In this block we takes two stops in SoE town, one in a broken but kind of amazing title, followed by a polished but far less well-aged one, and then whatever the hell Requiem was thinking.
Episode 49: Dragon’s Prophet
I love you… you stupid, stupid fucking game. Your broken ass, 5 breast slider havin’, crash happy clipping fest is some of the most fun I’ve had in an MMO until you apparently ran out of content and decided to just force us into horrible grinds until we were high enough level to be allowed to take more quests.
The combat is what hooked me as it felt a lot more like what I always thought a reticle combat game should be. The other two notable examples used the all too common issue of merely assigning your skills to the various click and hotkeys, except you had to aim them now. Coupled with a familiar dodge mechanic, Dragon’s Prophet went one step further by letting you use left and right click to chain together combo attacks, and even your hotkeyed skills would depend on when and how often you pressed them to combo into each other or themselves. It was fascinating, and very fun stuff once you got it down. I have heard that certain classes went under a revamp that don’t make their fighting prowess feel as good, and that makes me sad, even if I haven’t tried it out personally.
Then of course, there’s the fucking DRAGON RIDING/COLLECTION aspect that brought about this almost Pokemon-esque addiction to the game. We kept capturing, trading out and training dragons to get the best possible combo of travel, combat functions and looks.
Of course, once I hit that grindwall it slowed me quite a bit from wanting to play it, and I knew it was a game that would get me trapped if I wan’t careful. I kinda want to go back and see how it’s doing, but I think SoE evolution into Daybreak left this game on the backburner for things like H1Z1. Sad, really.
Recommended?: YES.

Episode 50: Everquest II
This was a pretty meh time for me. I dug the ease of things like housing, but I wasn’t really much of a fan of the rest of the game. The “importance” of the title was placed more on its predecessor, but I really didn’t like the combat system. The questing was ok, offering up a few unexpected twists, like the fact you’re tasked to kill several enemies only to arrive in the place they are, see they’re all dead, and have to investigate why. (Which my honest original guess was “another player got here before me.”). The housing system was robust, and the world looked well enough and played solidly, but little about the game made me want to keep going. I don’t dislike it enough to keep from suggesting people try it, though.
Recommended?: YES.

Episode 51: Requiem: Memento Mori
Placed on the backburner twice, this Horror MMO was anything but scary in the traditional sense. Though there were plenty of creepy enemy designs, the game just seemed like it was trying way to hard to be scary, and offering up nothing more than the aforementioned enemy designs, some frankly ridiculous blood and dismemberment physics, and leeching off of H.R. Giger’s design philosophy. One of the laziest Korean Grinders I’ve ever played and I can’t in good faith suggest anyone check it out for any reason. Apparently it was better under a different publisher? Whatever the hell I was playing, sure wasn’t. Skip it.
Recommended?: NO.