And so the wheel turns again, and I’m back to Everquest II. Thinking back, I’m not sure I’ve ever played one MMO exclusively for more than a year – well, not since Everquest was new anyway, and I wonder if any of them are supposed to be fun for 4+ hours a night, every night for a year. Is that even possible? It could just be me, I guess, but I’ve even managed to get bored of World of Warcraft at least once already…pre-level 60!

Anyway, having the SOE Access Pass, and a set of EQ2 discs, it was only a matter of time, although what is interesting this time around, is that I’m still enjoying World of Warcraft as well – at the same time. Is that even allowed? I’m such a maverick, but this shocking act of doublethink does put me in a new position; being able to directly compare and contrast the two titles, side by side.

It’s also been about eight months since I was last there, and its interesting looking for the changes. Aggro Me (see sidebar) meticulously documents and discusses pretty much anything that happens to EQ2, but despite being an interesting read, unless you’re actually playing, not a lot of it sinks in, so I’m having to discover it all for myself.

I’ve picked up my ebil dark elf priest Freeport alt, instead of my previous gnome swashbuckler Qeynosisan do-gooder, so am seeing a largely different and new set of quests to the ones I already did last time anyway, but the major change I’m seeing is speed…when did everyone get Spirit of Wolf as a passive race benefit? It’s insane how fast everyone runs around in there now!

Probably as a direct response to WoW, one of the recent changes seems to have been a global run speed increase to everyone and everything, of at least double, possibly more. Clearly a kludge fix to counter ‘It takes too long to get anywhere!’ whining, it does seem a step too far, and foot speed in EQ2 seems very close to Level 40 Mount speed in WoW, guessing at comparative distances and sizes. God only knows what EQ2 mounted speed is like now, but the ‘Sprint’ combat escape special is hilarious, being on a par with the WoW Warrior Charge/Intercept animation, but for at least a minute.

Trouble is, while WoW seems to have been designed for fast run-speed (wide doorways in inns and towns, etc), EQ2 was not, and in particular the twisty alleys of Freeport. I must have looked extremely comical, skidding past doorways and trying to do ‘carrier deck landings’ to get inside the banks. I’ve yet to head out of the city into the bigger outdoor zones, but presumably, this sprinting makes more sense out in the Commonlands and Antonica, zones which were always on the very large side, even with Griffin towers. I guess this is a good change, in context, but they probably should have turned it off in cities and the 1-10 city backyard zones. I’d imagine it becomes awkward in dungeons too.

The other big change I noticed was highlighted quest npcs on the mini-map. People with quests now have glowing quills above their heads, so you don’t have to run around town interrogating everyone you meet in the hope of part-time day labour opportunities. This is clearly a WoW feature that seems to have crept across, and does make life easier, but like the run speed thing, SOE seem to have gone one step too far again, and opening the zone map will show circles on it for all the people with doable quests in a wide radius – not just people you need to hand stuff in to. This seems to make questing a bit of a rally – tearing around the various sections of the city, joining the dots, and not really knowing what’s going on in that much depth. This probably slows down at later levels though, after all the initial City-Based Fetch-and-Carry questing is tidied up, if my last sojourn is any guide.

Death seems to have gone WoW too – they’ve got rid of shards (their limited corpse recovery thing) altogether, and now dying is just a bit of xp dept, and equipment damage. You don’t even need to go back to the place you died. I’m not sure how this will work out – I haven’t died a lot yet, once I remembered how to get the Heroic Opportunities going again, a feature I’ve always liked.

Collection quests are now separate to the main quest book – thank god! Last time around at least 30 out of my 50 quest slots were taken up with these things, which made getting any proper questing done quite difficult.

Performance-wise I start to see the real genius of WoW though – EQ2 at full power is almost comparable to real-time Shrek, but really hammers any PC that tries it. WoW on the other hand, with its cunningly deliberate cartoon-like style seems to flow along smoothly with all the whistles and bells turned on my decidedly average PC. By not going for ultra-realism, Blizzard have avoided the what I term the 'Spirits Within Effect', whereby the closer you get to 'real', the more obvious the remaining flaws become.

One thing I didn’t expect was to be doing EQ2 crafting again – a notoriously dull and overly complex sub-game, which I’m quite getting into again, but I’m sure that’ll pass before long. I think turfing the crafters out of that gloomy instance, and onto the streets, would help a lot - it's so depressing in there...

At this point, it's hard to say which I like best – probably World of Warcraft in the long run, but I'm a bit jasded with it just now, and the refreshed novelty of rediscovering EQ2, its recent ‘dumbing down’ changes, and the always satisfying accomplishment of its first 20 levels is proving to be at least a temporary distraction, and even a strangely complementary experience to the mighty WoW…