head-to-head competition

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.

My daughter and I played EQ loyally for a year and a half. It was awesome, an escape into a fantasy world of dungeons and dragons and marvellous elves. The expansion packs were nice until EQ went to the moon. I never bought an expansion after that.

In the old days, all the classes had purpose. My wizard was a remarkable traveller and I used to make a few plat porting people people around. My guild had fun banding together for raids and hunts too. But then it became so easy to port anywhere. Why bother playing a basically weak druid or wizard?! Then cat people started running around, and lizards on their heals. Sigh, how I missed the Tolkienish feel of the old EQ.

I finally quit EQ when DAC came out. I left EQ on one of our computers for a few months more for my daughter. But one day when she entered the wrong password while logging in, they locked her out of her account. I called them and they were very arrogant and refused to fix it. Nevermind they had just cut off a 9 yr old child from her favorite winter passtime. They were very arrogant and clearly implied that they owned the MMOLRPG market, so we could play be their rules or rot. Instead, I introduced my daughter then and there to DAC. There are a dozen good MMOLRPGs out there now that have beaten EQ hands down. As long as Verant runs it, I'll never go back.

EQ has always had lousy customer service. The game was a good RPG but turned into a videogame. I doubt EQ2 will be an improvement.

I was able to get in to the last week of EQ2 beta and had a blast! Being beta, there were some bugs to be sure, and there will still be some on release, but it was quite playable and fun. The game has great graphics, cool voiceovers, and tons of quests. There is a new crafting system that is much more complex and interesting than what I've seen in EQ1 or DAoC, or even Horizons. Only A Tale in the Desert had a more interesting crafting system - but that game is almost entirely about building. <br /> <br /> In addition to the game, your account will also give you access to their "Player Station", which includes extras like a guild web site including a message board, and an item database. I'm on pins and needles waiting for the release, which is Nov 9th (shipping Nov 8th), not the 17th, as listed here.