EQII - First Impressions

I downloaded the 7-day trial for EQII the other night and was able to spend only a few short hours in the game, so when I say first impressions, I mean it!

I'm not sure why, I assume because it's a trial, but you cannot create certain races when making your character, which is fine as there's many to choose from. I ended up picking an Arasai, the dark version of the Fae (think tinkerbell, but macho).

You then get to pick your class, name, appearance, and server. I chose the highly populated PvP server, Nagafen. I went with the Wizard class since it most resembled a WoW Mage, and I love caster DPS.

The game drops you in a starting outpost with plenty of NPCs to talk to, and trust me, they have alot to say. If you're interested in story, the NPCs will talk your head off, but it's entirely optional in most cases as you can select your responses to them. You could easily select something like, "I'm not interested in that, where's the work!?"

One thing I really liked about the game is there's no need to visit a trainer, and you get new spells every level. The new spells will automatically fill a spot in your toolbar if there's an empty space, otherwise you access your abilities book.

The combat seemed interesting enough, but I was lagging badly. I don't blame the game for this, as I hope it's my older system causing the lag. The controls are similar to other MMOs and can be figured out quite easily. I haven't run into the extensive learning curve other bloggers are talking about - yet.

All in all I like EQII and I might continue playing it between Arena matches while waiting on WoTLK. The free trial doesn't even require a credit card, just a Station ID, which is just registering with SoE. Also, if you've ever played an SoE game, then you can use your old Station ID, which is what I did.