Yes, chat, and the NPC chat baubles are OK, just every enviremont bitmap is black ... Umbral Halls without any light source Map, broker, crafting window, zoning.. everything seem to work, except everything else is black.
Logged in to test chonoportals, found out brewday was in... but logged in Mystic lake with a complete black screen (except for UI). Tried to zone in guild hall and crashed. Relogged and screen is black again. Zoned out using the UI and screen is black in Antonica too so it's unplayable. Same as Beee: black, black and black. I'm on a ROG Strix laptop with windows 11, directX 12 on a GeForce RTX 4070 Custom performance: everything extreme quality with shadows and flora off. Adjusted everything to minimal (extreme perf, camped to desktop and logged back in again. Everything is black again. Camped to desktop, adjusted game performance from launcher to everything minimal, launched game and it crashed. Launched again on another char and came to a black Splendor Sky aerie. Camped to char in guild hall, same. Everywhere, I only have the UI showing. I uploaded my DXdiag on my fansite, here's the link: https://eq2artisans.faerylands.eu/uploads/images/DxDiag.txt
I think they should keep ONE server that runs with lower requirements. It's been running with them thus far, so it should be doable. It might have to be its own region, but that should be doable too, since DX 11 is ONLY on Test atm. And then, have free transfers for anyone who needs to move to the lower spec server to keep on playing. I fear they are going to lose a lot of customers with this, and frankly, they don't have that many customers to begin with. It seems like something like this happens every couple years. I bought the machine I have now because I could barely move in Forlorn Gist with my previous computer. That was two xpacs ago. Daybreak Games needs to understand that a lot of their player base consists of senior citizens, who don't have the funds or desire to get the latest and greatest computer technology.
Don't read too much into those posted requirements yet as they seem to contain multiple inacuracies. Mimimum CPU i7 recommended i5? 20GB HD space required? I just updated Test on my laptop and the paks folder alone copied over at 26GB.
But, but, but...us senior citizens, on FIXED INCOMES, often, will be relying on accuracy (and TRUTHFUL information, o Devs >:-/) to be able to make important financial choices. The gods bless Sturmlocke and all others who know what they're doing with hardware, software, etc., but not all of us have those capabilities. ;-> Again, my question is this: Why are you doing this, o Powers? Why is this needed? Is it? :-/ There are other ways to improve the game for attracting new players; losing your prior customers doesn't sound like the smartest thing to do. Uwk
Okay I patched up the Win 10 laptop and that seems to be working fine. Test seemed considerably laggier than live in the same place (Gorowyn docks banker) but I didn't really stay logged in that long on either server. I can't really gauge performance on that machine as I haven't used it in years due to it being so difficult so I have little experience for comparison. But I'm definitely not seeing the missing environment/texture issues as some others.
When you patched it, was it a game patch or a software patch from like Microsoft or NVidia or someone? Inquiring minds with Win10 laptops want to know... ;-> Uwk
I copied the paks folder down from the Test install on this machine down to the laptop and then let the patcher top up the rest. That just saves the 26GB download. I have no intention of patching/updating anything other then the game until I know exactly where the issues lie. I could update the graphic driver on here but that would be a total waste of time if they're going to insist on feature level 11_1 as this graphics card cannot handle that regarless of the driver I give it. And as everything else on this machine is working fine I'm not going to take the risk of upsetting it. 30 years of tech support experience has taught me the hard way: 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'!
Edit: I should add: my laptop is a gaming machine with a proper nvidia card in it, not integrated graphics. That often makes a difference.
I guess someone with the technical know how to decipher the information is going to have to list options of computers that people can buy if they want to keep running EQ2. So many now days just state integrated graphics and don't give any info. I've had computers in the past that could run games with integrated graphics and some that could not. If they're going to set up such picky specs, it's going to be hard for some of the older player base to decipher what they need to continue.
I installed the test version and didn't have any issues loading the game and running around for a few minutes. That said, I suspect there's still a fair bit of optimization work that needs to be done. Just running around Qeynos, I noticed quite a bit of "hitching" and the GPU was running at about a 20-25% higher load than it does with the current DX9 client (averaging around 35% on the live version, about 55-60% on the DX11 test version). Same location, so the same pixels being pushed out, but it's making the GPU work a lot harder for no apparent reason. This is an Nvidia card with the latest drivers on Windows 10.
Whether they use DX9 or DX11 should be irrelevant as far as the server is concerned. They could offer two versions of the client, a "legacy" client which continues to use DX9 and a new one that uses DX11. I suspect the reason they probably wouldn't be too interested in doing that is because it would require they maintain two different versions of the client, so more work for the developers and customer service team.
Another update: So far so good on my end (aside from the things reported earlier, namely what Arandar said about the hitching and stuttering). I say this because I wan't to underline how fast the devs are reacting to our feedback, because the patches they pushed within the first 72 hours are already fixing things. This is super fast by todays industry standards, and I like that. We still have more stuff to fix ofc, but it's a good and solid start and I'm thankful for that! I also like how more of us around here are willing to test DX11 and are jumping in to see how their machines will hold up. Hope to see more of us join the test! Sidenote: I've been reading some of the feedback a few pages back, and it seems there are a few open questions and some concerns about the "why" this is being done etc. First of all, I want to offer my help to ya'll. If you need someone to help you find out what gpu you can upgrade to in the near future, or if you're thinking about trying Linux instead, feel free to post some system details and we'll look at it together! Quirrah and I started discussing this topic a few weeks or even months ago, because I knew the clock was ticking. Time does fly by really fast, doesn't it? In fact, we could create a new forum thread just for this topic so others can jump in and help eachother out. How does a "hardware upgrade DX11 2024" post sound? Let's stick together a little bit around here. We have so many techsavvy ppl in our community, surely we can help eachother out a bit here, right? Just to answer some of the questions: This being a test means that things might change until release. Who knows, maybe the devs will figure out a way to support more DX11 systems, revisions and hardware by the time we launch. I see a lot of ppl around here with integrated graphics that are almost as old as the game itself, or even older at times, so in this case the time to upgrade has finally come. Don't worry though, because unless I'm completely wrong here, a new gpu capable of doing EQ2's new DX11 API will cost you around 20-30 bucks second hand on the likes of Ebay etc. This is a very small investment all things considered. As you all know I am fully in favor of this API upgrade, because it will help address a number of things that ppl have been vocal about throughout the years: a) better multithreading / multicore and overall better performance b) better graphics c) future proofing the games and much more - just to name a few (Angelina's post actually summed it up very well). Is this really necessary? Well, DirectX9 already reached its end of life some time ago, because major gpu manufacturers have already stopped supporting DX9 natively in their Windows drivers. What Darkpaw is doing here = future proofing these games and that alone is highly respectable because it means that they're showing interest in maintaining these titles in the long run after all. In fact, I wish DCUO could see the same treatment as it's in dire need of a next-gen upgrade that takes full advantage of PS5 hardware. This is a live service game after all, and a single hardware upgrade after nearly two decades isn't too much to ask for. This is highly speculative from my end, but I assume the new system requirements (i7 etc.) are that "high" because it might be taking future graphical and art upgrades into account AND they're giving it a little bit of leg room while at it too. Aside from requiring DX11, the other system requirements (CPU, RAM etc.) have not increased that much as of this post. Angelina did say that more modern DX11 art upgrades are a thing they target further down the line, so it makes sense to reflect that in the sysreq as early as possible. Sounds totally fair to me. With all of that said, I see ppl here asking for legacy servers etc. and I believe Arandar is absolutely correct with his statement; something like that would most likely be too much effort seeing how we're trying to ease and optimize development time by going to DX11. I suspect a legacy client supporting both DX9 and 11 will be a nightmare to support, as someone else put it so delicately further below, so I don't see that happening. It's way too early to tell, but let's pretend and stick with the worst case scenario here: What I do think might potentially be possible to offer is a DX11 legacy option that supports more DX11 revisions and older DX11 hardware, especially the really old ones for compatability reasons. This is what Blizzard did to WoW after going DX11 for some time (not sure if it's still available nowadays though): https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/directx-11-legacy/121429/2 Also just highly theoretical, just playing around with some ideas here. WoW had its fair share of DX11 related issues too btw, and they got ironed out as time went on. At first it was chaos, then it got better over time. The same goes for Guild Wars 2 after going live with DirectX11. GW2: At first DX11 was even underperforming when compared to their old DX9 client, but after a while DX11 actually started vastly surpassing DX9. Same goes for Lotro. Here's a link with some examples: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...pectations-so-high.295699/page-4#post-4279096 Someone else mentioned how WoW, FF14 and more did it better than us and how EQ2 needs more hardware for the game to run than these other games do. Well, it's all relative, because WoW did vastly upgrade its system requirements over the years, especially after going DX11 legacy, DX11 and DX12. Nowadays WoW even has more modern gpu features such as Raytracing and the likes, usually only seen in super high-end PC games. Speaking of FF14: FF14 is getting a - tremendous - graphics upgrade later this year, and system requirements are said to be much higher than before, see here: https://www.gameleap.com/articles/final-fantasy-xiv-dawntrail-system-requirements Star Wars The Old Republic is going directly to DirectX12 too and the word is that this means older APIs might get dropped altogether: https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/comments/191trc8/any_estimate_in_when_directx_12_will_be/ I quote: "Most likely the same as their 64bit release. Public beta first - then global release. Supporting two graphics APIs with a small team would be a nightmare, so most likely forced DX11/12 on everyone. Which might suck for some people with older PCs/laptops, but from what I hear - recent patch with the new graphics features already made the game unplayable for them" It's going to be very similar for everyone performing an upgrade to their older games. A lot of major mmos are doing the jump now and leaving DX9 behind. Support several major API, with one of them being already end of life, is too much effort in the long run. Guild Wars 2 killed DX9 support too: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-minimum-system-requirements-update/ "We're happy to announce that we are now ready to remove the DirectX 9 renderer for Guild Wars 2 and migrate all players to the DirectX 11 renderer.05.01.2023" FF14 is upgrading their art, flora, textures, shadows, shaders, polygons, character models (!) and much more with this push to adapt new technology - also after seeing how DX9 has reached its end of life. I commend them for doing this, because the game did launch on Playstation 3 and now we're already talking PS6 in the near future = the time has come. So again, let's make the best out of this and help eachother out here even if that means upgrading the gpu in your system to meet the new requirements. EQ1 has been through this numerous times now, because it started with DirectX6, and has survived to tell its story. We can do it too.Cheers
A good suggestion, and I have created said thread in the Players Supporting Players forum. https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq2/index.php?threads/hardware-upgrade-dx11-2024.614717/
From what I have read in other posts, that is a problem. Try posting your specs in the new thread and see if anyone has suggestions on how to upgrade. https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq2/index.php?threads/hardware-upgrade-dx11-2024.614717/
Awesome, thank you! I'll be checking that post as much as possible. Ppl can also post pictures of their PC if checking the specs or the mainboard for upgrades is too much. The other day someone literally sent me a picture of their PC opened up including their model number and that way we were able to check what type of gpu fits in their case and on their mobo and what power supply they have etc. Aterskia and I did this too btw and he was able to upgrade his PC this way too (where is At btw?).
