Out Of The Shadows

 

Pre-orders for EverQuest II's seventeenth expansion, Reign of Shadows, finally opened yesterday. It's about time. Daybreak has been taking orders for the elder EverQuest's upcoming Claws of Veeshan (#27 in the series - collect them all!) for a couple of weeks now. 

The time lag between the two games always puzzles me. I get why the reveals would be staggered to give each a chance to grab some headlines but why there's such a discrepancy in the pre-orders is harder to figure. You'd think they'd want to get the money in the bank as soon as possible. I'm guessing the huge majority of sales are going to come from people who decided months ago they were going to pony up as soon as the time came. Hard to imagine many on the fence, waiting for more info before they decide.

 But then, I only ever buy the standard version. In twenty years I have never gone "Collector's" or "Premium" for any game. I want the playable content and you always get all of that in the basic pack. Unless they're going to bundle something like six months discounted membership in there, so it ends up saving me money, I'm not interested. And even then, no thanks. Tried it once with Rift's first expansion and look how that turned out. Paid for a year and played for three weeks.

I guess someone has to sit down and design all those pets and paintings and mountains and perks and then someone else has to code them and test them and it all takes time. Time that could, arguably, be better spent on actual content, although it's not an argument I'd make. Fluff is content, now more than ever.

Then there's beta access. Every company seems to wrap some kind of beta around the launch of an expansion these days and apparently players have to be enticed into testing with bribes (titles, mounts, pets). I imagine there's some set-up time involved. Also, the game has to be right in the final stages of readiness for players to be nodded in on nothing more than the wave of a credit card. You'd think so, at least, if it wasn't that, so often, it patently is not.

I suppose you have to be sure and get all your goblins in a line before you start taking money, although it's noticeable that neither game has announced an official release date yet. Makes me wonder just how close to a final build either of them are. And as we've just seen from the Shadowlands delay, declaring a date too soon can be risky. If Blizzard, with all their resources, can't hit a deadline, why should anyone else feel confident? 

The four options for Reign of Shadows are the same as last year:

Presumably the return of the astonishingly expensive "Family and Friends" edition means someone bought it. It does come with a giveaway copy of the Standard but for that price you could buy seven. 

I'll just be buying the one. Standard edition, that is. In fact, I've  already bought it. I did look wistfully at the Shar Vhal prestige home in the Collector's pack but realistically I already have far more prestige homes than I could ever hope to decorate, let alone actually live in, so I think I'm good there.

Detail on specific content is still light, although EQII expansions tend to follow a very reliable format so I'm not expecting any major surprises. The one thing that does sometimes throw a gnomish spanner in the works are the "features" and there I do have some concerns. 

The long asked-for revamp of the AA system could be an overdue clean-up that returns a popular mechanic to its former glory or a botched opportunity that leaves everyone wishing they'd left it alone. Whatever way it goes, I'm sure it won't please everyone, but I'm equally sure they did need to do something about it so here's hoping for a good result.

I'm a lot less sanguine about the mysterious "all new content-driven guild leveling mechanism". Unlike the AA revamp, I can't say I've heard people asking for this one. Yes, there was a bit of a rumble for more perks to be added to the higher tiers of guild ownership but I was under the impression the playerbase was broadly happy with the way guilds level up via Status.

Of course I may be wrong about that. I've been a guild of one for about as long as I can remember. The last person who wasn't me logged in something like six or seven years ago. Perhaps in active guilds people are clamoring for a "content-driven" means of advancing their collective fortunes.

I just hope that doesn't mean what it turned out to mean in Guild Wars 2. That game launched and ran for several years with a pretty good progression system for guilds. It worked whether you had three people or three hundred on the roster. Then they scrapped the whole thing and replaced it with a horrible version that left small guilds extinct in all but name.

I notice that, yet again, even the Standard edition comes with a max-level character boost. I've lost count of how many of these I have lying around. With the new Vah Shir race it's possible that, for once, I might even have a use for one. I'm betting we won't get a new 1-20 starting area and if we don't I can't see a lot of point going through the levels the hard way.

 

Speaking of the Vah Shir, I'm very impressed with both the concept art and what I take to be the in-game representation. Those are some cool cats. I'm very much looking forward to making one or two, although I think I'm going to have to buy some extra character slots. Also some extra hours in the day if I'm ever going to play them. 

Even though no date's been announced I find it highly unlikely the doors will open before mid-December. That puts it two or three weeks behind the revised launch for Shadowlands, which poses an interesting dilemma. 

A few weeks ago the idea of buying Shadowlands wasn't even on my horizon. I wasn't subbed to WoW or even playing the free version. The last expansion I bought (actually, was given) was Legion and I never did get around to playing that one. 

Then the pre-patch arrived with the extra free levels and the squish and Exile's Reach and I popped in to take a look and here I am, spending much of my time, subbed, playing and regularly blogging about World of Warcraft. And enjoying it. 

Here's a curious thing about Shadowlands. When compared to Reign of Shadows, the upper-tier editions, dramatically entitled Heroic and Epic, are very significantly less-expensive than their EQII counterparts, Collector's and Premium. When it comes to the versions I would actually buy, however, EQII's Standard edition comes in at two thirds the price of WoW's Base, at least with my All Access member's ten per cent discount.

The irony here is that I'll almost certainly get a good deal more value out of Reign of Shadows. Given the timing, I wouldn't have considered getting Shadowlands as well, had it not been for... the timing. With England under another lockdown I'm back on furlough until the second of December (at least), which means I could get a week and a half of WoW's new expansion in before I go back to work. And it's not like I have a lot else to do with my time right now.

I'm still thinking about it. A firm release date for Reign of Shadows would help me make up my mind. Anyone listening over at Darkpaw? I mean, you already have my money. It's safe to let the Vah Shir out of the bag now!