Producer's Letter -- Looking Ahead!

Greetings Norrath!
The time has come! We are very proud to announce our next expansion, EverQuest II: Chains of Eternity!
The team is hard at work developing our ninth - yes, our ninth - expansion and implementing the finer details, several of which I will go into here. When the expansion launches, Norrathians will pass into Ethernere, the realm of the afterlife, where all spirits pass after death on their way to their final resting place.

Recently, something has gone horribly wrong in Ethernere and it is bleeding through in the mortal plane. Over the summer months, evidence of ripples between the realms was in evidence as items with ethereal energy appeared upon the dead. As the tears between the realms widen, it will be up to the heroes of Norrath to save the immortal and mortal realms from collapse!

The adventures in this expansion will be great ones! The team is spending a lot of time ensuring that you experience the story, rather than merely read it, so I won’t give it all away in this letter. As for features and details, we’ve got a lot to crow about. We hope players enjoy it as much as we’ve enjoyed weaving it together.

Cross Over to More Content
In two re-imagined Ethernere overlands inspired by Feerrott and Loping Plains, players will find a region in chaos. The natural ebb and flow of spirits passing through the Ethernere to each spirit’s final resting place is corrupted and on the edge of destruction, threatening every mortal’s life and afterlife. Through the trials of nine new instanced dungeons, players will attempt to mend the end of all things. Prelude content and dungeons give insights into the threat from the other side while telling all new stories - including advancing the story behind the Ages End Prophecy. Players meet new creatures from the beyond and face a whole host of new challenges.

Lots of Quests!
In this expansion, the signature, or main, storyline quest will be available to everyone no matter how they play the game. Every player tough enough to access the expansion content will have the opportunity to see how the story ends, and raiding guilds will have opportunities to take part in special events that support the story. Even when the main quest line completes, players gain access to benefits as a result of their heroic acts and get rewards for replaying content.

Adventure and Tradeskill Levels Increased to 95
We are adding three more levels onto the cap which gives us a lot of opportunity to create new spells, recipes, and Prestige Abilities, our next feature...

Prestige Abilities
Each subclass will get access to new Prestige Abilities. Our engineering and design teams are hard at work creating new abilities that will set a new bar for players and for creating events. The new abilities give players more tools to tinker with in combat, and designers too.
Tradeskill Prestige Abilities
We have started implementing Tradeskill Prestige abilities too. These allow our tradeskill classes the ability to become specialists in their chosen craft in a variety of ways. We’re still creating these and excited about the opportunities that will open up for our tradeskillers!

Guild Level to 95
To provide new benefits, we wanted to increase our Guild Levels . We will speak more to that when we are further along with the implementation.

Organic Adornments
We have a new adornment type in development! These Organic Adornments, as the name suggests, will gain experience with the player and grow more powerful as a result. There will be many to choose from so players can focus on how they want to increase the power of their characters.

Loot and more loot
Of course, there are going to be plenty of items in the expansion for players to discover. This is a very strong content expansion with lots to do and find. We heard our players ask for fewer features and more content that builds on the core game so we’re doing just that.

Extra content
At the same time as we’re focusing on the expansion, we are still offering live content prior to the expansion. We are releasing the first areas of Sleeper’s Tomb in mid-September which we refer to as the “Prelude.” This advances the world story as players find entry into the tomb.

We have another event that we’re keeping under wraps that releases closer to the expansion and then, of course, there’s “Chains of Eternity” itself releasing in November. We’re even releasing additional free content at the same time that the expansion launches. Players will discover that avatars are once again making an appearance in Norrath. These avatars are different from those who appeared in the past.

All in the all, the team is driving hard to bring the players awesome content -- time and time again. I’m among a team of perfectionist gamers making a game for gamers. It’s been incredible to see them work tirelessly for excellence and everyone’s entertainment. Hard not to be romantic about gaming...

There’s more to come in the details, of course, but we have been bursting at the seams to tell you what we can...and now we have.

We invite you to come on this crazy ride with us. We really think you’ll love it!

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

P.S. We will be adding window recipes for tradeskillers with the expansion, as well as others...thought I'd mention it given the recent marketplace release.

Please use font sizes readablde by old men.

Windstalker wrote:

And heroic scarecrows....they will make an appearance, yes?

Windstalker wrote:

Am I understanding it correctly?? You didn't create any new zones just revamped those already exisiting in game and give them other names?
And please change the size of your fonts...

Kinya@Splitpaw wrote:

LOL - never realised that... 2 old zones with pretty colours and new mobs
Oh and yes... FONT INCREASE please!

Windstalker wrote:

This isteslf is proof that the EQII does listen to feedback. I am excited to see the new free content and what it's going to add to the game. I'm also excited to find out what new benefits level 95 guilds will have, they must be epic!

Thanks for the awesome news!

So Sleepers Tomb - Sept
Unamed content/pre-event - October
Expansion: Chains of Eternity - November

• 2 Overland Zones
• X amount of new quests
• Level increase to 95 (tradeskill and Level)
• Guild level increase to 95
• Tradeskill prestige abilities
• Organic Adornments
• ? Raid zones ?
• ? Instances ?

No testing? Beta?
Currently adornemnts are destroyed with no way to save the progres. What if we get new gear? Are organiic adornments destroyed?
The ideas have promise but the very aggressive timeline just makes me think bugs, bugs, oh and more bugs...

How is this related to Age's End
Why Loping (Mayong?) and Feerott?

Will there be a new race or class?
Misstiny

Was curious about the overland zones. It wasnt clear to me whether feerrot was getting revamped, or if it was getting a sister zone. expanding feerrot by giving it a deeper jungle overland sister zone would be great. I am not a fan of revamping(replacing) old content. Also the organic adornments: i see it as very risky and prone to disaster. The details of how they function will make or break it. my concerns are a new "unholy grind treadmill", and "end to sharing war runes with my alt army". dov was very good to me, i got a lot of great war runes early and my alts got a lot of use out of them. making each toon level up their own adornments will basically kill my desire to play alts. imo organic adornments should increase the base item template for that toon (not just the adorn you currently have equipped). organic adornments should not increase much, not be a big grind, and have a low cap on leveling up. leveled up adornments should be tradeable to alts in their leveled up state. Other than that this press release looks amazing. ofc we would love even more details, but this was a lot. Sounds like an expac with a lot of features you wont want to miss.

Gigv wrote:

yes plz.

a new amyg city under the lake at the end of feerrot...or maybe gnolls take firemist gulley after the undead (perfect lore tie in) wipe out the dwarves.

Kinya@Splitpaw wrote:

Won't be the first time.
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=446805
Silat

Prexus as a choosable Deity please

Acknowledging that this is a content expansion and not selling us another "feature" pack is a win in my book. When comparing this announcement to AoD this looks like a big win for the players.
If they can deliver on 3/4 of what is in this announcement, I'll be pleasantly surprised.
Oh, and I really hope when they say 9 dungeons there are actually 9 unique dungeons and not 3 used 3 times each.

Alluvial@Antonia Bayle wrote:

It's not. That's still to be concluded in whenever we finally get the next/last DoV update.

Windstalker wrote:

Does this mean Grind for Faction? I hope that isn't what this means as it is seriously boring and a lazy game design way to keep players busy. Just my opinion but I am sick of it - it has been used since Rime and just isn't fun. /sigh

Otherwise I am tentatively excited at the prospect of a proper content expansion, assuming I and my fellow European players are still here to enjoy it, and willing to give SOE/PSS1 the extra money after how we have been treated.

Looks good, though I would also be dissapointed if there were no truly new zones.
On another note entirely... can someone remind me what the level cap was after Velious? Haven't played since then but thinking of coming back and just wondering how far behind I am. lol

Why raise crafting? To make new spells? The 92 gear is/was useless from the start, quested items are better. Mobs need to drop components to make the item, not a chest plate or sword, but the mat. This gets adventurers and crafters working together more, like an MMO.
My biggest question is, are all the mobs going to kick/toss/throw/shoot everyone across the screen/in the air, or are you guys gonna try to do something new?