Editor-in-Chief Chris "Pwyff" Tom went on an in-game tour in EverQuest's upcoming Veil of Alaris expansion!

Another zone we managed to stop by was the Temple of Sepulcher, an enormous structure that represents all of the Alaran deities in one big mega-church. Eric noted that it was so big, the team needed to break it up into three different zones (East, West and the Sepulcher of Order). This temple would be the final zone for Veil of Alaris, with a large number of raids in addition to a pile of quests and repeatable quests.

We also managed to take a peek at EverQuest’s newly implemented Guild Hall feature, an addition to their previous housing add-ons, but this time creating an enormous guild hall for players to congregate in. With its massive interior and huge customization options, large guilds will definitely have a great time hanging out in these expansive rooms.

Capping off the tour, I got to chatting with Eric Cleaver about some of the big themes they wanted to pursue with this new expansion, and how they were aiming to give players something new. In this regard, Eric observed that the EverQuest team really wanted to focus on freedom in this expansion. He noted that in previous expansions, they tried to gate a lot of their content with rigid content locks, but in Veil of Alaris, they’ve “returned to their roots,” in giving the players a “travel anywhere and see anything” challenge. The only way they’re planning to gate content is via mastery of the Alaran language itself. As players become more proficient in the language, they’ll be able to access more content, but this doesn’t mean they’ll be restricted in any of their explorations.

Overall, Veil of Alaris promises to be a powerful addition to one of the industry’s strongest and most venerated MMORPGs. When asked how the team feels to be going 12 years strong in a market where dozens of other MMOs are dying within a year of their launch, Eric was quick to point to EverQuest’s incredible community, in addition to EQ’s forward-thinking developers. Because EverQuest is very community dependent for players who want to advance, establishing and maintaining a good community identity is integral to succeeding. This is obviously a rare line of thought in modern MMORPG design, and it’s probably what will keep EverQuest going for quite some time into the future.  

Christopher "Pwyff" Tom, Editor-in-Chief.