jeffs320's Full Review: EverQuest (Gold Edition) for Windows
OK, to be fair, I wrote a nasty review several years ago about Everquest:The Ruins of Kunark. At the time, I was wrapped up in Ultima Online and I didn't like how difficult EQ was to learn. I was not willing to put any time into learning how to play a game, I just wanted to have fun.
Well, it didn't take long to get bored with UO, as it lacked the difficulty to keep me interested. So I tried EQ again because my friend was still playing.
This was right after the Scars of Velious expansion, and this time with someone explaining how it worked I became an addict. I was obsessed with getting to level 50 so I could play with my buddy, and put in 17 days played time in 1 month and went from level 1-50. Yeah, I did nothing but play EQ for a month straight.
Then I was working toward level 60 (highest level in the game at the time) when Shadows of Luclin was released, which I believe brought the highest level to 65...I don't remember for sure if it was Luclin or the next expansion, Planes of Power, that raised the level.
To make a long story short, every time I reach a point where I cannot advance any more, a new expansion is released with new things to do.
The game itself is hard to explain without typing for days, but I will try to give a condensed version.
Basically you start off by choosing a race (High Elf, Dark Elf, Troll, Ogre, etc) that looks interesting to you. Each race has Pro's and Cons depending on what you want to do, ie Ogres make the best warriors as they cannot be stunned from the front, but they are an evil race and therefore hated in most cities in the world, other races have higher wisdom and intelligence which are better for spell casting classes, etc...
So once you decide if you want to be good or evil and which race is the one you like the most, you must now choose a class. They range anywhere from pure melee (warrior, rogue, monk...) to pure caster (wizard, enchanter, cleric, druid...) and anywhere in between. Hybrid classes like Rangers (my favorite) are a cross between a warrior and a druid, so they have less melee skills than a warrior, but have lower level druid spells to complement their warrior skills. The classes are well balanced, and are designed to work well with other classes for grouping purposes.
So now you have your character, it is time to make a name for him. Remember that you can never change your character's first name, and at level 20 you can set a permanent last name for your toon, and these names will stay with you for the entire time you play that character, so make one that you think best fits you. Character names are unique, so you don't run into 4 different toons named SlimShady like you could in Ultima Online, which makes it harder to get a name but much better to know they are unique.
So now you drop into the world of Norrath, what do you do? The simple answer, anything you want to do. There are thousands of quests you can do, starting at level 1 all the way through the very complicated level 65 quests that require the help of a large party of friends to complete.
You can work on trade skills and become a master fletcher, tailor, brewer, blacksmith, and many others. There are also quite a few nice player made items that you can make with these skills, so it is not wasted time by any means.
The thing that makes EQ so addicting is there is always something happening if you make friends. Someone always needs 30 more people to go kill this dragon over here, or 5 more to help kill something there, the possibilities are endless.
The strategy involved is really quite impressive for a video game - you will never survive in this world if you don't make friends and have people to group with, and it really isn't any fun if you don't do this anyway.
With the Shadows of Luclin expansion, the graphics were all upgraded in the game, which helped gain the appeal of EQ again at a time where so many other games were being released with much better graphics.
About every 6 months or so a new expansion is released which adds new zones, new races, new quests, new abilities, and most importantly new things to kill!
Sony and Verant Interactive put a lot of time and effort into making this the ultimate Online Role Playing Game, and as far as I am concerned no one else comes close.
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