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EverQuest II: Kingdom of Sky Impressions - Exploring, Fighting New Monsters, Quests

We take an up-close look at this soon-to-be-released second expansion pack for EverQuest II.

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The sequel EverQuest II launched in 2004, up against Blizzard's World of Warcraft. Both games offer a massively multiplayer role-playing experience in which you create a fantasy character (like an elf archer, a human baker, or a dwarf woodworker) and solve challenging quests and defeat dastardly monsters in exchange for fabulous treasures and experience points that let your character gain levels. EverQuest II launched with a pedigree that dates back to 1999, and although it takes place in the same world of Norrath that appeared in its predecessor, it also offers a more complex experience, with many different playable races. However, this sequel recently launched an online update (known as "Update 19") that radically changed the way characters develop over time, and the game has also recently introduced competitive player-versus-player combat. Later this month, developer Sony Online Entertainment will launch Kingdom of Sky, a second EverQuest II expansion pack that will offer a challenging new body of content to veteran players, as well as some new options for beginners.

Kingdom of Sky will take place in, of all places, a kingdom in the sky. According to EverQuest II's original story, the world of Norrath lies in ruins, forsaken by its pantheon of powerful gods. As a result, the different planes of existence that used to exist just beyond the veil of reality have collapsed, leaving behind only three fragmented realms in the clouds. As it turns out, the cataclysm also left behind a handful of ancient and powerful dragons that have secretly joined forces under the "Awakened One," a mysterious entity who seems to be building an army that includes both bizarre, otherworldly critters, as well as an old EverQuest favorite, the Aviak bird-men.

The second EverQuest expansion pack will encourage you to keep your head in the clouds.
The second EverQuest expansion pack will encourage you to keep your head in the clouds.

Kingdom of Sky will feature many new wide-open areas for players to explore that really highlight the vastness of the world. The game's areas will feature rockier, more-uneven terrain, as well as many more height differences--you'll be able to ride sliding platforms to ascend to majestic towers, and you'll also be able to fall off the edge of a floating sky fragment. However, falling off of a cliff won't always be a bad thing--you'll actually be able to jump from waterfalls and land on the sky islands below, or sniff out hidden areas. You'll even be able to scale certain walls to find hard-to-reach places. Exploring new areas will be one way to earn the expansion pack's new achievement points, which will accumulate separately from your character's regular experience-point total.

Basically, performing any number of different tasks, such as exploring and defeating certain monsters, will earn your character achievements, which show up in your character's profile. With each achievement, you'll earn achievement points that you can spend on an all-new skill tree of abilities, which you can use to further distinguish your character. This change, along with Update 19's new character-development system, should help players create highly distinctive characters that play different roles in battle. To this end, Kingdom of Sky will offer one other oft-requested feature: hats. Each character class will be able to wear a different kind of hat or helmet, such as a skull-faced helmet for shadowknight characters, or a pointy hat for wizards.

The expansion will offer new areas to explore, new enemies to conquer, and perhaps most important of all, hats.
The expansion will offer new areas to explore, new enemies to conquer, and perhaps most important of all, hats.

Although achievements will be available in the game for all characters of level 20 and higher, most of the expansion's new areas will offer challenging content to advanced characters of level 55 and higher. The new areas will be populated by completely new critters to fight, each indigenous to its own sky region. The realms of twilight, dawn, and night, for instance, are populated by vultaks (the scavenger cousins of the Aviaks) and gazers (gigantic, floating eyestalks), as well as a handful of new and incredibly powerful dragons that will provide a stiff challenge to even full raiding parties of 24 players. Apparently, the story will be tied to the reactivation of wizard spires--the teleportation hubs from the original EverQuest, which are ruined in the sequel. This quest will resemble a recent in-game event in which players were commissioned to build more griffin towers (hot spots in certain areas that let players ride griffins as a form of rapid transit), but will be much lengthier and more in-depth. Kingdom of Sky looks to be a game that players truly want to play, the result of careful consideration of fan feedback. The expansion is scheduled for launch on February 21.

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