Lords of EverQuest: Taking EVERQUEST Offline
The goal (it seems) of Lords is to grant the total experience of EverQuest from a new angle: lead your army to victory. With a choice of three races, the Shadowrealm (evil Troll/Iskar people), the Elddar Alliance (Elves/Frogs), and the Dawn Brotherhood (humans), you can take control and re-write the history of EverQuest as you see fit.
Game Play
Like other Real Time Strategies the basic goal is to mine platinum in order to build structures to create units to go and attack other units and structures. With the use of a Lord, a hero of sorts, one can add a dynamic element to game play with the strategic positioning of Lords. You try to position the Lords to gain the most benefit from their auras and/or magical abilities. The added feature of all units gaining experience and leveling up allows for a greater diversity in the unit structure; this compounded with
"Knights are the schiznat"
|
Knights, demi-heroes that are knighted units, creates a fertile base for the growth of a truly amazing army. Lest it be forgotten, the interactive 3 dimensional environment allows for players to position their units where the greatest harm can be inflicted upon the enemy. Lords of EverQuest also supports online play where up to 12 players can contest each other for dominance over Norrath with hundreds of magical items, 15 unique Lords, and 44 controllable units.
The Upshot
First off, all of your units level up and it is glorious and is wonderful and is stupendous and is just damn amazing. No more constant upgrading for health and strength separately; now just send your Ogre off into the midst of the fray and watch his experience and level grow. This creates the worry that the level 1 units you are making will not be able to hack it in the higher levels of the game, but SOE thought of this too.
"All of your units level up and it is glorious and is wonderful and is stupendous and is just damn amazing"
|
The units that you create come out at a level equal to half, rounded down, the level of your Lord. Thus, an army with a level 10 Lord Vekk (who sounds almost exactly like the Beast Master guy from WarCraft III) will produce level 5 Ogre Grunts. Another outstanding feature is the ability to create Knights. Knights are the schiznat. ‘Schiznat’ meaning level 7 units that are knighted by your Lord then have special abilities and auras depending upon which unit you knight. Regrettably, you cannot exceed more than 3 knights at any given time. And, oh yeah, you even get to carry units between levels. See, unlike most games where, if anything, just your Lord/hero is there when you start the next mission, Lords of EverQuest allows you take any units you wish with you to the next level, provided that you have enough points to bring them. At the end of every level you are granted a number of points. Each unit costs a certain number of points to bring and the cost varies depending on the unit’s level where (obviously) units of higher level cost more points. Thus it becomes a trade-off; do you want to bring your two level-sixes or your four level-threes? This grants you, the player, greater control over what you start each level with. Finally, the structures - they are beautiful-looking objects, and the placement of them is also beautiful. Normally, one has to place their structures either a specific distance from other buildings or has to have a unit build it. Not in Lords of EverQuest - here you just pick up and drop a building wherever it fits, assuming that it is upon a buildable surface. This feature allows for greater flexibility, making the game more fun and more challenging in ways rarely seen in RTSs.
The Nitty Gritty
Ok, so like most RTS players I tend not to delve too much into the MMORPG realm, leaving the vast and wondrous history of EverQuest unknown to me. Though, understandably, I expected that through a rich and varied story line in Lords of Everquest I would begin to gain a glimpse into the elaborate world of EverQuest. This did not happen. Here is a small, yet insightful, condensed version of the Lord of EverQuest story line: “These people don’t like you.", “OK, what do you want me to do?”, “Kill some of them and destroy most of their buildings because total destruction takes too long/is repetitive/is impossible because you ran out of platinum and your workers refuse to attack because they are wimps that just become the target of any enemy units that may wander by in search of the platinum mine that you can’t defend because you don’t have any platinum to begin with which is why you don’t have any platinum now to create enough units to obliterate your AI enemy.” “Sure.” But aside from the “Go here, kill this” story line, the frustrating quests, and the overall feel that this was more directed towards EverQuest players in need of something to do until the server starts working again, Lords of EverQuest also does support online play. Regrettably, no one is online, possibly because the server was working at the time.
Otherwise, there were a few things that could have been done better. Take the mini-map for instance: there are the green dots which are good, red dots which are bad, the vast unexplored blackness, and there is the area that you can see which provides you with the least amount of information possible. Though this is ok because you have your Lords and they can defeat anything that will come their way… as long he is a high enough level to have the really cool abilities that you cannot pick because you are granted an ability (or an upgraded ability) every few levels and the computer picks the ability, not you. Did I mention that you can’t pick the abilities your Lords receive?
Overall
Overall, Lords of EverQuest is a game with some serious flaws as well as some amazing advancements. For example, I like the handling of the hero characters, Lords, but dislike intensely the mini-map. Sony Online Entertainment made a decent attempt to take EverQuest offline but for all intensive purposes it should probably stay online. The storyline of Lords of EverQuest is weak so non-EverQuest gamers probably won’t like it and real EverQuest players are probably online. I believe this game could have been much better done, but even with its inherent flaws, it is still a decent strategy game.
