EQDiva

Played a couple of hours last night...basically its the Plane of Sky. Look and feel is pretty nifty, in one night I noticed no realy new and improved or big difference from any other zones. The imlementation of the floating islands and how you travel seems decent. Lag is still barely tolerable (for me on a very fast connection and above average pc). It will have to get less laggy for me to be happy.

I started anew on the pvp servers so I didn't see any of the new stuff. There were over 8 queen's colonies and 11 Overlord outposts at start up. The US non exchange server was completely packed. I two box on one computer and had zero lag. I was running on max performance though, I'll try to get some graphics going and see how it is. I barely made 9 on the first night so I don't have any PVP exp under my belt yet, but my guild is really enjoying it. Hard the Bard, Troubador, Nagafen.

Keep us posted on the PVP, I am interested on how that turns out. What are you doing on your second box? I have done more traveling. To be honest, this is the most visually stunning expansion I have seen in EQII and EQI (through lvl 65). Hell, I have had fun foraging...they stuck some pretty mean mobs roaming through the forage areas. Its a game in itself. With the problems with offline selling, and me having a dedicated merchant toon, I made over 3pp (a bunch for most EQIIers) just off non-rare forages in one night..and that was casualy foraging while exploring. That will change as the uber tradeskillers all ding 70 (and some have already). In general, the money pumped into the economy will affect the game some. Common trash drops in the 1-5 gold range with other vendor loot up 20 20 gp and thats just in the level 60-62 zone. At least the young'uns will have a little less pressure on the adpept/equipement prices now that folks are back playing their mains, even if the do have more cash to twink. A very strange twist of events for the T7 jewelry crafters, at least on the common stuff. Looks like they are gearing up to sell us encounter specifec resist jewelry. Lag still sucks in the T7 zones. This will cause some more folks to leave....possibly myself, if its not fixed..but I can be semi-patient a while longer. Hopefully the hard cores will progress on, some folks will got to pvp or back to their alts and the entry zones will thin out and delag some.

The pvp is a good time. I'm in a well organized, team speak enabled guild so we do well for our lvls. The problem with pvp is that the lvl limit isn't reasonable. IE, just because you can fight them, doesn't mean you have a chance. I was with a raid today composed of 2 groups of lvl 14-20 running through TS with good organization (ie everyone assisted the MA, who was not the mt,etc). We ran across 1 lvl 26 character and barely killed him with the whole raid. He came back with another orange and killed us. Lvl's are a bit unbalancing right now. I two box a conjuror:)

Just an update. Lag is less as the player base has spread out....still too much in some areas, but more tolerable. T7 raiding is a challenge, but I like it. In terms of the overall design of this expansion, I have to say it is above average. I have been pleased. Neat mobs, neat instances, neat inside zones with significant quests and decent equipment upgrades. Travel is more of a hassle tho. We are using spires and clouds (a tad bugg, the clouds) to zone up and fly around. I am currently 66, though more than half my guild is 70 and doing AA's. They are not terribly significant but helpful. AA's in EQII are more of a choice. You have 5 different paths (based on str, int, wis, stam, agil) and a max of 8 points in each of 4 or 5 levels down each path...with a max of 50 points allowed, so far. So you have to make a significant choice for your toon.

I am having a little bit of an issue with the depth of the expansion. It is wide...ie lots of places to go. but not a lot of depth in them, if that makes sense.