Everquest II Diary - Day One (1-10)

Choraz starts his aventures in the world of Norrath. He's been created on the Antonius Bayle server, which is a Roleplay server - but is also the most populous of the EQ2 servers at the time of creation. I like my MMORPGs to be populated, because I hate not being able to find a group, and I hate empty zones. It's a US server, but despite being in the UK I'm playing on it. At peak times Antonius Bayle is marked as 'Heavy Load' - I've never seen the two EU servers go above the lowest setting, 'Light Load'.

So, having chosen Neriak as my starting city, I find myself in the Darklight Woods. These zones are only a week or two old, having been released in the previous month's Game Update (#35). First thing I do is play around with the graphic settings - EQ2 is well known for being demanding. My system isn't top end, but it's pretty respectable. I figure I should be able to play on maximum detail, so I turn graphics up to 'Extreme'. For reference, I'm playing on a system with an Intel Core Duo 6300, 2gb of RAM and a 256mb ATI Radeon X1800. This turns out to work pretty well at first, but I quickly turn it down to a lower setting when I start running a dungeon with a full group as things start to chug big time with all those characters and particle effects onscreen at once (and as the main tank, that's far from ideal). The screenshots in this entry are shown at max detail settings, though. This is the first thing I see, the newbie outpost not far from Neriak.

What do you mean, it looks like Azeroth? How dare you! I'll have you know Darkshire is entirely a result of our own creative processes! Oh, dammit, I called it Darkshire again, didn't I? Sorry, guys...

Well, the early levelling doesn't take too long. I hit level 2 inside of five minutes of logging in and level 5 just shy of twenty five minutes in. The quests at this point are very simple, generally 'go and kill ten wolves' or 'go and gather me 5 pieces of wood'. You don't have to run to far to do them and they're good exp. The quest chain also serves to direct you to the next quest hub when you're about the right level, so it has a dual purpose. If you complete all the early quests, you'll also find yourself rapidly improving your gathering skills too, which come in useful if you decide to develop a tradeskill, another nice touch. The fighting is not particularly challenging at this stage, but nevertheless it's still enjoyable. The monsters with red-ringed names are hostile, which makes it easy and convenient to tell the aggressive beasties from the more docile ones. Finding quests is easy enough, as quest-givers have a large quill above their head (as in the picture above) if they offer a quest, and a red book above their head if you can hand a completed quest into them. A summary of your selected quest appears in the top right of your screen, and you can change your 'selected quest' simply by clicking a new one in your journal. You don't need to have a quest selected to recieve credit for completeing part of it, and indeed you actually get a message pop up telling you when you kill a quest monster - which act as a handy reminder to finish quests you'd forgotten about.

Choraz decided to wait for the Ghostbusters to arrive before he went for a dip in Neriak's swimming pool.

Reaching level 10 takes me around two and a half hours, after which I shut down EQ2. By that time, I've visited Neriak for the first time and moved onto the second quest hub in Darklight Wood, out of four. It's been a very enjoyable introduction to the game, and the game has a lot of features that really stand out for me. Firstly, the Darklight Woods and Neriak are superb zones. The Darklight Woods have an excellent graphical style, which is dark but not oppressively so. The guards look cool in their Dark Elf armour, especially the mounted ones. The quests aren't stunningly original (though they have their moments), but they are fun and give you more to do than simply grind away. The zone is actually quite large and packed with content and quests, but the design is excellent and thus it feels like a small zone when you are travelling it. It's also fairly safe to run through, even at a low level - the monsters are generally not on the roads, unlike some of the EQ2 zones where you'll unexpectedly find yourself getting jumped by high-level critters. All in all, Darklight was a real pleasure to level 1-10 in.

Now THAT's travelling in style.

Similarly, Neriak impressed me a great deal. It has a very distinct visual style that is both dark and ornate, yet creative and easy on the eye. It is relatively compact as a city (all one zone) and, once you complete a simple quest, you gain access to the teleporters in the city that make travel through it even easier. It really is a perfect example of how EQ2 cities should be made, instead of the rather ugly sprawling mess that is Freeport or Qeynos. It has also been designed for convenience in other ways besides simply travel - for instance, there is a small tunnel in the city which has everything needed to practice any tradekskill you might desire, as well as a banker and a broker (like an auctioneer in WoW) and a vendor that you can buy arrows from, as well as selling your vendor crap too. It's incredibly convenient, and it really makes you appreciate the effort the devs have gone to to make your stay in Neriak as much fun as possible.

At this point, I was starting to wish I'd created a Dark Elf.

In terms of the game system itself, a number of things have impressed me. Firstly, quest items usually aren't actually stored in your inventory - they're just noted in your quest log, saving a lot of space which you'll need early on. Late game you get some very big bags indeed, but at the start you'll not have very much space - you start with a 12 slot bag and I got another one from my veteran rewards that came with buying the boxed game (other rewards include bonus exp potions, which I think are a really cool idea). Secondly, the system of 'mini-dings' is a nice touch - every time you reach a 10% exp milestone through the level, you regain all your health and power as you do when you level up (ding) in most MMOs. For levels one to ten, this really reduces your downtime as it happens pretty regularly, and it's an occasional nice bonus in the later levels too.

Choraz started to wonder if it was possible to hijack a warg.

There is also a remarkable number of skills for each character, far more so than in World of Warcraft. By level 5, I had autoattack and four special attacks/spells, as well as four more buffs (some self-buffs and others group buffs). This increases rapidly - by about level 25 you'll have two or three full bars of different buttons. It gives you a lot of options in a fight, but it can be quite overwhelming at times, particularly as some skills will inevitably share the same icons. Whether you like the variety is down to personal taste, I suppose, but I personally think they could cut down on the number of skills by 20% or so and simply give the remaining ones more regular updates.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on my first two or three hours of playing EQ2. Check the next entry to see how Choraz's adventures continue to unfold on Day Two.

Hektor.