Today, EQ2wire quotes Everquest2.com announcing the incoming start of the beta phase for their upcoming expansion “Age of Discovery”. The beta will start on October 27th and end on November 14th.

Yes, that’s less than 3 weeks of testing. For an expansion. Granted, people talked a lot about how this expansion mostly seems to deliver things that were originally promised for their Destiny of Velious expansion, and that AoD looks more like an adventure pack than a real expansion. I can’t say, I’ve not played the game for long enough to judge.

But still. 3 weeks. Last time SOE tried such a breakneck speed, GU61 ended up horribly broken and needed numerous fixes. (Yes, that’s a different link for each word.) There’s still itemization broken in  several places, two months later. And here I thought mistakes are something you learn from.

I really would love to like Everquest II, but why, oh why do you make it so hard to do that?