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Everquest I and II Slated For Expansions
GinoMGG writes "Talk about a quick release. Hot on the tail of Desert of Flames SOE is acting fast to give those at the 60 cap something to do. WhoDigs has news from Ubisoft Germany on the Everquest 2 expansion, 'Kingdom of Sky'." Gamespot has word on both the EQLive and EQ2 expansions, while Mobhunter has a closer look at Everquest's 11th expansion - The Prophecy of Ro. From the Gamespot article: "The second expansion for EQII, Kingdom of Sky, will add an all-new structured skill and ability achievement system and will raise the level cap for adventurer and artisans to level 70 and guilds to level 50. It will add 10 new zones, 25 new monsters, and 'troves' of new items. Its plot will concern the Overrealm, a new realm of floating islands suspended at high altitudes, as well as a plot by ancient foes of Norrath to wreak havoc."
Never having played Everquest, I had a look at the wikipedia entry and looks cool... and has TEN expansions to date not counting this one!
Talk about sequels... at least it doesn't have a prequel, does it?.
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Everquest's 11th expansion
And this is why I don't play EQ anymore.
Honestly, I am flabbergasted that they would do this. The server population is so low, that most servers have been combined with others at least twice, if not more often.
A friend of mine recently took Sony up on their offer for a free 21 day trial to an All Station Pass, and updated and logged into EQ. A virtual ghost town was what greeting him. Even the bazaar was mostly empty. And yet Sony put development resources into an expansion.
As for EQ2, an expansion for that is not a surprise, but PvP is. It was pretty much a bust in EQ, and since they really weren't doing a ton of balancing in EQ2, the nerf bat is about to start swinging with a vengence.
I couldn't get into EQ2, even though most of my old EQ friends went there instead of WoW. I tried if a few months after release, when most of the bugs were done, and it just didn't work for me.
"Everquest's 11th expansion"
That's obviously more than one a year. Why not, instead of monthly subscriptions, simply roll a yearly subscription into the price of all these frequent expansions?
Seriously, is anybody still playing EQ without any expansions?
Curious. Expansions in EQ1/2 is starting to mean more vastness that will not be filled. Meanwhile, WoW is getting an expansion, and people are confused. Now...when D&DO comes out, expansions 'should' have a different meaning since D&D type P&P games live on from expansions. I am curious what fealing will be different. I think the mindset toward D&DO is different than other MMOs simply because of its heritage. After finally stopping my WoW habit, I am interested in trying out EQ2 or D&DO, but if EQ2 is going to be coming out with so many pay to play expansions so quickly, I am not sure I want to go that path. However, just having them available to me when my char gets high enough, is a welcome option.
So..anybody play? I thought it might be cool, but the "trial of the isle" demo was a ghetto noob-land and wasn't really fun at all.
I missed the PvP part. I didn't play EQ2 for long, but one of the saving graces that I felt it had was that there didnt' seem to be a danger of them falling into the "nerf everyone so that PvP will be 'ballanced'" trap.
Glad I didn't re-subscribe during the last couple months when I've been bored with WoW...
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
the first sentence should read "I missed the part of the story mentioning the addition of PvP to EQ2".
I post too quickly.
BTW, why does waiting between postings "allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment."? It's not like Joe Bob can't post when I do because I'm hogging the pencil.
Why not have the message just say "We don't want people posting with automated scripts and flooding the thread" and be clear about it?
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Why don't you just get an automated script to queue your posts, that's what the rest of us do.
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Again, to be fair, this will be Blizzards first expansion to WoW and will offer many new things to many people....new and old....to the game.
I should warn you about EQ2 and D&DO. If you like seeing a loading screen every time you go into a new zone, then you may love these two games. D&DO is the worse though. I recently played the beta and a huge amount of the time was taken up just watching a loading screen. I mean, you hit a loading screen just entering a tavern!
I think Blizzard has been great though with WoW with much new content already added for free over the past year. You may want to check out Guild Wars also, since it's just a one time charge for the game and no monthly fees. They are always updating that game also, but for new content they will be coming out with expansions about one every 6 months or so. You don't HAVE to by the expansion of course. Even if you don't like PvP, Guild Wars has a TON of just PvE stuff in there that you can explore. And the game is simply gorgeous, one of the best looking games I've every played (and that's saying a lot since I've played video games since 1980).
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Care to elaborate? :)
From the summary:
Its plot will concern the Overrealm, a new realm of floating islands suspended at high altitudes, as well as a plot by ancient foes of Norrath to wreak havoc.
That sounds an awfully lot like the WoW expansion, except it's Outlands, and it's a plot by the burning legion to destroy everything.
I kind of think DDO will be kind of like EQ2 with the way it handles additional content.
EQ2 has 3 types the free stuff which tends to come out monthly, adventure packs which so far have cost $5-$7 and are self contained dungeons and story lines. Then you have expansion packs which are huge and have many story lines in addition to new levels. All 3 are done by seperate groups so if adventure packs do not profit then no additional ones will be added, same with expansion packs.
As for zoning it is not bad, and coming from AC it was a main thing I was worried about. Excluding log in/out and deaths I perform maybe 5-6 a day(you will zone alot more as a new characters) and the usally consists of teleporting back to home area(where I sell and put stuff in guild bank or personnal bank), zone to transportation hub and check market for stuff I am looking for, zone to main adventure area, then zoning for instances, large dungeons, or further out areas. Then probably a zone to teleport back to home.
First off, companies are out to make money, not give away new content that cost them to make. Welcome to the real world of capitalism. Second off, I play eq2 and welcome any new content. Although I don't have a lvl 50 character yet, I was assume that if you get bored with your maxed out lvl character, start a new character. That's the reason you are given more than one character slot. This game, is far beyond WoW, especially graphically. I played WoW for a few weeks, and found it to be really really boring. With EQ2, I am less bored. All massive games get boring, but some are less boring than others. If you don't want to play, don't pay? Why complain about it?
It will....but this has not been stated as coming out with the expansion.
Woody of gucomics.com has some bright things to say about the EQ1 expansion, namely that once again the whole nature of the game is being changed. (EQ1 will now feature "Spheres of Influence" within which game rules will change).
As such, as with some recent EQ1 expansions, this isn't really an optional expansion but required if one wishes to participate with others.
I don't mind when MMOGs expand, but theoretically an expansion is something you ought to want when you've finished up with what you've already bought, not a required purchase in addition to the monthly subscription.
The EQ2 expansion, on the other hand, is much more along those lines. New places and features, but anyone who's still happily plugging along in the original content won't be FUBAR.
This is not true. Back in May 2005, servers were merged on a 2 to 1 basis, the excpetion being the PvP servers which went from 4 to 1. And thats all the mergers that have happened.