EverQuest turns 3, newbies get a break

Sony Online has announced that it is making significant changes to EverQuest, its popular online role-playing game. The changes are designed primarily to make it easier for new players to advance in the game without becoming frustrated or disoriented. Some of the changes are already in effect on the game's test server, and they are scheduled to go into effect on the live servers tomorrow to coincide with the third anniversary of the game's initial launch.

The changes to the game include no longer needing to sit down and stare at a spell book to regain mana, faster progression from the first level up to level 10, and greater experience gained for characters under level 30. In addition, when characters under level 10 die, they will now appear at their bind point with all their equipment intact, rather than needing to retrieve their corpse from where they were killed.

A number of other additions and adjustments are also being made to the game in the next update. For more information about these changes, visit the official EverQuest Web site.

EverQuest was developed by Verant Interactive and launched in 1999. The game has since grown to include more than 400,000 subscribers, making it one of the most popular online role-playing games in the world. For more information, take a look at our EverQuest archive.