EverQuest II Review

EverQuest II

State: Final
Website: http://everquest2.station.sony.com/
Developer/Publisher: Sony Online Entertainment
The Pitch: EverQuest^® II is the next generation of massively multiplayer gaming, a huge online world where friends have come together for adventure and community. Featuring breathtaking graphics and a vast, beautiful and dangerous game world to explore, EverQuest II sets the standard for graphical realism as players are immersed in the game’s exciting locales and mysterious lands.

EverQuest II (EQ2) was a game I nearly didn’t try. Not because the pitch didn’t draw me in; the pitch is pretty bland but I can ignore that. For whatever reason, I had low expectations of it and didn’t figure it would come close to today’s ‘AAA’ MMOs like Warcraft or Warhammer.. or anything with ‘War’ in the title, I suppose. But I figured if I was going to try 25 MMOs, I should try 26. After all EverQuest was the so-called grandaddy of current MMOs, so what did I have to lose other than my social life? I think a wee bit of me was terrified of the ‘EverCrack’ label that was applied to the original game after players found themselves addicted. But I tried it anyway.

Unique to EverQuest II

Races. The most obvious thing when creating your character is that you’ve got 19 Races to choose from right off. 19!! Runes of Magic has… um, 1. That is 19x the amount of races! Hot diggety! Even cooler than that, the races are broken up into 3 main categories; Good, Evil and Neutral. This classification will determine the type of Class you can choose. For instance, Ratongas (rat people) are evil, so they can only choose evil-based Classes. In addition, it affects your starting zone/city. What this offers the game is a competely different starting set of quests and areas to explore if you have alt-itis, like me. Lots of fun to be had with this. Especially when you can choose from Frogs, Lizard-people, Cat-people, Ogres, Trolls, Dwarves, Faeries… It’s fantastically diverse.

Classes. As for Classes, there are 24 in the game. Twenty-freaking-FOUR! This sounds like an MMOers wet dream. And it is. But to simplify things, the classes all fall within the 4 aforementioned archetypes: Scout, Mage, Priest and Fighter. They are further subdivided within each archetype into 3 sub-types. And then within those, they are split into good and evil mirrors. So of the 24 available, 8 are Good, 8 are Evil, and 8 are Neutral. No matter which alignment your character is, you have 16 Classes available to you at the beginning of the game. Still very impressive; it’s impossible to not find a class where you’ll enjoy the play style if you try a few.

Voice Acting. I had no idea this had been implemented, so I was in awe after starting my first character – a High Elf Wizard. Pretty much ALL text in the game is voice-acted. It’s absolutely incredible. Not only that, the vast majority of it is well done. I loved the Goblins’ Quests (Grexx etc) in the Queen’s colony. Superbly animated and well voice-acted. It really drew me into the game. If this can be done, why isn’t it, by other MMOs? This is one feature that make the game feel more real and alive than any other MMO out there, to me. Yeah, the characters still all stand around in one spot for hours on end… but the fact that they talk to you makes it feel more like I’m in Oblivion or something. And that’s a good thing.

Performance

EQ2 is the only MMO I tried where I couldn’t run it at max settings. Well, I could, but I didn’t get a framerate I was happy with. It would dip into the 20s far more often than I liked at Extreme High Quality. I set it at Very High Quality, and it seemed to run better. I couldn’t really notice much of a difference between the two anyway except for a bit of fancier lighting and shadow effects. It runs very well on that setting.

The Good

Heroic Opportunities. A very interesting addition to your standard 1-4-6-3-4-2 (insert your sequence here) hotkey presses for combat. What Heroic Opportunities are skills that you use during combat. After they are triggered, you are prompted (by your icons glowing) to perform certain skills in sequence. Completing the Starter Chain will then trigger a Finishing Chain. If these are completed, various effects will occur, from beneficial buffs and heals, to direct damage or damage over time. The outcome will vary, depending on your Class and which Heroic Opportunity you choose to complete. This is a great addition to combat, as if you become proficient at them, they can greatly add to your effectiveness in battle. Plus, they’re loads of fun to pull off.

Alternate appearances. When Sony introduced EQ2 to Eastern audiences (Japan, China, Korea), they created new models for all of the Races in game. Since that time, they’ve incorporated the models into all player’s games with a patch. So if for some reason, you just don’t like how you look, you can change your appearance to the alternate model, from the Login screen. Then, in game, you can choose to view the alternate models from the Options menu. You can do this for all races, or just one, as you wish. This is a cool idea as I wasn’t overly thrilled with the look of the Elves when I first started the game. I much prefer the alternate models for them.

Appearance slots. Another great idea. Sometimes, you get a hat with some great stats. So you put it on and think ‘Awesome!’. Then you look at yourself. And you look like an idiot. (LotRO, I’m talking about YOU here). So what are your options? Well, you can turn off the visibility of that item, in most games – usually if it is a hat or cape, you can. In EQ2, you can put on an entirely different set, just for looks. I love this. So I get some awesome looking gear, but it has crap stats… no problem! Put it into your Appearance slots and enjoy. It doesn’t affect your stats at all, it only makes you look cooler Since you’re going to spend every second playing this game and looking at your character… well, you’d better like what you see.

Tweaks to usability and UI. I’m lumping these into one. I could go on and on about how EQ2 does things smarter than in most MMOs. But instead of writing an enormous paragraph on it, I’m going to try to summarize. Keep in mind, I’ve only played for about 6 hours total, so I might even be missing other stuff. In no particular order:

• • Your characters turn their head to look at stuff. Dumb, hey? Nope. This makes sure you don’t miss something while you’re running through the world. Like a quest-giver, or just something of interest. It also draws you into the game, as your character acts like something smarter than a mannequin.
  • Import UI. Best. Idea. Ever. Why don’t all games do this? Seriously. Once again LotRO, I love ya, but take a tip here. I don’t know about you, but when I start a new character, I usually spend about my first 5 minutes customizing things onscreen to get ‘em just the way I like ‘em. Not with EQ2. A handy little box pops up, asking you which character you’d like to import the UI from. Well damn. That saves me a ton of time. Love it.
  • Windows on a grid. You may not be a Type A person. (some say OCD) I am. I like my stuff to line UP, dammit! EQ2 is the first MMO that makes me happy to play around with my toolbar arranging. Or my popup windows. It’s all good – I can make them line up on a 20px grid and it soothes my inner OCD freak. Ahhhh… it feels good.
  • Launch straight to character. Man, here’s another one I don’t know why more MMOs don’t adopt. From the launcher, I can just choose the character I want to play and it bypasses the Login screen altogether. Way to feed my addiction faster, Sony!
  • Best minimap ever. First off, it’s square. I love square minimaps – they just make much more sense to me. Secondly, the minimap has cursor-sensitive zooming. Right off, you don’t have to click the stupid +/- buttons to zoom in or out. Who’s great idea was that, anyway?? Wow, someone way back failed in UI school. Nope, you just hover your cursor where you’d like to zoom in, and scroll the mousewheel – the map zooms in on the location of your cursor. Exactly like how it works in Black & White 2 or other strategy games. I love it.
  • General UI and notification smarts. Like being able to un/lock any UI element individually. The ability to resize pretty much any UI window. Remembering UI window positions on a per-character basis. Automatically fading in or out when you mouseover elements; AND the opacity is defined by you. ‘Mini-dings’ tell you audibly every time you hit a multiplier of 10% towards your current levelup. On top of that, it indicates you’ve been returned to full health and mana, without you having to stare at your XP bar.

You feel like a Hero. Capital ‘H’. In EQ2, the combat is visceral and interesting. I don’t mean later on at level 20 or maybe level 45 or when you get 1337 gear. I mean in the starting zone. I got a wicked lightning spell as a newb Mage that really kicked ass. Okay, it’s not really that powerful, but hot DAMN does it look cool. Cause seriously, if you want me to keep playing your game, make me feel cool right off and you’ve got my dollar. Immediately after trying out the mage in EQ2, I went out and bought the Shadow Odyssey bundle pack. Immediately. Because not only did I feel wicked cool throwing around lightning and giant glowing hammers and stuff, but I was fighting enormous wolves, larger than myself. I truly felt like a hero, even though deep inside, I knew it was just the starting zone. But I didn’t care.

Side note here. WoW, here’s why I will likely never sub with you, even though I dally with you occasionally. All games have starter zones. But frankly, yours are LAME. I’m bored out of my skull. Why? The quests make me feel like a newb. They monsters aren’t exciting and I know I won’t even feel like I’m competent for at least 15 or 20 levels. That’s a long slog for me. I want to jump in, have fun, jump out. And you make me feel like a slowly evolving newb. Too slowly. /end rant

Interesting quests, excellent tracker. Yes, there’s your typical fetch quests. And there’s the ‘discover the evil behind X’ quests. Aaaand there’s the ‘kill me X number of Y quests’. But, there’s also the interesting quests – and I’m talking about the starter area here – like the one where you have to lure the ghosts to the priest. And the one where you have to defend the gnome that’s hiding in the tree from the giant wolves. I thought for the most part, though similar to what you’ll find in other games, there was a bit more imagination put into these quests. It didn’t hurt at all that they were voiced as well, making me actually pay attention to what I was supposed to do, not just hitting ‘next’, ‘next’, ‘accept’, like I do in some games. And then once you’ve accepted the quest, the tracker is fantastic. You only track one quest at a time, but it’s always clearly marked, both on your main map and your minimap, making it a snap to find where you’re supposed to go. Good job on this. BTW, you can change which quest you’re tracking at any time by simply choosing it in your Quests window.

Fast levelling, easy gameplay. Yep, I had those preconceptions too. EQ2 is for t3h h4rdc0r3. It’ll take you ages to level. Nuh uh. I was very wrong. I’ve played a few hours on my mage, levelling her leisurely, doing lots of quests, sometimes just running around exploring and gathering stuff. I’m level 11. This is not the EQ2 you may have played at the end of 2004 (so I heard).

Graphics and Animations. I figured it would go without saying when I said I couldn’t run it at the highest settings, but I’ll mention it here just in case. The graphics are phenomenal. If they aren’t the best of any MMO I’ve played, they are at least the equivalent. No other MMO has water like this that I’ve played. LotRO’s is close, but since you can go underwater, this wins. I could go on and on, gushing about how amazing they are, but I won’t bother – just play the game with a good video card and you’ll see. I probably shouldn’t lump the animations in with the graphics, but they are equally exceptional. From the goblin’s insane dancing to my mage swiftly flipping her staff behind her back, to the trotting little deer or the insidiously slithering snakes. They are all exceptional.

Sound and music. Let’s just put it this way. I sometimes find myself humming the song on the way to work.

The Bad

Well now, what can I tell you that’s bad? Hmm. Well… Um. Hmph. Okay.

The intros are kinda choppy. I like the camera gliding in and settling on your character while the disembodied voice tells me the history up until now.. but if it didn’t shift and jerk all the way through, it’d keep me from just hitting escape. What else?? Hm. I can’t complain about the community – I was invited to someone’s guild within about 4 minutes of playtime on one character and without request, teamed up with others to chop through some baddies on another. Um.. High system specs maybe? Addiction? That would be bad. I dunno. I’m stumped. Oh wait, I’ve got one!

9-ish GB trial download. I knew I could come up with one! Yeah, it’s big. And it takes a long time. But man, oh man, it’s worth it.

Summary

A completely unexpected treat for me. I’m still going to be playing LotRO as my friends love it.. and I like it a lot. But EQ2 is the game I’ll be playing in my spare time. Now to find a group. I play on Oasis if anyone is interested, but I’ll happily start a new alt on a new server. Just email me.

Download value: [rating: 10] (10)