Expansion Elation

Anticipating Echoes of Faydwer

By: Kiara

What's the best word ever in the English language? No! Not THAT one, perv. Let me be more specific. In relation to MMO's? That's right. Expansion! I always get excited when there are expansions in the works. New art, new quests, new CLOTHES (okay armour... but it's close), and all kinds of other nifty things.

Now, if you haven't read the website... well there's not a whole lot of detailed information. There's the standard teasers about everything that is going to be out. You just have to speculate and use your imagination on the specifics.

The first thing that catches my fancy is the new starting race. Fae. Pixies even! Woohoo! How cute is it going to be to get to play a little winged fairy thingie? I'm betting they're going to be tiny and have butterfly wings (OOOO WINGS!!!) and flutter and be all deceptively cute and and and.... yeah. Have I mentioned that I'm excited about this?

With a new race comes a new city, Kelethin rebuilt. So of course, being a city in the trees with little fairies running about, many of the houses look like nuts. I mean what else would a pretty little Fae live in? Naturally, with new houses there will be new decorations. Another big exciting thing. I'm thinking that my dark elf will be making a very serious move!

Amongst all the new decorations and furniture (hopefully the carpenters will be getting some love!) there will also be new weapons and armour styles. I'm hoping they'll go with the general theme of woodland folk and have armour sets that fit in with a forest motif. You know, greens and browns with leafy, barky patterns and stuffs. Course, so far I don't see anything like that in the screenshots, but one can hope. And then there are weapons. Maybe a really nice uber two handed staff with lots of wisdom for the Templars who like to be different. * drool *

There will be love for tradeskills. Adornments to give unique stats to items. I remember the same sort of thing from some game I played a while back. Little gems placed in empty slots gave you bonuses on the weapons and armour and such. (I can't recall the game, but I do remember getting to a point where it was just too much twitching for me and having to tell the significant other at the time that he needed to finish my game for me. You know, guys get a little cranky when you tell them to play your game and then insist that they play it the way you would if you weren't too scared to play? * nod *) I really only have two words for this. Studded. Leather.

New quests. Those are the best. Course, this is what keeps you up until four in the morning when you really should be sleeping for that whole work thing. But I'll just finish one more quest before I finish this article. New quests means new NPC's to give the quests or be the target of them. Personally, I'm hoping for D'Vinn. I used to go back and kill him just for revenge.

PvP will evidently be getting some attention as well. I haven't yet explored this, so I can't really say one way or the other what should be going in, or for what things PvPers are wishing. Even though it isn't my cup of tea, I'm truly hoping that the improvements and additions here make people happy.

As for new zones, well. Kedge Keep gets my number one vote. I can see this as a really awesome zone. There's a lot they could do with it. Additionally, I'd love to see Unrest and Mistmoore. All three some of my favourite zones from EQ1. I'm sure a lot of people * coughgnomescough * are looking forward to Ak'Anon and the clockworks.

Something else that I think is exciting news,is the reintroduction of the Gods. Miracles that can be performed and the chance to choose your diety. I'm wondering if perhaps one will have to go on a quest to "find" their god and declare for them. That would be a truly nifty way to introduce it and add a whole new dimension to factions not to mention roleplay. I mean really now, how many dark elves do YOU know who worship Quellious?

Thus far, we've had two expansions. Desert of Flames was good work. Kingdom of Sky, in my humble opinion, blew DoF out of the water. With the exponential increases in the creativity and quality of the work with each new expansion, I fully expect Echoes of Faydwer to be the best yet.