Ok look. I understand that most MMORPGs are supposed to be open-ended, and therefore don't always have the best storylines, or the most well-developed characters. However, most MMORPGs have at least a setting and/or background story (however vague), but this one didn't even try! It was just "ok Jon, here you are...in a world...with a class...start killing stuff...don't ask why..."

That kind of thing really doesn't do it for me. When there is no storyline, there is no real goal to work towards. Sure you run around leveling up and getting items but why!? When there is no storyline, then there is no overall goal to look forward to, which, in my opinion, really takes the heart out of a game (particularly one that has the phrase 'role playing game' in its genre). The whole "story" is just a never ending cycle of "go here, kill there, buy that" which I found to be nauseatingly repetitive. I know a lot of people are obsessed with this game, but I don't think anyone is going to argue that it has no real storyline.

Well I'll say it again, without a good storyline, the gameplay had a kind of meaninglessness to it. You're just sort of wandering around doing whatever, which I got tired of pretty quickly. Storyline types like me need an overall goal to work towards, doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff doesn't work for us.

The battle system and character customizations (and there were a lot of character customization options) are pretty good until you get past a certain level. Once you hit that certain level, you lose all of your items when you die, and the only way to get them back is to run over to your corpse (which can take a long, long time to find in EverQuest's huge world) and loot it. A lot of the time when I died, I ended up begging someone for a resurrection (which is humiliating, and forces you to deal with crippling 'resurrection effects' while nearby monsters probably kill you again). Also, when you die you lose experience, which means you can actually level down. Level down! The whole point of the game is to walk around and make your character more powerful and here you are leveling down! That was not cool!

Also, there are a lot of areas where you need a huge party to do stuff. It's true, the whole point of a MMORPG is to play with your friends online. But too often you'll find a quest or an enemy that you need tons of people to defeat. After a certain point, almost every quest is like that; there's very rarely anything you can do by yourself - or even with a reasonably-sized group. Enormous parties are hard to keep organized, and bring up a lot of "Who gets the loot?" and "Hey that was my kill! Give it back...somehow!" issues. You can get by alright if you have a huge party going, but sometimes you just can't find that many to work with you.

Finally, it takes a really long time to level up (which was kind of a shot through the heart for me, since I never got to the point where I could hang out in the difficult areas my two friends did). I got somewhere past level 10, and then they finally lost me with that level down concept. If you do start playing the game, try to get some friends to start out along with you, so that you can develop your characters side-by-side, and have each other to interact with from the get-go. That will hopefully solve at least one problem.

Overall it didn't keep my interest for very long. I had a lot of fun designing my own custom characters, but without a solid storyline to explore I almost felt like they were going to waste. The battle system has its ins and outs. It's highly customizable, but comes with a pretty steep learning curve. It's fun chatting with other players online, but getting huge parties together is time consuming, and often ends up being really disorganized. It has its moments, but it's certainly nothing I would pay a monthly fee for.

There is no real character development, just a bunch of npcs giving you vague quests for vaguer reasons. Your character is developed in the sense that he or she is highly customizable, but that's it. As far as getting to know your character and watching his or her personality develop, this game offers almost nothing.

The battle system has its moments. On one had, it is highly customizable and intricate, which gives the player a lot to explore. On the other hand, the learning curve is pretty steep. Also, because different classes often have such different battle systems, the player may almost feel like he is starting back from day one when he creates a new type of character.

The classes are, for the most part, reasonably well-balanced. Granted, there are some races that are predisposed to being better at certain classes, but the player has the option of choosing others that are more versatile.

Now for the main flaw: level gaining. As I mentioned earlier, leveling up is a slow process, so it takes a long time to make your character respectively powerful, or even powerful enough to get a long way from the area you start in.

For a battle sytem it's alright, but with a steep learning curve and a slow moving level gain system, it requires a great deal of patience, free time, and monthly payments to really get going (the fact that you can level down doesn't help much either...).

The game has no story, which means it has no ending, which means technically it can't have any replay value. However, its huge amount of classes and character types do an excellent job of encouraging players to build multiple characters.

In my case, however, I found the monthly fee to be detrimental to the game's replay value. Knowing that you are losing money - real money - if you don't play the game for X number of hours every month constitutes a sort of economic pressure that the game would be better off without. The redundancy of creating characters to move around in a world with no storyline can also get a tiring.

I actually thought the graphics were sub-par. I mean they were alright, but I expected a bit more. The environments are about average, and the characters are not very detailed. Not bad, not great.

Same as the graphics, really. The music is alright, but it's not spectacular.

If you don't like the music, you can upload your own via the mp3 function, which can be fun. But since it's the game's music I'm grading, and not other music being uploaded, we'll leave that aside.

Well suffice to say I didn't like it. The non-existent storyline and general lack of character development brings a sense of meaninglessness to the repetitive gameplay, and is rough on the game's replay value. I did have fun chatting and playing with other members of the community, but it's a step too far when you get to the point where you need a huge party to get anything done. The graphics and music are not very attention-grabbing either.

The battle system is alright, but, because it takes a long time for the player to get powerful, it stagnates a bit after a while. The replay value is complemented by the neigh-endless character customizations, but it's not enough to compensate for the lack of an engrossing storyline, or the monthly fee.

If you're in the market for an online game, I'd recommend Guild Wars, (and Eric would probably recommend World of Warcraft). Guild Wars is an online game with no monthly fee, better gameplay, and has an engrossing story. If you're in the market for a MMORPG, you can easily do better than EverQuest.