An idea for a final expansion (if one ever comes)

Honestly I just want an expansion where the players choose whether to fight for Rallos Zek or against him kind of like choosing between Giants Dragons and Coldain in velious. You can help rallos conquer other worlds, norrath, and then the planes, and then after all is done, the rallosian armies fight the only people left to fight, themselves. In true rallosian fashion, they clash until the last living thing in the entirety of all worlds, planes, everything, stands valiantly over the wasteland where all who had ever lived, now lie dead. Rallos then watches over the doomed existence he has made. Rallos then, with no-one but himself to wage war on, kneels down at a shrine to the nameless, fading away forever. With no gods, no life, no people; the pocket of space where all was created blinks away into nothingness and the nameless wanders once more, looking for a new pocket of space to watch, to cleanse his new loneliness. (Applause now at my amazing lore writing skills) BUT WAIT! Before druzzil ro died, THEY SPLIT THE TIMELINE AGAIN! So we are currently playing the lame timeline that druzzil saved from an epic ending.

This is kinda literally the storyline of Champions of Norrath: Return to Arms. If you go the evil route, the last boss is Mithaniel Marr.

Final 'expansion' should just be a large level cap increase (like 10 levels) with no new zones/mobs; and each level takes twice as much XP as the normal scaling (so that the 10th added level takes 1024 levels worth of XP) so that it'll take years for the average player to re-cap; then the fewer remaining players will still be able to beat the toughest content with smaller raid groups.

There will be no final expansion, only paid cookie-cutter collections achievements until the end of time.

I agree with Foob, but if there was one, it definitely would be Veeshan

Probably take the game back to its roots, slaying all the gods in their planes one last time and bringing in Veeshan as the final boss of EQ.

I am curious if the devs have a future plan of how to sunset the game. Or like Foob says, they just turn out a yearly expansion w/achievements and raids.

If it was me, I would make TOL 2.0 (check, Dec 2022), POP 1.0 (Dec 2023) and then POP 2.0 (Dec 2024) with Planes of Water, Fire, Air, Earth, Time and a new zone that houses Veeshan (or Avatar of Veeshan) and call a sunset in spring/summer 2026. And the final raid should not be a guild achievement but rather a server achievement- an open world boss that requires hundreds and hundreds to defeat, not just 54

The day they announce the game is shutting down is the day half the games population quits. People won't stick around for a final expansion. They won't announce "This is it!".

I am not saying if (for example) they do what I suggested earlier that they announce right now that the last expansion is released Dec 2024 and the game sunsets in spring 2026. That is dumb for business. The sunset announcement will probably be made 3-6 months before the final date. At that point if half the population quits, then so be it.

I just wonder if today, they have a vision for the end. That they want to produce xyz amount of expansions, they want it to be these themes, and have it cumulate into an end game at this point in time. They don’t have to announce specifics, but some of us would appreciate knowing they have a plan for the future that sees the journey end. Or are they just going to take every expansion created, split it into two parts, and release each part once a year with tasks and quests and shinies and raids ad nauseum?

I love reading books. It is nice to know the story I am reading is going to end at some point. Right now this is a never ending book. I don't know if that is really awesome after 23 years.

That's what I mean too... they will definitely not announce any end to the game until that last expansion is already underway. It would be stupid, as a very large amount of the population wouldn't waste their money on it. (I wouldn't).

I'll become a billionaire and buy EQ before that happens, and whip out an UE5 remake

I think they should take "Sunset" litterally, and have the final opponent be the actual descending sun crashing into Norrath...

The end-credits should be a montage of all your old screenshots in sepia-tone, and your friends-list scrolling down the screen...while the background music from Scarlet Desert plays...

If they did something fairly abnormal for an expansion release many people would take it as the game is ending.

Last expansion should be a fight to open a portal to the replacement game: Everquest Next or whatever.
Getting your character into the portal gets you a character/account on the new game pre release, while perma-deleting you everquest account. No turning back

Great idea to port over a character but a horrible idea to remove it from the current game. Players will want to experience both games at once and making them chose between the two will not go over well.

Really if they sunset the game I don't think I want it to culminate in a grand epic battle but that should definitely lead up towards it. I would simply like to see the game close when it eventually does with the world of Norrath going on. Not happily ever after, not destroyed in a cataclysm but it continues without us, as we have known it always in a state of conflict solving the next magical crisis to strike the world or it's associated worlds.

As much as I would like to see somehow access to the planes are cut off and Norrath continuing on it's own magic without the gods able to directly interfere. There's no denying the benefit it has for the denizens of Norrath, we are those denizens after all.