I'll save you a long read any give you the answer up front ... In my opinion Everquest Legends is a phoenix rising from the ashes of its classic Everquest roots. Is it perfect? That's a laughable question just given the Everquest roots in general, but suffice it to say, no, it's not perfect. But truth be told, it or any MMO never will be, so I didn't expect it from the start. You are never going to perfectly balance the expectation and desire of that many people, I highly doubt you could even get something perfect for a single person because too often desires contradict each other if you really examine what people say they want.
But let me back up a pace since this is the first time that I've brought this up here. What IS Everquest Legends? It would be easy to say that it is Everquest returning to it's classic era and starting anew, but that's not right, or at least it isn't the full truth. Yes, it is going back to the 1999 graphics, zones, dungeons and such, but it's more than that too. New quests, new lore, this isn't fully resetting the timeline to the Classic era start point, this is the start of a new story taking place in Norrath, it's not intended to be a re-telling of the story that's already been told.
I'm not going to go into the lore here, I don't have all of it (or even most of it really), and while it does provide a slightly different backdrop for the game and characters, mechanically that's not what makes the game different from Classic EQ ... rather it's the plaster and paint used to explain WHY mechanics are different and why things aren't following the same paths. It's significant, but it's the icing rather than the cake.
So what's mechanically different - First, you start as a multi-class character, and eventually unlock (at level 10) the ability to add a third class to the mix. While your Primary class must start as a class available to your chosen race, there are no restrictions on your 2nd and 3rd class choices. I forget the math, but without repeated combos (Warrior/Monk/Wizard vs Wizard/Warrior/Monk for example) ... I believe this still gives something over 500 unique combinations. While not all combos are going to work as well as others, they all seem to be viable over all. They have also revamped the classes (Rogues and poisons, for example to simplify the experience and make some of the class abilities more accessible ... in addition they have added in races and classes that were not originally available in classic EQ. Notably Iksar, Froglok, and (eventually if not at launch) Kerran, as well as Berserker, and Beastlord.
Then there is item merging and spell upgrades. The game allows you to merge items of the same base name together into a better version of the item ... so a rusty sword and a rusty sword can be merged into a rusty sword +1 which has slightly better stats ... you can then merge another rusty sword +1 and get a rusty sword +2 ... or merge two rusty swords into the rusty sword +1 to get a +2 up to +10 (though each tier requires more merging to get to the next tier). Motes of Potential also drop as loot in the game and those can be used to upgrade items OR to upgrade spells in your spell book modifying different stats such as cast time, mana cost, resistance adjustment, and damage (or summoned level in the case of pet spells).
All in all, good changes. The game is much more casual and solo friendly, while it has the old familiarity, the new systems and new lore give different over all feel to the game that really changes how it plays and what you can do as a player in good ways. Having played in closed beta and pre-order beta I am happy to say that I re-found my love for Everquest and I'm really looking forward to launch tomorrow July 28th (man I meant to post this a week ago .... what even is time any more). So .... what's the bad?
I will tell you right now, most of what I'm going to list as issues, many people will think are great. First leveling is too fast, I personally would love a means to actually lower my experience gain while still actually playing and enjoying the game. I'm a casual player, I get that you want to feel progress but character levels should have a feeling of accomplishment, instead they kind of feel like a hand out. But 'you can level all the classes and you have to grind out and max your gear' That is true, but a lot of casuals don't necessarily WANT to level every class to 50 and don't care to grind +10 gear in every slot ... after a point you'll soft cap if not hard cap things anyway. In short, those options won't keep people engaged once they max what they want, or at least get them to levels that they're happy with.
Another thing to me, is single character per server per account. I know that there are technical reasons for this, and yes, I know that you can have all of the different class combos on a single character. To me (and more than a few RPers) the draw of an alt isn't just leveling something new ... it's a new character, a new persona, a new story, and that doesn't feel the same changing things on a single character. They do have plans for an Alias system so that loadouts can have different names and therefor be different 'characters', but as of the end of Pre-Order Beta last week, that's just a promise and some slight details, it didn't even make the 6 month roadmap that they released over the weekend so will it be in for launch? I have my doubts but they haven't said one way or another.
This last one isn't game breaking, just feels ... well to be honest ... rushed. They're revamping the zones in game, adjusting spawns, loot, etc. But not all zones have had their revamp completed. This combined with the XP rate is what really makes it the issue. People are going to hit the 'non-revamped' dungeons the day of launch, and either people will flood to the revamped dungeons (as they did in Beta) or complain about the disparity. Likewise, features like the touted 'Revised maps for every zone' but while I'm hopeful that it will be in for launch, I noticed on the roadmap they put out that it noted "Continuing into summer" so the implication is that not ALL of the maps will be in at launch ... so again ... it just makes things feel 'unfinished' or like they ran out of time. I really feel that things would likely be smoother and feel more polished if these things had been finished before launch. Open world zones could have come later, but I really feel like the dungeons and maps should have been fully finished before launch. Tomorrow, we'll get the launch patch and some things may get addressed, they've already teased a lot of class adjustments and additions rounding out and filling in missing class features that have been added since the end of the Beta Test last week, but again this leads to a bit of the feeling of being rushed ... These changes haven't been through the Beta/Test server pipeline. While I'm sure that they have been fully vetted and tested internally regular MMO experience shows me that something not mass tested on a test server or a separate Beta process is likely going to have bugs and or balance issues that don't show up as reliably in internal testing.
Now ... ALL of that said. MMOs are, by their nature, ever changing and evolving. Do I expect bugs, sure, do I expect balance issues? Probably. Do I have faith in the team to get things addressed and finished up? Absolutely. The team behind the game is dedicated and enthusiastic, they're fans of the game just as much as developers. To them this isn't a chance to cash in on nostalgia, this is a chance to make a game they love as much as they loved the original Everquest, and to do it with the backing and support of the company that originally developed that game. And I think that once this gets going ... it is going to be an amazing ride.
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