Others say...

"READ THIS..."
I wanna start out by saying that not everyone will like this game. I am only 14 (just because i cant be below 14 if i wanna post this lol, im really one year younger) but i love it, and i have been playing for about 5 months. If you have played everquest one you will like this game. The graphics are amazing (if u have a decent computer) and the gameplay is awesome. The only thing is, of course since i play the game ill tell you how great it is. Most other people either tell you how amazing it is or how horrible it is. This game has also been changed a lot since its debut so ill go over some of the changes in LU 20 and from KoS (Kingdom of Sky) expansion.

1. Your character can reach an adventure level of 70.
2. There is a new achievement point system for players over level 20
3. Guilds can now reach level 50.
4. There are two new arenas for PvP (player versus player)
5. There are all new heritage quests, quests to get items from the original everquest game.
6. 30 new collection quests, for items found across Norrath that can be turned in to a collocter for exp and a reward.
7. You can now choose your proffession as you start the game, no longer requiring longg hours on quests to advance your level
8. There are now better tutorial islands for the beginners.
9. not from KoS but, for people who want to interact more with others, the servers have merged, causing almost all of the servers to be "heavy" so you can always find a group.

I think just trying this game would be one of your best moves to find out what its like. In 30 days of the free trial, if you work hard, im sure you can get to level 15-20 or beyond. In order to really experience this game you really need to play it for 30 days at least.

I have never played WoW so i cant say that eq2 is better than it however i can say that you need a lot of patience and maturity to really like this game. The guilds in this game also help low leveled characters out a lot. They can help you with quests and often like to invite new characters just to help out. I havent met any unfreindly everquest players and they all seem to treat everyone equally. If you dont like what people are saying though, you can choose to take out different chat channels from your chat window where all the messages appear as well as put people to your /ignore list.

I am not going to say that certain groups of people will like the game and certain groups wont, such as married couples. My guild is run by a married couple who completly love to play the game however i know that it is also frustrating for two people to try to succeed in this game alone. As someone has mentioned already, if you want to solo the game all the way through dont play this game. That is also incorrect, you can solo throufgh the whole game if you prefer. I will admit that it isnt as easy to solo as it is to group with people however it is just as possible.

When i read the other comments people made i could tell whether they were on WoW's side or EQ2's side by the way they owuld bash the opposite game. I have just tried to tell some the strong points of this game to you and cant really compare it to WoW. I hope it helped you, whoever you are reading this article, to know what its like to actually play the game and some of the good things about it.





EQI
Cathan
56th level Monk
Tarew Marr Server
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EQII
Cathan
22nd level Monk
Befallen Server







"Beautiful, but no soul"
I was a long-time player of EQ1 -- playing since beta4. I loved the feeling of openness that EQ1 gave you, the feeling that you were in a world and could do whatever you wanted. Groups were a choice, not a requirement. Zones were scary and huge, but most had something to do at any level. You could buff someone as you ran by, or give 100p to a monster, shout it out to the zone, and watch the lowlevels swing into action to hunt that mob down before it despawned. The game was only limited by your imagination.

EQ2 doesn't deliver that same openness. Instead, you are railroaded into a series of zones and quests, and a single playstyle. It's like they took any chance for you, the player, to operate outside the planned experience that the developers had in mind for you.

Not to my liking at all. It lasted 2 months before I deleted it from my system. Compare that to 7+ years for playing EQ1.

Pros: gorgeous graphics, fairly intuitive gameplay, lots of quests, well-developed tradeskills.

Cons: system hog, many bugs still, very few zones, not a very compelling storyline, boring spell lines, I could go on.

As the title says -- gorgeous, but not very fun.

"Great game!!!!"
I recently switched from playing World Of Warcraft to this because of the annoying immature teens who litter that game and I have been having ten times the fun since making that decision.

Yes, the game is more complicated. If you don't like the game just because you don't have the patience to figure things out then maybe you shouldn't be playing these types of games in the first place. The fact that this game is more invoved makes it far more intense and interesting. The area that I am in right now,Freeport, is huge and has tons of quests to accomplish.

This game seems to attract an older crowd which is great since you don't have to deal with idiots every ten minutes. The world is larger, the game more interesting, and the characters more highly developed than World Of Warcraft. Make the switch, you won't be dissapointed.

"HORRIBLE"
This game is a waste of $$$$. The first EQ was the greatest. The only problem was that there was 10 expantions for it which was pretty retarded. This game has great graphics, but the more pretty-looking the game gets, from my experience the crappier it gets(Except for HL2 and cs souce!!). I would strongly recomend WoW over Eq2.1 thing that is so retarded is how much memory it takes up. Anyway get WoW istead of this and ull thank me and LUV ME FOREVER!!!!!

"An unimaginative game by irritating developers"
This game was a very disappointing release by SOE. There seems to have been minimal effort put into it. Allow me to elaborate...

Each armor class has but one model, so every armor upgrade varies only by color. Furthermore, don't even think about being fashionable in this game. Even if you do somehow manage to achieve the look you want, the devs will change it on a whim (they have made black robes for evil-aligned players pinkish purple and left it that way permanently...calling it an "improvement" in the patch notes).

They have "Adventure Packs" which cost 5-7$ and are so-called mini-expansions. However, they are merely just a few rooms (where the walls, ceiling, and floor are all the same boring color/texture) that have quite literally been cut and pasted over and over again to create a dungeon. Best 7$ you ever spent?

Mounts are very unimaginative - again, just 1 horse model with different colors for each upgrade. The uberest horse is probably the gaudiest one of all (a "spirit horse" they call it - though it's basically just the same horse model with a faded out texture - like they were on a budget and couldn't create something special).

They recently came out with an expansion, Desert of Flames, but the expansion offers no new variety (it's all just recycled content with different names for the loots and spells). They raised the level cap from 50 to 60, but all the new spells are just the same as old ones they are supposed to upgrade, with a different name and slightly boosted damage, etc. Furthermore, in some cases the upgrade is so small as to leaving you wondering why you just spent weeks of your life leveling up at all.

Soloing is viable to a degree in this game. You can solo to 60. There are a couple of solo dungeons (or "solo rooms", more accurately) that offer no special reward or adventure. Once you reach 60 as a solo player you will find that there is nothing left for you to do. You only receive reward for killing an enemy if it is 10 levels below you or higher. In many cases something 10 levels below you that's intended for a group will beat you senseless. So you can forget soloing lower level group-intended enemies for loot. If you want to get ahead as a solo player, your only option is to buy loot from other players, but NO upgrade you can possibly get in the game will open up new soloing power and adventures (there's simply nothing to do solo but kill dumbed down enemies).

There is a bit more to do for groups and raids, but it's mostly just physically larger versions of soloable creatures that hit harder and have more hitpoints. Nothing really inspiring or creative. There aren't many uber items to go after, and much of the content is just recycled zone maps (same map with different opponents in it), recycled items (same graphic, different stats and name), etc. The game is inherently dumbed down, so there is little tactics or skill involved in killing anything in this game. There's not really anything you can do to improve your odds. Just "point, click, and pray" is pretty much the name of the game.

Crafting, I have to admit, was given more attention by the devs than most MMO's, but they ruined it with what could be the worst crafting system ever conceived. There is 0 automation, which would be fine if the system was interesting, but it's not. You have to sit there and click 1 or 2 buttons repeatedly while staring at a progress meter. Considering the sheer volume of things you need to make to level up your Artisan class, it begins to feel like a shameful waste of life after a while - just stare at a progress meter, click...repeat process 500 times.

The storyline is extremely pitted with potholes (too many to list). There is hardly a sense of immersion, considering the thrown-togetherness feel of the world (it feels more like an FPS multiplayer map than an immersive fantasy world, honestly). At times, when changes are made to the game that make it less fun, you begin to wonder whether the developers even play their own game.