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Pros: Great end game and addition of AA's and PvP Cons: Some cookie cutter zones. New heritage/signature quess require raid guild and/or level 60 artisian
Concept: Planes of Sky |
Kingdom of Sky just may have saved EverQuest II. With the introduction of AA’s (alternate advancement points) and PvP alone the folks at SOE are showing that they see what their community wants, and what has made World of Warcraft such a massive success.
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Antonica and Commonlands take players to where they will begin in this new expansion at 60. Tenebrous Tangle is a green and lush zone and has hints that remind me of Feerrott. This is where the first dungeon players will explore is located called Sanctum of Scaleborn. This is a massive dungeon that now since our first look will create an instance if over 100 players are located within the zone. Also located off of TT is Temple of Sky. This is primarily a raid zone as once you get past the foyer mobs the zone becomes x2 and x4 raid mobs.
After you level a bit the next area you will probably head to is Barren Sky. You can get to Barren Sky once in KoS by using a teleporter or by traveling from Nektulos Forest or Thundering Steppes. Barren Sky brought back bad flash backs of DoF as it is mainly a desert texture. The dungeons here are Nest of the Great Egg and Palace of the Awakening for the main group dungeons.
Bonemire is probably the coolest looking zone in KoS. With its purple water and scorched landscape it can’t help but remind us of Lavastorm. The main source of adventure out in Bonemire is the three zones Den of the Devourer, Halls of Fate and Blackscale Sepulcher.
Like Desert of Flames before it, Kingdom of Sky is mainly aimed at high level players who reached the cap, or were close to it. There are absolutely zero zones that will scale to their level. What makes KoS worth buying even for those lower level players though are the AA’s which they can start to earn at 20.
There are 50 levels of advancement in the system and you are awarded one achievement point for each achievement level. Each Achievement skill tree has a starter ability and 5 'branches' containing 5 achievement abilities each. The starter ability costs 1 point and may not be upgraded but unlocks the 5 branches beneath it. The first 4 abilities in each branch cost 1 point per rank and you will gain access to the next ability in the line once you have 4 points invested in the ability above it. These may all be raised to a total of 8 ranks. The final ability in each branch costs 8 points to purchase and may not be upgraded beyond the first rank. With a maximum of 50 points you should be able to spend 4 points in all of the standard abilities in any 2 separate branches and have 2 of the final abilities or you could specialize heavily in one branch and take all of those skills to 8 ranks (with a few points to spare).
Before Live Update 21 the players who this expansion was designed for though got the short end of the stick. AA’s are earned by discovery experience, quests, collections, killing named and epic mobs and also from any experience you gain once at the level cap being converted into AA experience. It would have been nice to see some of the quests completed in our journals at least being retroactively applied to our AA experience. This does not happen though and at level 60 you start fresh. Live Update 21 has made AA gain a little more quickly then it has been making trying to max your AA less of a grind. Overall it’s just disappointing to know that a player starting at 20 could easily get the 50 max points by the time they are 70. The veteran players are left grinding after 70 though to try and make up the AA they lost and attempt to max their AA. Seeing the quests retroactively applied would have been good enough for me.
Dungeons in KoS are fairly cookie cutter still. This was one aspect I was disappointed in as I was hoping to see new and unique zones after seeing more of the same all over Desert of Flames. Tenebrous Tangle’s zones for example Sanctum of Scaleborn and Temple of Scale are exactly the same except one is for groups and the other for raid parties. The zones in Barren Sky look very similar to Shimmering Citadel from Desert of Flames and in Bonemire all three zones are near identical. It almost feels as though the designers work with giant building blocks to put the dungeons together and these blocks are in short supply.
For what they lack in eye candy though they make up for in design. Den of the Devourer and Blackscale Sepulcher are excellent zones that require more then just killing your way through but actually developing a strategy and having the whole group work together in order to defeat. For example in Den when you make your way into the queen’s chamber she will have about a dozen hatchlings that will repop over and over. If you decide to pull her while these are up they will assist her in wiping your group. To overcome this one member of the party must run around and kick the eggs that pop before a hatchling can spawn. This makes for some of the most unique encounters that EverQuest II has ever brought us for groups. Usually this kind of strategy and tactics is only required in the 24 man raids.
After seeing much of the end game content I can admit while Desert of Flames wasn’t really focused on the raiding guilds and seemed to focus its attention on the small groups and solo players, KoS is almost entirely focused on the raid forces. There are numerous contested mobs, several raid only public zones (Ascent of the Awakened and Temple of Scale) and also quite a few instanced raid zones. KoS should have no problems keeping players occupied this time around.
KoS offers players three new heritage quests and two new signature quests. Unless you are in a raid guild though, you will be unable to complete some of these quests. For example the Wurmslayer (heritage) and the Mark of Awakening (signature quest) require that you gather raid forces to advance the quest. In the case of the Wurmslayer the mob that is required is a contested mob that many guilds will fight over being able to kill. This will make these items very exclusive.
Also exclusive for raid guilds will be relic armor. These are drops that must be forged by returning to Solusek’s Eye. Each item takes a certain stone that drops from off of the various mobs throughout KoS. I appreciate the fact that this new expansion has asked players to return to Lavastorm and Solusek’s Eye for a few of the quests as many players have not returned to the old world zones since the level cap was raised to 60.
PvP is limited to pure PvP servers that are added with KoS. While we didn’t have a chance to fully check out PvP yet, the kill details are as follows: Honorable Kills: Any kill of the opposing alignment that was engaged while the target had greater than 50% health. All players that generate at least one point of hate with the victim while the victim’s health is above the honorable kill threshold will be eligible to receive rewards, including experience, status, faction, and the ability to loot item or coin dropped by the other player. Neutral Kills: Any kill of the opposing alignment that was engaged while the target had greater than 20% health. Neutral kills result in moderate faction gain. Dishonorable Kills: Any kill of the opposing alignment that was first engaged while the target had less than 20% health. Dishonorable kills result in a loss of faction with both your alignment and the opposing city. Losing enough faction will cause you to fall out of favor with your alignment, and will restrict or remove any access to the rewards system.
Crafting has been numbed down a bit as well. Instead of refining materials, making intermediate items and then the final product, KoS just requires the final product to be made. While this only occurs in the level 60-70 crafts it is a sign that the developers are trying to make crafting straighter forward in hopes more players will start crafting. Also in hopes to force feed the new system two of the new heritage events require a level 60 crafter to complete. Also a bit confusing is how the new spell crafting system for Adept 3 spells works. Classes will now require one of two rare items for their combat arts to be made. This makes it highly confusing and frustrating to try and find the items needed to upgrade your character.
Overall I could talk about Kingdom of Sky for another two thousand words easily. Sony did an excellent job with this latest expansion and despite the gripes over the cookie cutter zones and the AA advancement I am having no problem getting past it. I presently have a Monk and Fury both at 70 working on the new epic quest line to save the Qeyno’s Claymore. As a member of a high end raiding guild KoS makes me feel right at home and provides plenty to keep me busy. Those without raid guilds may feel slightly disappointed over not being able to finish some of the quests without a raid force, but overall that should not stop anyone from buying this expansion if they have not already.
Kingdom of Sky offers plenty of content to keep players of any level busy. KoS is such a huge leap over Desert of Flames that I can not wait to see how the developers out do this expansion.