One of my favorite perks of living in San Diego (other than the fact that it’s easier to harass SOE employees), is that it’s so incredibly easy to make it to events much like the one held yesterday for The Shadow Odysseys launch. As announced on Monday, over at Station Players, the Sony Online Entertainment community team gathered at San Diego’s finest Internet Café, The Office Games, to show the fifth expansion to EverQuest II. Of course I made my way over to check it out; though I admit, the promise of pizza certainly helped motivate me.

I wasn’t completely sure what to expect. ‘Certainly there are better venues to show off The Shadow Odyssey’ I thought to myself; however, I was wrong. To my surprise the event was extremely well organized and there was an epic dev to player ratio. The store was packed with people trying out EverQuest II. In fact, there wasn’t a single person in the store without the game on their screen. Of course the café was essentially shut down to anything besides EQII, so that may have had something to do with it. During my walk around the store I asked players what they thought. For the most part, everyone was extremely receptive and seemingly surprised about the amount of fun they were having. To stress the point, I spoke with two avid World of Warcraft players in the crowd. The fact that they weren’t somewhere else playing Wrath of the Lich King speaks rather loudly in my opinion.

I mentioned the dev to player ratio before and I wasn’t kidding. In attendance from Sony was Craig “Grimwell” Dalrymple, Barbara “Babs” Saito, Alan “Brenlo Crosby and Emily “Domino” Taylor to name a few. Everyone who walked through the door received a personal greeting and an invitation to join in the festivities from someone on the team. “Was there any loot?” you ask? But of course! There were several free copies of the game given out, everyone got a posters and of course, free eats!

At one point during the evening I spoke with the Chief Marketing Officer for The Office Games, Tito Zamalloa, who was mingling with the players. Obviously he was excited about the great turn out and the feedback that the game, not to mention the store, was receiving. He mentioned that he’d like to do these kinds of events on a regular basis. “The Office Games is proud to partner with SOE on the release of EQII: SO. We foresee more active involvement with SOE's new releases and hope to be the ideal venue to experience new game releases in the region and beyond. This is a tremendous opportunty for The Office Games as we expand our locations nationwide and hope to be able to bring a terrific game experience and SOE's new releases into the masses. We're planning new events as we speak.” said Tito.

In all, the gathering was a great opportunity for Sony Online Entertainment to show off their newest expansion and to introduce new players to the game. Communities, large or small, are crucial to the growth of an MMO like EverQuest II. As with a house, said communities are built one metaphorical nail at a time.

Andrew "Tamat" Beegle
Editor-in-Chief
Allakhazam.com