Everquest is not an RPG, though you might be lead to believe that from the elvish person on the box. It suffers from so many problems I can't even list them all, but I'll try to throw you some.Customer Service - It's great!! And by great, I mean some of the worst treatment of customers I've ever witnessed in my lifetime.
It's a two-pronged issue really. It's extremely difficult to get a hold of a coherent tech in the event of a more physical problem/bug. You die to a bug? "well...we'll log it as a bug, sorry, that's all we can do" (they've recently made moves to fix this I think). The other barb as it were, is the strict adherence to their own "vision" (as they call it, not me) of the game in spite of overwhelming opposition from their player base. Regardless of how many people may dislike some aspect of the game (say...85% of the player base) they won't budge.
Boredom - by design, they want their world to seem "big". So, getting from one end of the world to another can take hours real-time. Ostensibly clever....who wouldn't want a big world to play in? However in a game when where you're forced to group (as the above posts suggest), some movement is often required to get into a party. With overcrowding rampant...you might even be moving along after you reach your supposed final destination. Result? Hours of your precious recreational time get spent moving from point A to point B.
Camping - people who haven't played EQ may not be familiar with this phrase. Basically, camping is the practice of a group/character hanging about in an area where a specific monster will always be spawning in order to net easy items/exp ( EQ has statics spawns in most areas... meaning a monster will pop into existence at a given spot everytime...). Thus, the areas with the best loot, and easiest/best exp are always rediculously crowded, and the crappy areas lie empty. That's how the "big world" crumbles.
Leveling&Loss - Easy exp? surely the challenge seeking player would go to these less populated areas to hone his/her skills. Well, yes and no, while it would be easier to find said monsters, many less popular areas suffer from pathing problems. What you say? Surely such bugs were fixed way back in beta! Nay, there are still glaring -graphical- bugs in the game after the first expansion. Bugs are very low on the priority list. Back on subject...pathing is the "path" a monster will take when you catch their attention...it can include running backwards before chasing you...running around a room beforehand...and all sorts of strange little things. The kicker is, their odd "paths", will often cause them to bring several friends with them...killing you nigh-instantly in this unpopulated area, which could also make for some difficulties recovering your belongings. In interesting double-standard, while they won't reimburse your character exp/item - wise when a bug such as that kills you, they will ban your account if such a bug made it easier for you to the monster. A Death can oftentimes set you back several hours exp-wise (not counting recovering your corpse), even more as you get higher. That's why people aim for easy exp.
In conclusion, I, myself, played EQ for quite awhile. Looking back, I'm not really sure why. It's not the human interaction.. because that's little better than a chat room...you hear more meaningful things going down to the local fast food joint. The skewed system of penalties and crowding makes for gameplay that usually consists of hanging around one area and repeatedly killing the same monsters over the course of several hours. In the hope of....what? Theoretically, you would one day be much more powerful after all that camping, and be able to choose activities more freely, but the future levels hold little but higher penalties, and more restrictive camping.
I'd only purchase this game for one reason, as a gift.....for an enemy.
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