EverQuest wasn't the first game of its kind when it was released in 1999, but it was the best, and remained the best for a long time. Along with Ultima Online, it deserves credit for popularizing the massively multiplayer online role-playing genre, and it's still widely played to this day. As a result, the inevitable EverQuest II has some seriously big shoes to fill. And it almost does. In many ways, this new game embodies almost all the numerous refinements and evolutions that the genre has undergone in the past five years, so it's one of the most instantly gratifying and accessible online RPGs yet. It also sports a rather impressive presentation, thanks largely to an ambitious effort to make almost all the game's non-player characters communicate using full speech. Yet when you get right down to it, EverQuest II really isn't that different from the numerous other games of its type, and its mostly great visuals are offset by subpar technical performance. So while EverQuest II isn't the massive step for the genre that its predecessor was, it can still be a fun and addictive online role-playing experience that has a lot to offer new and experienced players alike.