RATING:
Pros: Wide choice of customization for player characters, plenty in the way of content and expansions.
Cons: Worst. Engine Performance. Ever; Dated graphics.
Graphics: 5
Sound: 6
Gameplay: 6
Overall: 6
This week we tried out EverQuest 2, the almost decade old MMORPG from Sony Online Entertainment that, obviously, was the sequel to the ever popular EverQuest, one of the first major commercial MMORPGs. "You are a games reviewer and this is the first time you’re playing EverQuest 2?" I hear you cry, well yes and no, on the one hand we have actually had to check out some of the more recent expansions such as Tears of Veeshan when it came out so I’m not exactly ignorant to the game but as a loyal Ultima Online fanboi that I was growing up I stayed clear of EverQuest and its subsequent sequel. However, our first experience here focuses on character creation and we check out the beginnings of the game; so in that respect it is the first time we’ve played.
As EverQuest 2 was released back in 2005 the first thing you will notice straightaway are the graphics: they are dated. The fact that the game is still running shows its popularity for the brand, but for us the graphics really don’t seem to be holding up very well (in comparison to World of Warcraft which was released a year earlier and got a bit of a graphics overhaul with Warlords of Draenor).
One of the massive pulls of the game is the choice that players have with the large amount of classes and choices of race, even nearly a decade old there are very few MMORPGs that offer the same amount of choice to players when create their character; so a big tip of the hat to that as well as the amount of character appearance customisation options with sliding scales. Bravo.
Logging in to the game we started as a Ratonga rat type person and logged into Darklight Wood, a shadowy village on the edge of some forests under the attack of some rock elementals. From here all this started to go downhill.
First things first the actual engine performance, for us, is potentially the worst thing we’ve ever seen and this is something that isn’t new as we had the same problem when we played the Tears of Veeshan when it was released. I think it’s fair to say that with all the other games we have to test our gaming rig is more than up to par to take on a 10-year-old MMORPG... I would apparently be wrong. The screen constantly locked up for a few seconds at a time, typically every five or so seconds even in the starting area where from what I could tell there was only two other players as we always opt not to play at peak times. Checking the forums “lag” for want of a better word (the cause kind of determines as to whether it is lag or not) seems to be a pretty common problem for players and it was, without being too dramatic, game breaking.
Looking past that the environment was kind of lacklustre, though one could say that maybe the starting zones have been passed over in favour of spending more time on later level content, though even when playing the expansion it wasn’t exactly impressive (albeit flying from floating island to floating island on a flying horse did have its merits). The little town we start in was full of bland textures and wide open flat land that without a population of NPCs or objects filling it up just looked empty and lacking in effort.
With a glance around the area the initial quest giver didn’t stand out, albeit they start practically tight in front of us, as we logged in and turned away to have a look around at what was going on once we looked back the little icon above his head easily went unnoticed and the overhead mini map didn’t clue us in either. So for the majority of our video (which you’ll be able to watch through this week) we didn’t even have a quest apart from a Daily Objective that we simply presumed was our starting newbie quests and so randomly went killing stuff thinking it was a bit more sandboxy than expected. In less than a minute we went from stuff that we could drop with one hit to stuff that could return the favour in kind that we had to run from. It was all rather frustrating as we probably died a good four or five times in our 20 minutes of gameplay.
Overall I don’t think it’s fair to write the game off as I’m sure that it can be a pretty enjoyable and no doubt offers all the main features that an MMORPG with such classic roots would offer, and whilst it might not be the prettiest game on the market the fact that it’s been there for so long and still thrives has to say something.
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