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188 of 235 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars EverQuest II Preview, January 2, 2004

By	Alex H. (Bellevue) - See all my reviews

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.

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27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Never again, January 19, 2005

By	Realist - See all my reviews

Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars

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.

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21 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Great Art and Coding but Bad ideas and Horrible Company., November 23, 2004

By	Robert Simmons Jr. "kraythe" (Munich Germany) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars

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}