Hey guys, check out my latest Discussion video i go over all of the maps in EQ history leading up to EQN.
Just an FYI, the EQOA lore is entirely separate from the EQ1/EQ2 lore. So while things like Freeport, Qeynos, Neriak etc are accurate, there was never a dwarf city on that continent in EQ1's timeline, nor gnome, nor the two elven cities at the north end. They're basically the EQ1 cities from Faydwer renamed and moved over presumably because EQOA didn't have a Faydwer. This is a better early-EQ1 map that shows the locations of the cities a bit better. Odus and Faydwer came with the original game, Kunark was the first expac, and Velious the second.
Hnh...offhand, it doesn't look like any of the outer continents took a lot of damage (maybe spun about on an axis or two, and I think Kunark actually grew some), but the poor continent of Antonica was really in the way when the fewmets hit the fan. :-/ Uwk and yeah, we have a second moon in the sky after poor Luclin got nuked (hmm...who to blame, Erudites or Gnomes? Erudites or Gnomes...); was that always there, or did its arrival smash up Luclin? And how the heck did Antonica get stitched back together again in EQNext?!
Firiona Vie woke up heard the shower running went to look and found the moon Luclin and realized it was all just a dream? Alternately The camera pulls back and we see EQ2's Norrath is the centerpiece of a snow globe held by an autistic child, Or Marty Mcfly (human ranger lvl1) gets sent back in time by his gnomish friend Doc (doctor of chronoalteringthingamawhatsits) Brownreallybrownthatssuchaboringcolorcouldn'titbemagentaormaybemauvenoikowchartreuse on a souped up C.R.A.S.H. pad and inadvertently prevents the destruction of the moon. Seriously since they talk about the creation of Qeynos from a frontier town isn't it likely that this game actually predates EQ1 in the chronology? Admittedly my viewing was cursory at best of the little history lesson, and I have never been super lore man, but that is the feeling I had when I watched it. Or the answer could be alternate dimensions, something alluded to in the CoE signature quest
Yea, EQN is an entirely different timeline as well. They've pretty much already announced they're scrapping all EQ lore and starting over. Just some familiar names and places.
Oh, gods above, no...not another freaking "reboot! Because we're running out of ideas and have nothing better to do than make sure everything you know and have for years is wrong!" And they wonder why I don't read many comics any more or will ever give JJ Abrams any further money. Ever. X-P Uwk figuring EQ3 will be complete with "New Lens Flare!!1! "
Not to my knowledge it isn't. Why would they market it as set 500 years before EQ1 during a time of frontiers and early establishment? If you played EQOA you would see that the lore in that game matched the lore in EQ1 in a predated sense. All of the major cities were being established and a lot of them were under construction. Faydwer wasn't in EQOA because it was before that time when the elves moved, also i'm sure we would have gotten Faydwer eventually but never made it that far in expansions. The game failed to sell as much as they thought it would because they put it only on PS2 which was really short sighted imo. You can't expect console gamers to match the numbers of PC gamers, especially in terms of MMORPG's and especially in 2003 when hardly anyone used a console to play online. Everyone knows that EQ lore is a mess and is all over the place. That's half the reason i think they decided to reboot it and give it a fresh start. Show me an article that says EQOA was completely seperate from EQ1/2. Not trying to be mean but i disagree with you. Also if you watch the video reveal of EQOA they mention it took place during the time the elves split up. Our one and only expansion was called Frontiers for a reason, Proof below.
Also read this article http://www.giantbomb.com/everquest-online-adventures/3030-19126/ This one is good as well as it makes mention of the plague event that took place during EQOA. http://www.giantbomb.com/antonica/3035-3179/ We had a hell of a time with that plague! It was a debuff that seriously messed up our stats. We beat it with the help of the Springview healers and Antonius Bayle. I'm sorry a lot of you never got the chance to play EQOA because it was a great look at the history of Norrath. EQN seems to be going back to that time only it is indeed tossing everything else aside and starting fresh. EQOA however did not do that. It may have some inconsistancies but that's just how EQ lore is. Doesn't mean EQOA was seperate or in another realm or w/e.
Well think about it. EQ1 takes place about 300 years after the fall of the Combine Empire, and Qeynos wasn't founded (Freeport either for that matter) until after the fall of the Combine. So how could Qeynos and Freeport exist in EQOA 200 years before the fall of the Combine? Erud left Qeynos to found Erudin (Arcadin, or w/e its called in EQOA), similarly after the fall of the Combine. Also, the Desert of Ro used to be the elddar forest, the home of the Elves. Solusek Ro became jealous of their civilization and basically dried up the whole area, turning it into the desert (hence the name 'of Ro'). After the destruction of their home the elves fled the continent and settled on Faydwer. So how can there simultaneously exist a Desert of Ro and two major elven cities in the north of the continent in EQOA? There is also lore in EQ1 about the founding of Ak'Anon, and it being the first true gnomish city, not Klick-Anon, etc. IDK, there's a lot of contradictions. The dates of the Combine are dev confirmed here , so dunno how you can argue that. It really looks like they wanted to capture the EQ feel but without creating Faydwer and Odus they had to tweek things a bit and shift some cities over to Antonica/Tunaria. If you amended EQOA to be set say 250 or even 300 years before EQ1 begins then at least Qeynos/Freeport/Erudin(Arcadin) makes sense. But the elf/dwarf/gnome cities are still a problem, and whatever that big city is just south of Qeynos, which has no mention in EQ1.
It's just the way they are with lore. They make a lot of mistakes and you can see like i mentioned above a lot of inconsistancies throughout. I can only attribute it to sloppy lore keeping over the years. That or they just didn't really care to keep with it and wanted to fit in some new ideas. Possible also that they were limited in what they could add to EQOA because after all it was on PS2, Seems to me they might have put Faydwer places on Tunaria because they couldn't fit Faydwer into a Dvd without HDD support. So they just made a new spin on it. I am pretty certain that is the case. PS2 hardware running an mmorpg is just astounding and epic to me! I have no idea how they managed to make such a MASSIVE seemless world with no HDD... it's really quite an achivement in my mind. It could also have to do with the reason they never really expanded on EQOA now that i think about it. To this day i can't believe they managed so much space on one disc. It took like 2 hours to run from Halas down to Grobb nonstop with SoW. They should be proud of what they accomplished yet they just toss it aside as a failure. I think that's part of the reason the lore of EQOA is discredited by people. The game never saw true commercial success and therefor it is like the odd man out of the EQ series. I mean they didn't even mention it at SOE live during the history of Norrath. It's truly sad to be a part of something that was so innovative and ahead of it's time yet shunned by it's very creator! The city south of Qeynos is Highbourne. In EQOA it was where the Erudites come from. They were in the middle of crossing over to Odus and forming a city called Arcadin.
