The large and sweeping world of Norrath just got a little bigger in Desert of Flames, the first expansion for SOE's popular EverQuest II. Desert of Flames brings not only a whole new zone in the form of the rugged, arid island of Ro, but it also carries with it a broad combat revamp and increased level cap, as well as the introduction of player-versus-player battles. The substantive raiding and questing additions are primarily for higher-level characters, and the player-versus-player implementation isn't totally polished yet, but the balance of the changes is a well-rounded expansion with offerings for players of all levels.

The island of Ro is a pretty wild place, with all-new wildlife to see and monsters to smite.

By far the most far-reaching aspect of the expansion is the combat revamp, which has greatly reworked not only the skills and ability trees of most classes and subclasses, but has retuned the difficulty of monster encounters overall. As a result, mobs in the game now sport their color-coded difficulty rating that includes arrows over their names to indicate gradations in difficulty; downward-facing arrows indicate weaker enemies, while upward-facing arrows indicate powerful and possibly heroic monsters.

Something you'll readily notice is that heroic monsters are no joke--even if you're several levels higher than a heroic mob and it's grey (very weak, normally) to you, you can still get yourself readily trounced despite the level difference if you try to fight them on your own. A bit more caution is warranted when traveling or leveling solo, but soloing is absolutely still possible, and the newly concentrated abilities of the various classes make a pretty balanced match to the changed monster difficulty levels. If anything, the changes serve to nudge players to be more mindful of their surroundings and to perhaps group a bit more often in a game that is already heavily built around cooperative adventuring. Along with the change to combat, the maximum level cap for players has been raised from level 50 to level 60, along with new abilities to flesh those levels out, and a new zone to ply those skills in: the island of Ro.

Desert of Flames' signature new zone is the wild land of Ro, a large desert isle with a distinct Arabian flavor that's populated with plenty of new monsters, new quests, and new objectives for players level 45 and higher. You can actually easily reach Ro from quite a low level by simply riding a magic carpet from one of the main cities and wafting on over, and you'll be able to reach the bustling city of Maj'Dul the same way, zipping through the skies over a variety of deadly wildlife. Plenty of crocodilians teem along the beaches and other foes hover just nearby, so only appropriately leveled characters will be making their way into the countryside. The city itself serves as a single great hub for the new zone, a multitiered sandstone metropolis that's home to a number of different factions.

Frogloks on magic carpets somehow make everything all right in the universe. Nothing bad exists where there are flying frogmen.

When you're of a level to accept the quests here, you can choose to align yourself with one of the city's factions, currying the favor of a somewhat distrustful people by performing a number of tasks. Maj'Dul has some of the same dangerous and exotic flavor of its environs, with thieves and other hostile entities lurking in the streets that you'll have to be wary of. One of the draws of this new urban center, besides the new environment content, is the great arena.