One thing that will have Ultima Online players running to EverQuest is the necessity of team play. Starting about fifth level, you pretty much have to join up with other players in order to continue advancing your character. Most monsters you need to kill just become too powerful for you to survive otherwise. And if you are determined to go at it alone, it takes far far longer to level up. This means you have to learn to work with others fairly and intelligently to become more powerful. There is no room for "soloing" in EverQuest. The multi-user aspect is extremely important, and adds a lot to the game. The problem with this is, people aren't always easy to work with. Getting five friends to work together is difficult. Video game players tend to be independent types, so getting five of us working together is neigh impossible. And when someone dies in your group, you spend a lot of time waiting for them to return and pick up their body and equipment.

Thank you to the Northern Cross Guild for the screenshots.

And now to the center of EverQuest play. The thing that gets people addicted, and there are a lot of EverQuest addicts (they call it NeverRest), is the character building aspect. Like all RPGs through time, building up and buffing up your character is a central aspect of play. If you played a lot of Diablo, you should be familiar with this type of play. You go around killing monsters to gain experience to increase your skills to gain a level to kill bigger monsters to get better armor and so on. It has the addictive qualities of Civilization. In Civilization, you cry "Just one more turn!" In EverQuest you cry, "I'm almost to the next level, then I'll go to bed!" as the clock ticks past 2:00 a.m. And four hours later you're still playing and its time to get ready for work.

This is the core of play, as well as the games biggest fault. For many people, this aspect is incredibly addicting. If you played Diablo into the wee hours of the night, you might be the EverQuest addict type. But if you got bored with the repetition of hacking and slashing, casting spells and buying armor, then hacking and slashing some more, then EverQuest is definitely not for you. We actually fell into the latter class. We found EverQuest to be a game of painful drudgery, excessive repetition, and a leading cause of carpal tunnel syndrome. Whether you like EverQuest or not totally depends on which class you fall into. If you like hack and slash, EverQuest will take over your free time and you will enjoy the play as part of the process. If you don't like it, EverQuest will drive you up the wall and bore you to death and beyond.