The folks at EverQuest II have posted another edition of Explore Norrath, which takes a look at some of the locations of interest spread out across the land.

Ahh Castleview. Home of snooty high elves and fly-snacking frogloks! And Qeynosians say that Neriak has bad taste. Ahem. If one must live in Qeynos rather than the glorious Neriak, Castleview does have its advantages. If you can handle high elves (who secretly wish they could be as cool as dark elves) and frogloks (we haven't quite figured out what they're good for yet... but the garlic and butter experiment is going well).

Everyone loves a short-cut! For those who choose not to run around the long way, the bells take you all around Qeynos and outside of it to Antonica, The Caves, and Oakmyst Forest. Up the stairs from here, you'll find the town center (pictured above) which gives a nice discovery bonus.

Read more here.

You would think after 4+ years people would know where Castleview is. Since there doesn't really appear to be a major influx of new subscribers to EQ2 I think your grasping at straws, trying to find something nice to say about a game who for all intensive purposes has fallen off the map of most MMO players. When my wife went out to find a copy of the new expansion last month, she had to go to 6 stores before she could find one that had it. Not because they were out of stock, but because they hadn't ordered any. Four of the stores actually thought that EQ2 had been terminated. SOEs lack of advertising has bitten them in the ass big time. Word of mouth only works if your customer base actually interacts with people who use other products. Since the very nature of an MMO is deep immersion, it's doubtful that too many WoW players hang around EQ2 players or AoC players hang around LoTRO players....The development company actually has to spend money to promote it's product. Do you think those ads with Mr. T or Ozzy Osbourne are cheap? Hell no....but WoW has the player base and the market share to be able to afford them. Did EQ2 have this ability at realease? You bet your ass it did...does it now? no way in hell....EQ2 reached it's peak about 24 months ago. WoW is still reaching for theirs....the difference? WoW hired an ad agency that knows it's shit. SOE wouldn't know advertising if it bit them on the ass.

Yah, sure, that's one (rather predictable) way to look at it. I on the other hand have played this game for 4 years now and have been god knows how many times at the bells in Castleview, and occasionally in the inn there to buy some goods from other players. But have I explored Castleview? Maybe back in the day, but that has been such a long time ago, I really don't know anything about the place. So for me, these articles are nice reads, sometimes stuff I didn't know, sometimes things that refresh my memory. I say keep 'em coming!

And as predictable, you missed the point of my post entirely. The articles on original release content aren't really the point. How much more enjoyable would EQ2 have been to play for 4 years if SOE would have advertised the game actively? More people would have played (and still be playing sure) but with more subscriptions would come more money for new development. Back when EQ2 was released Smed himeslef promised 4-5 adventure packs per year and at least 2 full blown expansions with wonderful, never seen before content. What did we get? a total of 4 (or 5?) meciocre at best adventure packs, a few freeebies, and one expansion per year. We were suppose to be at level 100 this year, we are 4 years behind that (given their one level cap increase every 2 years) they haven't given us a new toon slot since EoF was released so many people have full slots with high level characters and no place to make another...but who cares? How many times can you repeat the same content over and over before it gets stale?

EQ2 has become as dry as dust for a lot of people. New games are being released more and more and players of EQ2 are making excuses to go play games that might not be as challenging or in depth as EQ2.....but they can't drag themselves to roll yet another alt, play the same dozen of so zones to get to level 80 in 3 weeks. The new expansion is 90% grouping. On many servers finding a balanced group to take on these over powered instances isn't an easy task. Server populations are starting to recede again after a short influx of people interested in the new content. It's only going to take one more decent release from competition and EQ2 will lose enough population to warrant server mergers.

SOE screwed up big time. And what do they have waiting in the wings? Has anyone heard of another SOE game in development ? Doesn't it concern you that SOE doesn't have another PC based MMO in the works? Are they operating on a skelteton crew over there? For all we know with the stock market in terrible shape, they could be preparing to close up shop....Imagine that...loging in one day to find the game closed forever because it wasn't profittable. DO you think they are going to give you advanced notice?

SOE has become nearly irrelevant in the MMO market. It's ashame too since Everquest was the grand daddy of all MMOs.

I agree with Ohreally this time when it comes to SOE and advertising.

I think when you ask John Smedly where Europe lies... he probably would scratch his head out of stupidity not knowing.

I have NEVER EVER seen ANY add of ANY SOE game here in Europe!

We've got plenty of Gamestop stores here in Oslo and NONE of them bother to have SOE games in stock.

SOE could have had double the subscription numbers with EverQuest 2 if they would have put their finger out of their ass and actually did some marketing over here!

EverQuest 2 is 10 times better then WoW. It has more content, more features, way better dungeons, better character animations and way lot more customisation.

I know not everyone likes the character animations, but any real artist and people with know-how know that the animations in EverQuest 2 are one of the best. And at least not everyone looks exactly the same as everyone else like in WoW.

Yet, SOE just suffers from having the most ignorant and stupid CEO of all time (John Smedly).

And as long as he doesn't retire and be replaced by a more competent person, he will run his own company in the ground....eventually.

Wich is a true shame! As SOE does have some really good and brilliant developers and artists in house.

Cheers

Originally posted by ohreally

And as predictable, you missed the point of my post entirely.

Yes, my apologies for that. I was just responding to the usefulness of an artilce like the one on Castleview. For me not entirely useless. I did see your point though, to which I also have to agree. I am a European player, and it's not easy to get a boxed version of the game without having to import it from the UK. There is a indeed a serious lack of promotion.

For me the game is still not dry as dust though, I still enjoy playing it every single day. I'm not one who races through the content like crazy, and I just finished the solo content of the previous expansion. That may of course be because I play a warden, mobs take a while to die on my wrath lol.

Also, I don't really see a serious lack of people on the server I play on (Antonia Bayle), but that may be the best populated server. I did notice a lower population on the other servers, so yah, a merge probably won't be far away if things don't change.

The game is not bad in my opinion, with some serious effort from SOE to draw people to the game, there might still be something in it.

Believe me, it's not much easier getting a copy of the game here in the states. My wife still plays and she had to visit 6 stores here in the city before she could buy a copy. 4 of the store owners thought EQ2 had been terminated...

I think Smedly is a Blizzard operative on a mission to destroy EQ2 slowly while bolstering WoW with idea from the SOE devs.....