Holly “Windstalker” Longdale, producer for Everquest II, announced the game’s 10th expansion: Tears of Veeshan at this evening’s SOE Live keynote address in Las Vegas, Nevada. The expansion is scheduled to release this fall and is packed with lots of new features. Here’s some of what players have to look forward to.
New Zones
Tears of Veeshan will introduce a new overland zone called the Eternal Broodlands, which is where dragons go when they die. There will also be 9 new dungeons, including two new Shissar themed dungeons, as well as some modern day twists on some old classics, such as High Keep, the NexusCore, and the Pickclaw Depths. The dragon Kerafyrm has also raised the Temple of Veeshan, which is so large that it is now the first flyable dungeon for Everquest II. The art of these new zones looks amazing and we can’t wait to see more!
(Hallway in the Temple of Veeshan)
More Alternate Advancements
A new Alternate Advancements tab will appear and allow players to add new AAs based on their archetypes. Players will be able to spend points in new dragon-paired abilities specific to their archetype-dragon match: Priests-Wuoshi, Fighters – Yelenak, Mages – Trakanon, and Scouts – Dozekar. The AA cap will also be increasing by 20 points, changing from a 320 to a 340 AA limit. The new tab allows a maximum of 50 AAs, so players will have to do some rearranging if they wish to place the maximum amount of points into this tab.
(New Dragons AA Tab)
Merenaries
Players will be able to store more than one mercenary and switch mercenaries while out in the field. This feature received a lot of applause!
Tier 4 Guild Halls
New Guild Hall options are being introduced for Freeport and Qeynos. The new halls will be versions of the existing Tier 3 guild halls, but have more rooms and include a basement level.
(Qeynos T4 Guild Hall)
Dungeon Finder
Updates are coming to the Dungeon Finder system. Good ones… they promise. The initial launch of the dungeon finder system left much to be desired and resulted with feature that was barely used. The relaunch of Dungeon Finder promises a new User Interface that will display your place in the que. The matchmaker functionality will pull a balanced default group consisting of a tank, healer, support, dps and two others or you can specify which classes you want to recruit. There will also be new rewards for using Dungeon Finder, such as currency and loot crates. Players are hoping that the new version of this system will be cross-server, but there is no word yet on if that is a possibility or not.
New Class
A leather-wearing, bow-weilding Priest that has a construct pet is comming to Everquest II. The construct pets will be customizable with parts and abilities found throughout the world. There is testing panel scheduled on Saturday with more information on this class.
This is just the beginning of some new and exciting things in store for Everquest II.
Check back with GameSkinny throughout the weekend as we continue to cover news from SOE Live 2013!
