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Tastes Great, Less Filling

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 31 / 34
Date: May 05, 2000
Author: Amazon User

For those new to EverQuest, it should be noted that while Ruinsof Kunark is an expansion for EverQuest, it does contain the entiregame and thus you don't need to buy anything else to play.

While EverQuest is called a massively multiplayer on-line role-playing game (MMORPG), I find the role-playing designation rather misleading, as is the case in most computer RPGs. There is actually very little role-play occurring in EverQuest, at least in terms of people acting as if they actually are their characters instead of someone sitting at a keyboard playing a game. If you play pen-and-paper RPGs such as D&D and you're looking for an on-line extension of the hobby, you'll be better off looking into text based MUDs, MUSHes, and other MU*s.

At it's simplest level, gameplay in EverQuest consists of killing various monsters so you can loot their bodies for items you can either use yourself or sell to someone else, be it one of the games automated merchants or another player, for money with which to buy nicer equipment for yourself so you can kill stronger monsters and repeat the process. If that sounds repetitive that's because it is. There is one basic strategy in the game; isolate the monsters so you can, preferably, fight them one at a time. Each class has different abilities which requires them to approach this strategy from different directions but ultimately they're all doing the same thing.

Despite the simplicity of the gameplay, or perhaps because of it, EverQuest is an incredibly addictive game. At the lower experience levels, rewards come often enough in the form of new levels and skills to make things really fun. As you advance in the game things then become more interesting because you're able to go more places, do more things, and start acquiring special items for your character.

However, all good things must come to an end and eventually the game becomes rather tiresome because the higher your level, the slower the game becomes. Warriors and other melee sorts find themselves spending long periods of time sitting around doing nothing while they heal up from their last battle. Spellcasters also spend a lot of time sitting around recovering the mana needed to cast spells and they have to keep their noses buried in the spellbooks to do it so they can't even watch what's going on around them while they're doing it. Healers not only have to meditate to recover mana but at higher levels they often have to do it in the middle of combat which means they miss most of the action.

EverQuest wastes time in other ways as well. Many of the nicer items in the game are dropped by specific creatures which appear at set spawn points at regular intervals. This means that if you want that particular item you have to go to that spawn point and kill whatever appears there over and over until the creature you're looking for appears, many are rare and only have a small percentage chance of appearing any time the spawn point "pops," and hope that it drops the item you're looking for, many of the better items being rare which means that there is only a small percentage chance that the creature will actually have the item when it appears. This means that you can spend hours sitting in one place killing the same thing over and over again hoping to get a particularly nice item. Not only that but, since you're probably not the only player in the game that wants that item, you'll have to stand in line to do it. Fortunately Ruins of Kunark alleviates the problem somewhat by placing nice items on random monsters in the lands of Kunark so that you can pick up nice gear without having to camp a particular spawn.

And these are just a few of the ways in which the game wastes your time.

Graphically EverQuest has always been the leader of the MMORPGs, though Asheron's Call did have superior environmental graphics until RoK was released. With the release of RoK, EverQuest now uses two seperate graphics engines. The "Old World," which consists of the lands contained in the original game, still use the original graphics engine, which is now 3-4 years old, because the publisher, Verant Interactive, couldn't legally change the system requirements once the game was released. However, the "New World," which consists of the lands added in the expansion, use a brand new graphics engine. The result is that the quality of graphics varies within the game. The Old World is kind of mediocre by today's standards while the New World looks very, very nice.

Sound leaves something to be desired in EverQuest and I have never considered it to be more than mediocre. The game uses a MIDI music soundtrack which some people, myself included, find rather annoying. There is no way to turn it completely off but you can turn the volume of it down so low that you can't hear it. Many creatures share the same footstep sounds so you can't tell the difference between them unless you can actually see them. (One of the things I like about Asheron's Call is that I can identify what's approaching me by the sound of it's footsteps.) There is also no variance in sound for surface so you sound exactly the same whether you're running on stone, wood, dirt, grass, sand, or snow. Some of the creature noises are nice but others are rather wanting. For example, when crocodiles and alligators are hit they sound suspiciously like someone trying to start a chainsaw. At the time of this writing, sound is bugged in the lands of Kunark. Many of the new creatures use the same sounds as humans. It's rather odd to see a mosquito fly past you and hear footsteps as it does so. Verant is working on a patch to correct this but its rather annoying that RoK was released with such a significant bug in place.

In a game like this, customer support is very important. Unfortunately Verant has a well deserved reputation for providing exceptionally bad support. If you're in need of tech support, you're better off turning to your fellow players on the various EverQuest BBSes to be found on the web than Verant's tech support, which has been known to take a week just to send you a form email telling you to provide them with information you already provided them with when you initially contacted them. In game support is provided by paid GMs and volunteer Guides. Unfortunately the Guides generally don't have the power to do much for you and the GMs have earned reputations for being capricious, rude and surly towards the players. Some have even been known to just kill characters out of hand for such minor offenses as walking up and speaking to them while the GM is standing in a public area.

While Verant advertises EverQuest as a dynamic world, it is largely static which things mostly staying exactly the same. Special events usually take the form of a GM ambushing player characters with a monster vastly more powerful than they are and indiscriminately slaughtering people until someone manages to summon some higher level players to come save them. Many people have learned to avoid zones where special events are taking place for just this reason. For some odd reason they don't think being killed by something they have no chance of defeating is very fun.

Overcrowding is another problem within the game but this exapansion has at least provided some temporary relief as many players have rushed to the new areas, which are quite large, to check them out. It's too soon to tell if this is a permanent solution or if people are going to gravitate to certain spots where the best loot/exp is located, as happened in the Old World, and/or if Verant is going to continue to allow the server populations to once more grow to beyond the point that the game was designed to handle.

Overall, EverQuest is a fun and addictive game but it has some flaws that become more and more serious the longer you play the game. You'll love it in the beginning but you may find yourself becoming more and more frustrated as you encounter the game's design limitations. It's probably the best MMORPG on the market right now but that could easily change as new games are released.

You are all kidding yourselves

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 30 / 35
Date: May 12, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Everquest: Ruins of Kunark is an amazing expansion to an otherwise perfect game. And anyone who poorly rates this game must really have personal issues that they must deal with. Yes, it is possibly the most addictive game, activity, etc... ever. So what if Verant messes up? So what if the guides or GM's are snotty? Players do not have to deal with them ever, and certainly wont take guff from them if they just play the game. The game is set up with a chat interface beneath the game screen, and statements that players make can be categorized, like auction, shout, out of character, etc. The people that get upset at other players for not wanting to hear them spam on and on about their weekend, or their lousy jokes need to find a frickin chat room. Those that truly love the game and understand it know that trying to level and get more powerful is all part of the fun. For example, in one area in Kunark (in the game) there is a forest called Warsliks Wood. Monsters that range from level 2 to level 30+ reside there, and one area within the woods is a truly massive fort, looking like it was built by giants. Well that is exactly who built it! They roam the grounds, and you can hear them coming! Very exciting stuff for a lower level player to run from a giant! And inside the fort is an entire area to explore. Now this was just a small example of the cool things you just stumble on while roaming. Oh sure, you need to just kill and kill to level up, but I, (unlike the majority of the other reviewers) take days where i just explore, find what i can find, and take in the lush beauty and astounding surroundings. I stumbled upon what looked like a mine shaft tonite, and as i walked deeper into the darkness i started seeing coffins, which gave the feel that this was a crypt of some sort. When i finally reached the end, i found a huge throne, whicj=h looked like some wicked king of the undead's throne! It's the little things like that that make me think about playing while at work, or in class. Obviously boundaries must be set, and people need to limit themselves as to how much time is spent playing, because you can lose track of time:). All in all, those who said they would stop playing, or would never play, are probably playing even as you read this. It is a truly wonderful game, one I will never tire of. Talk about replay value!

5 Stars for the First Four Months, 2 Stars Thereafter

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 23 / 25
Date: September 07, 2000
Author: Amazon User

The first couple of months you own this game (EQ) its like the world has stopped. You check online sites like Everlore.com and EQvault.com for additional information. You run around killing creatures, going on quests, talking with other characters. Man, everything is great in the world (everquest world, that is. The real world is just a distant memory). And I have to be honest, at first I thought this was the greatest gaming experience out there. The world seemed endless and full of potential. I wanted to try out different characters and races and journey to all three/four of the continents. How cool is it to be a barbarian shaman with the ability to cast spells and to fight, or to be a dark elf necromancer running around in Toxx Forest. There are both non-pvp (where players can't kill each other unless both characters consent to a duel or they enter an arena) and pvp servers (where, depending on the server, you can kill other characters within a certain level of your character, or only characters of a particular race--there is supposed to be a race war on one of the pvp servers). (I recommend the pvp servers for more hard core roleplaying, although as I later discuss, there isn't as much in this game as I hoped). Ahh, Evercrack (as its affectionately known) was my life.

And then, all the "little" problems caught up with me and the game began to annoy to no end. The list became too numerous: Lack of real roleplaying by the participants, horrible lag problems for non top-of-the-line computers, loading of zones that take seemingly forever (in EQ, the land is divided into zones, and when you go from one zone to another, the game takes a while to load the zone onto your computer; one city, Freeport, has three zones! UGH!), the fact that many of the really neat creatures or places or items are "camped" to death (which means that you have to wait your turn--believe, that can take forever), the "newbie" areas suffer from overcrowding.

Basically, the game became a huge time suck. Even relatively minor actions take a very very long time. EQ is definitely not a game to be played in short blocks of time. Counting load times, and the time necessary to recover your body and items, the average session was about 3 hours minimum. And then come the experience penalites. After a certain level, when you die, you lose a certain percentage of your experience. In other words, I spent three hours gaining a "bubble" of experience (you need five, if I remember correctly, to get to the next level) and then lost that bubble when I was killed by a mammoth in Everfrost. Well, guess I blew those three hours.

One of the strengths of EQ, especially when compared with Asheron's Call, is the interaction with other players. Essentially, the game is like a chat room with graphics. Which is cool when you become "friends" (in an internet sense) with other in-game characters.

However, this strength can also drive you nuts after a while, especially when you get into a zone and people are completely out of character and shouting nonsense to each other. Made me feel like I was back in high school, sometimes.

Also, don't confuse this game with a roleplaying experience. After a few months, the pattern of the game falls into: go out, join a group (which is necessary because some creatures can't be killed one-on-one), camp a monster or an area, hack and slash, repeat. There are plenty of quests, but most of them still focus on going out and killing something.

Hey, its hard for me to review this game because I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread for about 4-5 months. And then, things turned sour. Not all at once, but gradually. Hey, fans of EQ are fanatical (I was one of them once) and they have reason: EQ is addictive and can be a lot of fun. But, I am reviewing this game after having played it for almost a year. It starts off wonderful, but then it becomes more of a pain. So, I give it 5 stars to start, then 2 stars for the last couple of months I played it. Overall: 3 stars.

One of the most addictive Online games

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 21 / 26
Date: April 15, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I have been playing EverQuest for over a year and have enjoyed it immensely. I have also played several other Massively online Role Playing Games and out of all the games currently available I always go back to EverQuest. I agree that Verant the game publisher does have issues with customer service however having to help and support over 200,000 players is not an easy task and they always improving at it. As far as the Individual that commented about Power Players who sole intension is to level up as fast as possible, let those players be in their own delusional world as it is up to you to be the Role Player and find other like you that enjoy the game and like to role it out. And you will be able to find more of these players then the Power Players.

If you have played EverQuest in the past or you are considering it now, purchase Ruins of Kunark as you will have the capability of starting new characters on new servers as well as the new continent as well as a new race, much like the game is having a re-birth and you will have the delight in participating in this. Look forward to venturing the new worlds and participating in Role Playing with you.

Addictive, Fun ...BUT

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 19 / 25
Date: April 30, 2000
Author: Amazon User

A highly addictive game, which can be played with whatever suits your role playing philosophy.

BUT... the very company that brings you this immersive world is so immersed in its only development cycle that it does not allow you to play or seem to respond to the deep customer dissatisfaction.

Constant server downtime for long periods ( 6 to 8 hours many times ) to make minor changes. Impossible to reach tech support or customer service. Several spokespersons who respond to complaints on message boards with the almost literal 'well that's the way it is, so forget about your complaints'. Even with the release of this upgrade, a fiasco occured where many people did not get the upgrade after weeks of waiting and having paid for overnight delivery. The kind of human, public-relation errors could be listed forever in this everquest to be allowed to play and enjoy this game.

more of a same, brainnumbing

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 32 / 55
Date: April 07, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Well I played EQ for a year. It was fun up till 2 months ago, when it became obvious its enormous waste of time camping for virtual greed on overpopulated servers to get a new item. People swear at you, it seems to be a crowded bus stop at times. Classes are unbalanced and their abilities are falsely described to you, so that I ended being a rogue where DEX and AGI play no role, traps and locks are NOT implemented at all, etc. Whereas mighty classes like Necros can hold whole dungeons themselves, second rate classes like almost all melee (!) and specially rogues, cannot play alone for fun and kill a monster that gives them experience.

No doubt, graphical features are wonderful, and even more so in Kunark, but the gameplay is very hollow, making you hunt same monsters over and over again ad infinitum. This becomes apparent after a set time, depending on your intelligence.

Time is better spent reading a good book or talking to your friends. Fun is barely present in this game, more sort of a virtual greed and strife. Watch your frustration rise when you have to deal with 14-yr old doods that ruin your gamefun, day for day in this virtual universe...

..and the in-game gamesmasters can't and dont DO anything about it.

Beware! You have been warned! Karlek the dissatisfied Rogue of EQ

No matter how much you hate it...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 12 / 14
Date: July 18, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I was reluctant...VERY reluctant to buy this game after reading all of the bad reviews on Amazon.com, but my friend eventually pressured me enough to give it a try...after all, the store had a seven-day return policy! After playing it for six days, I both love and hate the game.

Let's first talk about why I love the game. First off, it's addictive...very addictive. Like a good novel, it takes some willpower to wrest yourself away from Everquest, and if you have friends online that own this as well, even more willpower...it's fun to go exploring and hunting with your friends. The graphics and sound aren't that shabby either, and when the sun sets or rises in this game, the sky looks gorgeous with it's red hues and clouds. Plus, the world of Everquest is HUGE and ever-changing. I mean, it takes DAYS to reach the other side of this world! Also, there is no player-killing unless you allow it. This is good, because I cannot STAND people who run around killing newbies that are less than fifteen minutes into the game!

NOW, let's talk about why I HATE this game. Unfortunately, since Everquest is so addictive, it can become a bad habit. I set limits upon myself; I only play Everquest for 2-3 hours whenever time permits. Some people have really fallen into Everquest, however, and spend practically every waking hour on it. Also, you need friends online because they help you start out by giving you expensive items and armor to use. I hate doing this, because I believe in getting everything myself (also the reason why I never play Diablo on Battle.net), but some areas of Everquest are very difficult for newbies, and shops charge exorbitant fees for their wares, so to survive, you have to take whatever is offered to you! Lastly, and this is by far the biggest gripe about Everquest, is something I like to call "corpse-running." When you die in Everquest, you lose all of your equipment, but never fear, because if you can find your corpse, you can get all of your stuff back. Nobody else can steal your stuff, so you don't have to worry about looters. Now, remember how I said that the world is HUGE? Well, since your corpse disappears after a time, or when you log off, you have to RUSH to get your stuff back. Unfortunately, this sometimes means traveling cross-country to get your corpse. Just hope that you don't have any errands to run in real-life during a "corpse-run!" When you finally do manage to find your corpse, you have to equip everything again. While this may not seem that bad at first, as you get more armor and weapons, you'll find this very annoying, as there is equipment for practically every part of your body! Ears, neck, head, shoulders, chest, legs...even your face can have equipment on it! Many hours are wasted by "corpse-running."

Notice how most of the reason why I love the game are somehow related to the reasons why I hate the game? I think that these "close ties" are why no matter how much a player may love/hate it, he/she will still keep playing Everquest. To wrap it up, Everquest is like...a double-edged blade. It has many good things, but these good things in the wrong circumstances can turn into bad things. You may love it, you may hate it, but either way, you can't stop playing it!

The best game I ever played

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: August 09, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I am not going to tell you that Everquest does not have its faults, but until I got Everquest, I never played a game for more than a few months before tiring of it and moving on to the next game. 1 1/2 years later, I still almost exclusively play everquest. When you play everquest, you truly enter into a different world, with its own rules, cliques, foibles, dangers and rewards. This is the closest thing you can get to truly being part of a fantasy world. The fact that the characters you are meeting are real people and not just computer generated facades, pre-programmed to respond to you, is what makes this game special. The world is huge. I have still not seen everything there is to see in the game, and I have played it for hundreds of hours.

Yet, it may not be for everyone. It is difficult, although not impossible, to play solo in the game. If you are a loner, or only have limited time to play, this can be frustrating. Of course, it is the grouping with friends and strangers that makes the game so interesting, and it is usually easy to get into a group. You will find you prefer getting into a group whenever you can as much for the company as the increased playing ability. The game is also very time consuming. I personally have no difficulty going days without playing the game, but I know people who spend way too much time playing it. You can get caught up in trying to get that extra level or cool item and lose track of the rest of your life. And it takes a long time to level in the game. If you are driven to beat a game by taking a character to the top level, be prepared to spend hundreds of hours to do so.

I highly recommend this game for anyone who enjoys role playing games. If you are not sure of the game, I would suggest that you go look up some of the numerous websites out there that give information on the game. Probably no other game is so well covered by fan sites. Check Yahoo's or Google's catagories for a list. My personal recommendation is http://everquest.allakhazam.com , which covers everything you need to know about the game, and includes a nice newbie guide to get you started.

E-Crack

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 11 / 13
Date: October 10, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This game is a drug, pure and simple. It's horridly bad for you. It'll make you skip school, miss work, and generally become an unbalanced person. When you're playing it, all your problems are forgotten and you are oblivious to the outside world. When you stop playing it, you suddenly realize it's dark outside and you've gotten nothing done. It leads to excessive inactivity, both physical and mental, which can result in tiredness, forgetfulness, and irritability. The worse things become in your real life, the more you come to depend upon it, the more you need it to forget what you'll have to face eventually.

Then you have to pray that you have good friends and a loving family to pull you out of the whole mess. Even after a year of abstinence from direct contact, you still have a strong feeling of emptiness that did not exist before. EverQuest(or EverCrack as many of the players have come to call it) is like the devil: don't sign your name, or you'll lose your soul. Don't make the mistake I made. At least I learned something from my experience, and that is the danger of drugs, in whatever forms they might take.

Why am I writing a review? I could be playing EQ!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 11 / 13
Date: February 16, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I'm not sure what I expected to get out of "EverQuest," having heard some opinions from people who are much more hardcore gamers than I am, but here's what I got out of it:

"EverQuest" is not a regular computer game. You don't pop it into your computer, go whack a certain number monsters on the head, win, and then deinstall it. Those games are a lot of fun, but once you've, say, killed Diablo several times with different character types in "Diablo II," you're not exactly rushing to do it the 300th time. Not by any means. (Great game, "Diablo II," but a different sort of animal altogether.) Those that see "EverQuest" as a big online "Quake" game seem to get very frustrated with many aspects of the game, including other players, and the feeling is usually mutual.

That's because, instead of "Diablo," "EverQuest" is more akin to a huge themed chat room interwoven with a game. Sure, you can and do play by yourself sometime, but you have to hunt far and wide across the game world of Norrath to find a place where you won't be interacting with someone else. (For the record, you can find it: Go to the Tox Forest south of Erudin, and swim west from the docks. The Kerra Isle zone is almost always empty, and it's especially so inside, if you choose not to hunt the native cat people, but instead do the quests for them. The quiet is a nice change from the sometimes deafening roar that pervades most EQ zones.)

In fact, the game is designed to more or less force you to work with other players: After getting your character (selected from either sex, multiple fantasy races and about as many fantasy hero/villain careers) up a few levels whacking the more mundane monsters and animals, you pretty quickly run into a wall where it becomes much harder to go at it alone. Jack may have been a giant-killer in the fairy tale, but if you want to kill giants in EQ, you're going to need friends. And that's what makes EQ a killer app: Interaction. You may think you aren't interested in making a bunch of online friends, but you'll soon find yourself laughing with, cursing with and adventuring with strangers from around the globe. I have no idea who some of the people I play with are beyond the vaguest details, but it doesn't matter. I get to jump into this fantasy world and I've got brave friends who have my back as I have theirs, ready and waiting.

Hardcore gamers, as I alluded to earlier, will quibble about some of EQ's technical specifications. First off, I've had very few technical problems. I can almost always connect within 30 seconds, have been kicked off line only twice in over six weeks of play, and the dreaded "lag" where the game continues by the connection between server and home computer can't keep up, has rarely been a problem. It occurs, but it's not very problematic, and even the harshest EQ critics acknowledge that it's getting better all the time.

There's also some talk that the graphics, especially in the original section of EQ (the continents of Antonica and Faydwer, and the island of Odus) aren't up to par, but I don't get the argument. Setting the game at maximum resolution (because I've got a late model computer), the graphics are gorgeous, and I haven't even explored the prettier (and more graphics-intensive) continent of Kunark yet.

For fantasy fans, EQ strikes a good balance between the familiar and the new. Many players want to play traditional elves and dwarves, and those areas of Faydwer are packed to the gills (particularly the elvish areas of the Faydark forest). You can help a sickly unicorn, slay dragons, play as a hobbit-like halfling and battle fierce orcs. Or, if you need another Tolkein-inspired fantasy game like you need a hole in the head, you can be an Erudite magician from far-off Odus (EQ has included a fantasy race of color, the Erudites, with a lightly African-themed look to them, and has made them the preeminent masters of all sorts of magic, good and evil, in the world of Norrath), exploring the deadly continent of Kunark and battling the native lizard peoples, the Iksar, there. (The Iksar are also a playable race, for those looking for an extremely distinctive character type.)

There's more to this game than can be covered in this review -- characters can develop skills beyond the ability to kill each other; my gnome wizard is an accomplished linguist, for instance, meaning that I've had to sit down with more than a dozen player-controlled characters of non-gnomish descent and share language lessons -- as EQ is a rich, deep, surprisingly immersive game.

Everything they say is true: EQ is addictive. And there's lots of good reasons why. A terrific game, and my household has two copies, one for me, and one for my wife.

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