My Experience on Beta

[JillieMT]

Hello! As of today, the NDA has been lifted, so I will pass on a few things I noted. This is not a comprehensive review, just a few scattered thoughts, lol.

Firstly, I was immediately pleasantly surprised how well EQ2 looked, and how smooth the graphics were. I have an AMD 3200+, 512M DDR RAM, and a Radeon 9800 Pro, so I am not totally top of the line, but its decent. EQ2 ran SMOOTH! Much smoother then I expected. There are literally dozens of options to tweak, so I am sure just about everyone can find a happy medium to play on.

Server lag though was probably the biggest problem. That will certainly need to be addressed.

I started a dark elf cleric named Jerlyssa. The tutorials to begin the game are actually quite fun. The quest system is nice, albeit a *tad* buggy at times, but that is expected for beta testing. On the Isle of Refuge where you begin, there are neat little quests to learn every facet of the game: combat, casting, how to bank, tradeskills, and so on. They were nicely done, and the much vaunted voice acting is quite good I thought.

I went to Freeport, which is the evil city, and its HUGE! It was fun to explore the city all over again, and it reminded me how fun a new MMORPG can be with no fansites, or anything to look up a map for. I explored for hours, and never left the city! I intentionally stayed away from the beta forum posts that gave info on levelling, or quests and such. I only participated in threads that troubleshot problems in the game. In other words, I used the forums as a beta tester, and not a player.

I haven't been in beta all that long, about 3 weeks, so there are TONS that I know nothing about, lol. But from what I saw, its fun as it is now, and certainly in MUCH better shape then Star Wars was after I tested that, and saw that released waaaaayyy too early...

Hm, I guess that is a start for now, I'm sure some other testers will chime in, and we'll chat away!  

[Lorathir]

I'm really buzzed. Current reports are really positive, it's looking really cool.

Jilly/anyone else in beta, how are the newbie zones? I've been worried that because all the races are starting in one of either two cities, there'll be problems with everyone doing the same quests/hunting the same mobs. How's that looking?

[Pojodan]

1800+ AMD, 512 RAM, Geforce Ti4600 here and I could run many options on and run quite smoothly.  Cities are difficult to get through as my system bogs down horribly in them, but dungeons and open areas like Antonica it's sweet and beautiful.

I must say that the lack of beastlords is a fair bit glaring.. just can't replace them  
Presently I'm running a lvl 20 Kerran Dirge
http://www.users.qwest.net/~pojodan/EQ2Mish.JPG <older pic>
They just recently added in Kerran 'grunts', which are, IMHO, perfect as they sound more big-cat-ish.
Another BIG plus is animations.. oh gawd how I loathed EQ1 animations for Vah Shir.. jerky, awkward, and just plain bleck..  now my Kerran's tail moves indipendantly of what she's doing so wether standing or running it sways side to side slowly and naturally.  Combat animations are beautiful and natural (Crouched slightly with a wide stance, no widely flailing arms) plus you auto-face your opponent once combat is engauged so no more 'not facing target' messages.

On the topic of locked combat:  It's really not such a bad thing.  In many ways is actually make sence.  The way I see it our avatars show respect for those around them by not interfiering with their battles unless they ask for help.  It would be nice if SOME experience was still to be had for killing them and maybe junk loot (Say the Sword of Uberness becomes a Damaged Sword of Uberness that's too damaged to be useable), but over all it's not so bad.  This also allows soloers to have a chance in dungeons.  I was lurking around Vermin Snye (Think Qeynos Catacombs) and was able to still fight cubes (Yup, those are still around) despite there being a full group or two standing right beside me.  

#1 best part: Voice overs.  Oh lordy how this changes things!  And what's best is that the voice overs are WELL DONE.  You actually get a feel for the sence of urgency for Scribe Jeblot's need for Mrs. Grubbyhand's muffin recipee over in Baubleshire when he audably speaks to you.  As you wander through the city you overhear conversations and people greet you as you pass by (Admitedly, some of them are rather cheesy).  NPCs also react to you, so if you've done Sgt. Grimlot's quest to kill rats he'll bow to you when you pass by or do some other emote to indicate that he likes you while when you first came to town and lacked citizenship he'd either ignore you or give you a scornful look.    There's also ambiant animals http://www.users.qwest.net/~pojodan/Ducks.JPG That quack, meow, bark, etc as they walk around aimlessly.  

Quests:  Prepare to be overloaded with quests!  My 20 bard has about 120 or more quests completed, most of them FedEx type, and still using several items obtained with quests.  ALl quests are doable by everyone since the reward is always exp, coin, and occationally an item.  All jewelry items are usable by everyone, and when the reward is a weapon or armor you get to chose between several options so that no one's left out.  If a quest is class specific (Which is either Hallmark quests for obtaining specific classes) or armor quests (Which there are 2 or 3 of for light/medium/heavy) then the others can't even start the dialogue to begin the quest.   Another neat feature is location finding exp, as in when you first encounter the entrance to Blackburrow there will be a fanfaire of music, text on the screen, and you'll be rewarded a sizable chunk of exp.  One can practically gain a full level or more just by walking around at the early stages.

Combat:  Combat is fun.  Heroic Opportunities, while hard to pull off in a group, can make things rather interesting if you can plan them out.  I can barely kill a green if I just hack away at a MoB with my bard, but with the use of Heroic opportunities I can take out even cons without much trouble.  Assisting is also a breeze as you need meerly target the MT and you'll automatically attack what he's attacking, even if he switches..  The only drawback being you get his health bar in the target window and you have to manually deactivate combat mode when the encounter is finished... but since heath bars above NPCs are easy to see (lots of options for coloring, when health bars show up, if names are showed or not and what color/size they'll be... I personally have PC names off with Health bars for NPCs always showing with names appearing with mouseover)

Overall feel:  There's some minor gripes, like the number of zones one has to go through to get to some places and the lack of shrink spells (dungeons get really crowded), but over all it looks beautiful and plays quite well with lots of surprises along the way.  

There's SOOO much more I'm missing, but I'm sure you can find details just about anywhere.


Oh, and, hoorah for graphical bugs: http://www.users.qwest.net/~pojodan/Topless.JPG

[Pojodan]

Jilly/anyone else in beta, how are the newbie zones? I've been worried that because all the races are starting in one of either two cities, there'll be problems with everyone doing the same quests/hunting the same mobs. How's that looking?

Newbie Zones:  Newbie zones are instanced!  Once a certain number of people are in a zone a new one is made and made available.  I'd almost say that they could stand to lower the max number of people per instance, but finding stuff to kill at low levels is almost never a problem.  There are a few sore points here and there like rabid badgers in Oakmyst forest since ther's only 3 spawn points and they have a fairly long respawn plus they don't always drop the item you need and you need 4 or 5 of them.. but I'm sure these things will get fixed in time.
Overcrowding only really becomes an issue in the teens when Antonica and Vermin Snye are the only really probable places to go (For Qeynos anyway), but VS can handle 10+ full groups easily and Antonica is friggin huge.. 100+ people in zone and you only see 2-5 at a time except in a few key spots (rotstuffed scarecrows especially as they're one of the city quests you can do to get points towards getting a horse)   Generally if there's a specific mob needed for a quest that's rare (Which is about 90% of the zone) I've found, at least in beta, that people love grouping up since if everyone needs to kill X lizards or get Y peices of wolf scat, EVERYONE gets credit for the kill in the group.

The 'newbie' zone, which is a small island where you learn the basics of the game including tradeskilling, encourages grouping with the quests that are available there.  I love how they did the newbie isle, every single part of it.. hell, I've made 2 or 3 characters just for the sake of going from one end of the isle to the other till I'm stoped at lvl 6 (Gotta go to your home city and finish a citizenship quest to ding 7) because it's so fun.

[Skanda]

Not sure how I feel about that "wide screen" type UI. Although from what I've heard you can turn it off?

Also don't think I like the fact that the game indicates which mobs will help each other (i.e. add) when you pull. To me that seems to be taking a fairly large part of the challenge out of it.

Overall I'm hearing some very mixed things about it (granted some so far is from the FoH board/Anti-EQ) which makes me somewhat cautious about EQ2. Stuff like not enough difference between the classes and most people seem to be saying that they all basicly break down into Tank/Healer/DPS with nothing to really make any class prefered over another. I despise the group death penality and from what I've heard my predictions about pickup groups are well founded. Also a lot of people seem to think Freeport is rather one dimensional.

I'm not too much a fan of EQ2's graphics, too plain (Personal preferance though). One thing I'll give them is it seems to run better on lower end machines then I figured it would, though I have heard about this server lag before. Overall I wouldn't mind trying it but I think the whole Sony thing will stop me from buying it and I haven't heard enough good things vs the bad for me to overlook that.

Edit: Those cartoon text bubbles I'm seeing in pics make me cry. Can they be disabled?

[Lorathir]

Yeah, there's apparently an option to turn off the letterbox style screen. I'm a bit worried about there being not much diversity between classes too (ie need a healer? any priest class will do) I hope they haven't forsaken uniqueness as a reaction to the class envy thing prevalent in EQ1. I've also seen rumblings that once you get too high in level, you're locked out from lowbie zones. I'm hoping that will change.

Is it ready for a mid-November release?

[JillieMT]

Yeah, the letterbox can be adjusted in the Options screen however you like it, or gone totally. Also, all the UI files are .xml, just like EQ, so there will certainly be plenty of fanmade UI's out there, just as there was for EQ.

Hm, I havent advanced high enough to get too specialized yet, so I am not sure about the "who can heal the best later in the game" hehe. I was on the path to eventually become a defiler, but Jerlyssa is only 10th level, and just became a shaman. So I can't really comment on the same-ness of character classes. I can see where the detractors might be coming from though. As soon as I completed my shaman quest, I was expecting to get a few new spells right off the bat. But I only got a Slow. So the only difference between me and the cleric I was was that slow.

And yes, you can see what will add. Ah, I am sorta glad to see this. In EQ, with experience you know what will come when you pull something, so I don't think too much challenge is taken away. It's kinda nice because a solo'er can pick their way through a zone finding singles to take on, and in some instances, it was quite exciting. I was in the Ruins, which was an undead-overrun area of Freeport, and I had a definite sense of danger as I made my way through there, looking for encounters that I thought I could handle.

The text bubbles aren't so bad really. I don't think you can disable them, as they include menus that you are using to interract with the NPC.

As far as the Isle of Refuge, I loved this area as well. As I said elsewhere, I felt the newbie quests were very fun, and well thought out.

[Lorathir]

So the only difference between me and the cleric I was was that slow.

Well, that in itself is a big difference - big enough to put me mostly at ease. I'm surprised though they've included slow - and mezz. I thought that at one time they were adamant they weren't going to have those in EQ2.

Apart from a few nitpicky things I have, I haven't seen anything that couldn't be changed, going on the basis the dev's are receptive enough. The group exp death penalty is a bit of a no-no for me. As I understand it, if one memeber of your group dies, everyone gets an exp penalty. Kinda harsh, especially as there are some real doofusses out there! Would probably be scarey joining a pickup group but I'm hoping this feature will change. Not many people have expressed a fondess of it.

All in all, (and I know it's early days yet) I've really liked what I've heard and seen from you guys and other sites. Could be a winner...

[Incite]

As posted to my guild's board:

It sucks IMO.

The graphics were pretty but incredibly jerky on a mid range system (Athlon XP2600, 256mb Radeon 9600, 512 mb ram).

The characters by and large look silly, very plasticy; dark elf males look especially silly.

The voice acting is so freakin annoying it's unreal.  I can think of nothing worse than the senseless drivel coming from the NPCs; having to read it was bad enough but you can skim or ignore it if you just read, listening is an exercise in pain tolerance.

The UI is completely unintuitive, so are the key controls.

Class selection is horrible; you are expected to choose your class path with no fore knowledge of what the class tree is, I couldn't even find a class tree with a search on the net or on SoE's site.  I'm sure there is one "somewhere" but I couldn't find it easily.

The Island of Refuge is possibly one of the worst ideas in any game ever. It's instanced and if you want to start the game with a friend there is no gaurantee you will end up in the same instance of it. You are stuck in the damn place until you've played through it and can get off - imagine the EQ tutorial but being forced to stay in it until level 5.

My keyboard didn't work at various points; couldn't type anything.

Combat was not exciting at all. Targeting mobs was difficult, and the whole thing felt clunky and annoying (much like the rest of the game really).

Dunno what else to say ... I might give it a try in 3-4 months time when they've hopefully polished things up a bit.

[JillieMT]

As posted to my guild's board:

It sucks IMO.

The graphics were pretty but incredibly jerky on a mid range system (Athlon XP2600, 256mb Radeon 9600, 512 mb ram).

The characters by and large look silly, very plasticy; dark elf males look especially silly.

The voice acting is so freakin annoying it's unreal.  I can think of nothing worse than the senseless drivel coming from the NPCs; having to read it was bad enough but you can skim or ignore it if you just read, listening is an exercise in pain tolerance.

The UI is completely unintuitive, so are the key controls.

Class selection is horrible; you are expected to choose your class path with no fore knowledge of what the class tree is, I couldn't even find a class tree with a search on the net or on SoE's site.  I'm sure there is one "somewhere" but I couldn't find it easily.

The Island of Refuge is possibly one of the worst ideas in any game ever. It's instanced and if you want to start the game with a friend there is no gaurantee you will end up in the same instance of it. You are stuck in the damn place until you've played through it and can get off - imagine the EQ tutorial but being forced to stay in it until level 5.

My keyboard didn't work at various points; couldn't type anything.

Combat was not exciting at all. Targeting mobs was difficult, and the whole thing felt clunky and annoying (much like the rest of the game really).

Dunno what else to say ... I might give it a try in 3-4 months time when they've hopefully polished things up a bit.

Ah, alot of that is opinion, but some are just erroneous.

1. Graphics: My system is only slightly better than that one, and I ran smooth. From the beta boards, very few people are having that poor of performance, so I am not sure what is that person's problem.

2. UI: It's not all *that* different from EQ's! In many ways, its actually better. Then again, to be perfectly honest, EQ's can be much better as well...

3. Isle of Refuge: You can indeed go the the instanced one that your friend is on. It sounds like this person didn't pay much attention to the documentation, or to the nearby NPC's when you enter the Isle...

4. Targetting: does this person on your guiild boards even play EQ? Because targetting is exactly the same...

[Logato]

I've been in Beta since August.

Good things...

Graphics are nice.
You get your spells automatically, but you get to buy enhancements or quest for enhancements to them.
Every class can solo, at least for the first 20 lvls.
Quest system is nice.
Fast combat, low down times.

Bad things....
Horrid server lag, mostly in large zones but in any zone if you have more than 6 or 7 characters in graphical drawing distance of you.
High hardware requirements. If you don't have at least 1 gig of ram, one of the latest $200 or more graphics cards, a pretty good processor, you may as well not get this game.
Content is pretty heavily scripted, with most of it leaning toward groups of 4-6 characters. This game won't be any better for soloing than EQ Live, maybe worse for the higher lvls.
You can lvl up fast with quests, but if your run a 2nd or 3rd character, they become boring and if your start a 4th or later character, you positively hate them.

[Skanda]

http://vnboards.ign.com/EQ2_General_Board/b22210/77133927/p1

If that poll is at all accurate then ouch.

[Pojodan]

As posted to my guild's board:

It sucks IMO.

The graphics were pretty but incredibly jerky on a mid range system (Athlon XP2600, 256mb Radeon 9600, 512 mb ram).

The characters by and large look silly, very plasticy; dark elf males look especially silly.

The voice acting is so freakin annoying it's unreal.  I can think of nothing worse than the senseless drivel coming from the NPCs; having to read it was bad enough but you can skim or ignore it if you just read, listening is an exercise in pain tolerance.

The UI is completely unintuitive, so are the key controls.

Class selection is horrible; you are expected to choose your class path with no fore knowledge of what the class tree is, I couldn't even find a class tree with a search on the net or on SoE's site.  I'm sure there is one "somewhere" but I couldn't find it easily.

The Island of Refuge is possibly one of the worst ideas in any game ever. It's instanced and if you want to start the game with a friend there is no gaurantee you will end up in the same instance of it. You are stuck in the damn place until you've played through it and can get off - imagine the EQ tutorial but being forced to stay in it until level 5.

My keyboard didn't work at various points; couldn't type anything.

Combat was not exciting at all. Targeting mobs was difficult, and the whole thing felt clunky and annoying (much like the rest of the game really).

Dunno what else to say ... I might give it a try in 3-4 months time when they've hopefully polished things up a bit.

Graphics: 1800+, 512 RAM, Geforce4 Ti4600 here.  Game runs very smoothly in open areas.  The main problem spot seems to be loading lag.  I can turn my settings down to extreme performance and the herkyjerkiness will be the same as when I set it as High Performance with several features turned on.  I'm hopeful they fix this issue... I beleive it has to do with loading models as they come within the clip plane since every time I get a jerk of lag inevitably it's because several characters (PC or NPC) just came within clip plane.

Models: /agree.  I'm a fair bit disappointed with the look of the the characters.  Erudites, Dark Elfs, Kerrans, Humans all look aweful.  My Kerran character took a lot of adjustment to make her look okay.  Most races seem to be decent looking with a lot of tweaking, but for the most part they look unplesent.

Voice Acting:  Say what?  I LOVE the voice acting!  I do beleive you can turn it off if it really annoys you.  But for me it makes the game 500% more immersive.  I never read quest text unless it's a really big quest with deep lore to it.  I've listened to and enjoyed all voice overs so far.  There are some that are kinda goofy/stupid, but they're few and far between

UI/controls: There's some issues here, but the UI's kinda low prioroty now, IMHO.  Still in beta after all.  I adjust quickly to UIs so I havn't really had any problems other than having to twirl my camera around sometimees in order to click on something that got behind a chat window.

Classes:  I like what Smed said on the boards.. this is NOT EQ1.  I rather like the way the game works.  You start out as a nothing then an NPC asks you what sort of profession you are and gives a basic description of what they are.. do you nuke? DO you heal? Do you sneak? Or do you fight?  Then the lvl 10 quests have you do seperate quests for each of the 3 options with longer descriptions of what they are.  I've only done the Bard lvl 20 quest and it was fairly quick and simple with a short description for what the two options where (Most classes only have one option other than betraying to get the other option).   It's very different from EQ1 or most other games, which, IMHO, is excelent.

Island of Refuge:  Again.. huh?   This part of the game rocks!  You learn a little bit of everything from questing to tradeskills to grouping, items, etc, etc.  They did an awesome job on this part.  As far as playing with a friend one of the two docks has a bell that lets you go to any of the other active instances.. just pick one and have your friends meet you there.

Bugs:  Bugs are bugs are bugs.. this is beta

Combat:  Targeting could be worked on, I agree, though normally my bard just has the MT targeted so I assist them constantly so it's rarely an issue.  Targeting ring and name highlight makes it easy to see what you have targeted.

There you go, more opinions.

[Drakh]

http://vnboards.ign.com/EQ2_General_Board/b22210/77133927/p1

If that poll is at all accurate then ouch.

THe thing you need to remember is that EQ 2 is NOT EQ 1 and the devs have stated that ...

i cant find the post but to basically summerise...

EQ 2 will conscentrait on small sized content designed for soloers, groups and raids of no more than 24 people... EQ 1 however will continue to be the source for huge raid content that it is now...

This is in effect enough to turn off about 40% of the current EQ population - so many where looking at EQ 2 as being EQ 1 with prettier graphics and are disappointed with it for this reason only.

Also ...

I'm a bit worried about there being not much diversity between classes too (ie need a healer? any priest class will do) I hope they haven't forsaken uniqueness as a reaction to the class envy thing prevalent in EQ1. I've also seen rumblings that once you get too high in level, you're locked out from lowbie zones. I'm hoping that will change.

This is also another reason people quit beta early but this has been put to rest in a recent post on the beta forums...

Since character individualization in EverQuest II has been a hot topic following the lifting of the NDA, we thought it would be a good idea to share our plan for the all-new features that are going live in the next few weeks to give a greater sense of uniqueness to players. We’ll be releasing more details each day, beginning with the character traits list tomorrow afternoon.
First, let’s talk about what’s changing from its current state.
We’re releasing the final class spells and arts lists. These move away from the standard archetype spells and arts we’ve been using for balance testing and give players access to their class-specific spell selections. The spells and arts you’ll see in the next few updates include new effects, class-specific strengths and flavor, and final names.
These spell changes are taking place across the board and will greatly refine class differences from what they are today. We’ve completed the balancing necessary to give a solid role to each class and now we’re excited to release the new spell and art lists.
To illustrate how these changes work, we'll use the Mage -> Sorcerer -> Wizard progression as an example.
Unlike how it was in the previous spell lists, once you turn level 10 you stop being just a mage. As you choose your path and complete your quest, from that point forward you are a sorcerer. There are no new mage spells after level 10. Each class will be branch off into entirely class-specific spells.
Once you turn level 20 and choose the path of a wizard, you are no longer a sorcerer. As before, there are no new sorcerer spells after level 20. You will be gaining wizard subclass spells from there forward.
In other words, there is no longer any such thing as a "level 44 mage spell," because a high-level wizard should never think of himself or herself as a level 44 mage in EverQuest II.
You will still be able to do a number of the same things to keep being useful in your key roles, but with unique and interesting differences that are suitable to each of the classes and subclasses that branch out from the common base.
For example, all priests will continue to receive instant heals, but other heal types will be restricted based on class. Only shamans will get wards, only druids will get regens, and only clerics will get reactive heals.
Classes will also receive a greater assortment of unique spells and arts. These are additional abilities that will likely be purchased off vendors. For example, illusionists will be able to cast racial illusions.
Full spell and art lists for each class will be released in the next few days.
Next, we’d like to outline some brand new features going live in the coming days and weeks. These systems add a tremendous amount of customization to each character and should help you create the unique persona you'll want to play in EverQuest II.
New Feature - Training Specialized Abilities
As you develop your character, you’ll be able to specialize in major aspects of your profession. About every ten levels, you can choose to focus on one of your core abilities and receive advanced training to improve it.
For example, a priest could train and receive either a stronger heal, a more potent buff, or a higher-damage nuke. This ability would be of much greater potency than the typical granted spell and may be upgraded even more through adventuring.
Each profession gets similar choices that play to their strengths – fighters may choose between offensive and defensive enhancements, or mages may focus on improving a damage spell, a pet, or a stun spell as appropriate to their profession.
New Feature - Character Traits
Character traits allow you to choose an aspect of your character and improve upon it. Traits are independent of your character’s race or profession, and all characters have access to the full list.
By the time they’ve reached level 50, every character will gain access to seven traits that help tailor their character to their preferred play style.
For example, a given character might choose to become Clever, thereby increasing their intelligence. Another character might choose to become Nimble, thereby increasing their base agility.
Traits can improve your character in a variety of areas, such as increasing your statistics, giving more health or power, improving your health or power regeneration speed, and making your more resistant to magic, disease, or different types of melee damage.
Traits are generally permanent effects that continuously improve your character during play. Once you’ve selected a trait, you’ll enjoy its benefits permanently.
New Feature - Racial Traditions
As players learn the background and lore of their chosen race, they begin to unlock certain bonuses. This starts with race-specific titles and leads to a choice of racial abilities.
By the time they’ve reached level 50, every character will gain access to four racial traditions to help tailor their character to their preferred play style and distinguish themselves from other members of their race.
For instance, an iksar could choose from enhanced health regeneration, increased power regeneration, or increased armor class. A ratonga may learn to forage for food or improve his ability to dodge blows. Erudites may learn to summon a magical wisp, guard themselves with a magic-resistant shield, or improve their alchemist crafting abilities.
Racial traditions take many forms, but are generally activated abilities that can be used on demand to greatly improve your character for a short period of time.
Some traditions give bonuses similar to traits, but with much more powerful effects.
Full racial tradition lists will be released for every race in the next few days.
New Feature - Enemy Mastery
During your adventuring career, you’ll be able to learn about the creatures and monsters you’re fighting and use that knowledge to your advantage.
Every few levels, players may choose from a selection of enemies and undertake a quest to learn how to exploit their weaknesses. The successful completion of this quest results in an enhanced attack against that type of enemy.
By the time they’ve reached level 50, every character will gain access to six enemy masteries to help tailor their character to their preferred play style.
Summary
These new kinds of choices allow for greater individualization without creating major imbalances between subclasses. One dwarf templar can have different stats and abilities than another dwarf templar while retaining the core abilities that they need to be successful in their key roles. Approximately every two levels players will receive an additional choice that allows another degree of individualization.
We plan to have the first round of these features showing up in next week's scheduled update (week of 10/25/04) with additional features arriving the week after. We look forward to hearing what you think of these upcoming changes.
Message Edited by Moorgard on 10-19-2004 07:50 PM
============================
Moorgard
EQII Community Guy

so basically all we have been doing is beta testing the basic archetype classes - over the next few weeks youll start seeing the real information about classes and their abilities.

Is it ready for a mid-November release?

November 12 is release date going round and i think its a possible target - we will see when these Individuality changes go live" but for the past 2-3 weeks the main focus on testing has been server stability and introducing the Bazaar system (which is great BTW )

[Lorathir]

Yeah, I saw that post on an EQ2 site Drakh, and it's very encouraging!