Reviewed: May 10, 2005
Reviewed by: Aaron Daigle
Publisher
Sony Online Entertainment
Developer
Sony Online Entertainment
Released: February 15, 2005
Genre: MMORPG
Players: Online
ESRB: Teen
8
7
6
8
7.9
System Requirements
Recommended System
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
SOE continues the prodigious expansion of their enduring MMO hit, Everquest with the recent launch of EverQuest: Dragons of Norrath, the ninth such addition to the core game. As is to be expected, Dragons introduces a host of new features, the reworked Bazaar and the all new Guild Hall being just two of the standouts, subtlety improved graphics and special effects, and of course new zones to explore, factions to erode and build up and as much loot as you can pocket.
The shear scope of the world of Norrath has become somewhat daunting I will admit. While other games might be prettier or have a better interface or a more interactive play style, I can’t think of another game MMORPG that has as much shear space to explore as Everquest, for new players I have to imaging entering the game at this juncture has to be intimidating as all hell. SOE has included some new features to make the game more fun though, including one that should have been added eons ago, a fully interactive in-game atlas. I know I sure could have used that, oh say a year and a half ago.
If there’s one thing that can be said of the citizens of Norrath, it’s that they don’t mess around when it comes to exploration. Dragons of Norrath is centered around the newly redesigned Lavastorm region where the some fortunate souls have discovered a vast expanse of previously unknown territory on the Antonican continent. While there are riches to be extracted from the Broodlands and their surrounding areas, the natives are enough to make even the most seasoned, loot-grubbing, dungeon crawling, hard-bitten adventurer take a pause. Yes, there be Dragons here.
It’s really nice when an expansion comes out like Dragons of Norrath. One that fixes more things than it breaks (there were only a few bumps in the road with the dragons rollout and they were fixed PDQ) and increases the enjoyment you get from playing the game. A few of the biggest headache causing issues I had experienced with Everquest were fixed with Dragons, and that is A-OK in my book.
For instance, one of my roles in a group is usually the looter, which means I'm also usually am the one that gets to turn said loot into cash to be distributed amongst the group. To get the most for the items when I sell them I have to equip gear that boosts my Charisma stat. Switching out my weapons for my steins used to mean rummaging through my bags but not any more! All I have to do now is bring up my Bandolier window and select the load out that has the steins in it, BOOM! I’m ready to go! So much easier than the 5 or 6 mouse moves it used to take to perform that simple operation.
As I said up at the top, the revamping of the formerly barebones mapping system into a fully functional atlas of every zone in the game is a great boon to new and veteran players alike. Being able to see exactly how all of the zones are connected and positioned relative to each other is a huge help when trying to navigate some of the more remote regions of Norrath. It’s also great to be able to check out the maps of zones other than the one you are in. This is a great feature and should have been integrated loooooong before the 9th expansion.
Also new to the game is the Guild Hall and Guild Lobby. The Hall serves as kind of a clubhouse of sorts, and features both a regular banker and a guild banker that you can give items to so they can be distributed to your friends who may have use for them. The Guild Hall also offers a set of trade skill equipment like forges, looms and kilns for the privet use of your organization. No more waiting in line in the Plane of Knowledge!
As cool as having your own (mostly lag-free) hangout for you and your guildies, complete with a healing pool and a teleportation system, the real functionality is out in the Guild lobby. There is a group of NPC Necromancers who will, for a moderate monetary consideration, summon your corpse from wherever you died. As some one who plays primarily as a Ranger, this is huge. No more hunting for a Necro who’s willing to travel to wherever I died to get my corpse out of harms way.
For the most part the new Dragons of Norrath content plays much like the Lost Dungeons of Norrath did or the Taskmaster activities, you get a mission go, do it and collect a reward. All of which is great and all, but one of the commonly heard gripes about Everquest is that it lacks engrossing gameplay, unfortunately while there are some semi-new things to do, the game is still very repetitive. I really wish there were some way to make combat more interactive, but I fear the engine is probably not up to the task with out some major changes being made if it can be done at all.
Aside from that most of the quibbles usually tied to Everquest are still present, it’s a processor and memory hog, so a gig of ram is definitely advisable (seems a bit much for a game engine that is around 4 years old). And even with a properly equipped system it does seem to me like load times are still excessively long for how frequent they are.
Dragons of Norrath follows the pattern of the last few expansions in that it saves most of the best visual boosts for the all new zones, the art style of the ones I spent a large amount of time in had a very eastern flavor to them, something not seen anywhere else in Norrath, and I will admit they are good looking for Everquest. And there in lies the something of a problem, at its core the current game engine is, I believe, roughly 4 years old. It has had DirectX 9 tacked onto it but that seems to be mostly a lighting feature and doesn’t really have anything to do with the fact that the visuals in general, with perhaps the exception of spell effects, are really starting to show their age.
Most of the models have a fairly low poly-count by today’s standards and the basic character customization just can’t keep up with the likes of City of Heroes and Everquest 2. To get the most out of it, you should be running the game at the highest resolution and eye candy settings your system can handle, but admittedly this will only do so much. Everquest just isn’t going to be able to stay competitive visually with the likes of City of Heroes, or even Asheron’s Call 2.
All that aside, I do feel the gang at SOE is very dedicated to pushing the engine as far as it will go, so we will probably continue to see incremental improvements as future expansions are released.
The audio portion of Everquest has never been its strong suit. The score in the new Dragons of Norrath areas isn’t bad by any means but you will probably queue-up some of your own tunes in the old MP3 player before too long as the same themes tend to get really boring after a while. It’s too bad there’s no way they could create a random music generator that followed a set of guidelines for each zone/region in the game.
I'm not quite sure how it would work but some of these games that are designed to be played for hours at a time should really figure out some way to mix it up a little when it comes to their soundtrack. Sound effects fall into the same category, adequate but nothing to write home about.
For players that already are playing Everquest, picking up Dragons of Norrath is a no brainer, the new features and conveniences make it foolish to pass up the this one, never mind all the new content for the few (if any) power gamers out there that have done it all.
For players not yet playing Everquest, you can take advantage of all the new improvements but you are unlikely to appreciate them as much as the folks who’ve been suffering along for the last 5 or so years. That and honestly there are better subscription-based MMOs to spend your hard earned cash on.
As the ninth expansion of the world of Norrath, Dragons offers a wide variety of fixes and improvements and streamlines some of those implemented previously. While it doesn’t really address the main issue I have with Everquest, the fact that it’s a naked leveling treadmill, it does add more quests, loot, and baddies to beat up on, so it’s not like they are just selling the improvements. You get some new areas to explore, new features to use, I’d say Dragons of Norrath is a must have for any Everquest player, but it’s probably not likely to attract many new ones based on it’s features alone.
As the game is reaching middle age, it will be interesting to see if SOE has anything up their sleeve to shake things up with future expansions.