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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Difference Two Years Make, November 21, 2006
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
This review is from: Everquest II: Echoes of Faydwer (CD-ROM)
When Everquest 2 (EQ2) was released two years ago in conjunction with Blizzard's World of Warcraft (WoW), it was suppose to be the battle of two heavyweight giants in the game industry. However, EQ2 was far from being a complete game and it suffered as WoW has gone on to court well over 5 million subscribers since then.
Flash forward to present day and EQ2 has released it's third expansion - Echoes of Faydwer (EoF) - and it's easy to see how much improvement this game has made over it's two year journey. The game has gone through numerous changes - both from the combat mechanics down to the tradeskill subset - to where EQ2 not only makes a strong run against WoW for best MMORPG on the market but the most casual player friendly game on the market right now.
EoF provides players with a new race - the Fae - and a new staring city, Kelethin, to start on the continent of Faydwer. Race selection is not just limited to the Fae as you can also start as a Dwarf, Gnome, Wood Elf, or High Elf as well. Kelethin is considered to be a haven of good in this game so only classes that fall within the alignment of Qeynos can chosen for play.
The continent returns famous landmarks that many original EQ players will recognize off the bat: Steamfront Mountains, Butcherblock Mountains, Castle Mistmoore, The Butcherblock Chessboard, etc. to name a few. Old enemies return such as the Crushbone orcs, Mayong Mistmoore as well as new challenges such as The Pumpkin Headed Horseman in the Loping Planes.
New raid zones including Emerald Halls, The Freethinkers Hideout and Mistmoore's Inner Sanctum await guilds that desire to raid high end content and offer great rewards for those skilled enough to make it through the zones (more on that in a minute). New armor sets await including set bonuses along with the abilities to adorn current armor sets with bonuses. New tradeskills include tinkering and transmuting to add greater variety to the game and help improve characters over the course of their journeys. Finally, Alternate Achievement (AA) points can now be earned starting at level 10 and are split 50/50 between two trees; the first tree goes to your character's class archetype; the second tree is specific to your character's class.
As if that was not enough, old EQ players who may not have taken to EQ2 due to the lack of no interaction with the pantheon of Norrath can rejoice as the gods have begun to return to Norrath again. Currently, there are nine gods that players can worship. The catch, however, is that the gods are now have alignments and depending on your character's alignment will dictate which gods you have access to worship. The gods are as follows:
Good Alignment - Mithaniel Marr, Tunare, and Quellious
Neutrals - Solusek Ro, Brell Serilis
Evil Alignment - Rallos Zek, Cazic Thule, and Innoruuk
Worship of each god provide players with abilities in the forms of blessings and miracles. Players have to provide offerings to their gods in order to gain the points necessary to use blessings and miracles for their characters. It should also be noted that each god's avatar appears in the game as a contested raid mob. This will prove to be interesting how this plays out in game since it has been suggested that players worshiping a god who kills their god's avatar will be perma-flagged as hated by that god. This is probably done due to how players acted in EQ's Planes of Power (PoP) expansion in order to make the consequences of such decisions long lasting.
With all the good that this expansion has been for EQ2, there are some glaring problems right now. The first problem being that a lot of the Old World content, Desert of Flames (DoF) content, and Kingdom of Sky (KoS) content did not get re-adjusted with the combat update that removed the hard stat caps in favor of a system of diminishing returns. The main problem with the re-adjusted combat system is that raid and heroic mobs in the game seemed to miss the re-alignment. Currently, raid mobs in familiar KoS zones (Labs of Lord Vyemm, Lyceum of Abhorrence, Halls of Seeing, Deathtoll) and content in the Fallen Dynasty adventure pack (Chel'Drak, The Direvine Matron, the city of Nizara)is currently out of balance with the mobs one-shotting players right and left. This problem does not exist with the mobs in Fayder zones it seems save for the more upper level raid/instance zones (Castle Mistmoore, Obelisk of Blight). While this will be beneficial for players starting out, for more players who have been around for a while it makes running the current quest series hard until more tweaking of the combat system is done.
The second complaint that I have with this expansion as a whole - and this is a personal gripe - is the lack of support Freeport characters have in the game. The Fae are a new good-based race while Freeport characters are still limited to the evil-neutral race based classes that have been around since the game started. The new quests in Faydwer also have substantially higher coin and gear rewards versus their Freeport counterparts. In rolling a new Fae Mystic toon recently and taking her to level 10, she sat close to 2g from quest rewards and loot drops versus THREE Freeport toons I also rolled at the same time that have yet to break over that amount from quest rewards and loot drops (but they make more money based on their tradeskills alone).
These two items knock this down from being a completely perfect expansion but minor issues aside, EQ2 has come a LONG WAY from where it was two years ago and deserves a second look at. While WoW may have held the crown for this long, this expansion has shown that the EQ2 development team has truly come to the level - and in many cases even surpassed - Blizzard when it comes to crafting a MMORPG that players of all types can enjoy and get lost in for a few hours.
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
EQ2 Echoes of Faydwer, January 9, 2007
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
This review is from: Everquest II: Echoes of Faydwer (CD-ROM)
I started playing Everquest when it was just that Everquest. I have 2 online accounts and enjoy the game a lot. I'm 51 and I have fun like I did when I was 21 and played Pong at the Archades. This game is much better than any other I have played. I have played console games from Coleco and Atari to the latest Playstation 2 and Xbox but by far I like PC games the most and this game the best. If you like roleplaying this is the best. You can create up to 6 characters per account and join or like I did create a Guild and do hundreds of Quests (hence the name). I have 6 characters and the highest is a 65 and the lowest is a 54. I have been playing for over a year now and still enjoy it. I have 2 teeanged children and am a woking single dad but still find time to play. My suggestion is it's a winner.
Gary
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ex WOW Player, December 20, 2006
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
This review is from: Everquest II: Echoes of Faydwer (CD-ROM)
After two years of playing WOW, I played the "Play the Fae" trial and liked it so much I purchased EQ2 with the expansions. I can say from experience that while it has been true that Blizzard has led the way in popularity, Sony will probably be finding more and more Ex WOW players flocking over in their attempts to find something better. This game is very casual player friendly which WOW is becoming less of a casual friendly game, not in soloability but in end game reward competition. I have found that after two years Blizzard is basically ruining their game making PvP frustrating with alot of imbalence with letting premade ventrillo type groups shift the advantage in their battlegrounds.As a casual player I found that the one thing that is left in end gameplay is the battlegrounds.Now they have finally made that pointless as well. After playing the trial of EoF I found it very fun and relaxing. No stress and dealing with all the issues that WOW seems to be rittled with. I have canceled my WOW account and have gone to a permanent EQ2 player. Another thing I find really cool is that as an ex EQ1 player before WOW I like it when I am playing and I see some Lore landmark or history of something that I remember from the first game, which from an EQ2 perspective was 500 years ago. I guess not knowing how EQ2 was at the beginning and starting now, I find that this game is very fun and casual friendly, the armor loot rewards from just doing normal quests are by far way better then I have experienced in other MMO's.
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