 | | EQII is one of the best looking MMORPGs ever. Looks aren't enough though |
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Occasionally you'll come across a game with a first impression so strong it captures your heart immediately. It flowers you with such undivided love and attention, constantly teasing and rewarding you to play it more and more. EverQuest II is one such game. In fact, for those first few days of playing, I had it nailed down as the very finest of MMORPGs. It blinds you with its beauty right from the beginning...so much so that
try as you might, it sadly becomes hard to look too far into the future.
Beauty fades, sadly, and for that perhaps I should apologise. I couldn't help but gush over EverQuest II last month, but as I've since unpeeled layer upon layer, I find myself not so pleased with what's underneath. Or rather, the lack of it.
I think the game plows too much production and content into its beginning game, in an attempt to hook players in and create an army of EverCrack addicts, before they get a chance to see what the rest of the game's like and realise that after a very pleasing introduction, it's really just a very standard MMORPG at the end of the day, and unfortunately one with many problems of its own.
 | | Get used to fighting ugly monsters in dark caves. It's pretty much all you'll be doing |
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The world for instance, feels conspicuously small compared to others of its type. In just a few hours beta testing World of Warcraft, I think I explored more playing area per square foot than I did in
weeks of playing EQII - there just doesn't seem to be a huge amount of world here, when set against its peers.
And even though you're initially captivated by this marvellous new fantasy world and all the untapped potential it holds, sadly once you've ran around town a hundred times, explored the fields of Antonica, bashed a million rats to death, and slaughtered your umpteempth Gnoll with your buddies, the inevitable repetition and grind begin to kick in. Now you could argue pretty much all MMORPGs by definition are a grind...a desperate race to reach that next level before bed. It just saddens me to discover that EQII is no different to the rest in that respect, when it started off promising to be so much more.
Ratcatcher
 | | Hallmark quests such as this are great fun. If only there were more of them |
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In the beginning this grind is disguised by the abundance of quests and missions from the various trainers and townsfolk around you, but as you go on to work your way through them all, they become glaringly obvious repeats of the same basic ideas. Take this to him, kill me five of those, and so on. The more interesting and challenging hallmark quests which are exclusive to each profession also start to dry up, a massive part of what made it all so great in the beginning.
I can live with repetition if it reaps benefits in the long run, but sadly it doesn't here. If you're a higher level character in EQII you get additional choices in your profession, and access to higher level areas, but it really needs more than that. It needs a bigger payoff. And that my friend, is EQII's biggest problem; a startling lack of long term goals.
Most MMORPGs tend to use player vs. player combat as the "end game", the idea being you level up for months until you're then fit enough to battle against other players. Some MMORPGs like Galaxies even give you further options, like building cities or taking to the skies. EverQuest II has none of that - there's just nothing to work towards. A mid or high level character will be doing exactly the same things as a low level character, just on a grander scale. Hence you find yourself spending hours upon hours building up your toon...for what?
 | | You get your own home in EQII, but it's really just a useless money sink |
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I also find myself displeased with the poor social elements of the game. For a multiplayer title, it can be needlessly tricky to communicate with other people. All in-game text, whether it be local dialogue, system messages, private tells, or group chat is done through the same tiny box at the bottom of the screen. In a crowded area you find it scrolling so fast that you're unable to keep up, and so many times I received messages that I never even noticed.
Guilds are underwhelming too, ultimately little more than a permanent group with no real benefits. In fact, the game pretty much
forces guilds to do rather dull "writ" missions repeatedly, or their rank will suffer. This sort of thing makes guilding feel more like work than fun, as if the developers are taunting you; "You better play our game 24/7 and grind your arse off or we're demoting you!". It's the kind of thing that's
sort of good game design in theory, as it encourages both constant logging in and grouping, but come on Sony, freedom should always be the main priority in an RPG - don't fucking
force players to do stuff. That's just evil.
Heck, even the huge amounts of recorded dialogue I was so fond of at first become a huge downer after some extended play. Hearing the same repeated sentences every time you walk past specific characters is just sadly very grating.
Overacting?
I know it's easy to criticise a game after only playing for the free trial month and not exploring its further depths. And who knows, perhaps EQII will increase ten fold later on, or after some heavy duty patches, as is the unpredictable nature of MMORPGs. But you have to remember that the first month is generally the "honeymoon" period with these games; the time where everything feels new, you can't get enough, and sit hand on mouse for 12 hours a day glued to the screen. It most definitely
shouldn't be the period where you're already picking holes in the game, finding it a little boring, and also noticing its long term shortcomings like this. I think the fact I find myself concentrating solely on these things already, says an awful lot.
 | | And for this quest young warrior...you must slay...10 spiders...zzZZZzz... |
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I won't take back every single one of my earlier praisings though, 'cos it's a well produced and nicely presented basic game at the end of the day, one with a great atmosphere and an impressive lack of bugs. You could never argue that. The problem is that that's all skin deep, and EQII needs to build on this basic foundation and give players more incentive to stick around for the long haul. 'Cos right now, I just feel like there's no reason to log in. Life is too short.
If you're a power-gamer who lives for the monotonous PvE levelling, and care about nothing more than grabbing that loot and maxing that character, EQII is certainly the best grind-a-thon out there, and yes I would recommend it to such people. For me though, I just think we should be moving past all that. MMORPGs should be continuing to explore new and interesting concepts and directions, and seeing where they can go next. This is a next generation MMORPG, and yet it's practically identical to what we were playing five years ago.
I'm not bitter. I treat EverQuest II as a single player game; one I bought, played for a month, then shelved like Fable or any offline RPG. It was a nice enough world to mess around with for that short period, but one I could never see myself playing as a long term game. There's just no reason to stick around.
The Fine Tuning of MMORPGs
We have this image stuck in our heads now of how these online games are "meant" to be. The problem is that developers know this, and are often happy to sit back and wallow in this nice safe place, rather than go out on a limb and try something new and adventurous. It's weird, the industry has been hinting that massively multiplayer online games are the future for a while now, and it all certainly sounds good on paper; thousands of players all logged into a single playing field, working together in an epic, persistent online mega world that never sleeps. But honestly, while there have been ups and downs as far as MMOGs on the whole go, I still don't think the potential has been quite fulfilled yet.
I think I can explain the very reason why that is too. You see, as someone who's played video games since Pong, and subsequently grown up through Amstrad CPCs, Atari STs, and Super Nintendos, playing every damn game along the way, I'm used to being the hero. The saviour. He who saves the universe, time and time again. Gaming is actually rather a confidence boosting exercise when you think about it ? I mean what other hobby lets you wipe out evil alien races, win the world cup, get the girl, and slaughter Nazi hordes on a regular basis?
 | | Some may complain of boredom, but EvE certainly stands out among the clones |
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And that's exactly why MMORPGs fail - you don't get that same epic feel. In order to create the kind of mammoth life or death struggle found in all the best single player games, it takes serious work from the developers. Months, if not years, of carefully crafted storytelling, character development, and intense level design. This is all well and good for a game that millions of people are off playing by themselves, but in a multiplayer game such as EverQuest II, each of your 250,000 paying customers is expecting that
same level of quality simultaneously...their own, unique fantasy fairytale.
This leaves the developers with something of a conundrum, no longer can each player go through identical storylines, so in order to cater to the masses and still give each of these players their own individual stuff to do, developers need to start mass producing lower quality content instead. Ignoring the killer plot twists, the epic journeys, and the engaging characters, instead they're forced to pump out auto-generated quests of a much more mundane nature. You want to take The One Ring to Mount Doom and destroy the Dark Lord Sauron thus saving the world? Well tough shit boy, you're gonna go kill 20 rats with a dagger instead. That's why MMOGs ultimately feel somewhat dull and lifeless at times. Here I am in a beautiful fantasy world, ready to conquer evil and save the day...and I'm stuck doing delivery jobs.
Where Now?
 | | The underrated PlanetSide. It's Battlefield 1942 but a thousand times bigger |
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I admit, I myself have been sucked into these online games never the less. Once you accept the fact that these are less epic struggles with good and evil, and instead more like virtual courier simulators, you can start to gain some enjoyment out of them. Living as your own little virtual character in a unique and weird world is fun for a while, and there's something to be said for that, sure.
But it's the MMOGs like PlanetSide and Jump to Lightspeed which deserve the major applause if you ask me - the ones which stand-out from the crowd, not just in quality but in originality. They strive to give us a gameplay experience and a setting that we haven't seen before, and truly use the internet in a way that no other game has.
And I'm afraid EverQuest II just completely and utterly
doesn't do that. Just like 90% of every other MMORPG.
World of Warcraft is already selling by the bucket-load in the US, bringing a whole new generation of players into the MMORPG genre. It goes without saying, I'm certainly looking forward to its European release. I just hope however, that developers in general are ready to use this new found popularity to their advantage and start pushing the boundaries more from here on out.
