In the time I spent in EQ2 these last few months I found myself genuinely surprised and delighted by the way it approaches certain features. It's nothing revolutionary, but after over 6 years spent mostly in World of Warcraft it can be easy to take WoW's ways as standard.
With these things in mind I decided that, for a change, I'm going to post about the positives of various MMOs I play or have played and focus on things they did right, things that added enjoyment (sometimes very subtly), instead of bashing what they did wrong. So to cut to the chase, here are 5 positive things I found in EQ2:
Mentoring
Depending on what MMO lands you've been traipsing through this feature might be something you're very familiar with or completely new to you. Mentoring, as implemented in EQ2, allows you to temporarily reduce your level to that of a groupmate. You keep all your abilities but they are scaled down in power and you incur a penalty to your XP gain (your mentored groupmate gets a bonus), but you can still earn XP based on how mobs con to you at your reduced level. For example if I want to play my lvl 60 conjurer and my wife wants to play her 25 inquisitor we can group, I can reduce my conjurer to level 25 and we can do level 25 mobs together.
Mentoring may not seem to be a big thing, but it's huge boon both to content and teamwork. On the content side it allows players to experience content they missed as they levelled or revisit content they enjoy in a way that retains some of its challenge.The social aspect is of even bigger importance. Have you ever rolled a new level 1 toon you weren't too interested in just to help a friend / girlfriend / relative who was just starting the game? Have you ever hated playing catch-up because your jobless friends got 10 levels ahead of you? Did you ever get tired of slaughtering grey mobs 30 levels below you because your guildmate asked for help? Of course. With mentoring you can do all those things and still be playing the toon you love while getting some xp and challenge out of it.
And to make it all even better, there are chronomage NPCs that allow you to reduce your level without having someone to mentor. So you can even enjoy lower level content solo!
Mounts
Appearance Slots
In addition to the standard inventory slots where you equip your rusty short sword or epic lootz (depending on how addicted to the game you are), EQ2 also gives you a set of appearance slots. These are only available for those slots visible on your 3D model (head, chest, main-hand, etc) and you can place any item you can equip in them. If you leave them empty your looks will be based on your stat item (so you could leave all of them empty and things would work as in any other game), but if you place something in the appearance slot its looks will be visible instead. Meanwhile you still get all the stats of your regular item.
This is not a unique feature but EQ2 gets it right: The custom look isn't tied to a specific item so when you upgrade your stat items your appearance stays the same. It doesn't cost any gold or a trip to an NPC. The items do not have to match - for example my tank uses an axe and shield but her appearance slot is filled with a badass looking two-handed sword. And there's oodles of appearance-only items (which have no stats but look awesome) to be found / quested / bought / crafted. All in all an RPers dream.
The Marketplace
Definetely an odd one for me to place on this list because I'm not at all a fan of micro-transactions. I'd much rather shell out $60 for a boxed expansion and $15 a month and get everything there is to get through gameplay than spend on micro-transactions, but in EQ2 I ended up spending quite a bit on fluff and I didn't even need it for gameplay.
First off, nothing in EQ2's marketplace is required to be competitive. There are no epic loots, no buffs, no combat pets, no potions, no mercenaries. There are a few things in there have some effect on gameplay, but they're all minor. For example there are XP potions but they cap at 100% bonus for 4 hours for a whooping $18. Keeping in mind that everyone can get a 200% rested bonus and that levelling is very easy already, they aren't at all necessary. There's also a few stat items but they can all be bought with Station Cash OR Dungeon Marks (farmed in game). All in all I spent over $250 and I haven't felt driven to buy a single item that affects gameplay.Secondly, the EQ2 Marketplace is packed with a huge variety of stuff. It doesn't matter what you like doing in the game, there's something cool you could buy. From appearance weapons and armor, to non-combat pets, to houses, to mounts, to dungeon layouts and spawners for creating your own dungeons (also buyable with dungeon marks).
Last but not least, you can use your Station Cash balance to pay for services such as server transfers (As an aside, EQ2 server transfers take less than 5 minutes to complete!!), character renames or even to add prepaid subscription time to your account.
Player and Guild Housing
This feature is awesome enough to deserve its own blog post (and maybe one day I will dedicate it one), but to make a long story short in EQ2 you can own houses. The downside is they are instanced. The upsides, however, are many! You can allow others to visit your house and you can even designate friends or alts who can make use of its amenities, place items inside it or redecorate. There's also a huge amount of items that can be placed in houses (in fact a whole tradeskill profession is dedicated to creating furniture and decorations). There's also a huge variety of house types and layouts. I've seen everything from a 2 room shack, to a mansion, to a firey draconic lair, to your own flying island. And just so you aren't too torn by the choices, each of your characters can own 10 of them.
And for a final treat here is a video tour of a player-owned house. The layout is premade, but all the furniture, paintings, statues and other decorations are placed by the owner. One of my characters owns one of these too, but I have to admit mine is not nearly as cool as this one. So for your enjoyment here's the video (made and posted by thesawolf):
