A critical look at EverQuest II: The Shadow Odyssey

by Michael Zenke on Nov 8th 2008 5:00PM

Massively tries to be your one-stop shop for everything MMO related ... but there's a danger to a site like ours. Ultimately, we become so close to the subject matter that we stop being able to objectively judge content. That's one of the reasons we try to avoid any definitive statements in preview materials. We're so used to MMOs that we try to adopt a passive viewpoint, a somewhat-impartial observer for the prospective player. That's useful to a lot of people ... but it can also allow the chance for critical observations to go by the wayside. Luckily, we're far from the only website on the internet talking about MMOs.

Eurogamer's MMO coverage has been very good since they started that subsite earlier this year, and they have an engaging look at EverQuest II: The Shadow Odyssey well worth reading. Author Jon Blyth is anything but passive in his discussion of the game, calling the expansion's occasional platforming puzzle "a flattering name for dodgy [gameplay] in a genre that really wasn't designed for it." He offers up a greater sense of what touring the new EQ2 expansion was like, and his walkthrough discussion of the dungeons gets across a newcomer's wonder at lore bastions like Befallen and Mistmoore Manor. Well worth a look for another viewpoint on the upcoming expansion, and a great contrast to our own gallery-style walkthrough.

The Shadow Odyssey Grand Tour

Tags: eq2, everquest-2, everquest-ii, expansion, soe, sony-online-entertainment, the-shadow-odyssey, tso

Reader Comments (1)

I'm a big EQ2 fan but, sadly, just cancelled my pre-order on this expansion. Why? I roll with a 3-person level-locked group that takes on challenging heroic content wherever we can find it; and we have level-locked trios of all tiers. The instances in TSO, however, scale only to the *level* of the group -- not its size -- and from what I understand there is no difficultly option like Splitpaw. This implies that the difficulty is always fixed for a full, 6-person group and, being as we are not raid-geared, will be too tough for us. I guess we could play the "mentor game" to tweak the difficulty a little but we prefer to keep our trios adventuring together.

Hopefully, I am wrong and there is a difficulty option before entering an instance but in the meantime I (and my buddies) am taking a "pass" on this expansion.