For years, Sony Online Entertainment's EverQuest has been one of the standard-bearers of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game. But hundreds of thousands of regular users later, the game is still seen by many industry observers as too complicated and detail-oriented to ever appeal to a mass audience.
Enter EverQuest II, the just-launched heir to the franchise. With a host of new features aimed at less hard-core players, EverQuest II was built to capture an almost entirely new community of users: those who want an easier, friendlier fantasy MMO experience.
It starts off by introducing newcomers to the game through a simple, effective tutorial. Beginning on a ship at sea, players must navigate the basics of interacting with non-player characters, killing rats, looting corpses, searching for treasure, and buying and selling booty.
When building a character, players must choose between certain races, such as Halflings, barbarians, elves and the like. The game, like its predecessor, is vastly open-ended, and players who progress beyond the earliest levels will experience countless scenarios. But the direction they take is determined by whether they choose to be good or evil. If they're good, they graduate from the ship to the city of Queynos. Freeport is for the evil.
The earliest quests in EverQuest II are pretty mundane: killing goblin invaders, destroying ancient war statues, collecting the venom sacs of just-killed mammoth spiders. None of these requires much skill, and they pose little danger to players' characters.
But soon, players face challenges that newcomers to the MMORPG realm may find daunting, especially if they enter the game with no friends at their side. The tutorial, which continues beyond the initial boat sequence, ends suddenly – and without warning – leaving players essentially to fend for themselves.
This is probably a good thing, as it's only by doing that a player can learn anything. Still, for newbies, the sense of being left without a safety net can lead to ugly attacks and death at the hand of goblin brutes. That can lead to feelings of desperation and "I hate this stupid game" sentiments.
Nevertheless, if one has the commitment to stick it out, the rewards are plenty.
EverQuest II is a beautifully rendered game. On a contemporary gaming box – it's only available for PCs – with an up-to-date video card, game play is smooth, the audio is crisp, and the lush tree-filled valleys rife with deer, bears, beetles, spiders and other beasts almost look like they could have been shot on video instead of rendered in a game studio.
In the earliest stage of the game, players can get by without grouping up. But by the fourth level, quests require teamwork to succeed. Attempting to satisfy such missions solo routinely ends with the player surrounded and overmatched, and a "not again" epithet.
What might be surprising, from a newbie's perspective, is how easy it is to find sympathetic fellow players. In EverQuest II, getting assistance with a demanding quest is hardly difficult: A simple request in most cases will result in an eager offer of no-strings-attached help. It is very common to see, in the chat window, shouts from random players asking who is off in search of the orc.
The crucial thing about the orc quest is that it forces new players to figure out how to look for, find and manifest a group. Wallflowers need not apply, as the game would be severely limiting to someone unwilling or unable to find partners from among the total strangers sharing the unfamiliar battlefield.
Sony Online is touting EverQuest II as a game that will generate an entirely new user base. The company insists it is not cannibalizing its existing EverQuest community. It argues those players will remain in their game, with only a small migration, while potentially hundreds of thousands of new players flock to EverQuest II on the strength of the original's name and the promise of a smooth learning process.
But at the raucous EverQuest II launch party in San Francisco last week, some veteran EverQuest players confided that they had grown bored of their longtime obsession and were ready to get a new one. The problem with that, from Sony's perspective, is that it is counting on EverQuest and EverQuest II being largely independent of one another. If too many people migrate, the quality of the community in the original will suffer.
Plenty of new players seem to be running around the world of Norrath, and for non-MMORPG veterans looking for a new kind of adventure, this game may well suit the bill.
The game does have some practical problems. One that could cause Sony's marketing department a headache is a misconception about what kind of video cards the game requires. Suffice it to say that even a year-old machine may not be up to snuff.
Another problem MMORPG virgins may encounter is that, in nighttime scenes – gameplay rotates through the cycles of days – it is very difficult to see what is going on. That makes for situations where a player may have to make decisions operating essentially blind. The only alternative is waiting, prone, until a new day dawns.
Overall, EQ II seems like an impressive introduction for newcomers to the often overwhelming MMORPG genre. It has captivating graphics; a wide variety of character choices, potential partners, enemies and quests; and a mostly gentle learning curve. For those willing to put in a significant number of hours a week on the game, EQ II seems to have all the elements to suck them in full-bore – and anger their spouses in the process.
