EverQuest: Depths of Darkhollow Q&A

MMORPG.com has conducted an interview with Sony Online’s Craig Knapp, in which the producer sheds some more light on the upcoming EverQuest: Depths of Darkhollow expansion pack. A snippet:

Q: What kind of new technologies are you using in the expansion?

A: There are actually a number of new technologies for this expansion that had to be created to support our ambitious features. Most of them are back end, but this is a good time for me to provide a quick description of the features:

Spirit Shrouds allow players to don the form of another character and even play a different archetype. It doesn’t matter if you’ve played a caster for years because players can now embody a minotaur melee and gain experience on their main. I running around on beta with my group as a pack of werewolves and it was simply a blast!

Evolving items give players the opportunity to progress an item beyond its initial state. Through adventuring and questing an evolving item can turn from a lowly club into an extremely powerful hammer. A set number of these evolving items are also available for trade which will create a nice secondary market. A rare sub-set of the items have an intelligence of their own that will communicate to surrounding players based on their owner’s play-style.

Monster Missions allow players to live out some of the more legendary events in Norrath’s history through the eyes of the participants and experience new lore from the perspective of their adversaries. Players have loved the Mission system since its introduction and this is really taking this system to the next level.