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EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark
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EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark
56 reviews   3.46 of 5

Product Description

Sound

Most people don't care about the sound, but I think it adds a lot to the game. Sounds are very unique to each other and each mob has its own little sound. Nice work.

Gameplay

The gameplay IS what shaped gameplay for any MMORPG today (aside from UO). Basically you make a character, decide its race, class, religion, and what not and go off and fight. The gameplay is diverse yet at the same time limited. While you fight in pretty much two ways (either being a caster or a fighter), you won't get bored. There's always somehting to explore, as Norrath is uncomprehendably gigantic. If you get bored of killing mobs, you can fight on a PvP server or even just go into an arena or duel someone on a blue server.
The races themselves vary so much, also. I'm an iksar which is a lizardman. There's trolls, ogres, half elves, halflings (hobbits), barbarians, and so many more, including the newest addition, vah shir which are tigers. The races also differ to a large degree, allowing you to be anywhere from Warrior to Shaman to Shadow Knight to Bard and a lot others.
Not only that, A LOT of thought was put into this game. It includes so many things, it really really does. You need food to survive, there are events that you can participate in, you can actually get married, and if you want just go fishing. That's not all though, there's so much more to do.
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Summary

EverQuest is essentially, a massively multiplayer online role playing game centered around the development of an individual character in a three dimentional first person world. You choose from an assortment of races and classes and deities(if you really want to find more about that, there are numerous websites available.) EverQuest is a level centered game, with little focus on roleplay. The game IS what you make of it, but there is little to no societal emphasis on things not involving level advancement and item advancement. There is good about EQ - its namely the fun you will have with others and exploring, and the strong ties with your character that you will make. Your character will become a pretty strong reflection of you, and people take enormous pride in their characters. EQ is a very good MMORPG, and its possible that the unique blend of happiness and frustration, action and bordeom, fear and bravery, reward and effort will make it the only MMORPG to have such a high success and retention rate. Its easy to become bored with something that is all excitement and euphoria if you attempt it for the typical EQ-Session hours, year after year.

Sound

Sound in EverQuest has historically been the most incompatible aspect of the game. For a long while, many sound cards had extreme issues with EverQuest. This doesn't seem to be much of an issue anymore, however, just keep your drivers up to date. The music I find surprisingly well crafted to the environment in most cases, at times it can be stunning, helping to guide you further into the mood - although some battle music customizing abilities would be most appreciated:) (the same sounds get dull when you spend most of your time in battle - this is mainly applicable only to melees though, who spend most of their time with the attack key on.) Sound definitely isn't the most stunning aspect, but it complements play very well, further drawing you into their world, or further frustrating you after the rivervale music loops for its thousandth time ;)

Gameplay

EverQuest centers around battle and teamwork. You can with a few classes, solo your way up - but in a high end world entirely based on politics and reputation - you will be ruined horribly, connections mean everything to the high level world - you must value your reputation ENORMOUSLY, else you might as well start your level 55 over again and play back for another 2,400 hours of RL time. Death at this level is a horrible thing, without a cleric around the casual player (if they ever see these levels) will lose a week or two of playtime. For the newbie, EverQuest starts off a bit fast paced but soon slows down. In the modern day world, most players have a considerably higher level alternate character which bestows upon them all their items. Meaning, you will be at a horrid disadvantage for some time, because there is no penalty or discouragement from twinking. Addictiveness is indeed associated with everquest, but the novelty of it soon dies and the game degenerates into a constant hack, slash, sit, med repeat. If your goal is to have those splendid adventures right out of a tolkien book, when you find yourself camping the same thing over and over again with a group for experience, with every player screaming "I so wish I was level X so I could camp item y", you may ask yourself precisely what the drive to power IS. Might I add, its true - be you level 1 or level 60, you will still be a rat slayer. Though the rats get bigger, stronger, and take more people to drop - its still the same concept, melees will run up and press "autoattack", casters will drop a few spells and med for 5 minutes. The addictiveness to EQ really spawns out of the sheer work and effort requird to get anywhere. The items you attain help enormously, as it is an item centric game - however a decent item will take you many hours of game time to even hope to see, and most of it is very boring camping of the same spawn, or working the auctions all day every day to earn that "slight profit".
Customer service in EverQuest is an issue that often spawns alot of negative review. Honestly, I must say that its not bad customer service - its more the effects of a very unique policy. Essentially, preserving the integrity of the economy and the game is a higher goal than customer satisfaction. If you die to a bug that cannot be proven, if you have an issue that is the result of your own mistake - accidental or not, if you want help and do not have verifiable proof to aid you in your claim - don't bother petitioning, because a fundamental aspect to EQ CS is that there MUST be proof, otherwise its a scam. This has both positive and negative overtones, id shudder to think of what it would be like in a world where players were not held by their actions, and could get free resurrections for deaths caused by their own stupidity. Yet, despite this, there are many times when a death the result of a bug or a server router "burp" will go untreated, and you will be stuck releveling for hours to get back to where you were. Considering level and item is now all that drives EQ players, exp loss is a pretty hard fact for them to face.
You might ask.. "why" do EQ players focus so heavily on advancement and leveling, whats with this obsessive drive for power and items which transcends the boundaries of all rational attempts to have fun, it really is the product of a very fortunate business mistake - or an intentional design exploiting psychological addiction.

Enough with the bad, however,for EverQuest is a dual sided coin. You will have your fun moments, your frustrating moments, the moments where you want to throw the EQ box out the window and cancel your account, the moments of exhiliration happiness and true fantasy friendships. You'll truly feel a sense of euphoric elation when you get that item you just spent the past 3 days of all your spare time trying to get, and you'll fell the rewards of having it. You may wind up in a great raiding guild, or one of those RP guilds the "d00dz" seem to specialize in bashing. The knowledge of a fantasy world you will aquire is truly amazing, considering the vast amount there is to absorb. I think the average level 60 could very well right a very long book on the wonderful and rich lives they have lived in EverQuest, as well as one on just documenting the things they can recall offhand. As an EQ player, you'll be continually amazed by the sheer amount of places you can go to fight and level, and enjoy exploration of the new content continually released by Verant - and have a relatively solid foundation in believing that your effort in the past will benefit you all the more in the years to come, because if one thing is apparent - Verant will NOT let EQ get outdated anytime soon.

In a light note, PK in everquest adds to the politics, and makes the game a bit more real - but you'll definitely face your share of due frustration to go along with it. PKing in EQ is restricted to PK servers - some with different rulesets than others. Overall, PK better emphasises roleplay than the other "blue" servers do if you stay within the realm of PvP race teams/deity alliance.

Overall, there will be highs and lows, if your goal is pure excitement and joy - stay away, because EQ reaffirms that for something to truly obsess, there will need to be a certain amount of suffering with joy, consequences to actions, politics and friendships, excitement and boredom. It truly is a phenomenal experience, but I must also stress that EQ is NOT for everyone. Being diverse, in fact, for every point I have suggested as negative here today - im sure someone will say its a positive. Especially all those pro-twinkers out there, and in fact - when you reach high levels and can gain such an enormous advantage, you probably will want to twink your alternates as well;)
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Summary

Everquest:

An RPG designed from the ground up to be a massively online game. The world of EverQuest was created to support over 1,000 players simultaneously per server.
Choose from 12 races and 14 classes, including dwarves, ogres, trolls, rangers, wizards, and rogues.
Over 40 unique skills and innate abilities.
Thousands of items to earn and collect, both magical and mundane, including artifacts of great power.
Three enormous continents to explore, as well as other dimensions and planes.
Adventuring alone is supported, and forming parties to complete quests encouraged.
Each class and race has strengths and weaknesses, and the stronger groups will be those who balance their parties and work as a team.
Hundreds of spells to learn, with five separate magic-using classes. Also, weapons can be enchanted to cast spells themselves.

Player killing (Pkilling) is controlled such that those who wish to engage in it may do so, however those who do not are completely immune.

Real 3D environment, with multiple camera views. Switch from exploring in first person to any number of top down views to facilitate tactical combat.

Beautiful SVGA (640x480) 16 bit color scenery, with adventure zones including indoor dungeons, arctic tundra, vast deserts, and even completely underwater environments.

Truly polygonal characters, both players and NPC’s – no sprites here.

Optimized for the latest graphic accelerator technology with Direct 3D support.


Everquest: Ruins of Kunark

An entire new continent, called Kunark, located south of Faydwer.

20+ Brand New Zones, including newbie zones all the way up to zones filled with dragons.

A huge array of new, even more visually stunning NPCs.

A more detailed world, using more polygons and larger textures.

More animation of objects throughout the new continent.

New Playable Race, the Iksar (Lizardman).

Lizardmen are neutral/evil and can be Monks.

New ships will sail from both Antonica and Faydwer to Kunark.

New cover and box art by famous fantasy artist Keith Parkinson.

The ability for players to exceed the previous level 50 limit.
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Summary

If you haven't finished high school yet, don't bother reading this review. It's written by an adult for other adults who enjoy playing these kinds of games.

I started playing EverQuest after watching another friend of mine play. I grew up with fantasy RPGs and had visions of getting some friends together to play online without having to schlep to some uncomfortable dining room table in the next county once every other week for ten straight hours of play. It seemed so well done.

In fairness to EverQuest, their servers are fairly reliable and the game is remarkably -- extraordinarily -- well thought-out in those among its genre. It's relatively free of technical glitches and its programmers enjoy the freedom to address the more fascinating sociological issues (i.e. "balancing") issues of a virtual society set in a fantasy world.

But the game really falls flat for anyone with half an imagination. Here's why ...

1. It's dominated by teenage and pre-teen boys. Imagine ANY society dominated by that group and you'll be in Norrath, the fictional land of EverQuest. For every ounce of imagination or humor or playing in-character, there is a ton of whining, begging, complaining, accusations and general annoying juvenile behavior.

2. Just sitting and staring off into space as time elapses is a HUGE part of the logistics of the game. If you plan to spend hundreds of hours on the game, expect to spend at least 4/5 of your time: sitting down and meditating/healing, running back and forth, retrieving your corpse, waiting for other players, hiding, waiting for specific monsters to "pop" so you can kill them.

3. The chat is dominated by auctions, begging and tons of really annoying jargon. 90% of what you'll see in chat mode consists of something like: "Plaxitor shouts>PLEEEESEEEEEEE -- need sow for cr to nro NOW!!!!!!" If you try to speak in any other kind of language, you will confuse or even annoy people.

4. The game degenerates into a very repetitive routine which is more addictive than it is fun. The focus on leveling up and advancing eclipses the thrill of the kill and the hunt for the loot.

5. The developers of the game ignore some basic economic aspects of the game and alienate many players. The notion of "twinking" is the practice of handing off (somewhat illigitimately) possessions of one person's very high-level character to one of their newer players. I've witnessed brand new player characters so heavily loaded with the kinds of weapons, armor and wealth that SHOULD only come following months of rigorous gameplay. There are virtually no technical mechanisms in place to prevent this and it gives a very unfair advantage to the obsessive players over new or casual players.

Essentially, if you're able to get your own group together to play this game you may appreciate it much more. But considering the colossal amount of time required to even get to an interesting point (e.g. beyond level 20, which will take weeks or months of constant regular play to achieve), it's unlikely that you won't have to suffer through all this nonsense.

Sound

The sound sucks. It is unimaginative and it has no functional purpose in the game. I turn it off and listen to music.

Gameplay

You create a fantasy character set in the kind of Tolkienesque genre of D&D or most fantasy role-playing games. (i.e. Wizard, warrior, rogue, bard, etc.) Starting with virtually nothing, you kill snakes and spiders, then bigger and badder monsters as your character evolves. You gain experience and gather loot as you kill. While quests are also an option, they really are rather poorly done in EverQuest.

A key component is party formation. It's a game that is oriented around cooperation of many on-line players. A well-formed group will be able to attack and manage larger, more powerful foes, or hoardes of monsters all at once. Good coordination of the group will be a key element in the success of its task -- if your party is skilled in group play, expect to kill and level faster and enjoy the strengths of each character type to their fullest. If it is poorly formed or has inattentive players, expect to die quickly.

You may also engage in player vs. player killing on some of the servers if you choose. This has benefits and drawbacks. Killing other player characters is easily the biggest thrill. At the same time, your ability to move freely about on those servers is quite difficult without constantly having to worry about being attacked without provocation.

Overall, the gameplay is very well thought-out and promising as far as a hack-burn-slash kind of game. It is, however, extremely repetitive and at times insufferably boring.
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Sound

This may be the only "Blah" part of Everquest. Music gets incredabaly repetative. If i hear that opening theme one more time i'll crack. sound effects are ok but agian, are repetative. The only good part if the sound is that great "Ding" that you hear when you gain a level. It's the most satisfying sound you ever heard(other than letting lose a loud fart after holding it in for a long time, hehe)

Gameplay

The gamplay is simple..hack monsters gain levels and explore new lands. However, this is just the surface of everquest, it extends much deeper. There are a lot of times when u truly feel like you're IN Norrath. In a sense u are, you will really gain new friends, you will really have incredable adventures. Adventures that you will remember for a long time. For me this was a dream world, a place where i've always wanted to go. Sometimes i lose sight of the objective of kill,kill,kill, buy new weapons, go new places. One time i just hung out in the town of Freeport and had a fun experience with a kid i had never met, and spent 3 hours doing it.
I had the pleasure of making fun of a digital whore with this guy, got drunk( having a pool party with at the same time almost dying) and watched 5 guys kill themselves in the arena in order to win this girls hand in marrage while she accepted every flirt from every guy that came along.
Another time me and 2 friends i made were trying to to get 1 of their bodies back in Blackburrow. When we opened a door that led to where her body was a train of gnolls(which is a large group of wolflike creatures) jumped out and attacked. we faught valiently to the end, or at least until i toppled back and fell off the bridge we were on into some water. The female friend of mine died, while the other still faught. He jumped into the water also and we swam to shore. We ran all the way up the tunnel to the surface of BB and escaped by diving into a area with a bunch of high lvl characters who killed off the gnolls. Afterword my heart was beating and felt like i had just appeared in an action movie. It's moments like these where u truly feel like you are in your computer.
This alone is enough to buy this game, i got the everquest and ruins of kunark expansion bundle for $30 and i gladly pay the 10 bucks each month to continue it.
Norrath is a forever changing world. GM's you are sorta the security guards of Norrath. THey put on little acts to progress certain stories that are progressing at the time. The programmers also change the games 100s of quests to coenside with these stories. Often some of these are rare quests that can only be completed once. Whoever completes them will forever be remembered in Norrathian history.
There are some annoyances, for example: trying to get your body back after it's been lost in an area with a lot of enemies. Luckily, there are a lot of helpful paeople out there that will help you.
Bottem line is there aer plenty of things to do in Norrath. When you've finally reached the lvl cap of 60 which will on it's own take months u can still take on many of Norrath's quests. Or, hell, you can even start you're own guild. When you're tired of that you can create another character, since there are tons of different combinations of classes and races youu can create. The possibilities are endless. Hey, if your joining soon join to Aneayro(i have no idea how to spell it) server and look me up my friends call me Gen.
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Summary

This is a large online multi player RPG. It is a basic game where you do quest and beat up on monsters. You can play solo or in groups. Groups play is encourage after about level 10 as the monster do get harder.

There are many areas to explore as your character develops. There are the usual array of races which are fairly common to all RPG. You can also choose what class your character is once you select races. Depending on your race you start at a newbie zone for that paticular race.

From there you start hacking monsters until you get a few coin and raise a level or 2. Then you can start to look for quests. These start with the get me a few of these items or take this letter to x.

For the most part you are looking at a Hack and slash game. So if you are looking for some brain teaser RPG it is not here. If you are looking for some social interaction while bashing monsters this is the place.

Sound

No real sound effects that are relevant. The odd foot step or splash when swiming is all I hear. I don't know if this is a design flaw or just that sound is hard to program on a game such as this.

Gameplay

There are many positive aspects of the game however they are overshadowed by the the few negative aspects of the game. It is fun to play when things are going well.

However......

The game is basically hack the monsters get the sparse loot and go hack more monsters. You can do this solo which is recommending until around level 10 or as a group.

Groups are nice if you can get into one or form one yourself. I have been finding that there are a lot of anti-social players out there and they will even complain when you are hunting in the same area as them.

Dying is a fact of life in this game, so get used to it. It is very fustrating as you get sent back to your home area. Then have to mount and expedition to retrieve your loot of your corspe. When your body is totally lost you have nothing after level 4 to being with. It is good that begging is a skill you can develop.

On the other side of the coin after level 3 you don't die as often. But, you do tend to be farther out when you do die. Making the recorvery of your body a bit of a pain if you are not sure where it is. HINT: /loc can be best friend before death.

The manual is horrid it gets you up and running but much past that it really does not do much for you. However there are some great resources out on the internet, with maps, faqs, quests, and other info. I recommend going and looking up some of the info before playing or purchasing.



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Sound

Music gets annoying very quickly.

If your card supports it, there are a few nice environmental and 3d sound effects, however, these are occasionally broken in some spots. Again, if you've played numerous games, it grates on you.

After 2 days, I turned the Music off, and played MP3's in the background. After a week, I turned ALL sounds off, played MP3's in the background, and kept CNN on in the background.

Gameplay

NO WASD. (if you don't know what that means, then you might actually enjoy EQ!)
NO Weapons maintenance.
Gain exp. Get loot. So you can get more Exp and loot.

Groups are a must, however, only like minded people group on EQ. Remember Highschool?

The Occupation system is either broken, or part of a plot by the makers of Ace Carpal Tunnel Syndrome support bandages. Click....click...click....you went up one point in Fishing! (a relatively useless skill)

Warriors. Expect a lot of downtime, a lot of scraping coins to buy new armor.

Casters. Expect a third of your time to be devoted to sitting, waiting for your mana to regenerate. Get a good book, or buy that hub and second computer so that you can at least surf the web or play Baldur's Gate II.
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Sound

I would rather sit in silence than listen to this game's sound. The sound of spells being cast and the monsters doing their thing are good at first. But after about the billionth time hearing those same limited sound effects, I would rather sit in silence or listen to music or the tv. That doesn't say much about the game does it.

Gameplay

I've quit playing EQ but my roomate is still hooked for some reason. My roomate has six characters over 40th level with 2 of those six over 50. He plays EQ ALOT. That is what EQ demands if you plan on reaching higher levels. That wouldn't be a problem if the gameplay was interesting. Mostly the gameplay revolves around either running from point a to point b or sitting in basically the same spot killing the same monsters a million times over (no joke). The character classes are unbalanced so that some are easier to solo than others. If picking a class that is difficult to solo, then that person must group. Not a problem. But if there isn't anyone to group with, then that person has some running to look forward to or just not playing at all. The monsters in EQ are particularly tough at high levels. A person could be a 52nd level druid and be hard pressed to kill a 45th level brownie guard by themselves. Verant says that the monsters are intentionally tough so people would have to group. Actually, I think they're tough because the magic spells do way too much damage but it's too late for them to change the game now. The reward for killing a monster varies widely from extremely poor to above average. Back to my roomate for a sec. He was in a dungeon "camping" some monsters to get some rogue armor for about 7 hours. The best treasure item that was looted was an ac 2 belt that gives 10 to mana and hit points that would have been good if his character was 30 levels lower (again no joke, these 30+ level monsters were still dropping cloth armor that a 2nd level monster might drop). The monster that my roomate was looking for never did "spawn" during that time.
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Summary

Everquest can be either great or not so great for different people depending on what they are looking for...if they want true role-playing and are not willing to put forth the tremendous time investment that is EQ than they will more than likely hate it, on the other hand if they are willing to put time and patience into EQ and are also open to some new role-playing ideas than EQ will be a wonderfully immersive game. What other game could you interact with other people in real-time(besides ultima online) on a day to day basis and start a stable community of gamers out to adventure... the choices are pretty slim.
Yes it is true that some of the people in EQ are really not there to play an adventure game with quests and social interaction, they are there to pretty much act like children and make fools out of themselves. All that aside EQ can be a great game and should be one to try regardless of its few flaws.

Sound

Sound in EQ can be good or bad depending on the hardware in your PC, if you have an average run of the mill sound card it will probaly leave you wanting much more, but if you have a sound card that takes advatage of 3D sound placement and also have a set of nice PC speakers you will get a great sound experience out of it.

Gameplay

Gameplay is based around a typical you hit I hit system that has factors like character level, attack rating, defense rating, stats like strength and wisdom, and of course what kind of gear you have. All these things can win or lose a battle for you, but keep in mind the battle just doesn't happen for you, it also needs you to make choices like should I use this spell now or should I attack with my weapon. The learning curve is quite simple, it is the fact that the game is never the same that some may need to get used to, learning how to attack and cast spells can all be found in the guide book or the book that comes with the game, but learning how to survive is totally different, it involves knowing what to kill and what you will need to do to keep from getting killed that takes some time to pick up.
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Summary

Everquest was fun the first few months, but the lag and disconnections were becoming worse and worse. Verant Tech support is a total joke. Me and many other people were getting booted from the game during zone changes (a stupid feature I think). Verant continued to balme our ISP's and just ignored us after that. It was NOT our ISP's. I just got fed up and cancelled my account after that. I think Verant is pretty arrogant. Anyways, gameplay was fun at first, but becomes quite boring after a while. Areas are not large enough: you've got other players camping out, waiting for monsters to spawn. I tell you this much, Everquest is NOT a roleplaying game. People should stop calling it that, because it's not. It's a hack and slash monster mash, just like almost everything else out there that claims to be an RPG. The closest thing right now to a real RPG (D&D) is Baldur's Gate 2. Save your $10 a month and go buy Baldur's Gate 2 and play it until Neverwinter Nights comes out next year. It will be a true online D&D roleplaying game that will blow away everthing elese out there right now. Also, I read that there will be no monthly charge to play.