Fan Faire 2008 Expansion Panel

This is based on my notes from the hour-long panel on the upcoming EQ2 expansion "The Shadow Odyssey".

As with any expansion preview, especially one not yet in public beta, this highlights things that the developers plan/intend to do. Things can/will still change up to launch day. (And, as with any MMORPG, can even continue to change after launch.)

General Information

This will be EQ2's fifth expansion. It is due to be released on November 18, 2008.

By now, those of you who are regularly playing EQ2 should be aware of the Void Storms, and their increasingly aggressive presence in Norrath. Strange creatures continue to wander out of them, and the sages are becoming quite concerned.

These storms have been seen in the past, however, though it has been over 4000 years since the ethernauts managed to close these portals into the Void.

Adventurers may be walking partially in the footsteps of those long-forgotten ethernauts, but, before all is said and done, they will need to blaze their own paths, and find their own way to deal with these storms from the Void.

While there will be no level cap increase with this expansion, so folks that were lagging behind their friends have some chance to get more caught up, there will be plenty to do and see in terms of higher-end content.

There will be twenty single-group instances going in, including Befallen, Guk (Upper and Lower), Nuroga (Nurgan/Drogan empire, such as it were), Najena, Mistmoore and several more. These zones may have a wider level range over which they scale, based on the zone that contains the entrance to the instance, but expect the upper range to be level 80 on all of them. The number on the lower end will vary, as mentioned above, and I heard numbers as low as level 50 thrown around, for at least one of them.

There will be one overland zone, the Moors of Ykesha, in an area that used to be the Innothule Swamp. It will include level 77+ solo content and quests. For the raiders, they will find new content in Befallen, Mistmoore, Guk and the Void.

60 new achievement points will be available to earn, to be spent in a brand-new achievement tree. While full details are not available at this time, there was mention of one for harvesting, among other things.

Two new dieties will be included in this expansion. The first, Rodcet Nife, will act much as our current dieties do, with an avatar, etc. The other one, however, is going to be unlocked on a per-server basis. For the lore-hounds, there is apparently mention in one of the Desert of Flames timelines about someone who was banished to the Void ... sounds like someone is trying to make a return now!

At least 5 new heritage quests will be included in this expansion. While they hope to have more, they are unsure if they will be able to do so or not.

A mission system will be introduced, complete with quite a bit of lore. Through these missions, players will earn shards and status. The shards will be used to purchase a variety of items, including armor and weapons.

But What About the Crafters?

Have no fear. Crafters have not been left out. Only a small amount of information was given out in this panel, because there was still a tradeskill panel to be held, but here's the start of the tidbits for you:

There will be tradeskill missions, that are small-scale cooperative projects. These are meant for level 50 to 80 crafters, and designed for groups of six. (You can have less in a group, but it will take longer to complete.) This will be covered more in my writeup from the tradeskill panel.

Also partly on the crafting front, we will reach the new lands via airship ... once we build them. Crafty little gnomes will have us busy with a world event to build the airship, platform, etc. It sounds, at least on the surface, that it will be very similar to the spire or griffon tower building.

Stay Tuned!

There is only so much information that can be covered in a one-hour session, and I am sure there will be more details as time goes on. Further tradeskill information will be in my tradeskill panel writeup in the next couple of days.

Created: 2008-08-17 05:26:09          
Last Modified By: Niami Denmother          
Last Modified on: 2008-08-17 05:35:05          


© 2003-21 Niami Denmother.
The fine print. This is a research and information site. All of the information on this site has been gathered and submitted by the players and Niami Denmother. While we try our best to keep the information here as accurate and up to date as possible, rely upon it at your own risk. By submitting information and graphics to this site, you are granting us permission to use the materials in any way that we deem appropriate. EverQuest is a registered trademark of Darkpaw Games LLC. Except as is disclosed on the "about" page, this site has no official connection with EverQuest or Darkpaw Games LLC. All information, articles and graphics on this site are the copyright of EQ Traders Corner, its owners and/or Darkpaw Games LLC and may not be copied or reprinted without the express written approval of the copyright holder. This site is not meant to represent official EverQuest (Darkpaw Games) policy, and we are not responsible for errors and/or omissions that occur due to changes in EverQuest trade skills or information that we recieved from the community that is in error.