Recently we have had the opportunity to try the tenth expansion of EverQuest II, Tears of Veeshan with a a free press access account, allowing us to take a look at the new features added to the game, which shows that although SOE is working hard to develop EverQuest Next, they do not leave behind EQII and its community. This new expansion adds a new zone, the Vesspyr Isles, a new class, the Channeller, as well as other many improvements and innovations.

The Vesspyr Islands consist of a dozen large floating islands, which can only be visited if you have a flying mount. And if you don't have one don't worry, because thanks to newly implemented "heroic character" feature, players can start at level 85 and with a brand new Pegasus mount, which will allow them to explore the Islands freely. Unfortunately the Islands are in fact much higher in level than our character, the quest chain and main story arc from the expansion is started at either Qeynos or Freeport when a player hits level 95, and so all the mobs in the area of Vesspyr Isles were around level  100.

This caused that we could not fully explore all the new content, but our first impressions were clear; the area is very beautiful, very well designed, and also has an interesting Dragon central history.

The background of this expansion focuses on the attempts of the Dragon Kerafyrm to destroy Norrath, thing that players will have to avoid, of course. To get his dark plan Kerafyrm has drawed the huge Temple of Veeshan into the sky to create his own fortress, which has also resulted in exciting and epic dungeons and raids. This expansion adds a total of nine new dungeons, including for the first time a dungeon that allows flying mounts.

On the Islands there are lots of new quests, adventures and rewards (the first mission in the new zone will actually provide a flying mount upon completion), and there are many types of different missions, from trade to craft missions missions. As well as this there all-new Dragon themed Alternate Advancements (AAs) as well as the general limit being increased up to 340.

Finally the game introduced its 26^th class: the Channeler; a hybrid of healer, archer, pet controller, Priest archetype that play a balancing act with nature. They are able to build their own constructs, which hold the essence of various creatures and can use them as Shields to take damage meant for a Channeler or his companions . The class uses their bow to devastate their enemies and unleashed healing tool to aid their allies in battle. One of the key features of a Channeller is finding balance with their Conduits, when using these abilities it increases the Channellers’ Dissonance which affects their connection and harmony to the Truespirit from which they get their power. Once their Dissonance gets too high they are unable to use their Conduits and so must balance their use carefully, as is the nature of the class.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 7th, 2014 at 11:38 pm and is filed under MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.