• Crafting overhaul, no longer reliant on other tradeskill classes to make your components.  Also gone are the interim steps to crafting a final piece, now you just make the final piece in one go.
• Tradeskill event counters now appear at the bottom of the crafting window.
• 4 New races (Fae, Arasia, Froglok & Sarnak).
• 3 New starting areas (Neriak, Gorowyn & Kelethin)
• Achievement Experience from level 10.  Spend up to 140 points split between two alternate paths (class & sub-class trees) to progress your character.
• Tons of new quests including some very immersive signature and heritage quests. (Easily 4000+ quests in game)
• Armor sets unique to your class, equip em all for a bonus.
• Unique class helms
• 4 Expansion Packs which have introduced a ton of zones, quests, items and overall content.

• Broker system overhaul, you can now sell direct from the broker instead of your house.
• No more having to be online to sell.  Now your goods are still listed when you log off.  
• You can now sell on the broker with all of your characters, not just one.
• More mounts including Wargs, Rhinos, Flying Carpets, Hover Platforms and armored horses.
• Quest sharing option.
• Quest journal limit increase.
• 3 Adventure packs

• Addition of an Appearance tab which means you can look however you want but still keep your best armor equipped.
• Dressing room feature.  Ctrl + Left Click most armor, weapons and furniture on the broker to see what it will look like before you buy.  Can also preview quest rewards this way and also links provided through chat window.
• Worship deities.  Gods have returned and you can now pick one to worship to obtain blessings and miracles in addition to pets and cloaks.
• Cloaks...need i say more.
• Can now zoom in and out on the map.
• Racial traits & class upgrades have been improved and now are easier to keep track of as it has been added to the achievement window.
• Two new sub crafting classes - Transmuting & Tinkering
• Coin denomination now auto changes for you to the next highest denomination, yay, no more carrying around 6000 copper.
• Easier to move house now, when you buy a new place all your stuff will be automatically moved over for you.
• Tradeskilling can now be done outside at one of the many crafting stations placed outside.
• Tradeskill work orders introduced.
• Compare you current equipment with potential purchases with mouse over tooltips.
• Mentor system.  High level players can now group with lower levels and mentor them down to their level.
• SOGA models, an alternate appearance look for your character.
• Griffons added to TS and Nek Forest.
• Weapon & Armor imbuing.
• In game mail.
• Adornments which can be added to any equip able item.
• Stack sizes for gathering resources is now 200.
• Customisable guild heraldry for cloaks.
• In game looking for guild feature.
• Better LFG & LFW options.
• PvP dedicated servers.
• Arena PvP and consensual duel introduced on PvE servers.
• Extra earring slot.
• Teleporting. Some classes can now open portals to certain zones.
• Can now change your Tradeskill profession.
• Sub-class system gone. Start out as the class you want from level 1.
• Legends of Norath online card game; play in game or on the standalone client.
• Reverse writs added. (The items you find on mobs that you turn in for status for you and your guild).
• Brokers now list all items from all cities (used to have to visit a blackmarket fence to look at wares from other city).
• Access to old world zones no longer requires completion of a heroic quest or having to wait to reach an auto entry level limit (EL, ZEK etc).
• Guild Level cap is now 80.
• Harvesting tools added.  Woodworked and tinkered tools reduce harvesting times.
• Mannequins have been added.  Now you can display your favorite armor and weapons in your home.
• Epic weapons have been added for each class.  Solo and group for your Fabled version then raid to upgrade it to mythical.
• Craters also get Epics!!. Quest and craft your way to obtain your very own tradeskill specific cloak.
• There are now more amenities available in East, North and South Freeport, including bankers, menders, and mariner's bells to summon transportation in and out.  Similar amenities are now also available in North and South Qeynos.
• 4 more bank slots per character plus 4 more shared bank slots.
• Evil and Good aligned characters can now access the same shared bank slots. (not PvP)
• Money can now be shared to all characters in the bank. (PvP still restricted by alignment)
• You can now gain Achievement Experience from gray con quests that are level 10 or higher.
• Weaponsmiths and woodworkers have learned to create recipes for new, more desirable crafted weapons with a choice of new effect.

You can find all the Update Notes since the game was released HERE 

Oh, and who votes for getting this stickied.

sticky this

Originally posted by Nadia

sticky this

/nods..and its probably needs to be longer :)

It was such a big help that I decided to register with the site and comment on it.  Thanks for the info.

/sticky vote 

Nice post. I've played EQ2 on and off since release and everytime i say thats it i'm not going back i always do.

One small thing though, shouldn't it realy be 4 races? Frogloks weren't available at release.

Originally posted by Paxmag

Nice post. I've played EQ2 on and off since release and everytime i say thats it i'm not going back i always do.

One small thing though, shouldn't it realy be 4 races? Frogloks weren't available at release.

Thanks for that, its been so long i had forgotten the Frogloks were not in at release.  Updated list.

Holidays!

They've done so many amazing things since launch. Also, I hope one day you're able to add "Zoneless" to the list.

Wonderful outline, very useful for someone like me who left the game a few months after release. I'm glad to see the changes, however I'm not sure about coming back to play, nonetheless this outline sure puts the game into perspective.

I felt the same way BuzWeaver, but after giving into EQ2 a second time (About 1 and a half years after first leaving) I'm now hooked. What SOE has done with EQ2 over the years is absolutely amazing and I can now say EQ2 is truly an MMO masterpiece. If you're into a great community and absolutely awesome gameplay then I think you should give this game another try.

List of all the updates with dates and details here:

http://eq2players.station.sony.com/game_updates.vm

Worth checking out for the "what has changed since I last played" crowd...