There was an ongoing debate I read online – Is Everquest for the casual gamer? Without a shadow of a doubt I can tell you it’s not. With nicknames like Evercrack and Never-Rest, I couldn’t recommend this game to you unless you felt a need to escape reality.
EverQuest is a fantasy role playing game that exists in it’s own little world. This mythical world of ghosts & goblins, wizards & warriors, resides in cyberspace. Without a connection to the Internet you cannot participate in this ever-enthralling quest.
Give EverQuest half a chance and it will become a digital addiction. Unlike 90% of today’s video games, it cannot be mastered in a few hours. In fact, I’d say it would take you about a year just to max out one of the many different character classes.
1 Hour 45 Minute Installation
From the very beginning I knew I was in for the long haul. It took nearly two hours to set up Everquest. First the game copied about 500 megs from the CD, then it initiated two lengthy online updates and finally I had to sit through the online registration.
It get worse…
Everquest is a very slow paced game. Switching zones (different areas in Everquest) takes several minutes. Your character doesn’t always progress forward either. You can lose experience just as easily as you gain it. Lose a duel, or die in the wrong spot, and you can lose all your stuff.
So why bother?
Despite the fact that EverQuest is the slowest paced game I’ve ever played, it’s also the most addicting. I’ve put in over 40 hours of game time in just the first week of owning it. EverQuest qualifies as a full time job. Even thought there are many severe flaws with EverQuest, I still come back for more.
Personification…
Early on you will form an attachment with your character. It’s the representation of you in this pseudo world. You are in total command. You can fight or flee, laugh or cry, you can fish, you can drink, you can explore, you can jump, you can run, and… well… you get the picture.
What makes EverQuest special is that the people you meet are real. Other players, often hundreds at a time, are logged into the EverQuest world. What makes it even more special is that you don’t have to kill everything that moves – like in most other first person perspective games. You can make teams, join guilds and you can fight… together or against each other. The playability is not linear – it’s not just kill kill kill.
EverQuest is the friendliest of all online communities.
When I first got AOL, I enjoyed the random IMs… the friendly greetings from people all over the world. But over time it changed. It wasn’t it a cute little community anymore, people became distrusting. Eventually, I too developed a wary feeling whenever I didn’t recognize a screen name contacting me.
Currently the EverQuest community is not too large where it becomes cold and unfriendly, but not small where it becomes dull and uninteresting. The strangers you meet are generally friendly… even from my very first battle one of the EverQuest citizens helped me out.
Imagine my surprise, while fighting a large rat, my body started to glow. Off to the side a Cleric was “Buffing” my character. I became a little frustrated at first because I didn’t even know how to say thank you, but soon I learn how to communicate… and even help out others in a melee.
The Common Goal…
In EverQuest, you share common interests… to explore, to develop, to have fun. The EverQuest crowd is more mature crowd. To my surprise, there’s quite a few female players… and I’m not talking guys walking around as female characters either. In order to play you need to have a credit card, this tends to weed out the obnoxious immature players – the kind that laugh at your corpse when they frag you in Unreal tournament.