Going Oldschool with Everquest 2

When Everquest 2 came out a little while before World of Warcraft, I didn't really care for its setting, especially when compared to WoW. I mean, WoW has big, ugly orcs with massive axes and spiky pauldrons and even with the odd pink-haired gnome here and there, WoW is pretty brutal and dirty. In a good way. War, fantasy, a bit of Mad Max, some steampunk, it's pretty cool. Heck, even the goodie-goodies of Azeroth inspire badassery:

BAM!

Then there is Everquest 2:

You too can be a Froglok.

And more Everquest 2:

Not pictured: Badassery.

Azeroth is about twelve billion times cooler than Norrath. I'm really not big on the whole fairytale-feel of Everquest 2.
Of course you don't have to be a frog or a fairy. You could be a troll or a big, ugly ogre or even a hooded assassin on a pegasus, who is also a dragon:

Thought I was only making it up, didn't you?

But even with some badass races like barbarians and lizardmen and awesome classes like necromancers and shadow knights, half of EQ2 seems to be placed somewhere in the Disney universe.

You see, I've decided to take another look at this game a few days ago and tried one of the newer classes, the "Beastlord". They're basically rogues, as they go all stealthy and stabby and are mostly melee-orientated, but they also get to tame animals like hunters do on WoW. Which makes them fantastic solo-characters, because their pets do all the tanking while you do the backstabbing.
And since race kind of matters in EQ2, I have picked one of the races, which favour rogue-like classes: The Ratonga. They're quick and agile, they're proficient with all things stabby, they're smart and they're natural thieves. So, I'm a rat-rogue, hiding in the shadows, stalking prey, slicing and dicing my way through the enemy lines and commanding wild beasts to do my bidding. I AM DEATH!

Death happens to be fucking adorable.

Yes, basically my character is Mickey Mouse with glowy green eyes and an oversized viking helmet, riding on a burning, undead horse. My pet tiger could probably eat the entire package in one quick bite. Meanwhile, Claire picked a dragon-like Sarnak, the females of which are among the tallest races in the game:

"Please don't eat me!"

If I get on my mount and park my character next to hers, it'll make me look like a furry midget on a burning pony:

If you can't stand to see berserking rats, dragon-people and pixie assassins in your game, then EQ2 isn't for you. But anyone who enjoys a bit of racial diversity, well... there are 20 different playable races right now. And while they do range from frogs to lizards to cats, you also get the usual suspects like dwarves, humans and every flavour of elf known to man. And then you get to choose from one of the currently 26 playable classes in the game. Enjoy!

There are also about 38 billion mounts, pets and armor sets.

Everquest 2 has gone Free2Play a while ago and may well be worth a look, depending on how much you can enjoy certain (out?)dated mechanics and visuals. Unlike its earlier F2P versions, you now get to choose just about any race and class you want to play, with the exception of the "Freeblood" vampire race and the Beastlord class, which cost extra, as they're part of an expansion. Speaking of expansions - the F2P version includes all the expansion content for free, with the exception of their newest Xpac content, which is fair. You still get 85 levels of free content, which is about as much as it sounds.

Unlike WoW, EQ2 goes for a more realistic look, which was breathtaking nearly a decade ago. Today, well... let's just say the game can't deny its age. It's not ugly by any stretch of the imaginaion:

It won't absolutely blow you away, either.

Many characters and armor sets look pretty impressive, but certain landscapes look bland and artificial, outdoor textures are blurry and washed out. But the game truly shows its age when it comes to quest design, storytelling and basic user-friendliness. Or lack thereof.

Quest NPCs in EQ2 have the annoying habit of sending you back to the same spawn of monsters again and again. "Please swim over to that island of orcs and kill 8 of them." And here's the followup quest: "Please swim back there and burn down their tents." Next followup quest: "Swim over there once more and poison their food." And so forth. NPCs will tell you to loot specific items or kill speficic baddies in a certain area, then send you back to interact with different items, kill different enemies or go after their boss. It's not gaming's most annoying problem, but most newer MMORPGs have abandoned such shameless content-stretching for a reason.

And sometimes the story behind those quests is just lame and nonsensical. At some point I was sent to explore a cave alongside some scout NPC. So we went through the whole thing together, until there was just one tiny, last little room left to explore. That's when the scout told me to return to the cave entrance to report back to the NPC who gave us the quest. Why? Fuck if I know. "I'll scout ahead real quick, you go and report to the guy." Right. Because checking on that last tiny spot on the map is something he could only do by himself or whatever.
Since gold and experience points generally matter more than a coherent story, I went back there, reported in and the NPC immediately told me that something wasn't right. "The scout should have returned by now, but he hasn't." Um... what? He said he was gonna inspect the rest of the cave and sent me back FIRST, so OF COURSE he hasn't fucking returned before me! How would that even work?

So of course I was sent all the way into the cave AGAIN, only this time I was supposed to also go into the last little room I wasn't supposed to enter before. And since you're not complete retards, you'll already know that I found the scout right there. Dead. So I had to run back to the cave entrance once more, tell the guy what happened. End of story.
Ha! As if. I was sent to find a way to kill the guy who killed the scout in the final room of the cave. So there was a bit of side-questing outside the cave for a while, I got myself a nice magical boss-slaying potion, then I had to make it all the way inside the cave for the third time to kill the damn boss. Sigh. EQ2 does this kind of thing a lot. If that's a deal-breaker for you, then EQ2 really isn't for you.

You'll be sent into the same spawn of monsters A LOT.

By today's standards, the game is rather lacking in the user-friendliness department. Hitting escape won't bring up the options menu, unless you tell the game to do so - inside the freakin' options menu. The UI comes with a little EQ2-Button, which brings up a huge list of settings in what looks like the Windows start menu. This thing lets you write a biography for your characters, which passing players may read. You can set prefix and suffix titles and a surname for your character. "Bob" may turn into "Slayer Bob Boson the Dedicated". You may flag yourself a role-player and act in character, you get to choose from various voices for your avatar, you can name each and everyone of your summons and pets, customize your shapeshifts and illusionary forms if present, apply alternative advancement points, dragon points, pet points, class traits and specializations, racial abilities... it's one of the deepest, most complex role-playing experience you'll ever find, but it's far from intuitive.

Oh, if you happen to own a webcam, your ingame character will begin to mimic you. I'm not making this up - check this out:

If you fast forward towards the last minute or so of the video, you'll also get to hear some of the optional voice modulation, which allows people to sound like ogres or trolls or whatever they're playing at the time. Here's the official video, which gives you a better impression on how this thing works:

EQ2 lets you activate realtime 3D portraits when you play in groups, so you get to see everyone's facial expressions. What a fucking cool feature!

And that stuff right there stands for what makes EQ2 so great until today. It's all about the role-playing, the characters and the incredibly detailed game world. Claire's character isn't just a freaking armored dragon. She's also a shapeshifter, who can transform into a wolf, a tiger or - oh god why, some kind of tree, I suppose? Characters act out many of their emotes with speech and everything like they do on WoW and each race gets different voices to choose from for each gender. All the monsters and creatures speak their own languages, which you can learn!

The first time you fight, say, a bunch of gnolls or goblins, everything they say to you will sound like a bunch of gibberish. Even their speech bubbles look like somebody facerolled across the keyboard whilst switching the font to Wingdings. But keep fighting and looting them, collect relics and tokens, which allow your character to understand them a little more whenever you study one until their speech finally makes sense. The gibberish turns into proper English, the text bubbles suddenly become legible and you may even communicate with other players in goblin tongue, if only to troll everyone around you.

You may also study an enemy's anatomy. Slaughter a bunch of orcs, study their bones and intestines and ultimately learn a new special attack, which deals extra damage to, well, orcs. Or birdmen. Or golems. Or whatever anatomy you've just mastered. You also get a nice trophy, which you can put up for display inside your own house.

It ain't much, but it's home.

Newbie characters will eventually gain access to a small room at their local inn. It's really just a little room or two and you'll get some basic furniture like a chair, a bed and a table, but you can buy, craft and quest for more furniture and decorate the place with carpets, portraits, pets, trophies, mirrors, lights, beer kegs or even set up your own shop where people can buy all the unwanted crap you find on your travels.

The style and size of your home doesn't just depend on your virtual wallet and whether you only wanna shell out a few coppers worth of upkeep for a crappy inn room or shell out platinum for a massive estate. Each city offers a different style and architecture to its inhabitants. Don't like the city you started out with? Travel the world, find a place you like better and apply for citizenship. Don't like being a goodie-goodie in the fairytale kingdom of Qeynos? Betray your faction, become evil and move to Freeport! Or vice versa. Yes, EQ2 has faction betrayal. So if you've always dreamed about being a hulking ogre paladin in shining armor, go ahead and change sides.

Mind you, changing factions doesn't work at the swipe of a credit card like it does in certain other MMOs. Instead, you have to follow a lengthy line of quests, eventually become exiled and then spend the rest of your virtual life as a neutral exile or earn the opposing faction's trust. Or even change your mind and suck up to your own faction again. It's a bit of a lengthy process, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. If betrayal was easy, there wouldn't be much need for factions to begin with.

That said, good and evil characters don't "hate" each other as much as, say, the Alliance and Horde do on WoW. So unless you're on a pvp server, your good character may form a party with evil characters, you may send mail to evil characters and trade with them. Just don't try to walk right into one of their capital cities. You can sneak in there through the sewers if you want to visit a friend, but the guards generally aren't too happy to see members of the opposing faction.
EQ2 doesn't make questing with friends too complicated. In fact, it encourages it.

Claire's evil warden shape-shifted into a wolf, my good beastlord, our pets and a Sarnak mercenary.

Not only can you team up with the "enemy" if you so choose, but you may also temporarily lower your level to that of a friend, so you can enjoy the same quests and content together.
The game also allows you to hire mercenaries, which can function as tanks, healers or damage-dealers. Okay, that feature actually costs a small fee to permanently unlock, but in case of my beastlord it was well worth it:

Beastlord, pet wolf, monk mercenary. That's a small group right there!

And while Norrath will always be a bit too magical, happy, colourful and over the top sugary to me, there are certain sights, features and activities even I can't hate.

Hooded dragon assassins!

Pegasus Knights!

Cow... um... lizard... things?

This guy!

Commander Fluffy!

Dapper, dual fish-wielding goblins!

Captain Salty (which, funnily, is also my Xtube handle)

Anthropomorphic rats with sunglasses!

Riding creepy-ass gryphons!

Everquest 2 may no longer be the prettiest MMORPG out there. The quests are as bog-standard as they come and getting the hang of all the customization and features is about as complicated as running the ISS space station. But at a starting price of nothing, you also get a shitload of game for, well, no money, really. And if you crave tons of races and classes to choose from, faction-betrayal, a fantastic housing system, some of the best crafting in any MMO (which I didn't mention, because I hate crafting :P) and maybe even facial recognition to truly act "in character", then why not give this thing a go? Even if you used to play this game years ago like I did, it may be worth another look, because they've finally added some essential features like a useful, working map system and quest markers, so there is that.

-Cat