Everquest 2: Gamespy previews Everquest 2

Fargo from Gamespy has a small article up about time spent with Everquest 2 and reports that the Dev's say the game is 70% complete!

Check it out:

So I got to spend a few hours with it on Friday. It's really coming together: developers estimate it's around 70% done, meaning that most of the game's systems and interfaces are in place. At this point, they're just fleshing out tons and tons of content. The world is even more lively, now. NPCs that used to wander mutely around now have cool things to say, and lots more quests are in place. Crafting is now in the game, so you can go to a forge and work raw materials into finished products -- it's not quite finalized, but it's in the game so that the developers can seriously playtest it.

There is now a (very small) non-internal beta running. I'd say maybe a couple hundred people. They haven't announced when they're going to open it up further. Tons of low-level content is in; the high-level stuff is still being tweaked, and they're waiting until the classes are balanced and more final before they can really finish up those areas.

They also recently re-did some of the graphics for the people in the game. People often complained how the characters looked kinda "plasticky" in screenshots -- no more. Skin textures on the humans and elves are much more realistic now. Constant little tweaks like that are just making the game look superb.

The plasticity remedy sounds like a good thing. For a while there, it looked like those models were coated in neon paint. I, for one, am pretty eager to get on that beta. The open-endedness of the early-game kind of reminds me of Lineage 2, but with more options, and I can definitely get into that. Ah, this reminds me. Check out this right here, SOE is teaming up with select online retailers to offer pre-buyers a "starter kit," which will include, among other things, a stripped-down version of the game's character creation tool. You'll also get a pair of Journeyman's Boots for your trouble, the original EQ's version of which our own Bryn camped 17 hours for. How's that for a freebie? Am I the only one that thinks this is kind of sketchy?