Those with more experience with MMORPG's should find alot to like here , even after your initial 30 days of free play .
User Rating: 8.2 | EverQuest II (With Kingdom of the Sky Bundle) PC
2005 has been a year for me to hop in and out of mmo's . i cancelled my World of Warcraft account back in may and have had a few chances to try out other games in the proccess . so far this year i've played at least 5 mmorpgs , and i can say that Everquest 2 has been the one i've found and so far am loving . so much that i've payed my first monthly bill . all the other games were never fortunate enough to get 15 dollars from my pocket . having played the "Trial of The Isle" a while back when they released that demo , i already knew EQ2 was a decent game . its once you leave the isle and get into the real game world is when everything opens up to you . its both incredibly exciting , and for some people , confusing , at the same time . i don't like to go into details on the gameplay cuz you have the actual Gamespot review to look att for that . i'm just going to pick and choose points of interest that i think are important to let out . first off being that this is pretty much the most beautiful mmorpg out there . then again depending on your system will determine how "beautiful" the game actually is . just so ya know on my graphics card i can run it alright at 1280x1024 at high performance settings . now those settings aren't nearly as good as anything over balanced , but its still good none the less . second point being that , dispite being an easy game to learn with a nicely streamlined interface , its hard to understand everything at first . the game does alot to try and get new players to understand how to go about their character's lives in game , but somehow it just seems to take alot longer to sink in . for one , even though you can tell when an npc has a quest by their voice-over , not all quest-giving npcs say anything . this can mislead people into thinking "well theres no quests for me to do" . believe me theres tons of quests you can do in this game , just alot of them are harder to find . also figuring out where you should go most of the time is a hassle . i really didn't know there were several zones within my starting city that i coudl quest in and grind xp . third being , after you leave your city to start your real adventuring , you end up spending alot of time , like say 10 levels or more , in just one zone . alot of times fighting similar looking mobs along the way . i lost count how many levels i spent fighting badgers in antonica . though this has been known to plague Everquest since the first one , after a while you do move on to bigger and better things . so don't expect to really fight those bigger and better mobs by yourself , because soloing takes alot longer than fighting with a group of people . so if you enjoy group play , then have fun! prolly my last big point would be the fact that you really have to spend alot of time playing this game if you want to get anywhere . i'd say at least 3 hours a day . theres not the same level of accomplishment that you can find in an hour's playtime like you would in WoW . but eq2's players and community really do suck you into playing for longer periods of time , and you'd be surprised what can be done in a few hours of playtime . really when i look back at it , i never really looked at everquest 2 to be as good as it turned out to be for me . i'm really glad its turned out this way for the fact that i'm still playing and enjoying the hell out of this game . the only thing that dissapoints me is how harsh gamers that don't play or haven't played eq2 , look and talk about this game . it seems like everyone i talk to or play with in any other online pc game , as soon as i mention that i play eq2 , a bunch of people will respond to that in second telling me "eq2 sucks!" or "WoW is so much better." . i really don't care what other peoples opinions are , cuz they're entitled to them . but really , could ya just not get so offensive on the subject? i say if you're in the market for an MMO , you're two safest bets are World of Warcraft and Everquest 2 . If you don't like what you find in the demo version of eq2 , then go with WoW . but i'm here to say that i believe that those with more experience with MMORPG's should alot to like here , even after you're initial 30 days of free play . 
