| Another week, another role-playing game. Am I typing myself? Could be. Am I enjoying myself? Definitely.
Everquest, the online-only RPG sales phenom of the moment is one heck of a good time.
Everquest endured an extensive beta period. Unfortunately, all the testing in the world did not prepare them for prime time. Early players were often greeted with the inability to login to the world or repeated loss of connection. Fortunately, all the server problems I encountered early on appear to have been resolved. Now, "resolved" for many folks into tech-speak does not always mean fixed. In this case it does. I haven’t had any problem logging on even during peak usage hours in over a week.
User-interface design slices the player like a rusty two-edged sword. Outside the game, the experience is awful. Setting up accounts, logging onto servers, etc. frustrates even the most patient user. For instance, the game attempts to log you into a login server before you can even get onto a game server. Instead of providing a simple server status screen early identifying that the login server is available, you have to actually attempt the login. Seems petty? I can assure you, when you’ve been trying for hours to get onto the game because you have a deadline for a review to write it can be pretty dang irritating. Ok, not the typical gamer experience, but I’m allowed to rant. Inside the game, a number of innovative and customizable elements create a simple and effective user-interface. Spell use is particularly efficient. One down side — full-screen mode and text colors. The designers provided pretty legible colors for conversations, while system/status messages such as combat information are the most unreadable blue you can imagine. This is not a problem if you stay out of full-screen mode, but then you’re stuck with 640x480 resolution.
Top-notch gameplay abounds within Everquest: - Substantial character generation options
- Wide variety of environments and foes
- Clean, efficient, and downright frightening (at times) graphics. You try to casually walk over a hill into the maws of a screen-filling giant spider.
- Customizable on-screen and keyboard shortcuts
- Yes, you can fish!
- Bad guys? You betcha! And neat looking to boot.
- Best implementation of working with groups to hunt and share experience ever in an online game
The true definition of role-playing often loses itself somewhere between a game that develops characters based on experience and one that is truly open with identifiable characters and personas. Everquest does allow the player to develop a character in a variety of ways, gathering experience, improving skills and generally becoming more powerful as time goes by. Pure role-playing is a sadly unfamiliar denizen of the worlds of Everquest. Most players still approach the game as a friendly version of Quake, wandering the lands in search of power-ups and killing all in their way. It’s my hope this will mature over time – it’s little fault of the designers. Well, if they had made killing creatures that easily killed you a level ago a little less fun, maybe I could get on with pretending I’m really a half-elf bard who can sing on pitch.
Austin, Texas, was once a quiet little city with a world-class music scene and some of the most beautiful and rare scenery to be found in the continental United States. The word got out and now there are more non-natives than locals. More pour in everyday as apartment complexes spring up overnight. I enjoy Everquest and hunting the frozen tundra of Everfrost Peaks. It makes me sad that word might get out and I’ll one day find this neat and enjoyable land chockfull of inhabitants. So, if you want to enjoy the best online role-playing experience available today, come on in. Just wipe your feet first, please. | 
