Buy 'EVERQUEST: Gates of Discord': PC

Gates of Discord is EverQuest's seventh expansion in five years, making one wonder just how bad the original Norrathian cartographers were, what with all these "lost continents" popping up lately. This time you get to explore Taeolosia, located off the already existing zone "Nedaria's landing." Don't worry; I didn't know that zone existed either. The stated target audience for this expansion is extremely high-end players - namely, those players who are already flagged for the Elemental planes from the Planes of Power expansion, or are in a guild that's gotten tired of farming the high-end zones.

When the Planes of Power expansion launched 2 years ago, people began to accuse SOE of "softening" up the game. Prior to PoP, players had to wait on boats to get around as well as undertake painfully long corpse runs when they died. With PoP, you got access to a sort of Norrathian Mass-Transit system that allows you to instanteously teleport from a central zone to any city, and the new zones featured a graveyard that allowed you to get your belongings back in a reasonable amount of time. Gates puts what some might call the challenge, and what I call the frustration, back in EQ. The first clue you're back in "EQ Classic" is the wait for the boat that brings you from Nedaria's Landing to the first Gates zone, The Abysmal Sea. There hasn't been a boat ride in EQ since Scars of Velious in 2001, and I can't say I've missed them. The second clue is there aren't any graveyards, so break out the rez timers because the long corpse run is back. The third clue is that you can spend 6 hours doing a Trial and fail, completely wasting your time. Therefore, if you think the halcyon days of EQ are pre-Planes of Power, you'll enjoy the challenge; for the rest of us, this expansion is a reminder that the "good old days" weren't always that good.

Like Planes of Power, you will have to get flagged to progress through the zones. You get flagged by completing a Trial, and unlike PoP, these Trials are designed to be completed by single groups. That design backfires since most groups will be formed around the "Holy Trinity", where the 6-person groups include a Warrior, Cleric and Enchanter, leaving only 3 spots for the less-desirable classes. The Trials are very long, lasting in excess of 6 hours even if you are balanced and know what you are doing.

Gates adds a new class, the Berzerker, to the mix and to be frank EQ needs more classes like Florida needs more snowboarding shops. With SOE still trying to balance the existing classes, it's a little surprising that they tossed another one into the mix. The Berserker is a melee class similar to a Warrior, but restricted to wearing chain armor. They do have some interesting abilities, though. Berzerker's can summon blunt axes and thrown weapons, which are then used in the Berserker's special combat abilities. These combat abilities will cause an opponent to become snared, stunned or move the Berserker down on the mob's hate list. The Berserkers also get another class-specific ability called Auras. Auras are chants that let you boost the damage output of the entire group and they last for one minute and have a re-use timer of thirty minutes.

Gates also makes an attempt at solving a huge problem that has plagued EQ from the beginning: no item decay. Once an item enters the game it never leaves it, and with every expansion introducing better items, yesterday's uber-item is today's junk. To combat "mudflation", SOE now lets you "donate" items to NPC's called Tribute Masters who will then bestow buffs on you. These buffs (Flowing Thought, Regeneration etc.) are usually only attainable through item effects, so in addition to being a cheap way to get these buffs, it's also a great way to "try before you buy" any items with those effects. The downside to the Tributes is you can only buy them in your home city, which is an unnecessary trip. On launch there was a bug that caused you to receive about ten times the amount of Tribute you were supposed too, which meant people could have stayed buffed for days on end. That has since been adjusted and now it feels a little low - it will take about 1,000 platinum pieces/hour to keep the highest Flowing Thought tier going. That seems a little excessive to me, so we'll see if SOE keeps making adjustments.

In addition to the Tributes, Gates introduces group and raid leader abilities. If you are the leader of either of these, a certain amount of XP per kill goes to this alternate advancement pool. The points you earn from leveling these abilities allow you to mark targets, set the main assists, etc. At first, I thought the skills redundant since any group worth their salt was using good communication skills accomplish the same results. Once I saw them in action, though, their value became quite apparent as they allow more streamlined communication, as well as eliminating most problems that poor communication causes. For instance the raid leader can assign each mob a number that everyone can see indicating the order he wants them pulled, eliminating the "oh, I though meant to pull THAT dragon" problems. There's also a smattering of new Alternate Advancement abilities here as well, with some of them being upgrades of existing abilities, and most of them costing many more AA points than older one's, a reflection no doubt on how fast high level players can rack up the points.

Graphically, Gates is one of the better looking expansions since Luclin. While there aren't any new engine enhancements here, the monster and building models are well done. The texturing is likewise excellent, with many areas influenced by Mayan and Aztec styles, matching the similarly themed architecture perfectly. The zones themselves are laid out well with decent terrain. One zone that looks fantastic is the gigantic ship you can board in the Abysmal Sea, which is about the size of the 2 Freeport city zones.

Whether or not you'll enjoy Gates is really going to depend on where you are in your EQ career. If you've explored everything there is to see and you've been bumping heads with the other top guilds in the Elemental Planes, most likely you are already enjoying Gates. I've also noticed that the Gates zones are sparsely populated, so you'll want to head there with a group already formed. On the other hand, if you still have a lot of flags to get in PoP there's still a ton of content appropriate for your level to keep you going. The Tribute, Group Leader and new Alternate Advancement abilities can be used by anyone, and raid leaders may find the expansion worth it just for the new abilities alone. The Berzerker class is a fun novelty, but unless you've been having a hard time deciding what that last alt is going to be, you'll barely notice their existence. Gates is designed for the elite EQ player, so casual players won't get much out of the content. There is a demand for high-end zones, and Gates delivers that quite well. While most of the player base may feel left out by this expansion, it is nice to see SOE address some of the high-end bottlenecks.

Score: 8.0/10