Everquest II aims upcoming Complete Collection at new players
by Eliot Lefebvre 
Oct 24th 2009 at 1:00PM
Filed under: Fantasy, EverQuest II, MMO industry, News items
The problem with getting players into a new game after a couple years is that, well, the game has moved on. It has a couple expansions under its belt, it has a whole lot of new concepts, and new players aren't going to be on board for it. A new player is hard enough to rope into an MMO as it is, much less when you tell them they have to buy three expansions and hit level 30 in a month to see some of the cool stuff. Everquest II knows how much of a struggle it can be, which is why they're releasing the Everquest II Complete Collection just in time for both the holiday season and before the upcoming expansion pack The Sentinel's Fate (due out in February).
What does it contain? The initial Everquest II, obviously, along with all five of the game's extant expansion packs. If that's not enough, it also offers sixty free days of play (up from the usual thirty) and 500 Station Cash to help buy things from the game's microtransaction system. At the risk of sounding like a marketing press release, it's an ideal way to get a friend into the game over the holiday season, and presumably get them ready in time for the new expansion to hit.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jack said on 6:47PM 10-24-2009
Its kinda nice but is it me or did they not already include all the Everquest releases with every expansion pack before it.....?!
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royale said on 10:50PM 10-24-2009
Yes, they don't require you to buy all the previous expansions. You just buy the most recent one and all the previous expansions come along with it.
This is a really nice offer, though, even for someone who has most of the stuff already. Even just the two months of gametime is a deal if you think of it as $10 a month. And on top of that they give you all the expansions--including the newest one released only a year ago.
One thing I'm not clear on: I wonder if I could buy that pack, use only the SO key to upgrade my account and still get the 60 days of game time... Or do they require you to create a new account when you buy this package?
Evi said on 6:52PM 10-24-2009
Now there's a tempting offer. $20 for the game plus all expansion packs? Hot diggity!
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Wisdomandlore said on 7:54PM 10-24-2009
I was considering buying this (I went with WoW instead). You can buy the current pack, Shadow Odyssey, which gives you all of this for $20 (although the the Sony Station charges you $40). So this isn't exactly new...
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Jason said on 7:55AM 10-25-2009
EQ2 is a tragedy because when I played the trial, the RPG elements to it seemed kind of cool, but the engine made me feel like I was driving a broken down old truck. The thing runs terribly, I have a feeling it's amazingly unoptimized. I don't usually get upset about art, either, but in this case each scene feels like it was patched together, you have places where textures meet other textures that don't match abruptly (like trees that appear to be just driven into the ground by some guy with a huge hammer) or where the same texture and lighting is used for everything, which reminds me of how Doom looked (Freeport starting area). I think they need to throw this out and start over again with something that has a consistent visual style and runs above 30FPS everywhere on hardware that has been out for a few years.
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Mr Angry said on 7:25PM 10-25-2009
I just gave this another shot, it will always be fun for me, I was surprised how robust and deep this game is, so paid SOE for 3 months and see what happens.
I believe Nagafen the PVP server was recently merged, so there has been a flurry of activity, which is great!
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