When Steam offers a sale, Steam pulls no punches. This holiday has been one of the best sets of sales in the video game industry that I can remember, mostly thanks to Steam's Black Friday deals and this insanely long holiday special that's currently going on. Their deals are so great that the sales are actually crippling their bandwidth -- quite a feat for a service that has one huge bandwidth pipeline.
But we're not here to talk about Steam today. We're here to talk about EverQuest II and specifically why you should consider getting back into the game if you were a former subscriber, or if you're a brand new player. The reason? The game is five bucks.
Five. Five dollar. Five dollar MMO game. (Not to be confused with five dollar footlong subs.)
The price belies the game
EverQuest II is not a five dollar game by any stretch of the imagination, and that's what makes this deal so amazingly awesome. The graphics, the voice work, the game systems and the huge chunks of content that you get with the game are well worth five bucks.
Even today, EQII pushes computers to their limits with 3-D texture art, great shadows and lighting, beautiful spell effects, reflections, and what can only be scientifically referred to as "a boatload of pretty." Beyond the eye candy, however, lies an intricate game that really lets you do what you wish to do. When you enter Freeport or Qeynos, expect to find your own path through the city and take quests at your leisure. Explore, trip across quests, and really have an adventure instead of "jobs on rails" in some of EQII's areas.The game has over 80 levels of content, meaning that you're certainly not going to run out of things to see or places to go easily. Even veteran adventurers can take advantage of new options, like the "alternate advancement" scheme which lets you apply experience points towards getting talent points for your class.
Great for new players, great for old players
Another one of the reasons that this game in particular is getting the "Why You Should Be Playing" treatment is the fact that this sale is a comprehensive package of win.
If you're new to the game, then you can jump on over and get yourself the Rise of Kunark starter pack, which gives you the EverQuest II base game and all of the expansions up to and including the Rise of Kunark. That's four expansion packs and three downloadable adventure packs worth of content and 30 days of play time all for five bucks. The only thing you're missing is The Shadow Odyssey, and that's currently five bucks too.
For old players, you can pick up The Shadow Odyssey, and get back into the game for five bucks. As with prior expansion packs, The Shadow Odyssey is a compilation pack that includes all of the prior expansion and adventure packs. This means you can catch up with anything you may have missed, all for just five bucks. While buying The Shadow Odyssey won't give you any in-game time, you can certainly toss 15 bucks towards a month of play to see what's changed.
Beware the Sentinel's Fate
And, as my last reason, this is a great deal to use to get yourself ready for EverQuest II's upcoming expansion, Sentinel's Fate. Sentinel's Fate is adding two all new areas, more monsters, more quests, and more pandas.
So, why not take advantage of a really good offer and get a foothold in a new game right before it gets a huge swell of brand new content? Five bucks is a great MMO deal, especially for a game of this caliber and size.
