EverQuest: The Serpent's Spine Preview

IGN PC has dished up a hands-on preview of EverQuest: The Serpent's Spine, the long-running MMORPG's upcoming twelfth expansion pack.
More than anything, Sony Online was stressing how this expansion is poised to bring together lower level characters for intricate boss and dungeon encounters. We checked out a dusky, craggy zone called Direwind where a gnoll stood amid a series of totems. This wasn't an instances boss encounter, rather an outdoor, static raid or party target. In order to take down the gnoll, players had to interact with the totems while conducting the battle. These kind of fights where parties are forced to manipulate environmental objects while in combat is repeated in numerous other areas. In the Blightfire Moors, a zone just outside Crescent Ranch, there's a tower encounter, again non-instanced. This time, it's a bunch of torches against the room's walls that need to be manipulated in order to prevent the phantom boss from summoning more allies.