EverQuest II

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EverQuest II (2004) takes place 500 years after the original EverQuest. Immediately after the events of the Plane of Time from the first game, the Gods all left, the Ogres formed the 2nd Rallosian War and nearly conquered all of Antonica again, Norrath suffered from a great cataclysm known as The Rending that tore up the entire planet over the course of 300 years, and finally, "The Shattering" happened when the moon Luclin exploded, raining down on the face of Norrath. Antonica took the brunt of the armageddon, despite having already been split into several continents from the Rending. The initial myth arc was that the seas were finally calm enough after Luclin's fall to be sailed, and the adventurers were seeking out all the old lands. There was also a cold war going on between Freeport and Qeynos. The former fell under the hold of the mysterious Overlord Lucan D'Lere, the latter is ruled by the descendant of EQ1's Antonius Bayle, Antonia Bayle.

Then came expansions. Well, first came "adventure packs", a concept sort of like a mini-expansion that didn't prove very popular. The continents of Faydwer, Kunark, Odus, and Velious would come soon enough, each continent having their own share of troubles.

EQ2 added a few new races to the game, as well as vastly different gameplay mechanics. Most notably, there is ample content for single players, and it is possible to advance to the maximum level (currently 90) without ever stepping into a group. Quest lines are easier to follow, and rewards are easier to come by. However, EQ2 now faces the same issue its predecessor does of too many players at the upper level. SOE has responded to this problem by trying to make it easier for players to rush through all of the "old world" content and get to level 92 as fast as possible.

Tropes used in EverQuest II include:
  • Absurdly Spacious Sewer:Some parts of the sewers of Qeynos take this trope to such a ridiculous extreme that you might be forgiven for thinking you're in an underground cathedral (since there are those there as well.) Justified in that the sewers are also the catacombs where most of Qeynos' dead are laid to rest. Kinda like they used to do in Paris, France. Freeport's sewer systems on the other hand, are much MUCH larger, significantly filthier, and don't serve for any secondary functions other than being a sewer.
  • As Himself: Proffesional baseball player Curt Schilling is a huge fan of EverQuest and MMO's in general. During an EverQuest 2 charity event, SOE created a character designed off of Curt himself using an anagram he created named Clint Gilcrush. Curt lent his voice to the dialogue of this character for the sake of the charity. Since then, Clint Gilcrush has been a permanent part of the game. He's secretly a triple-agent for both Qeynos and Freeport during the Betrayal questline, and the player is tasked with taking a bounty out on his head.
  • Acceptable Breaks From Reality
  • Aliens Speaking English: Averted, unlike EQ1. EQ2 has "language quests", where you have to kill enemies of a certain race until they drop items, and when you've collected enough items then you learn to speak that language. Until you've done so, they're incomprehensible. The developers even included alien-sounding gibberish recorded voice lines for speaking NPCs and players who don't speak that language.
  • Allegedly Free Game: EverQuest 2 opened up Free To Play servers that allow players to play the entire game for free, but at severe restrictions. Players have access to the entire game, but can only play a handful of races, the most basic of classes, and cannot use gear past a certain quality level. Other options, such as bag slots and bank slots, are also arbitrarily restricted. Worse still, free to play users have their AA Slider forced to 50%, meaning that they level up 50% slower than paying subscribers at all times, with the side benefit of getting AA points that are not really all that useful to a level 10 character. The goal seems to be to get people to pay for unlocks then get them to pay for a subscription anyway, making the entire free to play thing a trojan horse -- and any unlocks literally worthless.
    • In December of 2011, the entire game jumped over to the Free To Play model, which upset and frustrated returning veteran players with the fact that their fully Mythical-geared level 90 Sarnak Bruiser now had to be unlocked by buying the right to play as both the Sarnak race and the Bruiser class first, as well as paying $10 per character slot past the most recent 2 you used, as well as $0.30 per mythical item to use said gear. This was very quickly patched with a formal apology and a refund of any such packs that were purchased, as grandfathered characters no longer have to buy the packs -- but still have to pay for the item unlocks. (New characters, however, require the unlocks.) The gold subscription is still a valid option to avoid having to worry about all these, as the (very frequent) popups are quick to remind you.
    • One important note to this, if you are a Gold subscriber, you do get $5 in Station Cash each month, dropping the "net fee" from $10 to $15 a month down to $5 to $10, depending on how often you pay for the game. These 500 points of station cash a month can easily be used to stockpile race / class / item unlocks and the like, meaning that dropping down from Gold to Silver is not so bad with a certain amount of preparation. Alternately, this 500 points of station cash a month can be used towards the expansions to keep content flowing.
  • All There in the Manual: A lot of the storyline that goes along with the expansions isn't readily available to players, or at best has to be pieced together bit by bit as you learn the lore.
  • Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: Roehn Theer, the Big Bad of the expansion Sentinel's Fate, is fought on a flashing neon chessboard surrounded by a black and purple swirling acid trip.
  • An Adventurer Is You
    • The Medic: The various priests.
      • Combat Medic: Furies, Inquisitors, and to a lesser extent Mystics can produce a significant amount of damage in addition to healing.
    • Stone Wall: Warriors in general, although the Guardian is the most classic example (excellent defense, comparatively low damage output)
    • Fragile Speedster: Scouts in general, although a good Brigand or Swashbuckler can take a few hits.
    • The Beast Master: Necromancers and Conjurors. They specialize in undead and elementals, respectively. The Beastlord class takes this to it's logical extreme, taking control of animals. To a lesser extent, Druids can charm animals (and some humanoids) to work for them but it only lasts for a few minutes.
    • Squishy Wizard: Any mage class.
    • Of course, anyone not listed in Stone Wall is probably going to find out the definition of Glass Cannon.
  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: Subverted. Technically yes, you get rewarded for most things with clothes, but since your gear directly affects your stats, it's entirely functional.
  • The Artifact: EQ2 doesn't have it quite as bad as its predecessor. For one thing, there are fewer outdoor zones, and thus nothing to be "reliced". Also, Sony sometimes lowers difficulty of monsters, or an entire zone, from "raid" to "group", or from "group" to "solo". Still, some formerly high end dungeons like Solusek's Eye now have little point to them. Also, leveling is so easy now that the low end dungeons just aren't necessary anymore, as a player could gain five levels in less time than it would take him to find a group.
    • With the Destiny of Velious expansion, EQ2 did away with weight entirely, rendering the big-but-super-heavy bank container suddenly something you can carry around with no difficulty, and a boss who's trick was teleporting 9999 lb stones into your inventory rather pointless.
    • An unusual subversion in Everquest 2 is The Protector's Realm. As of the Rise of Kunark expansion, it was a high-end raid target. With the level cap raised by 10 and the stat bonuses conferred by gear vastly improved, it can generally be cleared with a single group (as opposed to four), and has found new life as a great area for money farming. A good "PR plat run" can net a player in the neighborhood of 30 plat.
  • Authority Equals Asskicking: Most raid bosses.
  • Back Stab: The rogues take the scout archetype, though all scout classes excluding bards can backstab, the Assassin takes the cake for sheer overkill. Near end game they have at least 7 backstabs, a few location dependent abilities, and a few combat abilities that "stealth" the assassin after execution. They can simply out-damage any other class except some nukers; well, that is if they don't get squished after grabbing aggro.
  • Big Bad: At the start of the game, Overlord Lucan D'lere was the Big Bad. Like its predecessor, EQ2 adds a couple more Big Bads each expansion. Due to the fact that none of the current developers were part of the original EQ2 team, they don't care about the "old world" content and Lucan's threat priority has become increasingly irrelevant.
  • Bigger Bad: EQ2 now has Kerafyrm as the grand daddy of all Big Bads, being the prominent character found at the core of the Age's End prophecy that Norrath is now facing.
  • Big Good: Antonia Bayle started as one. She still technically is, but like Lucan, her plot relevance is steadily decreasing.
  • Big Boo's Haunt: Fewer than in EQ1, but EQ2 had Ruins of Varsoon in the original, Desert of Flames had the Silent City and related instances, Kingdom of Sky had the Blackscale Sepulchral, Echoes of Faydwer had Castle Mistmoore and the Loping Planes...
    • Unrest in EQ2 is much scarier than the first envisioning. The zone is strongly story-driven. You're being watched and commented on by the Big Bad of the end zone as you discover the cause of the curse that rests upon the estate and how he brutally slaughtered the innocent family that lived there. Just before you fight him, he actually realizes that you are a player behind a computer monitor, and tries to "jump" out of the screen at you when he pulls an Interface Screw on you before you approach him.
  • Big Creepy-Crawlies: During one of the revamps, all the frogs and slugs and bugs in the newbie zone The Peat Bog were enlarged massively. Now the frogs are as wide across as a male barbarian, and the more dangerous slugs in the back of the zone are 4 times bigger than a human.
  • Black and Grey Morality: The entirety of the Sentinel's Fate expansion. The Erudites have a racial outlook that pretty much boils down to "For Science!". They messed around with necromancy, slaughtered Kerra and Hua Mein, and generally were jackasses to everyone. However, they were fighting to save Odus and possibly all of Norrath from either being torn apart by the Void itself or drawn into the Underfoot, and the Void Invaders and Guardians of the Underfoot are nowhere near as nice as the Erudites...
  • Black and White Morality: Qeynos vs Freeport, and to a lesser extent Qeynos & Kelethin & New Halas vs Freeport & Neriak. (Gorowyn, the third "evil" city, has a policy of Pragmatic Villainy, tolerates good aligned adventurers inside it and is diplomatic with Qeynos and Kelethin).
  • Boss Game: In spades, especially when it comes to higher end content. Some raid zones don't even have "trash", it's just a gauntlet of boss after boss.
    • The best example of this might be Toxxiulla's Mound. No trash, just a ring event involving dragons. The other good example would be The Palace of Roheen Theer. No trash, just epic after epic. It's worth noting that many raiders prefer the boss-only zones because generally killing "trash" doesn't result in loot drops which makes time not spent working on the bosses time wasted.
  • Bottomless Bladder: Played straight for players. Not always so true for NPCs.
  • Born-Again Immortality: The fae and arasai. When they die, either of natural or unnatural causes, a spirit bud is created which regenerates the body until they are ready to be reborn. However, the spirit bud can be destroyed, which leads to the fae or arasai's permanent death.
  • Breast Plate: EQ2 almost completely averted this trope. Unarmored characters wear peasant-like clothing rather than underwear. In fact, there is one piece of gear in the game that shows any significant amount of skin on a female character, and it's a rather expensive prestige item that only acts as clothing instead of armor anyway.
    • Back with a vengeance as of Destiny of Velious, as villaineses Cara Omica, Tserinna Syl'Tor and Sullon Zek all wear what amounts to armor in the shape of a bikini and stockings. Most PC armor remains reasonable and sensible, but as of LU63 female characters can wear halter top shaped breastplates.
  • Canon Discontinuity: In terms of the lore and history behind the world of Norrath, things are split up into two categories. First is that anything actually found inside EverQuest, EverQuest 2 (up to a certain point in time for its own storyline with EverQuest), and EverQuest Online Adventures is official canon to the games. There's also the tabletop Pen & Paper versions of the games, which have much more detailed stories and lore, but aren't considered canon unless it's also covered in the game.
    • How evil Rallos Zek is has varied from time to time. At his best he's been an "a shade below Neutral" type evil who abhorred Innoruuk, Cazic Thule and Bertoxxulus and respected the Marr twins. At his worst, he's more of a "kill everyone until everyone wants to kill everyone" type.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: If your home city is Freeport or Neriak, all your pre-given dialogue when interacting with NPCs has you as almost a complete Jerkass.
  • Cash Cow Franchise: EverQuest 1 was such a success that they took all the money from it and used that to create many new games (EQ 2 was just one of them), rather than improve EverQuest. They mostly all failed. It's pretty obvious that the management has no regard for the original EverQuest other than to milk it dry.
    • Besides EverQuest and EverQuest 2, there is the online card game Legends of Norrath, Champions of Norrath (PlayStation 2 game), Champions: Return to Arms (PlayStation 2 game), EverQuest Online Adventures (PlayStation 2 game), EverQuest Hero's Call (Pocket PC), EverQuest Hero's Call 2 (Pocket PC), Lords of EverQuest (PC real-time strategy game), EverQuest Role-Playing Game (a role-playing game produced in collaboration with White Wolf which uses the d20 system). Also a line of novels have been published in the world of EverQuest and there has been talk of a feature film for years.
    • A new MMORPG called EverQuest Next has also been announced.
  • Catfolk: The Kerrans physically resemble large humanoid felines. Their bodies are covered in fur with colors and patterns denoting their lineage.
  • Critical Hit: In the Destiny of Velious expansion, being able to critical hit (by building up your Crit Chance stat) is literally essential to completing any content. Enemies have a stat (that you don't get) called Critical Avoidance, which requires you to have a crit chance of over 100% - for high end raiding, you need around 240% crit chance.
  • Collection Sidequest: Quite common.
  • Convection, Schmonvection: Players can float or jump right over lava without any problems. In the old days, falling into lava was an instant automatic death, but later it was changed so falling in gave you negligible damage.
  • Culture Chop Suey: The monk guilds in the human cities seem asian-influenced, in what is otherwise largely Medieval European Fantasy.
    • While the city of Freeport maintains a largely medieval feel, the Freeport Militia have gained a distinctly Roman aesthetic.
  • Damage Discrimination: Usually. Most monsters will not harm friendly monsters, though there are a few cases where they do. For example, in Tower of Nurga, there's a fight where you have to position a drake boss so that his fire blasts hit two goblins guarding an elevator.
  • Death Is a Slap on The Wrist: You have to pay to repair your armor, and you get a small xp penalty which regenerates if you have the game turned off. When the game first started, it was a bit more painful, as you'd have to retrieve your "spirit shard" from where you died to get 50% of your exp back, but those were done away with years ago.
  • Difficulty Spike: It's actually quite easy to solo your way all the way up to max level. In fact, the developers changed the game to intend for this. You will then be lacking knowledge on how to work as part of a group. You will also probably be undergeared, as all the better weapons and armor are obtained from "heroic" quests and boss mobs, both of which require groups to conquer.
    • Will happen to you again if you decide to go from being a casual player to a raid player. Raid quality gear mostly only drops in raid zones.
    • Also noticeable within dungeons themselves. For example, in the raid dungeon Perah'Celsis' Abominable Laboratory, there's a large jump in difficulty between Vernox the Insatiable, who is a "tank'n'spank" mob with a few tricks to watch out for, and Sara Greenheart, who spawns adds, bounces you all over the room with area-of-effect attacks, and power drains.
  • The Dog Bites Back: Rallos Zek imprisoned Vallon Zek, God of Strategy, Tallon Zek, God of Tactics, and Sullon Zek, Demi-Goddess of Rage, in his fortress with the intentions of killing them and taking their powers in order to fight Kerafyrm. While Tallon and Vallon initially didn't know what was happening, imprisoning the God of Rage only enraged her more... Thanks to the help from the adventurers, the three of them kill Rallos Zek, and all three gods decide to govern in his stead as a triumvirate of war known as the Hounds of Zek.
  • Down the Drain: Edgewater Drains is to date the only zone in EQ2 with a significant underwater area.
  • Dual-Wielding: All the scout and fighter classes except Paladins and Shadowknights.
  • Easier Than Easy: Erudin Library. This is the dungeon that gives even casual players little to no trouble, and the good ones can clear it with two people.
    • The Obelisk of Ahkzul. Can be soloed at 90, and gives about 6-12 plat a run and some level 80 stuff to transmute.
  • Eldritch Abomination: The Void Invaders. Roehn Theer qualifies. He is the Avatar of the Nameless. He has the power to kill the gods themselves. His weakness in a weird checks and balances sort of way? Mortals like us adventurers.
    • Arkatanthis the Destroyer. He doesn't have a role in the story arc, but he's one of the Cthulu-inspired Amygdalans. After the Sentinel's Fate expansion came out, he had the distinction of being the toughest boss in the game.
      • As of Destiny of Velious, it turned out that Roehn Theer wasn't that Eldritch after all. He was a deity who's specific Circle of Influence was being able to kill other Gods to prevent them from becoming too powerful or messing around with the mortal world too much. He was also specifically given no dominion over mortals.
  • Eldritch Location: The Void.
  • Enough to Go Around: It's not uncommon for the target of a quest to drop 3 or 6 copies of the needed quest item.
  • Expansion Pack: Many many of these. They churn them out so often. As of now, EQ2 has 6 full size expansion packs plus three "adventure packs". The adventure pack concept didn't turn out to be very popular. EQ2 also release an amount of content that could be reasonably described as a mini-expansion pack about halfway between expansions, for free.
  • Expy: Kerrans to the Vah Shir, sort of. Kerrans existed in EQ1, but not as a playable race. The Vah Shir race went extinct when Luclin was destroyed, but Kerrans were made playable to consolidate Vah Shir fans. Official lore states that the Vah Shir adventurers who were trapped on Norrath when teleportation was cut off from Luclin all decided to live with the Kerra tribe and mate with them. The Kerra we see 500 years later are the genetic result of the Vah Shir and Kerra.
  • Fantastic Racism: Between the Kerrans and Erudites. Going all the way back to EQ1 where the Erudites drove the Kerra off the mainland of Odus onto an island that became called Kerra Isle. With the original release Lucan D'Lere proved how evil he was by making the Kerrans and Erudites share a slum. In Sentinel's Fate the old hostilities flared up, with the Kerrans hating the uncaring and disconnected-from-nature Erudites and the Erudites despising the backwards superstitious Kerra.
  • Fetch Quest: By the bushel.
  • Floating Continent: EQ2 looovvess this trope. The entire Kingdom of Sky expansion pack took place on floating islands. Part of the Swamp of Innothule, although technically not floating, was so high off the ground it could only be accessed by airship. In the Sentinel's Fate expansion, the entire continent of Odus is floating because it's now located in an alternate dimension entirely.
  • Forced Level Grinding: Leveling up is easy compared to EQ1. Now go get your 325 AA's.
  • Frankenstein's Monster: Flesh golems.
  • Forced Tutorial: Controversially removed from the game. The original game started all players out as "Level 1 Commoners" in a zone called "Isle of Refuge". You learned to play by completing the quests there, picked your archetype (fighter, mage, priest, scout), and an alignment (Qeynos or Freeport). The whole archetype and class picking part was done away with years ago, "to make the newbie experience more unique", and the Isle of Refuge was split into The Queen's Colony (for good characters) and Outpost of the Overlord (for evil ones). But as the focus of the game shifted away from Qeynos and Freeport and the gear from the two tutorial zones became outdated, SOE decided to just get rid of them entirely.
    • Tutorials now exist as a series of pop-up windows and they aren't mandatory. There's no reason a newbie can't just start level grinding and ignore the hell out of all the quests.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: Originally, Lucan D'Lere was just a paladin in the Order of Marr. Before EQ1 took place he split from the Order and founded the Freeport Militia. Five hundred years later in EQ2 he's the unquestioned ruler and tyrant of Freeport. To this day, only Lucan's most trusted adviser, a dark elf named Tayil N'Velex, knows that he is actually an immortal Lich, but even she doesn't know where he keeps the phylactery that contains his soul.
  • Get on the Boat: When EQ2 first came out, Get on the Boat was one of the major themes of the game - get on the boat and sail to the newly rediscovered lands. You had to complete substantial quest lines before you were allowed to. Now? Not at all. The boat quests can still be completed but aren't necessary anymore.
  • Giant Enemy Crab: The Scavanator
  • Hammerspace: Lampshaded during a quest from the Bristlebane Day (April Fools) celebration. You're tasked with recovering 50 novelty and joke items and gadgets from a pirate. When you return to the quest giver he asks how you managed to carry all of that on your person, and you reply with "You know... I have no idea."
  • Helping Would Be Killstealing: Not even possible. One of EQ2's mechanics "locks" you and your opponent in combat and then other players can't help. However, other monsters can occasionally steal your kills if you're in one of the rare areas where they're programmed to attack each other.
  • Hitbox Dissonance: Dear God, Eirreen the Broken. Eirreen is a freakin' huge dragon. Her hitbox is roughly the part of her belly between her legs.
  • Impossible Item Drop: The monsters in this game can run the gambit from incredibly tiny (such as the Brownies, who only stand a couple inches off the ground,) to absolutely gigantic (like Tarinax in Deathtoll). Since nearly all loot drops in the form of treasure chests, killing tiny monsters can result in a gigantic Master Chest spawning and completely crushing the corpse.
  • Inexplicable Treasure Chests: How the loot system in this game works. Treasure chests containing loot appear out of nowhere when you kill monsters.
  • Interface Screw: Alcohol blurs the screen and gives you double vision, and if you get drunk enough quadruple vision. Various spells cause similar blurring effects.
  • Invulnerable Civilians: Most NPCs cannot be attacked.
  • Item Crafting: Very much present.
  • Jack of All Stats: Humans in both games have average stats across the board.
  • Kick the Dog: If you live in Freeport, you can kick dogs. Cats and pigs too. Animals roam around the residential areas in Freeport, and you can kill them. (Qeynosians have animals wandering around too, but they're unattackable. Still, any Qeynosian who badly wants to indulge in some dog kicking can sneak into Freeport and kick dogs to his or her hearts content)
  • Lampshade Hanging: EQ2 has a fondness for this. There's a quest where you have to harvest Treant corpses (read: full sized trees) and carry them back to an NPC, who queries you on how you accomplished it. You answer him "Norrath has always been a land of mystery". The whole Twenty Bear Asses thing has become a running joke, with a few NPCs even laughing at you for killing rats for quests.
    • One of the holiday quests for the April Fools Day expy Bristelbane Day is literally called "Kill 10 rats". The quest deconstructs and lampshades MMORPG cliches in general.
  • The Legions of Hell: The Nightbloods, despite being aligned with the Void Invaders, look much more like legions of hell than shadow monsters.
  • Loads and Loads of Races: Twenty-one in total (twenty if you count Kerrans and Vah Shir as the same race, which some do and some don't). High Elves, Halflings, Dwarves, Wood Elves, Frogloks, Humans, Barbarians, Half Elves, Gnomes, Erudites, Freeblood Vampires, Dark Elves, Ogres, Trolls, Iksar, Vah Shir, Ratonga, Kerran, Fae, Arasai, Sarnak. Have fun making those characters.
    • Mind you, that's only the playable races. Just for fun, here's a list of some of the non-playable races. [1]
  • Money, Dear Boy: Many of the changes made to the game over the last few years were only for the sole purpose of raking in more dough and keeping the game alive. You can buy in game items with real life cash, and it just gets worse from there.
    • For example, as of The Shadow Odyssey, all subclasses got their own unique looking armor. Granted, there were only a few different base designs, but at least they bothered to palate-swap the armor. Ever since they started providing super-elaborate decorative armor in the Marketplace for real money, there have been five total armor texture schemes - plate mail, chain mail, leather armor, gi, and cloth armor.
    • The Freeblood race was created just so players could buy and then play as a vampire race. The race itself has no lore behind it (though the developers tried to justify some connections with the Nights of the Dead Halloween events) other than that they used to be both Humans and Elves who were abducted by vampires, experimented on, showed resistance to sunlight, retained free will, and escaped from their captors.
  • Myth Arc: EQ2 had them from the get-go, starting with "rescue the Froglok race". Now the arcs are connected.
  • Neglectful Precursors: The Combine Empire was seen as this for a long time.
  • Nerf: In a rare case of nerfing the enemies rather than the players, the game did away with the concept of "critical mitigation" entirely.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: EQ2 did this in The Shadow Odyssey expansion. In their attempts to fight off the invading forces of the Void and prevent them from destroying Norrath, the players eventually had to fight against the former God of Health from Norrath's Pantheon, Anashti Sul. She had been banished to the Void for unleashing the Undead upon Norrath, and now she wanted revenge. When the players finally defeated her, they ended up breaking the proverbial leash that kept her bound in the Void, and was allowed to reform herself on Norrath. Even she could not have predicted such an outcome when she died, but was pleased nonetheless. She now exists on Norrath as the God of Eternal Life. She's still evil and bitter about what the gods did to her though.
    • Sentinal's Fate, the follow up to the Shadow Odyssey has this again. When you defeat the 4 Rune Roheen Theer, you weaken him enough to allow Kerafyrm to steal the power of his magic god-killing swords. With Roheen Theer out of the picture, the void's grip on Odus weakened, which forced the Erudites and adventurers to turn their attention to preventing the whole of Norrath from being pulled into the Underfoot.
  • Nintendo Hard: In general, SOE does a fairly good job at providing both easy content for the casual players and really difficult stuff for the hardcore ones. Sentinel's Fate originally had two raid zones. It took the game's best guild 6 months to defeat the 4 Rune Roehn Theer boss, and almost as long to defeat Arkathanthis the Destroyer. Then, so the top level guilds didn't get complacent, they released the Underfoot Depths raid zone in LU57...
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Way too many to list all of them, but here's a few...
    • In EQ2, Za Za Lenska gives you a quest to get "potion ingredients to help her husband" that include snake venom (a reference to Zsa Zsa Gabor going through husbands).
    • A character you're forced to fight one-on-one in a monk trial event is called Crush "The Icescale" Lizzard (shout out to Chuck "The Iceman" Liddel).
    • The quest "The Number One Threat In the Butcherblock" requires you to kill bears. Given to you by Scout Colbear.
  • Non-Mammal Mammaries: Thoroughly averted. The game features a few amphibian and reptilian races. Female Iksar are skinnier than males. Female Frogloks are virtually indistinguishable from males. Female Sarnaks are actually much bigger than male sarnaks (No less than 2 feet taller), although their facial horns and features are smaller, blunter and less elaborate.
    • Played straight with the Bixies, an NPC race of bees. They're insects, to be sure, but a cross between a bee and a woman, and their torso's carapaces all have two breasts.
  • Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Yep, they're still the same, although the Coldain Dwarves have been changed by their environment enough that they easily stand out.
  • Our Elves Are Better: Played straight with the haughty High Elves and the evil Dark Elves. Wood Elves are more easier going than other elven races.
    • EQ2's subversion is the Half Elves, who are known best for being obsessed with hair dye and piercings, and other means of standing out from the normal standards of society. Not having a culture to begin with (being stuck between Humans and Wood Elves), they created their own from the ground up. They've developed an rebellious outcast mentality towards most forms of authority, and visually reflect that with skin piercings and wild hair. So basically a race of disaffected teenagers.
    • The between-expansion packs content release LU 60 gave us the War Elves. Huge, muscular, grey skinned, red tattooed, immortal warriors. The lore goes that Rallos Zek was given some of the first Dark Elves by Innoruuk in exchange for not wiping out the rest of them. Rallos planned to use them as sacrificial peons, but his sons Vallon and Tallon Zek held the War Elves back when Rallos' legions attacked the Plane of Earth so that they weren't hit with the Rathe's Curse.
    • Both subverted and played straight by the Renda'Dal, or "New Elf". Subverted in that, after taking huge losses after the War of the Fay, the inhabitants of the High Elven city of Felwithe decided that the best way to ensure racial survival was to inbreed and intentionally decrease their natural lifespan from 800 or so years to around 70, in order to ensure they reproduced more often. Played straight in that they're still exceptionally arrogant, but also maliciously xenophobic, attacking anyone, even other High Elves, who enter the city.
  • Our Gnomes Are Weirder: These gnomes are based heavily on the Dragonlance tinker gnomes, although they're much more competent (but still blamed for 99% of everything that ever goes wrong, even when they're not involved.)
  • Our Ogres Are Hungrier: In EQ2, the Gods' departure lifted a curse that made the ogres stupid. With the curse gone, but their arrogance and massive physical size still there, they ended up a quite scary race of Genius Bruisers.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: EQ2's vampires seem to be rather similar to dark elves, and there are groups of vampires living openly in the dark elf city of Neriak. The game skirts around the issue of whether sunlight actually harms them or not. One instance in The Shadow Odyssey expansion requires adventurers to "become" vampires themselves, and fight a boss where natural sunlight is occasionally exposed to the area, and it's lethal to players.
    • Eventually, entirely for the sake of money, the developers created the Freeblood Vampire race. A race of vampires who used to be Humans and Elves that were abducted for vampire experiments. They managed to retain some of their free will, as well as proved that sunlight didn't affect them. They escaped and started living in the cities across Norrath.
  • Power-Up Food: Still exists. The best food gives increases to things like block chance, but has a very short duration making it too expensive to be practical.
  • Phlebotinum Overload: Kerafyrm now has the Power of the Nameless. However, the power was meant only for Roehn Theer, and Theer needed his swords Enoxus and Aeteok to properly channel it. Kerafyrm has neither of the swords, his reasoning being that he now has the power, and the swords are just mundane vessels to store it, so he didn't need them. If he tries to use this power, Theer believes that it will "hasten the cataclysm foretold in the Age's End Prophecy" by literally unmaking the world.
    • On top of that, Rallos Zek, the God of War himself, is after the power aswell to become the "True King", a kind of "God of Gods" to plunge the entire universe into war, but even if he does kill Kerafyrm, there is a chance killing the Prismatic Dragon will end the universe as well.
  • Playful Otter: The Othmir, who play a pretty fair role in Velious.
  • Pragmatic Villainy: The Sarnak of Gorowyn. They lead a fairly militaristic lifestyle, but decided it would be much more profitable to make Gorowyn accessible to good-aligned adventurers as a waypoint between their lands and Kunark than to follow the standard Evil practice of killing them for the evulz. The only reason why they practice more evil professions is because it was the best way for them to survive in their environment.
  • Punny Name: Oh so many of them. There are whole web pages which list them.
    • One example is the zone "Estate of Unrest" (State of unrest).
  • Rainbow Pimp Gear: Averted. Players have the ability to equip armor and weapons in an appearance slot.
  • Random Drop
  • The Reveal: Players learned that Eva Corruno'thes, the Prophet of Tunare, was actually Firiona Vie, who kept herself Hidden in Plain Sight until the time came for her to play her part in the Age's End story arc.
  • Slobs Versus Snobs: Comes up every time the Erudites argue with anyone, but especially with their old rivals the nature-oriented Kerra.
  • Some Call Me... Tim: Lord Doljonijiarnimorinar. Players call him Bob. The game even gives this a shout out - one of the achievements is "Defeat Lord Doljonijia... Bob"
  • Stripperiffic: Antonia Bayle.
    • SOE in general decided very deliberately to move away from using stripperiffic women to advertise the game. There's one skimpy dress (in various colors) that female characters can get in EQ2, but it's an optional prestige item. Antonia remains stripperiffic, but she isn't plastered all over the official art like Firiona Vie was in EQ1.
      • As of Destiny of Velious expansion they've been bringing it back. Tserrina Syl'Tor, Cara Omica and Sullon Zek all sport "armor" that is ludicrous at best.
  • Tailor-Made Prison: Combined with a self-invoked Sealed Evil in a Can. The Goddess of Love, Erollisi Marr, was sealed up within her very own memorial shrine that was built in New Halas, in the statue that was forged by Verig Ro, the God of the Forge. After adventurers are tricked into tampering with the statue and creating a small crack on the surface, Erollisi was able to escape and reform herself. She reveals that Ullkorruuk, the Goddess of Betrayal, was the one who put her there in the first place, and the only way she could keep her locked away was if she locked herself up and used her powers to maintain the prison. When Erollisi escaped, she kicked Ullkorruuk's butt and showed her how her very own motivations for existence backfired against her.
  • Temporal Paradox: The Shiny Metallic Robe heritage quest results in a paradox that leads to you finding a portal that takes you to 500 years in the past (in EQ1's time) where Clockworks have taken over the entire world. You meet a gnome enchanter who figures that if you're from the future, then she's trapped in a time bubble existing outside the normal timeline. She tells you that she was probably the cause of this alternate reality, and knows how to prevent it from happening with your help. This results in a Stable Time Loop that fixes the timeline by giving you the item that caused it in the first place; a package that is not to be delivered to you until 500 years later, back in the present time.
  • Titled After the Song: Combined with Theme Naming. Quests surrounding Erollisi Day and the Returning Goddess zone are named after songs.
    • Shot Through The Heart: Bon Jovi (E-Day 2010)
    • Whats Love Got To Do With It?: Tina Turner (E-Day 2011)
    • Total Eclipse Of The Heart: Bonnie Tyler (E-Day 2011)
    • Captive Heart: Selena Quintinilla (Returning Goddess)
    • Unbreak My Heart: Toni Braxton (Returning Goddess)
    • Thief of Hearts: Madonna (Returning Goddess)
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: Rallos Zek, the God of War, in the Destiny of Velious expansion pack and the subsequent patches "Children of War" and "The War of Zek". Rallos was always an evil god, and has tried to put his ambitions of war and conquest into motion numerous times in the past, including the Planes of Power expansion pack in EverQuest and both Rallosian Wars. This time around, once Kerafyrm absorbed the powers of Roehn Theer, Rallos wanted to fight Kerafyrm immediately, even while knowing that one possible side effect of killing Kerafyrm would be the dissolution of all existence. Why? Because he believes that with the powers of Theer, he can become the True King and plunge Norrath into perpetual war. Not Jerkass enough for you? His plan is to kill his children Vallon, Tallon and Sullon Zek, and absorb their power back into himself to make himself a match for Kerafyrm, and after he's beaten Kerafyrm, use the power of Theer to kill all the other Gods and rule Norrath unopposed.
  • Thong of Shielding: Sullon Zek
  • Twenty Bear Asses: EQ2 pretty much revolves around this style of quest.
  • The Usual Adversaries: The Bloodfist Orcs in the Commonlands for Freeport, the Crushbone orcs for Kelethin, and the Ry'Gorr orcs for New Halas. Qeynos gets the Blackburrow Gnolls instead of literal orcs, and Gorowyn gets a race of parrot Aviaks known as the Spiroc. Neriak doesn't have a single adversary who fills this role, but do have issues with some rogue vampires and an encampment of Dark Elf rebels known as the Thexians.
  • Vaporware: New Halas just kept on getting pushed back. It was finally released well over a year after the original planned release date.
    • When Destiny of Velious came out, players exploring the old world zones with their new flying mounts found a few remnants of what appears to be unfinished content. Most notable among these is an air dock in The Bonemire that was never used for anything and left inaccessible.
  • Villain Exit Stage Left: God dammit, Maalus Shadowfyre...
    • Tert Turganpuncher does the same damned thing!
    • Maalus came Back for the Dead with the Drunder update. Hopefully we'll get another shot at Tert as well...
  • Weapon of X-Slaying: Weapons with the "Bane" effect do extra damage to a particular species of monsters.
    • Some of the weapons of a x4 boss in a contested zone also have a damage proc that only damages "those born of zek".
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Giants look very human-like, if not absolutely huge, and seem to behold at least some intelligence... the thing is, you can kill them for meat!
  • Wolfpack Boss:
    • Ludmila Kystov and her party (Meldrath Klotik, Jracol Binari, Blorgok the Brutal, the Doomcoil) in the Protector's Realm
    • Octis, Sslortis, Sunrise and Nightfall in Emperor's Athenaeum.
  • Worthless Yellow Rocks: Both averted and played straight. When the game first started, gold was exceptionally hard to come by or save up, and any player who had even 1 Platinum coin was among the richest people in the game (100 copper = 1 silver, 100 silver = 1 gold, 100 gold = 1 platinum.) This late into the game, gold is generously given out by monsters and quests at high levels, and the value of platinum has dropped, leading to inflation because everyone has so much of it. It's common to see people throwing four to five hundred platinum at a single piece of gear. At the same time, copper and gold clusters are a commonly-found tier 1 and tier 3 tradeskill harvest, respectively.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: The raptors in The Withered Lands. They know enough to use the little glowing feather "this NPC has a quest for you" marker to ambush players, which would make them Dangerously Genre Savvy - except they don't realize that this isn't an action movie, it's an RPG, and they're just trash mobs.
  1. ↑ Aviak, Bixie, Boarfiend, Brownie, Bugbear, Burynai, Centaur, Clockwork, Cyclops, Djinn, Drelock, Droag, Ettin, Fungusman, Gnoll, Goblin, Giant, Gruengach, Hua Mein, Kobold, Lizardman, Orc, Othmir, Ravasect, Roekillik, Shadowed Man, Tallonite, Vampire, Yah-lei.
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