Once you play through the tutorial, you’ll find yourself on the Isle of Refuge which can also be called Isle of Newbies. On this island you’ll learn more about the game, particularly questing, tradeskills, and grouping. There’s enough here to keep you busy for some time, and you’d be wise to rack up some experience on the island before choosing to move on. Unfortunately, your experience and level are capped while on the island, so you may find that you can no longer accumulate experience long before you complete all of the quests the island has to offer.

Next it is on to your designated city – well almost. You start out in a low rent quarter of your city until you complete a special quest to gain citizenship in the city and the right to move freely through Norrath. You’re not completely destitute, though, as you’ll be given your very own apartment which you can keep as long as you make your rent payments. It will even come with a few basic decorations and a table which you can place to your liking. As you accumulate wealth you can choose to spend it on things for your place and decorate it to your heart’s content. You can even have friends over by specifying a player access list for your place. Some gamers will probably spend a lot of time decorating and admiring their homes, but most adventurers will rather spend their time out in the world.

Just one of the many monsters awaiting you in Norrath.

One of the first things that will really strike you about your starting city is how alive it is. There are NPCs everywhere going about their business and their lives. Even more striking is the fact that they are all voiced. You will hear them speaking to each other and calling out to you, and if you choose to speak to them the whole conversation will be voiced. Needless to say this adds a whole new layer of immersion to the game and really helps to bring it to life. When speaking with the locals you will quickly find that there is certainly no shortage of quests available for you to take on. You’re free to accept them as they come, and the game provides a handy journal to help you keep track of them all. You can highlight a quest in the journal and the game will automatically display the next step in the quest in the upper right corner of the screen for you. Initially most of your quests will be along the lines of “deliver this” and “kill 5 of that”, but early on you’ll be spending your time running around and killing little critters anyway, so it’s a good way to get some bonus experience and items. Once you complete a quest and return for your reward you’ll be thankful for one feature of EQ2 that is particularly nice. You can ask the local guards for the location of any NPC and a glowing trail will lead you straight to him or her. It sounds like a little thing, but there is nothing more frustrating than running through an area crowded with NPCs trying to remember how the one you spoke with two days ago looked and this feature completely alleviates that frustration.

When out in the world enemies are color-coded to let you know if you’ll be overmatched or not before you begin an attack. The game also lets you know if the enemy you’ve targeted tends to bring allies into a fight or if it is something that is better left to grouped players. These are all good aids to keeping you from getting in over your head without knowing it. Attacking is easy enough to do, you just need to target a creature and then press one of your attack buttons. These buttons reside on a convenient toolbar that you can customize to your liking. You can queue up attacks as well, so for example a mage can move right into a second spell once he finishes casting the first. You’re free to move around while fighting so taking flight is always an option if things go south fast, although moving while casting a spell will interrupt it. EQ2 minimizes your downtime between fights by allowing you to recover your health and mana at a fairly brisk rate. This is a welcome feature as with all the time you will spend fighting the last thing that you want is to be forced to sit around doing nothing but watching your health meter slowly inch up.

When fighting in a group (and for higher level solo players) you will be presented with Heroic Opportunities. These are like group combos, and require group members to initiate a sequence of spells and attacks. If someone misses their part in the chain, the whole Heroic Opportunity is lost. It sounds simple enough but in truth these are hard to pull off because everyone in the group is usually frantically unleashing attacks and can very easily miss their spot in the chain or not even realize that one has started. Pull it off though and you’ll be rewarded with a temporary boost to one of your group members’ attack related ratings.

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