EverQuest Announces The Broken Mirror Expansion

Part two of yesterday’s Norrathian live stream announcements was the big reveal of the upcoming EverQuest expansions, The Broken Mirror.

Mirror cracked… also boobs

As with EverQuest II, classic EverQuest is moving away from the whole DLC idea that Daybreak put out earlier this year and is back in the long familiar territory of old fashioned content expansions to keep people busy for another year or so.

The copy for the expansion reads:

A goddess wakes and gazes into a looking glass. The reflection of her true nature fractures and breaks. Even as the looking glass shatters and the world around her dissolves, Anashti Sul only looks deeper still into the fragments as they drift away. When her fractured mind glimpses her surroundings, she discovers that she is adrift in an unknown time and place where gods and goddesses maintain direct influence over Norrath. A hunger for power wells within her, having passed many an age with no power at all and an upstart sitting in her place. With a whole new realm before her, she resolves to rule again!

Anashti Sul’s passage through a rift into this reality caused her to split into the two most dominant aspects of herself – life and decay. Fully aware of each aspect, she knows that both must command a plane of power lest she weaken entirely and crumble into the nothingness of The Void. And so she crafts a plot to infect the planes of Norrath with a war that threatens to collapse the balance of all life! Are you brave enough to face the might of a goddess who is ravenous to rule? Will you prevent the chaos she would unleash in all of Norrath?

The Broken Mirror is the 22nd EverQuest expansion. This expansion features new zones and dungeons, and must-have in-game items.

I think 22 expansions in, the team at Daybreak probably has their system down pretty well, so the content looks pretty standard:

• Level Scaling Raids – Instanced versions of Plane of Hate and Plane of Fear that scale for level 75-105 raids.
• 7 Expansion Zones – 4 completely new zones and 3 revamped zones.
• Illusion Key Ring – Access your illusions in one easy location!
• New Quests, Heroic Adventures, Missions, and Additional Raids
• New Spells and AAs

Again, no new races, classes, or levels, but I am going to guess those are more labor intensive.  You do what you can with the resources you have.

The pre-order page is up, so you can give Daybreak your money today if you so desire.  And, as with the EverQuest II expansion, there are three options ranging from reasonable to outrageous.

The Broken Mirror? Try the broken gaming budget!

$35 is at the fairly reasonable end of the spectrum for an solid MMORPG expansion, while $140 wanders well within the bounds of greed as far as I am concerned.  But, as with the the EverQuest II expansion, I am no longer invested in the game, and that Premium Edition is clearly not targeted at idly nostalgic players like myself.

They also have a Time Locked Server Adventure Pack offer as well, and like the EverQuest II version, I assume it includes the expansion, since the bag and potions clearly are not worth the $35 they are asking.

I have not seen a launch date listed anywhere, but I would predict it will be go live on a Tuesday in November that isn’t the 17th.  If I had to pick a date, I would go with November 10th.  We shall see.

Terrors of Thalumbra and Why Expansions Trump DLC

Yesterday Daybreak broke loose and finally gave out some details about the previously hinted at/mentioned/waved about behind a curtain full on expansion for EverQuest II.  And so we were shown the Terrors of Thalumbra in a live stream that I totally missed, but which Feldon at EQ2 Wire attempted to live blog.

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Smed-thulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!

The copy for the expansion reads:

Deep underneath Norrath lies a realm on the edge of the Plane of the Underfoot, known as Thalumbra. This expansive, subterranean domain is home to fabled races and ancient terrors!

When the dark shroud upon this land is pierced by Lanys T’Vyl, the recently resurrected demigoddess of Malice, it spells doom for all! You are a hero on the stage of Norrath. Will you play your part and protect Norrath from those who seek to destroy it? What mysteries will your torch uncover deep beneath the surface? Can you withstand the terrors of Thalumbra?

Terrors of Thalumbra is the 12th EverQuest II expansion and brings new adventures to Norrath.

I keep thinking Cthulhu when I read about it and see the screen shots.  That can’t just be me, right?  Not that borrowing from Cthulhu is bad or hasn’t been done many times before. (Where do you think C’htun in WoW came from?)

As mentioned previously, this is a return to the classic expansion plan previously, and presumably successfully, followed by SOE for the game, and an overthrow of the adventure pack/DLC path that Daybreak set themselves on earlier this year with The Rum Cellar.

And it doesn’t take you much time to figure out why Daybreak might have headed back to the tried and true expansion path… it is tough to sell DLC for $140.

Terrors of Thalumbra Prices

The pre-order page is up and ready to take your money, with the price for the expansion ranging between $35 for the base package to $140 for the premium edition.  Past history shows that half of those buying the expansion, who represent the core following of the game, will opt for one of the two higher priced options.   All Access subscribers get a 10% discount on the prices, and they will make up a majority of the buyers I am sure, but going past $100 is still asking a lot.

Far be it from me to tell people what value they should put on virtual items, but it would take a lot more than what Daybreak is offering to get me into either of those packages.  But that is just me and I have long since admitted I am not really invested in the game anymore.  2004 is more than a decade in the past.  I might feel different if I had characters at level cap and was active and in a guild and so on and so forth.

And should I get back into things, the standard edition seems pretty reasonably priced for me.  The expansion content includes:

• 1 large new (underground) Overland zone for level 100s
• 13 Heroic Dungeons for level 100s (6 are event heroics!)
• 6 Advanced Solo for level 100s
• 1 Contested for level 100s
• 5 Level Agnostic Heroic ToT Dungeons for levels 20 to 95 added to Dungeon Finder
• 3 “X4” (or 4 group) Raid zones (AT LEAST 5 bosses each) for level 100s
• 1 “X2” (or 2-group) Raid zone with 9 bosses for level 100s!
• Over 80 quests including Signature line, tradeskills, locales, missions and more!
• Over 50 Collection quests!

No new class, race, or level cap increase, but otherwise pretty standard fare for an expansion.  Basically giving the people what they want.

Finally, in what seems like an old school SOE move, Daybreak also announced a $35 “Time locked server adventure pack” which includes an 88-slot bag and a vitality potion bundle.  It is stuck there in the middle of the Terrors of Thalumbra order and info, but does not explicitly say that it includes the expansion, just the two items.  For that price, it is way too expensive for just those items, so I assume it includes the expansion, but since it doesn’t say that explicitly I wouldn’t put money down for it without some clarification.  Ambiguity for the win.

Anyway, expansions are well and truly back.  The proposed launch date for Terrors of Thalumbra is November 17th.