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New players will be able to create and play as any of the standard EverQuest races (human, elf, dwarf, troll, ogre, and so on) or as an Iksar, a member of a lizardman race that once ruled the continent of Kunark but has since fallen from grace. Even veteran players may be tempted to start a new Iksar character, as Iksars begin play on Kunark and are the only race other than humans that can advance in the Monk character class.
Visually, EverQuest has always wowed players with 3-D accelerated graphics cities, dungeons, waterfalls, creatures, and other fantasy vistas. The creatures and terrain in the new areas have three times as many polygons per model and much larger textures, which means that Kunark is an even greater visual feast.
But Ruins of Kunark is more than pretty graphics and a new race. Over 20 new adventure areas of varying difficulty await explorers of this ancient and mysterious continent. Braving these dangers brings great reward: players who have the Ruins of Kunark expansion will be able to achieve a higher experience level (and therefore more power) than those who fail to upgrade.
EverQuest was an achievement in online role-playing games and quickly became the most popular game in its class. The graphical tweaks, unique new race, new adventure areas, and increased power cap introduced in Ruins of Kunark make the game affectionately known as EverCrack that much more addictive and fun.
Pros:
EverQuest is a multiplayer online game you play via the Internet. A stable Internet connection is required to play. Sony Online Entertainment charges a small monthly fee for this game, separate from your Internet service provider access charges. The first month of this fee is included in the purchase price of this package. You must provide a valid credit card to register and play. After your first month, you can use your credit card to buy more time.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Tastes Great, Less Filling,
By
This review is from: EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark (CD-ROM)
For those new to EverQuest, it should be noted that while Ruinsof Kunark is an expansion for EverQuest, it does contain the entiregame and thus you don't need to buy anything else to play.While EverQuest is called a massively multiplayer on-line role-playing game (MMORPG), I find the role-playing designation rather misleading, as is the case in most computer RPGs. There is actually very little role-play occurring in EverQuest, at least in terms of people acting as if they actually are their characters instead of someone sitting at a keyboard playing a game. If you play pen-and-paper RPGs such as D&D and you're looking for an on-line extension of the hobby, you'll be better off looking into text based MUDs, MUSHes, and other MU*s. At it's simplest level, gameplay in EverQuest consists of killing various monsters so you can loot their bodies for items you can either use yourself or sell to someone else, be it one of the games automated merchants or another player, for money with which to buy nicer equipment for yourself so you can kill stronger monsters and repeat the process. If that sounds repetitive that's because it is. There is one basic strategy in the game; isolate the monsters so you can, preferably, fight them one at a time. Each class has different abilities which requires them to approach this strategy from different directions but ultimately they're all doing the same thing. Despite the simplicity of the gameplay, or perhaps because of it, EverQuest is an incredibly addictive game. At the lower experience levels, rewards come often enough in the form of new levels and skills to make things really fun. As you advance in the game things then become more interesting because you're able to go more places, do more things, and start acquiring special items for your character. However, all good things must come to an end and eventually the game becomes rather tiresome because the higher your level, the slower the game becomes. Warriors and other melee sorts find themselves spending long periods of time sitting around doing nothing while they heal up from their last battle. Spellcasters also spend a lot of time sitting around recovering the mana needed to cast spells and they have to keep their noses buried in the spellbooks to do it so they can't even watch what's going on around them while they're doing it. Healers not only have to meditate to recover mana but at higher levels they often have to do it in the middle of combat which means they miss most of the action. EverQuest wastes time in other ways as well. Many of the nicer items in the game are dropped by specific creatures which appear at set spawn points at regular intervals. This means that if you want that particular item you have to go to that spawn point and kill whatever appears there over and over until the creature you're looking for appears, many are rare and only have a small percentage chance of appearing any time the spawn point "pops," and hope that it drops the item you're looking for, many of the better items being rare which means that there is only a small percentage chance that the creature will actually have the item when it appears. This means that you can spend hours sitting in one place killing the same thing over and over again hoping to get a particularly nice item. Not only that but, since you're probably not the only player in the game that wants that item, you'll have to stand in line to do it. Fortunately Ruins of Kunark alleviates the problem somewhat by placing nice items on random monsters in the lands of Kunark so that you can pick up nice gear without having to camp a particular spawn. And these are just a few of the ways in which the game wastes your time. Graphically EverQuest has always been the leader of the MMORPGs, though Asheron's Call did have superior environmental graphics until RoK was released. With the release of RoK, EverQuest now uses two seperate graphics engines. The "Old World," which consists of the lands contained in the original game, still use the original graphics engine, which is now 3-4 years old, because the publisher, Verant Interactive, couldn't legally change the system requirements once the game was released. However, the "New World," which consists of the lands added in the expansion, use a brand new graphics engine. The result is that the quality of graphics varies within the game. The Old World is kind of mediocre by today's standards while the New World looks very, very nice. Sound leaves something to be desired in EverQuest and I have never considered it to be more than mediocre. The game uses a MIDI music soundtrack which some people, myself included, find rather annoying. There is no way to turn it completely off but you can turn the volume of it down so low that you can't hear it. Many creatures share the same footstep sounds so you can't tell the difference between them unless you can actually see them. (One of the things I like about Asheron's Call is that I can identify what's approaching me by the sound of it's footsteps.) There is also no variance in sound for surface so you sound exactly the same whether you're running on stone, wood, dirt, grass, sand, or snow. Some of the creature noises are nice but others are rather wanting. For example, when crocodiles and alligators are hit they sound suspiciously like someone trying to start a chainsaw. At the time of this writing, sound is bugged in the lands of Kunark. Many of the new creatures use the same sounds as humans. It's rather odd to see a mosquito fly past you and hear footsteps as it does so. Verant is working on a patch to correct this but its rather annoying that RoK was released with such a significant bug in place. In a game like this, customer support is very important. Unfortunately Verant has a well deserved reputation for providing exceptionally bad support. If you're in need of tech support, you're better off turning to your fellow players on the various EverQuest BBSes to be found on the web than Verant's tech support, which has been known to take a week just to send you a form email telling you to provide them with information you already provided them with when you initially contacted them. In game support is provided by paid GMs and volunteer Guides. Unfortunately the Guides generally don't have the power to do much for you and the GMs have earned reputations for being capricious, rude and surly towards the players. Some have even been known to just kill characters out of hand for such minor offenses as walking up and speaking to them while the GM is standing in a public area. While Verant advertises EverQuest as a dynamic world, it is largely static which things mostly staying exactly the same. Special events usually take the form of a GM ambushing player characters with a monster vastly more powerful than they are and indiscriminately slaughtering people until someone manages to summon some higher level players to come save them. Many people have learned to avoid zones where special events are taking place for just this reason. For some odd reason they don't think being killed by something they have no chance of defeating is very fun. Overcrowding is another problem within the game but this exapansion has at least provided some temporary relief as many players have rushed to the new areas, which are quite large, to check them out. It's too soon to tell if this is a permanent solution or if people are going to gravitate to certain spots where the best loot/exp is located, as happened in the Old World, and/or if Verant is going to continue to allow the server populations to once more grow to beyond the point that the game was designed to handle. Overall, EverQuest is a fun and addictive game but it has some flaws that become more and more serious the longer you play the game. You'll love it in the beginning but you may find yourself becoming more and more frustrated as you encounter the game's design limitations. It's probably the best MMORPG on the market right now but that could easily change as new games are released.
22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
5 Stars for the First Four Months, 2 Stars Thereafter,
By
This review is from: EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark (CD-ROM)
The first couple of months you own this game (EQ) its like the world has stopped. You check online sites like Everlore.com and EQvault.com for additional information. You run around killing creatures, going on quests, talking with other characters. Man, everything is great in the world (everquest world, that is. The real world is just a distant memory). And I have to be honest, at first I thought this was the greatest gaming experience out there. The world seemed endless and full of potential. I wanted to try out different characters and races and journey to all three/four of the continents. How cool is it to be a barbarian shaman with the ability to cast spells and to fight, or to be a dark elf necromancer running around in Toxx Forest. There are both non-pvp (where players can't kill each other unless both characters consent to a duel or they enter an arena) and pvp servers (where, depending on the server, you can kill other characters within a certain level of your character, or only characters of a particular race--there is supposed to be a race war on one of the pvp servers). (I recommend the pvp servers for more hard core roleplaying, although as I later discuss, there isn't as much in this game as I hoped). Ahh, Evercrack (as its affectionately known) was my life.And then, all the "little" problems caught up with me and the game began to annoy to no end. The list became too numerous: Lack of real roleplaying by the participants, horrible lag problems for non top-of-the-line computers, loading of zones that take seemingly forever (in EQ, the land is divided into zones, and when you go from one zone to another, the game takes a while to load the zone onto your computer; one city, Freeport, has three zones! UGH!), the fact that many of the really neat creatures or places or items are "camped" to death (which means that you have to wait your turn--believe, that can take forever), the "newbie" areas suffer from overcrowding. Basically, the game became a huge time suck. Even relatively minor actions take a very very long time. EQ is definitely not a game to be played in short blocks of time. Counting load times, and the time necessary to recover your body and items, the average session was about 3 hours minimum. And then come the experience penalites. After a certain level, when you die, you lose a certain percentage of your experience. In other words, I spent three hours gaining a "bubble" of experience (you need five, if I remember correctly, to get to the next level) and then lost that bubble when I was killed by a mammoth in Everfrost. Well, guess I blew those three hours. One of the strengths of EQ, especially when compared with Asheron's Call, is the interaction with other players. Essentially, the game is like a chat room with graphics. Which is cool when you become "friends" (in an internet sense) with other in-game characters. However, this strength can also drive you nuts after a while, especially when you get into a zone and people are completely out of character and shouting nonsense to each other. Made me feel like I was back in high school, sometimes. Also, don't confuse this game with a roleplaying experience. After a few months, the pattern of the game falls into: go out, join a group (which is necessary because some creatures can't be killed one-on-one), camp a monster or an area, hack and slash, repeat. There are plenty of quests, but most of them still focus on going out and killing something. Hey, its hard for me to review this game because I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread for about 4-5 months. And then, things turned sour. Not all at once, but gradually. Hey, fans of EQ are fanatical (I was one of them once) and they have reason: EQ is addictive and can be a lot of fun. But, I am reviewing this game after having played it for almost a year. It starts off wonderful, but then it becomes more of a pain. So, I give it 5 stars to start, then 2 stars for the last couple of months I played it. Overall: 3 stars.
29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You are all kidding yourselves,
By Joe Ashcroft (AZ) - See all my reviews
This review is from: EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark (CD-ROM)
Everquest: Ruins of Kunark is an amazing expansion to an otherwise perfect game. And anyone who poorly rates this game must really have personal issues that they must deal with. Yes, it is possibly the most addictive game, activity, etc... ever. So what if Verant messes up? So what if the guides or GM's are snotty? Players do not have to deal with them ever, and certainly wont take guff from them if they just play the game. The game is set up with a chat interface beneath the game screen, and statements that players make can be categorized, like auction, shout, out of character, etc. The people that get upset at other players for not wanting to hear them spam on and on about their weekend, or their lousy jokes need to find a frickin chat room. Those that truly love the game and understand it know that trying to level and get more powerful is all part of the fun. For example, in one area in Kunark (in the game) there is a forest called Warsliks Wood. Monsters that range from level 2 to level 30+ reside there, and one area within the woods is a truly massive fort, looking like it was built by giants. Well that is exactly who built it! They roam the grounds, and you can hear them coming! Very exciting stuff for a lower level player to run from a giant! And inside the fort is an entire area to explore. Now this was just a small example of the cool things you just stumble on while roaming. Oh sure, you need to just kill and kill to level up, but I, (unlike the majority of the other reviewers) take days where i just explore, find what i can find, and take in the lush beauty and astounding surroundings. I stumbled upon what looked like a mine shaft tonite, and as i walked deeper into the darkness i started seeing coffins, which gave the feel that this was a crypt of some sort. When i finally reached the end, i found a huge throne, whicj=h looked like some wicked king of the undead's throne! It's the little things like that that make me think about playing while at work, or in class. Obviously boundaries must be set, and people need to limit themselves as to how much time is spent playing, because you can lose track of time:). All in all, those who said they would stop playing, or would never play, are probably playing even as you read this. It is a truly wonderful game, one I will never tire of. Talk about replay value!
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