Date: 11. November 2004
Type: Game Reviews
Author: Peter
Platform: PC
Now that the beta is over and the game is in stores, it is time to write
a few lines about Sony Online Entertainment's newest MMORPG. Before I start I want to mention that I belive
that a review should be handled the same way as a critique about a theatre premiere.
So those used to a more advertising like review style shouldn't confuse my writings
with liking or not liking the game.
The main positive aspects of EQ2 are the amount of content to
explore, the great graphics and the support for online communities.
Especially the graphics are in the field of realism better then those
of any other MMORPG out right now.
The negative points are that you just get 4 character slots for your money. That the game is still far from
being bug free. That everything cost less then a second to understand and
needs then to be repeated for days and weeks to become good at it. That some of the
used anti cheat concepts are a bit extreme and that being
frustrated at times seems to be, as in most MMORPGS, a central part of the concept ...later
more about all that.
Let's go into detail: You start at a character creation screen.
The only thing having a gameplay impact here is choosing the character's race,
because of its starting statistics and possible starting towns.
The goodies base town in Qeynos, those of evil characters is Freeport. Most
races are neutral and can be played at the good and the evil side.
The starting statistics have most impact at start and are at
level 50 probably more or less irrelevant. Still most gamers usually
like to know them, so that they can perhaps level up a bit easier.
SOE does not mention them here. After World of Warcraft advertised a lot how easy it is to
learn, SOE seems to try to avoid anything that has to do with numbers or thinking so early
in the game.
Most done at the character creation screen is visual individualization
of your character. This is done quite nice and detailed as you have
sliders that change things as ear size, nose, eyes and many details more.
This even with 2000 players on a server an unique character is easy possible.
Also the many possible cloth and armor combinations with nice 3D surfaces
give characters a good individual look. A good impression of of
the many possible variations give these
screenshots done on the last day of beta.
After choosing a race like wood elve and the cheetah like kerra, individualizing visual appearance
and finally choosing a name, you can start the game with the tutorial or on the starter island. Arriving on the
starter island you will be asked to choose between becoming fighter, mage,
priest or druid. Later in the game at level 9 you will be asked to chose one of
three subclasses and even later, at level 19, you can select your final class out of 2 choices.
This way 24 classes are possible in the adventurer line as your adventure experience
increases.
You can also gain experience as artisan if you want.
There is one artisan starting class and later twice three
subclasses to chose from. Artisans get their experience from crafting
items out of things they harvest, get from dead monsters, or
buy. Most must be collected in more or less dangerous areas
or bought from other players. Crafted items are always better then
bought ones and most times better then items from quests.
Because you can go into a sell mode where brokers in town sell
your items, money can be earned that way. A very nice detail
is that every crafted item carries the crafters' name in its
statistics. Crafting itself is quite unique in EverQuest II.
While you craft events occur and you have a few seconds
to react by clicking the button with the same event-symbol or you get a crafting
accident. Such accidents can hurt you and damage the crafted product. Leaving the
computer while crafting can even be deadly. This is on one hand
a great way to keep script kiddies from gaining unfair advantages,
but I whish they had not chosen this kind of button click rat IQ test.
A multiple choice math test, or something needing a bit brain would have been at least
useful for something when you have to do it many thousand times. So while the crafting system is nice,
crafting itself can get annoying, but it is still better
then to compete with script kiddies. Even when I doubt it is save this way.
It was mentioned sometimes that it would be
possible to play just artisan. From my experience with the last minute changes to the crafting system
at the end of beta, this career path highly improbable.
To many things can not be bought in shops and the needed amounts can usually also not be bought
from others for a reasonable price. You have to go out yourself and collect what
you need and even a level 50 artisan has just the health of his/her adventurer level.
While artisans just need to talk to an NPC to chose their subclasses or
path as some call it, adventurers need to succeed in a hallmark quest.
Everquest 2 is, as the name suggests, full of quests. From what I have
seen there are more then 600 quests in total, but that is more a guess and
the number will sure increase over time. You can get experience points,
items or both as rewards. Some like quests, others don't.
You can play EverQuest avoiding the quest part most of the time, but
the 2 hallmark and certain area access quests can not be avoided.
These quests also tend to be very annoying because a lot of them require
the help of a group or involve searching for a NPC for hours.
Frustrating players is in most MMORPGs a very common thing, because if
the event is successfully mastered by the player after hours, it increases addiction for some and addiction means
more money for companies. That's the side effect of paying as long as you play.
Many things in EverQuest II can be seen in two ways, as simply a nice
feature or something to make an addiction more likely and of course
I will interpret them all just as nice features in this case.
Anyway, I don't recommend to start such
games to distract from any problems in your life unless you are
60, single and retired, or at least never had any problems
with limiting gaming time. The positive side effect of monthly
payments is that if there is a bug, somebody who's income you pay goes
and tries to fix it. In conventional gaming you report the bug
10 times only to get 4 months later an update that does not even mention your bug.
Back to Everquest 2. After you left the starting isle you
will find yourself in one of 6 starting communes located around
the central city areas. In the starting commune you will get
an own room with the rent already paid for one week. You can put furniture
in there or pictures, give friends access to it and may any time
rent a larger home somewhere else. After you solved the easy citizen
quest you are citizen and may do what you want. This is where
the better part of the game really starts. Everquest II offers
large areas to explore with really great landscapes. Most screenshots
can not really show the graphic quality, but the game
is one of those making actually use of your new 3+GHz GeForce 6800 system
and running it with just 512MByte memory tortures your hard disk
quite a bit. While you explore the game you will cross a wide variety
of landscapes, monsters to fight, resources to harvest and it takes usually
weeks until you have a sense of orientation on the main Qeynos isle.
At this point I should mention
that goodie player Qeynos is graphical much nicer while the dark side Freeport
has a funny dark humor and seems on slow systems to run smoother.
As the word multiplayer says you can group with others and a few
raid areas can even only by accessed by raid groups. On a larger scale
guilds can be created. There are quests for guild points, guilds
get their own webpages, many statistics and other tiny advantages.
Most of the game can also played solo without a group or guild,
which leaves much more time for exploring, quest, or the a bit
DOS like uncomfortable chat window. Not the whole game
can be played that way. SOE forces players to join groups
at certain points by giving a quest that can
not be solved solo and also not be avoided. So who insists on solo gaming may, depending
on his/her class, reach not even adventurer level 10.
But those type of quests make usually less then 1% of your gaming
time which is even for most
solo players ok. I still hope that this will change in the
future because SOE representatives mentioned the solo option as feature.
The combat system in EverQuest II knows health and power. Power is used for spells,
but also for special and often impressive looking fighter
attacks. Certain actions combined in the right order trigger so called heroic
opportunities that can add extra damage or give other advantages.
The enemy's strength is always shown relative to your strength
by color codes from red as 'impossible' to gray for 'too easy'.
The game is not unnecessary violent and and standard settings I noticed
no blood, both I found very positive. There is no PvP combat in EverQuest II
and there a no plans to add one as far as I know. To me it seems not logic to
create a good and an evil side and then to offer no PvP server.
A reason for this decision may be balancing issues.
All classes are about equally strong in fighting monsters. This is
mostly reached by reducing the options that would allow to change your
characters basic statistics. While this makes it harder for new
players to mess their characters so much that they become unplayable,
I heard many roleplaying fans criticize this extreme balancing. Many
like to take out pencil, paper and calculator to make
perfect and superior characters. I personally don't mind that some statistics
can not be changed much while leveling up. If you take items,
spell upgrades and the few possible character variations into account,
the difference between two characters are big enough.
The second way SOE balances the game is by making a monster weaker or
stronger based on the player's level. This is usually not even noticed
by the players first, but would of course not work in PvP and could explain
why EverQuest 2 offers no PvP combat.
The game engine itself has one weak point and that is changing of
areas. While Dungeon Siege showed already years ago that
on they fly loading of data and making just one area is possible,
the industry did not overtake these concepts. Loading
times of areas can get very long and even more with
512MB or less memory, why I recommend to have at least 1GByte.
A lot in Everquest II could still change, so for example a large
part of the spell and crafting system changed in the last
days of the beta. The game will also be still full of bugs at
the release date and sure for some time after, but the constant money
flow ensures a good motivation to fix bugs fast and SOE
did already a good job there while I tested the game. Also the
support from the SOE representative was at least in
the German forum very good and professional.
A point still worth
mentioning is of course the cost of the game. Game + the 13$ every
month which will be too much for a lot of gamers, especially
with only 4 character slots for every account.
The EverQuest 2
website contains a few movies
for those who are interested.
SOE uses here streamed Quicktime instead state of the art DivX or XviD HD downloads.
This choice may make them impossible to watch
for many users.
Because the game changes a lot this review may not fit anymore in
a few months. If a review copy should end somehow at my
table I will probably rewrite the review or
add a chapter to keep my readers up to date.
Summary: EverQuest II impresses most through great looking
graphics for a MMORPG. It has also a lot of content in the form
of hundredths of quest, large areas to explore, and a wide
variety of ways to support ingame communities. While not
all attempts to be innovative succeed, the game will provide
those who have enough time with months of entertainment and
addiction. Negative points are the limit of 4 characters
per account, offline inspecting characters for a fee, a
limit to the number of open quests, long waiting times during
area changes, enforced group playing at times and a still high
number of bugs. But while already as good as many competing
products, Everquest II has so short after launch also still a lot
of potential to improve.
