Rating: 
Summary: It just lost it's appeal
Review: After the continual persistence of a good friend of mine, I decided to purchase "Everquest". Up to this point I had only heard good things about it, and did look interesting when I watched my friend play it. So I thought I would give it a try. In the end it got old, and I cancelled my account.Let me start off first by listing the games good points. The graphics are very good, smooth, and crisp. It has very little lag, which is one of the main reasons I gave it two stars. Let me tell you, I play Ultima Online and it lags horrendously. On my pentium 233, 33.6 modem I wasn't expecting anything differnet when I started EQ. I was greatly surprised. The game ran smoothly, and only went choppy at times when there was a great crowd of people around me. I definently give credit to Verant for that. There are a lot of different races and classes provided which offers a lot of variety. There is the faction system. Evil players can't get into good towns because of bad faction with the guards, etc. Some people may tell you it's annoying, but I think it adds to the value. There are endless quests to keep you occupied, tons of items to get, and so many differnt places to go. Unfortunately, it's going to take you a LONG time to go to get to these places. Now to the bad points. Character development is slow and tedious. Level ups don't come without hours of work. Just getting to level 12 took me over 24hours playing time. I played a Dark Elf Shadow Knight for those who are familiar with the game. The hardest class to get level ups in. As another reviewer made a point before, it gets boring. For the first month of playing I loved it, and then I slowly started to realize, that I kept doing the same thing over and over again. Go out, fight, sit down and heal, fight some more, and desperately try to get that level up. A lot of EQ players have a terrible attitude. Trying to roleplay will get other players sneering, and cussing you out. I'm sorry but I thought it was supposed to be a "role playing game"! I think a great number of players are just intolerant teenagers. In one instance, I was out fighting in a desert called North Ro. A dark elf npc named Dorn was there, and people were asking others to help kill it. I declined, because since I myself were Dark Elf, my faction would take a bad hit. One player responded saying "F--k your faction". I'm sorry, I just don't appreciate that in a video game. People take it far to seriously. After endlessly trying to get level ups, I got tired of it. The appeal was gone, and my account was cancelled soon after. The game has it's high points, but it's value is brought down greatly with the mass of bad points. I've heard of a lot of people getting addicted to the game. Somehow struggling to get a level up, getting endlessly frusterated in the process, doesn't sound too exciting or addictive to me. If you find you're getting addicted, get off of it. Don't neglect your family because of it. How stupid can one get? As for me, I'll stick with my Ultima Online for now. And the friend who got me into the game? He's since quit, after reaching lvl 52 with his Shadow Knight, for the same reason I did. Not Recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: Why am I writing a review? I could be playing EQ!
Review: I'm not sure what I expected to get out of "EverQuest," having heard some opinions from people who are much more hardcore gamers than I am, but here's what I got out of it: "EverQuest" is not a regular computer game. You don't pop it into your computer, go whack a certain number monsters on the head, win, and then deinstall it. Those games are a lot of fun, but once you've, say, killed Diablo several times with different character types in "Diablo II," you're not exactly rushing to do it the 300th time. Not by any means. (Great game, "Diablo II," but a different sort of animal altogether.) Those that see "EverQuest" as a big online "Quake" game seem to get very frustrated with many aspects of the game, including other players, and the feeling is usually mutual. That's because, instead of "Diablo," "EverQuest" is more akin to a huge themed chat room interwoven with a game. Sure, you can and do play by yourself sometime, but you have to hunt far and wide across the game world of Norrath to find a place where you won't be interacting with someone else. (For the record, you can find it: Go to the Tox Forest south of Erudin, and swim west from the docks. The Kerra Isle zone is almost always empty, and it's especially so inside, if you choose not to hunt the native cat people, but instead do the quests for them. The quiet is a nice change from the sometimes deafening roar that pervades most EQ zones.) In fact, the game is designed to more or less force you to work with other players: After getting your character (selected from either sex, multiple fantasy races and about as many fantasy hero/villain careers) up a few levels whacking the more mundane monsters and animals, you pretty quickly run into a wall where it becomes much harder to go at it alone. Jack may have been a giant-killer in the fairy tale, but if you want to kill giants in EQ, you're going to need friends. And that's what makes EQ a killer app: Interaction. You may think you aren't interested in making a bunch of online friends, but you'll soon find yourself laughing with, cursing with and adventuring with strangers from around the globe. I have no idea who some of the people I play with are beyond the vaguest details, but it doesn't matter. I get to jump into this fantasy world and I've got brave friends who have my back as I have theirs, ready and waiting. Hardcore gamers, as I alluded to earlier, will quibble about some of EQ's technical specifications. First off, I've had very few technical problems. I can almost always connect within 30 seconds, have been kicked off line only twice in over six weeks of play, and the dreaded "lag" where the game continues by the connection between server and home computer can't keep up, has rarely been a problem. It occurs, but it's not very problematic, and even the harshest EQ critics acknowledge that it's getting better all the time. There's also some talk that the graphics, especially in the original section of EQ (the continents of Antonica and Faydwer, and the island of Odus) aren't up to par, but I don't get the argument. Setting the game at maximum resolution (because I've got a late model computer), the graphics are gorgeous, and I haven't even explored the prettier (and more graphics-intensive) continent of Kunark yet. For fantasy fans, EQ strikes a good balance between the familiar and the new. Many players want to play traditional elves and dwarves, and those areas of Faydwer are packed to the gills (particularly the elvish areas of the Faydark forest). You can help a sickly unicorn, slay dragons, play as a hobbit-like halfling and battle fierce orcs. Or, if you need another Tolkein-inspired fantasy game like you need a hole in the head, you can be an Erudite magician from far-off Odus (EQ has included a fantasy race of color, the Erudites, with a lightly African-themed look to them, and has made them the preeminent masters of all sorts of magic, good and evil, in the world of Norrath), exploring the deadly continent of Kunark and battling the native lizard peoples, the Iksar, there. (The Iksar are also a playable race, for those looking for an extremely distinctive character type.) There's more to this game than can be covered in this review -- characters can develop skills beyond the ability to kill each other; my gnome wizard is an accomplished linguist, for instance, meaning that I've had to sit down with more than a dozen player-controlled characters of non-gnomish descent and share language lessons -- as EQ is a rich, deep, surprisingly immersive game. Everything they say is true: EQ is addictive. And there's lots of good reasons why. A terrific game, and my household has two copies, one for me, and one for my wife.
Rating: 
Summary: I wish I had it
Review: I orginally started to play this game at a friends house. I became very addicted to the game and I have it in the mail coming to me very soon. It's great for anyone who likes to play AD&D. It gives you a nice graphic view of many of the characters that would look like from AD&D characters. You can either play solo or group up to level up. But grouping is the easiest way to Level up quickly. There are tons of monsters and lots of different types of characters to play and the style you want to be in. There is magic, warriors, monks, wizards ect in all different speicies. This game is great to kill any time, but the time does fly by on this game, so make sure if you have a date to some where, you keep track of time. What i like about the game is, the first month is free, almost like a trial, after that its up to you if you want to continue to play it. There are tons of servers to play on, so if you don't like one of the servers, try another until you find one that you appriciate.
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