EverQuest II Website Opens

Shortly after yesterday’s EverQuest II announcement, Sony launched the official EverQuest II website, which contains an overview of the game, screenshots, wallpaper, a FAQ, and even a word from John Smedley himself:

Greetings Citizens of Norrath,
With the announcement of EverQuest II, Sony Online Entertainment is showing the incredible future of EverQuest, and how we want to take online gaming on the PC to the next level. The question on a lot of people’s minds is what does this mean for EverQuest? Well, as all of you know we’re bringing out our fourth expansion, The Planes of Power this Fall . It will add a whole new dimension to EverQuest, particularly to the higher end of the game (although we do have a lot of other cool things for lower level players).

What about after The Planes of Power? We plan on keeping EverQuest running for a long time to come, and those plans include adding more and more features into the game as well as future expansions. In the near term, you can look forward to a completely revamped interface. This interface is going to dramatically change the way people play EverQuest. We’re getting rid of the old framed full-screen interface and replacing the entire thing with an extremely modifiable set of windows. Users will be able to customize the interface with their own artwork, and decide for themselves what they want on the screen… including things like the Experience Bar and a pet health indicator. We’re also adding in all kinds of new abilities such as launching separate chat windows and simple inventory control. In addition to the interface, you’ll also see an all-new particle system that will allow for some spectacular spell effects. We plan on enhancing EverQuest for a long time to come, not letting it grow stale. A lot of people have invested an incredible amount of time in EQ, and we understand and respect that. We’re not going to reward that by turning off EQ in order to get everyone to play EQII .

We’ve worked out a very great storyline and transition path for those players that choose to check out EQII . We will be announcing the specifics of how descendants of your character(s) will carry on the family name well into the Age of Destiny that EQII is set in. There are a lot of other things that we plan on doing that will give our players a real sense of continuity in Norrath. All of this is in the cards and will be revealed over the next 6-12 months.

I also want to announce that many of our Legendary Subscribers will be the first to experience EverQuest II in its Beta sometime next year. We will be giving preference to longtime Legends Subscribers, so my suggestion is that if you’re interested in EverQuest Legends, sign up now. After Legends players, longtime EQ subscribers will be eligible for a phase of the Beta as well. I realize this information is somewhat vague, and the only reason for that is we don’t have an exact date just yet, but we should sometime later this year.

Overall I’m sure many of you will have more questions. We’ll be watching the boards and taking note of common questions. We’ll answer as many as possible. We still need to leave many of the features of EQII behind closed doors for now, but we will be gradually revealing just how amazing this world will be!