Although EverQuest II was released just over a decade ago the game is still around, still getting updates and expansions and still has a pretty decent sized population that, whilst a shadow of its former glory and never attaining the lofty heights of World of Warcraft (released in exactly the same year) the game still has a lot to offer. Not without its issues and definitely look a little on the dated side, for our next “Things We Love About…” feature we’re taking a look at some of the elements that still keeps players coming back to EverQuest II and while it remains one of the best MMORPGs on the free to play market.

• Level Shifting Feature - By using a Chronomage NPC players can lower their own level. Now at first players might be wondering what purpose could such a feature ever server and why would it be useful? Well first of all we’re personally not fans of burning through content of a game, we like to savour and enjoy it, so the idea of playing new games with friends is great, we don’t like playing with someone who is already a high level and them burning through the content and one hit killing everything for you has absolutely no appeal to us. In the world of F2P where most games have limited character slots, or require you to pay cash to unlock new ones, a friend making a new alt to level with you isn’t always an option; so in a system where they can use their main character, lower their levels (which also downscales their gear as well) and have them play with us is great. Similarly the number of times when questing where we’ve just dropped a quest because we’ve had it for so long and it isn’t worth the little amount of XP you’d get for turning it in and the mobs are too level to get XP from, but the result is that you miss out on the story content; with the level shifting feature none of this is an issue!


• Alternate Advancement - Players have two different ways to level up and customize their character. When gaining XP to increase their standard levels players will unlike new abilities for their class, however, with the secondary/additional Alternate Advancement players can acquire separate points from defeating renown enemies, exploring challenging locations and even allocate a proportion of their standard XP to be added towards their Alternate Advancement points. With these points players are able to customize their characters with more detail giving them new powers, abilities and tradeskills, adding an intriguing and higher level of unique character building to the game.


• Mercenaries - Hireable NPCs that join you in battle. One of the things we really love is the Mercenaries system where players can spend cash (every half hour) to hire a mercenary to join them, made up from hundreds of mercs around the world. These mercs have their own abilities and powers representative of one of the standard classes, and players get the full benefit of these companions with NPCs able to give buffs or even resurrect players if they die; ideal to have a companion that makes up for a players chosen class’ shortfalls. There are various mercenaries to find and hire, including Elite Mercenaries that can be found roaming the lands of Norrath who, once hired, will despawn for a time before other players can locate them and so giving them an element of rarity. As these companions will be following a player around it is important to keep them looking sharp and mercenaries can be dressed with the appearance tab (though they can’t have any stat changing gear added to them).


• Complete Fantasy Immersion - The EverQuest franchise offers one of the most immersive high fantasy MMORPG settings. Given that the game and EverQuest franchise was launched in 1999 it’s fair to say that there is an absolute wealth of backstory, events and general lore to be uncovered in the games that EverQuest II has added to. With the detailed and well thought out quest chains, the ton of information to be gleaned off NPCs, the atmospheric and imaginative world environments then it is very easy to surround yourself and get lost in the game. The game was perfect for roleplaying, particularly for those with a D&D style high-fantasy background, though the RP communities are much smaller than they used to be they can still be found kicking about keeping the world alive.


• SOEmote - Capturing your facial movements and translating them to your character. SOEmote was a huge thing when it was first announce for EQII, as mentioned above the roleplaying community was always strong in the game and SOEmote was definitely geared as the next step in roleplaying. What the software does is hook players webcams and mic up and firstly has a voice alteration that when it plays to other players can have the pitch altered to sound deep down like an ogre or high pitched like a Halfling or gnome. However, the genius is in the camera, the webcam tracks your head and face and mimics it back into game and has your character do the same; turn or nod your head and your character will turn their, smile, frown, open your mouth, blink or laugh and the camera will pick up those tiny movements and reacreate them in game for other players interacting with your character to see. It’s a shame that many players disable the feature due to some performance/lag issues, also that the RP community that really benefit from it isn’t as big as it used to be.


• Player Housing - EverQuest II still has one of the best housing systems of any current MMORGG. There is a frankly huge amount of customization and options available to players when it comes down to player owned housing; whether your own humble home or a huge Guild Hall for you and your guildmates. There are thousands of items that players can use to customize their home, furniture, objects, collectable, banners, statues of epic kills and more, and with time and effort and a little imagination some players have been able to create some truly amazing locations.

So that’s what we love with EverQuest II, but more importantly what are some of your favourite things? What do you think could/should be added to our list that makes the game great? Let us know what you think in the comments below!

If you want to know more of the game, take a look at our profile by clicking on the Info button below. In addition also you can take a look at our analysis of the game's closed beta HERE.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2015 at 1:27 pm and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.