A Look at the EverQuest and EverQuest II 2025 Roadmaps

Showing that everybody under the Daybreak banner is hewing to the same plan, EverQuest and EverQuest II came out with their 2025 roadmaps this week and, like the LOTRO 2025 roadmap I wrote about earlier in the week, there isn’t a lot on there that wasn’t something of a known quantity, something that we couldn’t have guessed in advance.

Of course, both titles already have 64-bit servers… and somehow managed to upgrade servers in place rather than requiring server transfers… but other than that years 26 and 21 look fairly tame after the Year of Darkpaw.

EverQuest

We’ll start with the roadmap of the senior title.

At first glance that does seem like a lot of stuff… if you can read it.  You may need to click on that roadmap to enlarge it in order to read it unless you have much better eyes than I do.

When you do read it though, it does have a lot of what I might consider “fluff” for something with the title “Development Roadmap.”   So I took the listing they had below on their post and removed all of the expansion unlocks for special servers.

That left a bunch of stuff that was predictable, like annual holiday events, so then I removed anything that wasn’t new content… is Extra Life, which gets two entries, really a “development” task… to see what was really coming to Norrath in 2025.

• January 
• February  
  • The Outer Brood Tier 2 Raids unlocked
• March  
  • The Outer Brood Tier 3 Raids unlocked
  • 26th Anniversary
  • Bristlebane’s Day – New Content
• April  
  • Tempest Festival – New Content
• May  
  • New Progression Server Launch
• July  
• August  
  • Stone Cold Summer– New Content
• October  
  • EverQuest’s 32nd Expansion Beta and Pre-Order
• November  
  • Champion’s Festival – New Content
• December  
  • EverQuest’s 32nd Expansion Launch
  • Frostfell – New Content
• Throughout the Year 
  • Server performance improvements
  • Ongoing conversion of Suite windows to the New UI Engine
  • Anti-cheat improvements

So my summary would be raid unlocks for the current expansion, new content for some annual holidays, a new progression server, server merges, and expansion 32 in December.

And that list is pretty good for a 25 year old game.  I just want to see beyond a bunch of “business as usual” things to get a sense of what is changing.

Then there is the “throughout the year” entry.

Server performance… I wasn’t aware that server performance was an issue, but I guess it is always an issue with every MMORPG.

The New UI engine was a while ago and they approached that with caution, which was wise no doubt.  I cannot tell what has changed.  At some point though they’ll have to tell us what this effort brought us.

Finally, anti-cheat improvements makes me smirk a bit.  Are we still cheating in EverQuest?  I remember people using tricks to fast travel and get up to all sorts of mischief, but I thought that might have settled down a bit.  But that is probably me being naive.  Gamers will always find a way to cheat.  The rationalization is always “if the software allows it, it must be within the rules.”

EverQuest II

When it comes to the little sister, there is less on the chart, though that is in part because it doesn’t have so many special servers unlocking as many expansions.

As with the EverQuest listing, I took it upon myself to omit items that were not delivering new content or similar updates, paring it down to the following.

• January
  • Scars of Destruction Tier 1 Raid unlocked
    • Sodden Archipelago: Thawed Marshes
• February
  • Scars of Destruction Tier 2 through 4 Raids unlocked
    • Blackhook Spiral: Frenzied Breach
    • Blackhook Spiral: Spiritual Terror
    • Blackhook Spiral: Aftermath
    • Western Wastes: Exploration Determination
    • Western Wastes: Temple Crater
    • Temple of Veeshan: Echoing Silence
    • Sodden Archipelago: Operation Cooperation
    • Kael Drakkel: Abdicated Throne
• March
• April
  • GU128 Launch
  • GU128 Raids unlocked
  • Dragon Necropolis: Ancient Tombs
  • Dragon Necropolis: Disturbed Vaults
  • Flooded Scars: Abyssal Assault
• August
  • GU129 Open Beta
  • GU129 Launch
• September
  • Expansion 22 Prelude Event
• October
  • Expansion 22 Beta and Pre-Order
• December

For EQII there are game updates and an expansion at the end of the year.

There is no “through the year” entry so it seems that server performance and cheating are perhaps not issues for the younger sibling.

Also, there is no special rules server on the roadmap.  But the installed base of the game is small relative to EverQuest, so it looks to be on an every other year cadence for such things.

Conclusions?

Really, it seems like a normal year for the Norrath titles, which is really all we can ask for these days.  If we go back to my wishes post for the start of the year, all I wanted was this sort of normalcy, that the titles carry on as they have been.

And that is what we seem to be getting.  I am good with that.

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