EverQuest Legends shows off stances and raid difficulty levels - SGF preview

It’s hard to imagine the MMORPG space being what it is today had there been no EverQuest. While the luster of the series has dimmed in recent years, the first game, released in 1999, took the early internet by storm and quickly became beloved by those who played it. Now, 30 years later, the team at Game Jawn and publisher Daybreak Game Company is releasing EverQuest Legends, which brings back the spirit of its original 90’s release while reimagining aspects to be welcoming to players who may no longer have the time to invest to reach those epic areas. While at Summer Game Fest’s Play Days event this year, I had a chance to speak with some of the team and learn about the brand-new Stance system and world tiers that will aid you in tackling the challenges ahead.

In addition to being able to have your character wield the powers and abilities from three different classes now, thanks to EQL’s multi-classing system, another powerful mechanic that will be at players’ disposal is stances for melee fighters and invocations for spell slingers. At the core of both, these are unique states that a player can put themselves into that will grant specific benefits for as long as they remain in that state. Melee characters can pick from “Defense Stance” which will reduce physical damage you take by 50% and magic by 20%, “Offense Stance,” that doubles your melee damage and increases your crit chance by 25%, and lastly “Mage Hunter Stance” which is the inverse of Defense, reducing the damage you take by magic attacks by 50% and physical by 20%. I can clearly see the value and benefit of all three, but I am far more attracted to the offerings from magic users over their meathead siblings.

Caster Invocations also feature three states that you can put your character into: “Recover” doubles your mana regeneration rate and reduces spell costs by 5%, “Over Channel” will severely reduce a target’s resistance to spells while offering further bonuses per caster class you have, but my favorite has to be “Spell Blade”.  This last invocation allows you to select a spell from your list and give it a chance to trigger whenever you make a melee attack. During the demo, I watched the player pair the Spell Blade invocation with the Life Tap spell, which let him heal whenever it triggered off of his melee, which, as a Shadow Knight / Cleric / Monk hybrid, he found himself doing frequently. 

Speaking with David Youssefi, EQL’s executive producer, I learned how this Spell Blade would interact with other, more complex spells and how the team plans to keep it balanced. “Take Inversion, for instance. The spell takes a large chunk of time to cast, but Spell Blade just removes that casting time, “ David explains. “But then it locks out all of your spells for that amount of time. So if you're not gonna be casting all the time, but you need those spells to go through quickly, this is a great way to do it.” As someone who always loved to use the Magic Knight in Final Fantasy V, this Spell Blade Invocation sounds rad as hell, and something I can’t wait to try out.

A big focus of this title is giving players ways to build really strong characters, but Game Jawn is also taking a page from games like Diablo by incorporating ways to adjust the world's challenge via a raid difficulty system. As the difficulty increases, not only will you take more damage and mobs have more health, but monsters will start multi-classing too. “For a baseline example, most of the raid monsters in Difficulty Zero have the same hit points. We may have toned down their damage somewhat for the solo version, so it doesn't just kill you as fast, but most of their stats are at least close to what they normally are,” David explains. “As you go up [in difficulty], enemies are getting more hit points, they're dealing damage, and they start multi-classing so they get more spells. They can do more things. So it just gets harder as you go up. “  I shudder to think of how multi-classed enemies work, but I’m also 100% in and would love to see this sort of system adopted into other MMOs. Regardless, I appreciate how Daybreak has designed systems that let players feel like absolute badasses if they want, or offer really tough challenges that require teamwork. It all sounds like a really good time.

EverQuest Legends recently went up for preorder earlier this week, and doing so will gain you access to the exclusive pre-order Beta when it goes live on July 1 (progress will NOT carry over), along with letting you reserve your character's name. The game will cost you $19.99 and requires a $9.99 monthly fee (first month is free). Unfortunately, EQL won’t be a part of Daybreak’s All-Access plan alongside EQ1 and EQ2, meaning dedicated EverQuest players may suddenly find themselves having to pay for two separate memberships. 

EverQuest Legends looks to be a creative, novel approach to giving fans a way to experience classic content without simply being a classic server. If you found yourself logging onto EverQuest back in 1999, chances are good that life is a bit different these days. EverQuest Legends has been designed with that in mind and aims to offer ways to revisit Norrath without the same level of commitment. I, for one, can’t wait to drop back in and poke around a bit again. Maybe I’ll even buy some Surge and Doritos to really complete the nostalgic trip. 

EverQuest Legends launches on July 28, 2026, and for a more in-depth look at the game, check out our GDC coverage earlier this year.