PART I

When Sony Online Entertainment showed off gameplay trailers for EverQuest II at E3 in Los Angeles, this past May, there was a sense of wonder and awe. When Sony announced that almost every NPC would speak, there was a sense of wonder and awe. When Sony sent the invite for the closed beta and it was 3.5 gigabytes in size, there was shock. Expect the retail version to be much bigger.

Will it be worth it? That is yet to be determined, but as SOE has granted permission to speak about the first 10 levels of the game, from this limited vantage point, the answer has to be a resounding “you bet!”

First, let’s clear something up right now – this game is a RAM hog. While it will be optimized to work with only 512 megs of RAM, with only that much – which is the minimum system requirements – the game started to lag noticeably as more players made their way into the realm of Norrath.

The game takes place several hundred years from the time setting of the original EQ realm. Norrath has been devastated and only two real cities remain – the peaceful and ‘good’ alignment city of Qeynos, and the militaristic ‘evil’ alignment city of Freeport. This is important to know because as you enter the world, you will have to choose a race that will align with one of those cities.

For the sake of organization, let’s break this preview of EQ II down into several categories and two parts. In Part I, the areas of character creation, and professions will be addressed. In Part II, we will look at combat, crafting, and quests:

Character creation

When you jump into the game you are given a choice of races to begin with. There are 15 races, including one that has yet to be unlocked (frogloks), and of course, you can play either the male or females of the races.

Most of the character customization applies to the head. There are three options for eyes, five head options (ears, cheeks, chin, lips and nose), four areas for hair customization and four for body. Two of the body options entail the color of your shirt and pants/skirt. Actually, those are sort of throwaway options considering that you will be changing out those for armor as you progress. However, should you lose your armor or mage clothing, those will remain with you. Humans also get an age slider bar.

During the character customization/selection process, you will also (as mentioned) choose your alignment. Each city has decidedly different attitudes and while Qeynos is a benevolent, peaceful and optimistic society basking in the glow of joyfulness (people are always welcoming you), Freeport is somewhat bleaker, and a harsher environment where killing first and asking questions later is often the encouraged course of action. You can be almost as bad as you want to be, threatening folks and finding excuses to attack anything you can. Rather than a caretaker for your room in Qeynos, in Freeport you have an abusive slumlord.

Once you have created your avatar, you are ready for the tutorial (which you can skip if you have been this way before).

The professions and abilities

During the tutorial there are not profession classes. It is not until you arrive at Refuge Island that you actually choose from four groups – mage, priest, fighter or scout. Each class refines further as you move through the levels. But during the time on Refuge Island, there are a series of quests that explain the basics of the game, such as combat, grouping and crafting (more about the latter in a moment). Though there is a little variation in the combat missions, all culminate with a raid that will call for a group. During the group, you will learn the dynamics of the heroic opportunities and how you must work as a group to pull off some of the more showcased elements of combat. By the time you reach level 6, it is time to seek out ambassadors, leave the island and begin the real trek through the new world of Norrath.

When you arrive in your chosen village, you are given a room and a series of tutorial-style missions that do not yield experience points (initially), but do familiarize you with the town. This all paves the way for you to gain citizenship status. You cannot advance past level 7 without becoming a citizen. All experience (XP) is held and accumulates until you run those quests. The same idea holds true later as you get to the profession quests. At level 9, by way of example, a mage will get a mission to seek out his or her class trainer. The trainer will explain about the three classes available that the aspiring mage can select from to advance as a profession – summoner, sorcerer or enchanter. Each of these are further refined as you move through the game, and make choices. While you can complete the mission at level 9, you won’t actually become that profession until level 10.

The crafting profession, known generically as artisan, is open to all players, and it levels just as a profession would but through crafting.

EverQuest II seems to have a fairly good balance between the classes. The fighters can take a lot of damage, deal it out reasonably well, and taunt mobs off the weaker classes. Mages are, as in most MMOs, strong and can nuke most mobs within a level or two of them. They have a lock-down, and can deal out quick death, but the cost comes in terms of power drain. Too many groups of mobs can leave a mage drained, and because the mage can only wear light armor, this means they are somewhat squishy. The priest can only wear light armor as well, but seems somewhat sturdier than the mage and can actually use melee weapons – but because the big benefit lays in buffing and healing, you really don’t want your priest (at the early levels) on the front lines. Once again, power drain (as in mana) is a big consideration. The scout is not as hardy as the fighter, but will end up doing a lot of melee. While a bow becomes available, the bow reset times factor in and most mobs will close before you are able to get off more than a couple of shots (unless you have a fighter with the aggro). Scouts also have a team movement buff, and can go into a stealth mode, which allows for attacks from the back. The flanking and side attacks can be deadly.

Each class has strong attributes to recommend it, and each has some weaknesses, which can be exploited by the opposition in combat. Soloing is possible, but the group dynamic is where these classes really start to strut.