Lord Dankerino

Game-A-Week Episode 3: EverQuest II

Last time on Game-A-Week, I covered EverQuest so clearly, the only logical choice going forward was to cover EverQuest II

You know, the sequel. Except, not really?

EverQuest II seems to take place in the same world as EverQuest 1 but everything is super different. For instance, Freeport, which was just a humble human town in EverQuest 1 is now the bastion of evil and the headquarters of the emperor of doom.

I was like "Wait what? Excuse me?"

Literally when you play the game for the first time you are greeted by a message saying "Welcome to EverQuest II. A lot of things are different now, so don't assume anything!"

They weren't kidding.

All of the knowledge I had gained by playing EverQuest 1 was worthless. I'm over here thinking I can skip the tutorial because I already knew how to play EverQuest. As it turns out, no, I didn't and I was super lost and had to go back to the tutorial.(edited)

Although, you're asked to choose a control scheme upon first log in. There are two options EverQuest II (default) and EverQuest. So I picked EverQuest since I already knew the EverQuest control scheme and didn't want to learn another one if I didn't have to. Turns out, it was completely different from EverQuest 1 and the EverQuest II control scheme was actually the same from EverQuest 1. I.... I honestly don't know how that got mixed up. Like, who was in charge of this?(edited)

That being said, the game is a lot more accessible than EverQuest 1 and had a lot of QoL changes that made the game much easier to play. There was no difficulty getting into it, figuring out how to play it like there was in EverQuest 1(edited)

Another QoL change that I really like is that a lot of the quests have voice acting. The voice acting itself is nothing to write home about but I'm a slow reader. So having my quest read out to me like an audio book instead of having to read it myself makes going from quest to quest a lot faster. For me, at least. I have executive function disorder so this is probably something that only I can appreciate.

On the other hand, the Free to play account is much more restrictive in EverQuest II than it is in EverQuest 1. For instance, in EverQuest, you can hire a mercenary to help you out on a f2p account. In Everquest II, this is only for paying members. This isn't a problem for me because I chose a pet class but I can see it being a problem for literally any other class as mercenaries are lifesavers in these games. (Although, the EQ2 mercenaries appear to be super lame compared to EQ1) There are even a couple of races and classes that are locked behind a paywall unlike Everquest 1.(edited)

There's also a message that pops up periodically (and when you close the game) telling you to subscribe. It's annoying, intrusive and I hate it. I found myself saying "fuck off" out loud as it popped up while I was in combat.(edited)

I like Everquest but fuck Daybreak and Sony Online Entertainment for this shit.

One thing I forgot to mention in EverQuest's game a week was the expansions.

A lot of people consider EverQuest a has-been MMO. It was once the pinnacle of the genre but ever since WoW came along and dethroned it, its been a shell of itself. That's the popular opinion anyway. Everyone talks about something being a WoW killer but no one ever talks about the fact that WoW was the infamous EverQuest killer. EverQuest was THE MMO back in its day before WoW. A lot of WoW devs were huge EverQuest players, in fact.

But....!

Do you want to know how many expansions EverQuest has?(edited)

25

No, I'm not kidding. You read that right.

Twenty. Five.

And its not even done, there's another one, a 26th expansion coming in December of this year.

EverQuest is very much still alive and kicking.

Its also a little depressing knowing that the world will end before this game's story does. But I digress.

Now 26 expansions is incredible. Absolutely mind blowing. For an MMO, an expansion is basically the next iteration of the game. So consider this: EverQuest was sucessful enough to have 26 games! Holy shit, that's unfathomably huge. So how many does EverQuest II have?(edited)

15

Yup. Fifteen.

Not as many as EverQuest 1, but that's to be expected as Everquest 1 has been around for a lot longer.(edited)

But just like EverQuest 1, EverQuest 2 has yet ANOTHER (16th) expansion dropping in December of this year. Which, I must admit, sounds a lot cooler than EQ1's new expac this December since EQ2's december expansion is introducing THE ENTIRE MOON as a new zone to quest in.(edited)

Now 16 might not be as impressive as 26, but you want to know how many expansions World of Warcraft has?

Now keep in mind, both Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft were released in 2004. They came out mere months of each other.

Including the newly announced expansion set to come out next year, World of Warcraft has only 8 expansions.

Both released in the same year and yet EQ2 has DOUBLE the amount of expansions of WoW. I guess the mighty EverQuest killer forgot to check if its opponent was actually dead (Hint: It was not) Who's the has-been now?

Now, as impressive as that is, and I'd love to talk about it more, let's say that's enough and move on to another topic.

Going back to things being very different than Everquest 1, I wanted to play as a Drakkin in EverQuest 2 since I thought they were a super interesting race in EverQuest 1 but come on, how could I not play a Froglok?

Turns out, Drakkin(Which, by the way, are these pretty cool half dragon, half human people) do not exist in EverQuest II's timeline so they aren't available to play as. You know, because they don't exist.

The class I wanted to play, Magician, also does not exist in Everquest II but thankfully, there was a similar class in EQ2 called the Conjurer.

So instead of a Drakkin Magician, I decided to play as a Fae Conjurer.

Because how many games let you play as a fairy?

Surprisingly, very few. You'd think it would be a lot more common because faeries are literally THE most basic fantasy creature ever alongside dragons.

I mean, the fantasy genre is derived from fairy tales.

It even has fairy in the name, I mean come on.

This is a no-brainer. Why is this rarely ever a thing?

So anyway, I'm really glad I picked fae because since fae have wings, they don't take fall damage. I can jump from wherever the hell I want and take the shortest route without plummeting to my death. It's literally the best thing ever.(edited)

There's something very satisfying about watching a fellow player fall to their death while you just daintily flutter to the ground unharmed from the same height.(edited)

Now this has gone on for a long time talking about this and that but what about the actual game? That's what we're here for after all.(edited)

While the game is much more accessible than EQ1, as far as the actual game goes, EQ2 just didn't grip me like EQ1 did.

EQ1 was harder to get into but once I did and figured everything out, I ended up loving the game. For EQ2, I felt a little underwhelmed (You know, after being overwhelmed when I skipped the tutorial)

Also, for all of EQ2's superior QoL changes, it does not have anything like EQ1's hero's journey which will point you in the right direction when you didn't know what to do next.(edited)

For EQ2 I found myself finishing the first questline and then saying "Well, now what do I do?"

It's bizarre to me how they failed to include the literal only QoL feature in EQ1 that I actually liked and found helpful.(edited)

EQ2's gameplay plays very similarly to WoW. Which I think is part of the reason it didn't grip me like EQ1 did.

EQ1 felt like nothing I've ever played before. A truly unique experience from an age long forgotten.(edited)

EQ2 felt like and I really hate to make this comparison (especially since EverQuest II came out first), a poor man's WoW.

Also, while EQ1's graphics are objectively worse than EQ2's, I found EQ1 to be more visually appealing.

Kind of like how games on the N64 looks nice in a retro sort of way but games on the GameCube look like complete garbage (Except for Pikmin, Gale of Darkness, Chibi Robo, the Wind Waker and Pikmin 2. Those games are gorgeous and still look incredible to this day.

I give EverQuest II a 6/10. So that's a D. It gets a passing grade but just barely. (For the record 6 and above is a passing grade. That's a hot tip I learned while trying to survive in College and High School) It's an okay game but not super great. Its kind of like a slightly more confusing WoW clone. Again, I hate to make the comparison but I don't know how else to put it. (I took one look at Alternate Advancements which is basically this game's version of talent trees and I was so overwhelmed and confused of where to even start, I decided to just not even bother touching it. Thank god, there's an option to allocate your points automatically.) I'll be keeping it on my computer so I can at least make it to the end of the vanilla game. Which, actually, I looked up the final boss of vanilla EQ2 and turns out its Darathar who I saw wandering in the starting zone and I managed to kill it with the help of a bunch of other players who were passing by. Whoops. Have you ever heard of speedrunning an MMO? Because I think I just did it. I killed the final boss at level 13. So I guess this time I'll be doing the right way? Maybe? I'll have to think about it!