NO UK/Euro Server?

[Xavier]

From an announcement made by SOE yesterday it looks quite likely that all english speakers are going to be asked to play on the american servers for Everquest2.

Not only does this mean the patches are going to be scheduled across GMT primetime but also that the amount of people playing within GMT hours is going to be diluted across some 18 US servers.

One guild is doing their best to counteract this decision, electing an unofficial Euro server for english speakers, more details of which can be found here:

http://www.eq2-alliance.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=19

Personally I hope SOE do something to clarify or counteract this quickly, otherwise it could prove to be their biggest PR disaster to date.

[Gengi]

This is a severe kick in the nads, makes the server choice a lottery
I was looking forward to just looking at a few choices, now there will be the whole bloody range. Will need to see if A euro-English server consensus can come together shortly.
These people are looking to make a Euro choice. Xavier, maybe you could ask Venemous if he fancies joining there officer type forum to see what they are thinking.

Later

[Cask]

There have been a lot of "The sky is falling" and "I'm not buying it now" type posts on the beta forums but I'm not too concerned about the effects of not having a UK server. With a little community organisation (see Xav's post) we can have as many UK servers as we want with the added bonus of there almost never being a quiet time where it's hard to find a group.

Drawing on my knowledge of the EQ1 community, there was very little European community organisation and certainly no unofficial Euorpean servers designated from launch. Yet after a while almost every server had its European guilds cleaning out the raid mobs before the Americans got home from work. All those Europeans couldn't have possibly fitted onto one English speaking server anyway so that may be the cause of making us share the US servers.

Like Xav said the patch times could be a problem but will have to see how that works out. 100ms higher ping would be more my concern but then you get used to it and might well be a better alternative to having a UK server bursting at the seams at 8pm.

[Gengi]

On the official boards there is a thread asking Euro English people to join the server that starts with an E. May be a reasonable stop gap.

Later

[Xavier]

As long as theres only one - not two or none.

[Ukle]

Originally Posted by Cask

Drawing on my knowledge of the EQ1 community, there was very little European community organisation and certainly no unofficial Euorpean servers designated from launch. Yet after a while almost every server had its European guilds cleaning out the raid mobs before the Americans got home from work. All those Europeans couldn't have possibly fitted onto one English speaking server anyway so that may be the cause of making us share the US servers.

Like Xav said the patch times could be a problem but will have to see how that works out. 100ms higher ping would be more my concern but then you get used to it and might well be a better alternative to having a UK server bursting at the seams at 8pm.

Yup there wasn't a UK / Europe server at launch but the 2 that were added over the years offered a lot. The first one (whose name escapes me) was one of the most popular servers around. While the other server, Venril Sathir, was low populated but had a great community and was expecting that community to transfer over to the new EQ2 UK server.

Patch times will be a problem as before - given SoE's poor ability to estimate the duration of patches and them starting at early hours PST.

Ping means nowt though in old EQ so doubt it would mean anything in EQ2, after all its not PvP.

[Aada]

Im giving serious thought to not bother with EQ2 at all... having playing WOW atm in the stress test im loving it have'nt been this mad about playing a game since DAOC was first released..

PVP
nice graphics
decent quests
nice PVE
nice choice of characters
nice loot

ah its a dream at the mo i advise anyone to dl the client its simply a masterpiece

[Ukle]

Originally Posted by Aada

Im giving serious thought to not bother with EQ2 at all... having playing WOW atm in the stress test im loving it have'nt been this mad about playing a game since DAOC was first released..

PVP
nice graphics
decent quests
nice PVE
nice choice of characters
nice loot

ah its a dream at the mo i advise anyone to dl the client its simply a masterpiece

Yup its very nice but its far far to easy... reminds me of Horizons in that there is no challange what so ever.

[Cask]

Originally Posted by Ukle

Ping means nowt though in old EQ so doubt it would mean anything in EQ2, after all its not PvP.

Well I guess that depends on the gamer. I can 'feel' an 140ms ping far more than a 30ms ping and certainly in EQ1 it had consequences. Looting, moving items around in backpacks, casting spells directly after stopping running, switching weapons all became that little bit harder because of the latency and I found it to be a barrier to immersion and even a danger when split second timing is required to survive.

Admittedly EQ2 has great netcode and it shouldn't be a problem but as a gamer latency is always one of my concerns

[Jonaldo]

Originally Posted by Aada

having playing WOW atm in the stress test im loving it have'nt been this mad about playing a game since DAOC was first released..

You said this about Guild Wars only last week

[Gengi]

One thing that may or may not be a 'good thing' is if as seems to be the case the US version is up and running a couple of days before the bulk of Europe actually get the boxes we should at least know the server names .

There is always a silver lining sometimes you have to look really hard sometimes you have to make it up

Later

[rynnor]

Originally Posted by Xavier

Not only does this mean the patches are going to be scheduled across GMT primetime but also that the amount of people playing within GMT hours is going to be diluted across some 18 US servers.

Its bad news and I hope they reconsider but I think you would find that all servers get patched at the same time anyway - thats what happened on EQ1 when they launched servers actually situated in europe - remember that all the support staff will be in the US so they arent likely to split the servers for patching...

[rynnor]

Hmm - I read around a bit and this is more serious than I initially thought - because of the way you have to be online to sell stuff any euros on an american server are going to be at an extreme disadvantage - either not able to sell their stuff or unable to find a seller.

The difference in ping is not trivial either and finally the US copies of the game will be out 3 days before the euro ones so potentially guilds could well have formed and have grabbed most of the limited guild housing on the server.

We are screwed already - I pray that they re-consider - I dont fancy trying to play in french or german in order to get a server with a population when I'm online and a decent ping...

[Ukle]

Originally Posted by rynnor

Hmm - I read around a bit and this is more serious than I initially thought - because of the way you have to be online to sell stuff any euros on an american server are going to be at an extreme disadvantage - either not able to sell their stuff or unable to find a seller.

The difference in ping is not trivial either and finally the US copies of the game will be out 3 days before the euro ones so potentially guilds could well have formed and have grabbed most of the limited guild housing on the server.

We are screwed already - I pray that they re-consider - I dont fancy trying to play in french or german in order to get a server with a population when I'm online and a decent ping...

Doesn't selling work exactly the same as EQ1 Bazaar? if so you just keep a character online at all times, so when you are not playing them you put them into bazaar mode and people can buy goods of you without you being there (you become like a NPC seller). This is as good thing in a way for Euro traders as means when you log for the night you got all the yanks to log on and strip your trader bar by morning

Shouldn't Guild housing be extremely expensive as i thought it is rare and therefore has to be earn't. If so is unlikely that any will be bought in the 3 days headstart the yanks have over us let alone them all.

And you cant play on the French and German servers as you have to have the French and German localisations loaded, so if you can read French or German your ok Although the Speech will still be in English as thats down to your client so you could just rely on that...

[rynnor]

Originally Posted by Ukle

Doesn't selling work exactly the same as EQ1 Bazaar? if so you just keep a character online at all times, so when you are not playing them you put them into bazaar mode and people can buy goods of you without you being there (you become like a NPC seller). This is as good thing in a way for Euro traders as means when you log for the night you got all the yanks to log on and strip your trader bar by morning

I think it works the same as EQ1 but its tricky for those who might only want to play the crafting side of the game as they wont have contact with customers - and while the low level stuff you might knock out en masse as you get to the higher levels people will want gear with specific bonuses - you cant just knock out the high level gear and see it disappear from the shelves...

To compare it to daoc - you may find SC gear created for thidranki but you wont find sc'd level 50/51 gear as peoples requirements are too specific - its all done by order...