You probably have to enable the Luclin or Velious textures or what not in your eqclient, I believe they default to Off
Yeah, I'm not sure what to do. Everything is set to high (even the old client settings). I wonder if these were the "new" textures you could download from the old launcher originally.
Patcher -> Advanced tools (bottom left area) -> game configuration -> on last page, set texture quality to high, and also make sure texture compression is OFF, that will ruin any texture setting. You set environmental textures in game, but you need to restart to see them. Making this post brings up a few other issues that have bugged me. **Having settings split in and outside of the game is annoying. Best case, every option should be available both inside and outside of the game. **EQ settings are needlessly complicated. I'm willing to put effort into figuring out settings and getting various games to run right, but I know for a fact many people who judge EQ's fidelity poorly don't run it properly. Settings need to be condensed and need be laid out in a more understandable way. IE, Shaders : Low, medium, high, ultra. Not 5 different shader options with technical descriptions that most people don't understand. (As an aside, here is more info on EQ settings) http://everquest.fanra.info/wiki/Graphics_and_performance_settings_guide **BUG: You can't use the launcher configuration tool without changing your resolution, and only 4:3 aspect ratio resolutions are an option. Meaning everytime you change something from the tool, you need to change it in game. ============= I want to clarify something. The problem I have with EQ textures is more with environmental textures than PCs/NPCs, that's why I asked for expansion specific official texture packs. It would also be nice to have mod support for unofficial texture packs (well, as long as you don't need to buy them from the player studio for SC.) And since I'm making another post, native anti-aliasing support to EQ too please.
Right, I have everything setup correctly. Even the settings in my eqclient.ini show TextureQuality=1 (which is the best) (2 is medium) (3 is low) Honestly, I don't think this is a setting you can change to get these. Maybe a Dev could comment on this... maybe.
Piestro people only whine about "new" zones like Nektulos 2.0 which was like a theater stage (horribly done) and Freeport 2.0 which completely banished the REAL feel and layout of Freeport... Had they kept the layout the same, refined the buildings and so on then it would be top notch (think Commonlands and N/SRo's which share the "sorta" same layout as the originals but vastly improved graphics, only hickup I can see is commonlands tunnel which feels so outa place compared to the old one but thats just me. Keep to the old ideas and people whine less, but do dramatic changes to their loved places like Nektulos 2.0/Freeport 2.0 and they will gut you alive. Changing/updating to newer graphics then we are talking 3 expansions which is far from 700 zones or how ever many you listed and their models (many models have already been fixed and kudos for that) You could go further but many of them are quite nice
Zinth, I totally agree with you on the horrible revamps of Freeport and the first Nek-disaster, however I think you are a bit too forgiving about the Commonlands revamp. Not only did they make one zone out of two, which makes the world a bit smaller(and I like my Everquest BIG!), the combined zone actually IS a lot smaller then the two were. You can especially see this with the Orc camps and the Undead tower: they are all ridiculously close together now. Too close to create the sense of distance. Furthermore a lot of small details were lost: all the houses and Inns are now open structures without a door, which always felt tacky and cheap to me in more modern MMO's. Also, now you can /con a merchant safely from a mile away and see if he is /glaring or worse to you, while before you had to sneak up to the door, open it, do a quick /con and possibly run for your life if your faction with those shady merchants was too low. Also, the opening to Befallen used to be hidden behind a dune: the only indication that there was something mysterious and awesome there was that eery glow that you could see behind that dune. Now the entrance to Befallen is a gaping hole in the zone-wall that you can see from the other end of the zone. Also the old zone layout had more distinct features, like the high hill with the druid (or Ranger?) NPC on top and that low, bowlshaped area in front of the first Inn group in East Commons. Now it is mostly the samish hilly area. Bad revamp, obviously done by someone who had not emotional ties with the game. Only revamp that I can live with is the way Nektulos ended up: they pretty much exactly copied the layout and features, after the backlash of the first revamp. Even RO is iffy because, again, they joined two zones in one, which sucks and makes the world smaller(I do not care that the zones are deserted, I like traveling and loneliness). Also, the old Ro music was much better, more mysterious and eery. Sorry for my rant, I am glad they probably will never do a revamp again.
yeah well I am a forgiving person, but I do not like glaring mistakes like those I mentioned, the other tidbits I can sorta live with, and yes I know they combined zones to keep the number of "empty anyways" zones down
Hehe, obviously we agree on revamps, I sortoff used your post to fire of my rant. I also hope the devs realize by now that if they want to repopulate zones somewhat, that joining them together does not work. They might as well condense the whole game into 35 zones then. I really like how the devs are going about that particular issue now: Anniversary quests that take you all over the (old) world(love it), Hotzones and hopefully in the future, Collections that make you go back to zones everywhere and hunt down that Blackened Alloy Bastard Sword. That would be the ultimate nostalgia-fix for me, hell, I already do that now and line the walls of my house with them!
There are three types of revamps imo. 1. The "Freeport Method" 2. The "Hardcore Heritage Method" and 3. The "House of Thule Method" Number 1 is terrible. Think Freeport, or Deserts of Marr, or Bazaar, or Nektulos, or Highpass, or Lavastorm or...you get the idea. It involves completely re-imagining a zone we know and love, and putting it back in game with an entirely new appearance, layout etc, not only removing that which we have loved for so long....but not even really giving a viable reasoning as far as in-game lore goes as to how the heck Freeport went from a relatively small/average sized coastal trading town....to a gigantic militant crapstorm, over night. Please never do this one again...ever. Number 2 involves recycling the zone and it's graphics entirely. Scaling the stats of the mobs inside to a higher level for re-exploration and rescaling the loot that they drop. maybe a few minor mob placement changes, perhaps to fit a lore (Rain of Fear Velious theme) but mostly untouched. This one is my favorite honestly. I would prefer things like this happen more often. But either in a temporary fashion, like Hardcore Heritage, or a completely 'new' zone, like Rain of Fear's Velious theme. And then there's number 3. The House of Thule Method. This method is what I WISH the revamps like Freeport etc turned out to be. Think of Erudin's Burning, or Feerrott The Dream, or Fear Itself, or the individual islands of Al'Kabor's Nightmare. Not only is the exact layout, design, and general feel of the original zone kept in tact, but even the architecture right down to the shapes etc are kept in-tact as well. It's literally only different than the original in the fact that the textures are higher resolution, the terrain changes a tiny bit to reflect modern terrain styles, and that it's a new .eqg zone that can be modified to put in whatever changes they needed to put in that caused the revamp in the first place (Be it a portal to Arcstone, or a devastated port-apocalyptic setting and appearance). Here's a couple comparison screenshots of Erudin and Erudin Burning to show what I mean, for those that may not have seen the zone or what-not. It is my personal hope that older zones never have to be completely revamped ever again. Like someone said earlier, most people love having those zones, exactly as they are, for nostalgia. Heck I'd even prefer that the original models all be put back in (orcs, goblins, spiders etc) for the old zones and only use the new models in newer zones. There is SO SO many loose ends and unused zone lines from Classic-Rain of Fear (from the tunnel to Neriak Palace and the passage to Unkempt in Jaggedpine all the way up to the seemingly going to be unused portal in Shard's Landing) that you could literally survive for the next like 20 expansions off that stuff alone. Just doing what you guys did with Underfoot and The Hole...simply putting in a zone line, maybe opening up a door or removing a wall that covered up the secret tunnel. But if you ever find the need to revamp a zone again for whatever reason...please please please do it in the House of Thule style. Please?
I really do think that there has to be a bit of give and take when it comes to zone revamps like Freeport and Commonlands. When a new player comes into the game, and, as part of current content, has to go back to a place with the dated art assets, they don't have that emotional tie that we do as veteran players. What goes through their mind? "Wow.. this game looks OLD. Why haven't they updated XYZ?" Them taking the time to go back and redo entire zone layouts in some cases takes more effort and imagination than redoing what was old, and we should be even slightly appreciative of the fact that they were willing to go back and spend that effort bringing and keeping the game up to date. Looking at some of the demonstrated Screenshots, though, from House of Thule? I would agree that it's the best way to go if possible. That is if the original layouts are still viable artistically. EverQuest II going back and updating Freeport and Qeynos, keeping the same layouts and updating textures and lighting, completely and totally chugged. It didn't work very well. Artistically speaking, it could be seen as a bit of a mess. I do have memories of places like Freeport and Commonlands. But I can still back up and say... it's old. It looks old, it feels old, and me going back there and getting that pang of nostalgia for a few minutes isn't worth the dated look of the game. In fact, I get more feelings going to the new Freeport; looking to the differences remembering how things were, captivated by how they've changed.... it's a good feeling to me.
Most graphical revamps of classic zones are tied to certain expansions, as some expansions turned classic zones into pseudo hub zones. For example, freeport and the zones around it were a hub for POR zones, so from a game design perspective it was reasonable to expect consistency in fidelity across the expansion and its hub zones. That's not to say I disagree with the desire to keep the layout the same in revamped zones, I think that's a fair stance. But I'd rather deal with controversial revamps of nostalgic zones (eg POR) than have blatant inconsistency in fidelity like you have with ROF's velious zones.... I don't include NToV in that since it's purely a bonus zone, but EW, CC, and Kael are core tiered zones thus should have the same fideliity as the rest of the expansion.
