EverQuest II's Destiny of Velious offers a trio of pre-orders

Which way would you like your EverQuest II: Destiny of Velious expansion pack? Sunny-side up? With fries? Medium-rare? If you like options, then SOE's assortment of pre-orders will have you pouring over the menu quite carefully.

Destiny of Velious became available for pre-orders yesterday, and EverQuest II's website lists three versions of the game available for purchase. The standard digital version is $39.99 and offers a loyal snow hound pet and four in-game paintings for your house as special rewards. If you want to kick it up a notch and shell out for the digital collector's edition, you'll get the snow hound, paintings, Tserrina's Wedding Present housing item, cosmetic ice armor, a prestige house and the ability to transform your griffon into a Stormfeather Brood Guardian. The collector's edition is temporarily priced at $59.99 for the next few weeks, and will go up to $89.99 on February 22nd.

There's also a retail version through Amazon and GameStop for those who prefer a physical copy of the game. The retail version contains the four paintings and an animated cloak as fun rewards. All versions of Destiny of Velious come with the core game and all of the expansions to date, and will include a full month of free gametime for new accounts. You can read all of the nitty-gritty details over at EverQuest II.

Update: Fixed the date of the CE price increase.

Reader Comments (13)

89.99?! That's a typo right....tell me they're not honestly charging people NINETY dollars for a CE.

@WonderPenguin Not just CE, but F2P CE. ROFL!!!

@Suspiro lol you're right!

They still are for House of Thule.

I agree with a commenter from a thread yesterday.

SOE have failed to put up a promotional site to show and demonstrate features, new areas, new ways of playing, it's all about fluff items and forcing people to pay now or be threatened with paying more later and 'missing out'. All SOE are advertising is some pretty simple in game items, where's the beef SOE?

Trust me on this one, a couple of weeks after release, you'll be able to get this xpac fro a whole lot less, I have a feeling that SOE isn't sharing for some pretty good reasons, and while it's wrong to discuss games under NDA, I'm pretty sure a quick search around the internet can reveal what people are actually buying.

The article is incorrect, the price of the collector's edition doesn't increase until February 22nd.

"Station Exclusive - Available until 2/21/11 for only $59.99*"

Smedbucks has never cared about makeing a good game nor has he ever cared about makeing happy customers.

He only cares about makeing money.

He should go back to the used car dealership.

Is the Silver membership with microtransactions worthwhile? I ask because these expansions are pretty damned pricey, and it seems like getting into EQ2 is going to be a hell of an investment.

@cowboyhugbees you just buy the latest xpack it comes with all the previous expansions.. if 40 bucks is to pricey.. MMO's might not be something you want to get into

@cowboyhugbees
That's something people often forget -- all of the EQ2 expansions include the current expansion AND everything that's been released up to that point. Plus 30 days of free play time for new players.

In a way, that means that existing players do get ripped a bit. After all, you end up buying each expansion multiple times. It would be nice if there was a discount on the online/download expansion options for current subscribers.

On the other hand, new players are absolutely golden. Destiny of Velious is (I think) the sixth or seventh expansion for the game. If you had to buy each expansion that would easily accumulate to over $200 to get access to the content that other players have.

Compare that to WoW: Battle Chest (Base game and Burning Crusade) will run $34. Plus another $37 for Wrath of the Lich King. Plus another $37 for Cataclysm. That comes to $108 to get in the game with all content. Even with LotRO, you're going to end up spending a good $30 or so for the expansion content.

As for the so-called Free to Play options that EQ2 offers, I do not recommend them. The price matrix ends up being ridiculously restrictive. And when you get to a point of frustration with those restrictions, you end up having to shell out either the regular subscription price of $15 a month (yet STILL be limited to only four races!) or $200 lump sum every year (which works out to $16.66 a month) to have access to all the races. In other words, to get the same level of access that a $15 a month subscriber gets, you have to pay $1.66 more just because you started out free to play. Totally asinine. :) So my recommendation is to buy Destiny of Velious and use your 30 free days. If you enjoy the game enough to subscribe, go with the regular subscription. If you don't enjoy the game enough to subscribe, would the much more restrictive free version really keep you playing? Probably not.

Looks like they're doing another NGE. Bait and switch after the expansion is out

I bet after they try to sell this POS they call a X-Pack they will roll all players into maybe 2-3 FTP (Eq2X) servers. The only people left working on the game will be Station Cash guys and that will be the extent of all future content.
They will let it sit in bleed out mode and make as much free money as thy can until its done. They will loose huge numbers soon so they have to decide if they are going to compete or grab as much cash as they can before it goes down.

We will see when its on Gamestops dicount rack for $19.00 in a month and when Rift takes a big bite out of the subs how it will go. SWTOR cant come soon enough.

recheck your facts.. the CE version is priced at 59.99 until February 21, 2011.

Station Exclusive - Available until 2/21/11 for only $59.99*

as seen here: http://everquest2.com/get_the_game/dov

EverQuest II's Destiny of Velious offers a trio of pre-orders

Reader Comments (13)

Posted: Jan 19th 2011 11:52AM WonderPenguin said

Posted: Jan 19th 2011 2:12PM Suspiro said

Posted: Jan 19th 2011 2:20PM WonderPenguin said

Posted: Jan 19th 2011 12:01PM ManaByte said

Posted: Jan 19th 2011 12:14PM Mr Angry said

Posted: Jan 19th 2011 12:45PM nekurawr said

Posted: Jan 19th 2011 1:09PM winterborn said

Posted: Jan 19th 2011 1:44PM cowboyhugbees said

Posted: Jan 19th 2011 6:01PM Tagwen said

Posted: Jan 19th 2011 6:27PM aurickle said

Posted: Jan 19th 2011 2:09PM Suspiro said

Posted: Jan 19th 2011 2:41PM winterborn said

Posted: Jan 19th 2011 6:00PM Tagwen said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

The Secret World launch delayed to July 3rd

Featured Stories

The Mog Log: The Legacy rewards and what they mean

The Tattered Notebook: The passing of Ribbitribbitt

The Firing Line: PlanetSide 2's Matt Higby on the MMOFPS revolution

Engadget

Joystiq

WoW

TUAW