Fantasy Re-Review

EverQuest II



With this review, I assume the reader is somewhat familiar with
EverQuest II. If you've never played EQ2 and you'd like to learn more
about the game, check out these resources:






What's Changed



My history in EQ2 is pretty similar to that of a lot of
other gamers
I've talked to--I started out strong and loved the game. I was dazzled
by the features and graphics, which seemed stunningly high tech at the
time. I lasted about 6 months which, according to my rather
unscientific analysis, is longer than most. Who knew that spending 20
levels in one massive zone only to move to another that looked, more or
less, just like the first would become dull? SOE should have. But I
digress.



Heading back into EQ2 was a bit surreal. The changes SOE has made to
the game were apparent right from the character creation screen. When I
played at launch, newbie characters started as one of four archetypes:

style="margin: 10px; border-collapse: collapse; float: left; width: 83px; height: 104px;"
border="1">

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/12030"> style="border: 0px solid ; width: 79px; height: 100px;"
title="Fae Warden" alt="A Fae Warden"
src="/image/view/12030/thumbnail"
name="photo_a">

style="font-style: italic;">I ventured back into EverQuest
II as a fae warden. Hey, it's a free safe fall!

fighter, scout, priest, or mage. At level 10 you narrowed your choices
down and chose a class (Druid, for instance). At level 20 you picked
your final sub-class (Warden). That system has been eliminated, and
players now select from a daunting list of 24 class choices right from
the start. Being able to choose your final class immediately instead of
20 levels later was a good move on SOE's part. Nobody wants to grind
away 20 levels of the same old same on two different characters just to
find out whether they'd rather play a Warden or a Fury.



A couple of new races have been added. The Fae entered the scene with
the Echoes of Faydwer expansion, and with them came a new starting
city, Kelethin, in the Greater Faydark forest. The evil fae, Arasai,
were introduced later in game update #35, along with another new
starting city, Neriak. (These locations, the renewal of beloved zones
and cities from the original EverQuest, look completely different but
still have a high nostalgia factor for EQ players.) While I haven't
downloaded the extra content necessary to play an Arasai (I'm not
generally evil, although my husband would probably beg to differ), I
have to concede that while the coolness of a fairy race may be
questionable, the reintroduction of Faydwer and the Greater Faydark,
along with a host of other familiar zones like the Butcherblock
Mountains and Lesser Faydark, was a stroke of genius that almost had me
breaking into a chorus of "Memories."



Almost.



Graphics
& Performance



Back when EverQuest II launched I was running a decent
gaming system.
It wasn't the latest and greatest, but it was perfectly respectable.
SOE had been hyping the stunning graphics in EQ2, and saying things
like, "Our game will look good and keep getting better as technology
improves." For me, at the time, it often looked like mud. I could turn
up my graphics settings in the safety of my own little room at the
village inn or in open outdoor zones, but when surrounded by 5 other
group members delving into a dungeon I was doomed to run my game on the
lowest settings or suffer crippling lag. While I would never advocate
the "technology will catch up" approach when it comes to developing
MMOG graphics (see my upcoming Vanguard review for more on that), I
have to say that technology has indeed caught up to EQ2 and the game
looks splendid.



That said, I've never much cared for EQ2's character models, and I hear
a lot of similar complaints from fellow gamers. SOE introduced what it
called SOGA character models in late 2005. These models, created in
cooperation with Gamania as part of the EverQuest II East project,
offer a distinctly Asian flair. (They were designed to appeal to the
Asian marketplace.) Players can choose whether to view the SOGA models
or not, and even select which races they would like to view as SOGA
models. You can also customize your character's SOGA appearance, even
if your character is already in existence, but only once.



EQ2 performed well on my current system, as I think it will on most
current gaming systems. And I found myself newly impressed with some of
the glittery effects I couldn't quite take advantage of back when EQ2
launched and my PC just wasn't up to par. Lighting and bloom effects
give the zones an ethereal look. NPCs' mouths move when they talk--and
in many cases they actually do talk thanks to professional voice
overs--and they gesture and appear more lifelike than the static NPCs
in older games.



Graphics &
Performance Score
: 9



Combat



Combat is the one thing about EverQuest II that I find
rather flat. EQ2
employs a system called Heroic Opportunities, designed to make combat
more interesting than the hit-auto-attack-and-go-AFK combat in

style="margin: 10px; border-collapse: collapse; float: right; width: 104px; height: 80px;"
border="1">

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/12031"> title="Fae Warden" alt="A Fae Warden"
src="/image/view/12031/thumbnail"
name="photo_a" border="0" height="76" width="100">

style="font-style: italic;">Completing a heroic opportunity
creates greater damage and spectacular spell effects.

older games. While you'll likely die in battle if you don't concentrate
and use HOs (don't look at me, I didn't make up the acronym), you're
still not going to find combat any more exciting than a lot of
repetitive button mashing. With my keyboard set-up, playing the level
15 Warden I made and leveled up for this review, what I ended up doing
was this:



Begin combat using Snare or Root

Trigger a Heroic Opportunity with hotkey button 5

Advance the HO with hotkey button 2

Complete the HO with hotkey button 3

Heal with hotkey button 6



Lather, rinse, repeat.



Even so, props to SOE for at least trying to make things more
interesting with Heroic Opportunities. HOs can get more challenging in
a group, but they tend to be repetitive during solo play.



Combat Score:
7



The Bling Factor



EverQuest II, for its time, served up some fresh
innovations. (No, I'm
not necessarily saying EQ2 was the first to use the following systems
or technologies, so keep your fanboy indignation in check.) It uses
voice-overs for prominent NPCs. It has a memorable and impressive
musical score. It offers collection quests, allowing players to pick up
items found on the ground and add them to a collection. Completing the
collection earns the player a reward. (And for those of you who played
EQ2 back at launch, those collection items no longer consume valuable
backpack space--you can double-click them and add them to your
collection via an interface.) Player housing is equitable and
instanced--each player gets a newbie room at the inn in their starting
city for the meager upkeep fee of 5 silver per game week, and can move
up to fancier, more expensive digs from there. EQ2's crafting system
is, although not perfect and really still akin to button mashing, oddly
addicting, as evidenced by my character becoming a level 20 crafter
long before she became a level 15 adventurer. (And I'm normally not a
crafter, so that says something.) The same goes for harvesting--it's
difficult to pass up a node and not want to harvest it.



The bottom line is that there are still features in EQ2 that make me
think, Hey, that's cool! And I still hum the EverQuest theme song
(which replays itself in EQ2) from time to time.



Bling Factor Score:
9



Summing it Up



All in all, EverQuest II is a surprisingly slick and
well-executed
game. It was advanced and ambitious for its

style="margin: 10px; border-collapse: collapse; float: right; width: 104px; height: 80px;"
border="1">

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/12032"> title="Fae Warden" alt="A Fae Warden"
src="/image/view/12032/thumbnail"
name="photo_a" border="0" height="76" width="100">

style="font-style: italic;">The Crushbone orcs--even those
who "fail the empire"--will add a nostalgia factor for EQ players.

time, and because of that it has aged well. There's no sense of the
game being archaic and outdated like some older games can come to feel.
And a lot of the troubles that plagued EQ2 in its early days, like the
archetype system and the small and limited feel that the new world of
Norrath had, have been all but eliminated either through updates or
expansions. Overall, I've been pleasantly surprised by my second look
at EverQuest 2. My account is still active, and I'm still playing it,
even after this review hits the virtual newsstand.



If you're waiting for another MMOG and don't know what to do to pass
the time, it may well be worth digging up those old disks, downloading
an epic patch, and giving the game a second look. Or if you've lost the
disks or you've never tried EverQuest 2, you can pick up the game with
all the current expansions for $39.99 at your favorite game retailer or
href="http://www.direct2drive.com/6/4362/product/Buy-EverQuest-II:-All-In-One-Compilation-Download">Direct2Drive.



Average Score:
8.3





To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our EverQuest II Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Karen is H.D.i.C. (Head Druid in Charge) at EQHammer. She likes chocolate chip pancakes, warm hugs, gaming so late that it's early, and rooting things and covering them with bees. Don't read her Ten Ton Hammer column every Tuesday. Or the EQHammer one every Thursday, either.

Comments