From a technical point of view, Sony Online Entertainment has created one of the most precise, well-built systems ever to grace an online game. Their servers can support up to 3,000 simultaneous players, lags are non-existent even on a simple 56K connection and the downtimes - downtimes are periods in which a server is temporarily closed for maintenance - are rare and brief. The monthly fee you are asked to pay is necessary to maintain the enormous organization behind any MMORPG, and frankly, the almost flawless service offered by SOE is well worth the money. The support service is also very responsive, so players should solve any issue they have with the game in very little time.

Reviewing a MMORPG is not easy. The critic can't use "classic" parameters, since all MMORPGs are a reality in constant expansion. MMORPGs are virtually endless, the world in which they take place can be modified or expanded at any time by the developers, new gameplay elements are added and old ones modified on a daily basis, and the experience varies also accordingly to the kind of persons you play with. Essentially, a year from now (but also a month from now) Everquest Online Adventures will be an even more complex, richer game than the one I reviewed.

Like in any other MMORPG, in EverQuest Online Adventures there isn't a well-defined storyline. Anyhow, there is a rich, breathing fantasy world made of towns, wilderness, ancient ruins, mysterious caves, and dark dungeons; the game is theoretically endless, so your final scope in the game is basically levelling up. For many, the lack of a strong and straight storyline is a limit of the genre; in reality, the true strong point of EverQuest Online Adventures, and other MMORPG, is in the experience itself, and not in the end of it: a MMORPG is a game that wants to be played, not to be completed; as a true explorer would say, the aim of the journey is journey itself - not your final destination.

Connecting to the game world
If you have properly installed the Network Adapter, you should already have set at least one Internet connection. Anyhow, you can set up new Internet connections through the "Network" menu in the opening screen of Everquest Online Adventures. You must select the type of your connection (Modem / Broadband), all the info about your ISP (Internet Service Provider), like username, password, DNS servers, and, if you are using a modem connection, the phone number of your provider.

With your Internet connection properly set up, you can now connect to SOE servers and create your username and password. If you have already played any other SOE game, you can use your existing account. Once you've created your username, you must enter your account key, printed on the cover of the instruction booklet, and insert your billing info. With all this data stored onto your card, you are now ready to play!

...and creating your heroes
Everquest Online Adventures is played on many different servers. Each server is basically a virtual fantasy world that can support up to 3,000 simultaneous players; when you create a character, you must first choose the server in which you want to play. You can create as many characters as you wish, but once created, a character can't be transferred onto another server: he belongs to that world, and there he must live his adventures. This means that if you want to play with your friends, you should all choose the same server. Of course, you can create multiple characters on different servers, but keep in mind that if you have spent hours and hours bringing your Elf on Castle Lightwolf server to Level 30, you'll have to restart from scratch when you create a new character to play with your friends on Diren Hold server.

Creating your character is fun, and if you are like me, you'll create lots of different heroes, until one or two of them will become, for some reason, your favorites, the ones to play with for countless hours.

Players can choose between 10 different races: Dark Elves, Barbarians, Dwarves, Elves, Erudites, Gnomes, Halflings, Humans of the East, Humans of the West, Trolls; each race has different stats: for example, a Troll will have by default higher Strength than a Dark Elf, but lower Intelligence. Anyhow, what's really important is that each race can choose only certain classes, which are the profession of a character. For example, a Barbarian can be a Warrior, a Shaman, or a Rogue, but he can't be a Wizard; to make another example, more "evil" races like Dark Elves, Trolls can be Shadowknights, but not Paladins.

But what is a class? A class is actually the most important characteristic of a character. It affects your stats, the kind of weapons and items you can buy and equip, it determines the special abilities you can use, and basically it defines what your role will be into a group, what your "strategy" should be to survive, level up, and be actually helpful to other players. The developers designed classes so that they could be divided into 4 groups: Tanks, Healers, Damage Dealers, and Casters. Tanks - like Paladins or Warriors - are the heroes that thanks to good resistance and great strength should be always the first to attack, and the last to retreat; Healers - like Clerics or Druids - should stay in the backlines and heal their comrades; Damage Dealers - like Rogues and Monks - can attack with great strength, have special abilities (Bards can heal their friends, for example) but can't take as much damage as Tanks; Casters - like Wizards - can cast very powerful spells, but should attack and support their group from the backlines, since they are weak to the enemy blows. On a note, the mix of race and class you've chosen will also decide in which town you will start your adventure: Elves can come from the peaceful Northern towns of Fayspirie and Tethelin, Trolls live in the swampy lands in the South of Tunaria, and so on. The game world is immense, with more than 320 square miles of land to be explored; it's so vast that seeing a Troll in the Northern cities, or a Eastern man in the West, is actually rare.

You need friends - Playing the game
While this races/classes thing might sound complex, is extremely easy to understand the game systems once you're playing. The greatest thing in EverQuest Online Adventures is that the game is so well balanced that players will easily learn the game basics as they proceed in the adventure, discovering their strengths and weaknesses. From the very beginning, it's very difficult to complete alone the quests your character is given by non-playable characters.

In fact, grouping and socializing is the key to the whole game. In EverQuest Online Adventures you can't fight against other players; you can only fight and kill non-playable characters, and the game is entirely designed to encourage players to make friends and socialize, so that they can share their abilities, strengths, and mutually cover their weaknesses. Grouping is as easy as inviting another player to group with you, and a maximum of four members can be in a group; you could theoretically create the perfect group made of a Tank, an Healer, a Caster, and a Damage Dealer, but the game is always fun, even if the players fall just in one, two or three different categories. There are powerful groups made only of Wizards or Damage Dealers. Soon, you and your new friends will realize the necessity of creating the right strategy to explore the world and attack the enemies, taking into consideration the characteristics of your group.

Levelling up becomes also much faster when you are in a group. Like in most RPGs, experience points are needed to level up. You can gain experience points in two ways: killing monsters and completing quests.

Important non-playable characters will give you quests according to your class and your level. Completing a quest you're usually awarded with thousands and thousand of experience points, and sometimes you are also given new nice-looking and powerful weapons for free. Anyhow, there aren't quests for each level. For example, if you are a Paladin at Level 9 you'll need to level up until level 10 by killing enemies to receive a new quest. It's easy to understand why the developers didn't put a quest for each level: in order to level up, players are encouraged to join groups to kill enemies and help other players completing their quests, so that they can make more experience points in less time.

In fact, when you're into a group, not only you can kill stronger enemies much more easily, but you also get more experience points, since the game features a bonus group experience multiplier: basically, the more players you have in your group, the more points you'll get when killing enemies. Of course, it's important that you group with the right persons, and that you behave in the group following many simple common sense rules: for example, a good group member should let others loot the bodies of dead enemies; often, it's useful to decide to follow an "Alpha" looting strategy, just to avoid useless discussions: players agree to loot enemies in alphabetical order. Of course, if you grab an item that is completely useless for your class, it makes sense to trade it with a member of your group who actually needs it. Fortunately, I can say that a great many of players I've met playing EverQuest Online Adventures were always ready to help and to divide the loot with other group members. There is a great friendly atmosphere in the community of EverQuest Online Adventures that makes the game enjoyable and relaxing.

Guilds are the next step in terms of cooperative gaming. You can create your own guild if you are a group leader and you have 5,000 Tunars (Tunar is the currency unit in EverQuest Online Adventures), or you can simply be invited by other guild members to join them. A guild can be made of dozens of members willing to help each other and to follow the "way of life" of the guild. Little by little, certain guilds can become popular in the in-game world, especially if they have a good reputation, for example if their members are always ready to help players in difficulty. Guilds have also a ranking system, and only higher-level members can promote lower members. Guilds are fundamental in EverQuest Online Adventures since there are enemies, like enormous powerful dragons, who can be killed only by a big team of good players.

But there is much more than this in EverQuest Online Adventures, and it would be impossible for me, and useless for you, to go into further details here. So, instead of listing all the game features, I think it would be more fun to see how the game actually works, narrating an actual orc-hunting quest.

Orc-hunting is fun!
Many days ago, I was playing EverQuest Online Adventures with a new character I had created: his name is Toshiro, and he's a black-haired, nice-looking Elf - a Paladin. I was roaming in the centre of Fayspirie, and I came across an Elf who wanted my help to avenge the death of his loved ones. His family was killed by a band of orc thugs. I accepted to kill the orcs and bring him back their bandannas as a proof of my deeds.

But I needed other players to help me with my quest. I selected "Shout" in the "Chat Mode" menu so that all players in the surroundings could read my message. Soon, a couple of players decided to join me and invited me to be part of their group: Icer, a Wizard, and Jmurda, a Paladin. At that time, we were all around a low Level 9. I accepted the invitation, and on the left of my screen appeared the name of my new comrades with their respective hit points bars. In the top left corner of the screen, the compass helped me locating Icer and Jmurda; colored dots indicates the direction you should follow to reach your fellow group members. Considering there is no in-game map, this simplistic feature is absolutely fundamental. I approached them, selected the "Wave" action from the "Actions" menu, and then I switched to "Group" in the "Chat Mode" menu, so that only Icer and Jmurda could read my messages.

"Ok" I said. "I need to find those orc thugs, kill them and steal their bandannas." "I must do the same quest." said Icer. "Me too, I just got it." confirmed Jmurda. We decided to start looking around the orc camps next to the city. To avoid useless damage, or encounters with enemies too strong for our low levels, Icer cast his invisibility spell over all of us. In this way, orcs would have been unable to spot us. In EverQuest Online Adventures is easy to know the strength of an enemy: when you target a creature (with R1 button), the colored circle around the target indicates its strength compared to your current level. So, for example, a green enemy is much weaker than you and you can kill it with ease, light blue and blue enemies are weaker than you but can be a bit dangerous if you attack them alone, and so on. Red enemies are way stronger than you, and can be a threat even if you attack them with the help of other friends.

Going back to my orc-hunting campaign, all of a sudden Jmurda attacked a red-level spider; the creature, which previously was peacefully walking around, attacked and killed two of us. Fortunately, death in EverQuest Online Adventures is handled in a less "cruel" way than in EverQuest PC. While in the PC game you lose a certain amount of experience every time you die, in EverQuest Online Adventures you incur an "experience debt": a percentage of the experience points you get is used to pay this debt, until it's paid in full.

We regrouped, and continued our quest. No orc thugs were in the first and second camp, but we finally reached a more hidden camp where many orc thugs were wandering. Slowly, we moved towards them and started to attack. Icer used his magical powers to hit them, while Jmurda and I attacked with our swords. The real-time combat system is pretty straightforward. Once you've targeted an enemy, you just have to press the X button to attack him; your stats and weapons determine the amount of damage and the speed of your attacks. We killed a few orcs, but we found just a pair of bandannas. Anyhow, we had to rest in order to recover a bit of health.

In fact, your health and power (power is used for special abilities) constantly regenerate in EverQuest Online Adventures. While in EverQuest PC you had to eat food and drink water, in EverQuest Online Adventures food and drink are important just to recover more rapidly in between battles. Anyhow, the best and fastest way to heal is having a Healer as a friend (or being a Healer yourself).

Well, we went back to the camp and happily kept on slaying those nasty orcs for a long time, until we found the bandannas we needed to complete our quest.

The limits of EverQuest Online Adventures
I played the game for countless hours, and I must say that there are few games that sucked me into their in-game worlds like EverQuest Online Adventures. Sure, this is because playing with real people is much more exciting than playing with A.I. controlled characters, at least on my opinion, but this is also because Sony Online Entertainment, thanks to years of experience with EverQuest for PC, created an incredibly smooth, well-balanced, refined online experience that is more accessible than its PC big brother, but also complex enough to offer hundreds of hours of absolute fun.

The game has its limits, but they're all secondary issues, small smudges in an overall excellent picture. First of all, let me complain about the lack of in-game maps. EverQuest Online Adventures takes place in one the biggest game worlds ever created, and there is no in-game map to guide you during your adventures. So even reaching a big town becomes difficult if you haven't the support of players who have already been there and that can guide you or give you the necessary indications. There are many websites featuring user-designed maps, but having them in-game would be much better. Even very generic maps, displaying just the position of your character and your buddies on the world map, would be enough.

Another thing that must be highlighted is that the game offers almost no space to lone heroes. This was not a problem for me, but it's not difficult to imagine that like in real life there are persons who might want to be lone heroes, the Solid Snake(s) of the world of Tunaria. Unfortunately, there is little space for them, since, in a way or in another, you'll be forced to group with other players. EverQuest Online Adventures is all about cooperative gaming. But is this a limit? You decide.