Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Are any of you lot still playing EverQuest 2? Some people are, it would seem, since Sony are continuing to churn out both pay-for and free content. The latest free update, The Children of War, adds the fortress of Drunder, seven new missions, new PvP maps and modes, new quests, new crafting recipes and all kinds of other gubbins. This comes after Destiny of Velious, the latest pay-for expansion, added flying mounts and reduced the number of stats belonging to each character to two.

It would also appear that somewhere along the line the developers stopped hiring professional voice actors for their trailers, as you’ll see below.
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As previously reported, Everquest II is adding a Free-to-Play option. The story is no longer true. It’s gone into Open Beta, so now totally has a free-to-play option. The unique twist is that it doesn’t touch the traditional game at all, instead offering a parallel Everquest II Extended free-to-play option. So if you want to play a sub game you can, and if you want to enter a more micro-payment option, you can do that too. You can download the client here, which has Guild-War-esque streaming tech to allow you to start playing rather than waiting for Gigabytes of stuff to squeeze out of your internet-pipe. Also, according to the FAQ, despite being a Beta, there won’t be a character wipe when it goes live properly, so all your progress (and expenditures) will carry across into the full launch. This free-to-play second-life for 3rd-wave MMOs is very much a trend of the year, and you can see the Gamescom trailer below…
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With SOE having made some in-roads to freeland with Free Realms, it seems they’re also going to try it with Everquest 2. It’s not quite the DDO or LOTRO model, however, since Everquest II Extended is going to be an entirely separate (although mechanistically and thematically similar) game from the Everquest 2 that you probably abandoned to go back to World Of Warcraft. There are a bunch of details over here – it’s probably going into beta on 17th of August – but you won’t be surprised to learn that the game will be supported by sucking out vital elements of your soul and using them to feed the dead god Anubis, who lives on in a nth-dimension beneath the surface of the Earth an optional subscription and in-game micropaymentish marketplace.

Everquest II’s fifth major expansion goes live today. It’s a retail box at $40, and includes all previous EQ2 expansions and add-ons, as well as a load of new regions and new quest strings. To be honest I have little idea what kind of significance this expansion holds for the Everquest II community, which I understand remains fairly large, despite the fierce competition it faces from so many other MMOs. This interview delves into some of the details, and unearths some of the ways that the EQ designers are still polishing and reinventing their game.

Trailer and full press release after the jump.
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Ah, I’m late on this. I meant to post it a couple of weeks back, but got distracted by laserbeams firing from the heavens. But it’s still relevant, so it’s getting a quick nod here, in time for the weekend. After all – you weren’t planning on going outside or something crazy? In short: Sony announced that anyone with an inactive account for either Everquest or Everquest 2 could play until July 31st absolutely free. Details of it here. I haven’t played either since their respective early days. Does anyone think it’s worth returning?