Since I first caught a glimpse of the upcoming Everquest 2 (EQ 2) at this year’s Games Convention (GC) in the German city of Leipzig, I couldn’t await the day to actually play the game and be a part of the online community that is about to settle down in the “new” Norrath! Despite all this enthusiasm, however, I pondered some skeptical questions while finally downloading the huge beta client (around 3 GB): Would EQ 2 go down the way of another hype or would it live up to its potential and be a more than worthy alternative to that other “Big One”, Blizzard’s World of Warcraft (WoW)? And would Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) finally manage something that no other company in the MMO-business has been able to, yet – bring a devout single player like me into the online community?