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Sony Online Entertainment Inc. (SOE), has announced it is currently developing EverQuest II, the successor to the original and vastly popular EverQuest.

The second time around, EverQuest is taking on many improvements and new features over its predecessor. The core of the improvements is a completely new 3D engine being built in-house which, according to Sony, will allow an unparalleled 3D world experience. Also included in the new features, players will be able to own their own estates and ride horses and other modes of transportation, not to mention the variety of new quests and events that will be found in the game.

EverQuest II will also have improved localization features, including real-time localization in English, French, German, Japanese and Korean. It will also have localized servers in some preselected countries, which will be able to handle hundreds of thousands of concurrent users while they explore the lands of Norrath.

It will also have a bevy of new gameplay features, including a new player-defined "branching class system" and increased character feature customization such as hair, eyes, and body. It also features a new crafting system, an all-new rich combat system, and a dynamic world environment.

Sony Online Entertainment has selected NVIDIA graphics processing units for the development of EverQuest II. Currently in development at SOE studios, the game uses a groundbreaking 3D engine designed to take full advantage of the new NVIDIA GeForce FX GPUs to achieve cinematic-caliber visual effects that bring EverQuest II's 3D world to life.

"With EverQuest II we are pushing the boundaries of next-generation role-playing games, to deliver the first cinematic quality interactive entertainment experience," said Scott McDaniel, vice president of marketing, Sony Online Entertainment. "The investment we've made in NVIDIA, and they in us, embodies our shared dedication of better technologies that open the door to new and exciting gaming experiences."

As part of this joint effort for the development of EverQuest II, NVIDIA is providing SOE with early versions of new hardware, in addition to software driver updates, training support and testing resources.

EverQuest II is scheduled to be released in Winter 2003.

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Or u can goto the Official Everquest 2 Home Page check it out it has ALOT of cool stuff it tells u all about EQ2
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~Solid Shadow~

Good job RPG_Master44!

News about Russian expansion - an interview with Laura Naviaux and David Kim go over some details, speaking in depth with the folks over at WarCry.

An excerpt:

WarCry: What were some of the marketing challenges unique to the Russian market?

Laura Naviaux: Actually, not as many as you would think. In many ways, the market is very similar to Europe and North America, with less moving parts Asia, for example. Russian gamers enjoy the deeper and more complex gameplay of an MMO, so EQII was a natural fit. We did encounter challenges in creating the infrastructure. Russia is in the formative stages of getting high speed internet connections to a majority of its population; with a country so large in terms of land mass it takes time to penetrate, especially outside of the major cities. Bandwidth is also paid for by the bit so we have to mindful of patches and large downloads. Piracy has also been a big issue in Russia, but with MMOs physical disc replication isn’t as harmful to the business since our products require an account key and monthly subscription fee. Lastly, Russia is so large that distribution can often be challenging, but with a leader in the industry like Akella Online we were able to overcome all of these hurdles.