EverQuest II: Age of Discovery
Last night we got our first glimpse at the next EQ2 expansion, EverQuest II: Age of Discovery. And believe it or not, it’s coming this fall — November 2011. So much for my predictions that the next EQ2 expansion would be summer or fall 2012. Now you may be saying to yourself, wait a minute didn’t we have an expansion this February?
EverQuest II: Age of Discovery, while it will undoubtedly have new content, will be largely a Features expansion. Destiny of Velious content, including overland zones, group dungeons, and raids will continue to be released in content updates in August, November, and well into 2012 2013. This is a new approach to expansions as usually, once a new expansion has been released, previous expansions have rarely gotten new dungeons or content besides quest revamps, etc.
So what can we expect this year? Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson, Executive Producer of the EverQuest franchise including EQ, EQ2, and EQNext, revealed several new items.
In lieu of a level cap raise we’ll see another increase in Alternate Advancement points. Indeed, I have heard from several sources that EQ2 will remain a level 90 game for the forseeable future due to mechanics limitations.
We can also expect to see a feature from other games as well as SOE’s own EverQuest Live — Mercenaries. Perhaps conceding that lower level content just doesn’t have the appeal to draw groups, Mercenaries are NPCs that will help you if you can’t fill a group.
We’ve also been told to expect a new Tradeskill Apprentice. They use a new crafting workstation, although the exact nature of this class was a bit vague, as we were told they can be ‘trained up to make new recipes’. They may be a sort of Tradeskill Mercenary.
Last night also brought the revelation that the much-ballyhooed Beastlord class is coming to EQ2. We’ve already been told that it will not be a StationCash class, at least on EQ2 Live servers, although it may require purchasing the Age of Discovery expansion. In EverQuest, Beastlords have frequently been described as an overpowered class, due to being a hybrid of Brawler and Shaman, with a tank pet. One thing we can tell you — based on the screenshot, they wear leather.
A screenshot of the rebuilt City of Freeport which is being redone as a single large city zone which will function as a quest hub through the entire level range. Players will be encouraged to come back to their home city and continue to do quests for them. I look forward to a rebuilt Freeport which is no less sinister but perhaps one which looks a bit less like a landfill.
And finally, we heard about an exciting new feature Build Your Own Dungeon. Two screenshots were shown, but we only caught this one. There are MANY questions about what form this will take. Will we be able to create dungeons and run them with friends immediately, or will they need approval? If it’s the former, I predict very short dungeons with 1 mob. 🙂 If it’s the latter, I could see overworked EQ2 developers.
Our live continuing coverage of Fan Faire continues today at 2PM in the Freeport and Beyond panel where we’ll see more of the Freeport revamp due to hit this fall.
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Comments (37)
Klueril
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So whats up with the design a dungeon? Can I put boss after boss after boss?
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Kruzzen
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Not sure I like the design a dungeon thing or not. :/
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Erratic
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That’s my concern with the design a dungeon as well, depending how much flexibility they are giving it seems ripe for exploit.
Are the mobs pre-canned or can we adjust the stats on them? What about the named?
Is there loot in the dungeons? If so is it auto-generated or can we pick it, can we design the loot?
Are we given scripting tools to design unique encounters?
Assuming there is loot what is to prevent someone from designing an encounter like:
Enter room: you see a level 98×4 (if they don’t allow raid mobs than no x4). On the wall is a switch. You pull the switch and 10 level 98×4 allies spawn and help you kill it. You collect gear for essentially no work rinse and repeat.
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Feldon
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There are many questions about the Build Your Own Dungeon to be sure. I’ll see if I can get some answers. 🙂
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Karith
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@Feldon 2PM Pacific?
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Starseeker
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Might be a feature where you basically choose your adventure. So there’s a huge dungeon, and depending on what actions you take, takes you to a different part of the dungeon…like:
“you enter the dungeon, there are 3 doors, you choose door number 1, you go to a fire area of the dungeon, there is a fire boss. You kill the fire boss, now you have a puzzle to solve, it has two solutions, you choose one solution you can go to one area of the dungeon, you choose the other and you go to a different area”. basically till you get to the end of the dungeon, so no two runs will be the same due to variables.
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James
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My guess is they will have some sort of script that measure the difficulty and reward accordingly. So, it may be short with one boss, but your drops will be crap.
I’ll bet they add some kind of voting mechanism for players to vote up / down dungeons so you can decide which ones to visit.
Personally, I don’t like the idea. They tried this in Ryzom and it didn’t work well there.
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The Worst News from Fan Faire… « The Ancient Gaming Noob
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[…] EQ2Wire has some additional info about the Freeport revamp, which I only saw after I posted this. A screenshot of the rebuilt Freeport which is being redone as a single large city zone which will function as a quest hub through the entire level range. Players will be encouraged to come back to their home city and continue to do quests for them. I look forward to a rebuilt Freeport which is no less sinister but perhaps one which looks a bit less like a landfill. […]
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Kwill
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I thought the tradeskill apprentice was another type of mercenary — but it was quite unclear what he was talking about.
Botting crafting could really have some serious implications for the economy, if people are flooding the market with player made goods.
I hope the beastlord class comes through as something worthwhile. It’s a very fun class to play.
The dungeons idea seems fun, but suggestions such as player ratings or some kind of control over the process seem necessary. Curious how this will be implemented. The loot thing seems problematic, why wouldn’t you run your own dungeon to make plat? Seems exploitable to the extreme.
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Kwill
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And coverage would be 2pm pacific time, for those wondering.
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zebix
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If anyone played city of heros, they had the create a dungeon feature. Basically you make a map, plop in some mobs you select from a list they came with there own loot. Its been awhile but i recall you could put in objectives and make mobs say stuff. Once it was finished you publish it and other people could run it. They were ranked by player feedback as I recall. This will probably be something simular to that.
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UliTheGrey
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So mechanics will prevent Lvl 100 ? Thats sad, cause lvl 100 is not something that comes as a surprise and I hoped with all the revamps they did over the last years that they would be able to scale everything.
If they cannot raise the level cap there might be an already planned migration path to EQnext then: Take your level 90/95 character from EQ and EQ2 to EQNext and start leveling that to 100 there. Everyone else will start at level 1, existing players can transfer/copy to EQNext at or just below level cap. EQ and EQ2 will be put on life support shortly thereafter.
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Kwill
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I doubt they would migrate characters, as the EQNext game will run on the new ForgeLight engine.
I am curious what time in Norrath EQNext will be set. EQII was after the moon blew up … would this be before the time of the original EQ world? Makes more sense than putting it farther in the future.
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Sean Dorman
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I believe the best, fair way to implement the Build Your Own Dungeon is to allow guilds to make it for the purpose of raid exercises, like a Danger Room for adventurers where players can earn experience in working together. Loot? Get real…
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Karith
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@Kwill It’s an alternate reality of Norrath. It’s not the same as either everquest. I just think they will keep the same races, general classes, cities, and gods. But wars, some events, and iconic characters may not have exsisted in this re imagining of the world.
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Jrel
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I’d use the BYOD as a guild app test. No, actually, I’ve no idea why BYOD is being made. Maybe it’s similar to City of Heroes’ mission design system; which is kind of fun and let’s you level up your characters w/o having to do the main storyline.
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Zharxian
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Reforging? I’d like to hear some details about that.
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malkov
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BYOD is a great idea done right people seem to really focus on the negatives, done right if say with a rating system for dificulty and a mob/boss table only usable under the specific rating tables for reward. yes of course there would be nubs but then amongst our comunnity, but there are some actual great designers who love to put on say public events this is a very intresting idea for some of us because done right you wont end up with crap like someone mentioned about going in rinse and repeat for cheesing gear if you went in to a dungeon say with a 9 or ten rating you would get nice gear but the mobs encounters and say puzzles in it would warrant th reward but if you went into a 1 or 2 rating you would get crap….simple minds come up with simple anwsers….great minds come up with great things…i mean come on the people at soe are just people i know some of you think they are gods lol but they are people that have been coming up with great ideas for along time now hence all the great games now they give the players who love those games the chance to participate….
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Glenolas
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Feldon:
Will the Age of Discovery be a “for pay” expansion? I missed the answer if it was mentioned. Usually expansions require more player $$, while GU’s add features/content to extant expansions.
If it is a for pay expansion, then the reason for it coming so soon on the heels of the last is obvious. Just another SC ploy. If not, why would it be called an expansion, vs the normal GU due around then? It seems to be about the right amount of material for an ordinary GU.
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Feldon
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Age of Discovery is a real expansion, yes its going to cost. Its based on features more than content.
BYOD will be part of the expansion. I believe (no source yet) that Beastlord will require the expansion.
Big question: Will Age of Discovery be $40 or less?
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Dethdlr
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@Malkov: The other thing it would potentially do is allow people to create simple dungeons for smaller groups. I regularly hear people asking for content aimed at groups of two or three. The BYOD + the mercenaries should help those that like grouping with only one or two people. Not my personal choice of playstyle, but I can see this possibly filling that niche.
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Mythilt
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I see the BYOD feature being an SC item, which I think would be the best way to handle it. You pay the cash, get the dungeon seed (rights to build one dungeon), you then build the dungeon, and upload it, SoE worker checks it out to verify it isn’t a monty-haul fest, and flags it as playable.
The reason I think SC would be correct here is that it A) acts as a pre-filter to lower the number of dungeons to keep the SoE checker from being flooded with submissions. and B) helps pay for the SoE checker who I think would be needed.
I know some people hate SC, but in this case, I think it is the best way to make BYOD viable.
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sam
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My main question on the expansion is it an all for one deal or will these features be listed individually for purchase on the marketplace and the “expansion’ is really just a coined term for bundle of features at a reduced price since it seems content will be alot thinner in this new expansion model.
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sam
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I get its a real expansion. I just want to know if the features listed in the expansion will be for sale individually on the marketplace as well as in the expansion bundle. Such as will the beastlord be a purchaseable class W/O the expansion for say $20 and the new AA tree for $15-20, etc
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Quabi
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Is it even a new AA tree? The wording suggests to me that they’re just raising the cap on the existist trees.
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Lizzieanna
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I played City of Heroes for a long time, and one of their expansion packs was called Mission Architech. Players could design instances (what we call dungeons,) write the stories, create the mobs and mission objectives. It was the most innovative concept I ever heard of or experienced. Not only did players create the missions, (maps, mobs, objectives, stories, etc.) they could play them with a group and everyone could play the mission.. it bacame part of the game, giving it’s own rewards. So, while there will be lots of people finding ways to exploit the new create-a-dungeon feature, and there will be many tweaks and much refining of it, it will prove to be a wonderful thing. We will never run out of new dungeons!
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Glenolas
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Sounds like SC under another name.
SOE lessened the size of it’s dev team(s) around 2008 so that they could not launch a full expansion when the time came. In response, they promised to fill it over the intervening year, which grew to 15 months.
DoV was certainly not a full expansion, and we get to pay for something else now? Much of which can only be considered non essential to run the current limited content, and with no new content forthcoming, where are we expected to play the beast lord or use the new AA’? the Ascent?
Where’s the beef?
I’m thinking of a reversal of the speech of the cartoon character Wimpy: “I promise to give you the hamgurger on Thursday if only you will pay for it now.
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Eschia
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The class they always claimed they never would add and would ban you from the forums for mentioning. I am happy they are bringing it back though, but i know they will have to make up a whole new archaeotype for it since it’s rather a swiss army knife of different archaeotypes. I just feel this is all a huge prank.
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Murfalad
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DoV had more to do as a high level then Cataclysm offered with WoW, and with so much content held over for GU’s its certainly looking very respectable by standards of any EQ2 expansion, although I doubt anything with offer the same amount of solo quest content as Kunark did.
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karen20
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re: freeport revamp .. mentions ‘home city’ so folk will still be able to live there, yes?
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kaozz
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Lots of exciting news. Thanks for all the hard work at keeping us updated!
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Dan
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Why worry about the dungeon building feature? Its SOE. They add fun stuff into EQ2 thats never required, im sure this is no acception. If it fails who cares. Im just glad to see SOE still has great ideas EVERY EXPANSION. unlike…ahem… Blizzard 🙂
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Karl
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I also played CoH for quite a while. I thought the Mission Architect was one of the coolest ideas .. until I went back and played it after MA had been around for a while. You know what you find?
People create easy dungeons. Where mobs are easy to control, no aggro management required. Just bosses and sub-bosses with no “junk mob” minions. And all you see are people spamming the channels looking for groups to play those easy xp farms.
The rest of the world is nearly empty. It was kind of depressing. I really hope that SOE can come up with a way to avoid the scenario where people get to 90 in a week doing nothing but player made content and then really don’t know anything about playing their class in the “real” world.
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Nicolas
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The mission Architect killed City of Heroes, plain and simple.
It is a horrible idea unless they put strong limitations, such as limiting levels to 70 and below thus knowingly giving players options to bypass doing the same contents over and over when leveling new toons but not hindering high level offical content (which seems to be the focus of developers) or having a team of testers that would approve content.
Like Karl said, in CoH, all the player made popular dungeons were designed to be farmed. The official content became totally deserted in a matter of days. Players got lazy and shunned challenges in favor of farming with facility. After a few weeks of playing what had quickly become the most boring game on earth, everyone left.
So yeah, I hope they implement a level cap for player made dungeons well below the actual cap. I would hate to see EQ2 go the way CoH did.
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micheal
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i am thrilled about the new expansion but heres a issuse i have, 2 expansions have to be bought with in 9 monthes of each other. not to mention that the game was unplayable for nearly 2 monthes becuase of hackers. so we only got 7 and half monthes of game play in DOV. Now were being asked to raise our levels again, raise more aa’s, pay more money, and my biggest thing competely replace entire set’s of gear. i honestly hope they make the transition from destiney of velious to age of discovery alot smoother then the transition from sentials fate!!
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Feldon
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Less than 3 weeks.
Whether you buy the expansion or not, you will get new overland zones, group zones, and raid zones in Velious until 2013.
Level isn’t being raised for several years.
This expansion has no new armor, no new dungeons, no new zones. It’s a features expansion.
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JP
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Maybe they could just let the BYOD exp be applicable to AA only. Then, they would be just for the fun of it with a slight bonus.
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