My Knight of the Round Bottom
I got two really great games for Christmas – Professor Layton and the Last Specter and Super Mario Galaxy 2. And I have inFamous: Festival of Blood sitting on my PS3, ready to go.
I’m not playing them nearly as much as I should be. Instead, I’m checking out the “Freemium” experience on a seven-year-old MMO, Everquest II.
This is not the first time I’ve mooched on an MMO. I got a free ride, courtesy of an achievement-hungry friend, on World of Warcraft. The experience was instructive, but devoid of much context. It was the first MMO I spent serious time with, and so I didn’t have much to judge it by.
Playing Everquest II in its recently incarnated “Freemium” form has given me much of that missing context. Everquest was one of the Elder Gods of the MMO industry, and its sequel is notorious for being vanquished, though never entirely, by Blizzard’s Warcraft juggernaut. It’s frightening how very alike the two games are, sharing everything from mythology to battle systems to environments to quest structures.
However, there is a vast gulf of style between the two games, and Everquest II is a much more entertaining game for the casual soloist like me. The writing is far better. There’s actually humor, like the dock worker who asked if I’d be slaughtering baby chicks next, when I brought in a requisition for a dozen or so bear cub ears. There’s self-awareness in the form of pop-culture references, especially in the quest names like “The Kobold and the Beautiful” and “Ape is Enough.” Even the music is playful, curious and inspiring.
Warcraft was just fascist drek. The Wagnerian scores, the irony-free writing and the disturbing emphasis on racial conflict and purity made the game a drag to play at times.
But at their cores, both games are still massive grind fests, and both have a rhythm that nudges you toward group dungeon crawling and manifests itself in the form of questing “dry spells” in the overworld at times. So, soloing is still a bitch at times in EQII. And the game’s Freemium model dictates that it harass me every hour with a pitch to upgrade my membership for the pleasure of playing a less gimped game that is marginally more convenient. I have also noticed the Crimson Alliance Effect at work as I see characters in their teens race by my Level 30 knight with magnificent mounts and spectacular outfits.
I don’t think I’ll be giving any of my dough to Sony for the full EQII experiance. I have too many good games sitting around that need playing, but it’s been an entertaining ride.
