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List of Changes Since Release
Flem
Member UncommonPosts: 2,870
in Everquest II
In Lieu of a lot of people who played at release and ask the same question as to what has changed, I’ve decided to piece together a list of improvements that EQ2 has undergone since it came out.
- Crafting overhaul, no longer reliant on other tradeskill classes to make your components. Also gone are the interim steps to crafting a final piece, now you just make the final piece in one go.
- Tradeskill event counters now appear at the bottom of the crafting window.
- 4 New races (Fae, Arasia, Froglok & Sarnak).
- 3 New starting areas (Neriak, Gorowyn & Kelethin)
- Achievement Experience from level 10. Spend up to 140 points split between two alternate paths (class & sub-class trees) to progress your character.
- Tons of new quests including some very immersive signature and heritage quests. (Easily 4000+ quests in game)
- Armor sets unique to your class, equip em all for a bonus.
- Unique class helms
- 4 Expansion Packs which have introduced a ton of zones, quests, items and overall content.
1. Desert of Flames (Rasied level cap to 60)
2. Kingdom of Sky (Raised level cap to 70)
3. Echoes of Faydwer (Introduced content for all levels 1 through 70)
4. Rise of Kurnak (Raised level cap to 80 and introduced new content for 1-20 and 65+)
- Broker system overhaul, you can now sell direct from the broker instead of your house.
- No more having to be online to sell. Now your goods are still listed when you log off.
- You can now sell on the broker with all of your characters, not just one.
- More mounts including Wargs, Rhinos, Flying Carpets, Hover Platforms and armored horses.
- Quest sharing option.
- Quest journal limit increase.
- 3 Adventure packs
1. The Bloodlines Chronicles
2. The Splitpaw Saga
3. The Fallen Dynasty
- Addition of an Appearance tab which means you can look however you want but still keep your best armor equipped.
- Dressing room feature. Ctrl + Left Click most armor, weapons and furniture on the broker to see what it will look like before you buy. Can also preview quest rewards this way and also links provided through chat window.
- Worship deities. Gods have returned and you can now pick one to worship to obtain blessings and miracles in addition to pets and cloaks.
- Cloaks...need i say more.
- Can now zoom in and out on the map.
- Racial traits & class upgrades have been improved and now are easier to keep track of as it has been added to the achievement window.
- Two new sub crafting classes - Transmuting & Tinkering
- Coin denomination now auto changes for you to the next highest denomination, yay, no more carrying around 6000 copper.
- Easier to move house now, when you buy a new place all your stuff will be automatically moved over for you.
- Tradeskilling can now be done outside at one of the many crafting stations placed outside.
- Tradeskill work orders introduced.
- Compare you current equipment with potential purchases with mouse over tooltips.
- Mentor system. High level players can now group with lower levels and mentor them down to their level.
- SOGA models, an alternate appearance look for your character.
- Griffons added to TS and Nek Forest.
- Weapon & Armor imbuing.
- In game mail.
- Adornments which can be added to any equip able item.
- Stack sizes for gathering resources is now 200.
- Customisable guild heraldry for cloaks.
- In game looking for guild feature.
- Better LFG & LFW options.
- PvP dedicated servers.
- Arena PvP and consensual duel introduced on PvE servers.
- Extra earring slot.
- Teleporting. Some classes can now open portals to certain zones.
- Can now change your Tradeskill profession.
- Sub-class system gone. Start out as the class you want from level 1.
- Legends of Norath online card game; play in game or on the standalone client.
- Reverse writs added. (The items you find on mobs that you turn in for status for you and your guild).
- Brokers now list all items from all cities (used to have to visit a blackmarket fence to look at wares from other city).
- Access to old world zones no longer requires completion of a heroic quest or having to wait to reach an auto entry level limit (EL, ZEK etc).
- Guild Level cap is now 80.
- Harvesting tools added. Woodworked and tinkered tools reduce harvesting times.
- Mannequins have been added. Now you can display your favorite armor and weapons in your home.
- Epic weapons have been added for each class. Solo and group for your Fabled version then raid to upgrade it to mythical.
- Craters also get Epics!!. Quest and craft your way to obtain your very own tradeskill specific cloak.
- There are now more amenities available in East, North and South Freeport, including bankers, menders, and mariner's bells to summon transportation in and out. Similar amenities are now also available in North and South Qeynos.
- 4 more bank slots per character plus 4 more shared bank slots.
- Evil and Good aligned characters can now access the same shared bank slots. (not PvP)
- Money can now be shared to all characters in the bank. (PvP still restricted by alignment)
- You can now gain Achievement Experience from gray con quests that are level 10 or higher.
- Weaponsmiths and woodworkers have learned to create recipes for new, more desirable crafted weapons with a choice of new effect.
You can find all the Update Notes since the game was released HERE
I know there’s bound to be many more important changes that I have forgotten. If anyone can think of any (not trivial ones please like how they changed the resources graphic icon etc) just post it and I will update this list.
Oh, and who votes for getting this stickied.
Comments
sticky this
EQ2 fan sites
/nods..and its probably needs to be longer
It was such a big help that I decided to register with the site and comment on it. Thanks for the info.
/sticky vote
___________________
www.awarewolf.net
Nice post. I've played EQ2 on and off since release and everytime i say thats it i'm not going back i always do.
One small thing though, shouldn't it realy be 4 races? Frogloks weren't available at release.
Thanks for that, its been so long i had forgotten the Frogloks were not in at release. Updated list.
Some things (other more minor then some):
Loads more instanced dungeons… think the original only had a few (Nek Castle, Ice Spire, Draftling and a few I can not recall)
Persistent Instances (Heroic and Raid)
Removal of most access quests (possibly a bad thing)
Scaling revamped guild raid system
Moving master strike from level progression to Lore and Legend quests / combining them under 1 icon
There was that DoF class revamp too
Lore quests like the Behemoth quest that were initiated from the official forums
More solo freindly open worlds
Sub 30 solo instances
Sub 50 minor heroic instances ('slayer ring' instance)
Holidays!
<div><span style="width:120px; height:120px;float:left;overflow: hidden;"><a href="http://www.zowned.com/Opef"><img src="http://www.zowned.com/file/pic/user/Opef_120.jpg"; style="border: 0pt none ; margin: 10px 10px 10px 10px; width: 120px; height: 120px;"></a></span></div>
They've done so many amazing things since launch. Also, I hope one day you're able to add "Zoneless" to the list.
Wonderful outline, very useful for someone like me who left the game a few months after release. I'm glad to see the changes, however I'm not sure about coming back to play, nonetheless this outline sure puts the game into perspective.
The Old Timers Guild
Laid back, not so serious, no drama.
All about the fun!
www.oldtimersguild.com
An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. - Jef Mallett
I felt the same way BuzWeaver, but after giving into EQ2 a second time (About 1 and a half years after first leaving) I'm now hooked. What SOE has done with EQ2 over the years is absolutely amazing and I can now say EQ2 is truly an MMO masterpiece. If you're into a great community and absolutely awesome gameplay then I think you should give this game another try.
List of all the updates with dates and details here:
http://eq2players.station.sony.com/game_updates.vm
Worth checking out for the "what has changed since I last played" crowd...
Ahh nah... your post was awesome man... I just wanted to make sure for those who wanted to "see more" they could click through
Ahh nah... your post was awesome man... I just wanted to make sure for those who wanted to "see more" they could click through
Thanks, ive added the Updates page link you provided to the original post.
That was a very informative post. I came back to the game recently after stopping playing for a while and was able to experience many of these positive changes. The game has come a long way since release.
This should definitely be stickied
.
Great post Flem, I've never actually played EQ2 but this was still an interesting read. I'm hopefully going to be joining the ranks in a few weeks tho, can't wait haha. I'm wondering if anyone knows where I can obtain a game time card for EQ2, see I live in the UK but SOE (or their publishers, not sure) seem to have a very light presence here in Europe. It's hard enough to find a copy of the game and with no EU portal for their main website it leaves ya feeling a bit left out xD. So any suggestions are welcome.
I vote sticky too !
SOE's Station Store sells them. You will have to check to see if they ship to the UK though.
Did they make any of the classes fun to play?
My youtube MMO gaming channel
Great list, thank you guys for the effort.
I played for a few weeks starting the first day of its release, and wasnt terribly impressed, I guess I was expecting it to be more like the first EQ. Then my ex dragged me into wow for a long time. Upon divorce and massive boredom I decided to look into this game again, and its truly amazing what they have done to it, I am having a great time.
The destructible walls in dungeons were a really nice update, I had no prior knowledge of 'em until I ran across one by accident ("That looks funny... Whoa!") haha
- Ding im bot! -
I stopped playing EQ2 to play Vanguard. I've recently started playing EQ2 again and I love some of the changes, but I miss the character progression. I had to cancell my acct.again, but am trying to stay on top of everything and my best friend has let me make a temporary character on his acct so I don't go through Evercrack withdrawls (lol)
Love tha game, definate sticky!
Have updated the list to include some of the more notable changes from GU #45
Nice list. I am downloading the game client now to check out all of the changes
Game update 49
eq2.wikia.com/wiki/LU49
- guild halls
- multicore support
- leveling speed from 20 thru 70 dramatically increased
GU49: Experience changes
forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m
To give you an idea, the old average from 1-70 was ~164 hours.
The new time sits at ~100 hours.
Game update 50, The Shadow Odyssey expansion
eq2.wikia.com/wiki/LU50
new ingame map system
eq2players.station.sony.com/news_archive_content.vm
EQ2 fan sites
this doesnt count as a "change" but wanted to post this here for easy viewing
mount info on the bear mount that comes with the retail box of The Shadow Odyssey
* Available as a summoned pet from 1-19, after that, becomes a mount.
* Becomes a mount at level 20 - 20% run speed.
* Increase in run speed at level 40 - 30% run speed and armored appearance.
* Increase in run speed at level 60 - 45% run speed and increased armor appearance.
* Increase in run speed at level 80 - 52% run speed and increased armor appearance.
This item is 1 per character.
EQ2 fan sites
Lavastorm revamp, March 2009
eq2.wikia.com/wiki/LU51
new content added for players in mid 40s and level 80s -- for soloers, crafters, casual raiders
Guide for lavastorm quests
eq2.allakhazam.com/wiki/Lavastorm_(EQ2_Quest_Series)
EQ2 fan sites