In late 1998, I got an email telling me that I had been accepted into the beta test for Everquest. I was ecstatic: I had been anticipating this game with much drooling for months. I was imagining UO with prettier, 3D graphics.

Boy was I in for a surprise.

Instead of awakening in Norrath to find a bloody, urgent battle scene before my eyes, where everyone was wearing something a different color and shouting battlecries... well... I was faced with a blank, poorly textured wall. So I started wandering around a little bit, trying to figure out how to make money to buy stuff. You see, in UO at about that time, the best way to make your starting buck was to pick up a tradeskill like sewing. One thing I had enjoyed doing in early UO beta, was acquiring a dye-tub before they all ran out and selling my services as a dyer to passersby.

Well, that doesn't quite work in Norrath. Another jarring difference that I was expecting, was the class system. Gone were the days of practicing my sword skill to make it better: now not only did I have to practice, but I had to gain experience, too! Hmm. But, this article isn't going to derail into a discussion of the merits and flaws of a class-based system to a skill-based system.

Yet another difference was this silly concept of 'zones' - sure I had known them in games like Duke Nukem 3D, but uh. Yeah. Not in a role-playing game. I thought they were artificial and pretty silly, but my technological conceptualization was rather thin at that age.

So, I've set myself out to make money. I figure pretty much the only way to do that is to go out into the wilderness and fight some skeletons, orc grunts, or giant spiders.

I run into a bat. Having been used to gauging how strong something is by actual experience instead of a 'consider' system, I just start swinging my sword at it. In about two hits, I'm almost dead - and running back to the city guards like a baby.

Little did I know that, unlike in UO, you couldn't run away from a monster that was giving you the good old beatdown in EQ. So I died. This would set my stage for the frustration I had with this game. But - I persevered. I thought, "With all these emotes [action text which would cause your character to do a special animation], the possibilities for role-play are infinite!" But uh, yeah. I was wrong again.

I finally figured out the /consider system, and took full advantage of it. I gained some levels, sloowly gained money for equipment by killing - not monsters, like I was used to - but rats, wolves, and bats. It was pretty boring, but I became (as I saw it) pretty powerful - so I head to the nearest dungeon, Blackburrow. And promptly get mauled by a train of about 20 gnolls (these dog-like creatures).

But still I persevered: I grouped with some people, and we started hunting in the dungeon. Now, hunting in EQ isn't like hunting in UO. In UO, you're with a loose group of people. Usually one of you has tracking (a skill that lets you find a monster - the better your tracking, the farther away it can be and show up for you), and you pretty much wander around the wilderness looking for a monster. Unless you decide to go to a dungeon, where you do pretty much the same thing but with less wandering around and more exploring and hoping you don't get killed.

Hunting in EQ meant standing in one spot waiting for the same monster to spawn in the same spot.

Over and over and over again.

Hunting monsters wasn't working to well for me, so I decided to try out trade systems. I read a few guides on the 'net, and off I go. In UO, you could gather just about any raw material from the wild: meat, kindling, logs, feathers, ore, vegetables, cotton, wool, leather...

In everquest, you bought em from an NPC sitting in the maze-like town that seemed as if an epileptic child with attention deficit disorder had sat down with their crayons, and their daddy loved their picture so much he made it into a map for his new massively multiplayer game, plotting important locations, NPCs, and corridors down at seemingly random.

Suffice to say, I didn't last long in Everquest. If you need some friends to play with just to have fun in spite of the game mechanics, then there's something flawed about the game design. I thought it was going to flop.

Little did I know that EQ would be the most financially successful MMPORPG of all time. Unfortunately this success meant that every MMPORPG released afterwards would be a rehash of the Everquest Formula:

Timesink + Repetitive Task + Semi-convincing world that somewhat immerses a player = addicted players

To date there have been over five expansions to this game. None have really fixed the inherent flaws in the game which make it the distinct opposite of fun: one might even go so far as to say Everquest gameplay is grueling, tedious, and annoying. There's always a feeling of if I get to the next level, I can go somewhere new - and that new place will be fun! Except, the new place is the same as the first, but with a different 64byte texture and slightly tougher enemies.

Everquest was a slight diversion, and I promptly returned to UO about two months after Everquest's commercial release.

Next monday (yeah, this one came out sooner than a week - but I felt like ranting): Surfing for the Next Best Thing will be a montage of several MMPORPGs that I played for a very brief time each, so my reactions will be more vague. To be covered: Asheron's Call, Jumpgate, Neocron, Anarchy Online

Stay tuned, kiddies! Oh, just a fun-fact. Qeynos (one of the human cities in Everquest) is simply SonyEQ (Sony published Everquest) backwards! How about that.