Pros: great if you like chatting with real people, many places to roam in their world
Cons: overly challenging for rewards received, some boring dry spells when trying to level
The Bottom Line: If you like on-line games and chatting with other people, this one is for you. If you don't like struggling with money issues and slow leveling possibilities, forget it.
dmarusz's Full Review: EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark (Add on)
Ready for an adventure in on-line gaming? Well, Sony has the bucks and the popularity to possibly draw you in. Everquest itself, is somewhat of a love/hate game. It has some really nice features to it as well as some things that will exacerbate anyone.
A lot of the strengths come from what is nice about on-line games. The sense of community, along with communication with non-NPCs (non-player characters) adds nice diversity as well as a way to get interested in playing for reasons outside of the product itself. Most of the community is nice to get along with as well as funny. However, there are always going to be some knuckleheads in the group.
The game sets itself in a kind of typical wonderland with dwarfs, halflings, ogres, etc. You start off as a race chosen by you, in a town that you will slowly have to learn to get around. You are a member of a guild, and there are many of them (which you chose before the game starts). So, you go to your guild to get some quests which will hopefully repay you in money to buy stuff and experience points which will help you to become better at what you do and become more lethal. You can die, but you will be reincarnated.
Your main drive is ultimately "leveling," meaning getting to a higher level of experience. They have over 60 levels, and believe me, and they are all worth getting to. A level 19 mage can really destroy a level 17 mage. Unfortunately, the leveling can also be the most aggravating thing.
This aggravation stems from going after quests. Most often, you'll want your player to get something or complete something which involves fighting others. Usually the player in your way is so above you in level, it can be tough just waiting/fighting to get to his or her level. The other unfortunate thing is that there aren't enough quests to keep your interest.
The quests are definitely a big beef with me. Many of the quests end with the reward being less than the desire to do it. For example, I once left to deliver a package. Well, at first, I was not strong enough to complete the quest without getting killed by every NPC in the game. When I finally became strong enough to complete the quest (although I still died a couple times doing it), I received little compensation in the way of money or experience points. These quests, topped with a very vague story, can be disconcerting.
Another beef might be the customer service. They are responsive, but not too helpful. The big problem here is that they like to do things though e-mail, and I can understand this. The weakness to this approach is that they want you to list almost all of your computer's specs. If you leave even one out, you'll get a reply email giving you the spec list required and a resubmit request. You can't just ask them a simple question. I remember one time I couldn't get on the system so I wrote them asking why. They asked for my specs, of course. Later, I found out from their web site, that one of their new patches had a bug in it. They could have just told me that in an e-mail. If something is not working and your paying a monthly fee, a week of downtime e-mailing back and forth means something money wise.
Well, I'm getting off the track here. Sony isn't all bad. In fact as far as updates, improvements, fixing bugs and adding new things to the game, they seem to do very well. It's nice to know that the game is evolving underneath you. This will fix the problem of the game becoming stale.
The diverse nature is also a great thing about this game. You can be one of multiple races, one of multiple guilds and they have spells for magic up the wazoo. You can even create multiple characters and log on as a different one each time on different servers. This variability can make up for a lot of the weaknesses with the quests and story line.
As far as the graphics and sound go, they are alright. You can only expect so much from an online game or else they'd have to require a cable modem. Adjusted on the curve, they do pretty well.
When I was playing it, there were times of lull that I wanted my subscription to end. Now, after a month of not playing Everquest, I want to start again. They must be doing something right.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
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