EQ2: Kunark factions and character loyalties

Last night was my first play session in EQ2 since the expansion, Kunark Ascending, launched earlier in the week. I spent the time, just as I have the last few weeks, on levelling and preparing my Inquisitor for the expansion. He’s now level 98, so still one and a bit levels short of the cap. He also has quite a checklist of pre-requisites left to do before he’ll get access to the expansion.

Early steps on the path back to Kunark

Out of curiosity I decided to check out my Sarnak Shadowknight, who was my main character for a year or so, to see what he would need to do. During general questing in the Kylong Plains zone, from the game’s original Kunark expansion, I’d seen that Sarnaks are one of factions on the continent. So it got me thinking at least briefly about whether I should revert to this character to play since he’d have a personal motivation to get involved with new events in the continent. Reading others impressions of the expansion thus far I noticed a reference to the quests forcing adventurers to fight against Sarnaks, his own people, that might pose a bit of a dilemma for this character. Although he’s capped already but has even less of the checklist done so I decided to go back to plan A and carry on with the Inquisitor; at least he, as a human, has no particular stake in the age-old Iksar vs Sarnak conflict.

A proud Sarnak

Admittedly it’s rare when I play any MMORPG to really feel like I don’t want my character to do a specific quest. There’s a quest in DDO that I always refused to do on my Paladin since it involved fighting brethren from his own religious order at the orders of a rival zealous faith. In SWTOR skipping missions wasn’t generally an issue, it was more micro-decisions in conversations within missions or instances that might go against one of my characters moral compass. So far in my EQ2 adventures I’ve blithely wandered through the world causing chaos and fixing wrongs, without very deep thoughts about my characters’ place in that world.

Would a Sarnak character be willing to even talk to these NPCs let alone help them?

I don’t want spoilers of the new storylines so I’m not delving into this issue until I’ve seen the expansion’s content on my neutral Inquisitor. As a broader issue though, it got me wondering whether major storylines or even whole expansions ever take us on a story path that certain characters might not want to follow at all?