EverQuest: The Scars of Velious Preview

Two years after its release, the online massively multiplayer role-playing game EverQuest continues to be a huge success. Just last month, the developers at Verant celebrated a new high of more than 67,000 players online in one day. Tens of thousands of people continue to flock to the fantasy world of Norrath and pitch - almost permanent - camp. The secret to the success of this game, aside from the cracklike addiction factor, is that Verant continues to support the game, with subtle gameplay tweaks in ongoing patches and in the form of expansion packs. The Ruins of Kunark, the last expansion, which debuted at the beginning of this year, introduced a new continent and a new player race in addition to many new monsters and items. The expansion sold even better than the original game, proving that EverQuest was still as hot as ever.

The continent of Velious is a frozen continent with harsh new dangers.

Ruins of Kunark, though, was an expansion pack that was aimed at new users, as it offered a new continent and new experiences that were available to all players, regardless of skill level. Verant, mindful of the success of the first expansion pack, is hard at work now on a second expansion. It's called Scars of Velious and, unlike the first one, is geared exclusively to high-level players. Scars of Velious will have 16 or 17 new zones, and the most accessible one (that is, the zone with the lowest level minimum for adventurers) is designed for characters at levels 30 to 35. The rest of the frozen continent of Velious is even tougher and will require that you be 40th level and above. Some areas are so tough that even level-60 characters will be hard pressed to wander through without incident.

The dragon motif, such as this one of a teleport circle, is found throughout Velious.

The new expansion, Scars of Velious, is set for a December 2000 release date. At this time, nearly all of the game's 16 new zones are well into development; most are actually finished and are in the process of being populated. Many of the monsters and NPCs are also finished, and during our most recent visit to Verant we saw many of them in action in the gameworld of Velious itself.

In Velious, the laundry list of new features is quite extensive. Although there will be no new character races, the expansion offers more than a dozen new zones, dozens of new monsters, and hundreds of new items. Unlike Kunark, Velious will be a true expansion that will retail by itself and will require a full copy of EverQuest to run. Verant expects to sell the pack at $19.95 when it ships in early December. In this preview, we'll take a look at some of the new zones and cities, new monsters, and new items. Let's start with the locales you'll be visiting in the new expansion.