Rumor: EQII's next expansion returns to Velious

It's been a long road getting from there to here, it's been a long time, but my time is finally here. Oh wait, that's from the incredibly sappy theme song to Star Trek: Enterprise. My bad. But it does describe the wait for EverQuest II players to return to their old stomping grounds of Velious from the first EverQuest.

That wait may soon be over, as ZAM is reporting that SOE has applied for the trademark "EverQuest II: Destiny of Velious." This comes on top of other recent hints, such as the Coldain dwarves in New Halas, so it shouldn't come as a total shocker to EQ II fanatics.

The Scars of Velious was EverQuest's second expansion back in 2000, which featured the titular continent where snow, ice and dragons abounded. A decade later, and players may be able to return to their old stomping grounds to see the familiar sights, as well as the (undoubtedly) great changes that have come upon this land. Head over to read the speculation and news on ZAM.

Reader Comments (7)

Man I miss those days of Everquest - SoV, but then they had to ruin it all with Luclin and PoP, so we all quit after that second bad expansion which proved that SOE were committed to taking Everquest in the wrong direction. Now the game is a shell of it's former self and such a bloated mess.

Everquest 2 was fun in beta but it needed alot of work done to it. However they launched the game even though we all said it needed more time and everyone quit to play the much more polished WoW. The funny thing was WoW was more like Everquest than Everquest 2 was. The reason why Everquest 2 was fun in beta was the possibilities of what they can do and the high population. It was so fun to group in that game but cause they launched it too early and with too many servers, it became harder and harder to group. So the game just died come December of 2004 and it was no point playing anymore. Now it's just a dumbed down soloers game where you can't find anyone to group with.

SOE have a long history of making great titles with so much potential and then ruining them by rushing them out or making game breaking expansions.

Planetside had an Expansion 3 months after launch and was only tested for two weeks. Everyone quit the game because it wasn't what they wanted for the game and BFRs in 2004 was the final blow.

Star wars Galaxies was rushed out as a buggy mess, it started getting better towards the end of 2003 with player cities and mounts. However in SOE fashion they ruined the game with Jedi and Holocrons. They then ignored the rest of the game for a year trying to fix Jedi, then doing the CU which ruined the game. Then the final nail in the coffin with the NGE which was the biggest shambles of a patch that ever hit any game.

SOE have done nothing for six years but change all their mmos into cash shops and release expansion after expansion milking Everquest. When you see their content quality in terms of what Blizzard does with WoW, it is laughable. SOE needs change and they need to get rid of John Smedley if they want to have success in the future.

Everquest 2 has plenty of people on the one or two servers at least. I just started playing it while waiting for FFXIV to come out and on my 27 berserker I can easily get groups consistently.

EQ2 didn't seem to be what I'd consider "dead" the last time I played it. There was a decent player base around, and I'd even dare say that it was a tad bit easier to group for the "low level stuff" than in WoW at the time.

The fact that they are able to launch new expansions would lead to the fact that the game is doing well enough, even if it isn't pulling huge WoW numbers.

Yeah Luclin was what made me quit EQ1 as well after 3 good years - Luclin was just unfinished and dull, then when PoP was announced and looked like it was just going to turn the lore into a joke by making almost every god into a loot-sack I figured that EQ1 had "jumped the shark".

Even though I think Kunark was a better expansion all-round, the Velious era was my golden age of EQ1 as I was in a great raiding guild - so I have fond memories and the nostalgic pull is strong, but I resisted re-subbing to EQ2 when their Kunark expansion came out so I'm sure I'll resist the return of Velious - I just can't go back to an MMO that bored me enough to quit it once - I loved almost everything about EQ2 for a year of beta and 9 months post-release, but like EQ1 the basic gameplay just sent me to sleep.

Also in EQ2 I didn't find any of the classes that interesting and with so many (24) they weren't clearly differentiated from each other enough for me to get excited about (something WoW in particular did right).

I agree SOE hasn't done much in the last few years except the cash-shop thing (which would have made me quit all their games on principal if I'd still been playing any of them), but I still hope DCUO and The Agency will be really good - though with SOE's business practices I expect both games to be ruined by having a cash-shop on top of a sub. Though if Planetside 2 is as good as the original Planetside was pre-BFRs then I'll play it even if I have to sell my soul to SOE and give them access to my wallet again.

If they treat it with respect this could be awesome.

Anyone else agree that the amount of EQ2 expansions is now a bad thing? I mean how intimdating for a new player it must be to know this game is about to be on its 7th expansion?

Tons of content im sure but wow...overwhelming

RIP Keith Parkinson

Rumor: EQII's next expansion returns to Velious

Reader Comments (7)

Posted: May 15th 2010 12:15PM Miffy said

Posted: May 15th 2010 12:28PM Egobrane said

Posted: May 15th 2010 3:05PM Rialle said

Posted: May 16th 2010 10:00AM Valdamar said

Posted: May 15th 2010 8:36PM TheGreatMachine said

Posted: May 16th 2010 7:38AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 16th 2010 9:58PM Jenks said

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