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by Cody “Micajah” Bye, Managing Editor

Since the introduction of the modern collectable card game in 1993, hundreds of companies have been vying to produce the most popular iteration on the market. Magic: The Gathering – the founding product behind the trading card game revolution – still maintains a substantial foothold in the physical space, but the digital realm has yet to be thoroughly claimed by any one particular company. Although Magic has its own online version, the war for digital supremacy has yet to be decided.

Many cards in Legends of Norrath: Forsworn try to touch on the nostalgic feelings of old EverQuest players.

Sony Online Entertainment’s Legends of Norrath online trading card game is one of the up-and-comers for the crown of the digital kingdom. Unlike many of its trading card cousins, Legends of Norrath (LoN) is played in a completely digital format, eschewing the table top for a computer desktop. Users buy and trade cards via SOE’s online marketplace and all the games are played through the LoN client and an internet connection.

Released in the late summer of 2007, Legends of Norrath has been a relatively successful venture for SOE, if you  base their success on the number of users online and playing. Each day the chat room has lists available participants, and each tournament has had a fair number of individuals that have been drawn to the competition. In our review of Legends of Norrath a few weeks after its release, we gave the title a solid review, indicating that the cards were nostalgically EverQuest in their style and entertaining in their gameplay.

Yet releasing the game wasn’t enough for the SOE-Denver developers, and they opted to release an expansion set for the game in the few short months before the 2007 holiday season. Pushing themselves, the development team put together a full blown 230+ card expansion for the game that was available days before Christmas. Titled Legends of Norrath: Forsworn, the expansion introduced a number of new features to the original game, including raid scenarios, 2-on-2 combat, more avatars, new unit and avatar types, and a variety of special keywords. From a storyline standpoint, Forsworn focuses on a number of characters that have forsaken their oaths to the Tribunal and are fighting against the Oathbound (the player characters) for control of Norrath.

With several months of tweaking under their belts, the developers at SOE-Denver have firmly balanced the gameplay within Legends of Norrath, and the Forsworn expansion set amplifies the specializations of each avatar archetype without breaking any of the game mechanics. For example, each archetype now includes another of the “classes” within the EverQuest games: the Fighters received new Paladin cards, Mages earned Necromancer abilities, Druid and Shaman cards were added to the Priest archetype, and Scouts were bestowed more Ranger enhancements. LoN players who enjoyed playing “theme-based” decks will find that these new additions are great for their decks and make items like the Necromantic Orb a workable card in the course of play.

Terin's Battle Axe is one of the many powerful new cards in this expansion set.

While the game still suffers from the “build-of-the-month” sort of situations, there really is no one way to play in Legends of Norrath, especially now that the “Power Elf” combo (a set of cards that allowed for quick kills and absurd power increases) has been changed and several other balancing factors have been added. Any player who sits down to a full variety of cards will find that they can put together a viable deck that will essentially counter any deck that was a powerhouse only a few weeks ago. A Fiery Avenger deck that focuses on avatar versus avatar combat may now feel some pressure from the low-cost Necromancer unit deck with a few Disintegrates thrown into the mix. The Forsworn expansion really amplifies the number of options available to savvy players.

Along with the new cards a number of cooperative scenarios have been added to the game, included a 2-on-2 multiplayer combat feature and a raid deck competition. The 2-on-2 matches are self-explanatory: two players face off against another two players to vie for the best tag team combo. In the recent addition, the tag team combos are perhaps the most unbalanced out of all the card assortments. It’s incredibly easy for a pair of avatar-combat characters to decimate any players that focus on unit or quest-building. Although the same can be said for the one-on-one matches, it’s much more evident in the 2-on-2 matches, especially if one of your teammates is not ready to face avatar combatants.

Out of all the additions to the new set, the raid scenarios are the most entertaining. Unlike the World of Warcraft trading card game, the raid deck scenarios are incredibly easy to jump into and participate in. With a willing and waiting set of players at hand, the first few days of the Forsworn expansion release were full of player attempting to kill off both Trakanon and the Goblin Dojo NPCs. To begin a raid, a group of 2-4 players (depending on the raid requirements) join together to form a fighting force against the raid opponents. Then the group most complete a series of objectives (typically defeat a series of enemies) to complete the raid. It was great fun, especially for those of us who stayed up into the late hours of the evening trying to be the first few to take down the nasty dragon and the filthy goblins.

But this also brings up my biggest worry about the Forsworn expansion set. In general, the raid decks are almost overbearingly difficult. Even with a group of players that really have a solid assortment of avatars and cards, the raids are some of the toughest opponents you’ll face in the game. Over the course of a week, I beat the Trakanon raid only once and just by the skin of my teeth. Although I could now claim that I had defeated one of the hardest creatures in the game, I was also concerned about those players that got burnt out or happened to have poor partners in every single one of their matches. It’s one thing to fail to defeat a creature in a one-on-one battle (you have only yourself to blame), but when there are others involved, finger-pointing becomes an issue. Perhaps some easier raids/multiplayer quests should be implemented into the game to allow players to learn tactics and find out how to interact in multiplayer games.

A variety of goblins have also been added to Legends of Norrath.

For the most part, the cards in the Forsworn expansion continue to follow the nostalgic feel of the original Oathbound set. Familiar identities like Antonia Bayle and Lady Vox are now integrated into the game, and the avatar pool has been expanded to include the despicable Iksar and the haughty High Elves. Frogloks, Dark Elves, Goblins and Wood Elves are now available as unit cards, so individuals who wanted to create decks with a particular race of creature can now engage in that activity.

The Forsworn expansion set does bring one area of the game into question. Despite all the tutorials and helpful players that are available at all hours of the day, the complexity of the game may soon become a crutch rather than a feature. Throughout my reviews of the Legends of Norrath card game, I’ve never once felt overwhelmed with the amount of information that needs to be kept track of. However, with the variety of new cards that have been developed for the two released sets alone, I can’t help but feel that the future expansions may begin to suffer from all of the nuances that are being integrated into the game.

Rather than keeping the game simple and streamlined, the developers are continuing to explore the depths of the EverQuest universe and creating new rules to accommodate for the items they’ve seen in the two MMOGs. In Forsworn alone, four keywords, two raids, a single player scenario, and several new unit and avatar types were added into the game. While I still feel that Legends of Norrath is a solid and incredibly fun game, I can’t help but wonder if the forthcoming expansions will make the game too complex.

But for now, Legends of Norrath and the Forsworn expansion continue to add fun and replayability to this epic card game. As I said in my previous review of the original set, card game aficionados and EverQuest lovers alike should look into this incredibly deep and entertaining game. Legends of Norrath: Forsworn only adds another layer of depth to this card-based adventure.

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