EverQuest Next Lore: Shades of Grey

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The lore of EverQuest is changing significantly with the reimagining taking place in EverQuest Next. Not all of the changes are sitting well with veteran players, especially as those changes kill off and radically alter the primary mythology.

Tunare, a well-known and loved Goddess and The Mother of All, is dead. She was killed by ravaners which are some sort of creatures of chaos (not Dragons like one o the panel transcripts stated). Things like these changes have brought significant change to the way in which veteran players are going to have to cope with the EverQuest Next lore.

Personally, I’m okay with the major change as long as what Steve Danuser, aka Moorgard, says is true about more new coming very soon. A lot of what we need to know in order to judge these changes hasn’t been revealed. We know nothing or little about the evil gods (my favorite) like Innoruuk, Rallos Zek, Cazic Thule, or Bristlebane. That leads into what is an interesting topic: The Grey Area.

The way in which Moorgard describes the religion system in EQN makes it seem like much of the world of Norrath is governed by how you do things rather than which things you choose to do. In previous EQ an NPC was good or bad. In EQ both NPCs could be considered good but go about doing their perspective of ‘good’ in very different ways (redeeming evil being vs. eradicating them). If you redeem the evil beings like someone from the Ashen Order would do, then The Knights of Truth might actually dislike you — by doing what one ‘good’ faction saw as the ‘right’ thing to do, another ‘good’ faction saw it as weak and now dislikes you. That example is still a little black and white for me, though. It’s still treating good and evil as universally recognized and acknowledged distinctions.

It sounds to me like EQN could easily adopt much of the original EverQuest’s faction system where pretty much any action you take influenced how another faction treated you.  I love that faction system because it’s not about simply maxing bars. It’s about interacting with the world and choosing who will and will not like you, and as a result what you can and cannot do.

The true test of how open EQN will be is whether or not someone can still be a Druid of Tunare despite Tunare being dead. Can someone still act in her name? Can I still choose to worship a slain god and have my choices influence the world, or will I be confined to the script of each public quest dynamic event rallying call?

As far as all of the changes go, SOE is fighting an uphill battle. They’re changing something people actually loved. If people thought the EQ lore was crap then everyone might actually welcome the changes to the story. That’s not the case. From my perspective, I’m okay with changing the lore and mythology as long as it ends up being as complete and interesting as the original.

  • All in all its just like every other fantasy, slight variations of DND/ Tolkien theme. No great literature or art is really changed.

  • @Wufiavelli: I disagree. EQ has always had a very nice lore and story that shapes the way the world is designed and the way players interact with it. I’ve always felt the lore translates very well and is unique enough.

  • No-one EVER really dies in genre fiction. The most you’ll be able to say when EQNext arrives is that Tunare is dead “at the moment”.

    They just put Luclin back together for heaven’s sake!

  • I fully expect Tunare to have a major story arc and be brought back. I’m waiting for info on the evil gods, though. I think it’s coming. I’m sorta reading between the lines and hoping Moorgard will throw us a bone some day soon.

  • Tunare is the Mother of All (Good). She created the good elves of Norrath and considers Firiona Vie to be her finest creation. Firiona Vie is of course the character that has adorned all of the Everquest Box Art for over 15 years. Firiona Vie is also prominently featured on the Everquest Next Website. On the Sullon Zek server, Tunare also is credited as creating the Vah Shir in an effort to strengthen the good aligned team.

    Tunare is a powerful healer, representing nature, life, and growth to her followers. Whenever Tunare is threatened all of the creatures of Nature come to her defense. Thousands and thousands of players have dedicated their Everquest Careers to playing a Druid of Tunare.

    How is Tunare treated in Everquest Next? Like a throwaway. Apparently they have plans to have Tunare die to a roving band of random chaos creatures in the Kithicor Forest. Not only do these random mobs easily kill her, but apparently her blood then spawns thousands of undead hordes that forever corrupt the Kithicor Forest.

    This is nothing but a bunch of pure garbage for anyone who has spent any amount of time playing Everquest. For a goddess that has such a large and beloved following you would expect they would have something really special in store for her. But instead they cast her aside to nameless mobs in a cheap attempt to re-explain why the Kithicor Forest is corrupted.

    Combine the poor lore to the apparent mandate to ensure that Everquest Next can be easily played on the PlayStation 4 and you have a recipe for what will likely be both a lore and game play disaster. I read they have scrapped their Everquest Next design at least two times already. I hope they also scrap this apparent flawed design and quickly.

    I would highly encourage anyone who is interested in this topic to visit the Everquest Next official forums and let them know your opinion.
    https://forums.station.sony.com/everquestnext/index.php?threads/tunare-is-dead.465/