Rating: 
Summary: Kunark does it again for EverQuest
Review: This game is a very well made graphical interface that will have you calling in sick to work the next day! This game allows you to play a multitude of races (from elves to trolls and the new lizard men) and alows you to choose your character's appearance, so you don't look like every other Tom, Dick or Harry adventurer. You are able to develop your trade skills (cooking, fletching, gemsmithing, etc.) to expert levels while at a low level, making the game easier for people wanting to buy the best in armor, weapons, spells and magic items.
Rating: 
Summary: EverCrack is no joke
Review: I played EQ for a total of 8 months. I had some server problems, problems with billing and got tired of people camping for items. I got annoyed at the lack of people actually role-playing. But I didn't care. I played in every waking spare moment. For a while I didn't see the light of day because I was either working or online. My life outside of the world of Norrath became little more than a pretense whose only purpose was to enable more time on Everquest. I stayed up work nights to play. I gave up real-world friends for online ones. I got to know the pizza delivery boy on a first name basis. I broke up with my girlfriend. I forgot to pay bills. In effect, I took a long vacation from real life in favor of a virtual world. Don't misunderstand me, I do not have an addictive personality, I don't drink, take drugs or even smoke, and I have no psychiatric issues. But this game really messed me up. I finally quit when I realized that my life outside of Norrath was falling apart. After a few weeks of agony, I was 'normal' again, and could see all I had been blind to before.The sad thing is I know there are a lot of people out there with the same problem who can't quit. Wake up! Don't sacrifice real life for a world that DOESN'T EVEN EXIST EXCEPT IN A SERVER! Your 35th level wizard won't get you a new car, a better job, a promotion, or (definitely not) better relations with your family, wife or whatever...that online life is worth nothing! Wake up to the fact that your lives in EQ may be an addiction! I gave this program 3 stars, an average of 5 for design and content and 1 for the inherent risk to your earthly manifestation. Let this testimony be a ray of hope to the hopeless, I recovered--you can too!
Rating:
Summary: You are all kidding yourselves
Review: Everquest: Ruins of Kunark is an amazing expansion to an otherwise perfect game. And anyone who poorly rates this game must really have personal issues that they must deal with. Yes, it is possibly the most addictive game, activity, etc... ever. So what if Verant messes up? So what if the guides or GM's are snotty? Players do not have to deal with them ever, and certainly wont take guff from them if they just play the game. The game is set up with a chat interface beneath the game screen, and statements that players make can be categorized, like auction, shout, out of character, etc. The people that get upset at other players for not wanting to hear them spam on and on about their weekend, or their lousy jokes need to find a frickin chat room. Those that truly love the game and understand it know that trying to level and get more powerful is all part of the fun. For example, in one area in Kunark (in the game) there is a forest called Warsliks Wood. Monsters that range from level 2 to level 30+ reside there, and one area within the woods is a truly massive fort, looking like it was built by giants. Well that is exactly who built it! They roam the grounds, and you can hear them coming! Very exciting stuff for a lower level player to run from a giant! And inside the fort is an entire area to explore. Now this was just a small example of the cool things you just stumble on while roaming. Oh sure, you need to just kill and kill to level up, but I, (unlike the majority of the other reviewers) take days where i just explore, find what i can find, and take in the lush beauty and astounding surroundings. I stumbled upon what looked like a mine shaft tonite, and as i walked deeper into the darkness i started seeing coffins, which gave the feel that this was a crypt of some sort. When i finally reached the end, i found a huge throne, whicj=h looked like some wicked king of the undead's throne! It's the little things like that that make me think about playing while at work, or in class. Obviously boundaries must be set, and people need to limit themselves as to how much time is spent playing, because you can lose track of time:). All in all, those who said they would stop playing, or would never play, are probably playing even as you read this. It is a truly wonderful game, one I will never tire of. Talk about replay value!
Rating:
Summary: Wow, this game is really fun
Review: Wow, this game is really fun, what else can i say except buy this game, it has pretty good graphics, lots of fun, and many different people to meet. If you don't have much free time, don't buy this game, it will get you hooked and make time for itself, you will not get your work done and it will be come a priority in your everday life! hehe, well maybe its not that bad, but it is very very very very addictive
Rating:
Summary: As good as the original
Review: For those people who liked EverQuest, Kunark is as good as the original. The lizardman is a great addition. The graphics are excellent, and the land is massive, so there are a lot more areas to explore. The only big problem I had with this expansion is the trouble that Verant/Sony had in distributing copies of the expansion to people who owned the original. It did not get out when expected. However, Verant/Sony provided quick and adequate restitution.
Rating: 
Summary: RavenWarrior of Prexus
Review: Let me start by saying this: Hello, my name is RavenWarrior, and I'm a RPG addict. Now that this is said, I'm officially kicking the EQ "habit". Which is exactly how EQ is tailored. It has the necessary "hooks" to keep you coming back for more, while taking your money and offering very little in return. The online gaming community in EQ is neither supportive, nor friendly......heck, I got yelled at for saying good morning to someone in ooc "out of character" chat. And, this isn't about Role Playing. This is about Leveling. Which makes one wonder why they call it EverQuest. It should be called Everlag, Everlevel, Evergripe.......you get my point. Trust me, from one RPG fanatic to another......Kick the habit before you lose too much more money.
Rating:
Summary: Tastes Great, Less Filling
Review: For those new to EverQuest, it should be noted that while Ruinsof Kunark is an expansion for EverQuest, it does contain the entiregame and thus you don't need to buy anything else to play. While EverQuest is called a massively multiplayer on-line role-playing game (MMORPG), I find the role-playing designation rather misleading, as is the case in most computer RPGs. There is actually very little role-play occurring in EverQuest, at least in terms of people acting as if they actually are their characters instead of someone sitting at a keyboard playing a game. If you play pen-and-paper RPGs such as D&D and you're looking for an on-line extension of the hobby, you'll be better off looking into text based MUDs, MUSHes, and other MU*s. At it's simplest level, gameplay in EverQuest consists of killing various monsters so you can loot their bodies for items you can either use yourself or sell to someone else, be it one of the games automated merchants or another player, for money with which to buy nicer equipment for yourself so you can kill stronger monsters and repeat the process. If that sounds repetitive that's because it is. There is one basic strategy in the game; isolate the monsters so you can, preferably, fight them one at a time. Each class has different abilities which requires them to approach this strategy from different directions but ultimately they're all doing the same thing. Despite the simplicity of the gameplay, or perhaps because of it, EverQuest is an incredibly addictive game. At the lower experience levels, rewards come often enough in the form of new levels and skills to make things really fun. As you advance in the game things then become more interesting because you're able to go more places, do more things, and start acquiring special items for your character. However, all good things must come to an end and eventually the game becomes rather tiresome because the higher your level, the slower the game becomes. Warriors and other melee sorts find themselves spending long periods of time sitting around doing nothing while they heal up from their last battle. Spellcasters also spend a lot of time sitting around recovering the mana needed to cast spells and they have to keep their noses buried in the spellbooks to do it so they can't even watch what's going on around them while they're doing it. Healers not only have to meditate to recover mana but at higher levels they often have to do it in the middle of combat which means they miss most of the action. EverQuest wastes time in other ways as well. Many of the nicer items in the game are dropped by specific creatures which appear at set spawn points at regular intervals. This means that if you want that particular item you have to go to that spawn point and kill whatever appears there over and over until the creature you're looking for appears, many are rare and only have a small percentage chance of appearing any time the spawn point "pops," and hope that it drops the item you're looking for, many of the better items being rare which means that there is only a small percentage chance that the creature will actually have the item when it appears. This means that you can spend hours sitting in one place killing the same thing over and over again hoping to get a particularly nice item. Not only that but, since you're probably not the only player in the game that wants that item, you'll have to stand in line to do it. Fortunately Ruins of Kunark alleviates the problem somewhat by placing nice items on random monsters in the lands of Kunark so that you can pick up nice gear without having to camp a particular spawn. And these are just a few of the ways in which the game wastes your time. Graphically EverQuest has always been the leader of the MMORPGs, though Asheron's Call did have superior environmental graphics until RoK was released. With the release of RoK, EverQuest now uses two seperate graphics engines. The "Old World," which consists of the lands contained in the original game, still use the original graphics engine, which is now 3-4 years old, because the publisher, Verant Interactive, couldn't legally change the system requirements once the game was released. However, the "New World," which consists of the lands added in the expansion, use a brand new graphics engine. The result is that the quality of graphics varies within the game. The Old World is kind of mediocre by today's standards while the New World looks very, very nice. Sound leaves something to be desired in EverQuest and I have never considered it to be more than mediocre. The game uses a MIDI music soundtrack which some people, myself included, find rather annoying. There is no way to turn it completely off but you can turn the volume of it down so low that you can't hear it. Many creatures share the same footstep sounds so you can't tell the difference between them unless you can actually see them. (One of the things I like about Asheron's Call is that I can identify what's approaching me by the sound of it's footsteps.) There is also no variance in sound for surface so you sound exactly the same whether you're running on stone, wood, dirt, grass, sand, or snow. Some of the creature noises are nice but others are rather wanting. For example, when crocodiles and alligators are hit they sound suspiciously like someone trying to start a chainsaw. At the time of this writing, sound is bugged in the lands of Kunark. Many of the new creatures use the same sounds as humans. It's rather odd to see a mosquito fly past you and hear footsteps as it does so. Verant is working on a patch to correct this but its rather annoying that RoK was released with such a significant bug in place. In a game like this, customer support is very important. Unfortunately Verant has a well deserved reputation for providing exceptionally bad support. If you're in need of tech support, you're better off turning to your fellow players on the various EverQuest BBSes to be found on the web than Verant's tech support, which has been known to take a week just to send you a form email telling you to provide them with information you already provided them with when you initially contacted them. In game support is provided by paid GMs and volunteer Guides. Unfortunately the Guides generally don't have the power to do much for you and the GMs have earned reputations for being capricious, rude and surly towards the players. Some have even been known to just kill characters out of hand for such minor offenses as walking up and speaking to them while the GM is standing in a public area. While Verant advertises EverQuest as a dynamic world, it is largely static which things mostly staying exactly the same. Special events usually take the form of a GM ambushing player characters with a monster vastly more powerful than they are and indiscriminately slaughtering people until someone manages to summon some higher level players to come save them. Many people have learned to avoid zones where special events are taking place for just this reason. For some odd reason they don't think being killed by something they have no chance of defeating is very fun. Overcrowding is another problem within the game but this exapansion has at least provided some temporary relief as many players have rushed to the new areas, which are quite large, to check them out. It's too soon to tell if this is a permanent solution or if people are going to gravitate to certain spots where the best loot/exp is located, as happened in the Old World, and/or if Verant is going to continue to allow the server populations to once more grow to beyond the point that the game was designed to handle. Overall, EverQuest is a fun and addictive game but it has some flaws that become more and more serious the longer you play the game. You'll love it in the beginning but you may find yourself becoming more and more frustrated as you encounter the game's design limitations. It's probably the best MMORPG on the market right now but that could easily change as new games are released.
Rating:
Summary: Unstable and Buggy as Heck
Review: A great expansion to a good game. ROK has the potential to improve some of the weaknesses in the original. Unfortunately, it is the least stable game I've ever played, and Verant customer support some of the least responsive. On the technical support boards run by Verant, there are literaly hundreds of comments regarding individual bugs that are never responded to by Verant. It took them about a year before they got Everquest to be stable. Unfortunately, this new addition brings them back to square one. I have not been able to play the Everquest for more than 30 minutes since I installed ROK without the system either locking or freezing up. But I still keep trying.
Rating: 
Summary: A MUST have for anyone that enjoys role-playing games
Review: Despite the dismal reviews people have of this product, it is still great. The game itself is outstanding, and will keep you playing for months and months. Most of the negative reviews concern the quality of the customer service. I will agree with them on that point, but they unfortunately blow it out of proportion and weigh it much too heavily relative to gameplay. Yes the servers are down relatively frequently (probably once a week) for maintenance, but usually only in the wee hours of the morning when most of us are in bed anyway. There are an unbelievable number of combinations of characters that you can select from, and it takes very very long to max out any particular character. It is very fun to team up with other people to take on the hundreds of different monsters in the game. I would recommend this game to anyone that has enjoyed a role-playing game in the past. This is the first (and only) online role-playing game I have played, and have enjoyed it immensely. You do have to pay monthly to play, but it is well worth it, and really not that expensive relative to how much you will be playing. I give the game 5 shining stars, but have to take away 1 for some of the customer support problems. I don't think there are as many positive reviews of Everquest as there should be because all the people that already own it would rather be playing than writing reviews on it!
Rating: 
Summary: Addictive, Fun ...BUT
Review: A highly addictive game, which can be played with whatever suits your role playing philosophy. BUT... the very company that brings you this immersive world is so immersed in its only development cycle that it does not allow you to play or seem to respond to the deep customer dissatisfaction. Constant server downtime for long periods ( 6 to 8 hours many times ) to make minor changes. Impossible to reach tech support or customer service. Several spokespersons who respond to complaints on message boards with the almost literal 'well that's the way it is, so forget about your complaints'. Even with the release of this upgrade, a fiasco occured where many people did not get the upgrade after weeks of waiting and having paid for overnight delivery. The kind of human, public-relation errors could be listed forever in this everquest to be allowed to play and enjoy this game.
|
