History VideoGame / EverQuestII

** [[Spoiler:Maalus came BackForTheDead with the Drunder update. Hopefully we'll get another shot at Tert as well...]]

* BreastPlate: [=EQ2=] almost completely averts this trope. Unarmored characters wear peasant-like clothing rather than underwear. In fact, there is '''one''' piece of gear in the game that shows any significant amount of skin on a female character, and it's a rather expensive prestige item that only acts as clothing instead of armor anyway.

** The best example of this might be Toxxiulla's Mound. No trash, just a ring event involving dragons. The other good example would be The Palace of Roheen Theer. No trash, just epic after epic.

* ImpossibleItemDrop: The monsters in this game can run the gambit from increadibly tiny (such as the Brownies, who only stand a couple inches off the ground,) to absolutely gigantic (like Tarinax in Deathtoll). Since nearly all loot drops in the form of treasure chests, killing tiny monsters can result in a gigantic Master Chest spawning and completely crushing the corpse.

* HammerSpace: Lampshaded during a quest from the Bristlebane Day (April Fools) celebration. You're tasked with recovering 50 novelty and joke items and gadgets from a pirate. When you return to the quest giver he asks how you managed to carry all of that on your person, and you reply with "You know... I have no idea."

* VillainExitStageLeft: God ''dammit'', Maalus Shadowfyre...

** SquishyWizard: Any mage class.
** MasterOfNone: Brawlers. They can DPS more than the other tanks but less than scouts and mages, and can tank but not as well as a plate-armor wearing tank.

** TheBeastmaster: Necromancers and Conjurors. They specialize in undead and elementals, respectively. The Beastlord class takes this to it's logical extreme, taking control of animals.

* BreastPlate: [=EQ2=] almost completely averts this trope. Unarmored characters wear peasant-like clothing rather than underwear. There is ''one'' skimpy outfit for girls, but it's something of a prestige item. It's clothing rather than armor anyway.

* WorthlessYellowRocks: Both averted and played straight. When the game first started, gold was exceptionally hard to come by or save up, and any player who had even 1 Platinum coin was among the richest people in the game (100 copper = 1 silver, 100 silver = 1 gold, 100 gold = 1 platinum.) This late into the game, gold is generously given out by monsters and quests at high levels, and the value of platinum has dropped, leading to inflation because everyone has so much of it. At the same time, copper and gold clusters are a commonly-found tier 1 and tier 3 tradeskill harvest, respectively.

* ImpossibleItemDrop: The Playstation 2 only ''{{Everquest}}'' spin-off ''Champions of Norrath'' take this to the extreme, where small monsters can drop equipment much bigger than they themselves are. Early in the game you encounter lots of ''Fire Bugs'' (about as big as a helmet or potion) dropping longbows, swords and leather armor. Of course they also drop gold.

* TookALevelInJerkass: Rallos Zek, the God of War, in the Destiny of Velious expansion pack and the subsequent patches "Children of War" and "The War of Zek". Rallos used to be a neutral-aligned god. Once Kerafyrm absorbed the powers of Roehn Theer, Rallos wanted to fight Kerafyrm immediately, even while knowing that one possible side effect of killing Kerafyrm would be the dissolution of all existence. Why? Because he believes that with the powers of Theer, he can become the True King and plunge Norrath into perpetual war. Not Jerkass enough for you? His plan is to kill his children Vallon, Tallon and Sullon Zek, and absorb their power back into himself to make himself a match for Kerafyrm, and after he's beaten Kerafyrm, use the power of Theer to kill all the other Gods and rule Norrath unopposed.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: In the [=EQ2=] expansion Destiny of Velious, Rallos Zek- the God of War, may qualify as this. Rather than wait and strategize about how to deal with [[spoiler:Kerafyrm]], he wants to go straight to war. Killing [[spoiler:Kerafyrm]] could destroy all of creation for various complicated reasons; Rallos thinks the risk is one worth taking, because he also wants the power of the swords to become the True King and plunge Norrath into perpetual war.

* AliensSpeakingEnglish: Averted, unlike [=EQ1=]. [=EQ2=] has "language quests", where you have to kill enemies of a certain race until they drop items, and when you've collected enough items then you learn to speak that language. Until you've done so, they're incomprehensible. The developers even included alien-sounding gibberish recorded voice lines for speaking NPCs and players who don't speak that language.

* TailorMadePrison: Combined with a self-invoked SealedEvilInACan. The Goddess of Love, Erollisi Marr, was sealed up within the very memorial shrine that was built in New Halas, in the statue that was forged by Verig Ro, the God of the Forge. After adventurers are tricked into tampering with the statue and creating a small crack on the surface, Erollisi was able to escape and reform herself. She reveals that Ullkorruuk, the Goddess of Betrayal, was the one who put her there in the first place, and the only way she could keep her locked away was if she locked herself up and used her powers to maintain the prison. When Erollisi escaped, she kicked Ullkorruuk's butt and showed her how her very own motivations for existence backfired against her.

* GoddamnOrks: The Bloodfist Orcs in the Commonlands for Freeport, the Crushbone orcs for Kelethin, and the Ry'Gorr orcs for New Halas. Qeynos gets the Blackburrow Gnolls instead of literal orcs, and Gorowyn gets a race of parrot Aviaks known as the Spiroc. Neriak doesn't have a single adversary who fills a GoddamnOrks role, but do have issues with some rogue vampires and an encampment of Dark Elf rebels known as the Thexians.

* AllegedlyFreeGame: ''[=EverQuest=]'' 2 opened up Free To Play servers that allow players to play the entire game for free, but at severe restrictions. Players have access to the entire game, but are only be able to play as certain races, classes, and not be able to access the most current expansion unless they purchase Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum memberships to the full game. Current existing subscribers are not affected by this, as their servers still require a subscription to play.
** In December of 2011, the entire game jumped over to the Free To Play model, which upset and frustrated veteran players with the fact that their fully Mythical-geared level 90 Sarnak Bruiser now had to be unlocked by buying the right to play as both the Sarnak race and the Bruiser class first. This was ''very'' quickly patched with a formal apology and a refund of any such packs that were purchased, as grandfathered characters no longer have to buy the packs (''new'' characters, however...).

** In December of 2011, the entire game jumped over to the Free To Play model, which upset and frustrated veteran players with the fact that their fully Mythical-geared level 90 Sarnak Bruiser now had to be unlocked by buying the right to play as both the Sarnak race and the Bruiser class first.

* AsHimself: Curt Schilling is a huge fan of ''[=EverQuest=]'' and MMO's in general. During an ''[=EverQuest=]'' 2 charity event, SOE created a character designed off of Curt himself using an anagram he created named Clint Gilcrush. Curt lent his voice to the dialogue of this character for the sake of the charity. Since then, Clint Gilcrush has been a permanent part of the game. He's secretly a triple-agent for both Qeynos and Freeport during the Betrayal questline, and the player is tasked with taking a bounty out on his head.

* AllegedlyFreeGame: ''[=EverQuest=]'' 2 is opening up Free To Play servers that will allow players to play the entire game for free, but at severe restrictions. Players will have access to the entire game, but will only be able to play as certain races, classes, and will not be able to access the most current expansion unless they purchase Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum memberships to the full game. Current existing subscribers are not going to be affected by this, as their servers will still require a subscription to play.

** TheBeastmaster: Necromancers and Conjurors. They specialize in undead and elementals, respectively.
*** The upcomming return of the Beastlord class takes this to it's logical extreme.

** MasterOfNone: Brawlers. They can DPS but not like a DPS class, tank but not as well as a plate tank.

* {{BackStab}}: The rogues take the scout archetype, though all scout classes excluding bards can backstab, the Assassin takes the cake for sheer overkill. Near end game they have at least 7 backstabs, a few location dependent abilities, and a few combat abilities that "stealth" the assassin after execution. They can simply outdamage any other class except some nukers; well, that is if they don't get squished after grabbing aggro.
* BigBad: At the start of the game, Overlord Lucan D'lere was the Big Bad. Like its predecessor, [=EQ2=] adds a couple more Big Bads each expansion. Due to the fact that none of the current developers were part of the original [=EQ2=] team, they don't care about the "old world" content and Lucan is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
* BiggerBad: [=EQ2=] now has [[spoiler:Kerafyrm]] as the grand daddy of all Big Bads, being the the prominent character found at the core of the Age's End prophecy that Norrath is now facing.

* BlackAndGreyMorality: The entirety of the Sentinel's Fate expansion. The Erudites had a racial outlook that pretty much boiled down to [[ForScience "For Science!"]]. They messed around with necromancy, slaughtered Kerra and Hua Mein, and generally were jackasses to everyone. But they were fighting to save Odus and possibly all of Norrath from either being torn apart by the Void itself or drawn into the Underfoot. And the Void Invaders and Guardians of the Underfoot were nowhere near as nice as the Erudites...

* BreastPlate: [=EQ2=] almost completely averts this trope. Unarmored characters wear peasant-like clothing rather than underwear. There is ''one'' skimpy outfit for girls, but it's something of a prestige item. And it's clothing rather than armor anyway.

* CriticalHit: As of the current expansion (Destiny of Velious), being able to critical hit (by building up your Crit Chance stat) is literally essential to completing any content. You also have to build up "Critical Mitigation", which makes your enemies' critical hits do less damage to you. And enemies have a stat (that you don't get) called Critical Avoidance, which requires you to have a crit chance of over 100% - for high end raiding, you need around 240% crit chance.

* DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist: You have to pay to repair your armor, and you get a small xp penalty which regenerates if you have the game turned off. Early on it was a bit more painful, as you'd have to retrieve your "spirit shard" from where you died to get 50% of your exp back, but those were done away with years ago.
* DifficultySpike: It's actually quite easy to solo your way all the way up to max level. You will then be lacking knowledge on how to work as part of a group. You will also probably be undergeared, as all the better weapons and armor are obtained from "heroic" quests and boss mobs, both of which require groups to conquer.

** Also, Arkatanthis the Destroyer. He doesn't have a role in the story arc, but he's one of the Cthulu-inspired Amygdalans. After the Sentinel's Fate expansion came out, he had the distinction of being the toughest boss in the game.

* {{Expy}}: Kerrans to the Vah Shir, sort of. Kerrans existed in [=EQ1=], but not as a playable race. The Vah Shir race went extinct when Luclin was destroyed, but Kerrans were made playable to consolodate Vah Shir fans. Official lore states that the Vah Shir adventurers who were trapped on Norrath when teleportation was cut off all decided to live with the Kerra tribe and mate with them. The Kerra we see 500 years later are the genetic result of the Vah Shir and Kerra.
* FantasticRacism: Between the Kerrans and Erudites. Going all the way back to [=EQ1=] where the Erudites drove the Kerra off the mainland of Odus onto an island that became called Kerra Isle. With the original release Lucan D'Lere proved how evil he was by making the Kerrans and Erudites share a slum. In ''Sentinel's Fate'' the old hostilities flared up, with the Kerrans hating the uncaring and disconnected from nature Erudites and the Erudites despising the backwards superstitious Kerra.

* FloatingContinent: [=EQ2=] looovvess this trope. The entire Kingdom of Sky expansion pack took place on floating islands. Part of the Swamp of Innothule, although technically not floating, was so high off the ground it could only be accessed by airship. And in the ''Sentinel's Fate'' expansion, the entire continent of Odus is floating because it's now located in an alternate dimension entirely.

* GetOnTheBoat: When [=EQ2=] first came out, GetOnTheBoat was one of the major themes of the game - get on the boat and sail to the newly rediscovered lands. And you had to complete substantial quest lines before you were allowed to. Now? Not at all. The boat quests can still be completed but aren't necessary anymore.
* GoddamnOrks: The Bloodfist Orcs in the Commonlands for Freeport, the Crushbone orcs for Kelethin, and the Ry'Gorr orcs for New Halas. Qeynos gets the Blackburrow Gnolls instead of literal orcs, and Gorowyn gets the Spiroc. Neriak doesn't have a single adversary who fills a GoddamnOrks role.

* HammerSpace: Lampshaded during a quest from the Bristlebane Day celebration. You're tasked with recovering 50 novelty and joke items and gadgets from a pirate. When you return to the quest giver he asks how you managed to carry all of that on your person, and you reply with "You know... I have no idea."

* JackOfAllStats: Humans in both games.

* LampshadeHanging: [=EQ2=] has a fondness for this. There's a quest where you have to harvest treant corpses (read: full sized trees) and carry them back to an NPC, who queries you on how you accomplished it. You answer him "Norrath has always been a land of mystery". And the whole TwentyBearAsses thing has become a running joke, with a few [=NPCs=] even laughing at you for killing rats for quests.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfRaces: Twenty-one in total (twenty if you count Kerrans and Vah Shir as the same race, which some do and some don't). High Elves, Halflings, Dwarves, Wood Elves, Frogloks, Humans, Barbarians, Half Elves, Gnomes, Erudites, Dark Elves, Ogres, Trolls, Iksar (both games), Vah Shir, Drakkin ([=EQ1=] only), Ratonga, Kerran, Fae, Arasai, Sarnak ([=EQ2=] only). Have fun making those [[{{AltItis}} characters.]]
** Mind you, that's only the ''playable'' races. Just for fun, here's a list of some of the non-playable races (both games). [[hottip:*:Aviak, Bixie, Boarfiend, Brownie, Bugbear, Burynai, Centaur, Clockwork, Cyclops, Djinn, Drelock, Droag, Fungusman, Gnoll, Goblin, Giant, Gruengach, Kobold, Lizardman, Muramite, Orc, Ravasect, Roekillik, Shadowed Man, Tallonite, Vampire, Yah-lei.]]
* MoneyDearBoy: The game is turning more and more into a cash cow for Sony. You can now buy in game items with real life cash. And it's getting worse.
** For example, as of ''The Shadow Odyssey'', all subclasses got their own unique looking armor. Granted, there were only a few different base designs, but at least they bothered to palate-swap the armor. But ever since they started providing super-elaborate decorative armor in the Marketplace for real money, there've been five total armor texture schemes - plate mail, chain mail, leather armor, gi, and cloth armor.

*** Sentinal's Fate, the follow up to the Shadow Odyssey has this again. When you defeat the 4 Rune Roheen Theer, you kill him for good, allowing [[spoiler:Kerafyrm]] to steal the power of his magic god killing swords. And because Roheen Theer is gone, the void's grip on Odus is weakening, which will allow the whole of Norrath to be pulled into the Underfoot.
* NintendoHard: In general, SOE does a fairly good job at providing both easy content for the casual players and really difficult stuff for the hardcore ones. The last expansion, Sentinel's Fate, released in February, has two raid zones. It took the game's best guild 6 months to defeat the 4 Rune Roehn Theer boss, and almost as long to defeat Arkathanthis the Destroyer. And then, so the top level guilds didn't get complacent, they released the Underfoot Depths raid zone in [=LU57=]...
*** This looks to be inverted in ''Destiny of Velious''. The new solo stuff have abilties like do 4% of the targets health in damage every 6 seconds, or huges [=DoTs=] and debuffs. Gone are the days when you could run through a zone, pull 30 mobs and kill them all with full health. The zones are even harder, most requiring 110% critical mitigation (a stat previously needed only by raiders) and 200% critical chance (when only 100 was needed before).

** Let's not forget the quest "The Number One Threat In the Butcherblock" which is to kill [[EverythingsWorseWithBears bears]]. Given to you by Scout [[TheColbertReport Colbert]].
* NonMammalMammaries: Well and averted. Female iksar are skinnier than males. Female frogloks are virtually indistinguishable from males. Female sarnaks are actually much bigger than male sarnaks, although their facial horns and features are smaller, blunter and less elaborate.
* OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame: Yep, they're still the same.
* OurElvesAreBetter: Played straight with the haughty High Elves and the evil Dark Elves. And even though the Erudites are more closely related to humans than any other race they're as arrogant and self-absorbed as elves. Wood Elves, as usual when they're present, are easier going than other elf races.
** [=EQ2's=] subversion is the Half Elves, who are known best for being obsessed with hair dye and piercings and talking with British accents. Not having a culture to begin with (being stuck between humans and wood elves), they created their own from the ground up. They've developed an rebellious outcast mentality towards most forms of authority, and visually reflect that with skin piercings and wild hair. So basically a race of disaffected teenagers.
** And then the between-expansion packs content release LU60 gave us the War Elves. Huge, muscular, grey skinned, red tattooed, immortal warriors. The lore goes that Rallos Zek was given some of the first Dark Elves by Innoruuk in exchange for not wiping out the rest of them, and then Rallos' sons Vallon and Tallon Zek held the War Elves back when Rallos' legions attacked Norrath so that they weren't hit with the curse.
* OurGnomesAreWeirder: These gnomes are based heavily on the DragonLance tinker gnomes, although they're much more competent (but still blamed for 99% of everything that ever goes wrong.)

* OurVampiresAreDifferent: [=EQ2=]'s vampires seem to be rather similar to dark elves, and there are groups of vampires living openly in the dark elf city of Neriak.

* PhlebotinumOverload: [[spoiler:Kerafyrm]] now has the Power of the Nameless. However, the power was meant ''only'' for Roehn Theer, and Theer needed his swords Enoxus and Aeteok to properly channel it, and [[spoiler:Kerafyrm]] has neither of the swords. If he tries to use this power, Theer believes that it will "hasten the cataclysm foretold in the Age's End Prophecy" by literally unmaking the world.
** And on top of that, Rallos Zek, the God of War himself, is after the power aswell to become the "True King", a kind of God of Gods to plunge the entire universe into war, but even if he does kill Kerafyrm, there is a chance killing the Prismatic Dragon will end the universe aswell.

* PragmaticVillainy: The Sarnak of Gorowyn. They decided it would be much more profitable to make Gorowyn accessible to good-aligned adventurers as a waypoint between their lands and Kunark than to follow the standard Evil practice of killing them for the evulz.

* TheReveal: In [=EQ2=], players just learned that Eva Corruno'thes, the Prophet of Tunare, was actually [[spoiler: Firiona Vie,]] who kept herself HiddenInPlainSight until the time came for her to play her part in the Age's End story arc.

* TemporalParadox: The Shiny Metallic Robe heritage quest results in a paradox that leads to you finding a portal that takes you to 500 years in the past (in [=EQ1=]'s time) where Clockworks have taken over the entire world. You meet a gnome enchanter who figures that if you're from the future, then she's trapped in a [[AlternateUniverse time bubble]] existing outside the normal timeline. She tells you that she was probably the cause of this alternate reality, and knows how to prevent it from happening with your help.

* {{Vaporware}}: New Halas just kept on getting pushed back. It's finally been released, though, well over a year after the original planned release date.

** And now Tert Turganpuncher does the same damned thing!

** Some of the weapons of a x4 boss in a contest zone also have a damage proc that only damages "those born of zek".

* BlackAndGreyMorality: The entirety of the Sentinel's Fate expansion. The Erudites had a racial outlook that pretty much boiled down to [[ForScience "For Science!". They messed around with necromancy, slaughtered Kerra and Hua Mein, and generally were jackasses to everyone. But they were fighting to save Odus and possibly all of Norrath from either being torn apart by the Void itself or drawn into the Underfoot. And the Void Invaders and Guardians of the Underfoot were nowhere near as nice as the Erudites...

* {{Expy}}: Kerrans to the Vah Shir, sort of. Kerrans existed in [=EQ1=], but not as a playable race. The Vah Shir race went extinct when Luclin was destroyed, but Kerrans were made playable to consolodate Vah Shir fans.
** Official lore states that the Vah Shir adventurers who were trapped on Norrath when teleportation was cut off all decided to live with the Kerra tribe and mate with them. The Kerra we see 500 years later are the genetic result of the Vah Shir and Kerra. [[UnpleasableFanbase Unfortunately for the Vah Shir fans, the actual appearance of the Kerra race is more Gorilla than cat-like.]] There are nothing particularly feline about the race's appearance- specifically their skull structure and ears- and people keep whining that they want the Vah Shir back as they were.

* BoobsOfSteel: Human, Barbarian, Wood Elf, High Elf, Dark Elf, Half Elf, Kerran, and Ogre female Brawlers, provided they're wearing armor with a Gi appearance. (which is basically a tube top, pants, and disconnected sleeves.)