Whack A Mole, Whack A Dwarf, Whatever - Scars of Velious Review
posted at 7:30 PM on Monday, December 18th, 2000
Introduction
| Publisher |
| Verant Interactive |
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| System Requirements: |
Pentium 200
600MB HD Space
64 MB Ram
16 MB 3D accelerator
DirectX 7 compatible sound card. |
| |
| Reviewed Using: |
PIII 500
128 MB RAM
GeForce 32MB |
It seemed necessary to explain to you, our dear readers, why there is no one author to this review. Here’s a snippet of the staff meeting:
”You write it.” “No way, not after what happened last time.” “Well, then, YOU write it.” “Last I checked I was still permanently banned from Everquest.” “Dammit, you write it.” “No way, Jose, I’m waiting until we get the review copy they promised us.” “Look, minion, we’re not getting a review copy, they don’t do that for online publications.” “But they sent us a review copy last time!” “They’re Verant, they change the rules whenever they feel like it!” “Settle down, peons, who’s going to write the review?” “Ow, make Subversive stop hitting me!” “For crying out loud, no one leaves their desk until I have a review of Scars of Velious!” “Who ate my lunch out of the staff refrigerator?”
There you have it, folks. This review is from all of us.
Story
Many years ago, as the Dwarves of Kaladim were building their cities, they sent out exploration parties seeking minerals and building materials. Apparently they were horrible sailors, because they completely missed the huge landmass directly south of their home and went around the world, landing on a frozen continent of ice and snow. There they found giants and dragons, and a struggle for their survival. The giants and dragons on this continent are not the poor dumb beasts of the warmer climates - they have thriving communities. Eventually the surviving Dwarves formed their own cities, and a three-sided war began that continues to this day.
More recently, a diverse exploring party left the continent of Antonica aboard the Gnomish ship, Icebreaker. They were seeking the lost continent of Velious. It wasn’t all THAT lost, it’s closer to Antonica than the continent of Kunark judging by the boat ride, but anyway…
All righty, let’s turn the roleplay flag off. Scars of Velious is an expansion pack to the mind-blowingly and somewhat confusingly successful Everquest phenomenon. (How a company can hate its customers THAT much and still have customers at all is a subject worthy of a doctoral dissertation.) Unlike the previous expansion pack, The Ruins of Kunark (which was an integrated expansion containing content for all levels, with the original game included), SoV is a true expansion set - utterly meaningless unless you already own the full game. It’s also intended for characters level 35 and over, according to the box. According to the players that already own it, the only way you’ll see Velious at 35 is as you’re trotting across the zones looking for your corpse. It seems that this expansion was designed primarily to ease the overcrowding of high level dungeons and planes, by giving the long time players something to do besides gnaw off their own body parts in an attempt to get more room in the Skinner box.
Gameplay
Apparently the accusations of EQ being a giant version of Whack A Mole stung a bit. Verant has really knocked themselves out this time to make the game more dynamic. The NPCs are more interactive (and funny - one uber-mob literally kills you if you say “phat lewt” within his hearing) than ever before, and there are hundreds of quests. New writers are apparently on staff, because the stories are colorful and interesting, as opposed to the previous levels of hackneyed and clichéd. You could spend weeks exploring the towns with all their details.
And then there’s the faction game - giants, dragons, and dwarves all have faction. Kill one, your faction goes up with the other two. Well, not exactly - each race has TWO factions, and the balancing game is not as simple as it sounds. Each race has a different set of quests and rewards, and screwing your faction with one set literally means you won’t get to play with them until you apologize, i.e. fixing your faction. The old faction game was so simplistic as to be ridiculous, but the new version is complex and fascinating.
Everyone can access the entry portal to Iceclad Ocean, or you can take the boat. If you want to use the other portals on the continent, you have to walk to the portal, pick up a no drop, soul bound key, and keep it on you. Yes, even you, the passenger of druids and wizards. NOBODY takes shortcuts until they’ve actually seen the new land once. (We thought this was neat, you are free to disagree.)
The most controversial of the new features is the corpse dragging issue. Say your friend Maurice is KOS with the giants. You, being a friend to the giants, can stroll through the giant city with relative ease. Don’t bother dragging his corpse in Velious - rescuing the enemy will make you an enemy as long as you’re hauling the corpse. Maurice is pretty much screwed without a nice necro and a summon corpse spell. Wait, that’s the way it was intended - the way it actually works is dragging any corpse except your own sets off every monster in range. And if you were Kill On Sight to start with, dragging your corpse isn’t going to make you MORE popular. (I think this is retarded and overly punishing to the player, especially due to the dual faction issues of each race - you can get in really deep before you get splattered like a possum on an eight lane highway.)
This is still Everquest, though, so if you hated the gameplay before, you aren’t going to like it any better now. It’s still Whack A Mole. You still kill the monster, get the item, turn it in, get loot. It’s just that the quests are much, much more fun and interesting to read.
Aesthetics
Some of it is spectacular. The race of ottermen are the neatest looking things ever to walk a virtual world, and the designs of some of the dungeons and cities are breathtaking. No matter how jaded and cynical you are, the first time you walk over the bridge made of a dragon skeleton you feel small.
Some of it makes you want to beat your head into a wall. The giants, for instance - they get right so many details, like the tunic flaring out when the giant turns to attack the pesky gnome behind him. But the features are smeary, as though the creature was designed to a standard scale and then simply blown up. Try this experiment - photocopy your face, and enlarge it twenty times. Ugly, huh? No matter how good you looked to start with. Enlargements never look as good as the original. We also cannot stand the trees. We know technology is far enough along that you can give us trees with depth, so this isn’t excusable.
We also understand wanting to convey a sense of peering across a vast wasteland, but what’s the point in making a zone that’s huge, takes an hour to cross, and has nearly NO features to let you know where you are? You can literally run around for hours, with no clue of where you are, unless you constantly spam the location and sense heading keys. Best spam that location key anyway, because if you die, finding your corpse again is straight from Mission Impossible. Yay, West Karana covered in ice. Thank heaven for zones like the Great Divide, with its mountains, caverns, and landmarks. The points lost during my endless trek across the Eastern Wastelands and Ice Clad Ocean Chain of Empty Islands were restored.
The lag is not as bad as it is in certain Kunark zones (Burning Woods, anyone?), mostly because things are frozen - as in they don’t freaking flutter and twitch every two milliseconds.
Sound
We refuse to believe there are any high level players left who still have music enabled in their options. These people would need treatment. SoV has new music, but it’s as repetitive and ultimately as annoying as the old music. Some sound effects are pretty neat, like the giants’ “speech” and the chittering of the otters.
Value
If you’re over 40th level, if the game has gotten dull for you, and if you really, really like the “Quest” in “EverQuest,” then the expansion is totally worth it. Especially since some stores are pricing SoV to move at ten bucks, but even the recommended price of twenty isn’t unreasonable. If you don’t have a character above 40, and if you’re having plenty of fun in the “old” lands, it’s not really worth it unless you have nothing better to do with twenty bucks.
Conclusion
New zones, some exploring fun until the maps come out. New quests, with more verbal color and detail than ever before. New fun with NPCs. New challenges for uberguilds tired of Old Sebilis. Plenty of meat for a dedicated EQ player to enjoy. And absolutely nothing to make a former player come back from retirement.
Gameplay: 3/5 - It’s been out for a year, they aren’t going to screw with a system hauling in this much cash.
Aesthetics: 3/5 - Varying between wonderful and more of the same blocky chunky goodness you love to laugh at. The inconsistency is annoying.
Sound: 2/5 - Mostly annoying, occasionally cute, and always turned off.
Value: 4/5 - If you already play EQ, another twenty bucks won’t bother you.
The Verdict: 3/5 - Whack A Mole for Enthusiasts.
Our SoV review forum thread can be found here. Ha ha, just kidding, it's here
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