Could Planes of Power be the next EverQuest II expansion?
by Michael Zenke 
Dec 19th 2007 at 2:45PM
Filed under: Fantasy, EverQuest II, Expansions, New titles, Endgame, PvE, Opinion
The Ancient Gaming Noob is a great title for a blog. Even better: the blog offers insightful and intelligent commentary on Massively Multiplayer games. In fact, about a year ago Wilhelm (the blog's author) prognosticated the Kunark setting for the next EverQuest II expansion. When he stepped up to the plate with another guess earlier this week, I couldn't help but pay attention.Wilhelm figures that Sony Online Entertainment is going to be dipping back into the EverQuest lore, but with a twist this time. Instead of more terrestrial real-estate, he imagines they're going to look to the heavens for inspiration. In essence: a revisit to the Planes of Power. His logic is great, and his argument is fairly persuasive. It hinges on what high-end players want most:
Raids. Progression. Equipment. All of those in enough measure to keep the high end guilds busy for a long time. Perhaps all of these aspects in enough measure for some EverQuest guilds to take a serious second look at EverQuest II. While I expect that the basics of the new planes will be the similar to how the exist currently in EverQuest, which is to say instanced versus wide open, there will have to be changes. The gods will no doubt have revised their defenses. Of course, they won't go overboard, as you can only have 24 people on an EverQuest II raid, unless they chose to change that as well.
For the rest of us, he predicts a new Beastmaster-style class that draws a lot of elements from the Hunter in World of Warcraft, as well as new AA options. To me, it sounds totally reasonable. Are we looking at new planes? Perhaps zones somewhere on the shards of Luclin? Certainly they wouldn't pull Velious out of the closet? What do you think?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
wilhelm2451 said on 6:47PM 12-19-2007
Smarter people than I say I am way off. So far comments on the post run 100% against my predictions. Go me!
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Ghiest said on 5:59AM 12-20-2007
I hope not, Planes of power ruined the original Everquest (when I quit it) mostly due to big big mistakes on keying and attunement for dungeons (sound familiar?) and massive time sinks in the game (again sound familiar?), along with a dodgy graphics upgrade it all came right at the wrong time. I know about 75% of my gaming friends also quit EQ at the same time because of roughly the same reasons.
Unless they can find someway not to use allot of the above then really they will lose customers again.
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