"EQ2: an experienced player's view"

Everquest 2 was one of the more prominent games of the future of MMORPGs. With the original Everquest setting the groundwork and defining the MMORPG genre, Sony created Everquest 2 with the idea that with the future of technology, they would finally be able to do what they originally wanted to do with the original Everquest. After playing Everquest 2 for 5 months, and having gotten 2 level 50 tradeskillers and a level 40 adventurer, I have to say that EQ2 was a ambitious attempt but ultimately fell short (but not that short) of their true ambition, as many of their groundbreaking features turned out to add to the monotony of the game rather then to the creativity. It is a great game but ultimately I think they missed the mark on some of the innovations they were trying to achieve.

The first mistake they made was thinking that Everquest 2 would sell purely on the merit they have received from Everquest Live. They sat back and watched Blizzard hype World of Warcraft with hundreds of previews, thousands of teasers and a menagerie of videos showing the world of Warcraft, assuming that people who played Everquest would spread the word. They made an effort to advertise the game, but it was half-hearted at best. Every time I looked up a trailer for EQ2, I would see ten for World of Warcraft. It was no surprise that when the two games were realized, the sales for Everquest 2 was dwarfed by the staggering number of people joining World of Warcraft. Ultimately Sony didn't prepare to see their customers be only a mere 10th of the Warcraft population. Of course though competition proved to be a cornerstone for EQ2's modest success. Seeing that they were grossly outnumbered, they started making new efforts to please the customers of their new game.

Customer service is one of the more important aspects of any actively updated game. People have complained about the customer service of EQ1, and naturally assumed that EQ2's customer service would be the same. On the contrary however, the competition with Blizzard has forced Sony to be more empathetic to the customers they have and ultimately has provided with a very outreaching and thoughtful customer service team. Every time I have had a problem the customer service people have tried their best to fix it. About once a month all of the complaints of the people are compiled and fixed, and so far Sony has managed to release 13 live updates: all of which fixed thousands of bugs and added hundreds more features (and inevitably more bugs along with it, which usually get fixed over the course of the couple of weeks after the live updates get released). As a prime example to their customer service, my character lost some status when he changed guilds. After petitioning the customer service, which answered within about an hour, he loaded his avatar into the game and spent the next 20 minutes looking over my previous status logs to find my missing status. There wasn't any formal “we're sorry but you are screwed” generic answer, they made a conscious and even rather difficult effort to fix my problem. EQ1's customer service might have been rather un-empathetic but so far I have had nothing but help from EQ2's customer service.

Tradeskills, sadly is a very large shortcoming of EQ2. They spent a lot of time devising the system that the current tradeskills used, which obviously is shown by its complexity. However despite the complexity of the system they all based it on the idea that people enjoyed grinding their way through levels rather then the chance system originally devised in EQ1. They took this to the extremes, and although I despise bots and the havoc they wreak upon the community, I found myself wishing I had one towards the latter levels of my tradeskilling career. Why you ask? Because a tradeskiller can be easily replaced by one of those birds that dip their beaks into water. The ENTIRE system can be completely replicated by spamming the mouse button and repeatedly hitting 1, 2, 3 in a row. Now that doesn't sound that bad (or maybe it does), but what made it worse is that nothing, and I mean NOTHING, broke that monotony. Every single tier was identical to the last. Same types of items, same amount of items, the only thing that changed was the stats involved. Every single item had around 10 sub-combines to it, and each sub-combine took 1-2 minutes each. Finally whether it was sub-combines, final combines, or rare combines, every single combine was exactly the same. As in you press the mouse key to start it, and you spam 1, 2, 3, until it was finished, or if you are trying to keep it pristine quality 4, 5, 6. The only reason why I currently have such a high tradeskiller right now is because tradeskilling was something I could do while doing my homework (being a high school junior). I would click the mouse button, do 2-3 algebra problems and click the mouse button again. And that would be all that was involved. Not only that but towards the end the monotony became ridiculous. To get my tailor from level 30 to level 40 I made a stack of clothing and 20 stacks of bags (for those of you who don't know what a stack is, its 20 items). This came out to (assuming everything came out pristine, which it didn't) 3240 combines. All of which were EXACTLY identical. Sony wonders why there are so many tradeskill bots plaguing the web. Well here's your answer. From the ease of which a bot can replicate someone tradeskilling, to the enormous amount of grinding involved, I am surprised I had the constitution to not use a bot. When it takes a conscious effort to avoid going to botting, you know that the grinding system is flawed. My personal suggestion would be to make an interactive tradeskill system if you are going to make it complex (actually going through the motions, auto-attacking the metal with a hammer, picking it up and dropping it into the forge/anvil/water, etc.) and because of the effort involved massively shorten down the grinding, as that will also deal with the bot issue. However until that point I have to say that the tradeskill system, although complex, is one of the most boring, mundane and ultimately agonizing systems I have ever seen.

Luckily though tradeskilling is only a very small part of the game. Housing personally makes up the majority of the time I spend in that game. Although it took me an exorbitant amount of time to get to the point where my carpenter could make decent furniture (which by the way seems to have no pattern tier wise whatsoever. Most of the furniture in my house is t3 or t4 because they look so much better then t5 furniture, which seems to me to be very flawed. But that is a different argument, and again having to do with the tradeskill system, which I have already expressed, is one of the downfalls of the game), I have thoroughly enjoyed furnishing our guild house. The amount of furniture that can be used is rather small, sadly enough, but those that are there look magnificent. Due to a rather faulty physics system (probably an unintentional bug but used to advantage by home designers everywhere) it is very easy to make fireplaces, staircases and floors out of tables, chairs and torches that can be floated in mid-air with some clever furniture placement. Due to the selection of furniture and the ease of which they can be used in bigger furniture items, there are truly limitless options for your house. Sanctum's guild house (which I am proud to say I furnished myself) http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=housing&message.id=20203&query.id=0#M20203 took me hours to complete and I couldn't be more happy with. Whether you go for a tavern theme (as you can see I did), modern theme, or Arabian nights theme, the possibilities are limitless. The only problem I have with the housing system is that it currently has no tangible benefits and some of the larger houses are less useful then the very much cheaper smaller ones. Housing in the end is one of the nicer parts of EQ2, and it is a shame that the bugs and added features associated with it are so far low on the priority list to be fixed/added.

Sony, when dealing with adventuring, was obviously trying to be innovative with their design. Although not without flaws I have to admit that their system does work out rather well. One of the biggest complaints in EQ1 was the downtime associated with… well just about anything. Sony tried and ultimately did a very good job with eliminating downtime in EQ2. The system works with a lock mode. When not fighting your power and health are regenerated at a very high rate, and as for me since I use player made food and drink at a rate where I have little or no downtime whatsoever. Within battles you lose that extra HP/power regeneration, and cannot receive outside help from anyone but your group. The general idea behind this was for you not to have an unfair advantage while battling creatures but not to create outside downtime. As a bonus side effect this system has stopped Kill Stealing, also a very big problem in EQ1, almost altogether. Also rather then with the EQ1 system where most everybody relied as much on skills gained through repeated use as much as spells (or in the case of warriors in EQ1 no spells at all), almost everything done in EQ2 requires using a large array of skills one after another. Some find this system cumbersome, but I find it rather interesting to find out which combination of skills create the best effect. This system however can be rather unbalanced: on my conjurer I can stack skills to the point where I can take encounters groups of 3 and possibly even 4 could not handle. To throw another factor within the midst, there are heroic opportunities. These are attacks that were designed to reward groups that work together, rather then everybody else going off and doing their own thing. If people use a type of skill (which is designated when someone activated a heroic opportunity) you can string attacks together to create a very powerful effect. For those groups who don't work together, they have to do without. This system is rather imbalanced at the moment (and hasn't received much attention for some reason), as many 2 and 3 person combinations are much better then the 4 person combinations, and some effects are obviously better then its “equals”. Its an interesting system but it needs some work yet. The EQ2 combat system rewards the adventurous and the people who are paying attention. This isn't EQ1, where you can just hit auto attack then stare at the wall while the battle finishes; you actually have to put effort in what you do. Some of the more lazy players don't like this system for obvious reasons, and those too accustomed to EQ1's system don't bother to use it at all. Bottom line is however if you don't make the effort you are going to be rather useless in EQ2, which is one of the better achievements Sony has accomplished with the combat system.

Raiding plays a very large part in EQ2 as well. Although largely geared towards solo characters, EQ2 has made sure there is a very large raiding spectrum out there for people to attack. I personally haven't gotten to a level where I can constantly raid with my guild; however I have gone on some high level raids (pretty much as a tag along more then anything else) and the raiding system is very sophisticated. Unlike most games, the raids in EQ2 require strategies to defeat. It isn't hack and slash like you do with one player but multiplied with 20-30 people. Most of the encounters require sophisticated strategies, forcing the raid leader to coordinate signalized movements to certain areas of the map, attacking from only certain angles and making sure that each class stays in their respective area to avoid as much damage as possible. Whether or not the majority of the game is for solo players, Sony knows what it is doing when it comes to raids, and ultimately does it very well.

Graphics is yet another issue that comes into play with EQ2. EQ2 is probably, with the exception of maybe doom 3, the best graphics game out currently. Yet best graphics or not, EQ2 is a very inefficient system. It guzzles CPU and RAM like crazy, and it will turn your graphics card into a giant fireball (figuratively speaking of course). There is no ability to see the inefficiencies of the game: I imagine it has something to do with the anticipation that you will be looking at hundreds of units at a time in certain circumstances. The results however are obvious. Doom 3 and EQ2 are around the same area in regards with graphics. EQ2 uses 2-3 times the amount of resources. I can run Doom 3 and half-life 2 at around 70 fps with all the settings turned up all the way. With EQ2 I can run it at high quality at around 40 fps in the country and 10-15 fps in the city, and I have gone through and played with every single of the hundred or so settings available for hours on end to get the best balance out of it. So although the graphics are spectacular (and don't kid yourself they are amazing, I once watched a snake for 5 minutes because of the gleam on its scales and spent an hour in west Freeport looking at the different affects additional specular while raining had), the massive system requirements detract from the game. Ironically EQ1 was the same way; I could run Counter-strike at a steady 80 fps yet turn on even half of the luclin settings and I was dropping to around 20 FPS, not to mention the fact half the people looked naked (due to the fact that the graphics card refused to render some of the “geometric” armor sets). Maybe it has to do with the coding, but either way the system is very inefficient even if spectacular looking.

Finally we come to sound. Sound (or at least music) is sad to say very unattractive in EQ2. Most of the time it is so slow you can barely hear it, or isn't there at all. What you do hear is usually very, very low beat and about as simple as you can get without becoming monotone. Sony realized this soon and quickly implemented a system where you can replace the game music with whatever music you want. Right now I am using the music tracks from the OST (original sound track)s of Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross and several Final Fantasies, and I must say it sounds A LOT better. On the other end of the spectrum however are the sound effects. While some of the sound effects don't quite make sense, Sony did a very good job of creating the right sounds for the right places. You can hear the ringing of the metal on metal as you hit a monster with your broadsword, the soft pitter-patter of the rain as you run through a deluge, the pounding of hooves as your horse races through the Commonlands and the booming thunder as lightning streaks across the sky. While the music might be horrible, the sounds are amazing.

Well for those of you who bothered to read this review, congratulations, I am impressed. As long as I have been playing, I have enjoyed EQ2. Sony was extremely ambitious when creating this game, venturing into many fields that were uncharted and ultimately broke ground where no one had bothered to go before. This was a big risk in the end, and sadly some of those risks they took weren't quite worth it. It came out to be a great game but in some parts very monotonous, which took away from the overall feel. It is a very innovative game but in the end some of those innovations were best left untouched.

POINT SUMMARY (out of 10):
Customer Service: 9
Tradeskills: 2
Adventuring: 7
Raiding: 9
Housing/Fluff: 8
Graphics: 6 (due to overly high system requirements)
Sound: 6
Overall: 6.5-7

-Prey (24 troubador/50 Carpenter)
Alts: Predation, Predatory, Taelren, Taelrien, Pray
Oasis Server
7/25/2006

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/25/05