EverQuest: Online Adventures Preview

Though not the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game, EverQuest is undoubtedly the most popular. With thousands of users paying to venture through the world of Norrath on the PC, EverQuest and its expansions have created a massive online community. Sony Online Entertainment will try to lay the foundation for a similar online community with the PlayStation 2 version of EverQuest, called Online Adventures, which interestingly will take place on a continent named Tunaria, where the inhabitants look similar to those found in the original PC version of EverQuest, but the landscape isn't quite the same. In addition, the various menus and interfaces have been slightly changed to accommodate the PlayStation 2 controller, but for the most part, the gameplay that has attracted so many users to the PC version of the game seems to have gone unchanged.

While there have been some changes, most aspects of Online Adventures are quite similar to the PC version of EverQuest, especially character creation. Unfortunately, it appears that Online Adventures will only feature the cast from the original EverQuest, so you won't find any Iksthar or the Vah-Shir, but there's still a healthy mix of characters to choose from, each with its own unique skills and abilities. Trolls, barbarians, and even regular human characters make for the best melee fighters because of their inherent strength, and as such, they work well with the corresponding character classes. Conversely, the erudites naturally have a high level of intelligence, giving them an edge in the classes that rely heavily on magic. Other characters in the game include elves, most of which end up becoming rangers, as well as dark elves, one of the more popular characters simply because of their affinity for necromancy. There are numerous character and class combinations to choose from, and though it can seem a little intimidating at first to all but the seasoned EverQuest players, Online Adventures gives you a little help in making a solid character.

At the character-select screen, you'll get a brief overview of each character's strengths and concise information on each of the classes, some of which will be flashing to indicate that they would be most suitable for that particular character. Even when you're distributing points into your character's different abilities (such as strength, dexterity, charisma, intelligence, and stamina), the skills that are most important to the character's corresponding class will flash, so you'll get plenty of help early on if you're not entirely familiar with the ins and outs of the shadowknights, necromancers, wizards, or any of the other classes in the game.

Depending on the character you've selected, you'll start off in one of several towns scattered across the continent of Tunaria, where you can begin your journey by talking with other players that are also just beginning and possibly even team up with them. But what makes EverQuest so intriguing is that you can pretty much do whatever you want and raise your character to be something other than what it was intended to be or travel wherever it is you want to go--unless of course it's into an area that despises your particular character and class combination.

EverFetch

Your first few moments in Tunaria will most likely be spent exploring the immediate area and finding where the main entrance is to your town, which can actually take quite some time since most of the towns in the game are incredibly enormous. But once you've surveyed the land you can start your first quest by speaking with the leader of your guild (or class). These first quests are quite simple and usually only require you to speak with another computer-controlled character nearby or to fetch some item and bring it back to the guild leader, but it can be an easy way to get some additional points that you can put into your character's skills or some basic equipment, such as gloves or a robe. As you progress through these quests, they become a little more difficult, and they'll eventually require you to engage in some sort of combat, but if you feel so inclined, you can ignore these quests entirely, head out into the area just outside of town, and start to level up your character by defeating relatively weak enemies.

Combat in EverQuest: Online Adventures is somewhat similar to that in the PC version. You can get an idea of how you will perform in battle against a specific enemy by targeting it, which causes a circle to appear. This circle will have different colors depending on the strength of the enemy relative to your character, so if it turns red, that means your character has absolutely no chance of winning the confrontation and will more than likely be killed within seconds. If it turns yellow, that usually means the enemy is a little too strong for you, but if it changes to white or blue, then your character generally has a better chance of winning the fight. With the exception of the first strike that you use to get an enemy's attention, the physical combat doesn't quite play out in real time, but you do have to hold down the attack button to continue an assault. In addition, it can be a little tricky to run away from a battle, because the enemy will constantly pursue your character, so you either have to find a body of water where the enemy can't follow you or get another player to start attacking the enemy and draw its attention away from you. When an enemy is defeated, it will occasionally drop items that you can sell in stores.

Though you won't have too many spells early on in the game, magic also plays a huge role. Some characters will have the traditional elemental and poison attacks or supplementary spells that can give a boost to various character attributes. Other characters will have the ability to summon creatures, or pets, that will fight alongside them, but it's worth noting that the pets for dedicated magic users are much stronger than those for characters that have secondary magic abilities, like the shadowknight.

At this point, EverQuest: Online Adventures seems like a faithful re-creation of its PC counterpart. The character-creation process and the combat and magic systems are essentially the same, and all of the inventory and shortcut menus have been refined so that they're easier to navigate with a controller. There are plenty of preset phrases that you can use to communicate with other players, and the game has USB keyboard support if you feel like chatting with other characters to form hunting teams. Visually, the game looks relatively simplistic with plenty of sharp angles on the character models and the environments, but the draw distance is surprisingly far and the game retains a pretty solid frame rate even with dozens of characters onscreen at once. EverQuest: Online Adventures is scheduled for release in February 2003.