EverQuest II Previews
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When you arrive at the Isle Of Refuge, you get several quests, both regular and tradeskills to start off. The initial 5-6 levels are fairly linear if you follow the quest progression. You set out to do some simple quests for some people on the island to get various newbie gear. You then have to decide which faction you wish to align yourself with. Some races, like Kerra, can join both factions, while high elves and such can only join Qeynos, the good faction. When you feel you are ready to leave the island (after killing the orc boss to get the last newbie item) you arrange transport with one of the two ambassadors and off you go to the mainland, where the game really starts. The first thing when you return to the mainland is you find out you can't enter the city due to not being a citizen. The first few quests here aim towards that goal, and are also very linear. For example, you receive a quest to go and get your own room you can call home, then receive another which grants you some starting furniture, and yet another which tells you to go explore the landmarks in the current zone. There are also quests outside the initial linear progression to give you a little more experience and levels before you undertake the citizenship quest. A big difference from EQ is that you get more experience doing quests in EQ2 than you ever did in EQ. Actually the preferred method of gaining levels early is doing quests, not combat.
The second is at EQ2Center:
After you have chosen your race you can pick your starting city. Some of the races are pre-selected while others you can choose. This follows with the storyline and the basic nature of the races. Awhile back Sony Online Entertainment mentioned that they added uniqueness to the characters. That is definitely true. There are four major feature areas; eyes, head, body, and hair. For each of the major areas, there are one to four different sub-features. This is where you use a sliding bar to select the features. For example, let's take the Barbarian Male. You can change twenty-eight different features. Keep in mind all of the twenty-eight features have multiple choices. Barbarians also have Woads similar to a spiritual tattoo. I will be very surprised if you ever see twins walking around. Of coarse someone might have the same hair style or woad, but I bet there nose will be smaller, their chin longer or they will have a different skin tone. There are just so many different combinations possible. Also, if you don't want to go though all the different choices there is a randomize button. After all that you get to choose your name. Just as a word of advice, let's stay away from names like Ikilllotsofstuff, Iruleandyoudont and Iamthehunk. It's just not as "cool" as it sounds. So, lets all pick a name that you are proud of and let the adventure begin.
And the third is at GamePro:
As for graphics, the beta version of EverQuest II shined with vibrant textures and shockingly detailed character models. It was even possible to make out fine facial details like lines and wrinkles. The expansive environments have also seen a tremendous upgrade--you can see enemies when they're yards in front of you, unlike the last EverQuest. There were also some amazing spell effects on display, such as the Thorn Shield spell, which made 3D volumetric spikes sprout from the player's skin in real-time. Visually, the most impressive aspect is that the game's graphics were only set to roughly 65% of the highest possible settings--it looked amazing as it was, but we can only imagine what the game looks like at its highest settings. Of course, you'd need some seriously powerful hardware.
