Velious Features

I know this isn’t exactly up to date news but I just realized that GameStop released a list of Velious features. Obviously this isn’t set in stone but I think we can reasonably assume that these are accurate. A big thank you to EQ2 Wire for bringing this to my attention. I will say that a lot of this makes me happy and some of it makes me really sad. It is like Christmas morning that one year when you didn’t get what you asked for. At any rate I’m easing into this whole blogging thing again and I figured I might as well give my impression of the features and such.

Just in case you’re wondering why my list is shorter than the actual one I’m skipping the fluff items. I don’t really consider a cloak or housing item to be an expansion feature. That is just the usual stuff to talk you into reserving the game. I plan to focus on the real goodies.

Flying mounts – I’m not against adding flying mounts to the game but honestly this is just a “me too” feature to keep up with Blizzard. EverQuest II is, sadly, just not big enough to justify these. Expansions have been small for a while now. The total real estate just isn’t there and now the world will feel even smaller. You also have to look at the sheer amount of technical hours that will go into this. It is probably staggering. People assume doing this sort of thing is easy but it is anything but. I’ll take it but I’d rather see the time spent elsewhere.

More than 1,000 new weapons and items – This is standard expansion protocol. Obviously we’ll have a ton of new items to replace the old ones! Gear progression must go on! I just hope they do a far better job in Velious than they did in Sentinel’s Fate. If I see monks and druids together on an item again I’ll be most unhappy.

Over 300 new quests – I’m pretty excited about seeing the quests. I know a lot of them will be chores and the likes but I want to know the story of EQ2′s Velious. I hope we see opposing quests like we did in EQ1. I hope the giants still hate the dwarves and dragons. I want to see players have to make real choices about who they align themselves with!

Ten instanced dungeons – I’m relatively happy about this as well. Ten instances for groups is pretty decent. I’m not sure if they’re completely different or if they’ll be in sets of three like in SF. I am concerned that this number is less than what we received in Sentinel’s Fate but this might not be an issue of apples to apples. They could all be larger and/or offer differences per clearing. We’ll see how it goes but I’m optimistic because they should be dungeons we recognize, not things that are made up from extrapolated history.

Four new Heritage Quests – Neat. If one of them is the Coldain prayer shawl Buuncha may kill someone.

One massive contested dungeon – I wonder how you define massive in this case. Is The Hole massive? It isn’t to me. I am extremely touchy over the subject of contested dungeons. I gave Frizznik a lot of feedback about them at Fan Faire and I hope some of it was incorporated. Contested dungeons should draw players in like Cazic Thule did in classic. They should be interesting and rewarding. These are places where players have to compete for resources. They should never be empty, wasted zones like The Hole. The drop table in The Hole was atrocious. The items were few and the quality was below average. It is a terrible shame that a dungeon that could have been great was nerfed to oblivion less than 24 hours after release because someone figured out one exploit. Whatever this “massive” dungeon turns out to be it needs to be awesome. It needs to be the center piece of the expansion! I’m talking EQ1 Lower Guk awesome!

Two overland zones – I am deeply disappointed in this. To quote myself: The EQ2 trend of “two over world zones” and some instances will not work here. I have to harp on this and say we need a Kunark. We need four major zones with several open dungeons. Instead we get more of the trend. Two overland zones? I hope they’re “massive.” Velious was not a small place. Velious was ridiculously, annoyingly, large in EverQuest. It took time to get places and gave you a sense of scale and wonder. I loved that! These two zones need to be large and contain multiple areas like the Kunark ones do. Regardless, unless SOE pulls of some impressive feat of size I’ll probably be disappointed. I was hoping for a Renaissance for EQ2 and this is more of the same.

Four raid instances – This one is a curiosity to me due to the phrasing. The note goes further and says: Group up with 12-24 man raids for desirable loot. Could I be reading too much into this? Does this suggest that each of these raid zones can be done in either a 12 or 24 man mode? Is this lazy marketing when it is really one 12 man zone and three 24? If they go the Blizzard route of giving every raid zone in both sizes I would love that. I’ve begged for 12 man progression. If we get that I’ll be ecstatic. Four raid zones is good regardless!

Over 30 new creatures – I hope this means 30 new models. If they take the gnolls, paint them white and call that new I’ll be sad.

More than 100 new armor sets – This comes out to being roughly four sets per class. All of which will probably look the same as armor set we have now or like each other. Actual new art features will be available for purchase on the Station Store (sorry SOE guys, I do love you but you know your track record says I’m right).

There you have it, the features (according to GameStop) and my thoughts on them!