Endless Ages

Rating:
Summary: Spare Yourself the Trip
Review: If you are thinking about starting (or adding) an MMOG subscription, I recommend you look further. Endless Ages is an awkward, messy, ugly trip to Planet Crood, with dated graphics, a horribly awkward interface, very limited basic features, limited character customization possibilities, VERY limited content in terms of items, NPCs, world size/variety and creature variety, almost no graphics options (you get one: resolution), tedious, repetitive "quests," few in-game chat options, and generally deserted locations that leave you with almost nobody to chat with anyway.

The environmental graphics initially look to be about one step up from Everquest at launch, with slightly richer-looking landscapes owing to more graceful fogging and more natural-looking trees, but the elements such as weather, ambient animations, and ambient sounds that make a 3D environment immersive are sorely lacking here...not even the simple EverQuest-style rain, much less the violent storms that can make exploration of the Anarchy Online world so vivid. The EA environments often just feel dead. My explorations of the game-world were often done in TOTAL silence, and I had to fire a weapon just to make sure the sound effects were still working at all.

Furthermore, the world seems quite small and homogenous compared to other MMOG's, with none of the variety of EverQuest's wildly distinctive zones, or the scope of Anarchy Online's or Asheron's Call 2's vast rolling vistas. While EA doesn't have "zoning" between areas or dungeons, it doesn't offer much enticement to explore either, with one small area looking pretty much like every other. There are only two real cities, both of them usually deserted, and the creatures that populate the landscapes are typically just differently colored/sized variations of the handful of rather crude creature-models seen in the sandbox-sized newbie areas.

Poor graphics can be forgiven if the depth is there, but EA character-development and game-play also offers much less than other MMOG's. During character generation, choices consist of a genderless frog-like species, a genderless robot-like species, human male, and human female. (For some reason male and female humans are divided into separate "races": I guess so the game could boast four.) There is a quite limited range of face/body types to choose from for each race. (But, unsurprisingly, those who choose female humans are also given a small number of bikinis and g-strings to choose from.) In-game customization offers little more: the range of wearable items is very small, most of it just color variations. As anyone who has played an MMOG will probably agree, acquiring the wearable weapons and items that make your "toon" distinctive and interesting is a big part of the motivation to continue subscription. Higher-level players can do some generic "shape-shifting" in EA, but after seeing the enormous range of wearable items and clothing in Anarchy Online or EverQuest, Endless Ages still looks dramatically inadequate.

Beyond surface qualities, there are none of the class/profession distinctions that most RPG's use to ensure character variety. Instead, EA allows players to develop its twelve or so available skills to varying degrees while they play. This sounds okay in theory, and can work if the skills system is carefully designed to ensure a nice range of character types, but the range of skills in EA doesn't allow for much individualized development: everyone ends up learning most the skills to some degree with one or two weapons skills finding by FAR the most favor. As Asheron's Call 2 demonstrates, a skills-based system only works if it allows effective specialization. This allows unique characters to emerge, which is the whole point, and where most of the fun in playing such a system comes from. Without a good range of choices, there are none of the fine strategies and judgements that make developing a character over time enjoyable.

The FPS-light combat system also leaves a lot to be desired. Yes, it's real-time, but unlike a real FPS, combat is much less about mouse/keyboard dexterity or tactics than about the weapon your character is packing, as in RPG's. Without much range or distinctiveness to the weapons, you are left with the worst of both worlds: weapons that are boring in RPG terms and useless in FPS terms (no reason to use weaker weapons), and combat boring in any terms.

I'm running out of space here, so a quick summary of other problems I have with this game:

No real inventory management. All items are just tossed into one or two interface locations with no way to order them within a window. (No use of backpacks, bags, containers to help keep items in order.)

Crude chat system, which is just inexcusable. The default is a simple vicinity chat. If you get lucky and find someone to talk to you may add a group and/or clan chat that works across areas, but no "shout," no "out-of-character," no "auction," (which is a big problem since the stores offer so little in the way of useful items) no "whisper," no "tell." Without the easy ability to take part in global chatter, being a new player is a very lonely prospect.

This is a biggie: no features supporting teams or parties other than a shared chat channel.

No looting control. No in-game map. No way to customize the interface.

No direct control of third-person camera.

Horribly dated "go loot your corpse" resurrection system.

HIGHLY repetitive "quests" usually involving killing one type of creature over and over and over and over...

In short, Endless Ages offers little value, and it's doubtful the game is going to become competitive anytime soon. If you want RPG depth go for Anarchy Online, Star Wars Galaxies, EverQuest, or Asheron's Call 2; if you want RPG-PvP action, have a look at Dark Ages of Camelot, Shadowbane, or EVE (haven't tried that last one, but looks like a safe bet). Probably all of the online FPS's offer better action. Don't waste your time with this turkey. Surely just about any other MMOG would be more enjoyable.