EverQuest 2 Review: A Return to Norrath

MMOGs tend to last for a long time, sometimes many years. This is why Ryan Plas has picked up EverQuest 2; to give it another review and see how it holds up and taking into account both what kind of development it has made and compare it to today’s competition.

Back when EverQuest 2 first launched in November of 2004, I was one of the people logging in the first day. Having been a very large EverQuest fan, I was ready to continue my adventures in Norrath, even if it was 500 years in the future.

Drawn in by promises of new adventures in a familiar setting, I eagerly logged in… and was a tad bit disappointed. Poor performance was what killed it for me at the time, as the game was designed with “future technology” in mind. I hammered out a few levels with some friends, but eventually just went on to something else. It was a grand idea, but one that had a lot of problems which just made it unfriendly at the time.

Fast forward almost 5 years later, and the nearing of the 10th anniversary of EverQuest 1 got me thinking again. I tried going back to the original EQ and found it to be, well… not what I remembered.

Still jonesing for a Norrathian fix, I looked into Everquest 2 again. A lot of time had passed since the first time I gave it a shot, SOE had fixed a lot of the complaints, added a PvP server, and I had gotten a new machine to play it on. Why not and gave the game another shot?

Was I ever pleasantly surprised…

EverQuest 2 today is night and day ahead of where it was at release. I’m sure the addition of 5 expansions didn’t hurt.
One of the things I was worried about was whether or not that there would even still be anyone around in the starting areas. Back when I originally played, a higher level character could always mentor down to another player’s level to go adventuring with them, but at the time there were really no benefits to that other than getting to play with friends.

With the advent of Alternative Experience, or AA, SoE offered up the ability to customize your characters even more when at max level. On top of getting AA xp for killing mobs, they also allow you to gain AA exp from killing named monsters, or doing quests that no longer give you any real experience. Therefore, there are usually always a couple people willing to mentor down and do lower level content. Definitely a big boon in any MMO, and something that sets EQ2 away apart from other MMOs.

It’s also a very fortunate thing since EQ2 has a lot of group designed content. Not to say that soloing isn’t an option, but I will cover that a little later.

EQ2 has added in ton of content over its 5 expansions, offering a whole lot of things for you to do. One of the best aspects of the title for me is it’s dungeons. With games like World of Warcraft ruling the nest for the past 5 years, it was nice to go back to a game that was focused on grouping over soloing.

There are dungeons all over Norrath, ranging from the mid teens all the way to max level. Grouping is fun and fast

paced, with all facets of the game actually interesting. Although a lot of people consider this a negative at times, you will ALWAYS have something to do in a group in EQ2.

Sounds great, right? But the reason that some people actually find it negative, is–my God–you get abilities just flying all over the place. And for some classes that leads to just way too many buttons to press.

Combat can get complicated at times, and that does bring things down a bit. Not knowing what button to press when you have 50 of them on your screen, sometimes looking a lot like each other, doesn’t mean that you are a bad player, it just means that maybe somewhere down the line a developer went a little overboard adding new abilities to classes.

If grouping isn’t your thing, there is still no need to turn a blind eye to EQ2.

Soloing has become a de facto focus for most titles since World of Warcraft brought it to the forefront, and today’s EQ2 is no different.

All classes can solo their way to max level, or close to it.  The different AA’s abilities added to classes throughout expansions give even healer classes’ very decent solo abilities. And since you can start accruing AA at level  10, and gain it by killing named mobs and doing quests, you always have something to look forward to .

It also has one thing that World of Warcraft  “stole” for its 3.2 patch, the ability to lock XP.  You can lock combat and quest XP, so that you can stop and do all the content in your level range, if you want, and still build up AA XP.  I spoke with a few people in the mid 30’s that had locked throughout their character’s careers and had upwards of 50 AA points.  The number of AA points you have is capped at certain levels though, so keep that in mind if you decide to go this route.

EverQuest 2’s graphics are also one of the big draws to the title.  When the game was originally released, SOE had said that the engine was made with future technology in mind.  And while some of that statement is true, it unfortunately  is also mired in some old coding.

Some graphics are done on the CPU side when they should be done GPU side, and at times it can bog down when it really shouldn’t. The good news is that the current team does understand some of the engines problems, and is

currently working on some of them for EQ2’s next Game Update. The game itself is gorgeous and the locations varied.  And with the additions of old EQ1 content redone for the sequel, it can make for some interesting re-imaginings of old content.

The bottom line is EverQuest 2 is a worth giving a try.  If grouping is your thing, or if you are just looking for another title with some meaty content to sink your teeth into, you can’t go wrong downloading the free trial.

Review Score: 4/5

For additional information on EverQuest 2, or to download the 14 day free trial, visit http://www.everquest2.com