It's a tough time for MMOs to get any measure of attention these days if they don't have the word "war" in their titles, but that didn't stop SOE from coming around last week to parade EverQuest II's upcoming expansion, The Shadow Odyssey. Set for release in November, Odyssey will focus on high-level content: approximately 20 zones of it, mainly for players at level 80 or those edging thereabouts. Despite it unarguably being for the already-enfranchised, there are some interesting ideas going into it. For one, it will mesh in some pretty cool ways with an expansion for the original EverQuest launching around the same time. SOE will also be introducing some elements of The Shadow Odyssey in the last major content patch scheduled to go live around a month before the expansion's launch.
Expansion Telegraph
Leading up to The Shadow Odyssey's release on November 18, EverQuest 2 will see a substantial update in early October titled "Raising the Banner." Elements of this sizable update will set the tone for the expansion's content.
But the most significant bit of content in "Raising the Banner" will have nothing to do with The Shadow Odyssey. Players in the game now will have noticed the guild halls under construction on the outskirts of their respective faction capitols. Once Raising the Banner goes live, those structures will be completed, and ready for acquisition by guilds advanced enough to have unlocked the privilege of purchasing them. As far as functionality, they'll be similar to player housing -- they'll be instanced for guild members, though outsiders can be invited in. Members will be able to use the halls as a home base of sorts, where they can hang out and form groups, access the marketplace to sell wares, and enjoy other amenities that become available as their guild continues to level up, stuff like "guild strategist" NPCs that teach advanced ranks of abilities without requiring tome drops and armor mannequins that display sets that members have acquired.
Once "Raising the Banner" goes live, players will also notice a team of excavators hanging around the Sinking Sands zone. According to the update notes currently on the EQ2 test servers, these NPCs will "have numerous tasks for any recruits willing to help defend the site, excavate relics, maintain their assisting clockworks and provide crafted supplies for the team." The content of the activities they provide, according to senior producer Bruce Ferguson, will serve set the tone for the expansion in a big way.
Stages of History
The Shadow Odyssey's content will converge with the events of the original EverQuest's upcoming expansion, Seeds of Destruction, in some interesting ways. It's the first time that expansions for both games will play off each other in this capacity. Seeds of Destruction will focus on revisiting sites and events from EverQuest's past. Among other things, players will be able to accept quests from cover girl deity Firiona Vie, and adventure around the site of Qeynos back when it was still a backwoods fort. The main thread that ties Seeds and Shadow Odyssey together, however, is a zone called "The Void," an aptly-named place seemingly out of space and time, which will serve as a hub zone in post-expansion EverQuest and as a notable site in its own right in The Shadow Odyssey. The Shadow Odyssey will flirt with nostalgia, revisiting such places as Mistmoore, Najena, and the Sebilsian Empire.
Epic Welfare
MMOs have slowly but sure abandoned the restrictive, punishing loot-garnering schemes that defined their formative years. These days, it's hard to walk out of an instance run without at least a loot token to show for it. The designers behind EverQuest II are undeniably hip to how things have shaken down. In The Shadow Odyssey, monsters in all corners of the expansion will drop "void shards" that players can amass and trade to gear-peddling Erudite merchants for the upgrades that may have eluded them as dungeon drops. Further, a new "dungeon delving" system with incentivize players to revisit previously-cleared content for this crucial currency.
With The Shadow Odyssey clocking in as expansion number five, EverQuest II is undeniably more prolific than its erstwhile competitor when it comes to releasing retail expansions. Whether The Shadow Odyssey is substantive enough to keep the game relevant in the face of the two biggest MMO releases of the past few years remains to be seen. EverQuest II: The Shadow Odyssey is set for release on November 18th.
