Massively's developer tour of Sentinel's Fate
With the EverQuest II team hard at work on their newest expansion, Sentinel's Fate, we were invited by community manager Kiara to drop by the Shattered Lands and take a closer look at the new zones in the expansion. While we were expecting to see some nice content, it's amazing to see just how beautiful these zones are when you walk through them in person.
I'm not one to open an article with such a bold statement, but the zones we got to tour in Sentinel's Fate were impressive. Hopefully today we can impart some of the beauty of these zones to you as we talk about three major areas in the new expansion: The Hole & The Seal of the Underfoot, the Erudin Library, and the Vasty Deep Conservatory.
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Massively went down The Hole
After a nifty jump from the city of Paineel (which was awesome, by the way) we soon found ourselves zoning into the top of The Hole, a gigantic contested dungeon that houses enough content to keep the most dedicated player busy. The Hole's content spans from 82 all the way up to 90 and contains over 30 bosses and 80 quests.
But to simply say that The Hole is huge is an understatement. There are drops, there are winding paths, there's even a NPC-firing cannon down in Old Paineel! But all of that, while cool, is nothing compared to the grandeur of the Tower of Serilis and the breached Seal of the Underfoot.
The Tower of Serilis is a twisting, icy, crystalline structure that pierces through the hole like a gigantic spike. Standing there on the shore next to it, I had to pull my camera back so I could look up all the way to see the top of the tower lit up by the streams of light filtering in from above. The Tower is one of those structures that makes you feel really small and insignificant, like you're in the presence of something truly legendary. Where other EverQuest II zones sometimes feel constrained, the Tower is magnificent. Very few MMOs have given me that feel of an epic landscape. I don't want to sound like I'm ranting here, but trying to impart the magnitude of the Tower isn't easy. It's cool. We'll leave it at that.
Deep within the tower is the broken Vault of Living Stone, which was the seal keeping the Plane of Underfoot (which I still think sounds like a bad rash of some sort) out of Norrath. However, since the Erudite heretics accidentally broke the seal in the original EverQuest, the Underfoot has been seeping into The Hole, slowly twisting it and corrupting it (exactly like a bad rash.)
All rash jokes aside, it's fun to compare pictures of the original seal versus the new one. It's safe to say that the artistry has come along way in the series.
The Scholar Primarch, in the Library, with the Silver Knife
Shortly after visiting the seal, we were whisked off to visit the Erudin Library. While this zone could be called a dungeon, it is certainly the most unconventional dungeon we've ever seen.
This is not the Erudin that players might remember from the original EverQuest. This is a much darker Erudin, and that's proven the second you walk into the door. While the halls may be glorious white marble, somewhere in the library there's a splash of red. One of the Erudites informs your party that a murder has just been committed, and he asks if you could help in solving the crime!
The Library is a freeform dungeon with six different bosses at the end. While players could just rush through the hallways, killing everyone in existence, careful parties will want to play along with the murder mystery and piece the puzzle together. The first stop is finding the dead Erudite, who, in our case, had his body hastily thrown underneath a decorative screen. Unfortunately, the killer neglected to put the Erudite's feet under the screen, giving the whole thing a distinct "Wicked Witch of the East" effect.
