Fantasy Re-Review

A Fresh Look at EQ2,
Vanguard and WoW

by Karen "Shayalyn" Hertzberg

---

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!