EverQuest II Revisited
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 889
To say things were slightly altered from the last time I played would be an understatement of gargantuan proportion. The biggest change I discovered the moment I went to create a new character (aside from the new races: Arasai, Fae, and the Sarnaks) was the absence of the archetype system. I can't stress how much of a pain this system was, especially for those of us that have a habit of making alternate characters on a regular basis.
I don't want to bore anyone with a "back in my day" story, but I have to give the quick version so you can understand. Back in the day (sorry, couldn't resist!), you had to start as one of four archetype classes (Fighter, Scout, Priest, or Mage). At level 10 each archetype would split three ways for a total of 12 classes. I'd like to say you were done at this point, but you weren't. Those 12 classes would then split further at level 20 for a total of 24 classes.
Any time you wanted to try another class, you had to play through 20 levels of content first. As if that wasn't bad enough, once you finally became the class of your choice, you only received one or two new abilities. This meant that you were basically still playing the same class you had been for the last 20 levels. My necromancer never even felt like one until I finally hit level 32 or so. That kind of system may have looked good on paper, but in practice, it was an absolute nightmare. Thank the gods it's changed now!
