EQL Depths of Darkhollow - expansion #10, live date 13-Sep..

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Folks, all I have to say about this is..."ROCK THE F RIGHT ON!!

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Loral's Preview of the Depths of Darkhollow EverQuest Expansion
http://eq.crgaming.com/viewarticle.asp?Article=9010

I just returned from the preview of Depths of Darkhollow, the tenth Everquest expansion.
It is with cramped hand that I bring you latest details on this exciting expansion. The
expansion has three major aspects; play as a monster, intelligent items, and the
traditional expansion zones and missions. SOE will release Depths of Darkhollow on
September 13th, 2005. Let's dig right in.



Play as a Monster

The most exciting feature of Depths of Darkhollow lets players select monsters as play
characters. Anyone who remembers Project M remembers how much fun it was to jump into the
body of a moss snake and pwn newbs. The Play as a Monster features improves on this idea
in many directions.

There are two ways to play as a monster: within missions and using a system called the
Spirit Shroud.

Using the Spirit Shroud, players can select lower level beasts to hunt with lower level
friends in old-world zones. This meets a long-standing problem where friends of mixed
levels could not hunt together. Though high level players may pick lower level monsters,
the experience gained will improve both their primary play character and their selected
beast. The creatures a player can polymorph into are limited by the infamous global memory
file; a large file containing all of the player models, armor, weapons, pets, and other
common world-wide models.

The second method of playing as a monster lets players jump into missions as any monster
within the dark minds of the SOE designers and artists. Players can jump into a variety of
missions with a variety of different monster PC models. We heard whispers of a lower guk
mission with the PC playing the Froglok assassin or Froglok Shin Lord fighting the hoards
of beasts from Cazic Thule's armies.

These missions offer unlimited potential for historical EQ battles fought from the other
side. Players might play as Nagafen and eat raids full of NPCs who wish to slay the great
red beast. Using spirit shrouds, players of high-end guilds can switch to a pack of level
50 beasts and hunt Lord Nagafen once again.

This feature alone fixes many outstanding difficulties in massive online games. It lets
players play with lower-level friends. It helps players hunt even if they are missing a
required class archetype. It helps revitalize old-world content by making any zone lower
than a player huntable once again.

Since missions, this is the most exciting feature I have ever seen added to EQ.



Zones and Graphics

The expansion itself will include seven large static zones and fifteen instanced missions.
This doesn't include a large raid-level instance of the final zones, Darkspire, intended
to offer a large amount of content for current high-end raiders who quickly run out of
existing raid content. This high-end zone will offer uninstanced single-group hunting as
well as single-group and raid missions.

From the screenshots we see large dark forests inhabited by ghost-white werewolves
(perhaps that's your friend Bob! Hey Bob!). We see huge bottomless caverns full of
criss-crossing walkways between giant stalactites. We see the giant cathedral of the
Darkspire. We see the twisted cities of the Illithid-Liches (Nanyea says they're called
"Alhoon"). The first shot of the large forest is called "Nektulos". Could a zone revamp of
our favorite dark forest be in our future?

The zones look beautiful and it sounds like they'll have a lot of content for a lot of
players.

The monsters themselves, both PCs and NPCs look excellent including werewolves, the liches
mentioned above, eels, big mushrooms, minotaurs, gnomish lockwork rogues, orcs, and
drachnids.



Intelligent Items

The final feature discussed during our preview of Depths of Darkhollow were Intelligent
items, also referred to as "Evolving Items" and "Smart Items". Did you ever read the R.A
Salvatore Legacy of the Drow books? Remember Dantag Banere's intelligent demonic sword,
Khazid'hea? Imagine that in EQ. Swords will insult their slain masters and desire the
expert hand of another. These weapons earn experience as though they were characters,
growing in power as their master (or servant?) wields them. The possibilities are endless.

During the last three days, Craig Knapp, Everquest producer describes his visions of
Everquest growing in depth instead of breadth. His philosophy seems to be both metaphor
and literal at the same time. Depths of Darkhollow looks to take Everquest into whole new
directions. Most importantly, the features of Depths of Darkhollow clearly define
Everquest as a continued force in a fiercely competitive world.

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Best regards,

Tim ==
(substitute 'tcsys.com' for 'nospam.co.uk')
_________________

Seeq Endestroi
Paladin of Mithanial Marr, The Rathe
http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=507035

Grave Wisdom / Grave Intentions - a Rathe Guild
http://www.gravewisdom.com