EverQuest II - Business

Business

SOE is marketing EverQuest II not as a direct sequel, but as a "parallel universe" to the original EverQuest. It is set in an alternate future of the original game's setting, having diverged at the conclusion of the Planes of Power expansion (the lore is explained in an in-game book). This allows both development teams to pursue whatever direction they want to take without impacting the other, and allows players of the original EverQuest to continue receiving updates without forcing players down a specific path. In that sense, they are two completely separate games bound together by name only. Players of the old EQ will find many familiar places and characters, as well as "heritage items" that are similar in name and function to items known from EQ and can be gained via heritage quests.

In Europe, the game was published by Ubisoft, followed by KOCH Media. As of 2010 it lacks any European publisher and is distributed in Europe only as a digital download.

In February 2005, EverQuest II began allowing players to place an order for pizza delivery from within the game, with a simple and easy command typed into the chat bar, "/pizza". This promotion has since ended, but generated significant press for the game.

In June 2005, SOE introduced Station Exchange to EverQuest II. Station Exchange is an official auction system—only on designated servers—allowing real money to be transferred for in-game money, items or characters.

In March 2006, SOE announced that it would end its Chinese/Korean operations for EverQuest II, which were being supported in the region by Gamania. The beta period for the game in China/Korea ended on 29 March, and on 30 March, all Chinese/Korean accounts were moved to the US servers of the game.

In July 2007, SOE introduced magazine EQuinox, which is the official magazine of EverQuest II. The release date of this magazine was 9 August 2007.

In December 2008, SOE introduced Station Cash, a real-money trading (RMT) feature.

in January 2009, SOE together with Valve made Everquest II available on Steam.

In July 2010 SOE announced a separate version of Everquest II called Everquest II Extended. Everquest II Extended is a free to play version of Everquest II funded by micro-transactions or optional subscription play. The free to play version was run on a separate server from the subscription servers.

In November 2011 SOE announced EQ2 was going free to play following a similar path as Everquest II Extended. As of December 6, 2011, with the release of GU62 and Age of Discovery, Everquest II updated from being a subscription based game to a Free to Play / Subscription game as proven to be successful with Everquest II Extended.

At the end of October 2012, Krono was added as an experiment. It works like the Plex currency in Eve online: It allows players to buy an ingame item for real money that when used adds 30 days of Gold subscription to the account. Krono can also be traded between players, sold on the Broker or be gifted to another players account. Krono is also a much safer way of purchasing game time than to buy SC cards from players in the game, which may - or may not sell you a valid code.