Everquest II Diary - Character creation

The character creation in Everquest 2 is one of the game's strengths, as it allows a very impressive amount of customisation (particularly facially) that, frankly, leaves a game like WoW in its dust. If all the characters took their gear off, you're not likely to find many that look alike. You can alter the size of your character, his skin colour, tattoos and headgear (spines and scale patters if you're an Iksar or Froglok), eye colour, and pretty much all the proportions of the character's facial features. It's good fun to play around and create a striking avatar for your adventures, but if you're not interested in doing that, then you can just press the 'randomise all' button until you find a look you like. There is, in fact, two entirely different sets of character models available - the original EQ2 models, and the SOGA models (made by the Asian branch of Sony Online Entertainment) for the Asian EQ2 release. Opinion is divided over which set is better, but I feel that the SOGA models are far, far superior, so I'm using them - even though they can occasionally look a little anime-esque.

The in-game human characters could apparently afford platemail trousers but not a shirt.

The class and race system is large and extremely varied, too. Basically, you can one of eighteen different races, divided into Good, Evil and Neutral (six races in each), that vary from the standard humans, elves and dwarves to the lizardlike Iksar, catlike Kerra or the distinctly amphibian Froglok. Depending on which you choose, you'll be able to choose from up to 4 starting cities - Qeynos & Freeport (the two original starting cities, the hubs for good and evil respectively), then the good city of Kelethin in Faydwer, or the evil city of Neriak near Freeport. Neutral races become either good or evil depending on their choice of starting city, so you can't actually be neutral in game. It's worth thinking about your choice, but you can betray citizenship in game if you desire, so if you make the wrong choice its not the end of the world.

The water between the collection of islands near Qeynos represents EQ1 zones that the EQ2 team couldn't be bothered to redo. Instead, they claimed that it was all flooded. Great save, guys.

After that, you've got your choice of class. There are a grand total of 24 to choose from, though it is somewhat constrained by your choice of alignment - I think only 16 are available to each side. If this seems like a lot of classes, don't be fooled. There are 12 archetypes, each with a good and evil equivalent. If you want to be a Cleric, you will be a Templar if you're good-aligned and you'll be an Inquisitor if you're evil-aligned. Both the good and evil equivalents of the class have the same basic function, though there is some differentiation between them - some more than others, admittedly. A Monk and a Bruiser have only minor differences between them, while a Paladin and a Shadowknight are very distinct classes from another. The same can be said about Rangers and Assassins, too, but sometimes you can't help feeling that the EQ2 team have emphasised a wide class selection to the detriment of the overall game.

After working on the movie Troy, Achilles decided to try his hand at adventuring through Norrath. Intelligently, he decided to bring a pair of metal shoes this time.

If some of the most similar classes were merged, it would make things a lot better in my opinion - some of the classes seem to exist only for the sake of having both a good and evil equivalent, even when it's not really necessary. Things get worse when one class is more powerful than the other, like in the Enchanter archetype the evil Coercer is considered superior to the Illusionist. As both good and evil can freely group with one another, it's a bit of a shame really. You can change to the equivalent of your class by betraying to a city of the opposite alignment, so a character of whatever race can in fact be any class with a little work. My Iksar can't choose a Monk at first, because he's evil, but if I want to be an Iksar monk I can create a Bruiser and then betray to Kelethin or Qeynos.

At the end of the day, though, I don't want to be a Monk. My main in Everquest 1 was an Iksar Shadowknight called Choraz. With Kunark (the Iksar homeland) coming back, it seemed only right to bring him back into the world 500 years after he first walked it. Sadly, instead of Cabalis in Kunark, he's now had to stoop to starting in Neriak with all the Dark Elves. Next entry, we'll see how his adventures go.