There's a fairly hefty set of changes to EverQuest II's hate/aggro system currently being ironed out on Test, and they aren't to everyone's liking. Due to the the complexity of the changes, developer Chris "Aeralik" Kozak has offered up a summary for players to wrap their heads around. We'll attempt to boil it down even more for you, at the cost of including some of the finer details.

The problem with the aggro system begins with the fact that hate has scaled linearly as the game has progressed, and damage has scaled exponentially with gear and new skills, making it hard for designated aggro-holders to keep control of mobs. One of the changes on Test has given taunts the chance to hit critically, just like damage spells, and there will be a base and normalized amount of threat from taunt abilities.

World of Warcraft's second expansion did pretty well. Like, 2.8 million units in the first 24 hours well. This, we all know. The important question is, what sort of impact did Lich King have on the WoW playerbase? What kind of impact did the expansions for EverQuest 2 (The Shadow Odyssey) and Lord of the Rings Online (Mines of Moria) have on those communities? Thankfully, GamerDNA is doing its level best to answer these sort of weighty questions by datamining the heck out of their userbase. We have some hard-and-fast metrics, as a result, exploring these exact issues.

Lich King's launch, purely from a 'size of the graph bars' perspective, was an unmitigated success. As Sanya puts it, "what we're seeing is the triumph of advertising combined with critical mass. Lich King was promoted harder, louder, and in more places than the other two expansions." Which is not to say that TSO and MoM were failures. In fact, both expansions resulted in some serious bumps for both games. The graphs make it apparent that their success was somewhat mitigated by the almost-simultaneous launch of Lich King, with EQ2 feeling the burn more than LotRO. What will be fascinating to see is how this story pans out months from now, when dedicated players of these other two games have full-force returned after 'completing' the content from WoW's newest expansion. We'll keep you posted.

Alongside the new dungeons and deep EQ lore that the developers have pushed out to EverQuest II with their latest expansion, there have been a load of new changes and updates to the game's crafting metagame. We touched briefly on those changes in our full on tour of The Shadow Odyssey, but Emily "Domino" Taylor dropped by the official forums to give more details. There she outlines her logic behind improving the overall crafting experience for non-combat players rather than focusing on a ton of new recipes or craftable items.

EQ2Traders bears the responsibility of hosting several in-depth looks into the new crafterly content in the expansion. The site looks deep into the Far Seas Supply Division Headquarters, the numerous changes to the Isle of Mara, and the new instanced-based crafting content. The site also features a quick reference guide for players wanting to jump right into the expansion-y, crafter-y goodness. Click on through to these great resources for the full skinny on this sword-less way to pass the time in Norrath.

Everyone's got an expansion out right now -- EverQuest II has The Shadow Odyssey, The Lord of the Rings Online has Mines of Moria, World of Warcraft has Wrath of the Lich King, EVE Online has Quantum Rise -- there's no end to it, but then that's the point, isn't it?

Well, you'd think that, anyway. Word on the street is that there are already Death Knights at level 80, and all the raid content in Wrath has been completed. One player reached level 80 in only 27 hours. Over a year of development for one week of content? Are MMO players just too damned hardcore, or did Blizzard aim too low? How much content should you be getting for $30 or $40 and your continued subscription, anyway?

There are some folks out there who (to continue using WoW as an example) are still hacking through The Burning Crusade's content, or even the classic stuff. How do you think a balance can be struck between those folks, and the crews who have already bested all the Wrath content?

Over the last week or so we've been asking you how you've managed to decide between the big releases hitting the MMO genre these days. Last week's Lich King launch, followed by this week's launches of EverQuest 2: The Shadow Odyssey and Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria seem like challenging decisions for the fan of the MMO genre. We're not going to ask you how you picked, though, because we think we know how you decided which game to play. Like Codex and Zaboo up there, you hang out online where your friends are. At least, we think you do.

So our question this morning is, first, do you decide which MMO to play based on where your friends are? Second, how important are other people to your continued MMO gaming? If your friends weren't playing the game they are, would you be? How much does the directly social nature of massively multiplayer games affect your gameplay? Let us know, and good luck making those hard choices!

The EverQuest II team hopes to continue its string of upward-momentum expansions with today's launch of The Shadow Odyssey. After the landmark success of Echoes of Faydwer and the mixed reaction to Rise of Kunark, this new dungeon-heavy expansion hopes to recapture player excitement for the original EQ while polishing the design advances already in the game. We've already talked quite a bit about the game's big picture, so let's bring it down to some specifics.

Kendricke has posted up the full patch notes for the expansion, with everything from class balancing to new content laid out in the timeless bullet-pointy format. MMORPG Info has a handy quick-start guide, pointing out where you need to go to jump on the low level quests and the brand-new dungeons. EQ2 Wire, meanwhile, has difficulty ratings for the new dungeons, while the official site runs down the heritage quests added in the expansion. A ton of stuff to go through, and very texty. For a quick respite, head below the cut for a fantastic launch trailer! Happy dungeon-crawling!

It's not often that an expansion to an MMO launches, and it's even rarer that two do so in the same day! But that's the case, with EverQuest II: The Shadow Odyssey hitting the live servers today at noon PST. Massively has been following the expansion's lifecycle since it was announced at this year's SOE Fan Faire, and today we've put together the best of all our content touching on this brand-new chapter in the EQ2 saga. Read on for all the details!

	Massively's grand tour of EverQuest 2: The Shadow Odyssey Join us for a tour of Befallen, Lower Guk, the dangerous catacombs of Mistmoore and (most impressively) the Anchor of Bazzul, a part of the treacherous Void! Vampire dragons, floating Void priests, undead frogs and slave-owning trolls all await you below, in our exhaustive exploration of this brand-new expansion.
	What you need to know about The Shadow Odyssey The Shadow Odyssey, EverQuest II's fifth expansion, is not just the usual bump to the level cap, a couple of new raids, and a reset for all the armor you already got. It's none of those things. What SOE has done with this expansion is go through the level 50 to level 80 portion of the game and say, let's make an expansion that has something for pretty much everyone.
	Exploring The Shadow Odyssey with EQII Senior Producer Bruce Ferguson SOE just announced the newest expansion to their EverQuest II title, and we've got plenty of answers for your burning questions. We had the chance to sit down with the game's Senior Producer, Bruce Ferguson, to talk about what makes this such an important product for Sony Online. Join us as we talk through some of the fantastic new content coming to the game.
	EQII: The Shadow Odyssey teaser trailer released We have some fantastic new video footage to present as well. This footage shows some exciting new content such as a few new goal-based dungeons, as well as some old favorites like Ruins of Guk and Befallen, plus new creatures and much more. Check out the complete video after the cut and let us know what you think!
	A walking tour of EverQuest 2's new Veksar dungeon As we've done in the past with new updates to EverQuest II, we recently had the chance to go on a walking tour of the brand new Veksar Invasion dungeon. Just as with our looks at the Shard of Hate, GU 47, and GU 45, we were able to go deep inside the new content to get a sense of what's new and interesting about the game.

Today is the day! Not just one, but two awesome expansions, chock-full of great new content are coming out today. The Lord of the Rings Online has its first separate expansion, The Mines of Moria. EverQuest II has its fifth expansion The Shadow Odyssey, but one that just furnishes tons of new content and goodness without boosting levels like expansions normally do. Of course, with two great new expansions launching today, we thought we'd ask -- are you taking today off to enjoy all the new content? Or are you going to go ahead and head in, knowing full well you'll be spending all day with your head in the clouds thinking of all the cool stuff you'll be doing this evening? Let us know!

(For those of you who decided to be good and go in today, we're adding in some gallery goodness to help pass the time and whet your appetite!)

For the third week in a row we're fortunate enough to be able to bring you a fantastic giveaway. After the explosion of swag during our Birthday celebration, and last week's Lich King loot pile, you'd think we'd be flagging. But no, instead we're collaborating with Sony Online Entertainment to bring you five keys for the newest EverQuest II expansion! The Shadow Odyssey is hitting stores tomorrow, and you can snag your keys first thing right here from Massively.com. The expansion is worth $39.99 at retail, making this giveaway valued for a total of $160.

To enter just leave a comment here on this post letting us know what you're most looking forward to in The Shadow Odyssey! You'll need to comment before 7:00 AM EST Tuesday, November 18th. You can only enter once per person, and after the contest closes we'll ship out the prize to five randomly-selected winners. To win you must be age 18 or up and a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec). For full eligibility details, we suggest you read our official rules. Good luck!

The latest EverQuest II expansion, The Shadow Odyssey, will launch this week on November 18th. In advance of the launch, Stephanie Morrow of Beckett Massive Online Gamer recently interviewed some members of the EverQuest II design team -- Noel Walling (Design Supervisor), Paul Molina (Game Designer), Adam Stevens (Game Designer) and Carlos Mora (Associate Game Designer).

The Beckett Massive Online Gamer interview focuses on the lore of EverQuest II (with an emphasis on background for readers who've never played), but also gets down into some specifics regarding The Shadow Odyssey dungeons, the challenges of designing around the 80 level cap, and some of the new features that players can expect from this week's launch of the fifth EverQuest II expansion. If you're an EQ II fan, the interview is worth a read, and of course we also hope you're enjoying our ongoing coverage of The Shadow Odyssey.

It happened with The Burning Crusade -- players had spent months raiding at level 60 to get the very best gear, and when TBC came out, people were getting green drops with better stats than the best raid drops after only a couple of levels. A lot of hardcore players were annoyed, while some just accepted it as the natural motion of things.

We've got at least three big expansions coming up in the next few weeks -- Wrath of the Lich King for World of Warcraft, Mines of Moria for The Lord of the Rings Online, and The Shadow Odyssey for EverQuest II. With the level caps going up in WoW and LotRO, we're expecting a similar situation to what we saw with TBC. How do you feel about this? Can it be avoided, should it? Maybe it's good to level the playing field now and then. Let us know!

Massively tries to be your one-stop shop for everything MMO related ... but there's a danger to a site like ours. Ultimately, we become so close to the subject matter that we stop being able to objectively judge content. That's one of the reasons we try to avoid any definitive statements in preview materials. We're so used to MMOs that we try to adopt a passive viewpoint, a somewhat-impartial observer for the prospective player. That's useful to a lot of people ... but it can also allow the chance for critical observations to go by the wayside. Luckily, we're far from the only website on the internet talking about MMOs.

Eurogamer's MMO coverage has been very good since they started that subsite earlier this year, and they have an engaging look at EverQuest II: The Shadow Odyssey well worth reading. Author Jon Blyth is anything but passive in his discussion of the game, calling the expansion's occasional platforming puzzle "a flattering name for dodgy [gameplay] in a genre that really wasn't designed for it." He offers up a greater sense of what touring the new EQ2 expansion was like, and his walkthrough discussion of the dungeons gets across a newcomer's wonder at lore bastions like Befallen and Mistmoore Manor. Well worth a look for another viewpoint on the upcoming expansion, and a great contrast to our own gallery-style walkthrough.

Coming to players in just over eighteen days is a fantastic new expansion to SOE's flagship title EverQuest 2! The expansion is entitled The Shadow Odyssey, and we were one of the first sites 'on the scene' to offer you a sense of what was to come. We've talked with the developers about the game, previewed the dungeons via screenshots, toured the new Veksar 'demo dungeon', and were even on-hand at Fan Faire for firsthand TSO experiences! Now we've had the chance to delve into the dungeons themselves, and we've come away with a gallery full of dungeon-crawling goodness!

Join us for a tour of Befallen, Lower Guk, the dangerous catacombs of Mistmoore and (most impressively) the Anchor of Bazzul, a part of the treacherous Void! Vampire dragons, floating Void priests, undead frogs and slave-owning trolls all await you below, in our exhaustive exploration of this brand-new expansion. Plus! Check below the cut for our exclusive video of the Anchor of Bazzul, showing of the latest in high-end graphics EverQuest 2 has on offer. It's a one-of-a-kind spread, so put on your adventuring kit and head into the depths!

After a long Beta process, lots of speculation, and plenty of opportunities for delicious previews, the time of Shadow is almost upon us. SOE dropped us a line to let us know that the fifth expansion to EverQuest II, The Shadow Odssey, is now available for preorder. The usual suspects are offering the product, of course, and you can digitally preorder the expansion from SOE's official site. Normally we're all about the discless preorders at Massively, but this time around we have to admit the box sounds mighty appealing.

Along with the usual weird in-box physical object SOE loves to give us (a pewter figurine this time around), the boxed copy of Shadow Odssey includes a first for EQII pets! Here's how the release describes it: "Dire Bear Mount and Pet. A Dire Bear cub that grows up as you level to become a fearsome mount." Is this just one of a number of these pets? Will the bear be obtainable any other way? We'll find out together on November 18th when TSO goes live!

Read on below the cut for a celebratory preorder trailer, the full features list, images of the in-game preorder benefits.