“The goal is to provide a fun and easy option for existing and returning players to play or experiment with our characters and have immediate access to high-level content,” writes Holly Longdale, EverQuest 2’s senior producer, explaining the new Heroic Characters. These are characters that start life at level 85, allowing players to skip the early game grind and get right to the good stuff.
“For a limited time, players can create a Heroic Character for free,” continues Longdale. “Oct. 1 until Oct. 15 is our “Hero’s Call” event which invites new players to create one free new Heroic Character per household. Existing accounts can create or upgrade to a Heroic Character for free too!”
“We’re essentially creating a shortcut for people to go to level 85 without invalidating that level 1 through 85 content, if that’s what they want to play — you can always start at level 1 and move up,” director of development Dave Georgeson told Polygon. “But we wanted to make sure that players could get together really easily, so that when friends come back to the game, they can find their other friends and be able to adventure.”
You can even try a character before you buy it. You create the character, and have from level 85 – 86 to try it out. A good few hours of play. In that time you get to arrange its skill points and create a build to play around with. If you like it at the end of your time then you can buy it.
Heroic Characters cost 3,500 Station Cash, SOE’s MMO currency. Inconveniently, you can’t but a 3,500 bundle of cash and will need to shell out for at least 5,000. That’s $45 in real money.
The Heroic Characters went live today.