EQ2: Terrors of Thalumbra is the best, worst expansion, ever

When SOE Daybreak announyed that there'd be no more expansions for Everquest 2, lots of people feared it would go the way of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Free Realms. But as people were starting to look for new virtual homes one one of the many other MMORPGs out there, Daybreak suddenly made a surprise announcement - there would be another expansion after all: Terrors of Thalumbra.

Sounded too good to be true, which is exactly what it was. With price tags ranging from 35 Dollars (standard edition) all the way up to 140 Dollars (premium edition), you'd expect a pretty juicy content infusion. Instead, you get a new signature questine, which can be completed in about three hours, a ton of generic side quests (kill this, loot that), new "prestige" items, which can only be equipped while you have a running subscription and an ugly brown zone with a dull and generic storyline, full of dull and generic characters. Look, you've already sent me to the afterlife and dragon heaven, had me join the armies of good and evil in an attempt to save the world in a massive showdown, so throwing me into some generic steampunk cave full of gnomes... sorry, "gnemlins", isn't gonna get me super hyped.

There is nothing epic about Terrors of Thalumbra and compared to some of the most exciting things you could see and do in previous expansions, Thalumbra looks and feels like early mid-level content at best. And this is the new "end game". It offers more or less the same amount of stuff you'd get in a free content update from more popular, successful MMOs, but with maximum padding. Here's a city, but you cannot interact with any of the NPCs without grinding a ton of reputation. Here's an instanced dungeon, which uses the exact same map as the city, except all the NPCs were replaced by monsters. Here's another dungeon, which uses the fucking city map AGAIN!

What's worse, the game no longer explains shit. Previous expansions finally gave you map markers and a general idea where you should go. They removed that sort of thing from Thalumbra, because apparently it adds to the "immersion". I have spent an hour down in a seemingly cleared dungeon, only to find some tiny, random bowl of water sitting in the corner of a room. You can pick it up, but you cannot use it, the item description tells you nothing about it. Turns out you have to bring the bowl to a dog at the other end of the dungeon to stop him from kicking you out of an elevator. Meanwhile, the quest log states: "Observe the activity of [generic bad guy faction]."

Look, I don't need a game to hold my hand every step of the fucking way. But this shit is just lazy. Speaking of lazy - EQ2 lets you study the anatomy of certain enemies (e.g. orcs, gnolls and the like), so you could use a powerful master strike against them. Studying them also rewards you with a book and a decorative item for your house. The new expansion gets rid of that by introducing trinkets, which allow you to use the master strike against everything. Not only does that make 100 levels of anatomy research entirely worthless, but it also means they won't have to add any more of those quests in the future. Lazy bastards!

The expansion introduced one redeeming new feature, however, which makes all of the laziness and the ridiculous price tag a little more forgivable: The infusion system. Infusable items can be upgraded to absolutely ridiculous power levels, meaning raiders and casual players are now on an equal power level. And this is something many other MMOs should do. Reserving the coolest, strongest, most interesting items for the low percentage of players, who have the time and the willpower to treat an online game like a second job is stupid. This shit needs to stop. A raid is its own reward.

The way EQ2 works right now is brilliant. You can play solo or group dungeons, join a raid, temporarily lower your level to enjoy some old content you may have skipped before, do whatever you want to do and keep getting stronger while you're at it. You'll earn enough ingame currency and resources to keep upgrading your stuff for a while. The system doesn't come without its flaws, however. The fastest way to upgrade stuff via infusion is by spending ingame currency. And you can make a ton of currency simply by buying subscription tokens for real money and selling them on the broker (read: auction house). You can turn real money into stats for your character.

It would make a lot more sense to award infusion points for simply playing the game, completing dungeons and quests, taking part in events and activities, rather than allowing players to throw money at the screen to make their characters grow in strength. But at the end of the day, this is Everquest 2 we're talking about, they're desperate for money and they'll do whatever it takes to seperate you from your cash. To be fair, infusable gear is incredibly powerful even without sinking mountains of currency into them and the first bunch of infusions is affordable with whatever gold you'll take home from your daily dungeons. But the wealthiest players will always be the most powerful ones. I'm not sure if this is any better than dividing the community into raiders and filthy casuals.

-Cat