Everquest 2: Music and Sound, an EverQuest 2 Review.

During our play time on Saturday we had access to top of the line machines without surround sound. Even with a basic sound system we were all impressed. When entering a zone we would hear the intro theme song specific to that zone. If it was supposed to be scary like Black Burrow then the music was evil and spooky to set the mood. One of the things that I appreciated was how they went from there. About a minute after loading into a zone the intro music would fade out and the theme would be set. Ambient sounds would start to add to your experience. All of the music was done in Prague by Laura Karpman.

In EQlive when leveling in a dungeon, hearing the 1 minute and 30 second music theme over and over ... well it became a tad repetitive and annoying. At this point people would mute the eqlive music and turn on the MP3 player (which you can still do by the way). I didn't hear anyone confirm a built in MP3 player but John Blakely specifically said that you can minimize the program and do anything you want while still in game.

Back to the point of this review .... Sound but more specifically surround sound. Walking in a town you will pass NPC's that watch you as you pass. They may say something under their breath, or ask you to come back for a story or quest. With surround sound it will sound very much like someone is actually behind you. The only downside to this is everyone is going to think you're crazy when you keep turning around to say "WHAT?!?!?!?".

The voice over system is truly everything they promised and more. Since they have started recording they have actually hired over 200 actors just for the voice over purposes. Everyone says something - including some of the monsters. I was truly impressed with the voice over system and they have plans to continue adding voice until release. I did ask about expansions and voice overs are something they plan to continue and to improve as the game goes on.

What really blew my mind during the interview was Chris Cao and Glenn Snyder talking about monster languages. In EQlive you had the opportunity to learn the languages of your enemy. You still can, however a few things have changed. Chris briefly explained a few of the differences to me. You no longer have to go to a trainer and chain click on 'Orcish' 100 times. Instead, you learn languages by doing quests and by crafting. Furthermore, there is actually a reason to have these languages now. When fighting in groups often you will be up against AI groups, meaning a PC (player character) group against an NPC (Non-Player Character) group. Let's say your cleric is overhealing like I do. The Orcs will all yell "GET THE HEALER" in voice over ... they will usually then continue to kill the healer. If you understand the orcish languages you will hear "Get the healer" in English, if you do not understand it you will hear "GRARBEN SNOBINDEDOBIN GAGURBEN". Some other reasons you want to understand certain languages is because as Chris Cao explained it kind of works like a faction. If you're near a dragon that gives a quest and you go near him ... he might start giving you a quest ... or kill you. If you don't understand the language then he will just eat you. This makes the game feel alot like Velious in the sense that you can work hard to get your language up to do a quest for a dragon.

The last thing that I really wanted to comment on was what we were told by John Blakely. He said "We are playing nice with voice chat programs like teamspeak keeping the ports open so people can talk". He did say that there were no plans for a built in voice communicator at launch.

All in all the sound and music is great. It helps create the feeling that you are returning to Norrath but in a completely different world at the same time. I'm at 31 thousand feet as I type this making my way back home from one of the best weekends of my life. I cannot express enough how excited I am about this game. For now however you have WarCry and so many other great fansites out there to keep you drooling.

Until next time,
Tamat