EverQuest 2 to bring back the 'absolute heyday' of PvP with classic server

EverQuest and EverQuest 2 developer Darkpaw Games is about to release its Producer's Letter for 2025, which will detail all kinds of events, goodies, and updates for fans of both games—and there's one special treat for the PvP sickos that bears a much closer look.

In June, Darkpaw will release an EverQuest 2 PvP server called Dozekar. It'll use the classic ruleset, which will make it possible to experience the joy, pain, and elf-stabbing of old all over again.

When EverQuest 2 first released, the game was oriented around two main hubs—Freeport and Qeynos. Freeport was a wretched hive of scum and villainy, and Qeynos a gleaming bastion of order. The tension between the two factions was foundational to the game, each having their own personalities and attributes. PvP servers, especially Nagafen, were bustling places with skirmishing and battles happening everywhere.

Slowly, as player power increased, server populations dipped, and focus moved more to raiding, the PvP scene dwindled. Servers like Nagafen got merged with others, and eventually the core tension of the original EQ2 story got moved to the back burner in favor of other things.

This always kind of irked EQ2 creative director Kyle Vallee, himself a Nagafen alum from back in the day before he joined the team to make the game. I got to chat with him recently about the upcoming release.

"For us, the absolute heyday of player versus player for EverQuest 2 was this 2006 timeline, especially Deserts of Flame and Kingdom of Sky," said Vallee. He's always looking to add a little of the PvP spice back into his game, and this server proved the best opportunity in ages.

The EverQuest 2 team has been doing classic servers for a long time. Its "Time-Locked Expansions" have been running since 2015, but the ruleset still includes a lot of newer features that old school players kinda hate. They took a stab at remedying this with last year's "Origins" server, Anashti Sul, which was painstakingly reanimated like a necromancer pet from a slice of the game from 2006.

It's proven to be a big hit with their players, and Vallee used that momentum to pitch the PvP project. "When we saw Origins come together and work, immediately a lot of players were like 'hey, what's the idea for a PvP server,' so it's been bouncing around ever since."

Dozekar will release in June and unlock content every four months up until their Kingdom of Sky expansion, which is where a lot of players feel like the wheels fell off for PvP. So if you spent any of your time in the mid aughts hiding behind shrubs waiting to ambush high elf clerics or banding up with your all-rat guildmates to exact vengeance for a cheese theft, sharpen your Dragoon Dirks. Your time has come.