EverQuest will be turning 21 in a couple of weeks and there is always something going on for anniversaries.
Classic EverQuest
Holly “Windstalker” Longdale penned a brief producer’s letter about what we can expect.
Progression Servers
Nostalgia is a staple of the EverQuest franchise at this point. There certainly aren’t any new games on the horizon for Norrath. And the nostalgia for the game is monetized via special severs. While such servers were mentioned in the letter, they won’t be coming any time soon. It seems that Darkpaw Games needs to clean up some of the past servers first, so merges are on the way. Is it time for the decade old Fippy Darkpaw server to finally wrap up? But once the get that squared away we can expect some new servers.
Overseer
The Overseer feature was introduced in EverQuest II with the Blood of Luclin expansion. It is, in its simplified way, a version of the WoW garrison missions that were introduced with the Warlords of Draenor expansion and has been iterated on with every expansion since.
While Bhagpuss has been covering this new thing in Norrath, I am still trying to come up with how I feel about the feature. A blog post about them has been under way for a while. But apparently they are popular enough that Darpaw is going to bring them over to old Norrath. Soon you will have minions to send out on missions in EverQuest. The feature will be available to characters level 85 and up.
Free Level 85 Heroic Characters
Do you want to play with the Overseer feature but do not have a level 85 character? Well, Darkpaw will fix that by giving you one for free! All members will get one, though details are still to come.
Of course, this is the usual opening where I complain about the fact that the EverQuest heroic character boost remains stuck at level 85. That was fine about a six years back when they introduced them, but the level cap got bumped up to 115 with the last expansion. 30 levels is a hell of a gap, especially since some expansions gave people five long levels. Some day they are going to have to fix this, but I guess today is not that day.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
I have mixed feelings about this. I like the Overseer feature quite a bit but with the timers and cooldowns and traits and especially now we get to choose our missions I find it fairly time-consuming to set up and manage. It’s now the main thing I do before I go to work and as soon as I get home and I have to balance other things around it as I play.
While I’d be happy to get gear upgrades for my EQ characters and free stuff is always welcome, I’m not sure I want to add another set of timed tasks to my schedule. That said, it will be enough to get me to log in out of curiosity and since it’s Member Only that means my Necromancer, who was a free 85 on a previous offer, or a new free 85. My poor old Magician is stranded for now on the old, now-free account and Daybreak are pretty much all about the Membership these days so she never gets a chance to do anything new.
I think the only thing that would get me to play EQ regularly again would be an upgrade to the Heroic starting level. I’d come back and level up a free 100, let alone a 105 or 110. They seem weridly determined to stick to 85 though. Makes me wonder if they simply don’t have the resources to do the work to set up a different level.
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@Bhagpuss – I’ll log in and make a level 85 character and poke around to see how the Overseer stuff compares to what they put into EQII, but I have trouble seeing myself committing to this as well.
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