Itemization, Spell Progression, and AA/Prestige choices all conspire to throw off even the best-laid plans. Any sufficiently complex MMORPG will have class balance changes that favor different classes over time. There’s a good chance that the character you started your EverQuest II career with is of a different class than your “daily driver”. Only two characters have reached Ascension Level 8 at publication time, so we have yet to glimpse Parts 4 and 5 of these quests, yet even lifelong EQ2 fans are already begging for mercy. With the vague dialogue and inscrutable clues that only make sense in hindsight, players are at their wit’s end hailing NPCs by the thousands in a scattershot zone-by-zone grid search to figure out where to go next.

It was expected, or certainly anticipated that the Epic Weapon 2.0 Quests would have similar prerequisites. However nothing could have prepared increasingly jaded players for the mountain of homework which has dropped into their laps as the curtain has been pulled back on Epic 2.0. All 24 quests required the completion of prior Heritage quests, befriending various Factions, and a fair share of “filler” content.

The original Epic Weapon quests introduced in 2009 were crafted by 18 designers working on nothing else for 3 months.

Eq2 the means to an end