The Kingdom of Sky takes EQII back to its Fantasy roots with a magical kingdom of floating islands inhabited by Dragon overlords and fantastical races of different bird-men and dragon-like creatures such as basilisks and dragon-men.

Michael expanded:

“The Kingdom of Sky is not the Plane of Air of EverQuest. It does remind old EverQuest players of it because of the concept of floating islands, but beyond that, it is totally different.”

I was treated to a movie and a Power Point presentation; lush colors and fantastical races. Aviaks, Hawkmen, Basilisks, Dragonmen… all creatures of high fantasy and of course, the Dragons.

The Kingdom of Sky or OverRealm was fought over by four different dragons until a fifth united them and they now seek to conquer Norrath. That’s where the players come in to nip the problem in the bud by defeating them. Four bosses plus the overlord, Terranax.

Kingdom of Sky extends the level range in EverQuest2 to 70 and is targeted towards players of levels 50 to 70. Apart from new zones, items and quests, the expansion will feature:

• Character advancement level to 70 and guild advancement level 50
• A new achievement system to further enhance and specialize your character’s abilities
• Signature Quests for class defining items and wardrobes
• New player titles

So… how do players get to these floating islands? A Live Event is planned where players will be able to participate in the building of teleportation spires to access the Kingdom.

Why an expansion that extended level ranges yet again so quickly on the heels of the last? Why targeted toward even higher level players?

Apart from the faster leveling that is possible in EverQuest2II, SoE marketing strategy is to release expansions that target Retention, followed Acquisition – rinse, repeat. This expansion allows them to put the EQII base game back on the retail shelves as it will be bundled with the expansion, providing new players a single game box that will take them to level 70.

What’s the best thing EQ2 has accomplished?

Having asked what the team would have liked to have done better, I had to ask this to be fair. Toot your own horn guys. This question did not take long for Chris to answer.

“We had the best launch. The best Day One. We had over a 100,000 subscribers sign on and play in the first 48 hours and our servers remained stable. We had no crashes, no glitches. If you remember the launch of EverQuest and the server crashes… I’d say we did a great job. No queues, no wait to play.”

Apart from that, we also talked about the Community. Taina Rodriguez, Public Relations Assistant chimed in here.

“We listen to the players. We are constantly making things better. Fixing things that don’t work the way they were supposed to.”

Chris continued, “Live Events are driven by the Community Managers and they work closely with the Live Team to bring fun and games to players. The glory days of EverQuest were the early days where server GMs had pretty much an open hand to create events. But now, we have the tools and the manpower to create events. You can bet that Blackguard (Ryan Shwayder) is busy looking at his calendar and planning for April Fool’s.”

I’ve always enjoyed visiting with the SoE folks and this was no exception. I could have sat around all day, shooting the breeze with them and extracting more information but I had my own show at the CES to run.

EverQuestII continues to grow and improve. Chris confirmed my theory that players of EQII have more different characters or “alts” that they play actively than EQ. It has to do with the ease of entry, there’s much less of a “grind” to gain levels and the sheer amount of things that a player can do in the game. It is indeed a different game, and for a player that had a single main character for 6 years of EQ but 3 alts in EQII, I look forward to the class revamp and trying out “newbie isle” all over again.

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Thank you for this report.

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* Editor's Note (01/13/05 - 11:49pm): SOE contacted us after publication to let us know that they had been mistaken and the line about one-time transfers to the PvP servers in the original edition of this article was not correct. It has been removed.