EverQuest II Previews

A pair of EverQuest II previews have surfaced on the internet, both of which are based upon the ongoing beta test. The first is at FiringSquad:

The game system has undergone a significant overhaul. In the previous game, classes were automatically set and each race had its own starting city or two. Sometime in the intervening centuries, however, the world was ruined by some cataclysmic event or other, and now there are only two cities to start off with huge cities, mind you but still only two.

On the side of good, we have Qeynos, the former human city on the western part of Antonica. On the side of evil is the dastardly town of Freeport, which used to reside on the eastern part of Antonica. The huge continent, formerly dominated by the Karanas and deserts of Ro, has been, well, demolished. Only a rump of it remains near Qeynos, the rest of it is scattered around the ocean, waiting to be re-discovered and re-conquered.

And the second is at Jaded-Gamer:

Another nice new feature for EQ2 is that you get XP for exploring new areas and finding special landmarks. If you are particularly adventurous at low levels you could probably get a whole level just exploring out to high level areas. The main place you will find yourself exploring is the main zone just outside the city gates, for Qeynos this is Antonica, for Freeport you have the Commonlands. Both of these zones are huge and almost always have over a hundred players (at the moment they both have serious lag issues but I hope they will have that sorted by release). This is generally because you will be in one of these zones for a long, long time as the zone has lots of points of interest in them that usually are part of one quest or another, though after a few levels in these zones you do start to get bored of the same backdrop and you generally only have the choice of one other dungeon to get a change of scene.