Customer Reviews

EverQuest 2

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(20)
1 star:		(34)

 

 

This peview is intended for an audience of some experience in online gaming, though inexperienced readers may find some good stuff in it as well.

The original EverQuest was a phenomenon. A game for the ages, quite literally. It's lasted for years, and for some people, it's never been boring. Has another online game ever come close to receiving the same acclaim as the original EverQuest? No way!

I had my hopes up for Star Wars Galaxies, and I gave into much of the hype. Unfortunately, for me it turned out a bust. The second I entered the SWG world I was awed by the graphics and the incredible detail. And I even became entranced for a time . . . well, more precisely, a week. The problem with Galaxies (and the success of EverQuest) is game play. SWG has no loot off dead creatures, no experience hook (it didn't take much time to reach master of any one profession). It was eye candy with no core. EverQuest has the "hook". It has the content. This old game has yet to meet its match.

So what about the sequel, EverQuest 2? Will it take the crown from its predecessor? Question marks arise, but I will provide some answers. Reading the developer comments on various forums, I can reveal some interesting details.

- There will be zones, just like in the original EQ

- There will be a "consider" option (con) that shows possible experience gains and follows the original EQ color scheme

- Luclin, Kunark, Velious, Odus and Fadywer will be absent from the original game. Antonica will have split into continents of it's own. The game takes place an age after the original EverQuest

- There will be no kill-stealing or power-leveling, enforced by a "lock" rule. Kiting will be absent

- There will be no twinking, and buffing "newbies" will not be allowed

- There will be item decay on death

- There will be 50 levels to attain originally, with a game engine that supposedly allows up to 200 if the developers choose to have expansions

- There will be standard groups of 6, and raid-groups of 24

- There will be solo-content and group-content

- There will be 47 classes, designed in a "tree' fashion. Everyone will start as a Commoner until level 5, and then choose a basic profession. At level 10, a new sub-profession will become available, and so on.

- There will only be 2 starting cities, Freeport and Queynos (rumored to be 17 zones each!)

- Roughly half of the original EverQuests zones will be remade and included in the sequel

- There will be player housing, and guild housing, but only in the cities

- The minimum requirements will be:

Operating System: Windows 98/2000/ME/XP
Processor: 1GHz
RAM: 512 MB
Video Card: DirectX 9 compatible. Pixel shader and vertex shader compatible hardware with 64 MB of texture memory
Sound Card: DirectSound compatible audio hardware

- The recommended requirements will be:

Operating System: Windows XP
Processor: 2 GHz or greater
RAM: 1 GB
CD-ROM: 16x CD-ROM or DVD-ROM
Video Card: DirectX 9 compatible. Pixel shader and Vertex shader compatible hardware with 128mb of texture memory or greater
Sound Card: Sound Blaster Audigy

Some problems that may arise with EverQuest 2 are graphics and solo-play, and cities.

Grouping is practically enforced in some cases (in dungeons), and soloing may be time-limited in some cases (ridiculous). There will be solo-content, specifically designed by the developers, but they want to suggest grouping most of all. Make no mistake; this will be a "group-oriented" game.

Graphics are an online game's "One Ring" (referring to Lord of the Rings) concerning the development team. Games that get carried away with graphics tend to lack in other areas. I hope that this is not the case with EverQuest 2.

I've read numerous articles where the developers are bragging and taking great pride in their graphics system, completely unaware that most people couldn't care less. If it's not a fun game, people will not play it, period. This was the case in SWG, which has lost a large quantity of its subscribers.

What the EQ 2 development team should do is concentrate on balance between their 47 classes (wow), balance between their variety of species and (of course) bug testing. They should concentrate on improving the game from the original (game mechanics), which they have done marvelously so far, and most importantly, game content and depth.

Cities may also be a problem in the new EQ. There are only 2 cities (albeit massive ones according to the dev team). What does this mean? Elves, dwarves, humans, frogloks, ogres and trolls all living in the same city. I find it ridiculous, and a complete step back from one of the thing's that made the original EQ great: cultural differences.

Cities may also be problematic for those who remember the original Freeport and Queynos. The developers were bragging about making the cities ten times bigger than the originals. My God! I couldn't find my way through Freeport in the first EverQuest, how the heck am I going to do it now? In addition, Freeport in the original EverQuest was devoid of players, completely, unless you were at the bank or the zone entrance. Keep this in mind. These new cities will be empty ghost towns, and far too big to navigate without an overlay map of some kind (which brings you out of the game).

EverQuest 2 is slated to come out in June, but Beta hasn't even started yet. It will NOT come out in June, which I'm sorry to say. With experience, I can tell you to expect the release around fall or winter of 2004.

I was excited, no, make that obsessed, before EQ2 came out. I visited the fan pages, found all the latest info and news, kept ahead of the curve on all aspects of the game. I knew it back and forth before ever stepping a virtual foot inside the game. I even purchased a new computer system especially for the game with lots of horsepower for the needs of the game. With that in mind, please take a few minutes to read this review if you so choose.

Once I started EQ2, I was floored by the reality of the graphics. They were outstanding. They weren't "realistic" but fantastic none-the-less. The fluidity of the movement was unparralled in a game of its size. This was not only in the players' movements, but in the animal or monster movements, the flags waving, the torches on the walls, the water in the streams. It was all better than I had hoped.

And the talking characters were great. They would tell you what to do, even though you were reading it before they spoke it in most cases. They would even motion for you to come to them if they had a quest for you AND the quest was automatically written in your journal. No more pen and paper notebook hunts wondering why you have a letter in your pack.

With all that said, I was happy to play for a while. More than happy, I was finding myself playing well into the night! It was addicting. That is until level 20 or so...

At about level 20 to 25:

1) You start to realize that all the "new" monsters look the same, or exactly like the "old" monsters only with different titles. The fluidity and graphics aside, if you have to see the same old monster over and over, its going to get boring.

2) You realize that the quests are all but identical, especially those for access: Talk to someone, kill something (or lots of something), talk to someone again, kill more things, talk to someone yet again, find another person (usually in a zone 15 minutes away), and then come back to kill more stuff and be rewarded with access to another zone in which the monsters all begin to look alike. There are several quests that give rewards such as armor or money, but they all involve delivery, viewing a certain place, killing a certain number of monsters, or a combonation of those aspects. And they all have the same bland quality to them. Once you do 25, you're ready to just go out and kill things.

3) You realize that you must group at all times or be rewarded with 1/3 or so of the same experience point total that you would have received in a group for the same amount of time / effort / number of kills. This is quite frustrating since it will then take you 3 times longer than your friend who groups to level up.

4) You realize that gear, especially good gear, is next to impossible to come by. Let's face it, you are in the game to get stuff since the quests have become an exercise in boredom and the kills all begin to look the same. But when that is taken away, you start to ask yourself why you are even bothering to play. Some would say that questing provides good gear but to them I would say that the rewards aren't worth the time and effort and to make a note of items 2) and 3) above.

5) You realize that the "spells" are nothing more than wastes of time and money. EQ2 forces players to upgrade spells, not only spell casting classes but fighting classes, as well. And if you can't find a rare item that is necessary for a spell, you will either have to find someone who can produce that spell for you at a very high price or be a sub-standard player in your class. This is, again, very frustrating since you are often times unable to find anything other than "artisan" spells when you are soloing or grouping.

6) You realize that the game is setup entirely to waste time in getting things accomplished. Another reviewer asks why the cities are layed out in such a winding fashion. The simple answer is so that you will waste more time in finding things and getting from point A to point B. Travel, while quickened by a few means within the game, is an obvious "time sink" that is intentionally there so that you will have to waste more and more time to get things accomplished, even within one part of one city. And the fact that one MUST travel back into his / her hometown is also a waste of time. Even at level 20, you can easily spend 10 minutes venturing from zone to zone to zone just getting back to a particular place that you must go. And if you spend 10 minutes traveling to, you will spend 10 minutes traveling back; and this is not counting the time spent within the city trying to find that which you are looking for. And this is just one example of the time wastes within the game. There are several others such as spawn times, spawn place holders, quest giver locations, monster locations, locations on the map, item decay and the placement of menders (required if you don't want your items to be unusable), and several others.

I may come off as sounding harsh or biased or like I am not trying hard enough to find the good but to that I would say this. I started a new character after reaching 25 since I became bored with the game to determine if my boredom was just due to the character. I was able to level him to 8 within a couple of hours and then onto 11 on the next session. But then I thought about the road ahead; the questing, the same monsters over and over, the tediousness of it all, and the repetativeness of it and just logged out. I decided that its not worth my time and its ultimately not fun. And I am not alone in that line of thinking.

I have spoken with several players who were almost as excited about EQ2 as I was before it began. We wanted to play it and get to the highest level quickly and begin the fun. But then we were told about the highest level and the lack of fun. Then we took a short look at the "fun" we were having getting there. The reward, the fun, just wasn't there. And so, I have quit as have numerous others.

So, to sum it all up, EQ2 is revolutionary in its design, packaging, and overall look and feel. The graphics and world look are second to none. The motions and AI is outstanding (for an MMORPG). It is, however, boring, tedious, and repetative to the point of numbing. I would say its a good game for the most part until you reach the higher level teens and lower level 20s. From then on, its only for those with nothing better to do or those that love the teamwork aspect of it or the relationships they have built with others. It is not for those that want gear, like to solo, those that like to see and do new things, or have less than 20 hours a week to devote to the game.

I've had a lot fun playing this game. The game is full of lore and the questing doesn't seem mechanical and boring like some other online games i've played. There is a variety of quests types to do from heritage quests that require a lot time and puzzle solving that give good rewards to simple quests that require killing a few monsters for some coin. Gameplay is mostly group oriented because some of the mobs require a group to kill, particularly the heritage quests, but being in a good group is a lot of fun. It is possible to complete harder quests solo at a higher level but by that time the rewards are much less useful to you. The latest patch changed some of the group mobs to solo because very few teams would bother with them because the reward wasn't worth it.
Being in a guild is very helpful. You get cheaper prices for mounts and apartments when your guild reaches certain levels, not to mention the comradery that comes with being in a guild. Part of the enjoyment of the game is hanging with your mates.
The game is full of bugs and sometimes a patch that fixes one bug introduces another. Those usually get fixed quickly. The graphics and spell animation are incredible at higher quality settings which require at least a $400 graphics card. Be prepared to buy a computer that costs more than a thousand dollars or be stuck with horrible lag, game crashing, and bland graphics. One of the biggest mistakes made with the game is not freeing up memory when you zone. After a while of playing the game lags so bad in certain zones you can barely move because you don't have enough memory and your comps uses the pagefile even with antivirus programs and other stuff turned off. Other games such as WoW have little zoning and no lag problems at all. Expect to reboot often.
The worst part of the game is the customer support. You submit a GM (Game Master) ticket and only get a response that sounds automated and like it's told to everybody. Then you have to wait sometimes for a few days to get the GM to help. Waiting this long is sad. On one server the GM's are actively taking the time to instigate other players to harass some person because they don't like him in real life. It's funny because everytime you log on you have to agree to not do those things. Time to instigate harassment but not time to help. How can you trust customer support like that?
Overall I would only recommend this game to someone with a good computer and plenty of time to play but it's definately enjoyable.

Sony has now proven twice that the business boys who run the show can completely ruin the gameplay of any franchise. First with Star Wars, and now with Everquest. The creative direction of Everquest 2 has taken a backseat to business interests--this is probably why nearly the entire original team that produced Everquest left Sony to work at Sigil Games (now working on a new game {EDIT}. Many features to add "longevity" to the length of subscriptions was added towards the end of beta. These features will hopefully fail and the MMORPG makers of the world will take note that shoppers reward the creative game developers rather than the greedy business boys.

Everquest 2 is fun for the first 10 levels. Many of these positive reviews are from people who haven't yet made it into the mid-20s. Much like the original Everquest, you will spend countless hours just looking for a group so you can do any type of advancement. Since level 18 I haven't found any quests I can do on my own--other than a few delivery quests that resulted in lousy rewards. People in the 30s say I haven't seen anything yet.

So while Everquest 2 managed to improve upon Everquest by adding a (mostly vague, but better than nothing) quest journal, a new crafting system, and heroic opportunities--it retains the infamous downtime between fights, required grouping, rare spawn camping, and consignment merchant system that requires you to remain logged on.

Then EverQuest 2 adds a few new misfeatures: group experience debt when a group member dies, only two major cities with dullsville written all over them, huge plotholes rended in the original Everquest story line to make the new world fit, voice acting that is more annoying than useful.

Perhaps the most damning evidence I can offer of Everquest's fall from grace at the hands of the suits at Sony is that the new Everquest is completely without a soul. Inconsistencies in the world gradually wear down your ability to suspend disbelief. You find yourself once again staring at the experience bar (usually full of debt because of a person in your group dying). You log in, turn on your LFG flag or try to assemble a group that doesn't fall apart immediately, just hoping to grind a few more experience points out so you can do it all over again. I really had high hopes for the new Norrath, but the world it a dismal bore slapped together like a bunch of quake levels rather than stitched together to weave a world.

There was a group of 7 of us at work that were all playing EverQuest 2--all but one is already canceling of boredom after the first month. This group played EQ for years, DAOC for years, and now EQ2 for one month. That's a bad sign for EQ2.

This is a great game. The spells are fantastic, the graphics are spectacular, and the gameplay is wondrous. Here are some pro's and con's of the game...

PROS
1. Great Graphics
2. Great gameplay
3. Hours and hours of enjoyment with almost no end
4. Mature guilds and chats which is actually a good thing becuase when you play a MMORPG, there is always some moron always acting big and making everyone feel bad. I truely dislike it, and, so far on EQII, there has been nobody acting like a "newb" in the chatrooms.
5. Quests are pretty original, whereas WoW's quests are repetitive to the max.
6. Adventuring is fun, and tradeskilling is fun
7. Most guilds will help you out if you are a newbie to the game which is quite handy if you need help killing a certain Monster, or to get to a certain place.
8. A lot of character classes which have their own skills and armour just for them.

CONS
1. Long zoning if you don't have an optimal computer
2. To get far in this game, you have to be in a group. Most mobs in dungeons are 3 people and up heroics (which you can't do soloing).
3. Rangers and such can't kite in this game. =(
4. Soloing is not really a good choice in this game because you don't get a LOT of exp. soloing whereas you get a ton of exp. with a group or a raid. To me, it's actually an annoyance to get a group to help out with some random Heritage Quest or something else.
5. As stated in another review, most of the low level items look similar to the high level items. If you get a better item, then it should look quite amazing compared to something not as good.

The reason why i'm giving the "overall" factor a 4/5 stars, is the fact that it takes a while to zone to different areas around Norrath. If you are looking for a good time, and great people to play with, get this game. You won't be dissapointed.

The game locks you into a series of quests you must complete for the first six levels and beyond, some of the longest 4 hours of my life.

You begin on a ship learning basic tutorial movement and such. This takes maybe 10 minutes and can be skipped if desired. You then arrive at Refugee Island which cannot be skipped. Here you must complete a series of goblin bashing quests and random killing to pad out your xp bars to level six. You can leave the island beforehand for your starter city, but there is nothing in that city you can kill and you cannot leave your initial arrrival slum until you complete a Citizenship Quest which cannot be begun until level six.

The graphics quality is high, but poorly used. Freeport where I began is dismal and the countryside is miles of emptiness between orc spawns. You thought the run from West Gate to the Bank was too long, wait till you try to get out of this city now. Even crossing the city takes far far longer than it should. The countryside outside was well textured but ultimately blah. There are landmarks, towers and ruins and such, but there is nothing to make you pause and admire the vista. Admire the graphics engine, but not the vista.

Character avatars, there is not as much customization as you would think having played Star Wars Galaxies. The sliders are there but all the faces have chunky cheeks and odd foreheads. Hair almost always looks like formed plastic on your head. With effort and skill a nice looking avatar is possible, but there are the worst newbie clothes Ive ever seen. You will soon cover them with an ugly robe or armor, so I guess it doesnt really matter, but still.

I have yet to have a moment of joy occur. Only frustration and annoyance and "What WERE they thinking". Its just as easy to make clothing pretty as it is ugly.

There was no reason to force us through a 4 hour tutorial. There is no reason why we cant get outside and look around within the first half hour of logging in.

And why is there so much clicking required? The interface is not intuitive, its not horrible, but it could be much improved.

Sony is famous for buggy product. I crashed once in game and 4 times while installing the game, but as a five year EQ/SWG player, this one seems so far to be remarkably bug free.

Through my own fault, I had to do the tutorial three times. Once as a quickie character to try to attend an in game meeting that night with friends playing in the evil city (I didnt even come close to making it) and twice today. The second time because I didnt notice I had selected Good rather than Evil, and so didnt notice I had the wrong city until completing all six levels of questing and slaughter. This can be changed later through a long traitor quest, but it seemed faster and easier to just redo the character from scratch.

I dont think I want to ever create any more new characters in EQ2 so the 4 character per account (not per server) limit doesnt bother me as much as it normally would.

Oh, and yes, the voice acting got turned off early on. A few voices are quite nice, but the rest... not the worst voice acting, but I'm only going to turn it back on if I find Lucan D'lere (who was voiced by Christopher Lee).

Lets not beat around the proverbial bush. The art and the coding of EverQuest 2 is top notch. The graphics are stunning and the effects are great. The implementation of these aspects is right on line in that the developers implemented what was designed. The servers are stable so long as not overloaded. Furthermore, the game tutorials are very helpful and it is easy to get into the game in a short period of time. It all seems wonderful until you dig deeper.

The problem with the game is the design and the company that designed the game. Clearly the game is designed to do one thing, suck you in as a newbie and not reveal the deficiencies until you have invested time in playing the game to the point that you are reluctant to give it up. To try to give you an idea of what I am talking about, lets hit the major points one by one.

The Crafting System:

This system is so completely flawed. In addition to missing recipes preventing the crafting of many items, there are numerous bugs in the system. However, we can perhaps give SOE the benefit of the doubt that they will add the needed recipes and fix the bugs. The problem is that the system is poorly designed in the first place. Making a single sandwich for use on your adventures will take you 4 to 8 combines at a minute each. The crafter sits in front of the stove and watches the progress meters while responding to events. If the crafter misses responding to an event, they can actually be killed while crafting. The word "tedious" hardly covers it.

To use an example, think back on the old days of EQ when you had to craft a single arrow at a time with three clicks. Move items into the crafting kit and hit combine. Do that 400 times and you have 400 arrows. Annoying? OK, now with EQ your arrow crafting kit is not mobile so you cant do it while waiting in combat downtime. On top of that, EACH combine will take up to a minute in which time you have to respond to any number of events. If you thought they couldn't make crafting any worse from EQ1, you were mistaken.

Even if you make items, don't bother being anything other than a scribe. The other professions are not in demand much at all. Provisioners (chefs) for example, can make food but the benefits of this food are so miniscule as to be certainly not worth the two and a half hours you need to make baked sunfish from scratch.

Part of the problem with the system is that in an inexplicable move, SOE actually decided to replace the entire crafting system (essentially) only a short time before the end of beta.

Selling and Buying:

The only thing that rivals the crafting system in poor design is the selling and buying system of the game. In order to buy an item from a player, you need to first visit a broker. This broker will allow you to find items up for sale, at which point you have to then go visit the seller. Good so far? Well, top this off with the fact that the seller MUST be in their apartment at the time that they are selling the item. Therefore, depending on where the seller is, you have up to a 20 minute run; in the meantime you might get there to find that the item has already been purchased by another player. This gives a new definition to the word time sink. Imagine trying to buy a sword sold by 5 different vendors in 5 different parts of the city and each of them only has one. This could be an exercise in frustration to say the least.

To make matters worse, players can not sell items while offline. Therefore, they have to keep their computer connected and running. This means that people instead of logging out leave their computers running and go AFK. It is a rather inexplicable thing considering that these players selling will be chewing bandwidth at the time.

The standard, "don't worry about it they will fix it" does not apply in this case. In fact, the system is working as intended according to SOE. Their logic is that they want to limit item availability. The reality is that they are trying to drive customers to buying a second account and playing one and selling on a mule on the other account; since this is the only reasonable plan to selling your wares in the game. A pure, unadulterated attempt at a money grab.

SOE's Moorgard said that the crafting system was as a result of the thought that the old pre-bazaar, system of EQ was the best. Personally I cant imagine how they would come to such a conclusion since those markets were a prime source of complaint from their EQ player base. The major complaints of the bazaar were the lag and frame rate and having to stay logged in but AFK. (god help you if you pay other than flat rate for your ISP). SOE solved the frame rate but set the economy back 5 years.

Classes and Races:

One good thing about EQ2 is that any race can be any class. This introduces many opportunities for role-playing advances such as the Dwarven bard or the Halfling monk. However, the class system itself is restrictive to say the least.

Each player makes three critical choices. What archetype, class and specialization they pick. After that there are basically no other choices to be made. Classes are a linear path in that what you pick means you get x spells and y abilities. There is no give and take, no tradeoffs to decide from. Its essentially idiot proof. Fortunately for SOE, you wont really get this until you get to at least level 20 to 25 and have your free month expired and your subscription running. This player doesn't find that to be a coincidence.

In addition, you must do several time consuming quests to select your classes and at other points that SOE calls "Hallmarks". Although I personally don't find this to be a problem, some other players would find the system to be annoying if they didn't enjoy questing.

What I do find annoying is that many of the classes are essentially the same. In fact other than the names of spells, there is little difference between the various classes. Bards are merely scouts with a couple of spells (yes, spells and not really songs).

Combat:

Combat in the game is fun. Its much less linear than EQ. Each character gets some special abilities and combinations of those abilities can cause other spells to "fire". For example, a cleric can invoke this combination (called a Heroic Opportunity) and then cast smite twice and have a stronger smite hit the bad guy. In groups, players can synchronize the heroic ops to make even stronger spells go off. The actual combat flow makes you feel much more like you are in the game and less that you can go AFK while auto swinging.

The problem, however, is that many of the heroic ops are broken and difficult or impossible to pull off. For example, you have to pull off a heroic op in 30 seconds but yet sometimes a spell required 2 times for it will have longer than 30 sec recharge time; so you can fire off the first spell but cant possibly get the spell off again before the timer expires. We can assume that SOE will fix this little point.

Questing:

At first EQ2 questing seems little more than running a number of errands, each with their appropriate pointer to the right location and a glowing trail to lead you there. However, once you get past these initial quests, the system opens up with options and things to figure out. This means that the questing system is actually fairly well done. There are lots and lots of quests to be done and the quester will be kept busy for ages. The only complaint I have about the questing system is that the developers didn't harness other ideas of their community for making the system even better such as the introduction of a great library.

{EDIT}

I agree with the previous poster, that the EverQuest world has passed its peak, and went straight downhill after the Shadows of Luclin era.

The game had the great roleplay feel, having to rely on other players for many things, such as the creation of armor to traveling via port. The game has recently been geared toward the more casual gamer, making everything easier. Everyone has become Experience obsessed, crowding into Planes which have no dungeon type of feel. Places where anyone can get to any "camp" and sit there killing things in the same spot, for hours. The feel of the "dungeon crawl" is lost to the ages. Raids are completely robotic, you do your same old little job, all the time, every time, without question or complaint. Overall, the old great roleplay feel is dead, and everything is completely impersonal and driven by the profit motive. It is no longer the fantasy world, it is a fantasmal recreation of the real world.

EverQuest II, however, seems to be working on recreating, and improving on, the old world. Some of the key members of the developement team of EQ1 are working on this new game, and opting to take out both the Planes and Luclin in a cataclysmic, unidentified event that shook the world. So that's two down, what about the other expansions? Well, the older continents have now been lost, the oversea route now blocked by permanant tempests. So we are back to the original world, but what of the start? You start the same as everyone else, without a class. You begin your journey in either Freeport or Qeynos. Freeport has become a haven to the shady folk, most evil or naturally mischievious beings opting to live out their lives there, under Lucan D'Lere, their leader since his days in the Militia of EQ1. Qeynos, on the other hand, it the haven for the light, all valorous or good-hearted flocking to its gates under Antonia Bayle.

Shortly after you begin to test your skills, you are given the choice of class. You can pick from several classes, later having the option to become a sub-class, and even later getting a specialized class. This continues the implementation of roleplay, as it follows your characters particular path of developement. And with Luclin and the Planes gone, instant travel is also gone, and it is back to the old ways, in more ways than one.

Overall, this game seems to be bringing back the best of the old, with new twists on the gameplay that should add a more dynamic sense of character to each player.

I have played EQ and EQII for over 4 years. If you buy this game be prepared to download many patches to it. If you are a road warrior and have a slow dial-up connection, expect a 2-3 day download. Yes I mean 2-3 days not hours. The game does not specify but recommends you have high speed bandwidth...In the past, Sony has issued new versions or extensions for EQ I, but they have not done so for EQ II.

I recently re-installed EQ II on a computer with a cable modem with a download speed past 512 KBPS, it took more than 20 minutes to download all the patches after the EQ II application connected...this does not include the time you spent installing 10 CD's before this happens.

Sony has made many changes to the game. EQ 1 players will think they understand it at first...but there is no incentive to group or join a guild until you have played the game for several months. The focus has been to allow the solo player to advance, perhaps to compete with WOW...this isn't bad...but as an EQ1 player I felt lonely many times. Guilds and groups don't have the loyalty you felt in EQ1.

If you decide to create an Evil character...be forwarned...On the server I played on there was a tiny fraction of people playing as there were in the "good" city. The NPC's in the city normally insult you. They try to coerce you to perform quests by using intimidating or insulting remarks when you ask...at first it is cute, after all you are a (supposedly) evil person (sic), but most folks don't like it after a few rounds of hearing it...that may explain why the betrayal quests...i.e a person leaving one faction for the other are so one-sided (evil folks wanting to become good)
Although having insulting NPC's is the flavor of an evil city, no one wants to hear it all the time. In EQ 1 the NPC's were nicer and glad to see you if you originated there.

Furthermore, it was nearly impossible to find a balanced group n Freeport (the Evil City). And, there were never any items fit to buy that were crafted by players. Since the game designers felt it necessary to make tradeskills so important, it is odd that in the evil city, you'd be better off wearing things you found looting dead monsters The bazaar is empty in Freeport...probably because people don't want to be insulted continuously when they live there.


If you have the right hardware, the game has slick graphics and is easy on the eyes. Game play is fast past level 1 through 15 or so...at levels 29-30 the game is a real drag as a solo player...if you want fast progresssion here, you will need to group with others in a dungeon. I loved the game thru this point when I could play it. After level 25 as a solo player...it was a slog.

As to social things...Many of my toons belonged to various guilds, but the Guilds never seemed to do anything like organized raids, or group together to help a guild memeber. Mostly they wanted to build a high membership count and force their members to accept city quests (tasks so hard that they required a group to fullfill) to build up their 'guild' score, but almost never did the guild leaders organize anything or anyone to help me finish these. After many minutes begging for help on Guild Chat, I normally found that the guild leadership had left it up to us to find non-guilded players - unwitting participants, to fill a quest that the guild would get a credit score for...In EQ I, you'd never see this happen...

Overall I think this is a good game. The graphics are great, Sony has included Guild web sites and management tools that the guild need not pay for at their own expense. You can even manage a guild wthout being logged into the game as a player.

My biggest complaint is the unreasonable expectation that no matter where you are you will have high speed bandwidth accesss to install the game and download the patches which seem to be larger than the original game files. If you payed 50 bucks for a game, you wouldn't expect that it would launch a dialogue box that says "You will need 20-30 minutes on a high-speed connection after you install all 10 game disks before you can play Everquest II"...

Sony expects bleeding-edge technology. A 128mb or better Video card, 1 GB of ram (or more) and a fast CPU with a high-speed bandwidth connection seems to be the norm...anything less and you'll pay a price in game performance. These things aren't cheap...if you add the cost of the hardware and the high-speed connection to the monthly fee..you won't be playing this game if you're relatively poor.

Finally, a note on the guilds and group psychology.. It is completely blown here...with the later emphasis on allowing folks to solo, somehow, the flavor of EQ is lost..I don't know where it went..but many times in this version of EQ, you will feel as if you are quite alone...

I played both eq2 and WoW during beta. As a huge eq1 fan I enjoyed way to many hours playing while in college. But eq2 didnt have that same fun feeling like when i first loged onto eq1 and was awe struck.


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