EverQuest II: Rise of Kunark
It looks like the first EQII expansion that I had absolutely nothing to do with has now come out. Scott Hartsman talks about Kunark’s Eve and how the day before the launch of anything is pretty awesome. Grimwell has an RoK Launch Day Blog up to keep people informed during the server downtime. Congratulations to my old coworkers at SOE for completing another expansion. I’m getting my patch going now so I can join the throng of Sarnak newbies in decimating Timorous Deep.
I was fortunate enough to have been in the beta for RoK since late September, and the bulk of my raid guild was there for the last few weeks as well, allowing us to help test/bug raid content.
It is a huge expansion and the developers clearly put a lot of work into it. I never played EQ1, but from what I’ve heard/read of it, RoK will bring a lot of the flavor of EQ1 back – particularly with gaining faction with various groups.
The game, IMO, is suffering for having to support 24 classes. The T8 fabled set armor were largely cut-and-paste copies of each other, and the set bonuses some classes received make little sense for raiding – which is the only way those armor sets can be obtained. With fewer classes, the developers could concentrate on making the classes more distinct, and could perhaps actually learn how all the classes are actually played.