Some thoughts on Everquest 2

So I have a little time, sitting here at work - where all my work is done and I have nothing more to do for the day, where I can put some thoughts down about my re-experiencing of Everquest 2. Maybe first I should give a brief background of my experiences with EQ2.

Having played Everquest (live) for a little while, and that being my first graphical MMO, I got rather drawn into it. I absorbed the lore, the items, the classes the entire gameplay experience. I lived on sites like Allakhazam and Caster's Realm each day, passing time at work during the slow periods while waiting for compiles and such. So it was only natural that I picked up EQ2 the day it hit the store shelves. I had seen my roomate beta test it some, while I was beta testing WoW and it looked neat. So, after I loaded up the game, I eagerly created my Dwarf fighter. I had played a Dwarf Warrior in EQ, albeit not to high levels, and really enjoyed him. I enjoyed tanking and pulling and such in a group environment.

Anyhow, he and I grouped every day - my fighter which became a Crusader and finally a Paladin along with his Priest->Druid->Warden. It was a fun experience, despite some of the shortcomings of the game. So I played through the constantly linked and always locked encounters. I crafted through the times when sub-combines were in, and you couldn't make them yourself. I played when the game ran like crap on Nvidia chipsets.

That all being the case, I still enjoyed the game. It was new, which contributed to part of the enjoyment, but it was also at its core, a fun game.

Anyhow, there were indeed nuances about the game I did not care for but were not major critically flawed components of the game; at least not in my opinion.

Now I am back in the game and have been for all of about four or five days now. I have managed to gain two levels with my Paladin and level a Fae alt up to level 9. So what do I like in the game, whether it is new or old?

- The quests. While they may not all be unique, or ground breaking, there is a ton of them in the game. They always keep me busy, and while some are a bit redundant and monotonous, I still enjoy doing them. Currently, it seems you are limited to 75 active (uncompleted) quests in your journal at one time, and I am always borderline full.

- The alternate advancement/achievement point system. Having never played a max level character in EQ, I never got to tinker with the AA system there - but I did become familiar with the talent system in WoW. While I liked some of the things the WoW talent system does, I didn't like how it basically forced you to play a certain way in most cases. with the AA system in EQ2, it appears that while building up AP points and speccing certain ways would give you advantages over a like-leveled and like-geared class, it doesn't put you so far above them that the one who doesn't have the AP points you have is irrelevant. They still allow you to *boost* certain aspects of your character or play style, but they don't force you to abandon everything else about your character. I am planning to spec my Paladin more for tanking, as it is something I enjoy to do - but opposite from WoW - speccing for tanking will not gimp my ability to solo or farm, or to play a non-tank role in a group or raid. I am extremely happy, so far, in what I am seeing with this system. I admit, at first glance of the AP "trees" and abilities listed there, I was underwhelmed. "Wow, I can boost my abilities a little? Maybe get a new ability if I go deep into the tree? This system seems irrelevant and is for nothing more than a grind and time sink." I thought to myself. Then, I read some of the forums and studied the trees a little closer and the more I thought about it, the more I really started to like this system - for the reasons mentioned above.

-The tradeskills. Ok, like I said I had played and tradeskilled back when the original system was in place. My Paladin is a level 24 Armorcrafter. All gained in 2004/2005. I spent countless hours creating my subcombines. Mindlessly pressing the hotbuttons on something like 5 different hotbars I had setup for crafting. Yeah, five. I had the tradeskill abilities for everything up, because I had to so many different stations. I had to make temper, I had to make padding and stitching. I had to make paper for patterns. It really was overkill and I got really burned out on it. Now, I also have a low level alt crafter who I just dinged to a 10 Scholar two nights ago. I was almost orgasmic seeing that I did not have to make a ridiculous number of sub-combines to make something. I only had to have some raw materials, then go craft what I wanted to make. However, I still enjoyed the fact that you had to actually do more than press a "combine" button and wait for the casting bar to finish counting down. I still had to counter the reactions or problems and I still could use the abilities to boost my progress. Right now, with the limited exposure I have had to the tradeskill facet of the game in its current state - I flippin' love it.

-The group dynamics. Again, I compare to WoW here because its what I almost exclusively played for the last year or so. In WoW, for many instances, you really needed a certain group setup. You needed a tank - usually specced for tanking. You needed a healer - usually specced for healing. You needed some for of crowd control, then the usual DPS. From what I can tell so far, and from what I remember in the past, EQ2 doesn't really require that sort of makeup. Sure, things are easier if you have a tank and a healer and some crowd control and whatnot - but you can get through many of the instances with some really crazy group makeups. Oh you are a healing specced Paladin? Why don't you tank and let the Templar heal? Or maybe let the Bruiser tank and the Paladin heal or dps. I am sure the higher level instances might be a bit different, but I really do love the absence of the "shut up and heal" comments and ideology I would get in WoW with my Shaman. It's nice to be able to fill multiple roles easily. It seems almost every class can DPS in some form - some better than others obviously - but you can be successful with a secondary healer DPSing if his or her heals are not needed.

-Mentoring. Mentoring is a feature of the game where a higher level character can temporarily drop his or her level down to that of another member of the group. So as a level 42 Paladin, I could group with a level 14 Monk, and mentor him - which would lower my level to 14 while I am mentoring. While I liked the idea when they originally put this into the game, I loathed having to setup new hotbars because I couldn't use my higher level skills. Now, your skills scale down to the level you mentor to. I am not sure if skills that originally only became available to you at a higher level than what you are mentoring become disabled or not, as I have not mentored that low since I came back to the game. However, this system is a very awesome idea. You talked your friend into playing the game last week, but you don't want to roll a new character to group with him? No problem, just mentor down and you can continue playing your main character, but at your friend's level. I really do love this system.

-The guild tool. I forgot how awesome this thing is. I ran two different guilds in WoW in my year there, and I hated the in-game guild tool they have. Reorganizing ranks is a royal pain in the ass, and not being able to see when someone joined is a glaring oversight by the developers. With the EQ2 guild interface, you get a list of members and can see the date they joined. I don't know about the rank organization - but I would imagine it's more intuitive than WoW's. Also, you can select which events to save in the guild event log. You can record /ginvites and /gkicks or /gquits. You can record when someone in guild looted some "epic" loot, or when guild members killed epic mobs. It can log when people leveled (adventure or tradeskill) and many other things. I really think this is a guild tool done right. The only thing I don't like is how the mouse scroll wheel works in the guild member listing (it's scrolls a highlight bar, instead of just scrolling the window) and that the member list window jumps around when... I'm not sure what causes it. All I know is I am scrolling down to look for a name and it jumps back up a few pages. I imagine it's due to someone logging in, or a member joining the guild.

I have more things I like, but those are ones I really wanted to touch on with this post. All in all, right now, I am having a lot of fun with the game. And that's what games are for, right?