Smokejumper responded to a thread from nine days ago on the EQ2 Forums asking for a clear answer to what exactly is Age of Discovery.  He basically said what we already knew about the content included in Age of Discovery.  Reading through it and some of his follow up posts, it looks as though the “expansion” will be coming out near the end of November but price and distribution information won’t be released until next week by the marketing folks.

Information about the upcoming Age of Discovery expansion has been few and far between, however SmokeJumper did take a moment to clear up how XP and loot will work:

Actually, you earn XP *and* tokens. The tokens are used to acquire items for any of your characters, not just the one you have currently logged-in. XP and tokens are awarded at the end of the dungeon run and based on a challenge rating system that should prevent exploiting. More on this soon.

As we heard at Fan Faire (which may, of course, have changed since then) is that there will be two vendors for DYOD, one selling armor/weapons/loot for your main characters, and one selling parts to add cool stuff to your own dungeons.

No additional information has been released about what choices there will be for DYOD Avatars (since you cannot play your own characters, you must pick one of the provided avatars), if you’ll be able to buy upgrades for them, etc.

From EverQuest2.com:

Closed Beta registration for “Age of Discovery” is now open! Applications are available at this link. Beta testing is vital to ensure a great product launch. We appreciate your participation and welcome any and all feedback.

Click the link above, sign in with your Station Account, complete the application process, and your application will go into the queue for approval. Please be sure to read and accept the NDA. All applicants must have accepted the NDA in order to be considered for participation. All applicants will receive an email to confirm that their application was received.

Applications will be reviewed starting on October 27th. Closed Beta will close on November 14th.

Players who are approved for Closed Beta will receive an email informing them of their acceptance, so please confirm that we have your correct email address during the registration process.

Beta acceptance emails will go out between October 27th and November 16th.