Announcing EverQuest II - Destiny of Velious

[Amnerys]

Last Thursday night at the Fan Faire Welcome Reception, SOE President John Smedley revealed the name and logo for the next EverQuest II expansion; Destiny of Velious.

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[Vinyard]

I was there!

[Aerfen]

Amnerys the link takes me to the 

The Gamer Petition: Supporting First Amendment Rights for Video Games

[Aneova]

I'm still waiting on the vid Who's got the fly over vid that's been mentioned?

[Wullail]

Sorry , but having read everything about it......Meh...

[Titigabe]

So, this is the only official thing that has been annouced?

The name and the logo ... No vids, no screens?

I guess one could expect a bit more ... still 6 months to wait but if you wan't us to be patient, we need to be feed with visuals

[CrazyHandsMatt]

http://everquest2.com/news/read/current/3642

[Zabjade]

Not seeing the flyover yet.

[lordxaveir2000]

This will be another fail xpac brought to you by smed  they have nothing cuz they have done nothing . They will be selling people a name not a great xpac .

[Deathbyshadow]

Siden@Butcherblock wrote:

This will be another fail xpac brought to you by smed  they have nothing cuz they have done nothing . They will be selling people a name not a great xpac .

Siden be quiet, they work hard every day and don't say they don't they have about 20+ games to monitor every day and it's people like you that stress them out and make them feel bad.  Amnery, SJohn, and everyone else you are doing an awesome job, I was at the fan faire to woot =D and you to Brasse lol

[Gaige]

Deathbyshadow@Nagafen wrote:

Siden be quiet, they work hard every day and don't say they don't they have about 20+ games to monitor every day and it's people like you that stress them out and make them feel bad.

Come to my job and make my customers be nice too, imo.  Especially the unsatisfied ones.

[Calthine]

Zabjade wrote:

Not seeing the flyover yet.

Gotcha covered:  http://eq2.zam.com/story.html?story=22951

[Amnerys]

Link fixed, and video coming tomorrow!

[Jevangal]

Titigabe wrote:

So, this is the only official thing that has been annouced?

The name and the logo ... No vids, no screens?

I guess one could expect a bit more ... still 6 months to wait but if you wan't us to be patient, we need to be feed with visuals

Some slides here at EQ2wire:

http://eq2wire.com/2010/08/06/galle...pansion-slides/

Vid here:

http://eq2.zam.com/story.html?story=22951

[Jevangal]

Just to add, regarding the flying mount idea. I heard it's a quest reward (at least at this stage in development).  The idea is great, but in practice I can see it polarising the community.  There will be some who argue the questline should be difficult enough that owning one of these things will be a significant status symbol, some will argue that the quest should be easy but mildly time-consuming (like the cloud mount questline) and some small minority will say you should be able to purchase these mounts on station cash.

Personally, I think offering these mounts on SC will annoy a lot of people, who will see this route as devaluing the ingame effort and reward.

Also what about existing "flying" mounts such as clouds and carpets?  Will these gain the same ability?  If not, how are you going to explain the difference to lore junkies who will see this as a jarring inconsistency?  And then there's the fae issue

Again, a great idea, but to make the idea become great in practice will take a lot of thought.  I'd value your comments on this please Amnerys.

[ke'la]

Siden@Butcherblock wrote:

This will be another fail xpac brought to you by smed  they have nothing cuz they have done nothing . They will be selling people a name not a great xpac .

Your right:

remapping every single zone in-game so they can support flying mounts.

Plus Adding:

• 10 new group instances
• 6 new raid instances
• 2 New overland zones
• 1 Huge Contested Dungon
• 300 new quests
• Lots of new armor and weopons baised on Valinous
• Lots of new traidskill stuff, including all new and differant harvestables specifically made for the brand new Valinous recipies.
• 4 new heritage quests
• 30 new creatures to fight
• as well as new Battle grounds stuff.

with all those things being MINIMUMS, and they haven't even go into what they are going to do with AAs yet, though we know they are going to be adding some.

yeah all that is doing NOTHING what so ever.

Oh and Gaige, yes if your customers claim that all the work you do in a day is nothing, and it wasn't I would defend your work too.

[Gaige]

Smaller than SF with flying mounts /shrug.  Its also half of an expansion.  Hard to get excited about.

[Calthine]

Gaige wrote:

Smaller than SF with flying mounts /shrug.  Its also half of an expansion.  Hard to get excited about.

It's half the Velious story.  How many xpaks did the Void story take?

[ke'la]

Calthine wrote:

Gaige wrote:

Smaller than SF with flying mounts /shrug.  Its also half of an expansion.  Hard to get excited about.

It's half the Velious story.  How many xpaks did the Void story take?

More to the point how many xpaks did the END of the void story take, cause the build up to it was contained in vertually every expainsion to date, including the launch game.

[Gaige]

Calthine wrote:

It's half the Velious story.  How many xpaks did the Void story take?

No, its half of the continent, according to EQ2wire.

[Gladiolus]

Deathbyshadow@Nagafen wrote:

Siden@Butcherblock wrote:

This will be another fail xpac brought to you by smed  they have nothing cuz they have done nothing . They will be selling people a name not a great xpac .

Siden be quiet, they work hard every day and don't say they don't they have about 20+ games to monitor every day

We're paying for this one, and over the years have contributed considerable amounts to fund mounts that might have been nice before we had a worldwide teleport system.

[lordxaveir2000]

Deathbyshadow@Nagafen wrote:

Siden@Butcherblock wrote:

This will be another fail xpac brought to you by smed  they have nothing cuz they have done nothing . They will be selling people a name not a great xpac .

Siden be quiet, they work hard every day and don't say they don't they have about 20+ games to monitor every day and it's people like you that stress them out and make them feel bad.  Amnery, SJohn, and everyone else you are doing an awesome job, I was at the fan faire to woot =D and you to Brasse lol

Last time I checked I pay to play one game I could careless about the other 19+ games sony has to offer. Like I said this will be another fail xpac 

[denmom]

This is not said to be mean, cruel, or to offend...and the "you" is collectively meant.

If you feel it'll be fail, don't buy the expansion.

If you feel that Sony is a fail company, don't give them your money.

If negativity is all you can find in Sony and EQ2, then it's time to just stop and find another place to give you your happy.

[Jevangal]

Personally, I'm looking forward to this one; I think the flying mount thing is a fantastic idea and a really exciting addition to the game.  I would love to hear more details about the mechanics though (as well as the quest/SC/fae issue I mentioned earlier): By what I hear, you can't fight from the mount so I would expect it would work exactly the same way as a griffon (except controlled manually by the player).  In that case, will it work like a climbing wall or griffon mount where you can /yell then jump onto it to get out of trouble?

I'm surprised they are making the othmir non-playable though; I thought they would have seen the money-making opportunity of all the people buying the race change tokens on SC :p

[Loxus]

I'm looking forward to this one, I think it will really show us what this team is made of, however, you can already see the panic setting in.  Sony is behind the 8-ball currently and the next 6 months are gonna be interesting.  How long have we been asking for flying mounts?  How long have they told us it can't be done?

Looking forward

The New Star Wars is very close to release

The New Wow expansion is due Nov 10 (I believe)

Rift is due Feb 11 (or about) and starting closed beta shortly 

Combined with

Smokejumper dropping the bombshell of F2F/RMT on a different server with no real direction timeline other then "we'll play it by ear".

They are jumping back into the balancing quagmire (always tends to upset at least one or 2 classes)

all wrapped up in the very high hopes/expectations of the playerbase for sentimental value of this expansion.

The conclusion is simple to see; Velious needs to be, hands down, the best expansion they release in EQ2 history to carry that much working against you.  If they expect the flying mount aspect to carry them through a lack-luster content or a unforseen botched mechanic/nerf it's seriously going to damage customer confidence. 

I'm not one to place bets on "Game-killers" and i'm not going to now, however, the development team has alot riding on this expansion.  It's Gut-Check Time.

[Sola]

Loxus@Everfrost wrote:

I'm looking forward to this one, I think it will really show us what this team is made of, however, you can already see the panic setting in.  Sony is behind the 8-ball currently and the next 6 months are gonna be interesting.  How long have we been asking for flying mounts?  How long have they told us it can't be done?

Looking forward

The New Star Wars is very close to release

The New Wow expansion is due Nov 10 (I believe)

Rift is due Feb 11 (or about) and starting closed beta shortly 

Combined with

Smokejumper dropping the bombshell of F2F/RMT on a different server with no real direction timeline other then "we'll play it by ear".

They are jumping back into the balancing quagmire (always tends to upset at least one or 2 classes)

all wrapped up in the very high hopes/expectations of the playerbase for sentimental value of this expansion.

The conclusion is simple to see; Velious needs to be, hands down, the best expansion they release in EQ2 history to carry that much working against you.  If they expect the flying mount aspect to carry them through a lack-luster content or a unforseen botched mechanic/nerf it's seriously going to damage customer confidence. 

I'm not one to place bets on "Game-killers" and i'm not going to now, however, the development team has alot riding on this expansion.  It's Gut-Check Time.

Don't forget FFXIV will be released the end of September!  From what I've read, the original FF Online is very close to how EQ1 made it feel like you earned things.  It has fallen into the same trap as EQ1 with not a lot of lower level user base and therefore difficult to level up and find groups.  the FFXIV sounds like it'll really bring back the epicness to MMO's (*crosses fingers*).

[Anestacia]

Pheep@Unrest wrote:

This is not said to be mean, cruel, or to offend...and the "you" is collectively meant.

If you feel it'll be fail, don't buy the expansion.

If you feel that Sony is a fail company, don't give them your money.

If negativity is all you can find in Sony and EQ2, then it's time to just stop and find another place to give you your happy.

+1

[Mustang8259]

I've got high, high hopes for this expansion and if the flyover video on Zam is anything to go by I think they're off to a great start!  The only concern i've had is the comment that they might have to split it into 2 expansions and that they "intend" to finish all of Velious,  but if they keep movin along with the same quality that is demonstrated in the video I think we're in for a treat, RoK may even have some competition for favorite expansion in my book =P I'm admittedly not the optimistic type most of the time, but this prview looks awesome, way to go Devs!

[Deathbyshadow]

Pheep@Unrest wrote:

This is not said to be mean, cruel, or to offend...and the "you" is collectively meant.

If you feel it'll be fail, don't buy the expansion.

If you feel that Sony is a fail company, don't give them your money.

If negativity is all you can find in Sony and EQ2, then it's time to just stop and find another place to give you your happy.

Exactly, and u should car about the other 19 because they have to worry about updates for everquest 1, 2 SWG and everything else, it isn't just about eq2 or everquest itself for some people and u weren't even at the Fan Faire to see how awesome it was siden, I rest my case no let's stop fighting and stop stressing these guys out

[Brook]

They don't have the staff to roll out a good expansion anymore.

If LU 57 is any indication of what we will be seeing from this company for the future of this game I will pull a Steven Slater and move on before Velious gets here. I got my monies worth for entertainment from this company but I refuse to pay for lower quality spell graphics and a declining population to play with, not to mention the haphazard way class balance or lack thereof has been done for the past couple of years. I am sick and tired of being jerked around by a company that says it listens but continues to change things that drive away customers and bring in new ideas to try without ever slowing down to figure out WHY what they are doing isn't working.

I don't foresee flying mounts bringing anymore of a fun factor to the game than for about 3 weeks tops while everyone gets used to it because we have instant travel everywhere now anyway.