EverQuest II: The Shadow Odyssey Previews
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First stop: the Ruins of Guk, Lower Corridor. The whole dungeon, like most of the others, scales from level 50-80 depending on the level of the person in the group who first zones in. Brett explained that the first two Guk zones have been set up so that the bosses start simple and become progressively more difficult. Since we were all wearing our developer armor and buffs for the tour, it was a little hard to judge the dungeons' difficulty so I'll stick to descriptions of the interiors and the mobs I saw. and take his word for it. Here we were taken to the Cathedral of Thoughtlessness, whose main feature was a series of moving platforms, requiring the players to solve a jumping puzzle to get to their next objective. We were also shown Ykesha's Outer Stronghold, which Brett described as a (very difficult zone.) The most memorable image I took away from that dungeon was that of a gigantic severed hand (walking) around.
The next dungeon we visited was the Cavern of the Afflicted, at which point we were joined by another developer, Carlos (Gninja) Mora. Brett described the dungeon as having (big waves with lots of mobs.) Imagine being in a zombie movie with a horde of the undead attacking you all at once and that's the effect you get in there. According to the devs, they tried to keep things more interesting by varying the pull rate in the dungeons. One of the dungeon bosses, the Bonegrinder, drops epic shoulder armor and a helm. As we wandered through the Vestry of the Archbishop, we came across some interesting mobs, pitch-black ghosts outlined in red.
Then the EQ2 Vault:
If you have visited the Sinking Sands lately, you may have noticed the gnomes are building some kind of a structure out over a cliff ... that's the dock for the very cool looking airship that brings you to the Moors of Ykesha zone. It's all very steampunk in design feel, with gnomes and gnome technology dominating. The SOE team hasn't lost their sense of humor to get to the other side of the chasm from the ship docking area requires a player to be shot in a barrel from a cannon! Those who play EverQuest Live will recognize some of the gnomish elements that have crossed over to EQII. Don't expect to tradeskill some of the more fantastic gnome technologies, though ... the devs say they would cause too much of a drag on the game to include them.
A clever touch is the addition of flying zeppelins to travel in, again invoking the steampunk theme of Victorian technology with a fantasy twist.
