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Fantasy Re-Review

A Fresh Look at EQ2, Vanguard and WoW

by Karen "Shayalyn" Hertzberg

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Once upon a time there was a girl who loved fantasy MMOGs. She loved them so much that her co-workers, all gaming journalists, gave her flack for her desire to frolick among the elves and orcs. Even so, whenever some big name fantasy MMOG was released she would let her hopes that it might be The Perfect Game climb to stratospheric levels. She would pre-order, and head to her local game retailer first thing in the morning to pick up her copy on its street arrival date. To varying degrees, she would play that MMOG aggressively for weeks, or even months, only to find herself disenchanted.

So much for expectations.

But not long ago this maiden--me, of course, and not so maidenly, come to think of it--decided to revisit a few of those MMOGs of old. And by old I mean released anywhere from a few years ago to several months ago. Sometimes, particularly when you're tired of waiting for The Next Big Game to be released, it pays to take a look back at where you've been, and to reassess things from a fresh perspective. With that in mind, I give you a second look at three of the MMOGs that made my gotta-play-it hit parade at launch: EverQuest II, Vanguard, and World of Warcraft.

In order to relive the newbie experience (and so I wouldn't get my arse kicked trying to play a higher level character that I hadn't looked at in weeks or months or even years) I created a newbie character in each game and headed out into their big wide worlds, trying to see them all with new eyes. What follows is a review of how those experiences played out. I'll be adding one new review each day, starting off with EverQuest II.

I'll be discussing certain aspects of the games: graphics and performance, combat, and the bling factor, or what cool innovations or other shiny things the game has to offer. I'll give each a final rating of 1 through 10, with 10 being the best. As it is with all reviews, your mileage may vary.

And since I'm going to be talking graphics and performance, here are my system specs:

3.2 GHz Pentium 4
2 MB memory
NVIDIA 7950 GT GPU with 512 MB video memory

Onward!