E3 2002EverQuest Online Adventures impressions

We had the chance to see Sony Online Entertainment's upcoming PlayStation 2 online role-playing game at E3. EverQuest Online Adventures will attempt to take some of the best features of the original EverQuest for the PC and adapt them to a more console-friendly style of play. For instance, instead of requiring players to use a keyboard to enter commands for their characters and chat for their friends, the game will let you use custom gamepad shortcuts that will let you send basic messages, such as "Follow me" and "I need healing," with a few presses of a button. EverQuest Online Adventures will also have a full chat system, as well as emotes--gestures that your characters can perform, such as waving and bowing at other characters.

The original EverQuest is infamous for how time-consuming it is--or, at least, how time-consuming it used to be when it was first launched. The developers are trying to make sure that EverQuest Online Adventures is a much faster, easier-to-play game that will let players jump in and play for as little as 30 minutes, without having to look around for a group of other characters to join with and still being able to get something out of their play session. So when characters venture out into the world and fight monsters to gain experience and treasure, they won't have to wait around as long for their wounds to heal and their spell power to replenish. Also, players will be able to buy reasonably priced potions in towns to help heal themselves and restore their magic power. The developers are also trying to make fights a bit shorter and more exciting than the PC version (in which characters and monsters sometimes end up standing there, trading blows over and over again for several minutes), but the PS2 game will let players create up to five shortcuts for different abilities, magic spells, or items that they can use quickly. This should help keep fights short and exciting but also open up lots of interesting tactical possibilities, especially in a good group of adventurers with different skills.

EverQuest Online Adventures is scheduled to come out in 2003, which should hopefully give the developers enough time to smooth out some of the game's rough edges. The character models look jaggy and plain, and the game's scenery, including trees, houses, and foliage, all look extremely simple, though to be fair, the graphics can't be too intensive for a game of this nature. For instance, if there are too many highly detailed characters onscreen at a time, the game's frame rate can slow to a crawl.

We'll have to wait and see how EverQuest Online Adventures turns out. The game is scheduled for release next year.