Every year we get to the point where Daybreak launches a new EverQuest expansion and I think back to a post I wrote in 2007 where I was guessing that they would get to the 10th anniversary, launch a final big expansion, and let the title fade away. I mean, they were climbing down off of their “two expansions a year” plan. That was surely the beginning of the end, right?
And now it is 2019, we were celebrating the 20th anniversary of the game earlier this year, and today Daybreak is launching Torment of Velious, the twenty-sixth expansion for the game.
How crazy is that?
Coming later this year
But it has been a crazy year. A 2006 version of World of Warcraft, traveling under the guise of WoW Classic, might be the most popular MMO title in the west this year. Remasters of old titles are becoming more common. And Holly Longdale says that EverQuest player population has been on the rise since 2015, largely due to their progression server operations.
Nostalgia sells.
So if you go back to that 2007 post of mine, you can credit Michael Zenke in the first comment for correctly prognosticating that EverQuest would keep going for a long time despite his own previous misgivings.
Given that, nostalgia piled on top of nostalgia, with a return to yet another old Norrath location, seems like a good plan. And so it is that the game will go back to Velious.
The hook for the expansion goes as follows:
The lands and denizens of the continent of Velious are suffering. The icy landscape has seemingly come to life and is flowing oddly upward toward the sky. This restless ice is infecting and animating the inhabitants it touches, turning them into zombie-like beings with a strange icy infection that appears alive in its own way – moving and shifting over their bodies. What has caused this strange turn? And what could it mean? All adventurers are called upon to unravel the chilling mysteries that are the Torment of Velious.
As if living in Velious wasn’t torment enough. The expansion has what sounds like some of the usual expansion things, with more levels, more zones, more quests, and so on.
- Level Increase to 115 [from 110] – Take your character to all new heights with our new level cap!
- 6 Expansion Zones – Uncover the mysteries in new zones on the continent of Velious. A new threat faces all and many creatures that have been familiar to Norrathians have been strangely transformed by living ice.
- New Raids, Quests, and Missions
- New Spells, Combat Abilities, and AAs
- New Collections
That may be a bit samey, but I assume that is what people are willing to pay for, so you might as well give the fans what they want. So here it is!
Congratulations to the Norrath team at Daybreak. They’ve kept going for more than 20 years.
Addendum: There is even a trailer for the expansion.
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