Dragons of Norrath EQ Expansion Announced

The EQ site has the details on the just announced new expansion for the original Everquest world, Dragons of Norrath. Aside from the usual new content areas and monsters, the expansion promises to provide some interesting new features for Norrathians of all stripes. From the article: "Featuring new lands with enhanced graphics, bold new storylines, and updated creatures including goblins, drakes and the ominous Frost Giant, EverQuest: Dragons of Norrath is the next great expansion pack for the fantasy saga that is EverQuest. Make ready with new features such as the ability to regenerate your mana/health before a battle, use your potion belt to access your inventory quickly, and quickly swap from Sword and Shield to Great Sword using the bandolier."

Yeesh

[Jahf]

At least put your ads in banners.

I usually say "but this is /." when people complain about threadvertising, but this is a new and blatant low.

Re:Yeesh

[Alarash]

How did you come to the conclusion that EQ is the most popular North American MMO? World of Warcraft is. And I don't mean to start a EQ vs WoW war here, it's just a fact : 600 000 just for the holiday season. Add to that 200 000 boxes that were bought prior to the holidays. EQ2 only has 310 000 players, and EQ Live never reached 500 000 according to this site [mmogchart.com]. Yes, the site lists only 200 000 customers but hasn't been updated since late november.

Uh, what?

[d3kk]

I'm confused by what they mean by "potion belt." It's been a few years since I played, but I definitely remember being able to hotkey inventory items. This included setting up hotkeys to switch from one to two handed weapons.

Looking at some of the other features...

The regeneration thing is entirely worthless since you need to be at your guildhall to use it. It's not like you can use it to decrease downtime.

The "new" NPCs they have listed all existed in the game years ago. Lame.

It sounds like they're really searching for ideas these days. I'm glad I managed to break the habit when Luclin was released.

Re:Uh, what?

[_xeno_]

Not having ever played EQ, I can't help but say that the new features sound surprisingly like Diablo II. Potion belt? Check. Switching weapon setups? Check. (It sounds more like switching between any weapon setup to any other with a hotkey, not just switching between one-handed and two-handed. I'd hope you could have macroed that ahead of time.)

It seems like they're ripping features from Diablo II, for some reason...

I have to wonder why they're announcing a new expansion pack too. You'd think the

Re:Uh, what?

[Lehk228]

actually the "players can buyt items" allows traders in the bazaar to buy items from other players by setting a price before hand, behaving like NPC vendors rather than sell-only trader mode.

Re:Uh, what?

[_xeno_]

In other words: it works exactly like the bazaar system in Final Fantasy XI, like I said.

Re:Uh, what?

[Lehk228]

I was under the impression that you had thought that EQ required both parties to be interacting in order to trade goods, my mistake.

Re:Uh, what?

[Dachannien]

You could hotkey inventory items, but that would take up hotkey slots - and unless you're pretty good at switching from one hotkey group to another, hotkey slots are at a premium. Also, you *can't* swap weapons via one button-push, though you could waste hotkey slots and main inventory slots to accomplish this by putting your equipment slot and a main inventory slot on a hotkey and then clicking the swapped items between them.

Also, you really missed out on LDoN. 'Twas the best thing to happen to EQ since

10 items in your hot bank

[Tangurena]

You could have 10 buttons in each hot bank. Abilities, spells, potions, clicky items. Shift + a number will switch to a different hotbank.

The potion belt sounds like something off of Morrowind or Neverwinter Nights.

Whoopee

[white1827]

Another bland expansion to EQ. For the record, after 5 years of extracting 10-13 a month from it's customers I think they can afford to redo a few monster models on their own dime. Each additional expansion seems to have ever decreasing amounts of features and content.

Yawn

[Shihar]

the expansion promises to provide some interesting new features for Norrathians of all stripes insert completely non-inovative tweaks to the game here.

To put it bluntly, who in the hell cares? You are either horribly addicted to the game such that your addiction defies reason and rationality and you will buy any crap they put out, or you are playing WoW. Either you are addicted and already lined up to buy this crap, or you came to your senses a couple years ago and are playing something different.

Not th

Why is Sony doing this?

[Pluvius]

Isn't this just encouraging its audience not to buy EQ2, which is a bad idea at this point in time? I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed this article coming right after one about WoW breaking sales records.

Rob

Re:Why is Sony doing this?

[NBarnes]

Hardly. Sony swore up and down for years upon years that Everquest 2 was not supposed to be a replacement for Everquest 1. They swore they'd continue to support EQ1 after they released EQ2. And for years these bizzare 'Sony will force us all to play EQ2 rumors!!!11!!!' rumors continued.

Why, in Shiva's name, would Sony want to kill EQ1? To throttle their golden goose only to hope that EQ2 could catch the same lightning in a bigger, better, bump-mapped bottle? No, they did the smart thing all along; EQ2

still?

[fearanddread]

There they are...kicking that dead horse!

I'd be curious to see how many subscribers they still have. I wonder if it's turned into the desolate wasteland I imagine it to be with everyone bailing for either Wow or EQII.

Anybody still playing this badboy?

Re:still?

[chrisG23]

I have no hard numbers as none have been released, but its my guess that most EQ1 players, especially the hardcore players that probably form the core of EQ's subscription base, are reluctant to drop their up to 5 year investment in a 'uber' character with 'uber' gear and start from scratch as a level 1 nobody on EQ2.

I bet SOE is making more money off of EQ1 right now than EQ2, and as EQ2 seems to be somewhere in the 3rd 4th or 5th place spot in the "wow id like to try that" factor, behind WoW, CoH, and

Re:still?

[Damvan]

Right on the money Chris... All my friends who play EQ (which I quit 3 years ago due to SOE treating their customers like crap) steadfastly refuse to even try WoW. Something about being uber and not wanting to start over. So, rather than play a game they might enjoy (WoW) they continue to punish themselves with EQ cause they are high level (essentially finished the game). And they continually bitch about EQ and SOE.

Hooray!

[Sparr0]

Once again Sony learns from the hackers, implementing features that we have used macros to perform (which I never considered to be cheating) for years. I cannot even remember how bad it was, playing EQ *WITHOUT* the ability to switch weapons with a hotkey.