During Fan Faire 2011’s “Freeport and Beyond” panel led by EQ2 Exec Producer Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson, a slate of exciting plans was laid out.

The announcements outlined Game Update 61 (War of Zek), GU62 (Freeport Reborn), GU63 and GU64 which would each contain new Destiny of Velious content, and Game Update 65 slated for August 2012 which would bring about the revamp of the City of Qeynos.

Here’s a transcript of SmokeJumper’s Fan Faire 2011 presentation (watch video here) from 13:58 to 14:36:

What we’re concentrating on is making sure that we have not just new content to chew through really quick, although we’re constantly doing that, I think you guys all realize now that we’re on a quarterly basis for content.

We’re not selling areas, quests, and things like that in the expansion packs anymore. We’re giving that to you for the regular subscription price as you play the game. The GUs (Game Updates) will constantly be adding more stuff like that. We’re telling Velious saga stuff… After Velious, we had 60, 61, Freeport is 62, then it’s Velious again on 63 and 64, and then Qeynos next summer for [Game Update] 65.

So you can imagine our shock when reading SmokeJumper’s statement today in response to a thread asking Is there anyone making actual content for EQ2 anymore?

Lol. Sorry, folks. I went on a two-week vacation starting at the beginning of January. It’s nice to know I was missed.

GU 63 (the next installment of DoV) is in April, not February. You’ll start hearing about it soon. The Qeynos revamp (GU 64) is after that in mid-Summer.

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Optimization of the Broker is something that’s been on EQ2 Lead Programmer Rothgar’s long term To Do list for quite a while. So it was a surprise when a change we first heard about in September 2011 partly arrived in yesterday’s Update Notes.

All of those ‘vendor trash’ items with a description like “You might be able to find a merchant who would give you a few coins for this item.” are now NO BROKER. This change should help clear tens of thousands of items off the broker whose sole purpose has been to provide some flavor to players rather than just giving them gold pieces from certain mobs.

Now, this change did not go without a hitch: All Fertilizer ended up getting flagged NO BROKER.

These items which have played triple duty as food for Burynai house pets, the Guild Hall amenity of similar function, and Plant Food for house plants also got flagged as NO BROKER. As these items (ie. a flask of distilled water, a bag of compost, a large decaying bone) have traditionally traded north of 25 gold a piece, this has led to a certain amount of consternation.

According to Gninja, a fix for this issue is coming soon:

Keep an eye on the patch notes, fertilizer loot will be once again be able to be sold on the broker. Sorry about that folks!

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Here are today’s update notes from the EQ2 Forums:

GENERAL

Fixed a placement issue with certain moveable objects (for instance, the portals will now place properly during the Zynos fight in Anchor of Bazzul).

ACHIEVEMENTS

Characters who have completed “Your Eternal Reward” should now receive the “Agent of Freeport” achievement.

MERCENARIES

Shaman mercenaries should no longer continue to think they are in combat when it comes to casting wards on their group. They will still cast their out of combat preward spells.

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From EverQuest2.com:

Come take another look at Dungeon Maker, one of the awesome new features in EverQuest II’s Age of Discovery Expansion. Host Linda “Brasse” Carlson (Director of Global Community Relations), a huge fan of Dungeon Maker, will interview Akil “Lyndro” Hooper (Lead Designer). They will chat about Extra Dungeon Mark Days, tips on how to spend your rewards, and information on our Test Server initiative that allows you to play your characters in Dungeon Maker. We may even give you a sneak peek at a new dungeon that is in the works.

Join us on Thursday, January 19^th, 2012, at 4:00 p.m. US Pacific Time* on Twitch TV! The webcast is expected to last about 20 minutes.

Time Zone Conversions

• PST: January 19 @ 4:00pm
• EST: January 19 @ 7:00pm
• GMT: January 20 @ 0:00
• CET: January 20 @ 1:00

Raiders continue to wait for a fix to the double-casting of AoEs first reported shortly after the release of Game Update 61 in August 2011. This issue has been discussed here here and recently here. We got a We’ll look into it from Kander on October 27, 2011 but have received no further communication on the issue.

Meanwhile, there are a few tweaks coming to the difficulty of Drunder Raid Zones. These changes are currently on Test will likely go live next Tuesday.

ZONE PROGRESSION / POPULATION

Vallon’s Tower x4 (Tower of Tactics) [Challenge]

• Ambassador Grindstone will no longer reapply his Unbridled Fury of the Elements buff as soon as he has dispelled player debuffs, he waits a few seconds.

• Ambassador Grindstone no longer casts Crystalline Torrent Spell.

• Vallonite Sentinels no longer memwipe when they cast Sentinel’s Touch.

• Vallonite Sentinels no longer taunt lock players during the fight.

Tallon’s Stronghold [Challenge]

• During the Tallon Zek fight Deathbringer’s Touch is now cureable as a curse.

• Tallon Zek will warn players as he teleports and will not fire his arrow volley until 10 seconds after he changes his location.

• Fighters will not take as harsh a punishment if they turn their back on Tallon Zek as he is firing arrows.

Here are your update notes for today, January 19th:

GENERAL

• Fixed a bug with house item tooltips that would sometimes show incorrect housing restrictions.

• Group Friend spells should once again work on warders and pets.

MERCENARIES

• Blurt Grasplung should now cure detrimental spells on groupmates.

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A video preview hosted by Emily “Domino” Taylor of the new “Storm Tower” Prestige Home was posted last week, and now this home is available for purchase for 1350SC.

The preview:

The announcement from EverQuest2.com:

For those looking to create something evil and forboding, the new Storm Tower Isle Prestige Home has plenty of space for sinister decorating. Dark and stormy, the island comes complete with crashing waves, gloomy clouds, and a watchtower based on the Tower of Bone in Darklight Woods.

Here are your update notes for today, January 17, 2012:

ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Extra Dungeon Mark Days are here from 17 January until 30 January! Dungeon Maker dungeon players and creators will receive 25% MORE tokens during this time period. To create and see listings of available dungeons, select Dungeon Maker from your EQ2 Menu button in game. Visit the Dungeon Maker category in the Marketplace to spend your tokens on items to equip your play character, as well as items to enjoy and build more dungeons.  Prepare to get your dungeoneering on!

GENERAL

• Fixed a UI bug on the mini-map window.

• Fixed a bug where if you had a single target maintained spell on a group member and logged out that the spell would still be there when you logged back in.

• Fixed an issue that prevented respec cards from working with beastlords.

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From TSR-JoshuaM on the EQ2 Forums:

We’ve reduced the amount of time needed in order to purchase a Character Transfer token to 7 days of active, recurring, Gold Membership time. This should alleviate a great deal of the gating issues preventing many of you from purchasing this token.

Station Cash purchases of Non-recurring Gold Membership does not make you eligible for Character Transfer services. This service is only extended to active, recurring, Gold Membership holders or Station Access subscribers.

In the event of an account to account transfer, a process which must be done manually, both accounts must be fully verified to start the process. This may be an issue for free-to-play accounts as you may not be able to meet the verification requirements and this cannot be excepted under any circumstance.

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Posted by Ttobey on the EQ2 Forums:

Most of the bugs ingame didn’t have very fulls sets of animations, so they wouldn’t work all that well as a warder, but we are working on it.

In a stream of responses to two threads discussing Mercenaries, Gninja answered several questions and provided useful information about the current and next waves of mercenaries. With a recent update, the number of mercenaries has increased to twenty (20) and mercenaries are now avilable in all 6 cities. Although they lack some of the innovative features and options of EverQuest Mercenaries, they are still one of the more popular features of the recently released Age of Discovery features expansion.

Mercenaries New & Old

Let’s take a look at the list of Mercenaries by class. This was posted by Slayacissa of Permafrost:

• Qeynos Harbor – wizard, paladin, troubador, swashbuckler, templar, monk

• Freeport – warlock, assassin, brigand, dirge, inquisitor, guardian

• Neriak (near DLW) – shadowknight, necromancer

• Gorowyn (near crafting) – Berserker, Defiler

• Kelethin (Jysolin Pub) – ranger, warden

• Halas (Coldwind Hall) – conjuror, mystic

That leaves just Beastlord, Bruiser, Fury, Coercer, and Illusionist with no mercenary.

After the jump, we talk about Mercenary Confidence, the “In Over Their Head” debuff, mercenary types, and where you can post your feedback on getting different types of mercenaries added.

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Think of the cookies!

Ever since Monday’s ~30 minute SOE Forum Maintenance, players have been unable to stay logged into any SOE forum.

This is causing headaches for players and SOE staff alike. If you remember your login information, you may participate in the discussion here.

and an update from Amnerys who, if you have been following her twitter, know that she is back working after maternity leave:

We are borked. We are working on it. It’s frustrating for all of us and we’ll have it fixed asap. Sorry for the inconvenience!

If the options of a Flying Gryphon, Hovering Disc, Cloud, and Pegasus weren’t enough, if flying as a Freeblood Cloud of Bats or Fae or Arasai weren’t enough, the time may have finally come for your flight option.

From EverQuest2.com:

It’s a bird, it’s a plane..No! It’s your EverQuest II character! Introducing the ground-breaking Flight Wings to EverQuest II. Now you can fly through the air with the attached Pegasus Feather Flight Wings or the Nightmare Flight Wings. Fly through Norrath in style, group with your friends and intimidate all challengers as you swoop into action from above.

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Yesterday, SOE President John Smedley issued a series of tweets about EverQuest II:

We are seeing some amazing growth in EQ2. 40% increase in daily logins since going f2p. 300% increase in new players.

And 200% increase in Item sales. Plus we have added a lot of new subs. All during the time that some really good competition hit the market

Some players have opined that a 200% increase in item sales might not be much of an indicator considering the Free-to-Play conversion coincided with an e-mail campaign encouraging tens of thousands of players who had quit to try EQ2 again for “free”. From discussions we’ve had with some of these returnees, many were shocked at how limited a Silver account was and pulled the plug within 30 minutes of trying out EQ2’s Free-to-Pay service.

The time period in question also included both Double StationCash and Triple StationCash events. It’s worth noting that the 200% increase in sales could be a count of items rather than a measure of revenue, or the revenue may be calculated before doubling and tripling discounts. The numbers could be juggled in any number of ways.

Europe Partnership

In other news, Smedley announced a partnership with ProSiebenSat.1 Games AG, a pan-European owner of television stations, radio networks, and print publications. Here was his tweet on the subject:

Very excited to be partnering with Prosieben in Europe!

UPDATE: Official announcement on the EQ2 Forums

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image courtesy Jayne of Kithicor

Over the last month, a growing number of players have reported missing Quest Feathers and Quest Books. The feather and book icons are invisible, leaving only the yellow or white wisp appearing above each NPC’s name.

People have reported the occurrence of the problem after updating DirectX, while others have reported temporarily alleviating the problem by /camping their characters.

This issue is being discussed on the EQ2 Forums.

If you’ve run Shard of Love a few times to get the Valorous Wings, and figured that’s all there was to the story, you may be surprised to know that there is a followup quest line A Goddess Risen. The quest series takes you to different instances, and culminates in a revitalized version of the Shard of Love. This quest series runs through February 6th @ 11:59pm PST.

If you are into unique Beastlord warder appearances, the emerald cave bats in the Faceless Oracle’s Demesne instance, available only during this event, might interest you.

Image courtesy EQ2 ZAM

Here are your update notes for January 10, 2012 from the EQ2 Forums:

GENERAL

• Fixed a bug where you would have to recast buffs on group members every time you zone.

• Fixed random lighting bugs on characters and environments.

• Players will now receive achievement credit for earning hall of fame status if they are offline when awards are processed.

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Sense of Urgency: Debone Bonewing should correctly update when defeating the zone boss in under 30 minutes from zone in.

DUNGEON MAKER

• Dungeon Maker creatures will no longer temporarily reappear when defeated while under the effect of a tier-adjusting object.

• Dungeon Maker adventurers should now show up in the Marketplace preview tab.

• Fixed a UI bug with the Dungeon Maker create window.

BEASTLORDS

• Fixed an issue that allowed “a drakonine guardian” to be tameable.

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First I’d like to wish a Happy New Year to all of you. No doubt many took advantage of the Double XP weekend and squeezed in the last bit of Frostfell magic.

In the coming weeks, we should be hearing more from EQ2 developers and their work on the upcoming Game Update 63 coming in February. This update is expected to include new Destiny of Velious content, including dungeons, raids, and more.

Here are some issues we’re tracking this week, some of which got a nod from a developer or community:

• Character Lighting
• EQ2Players
• Invisible Mercenary Healers
• Timorous Deep (Kunark) client crashes
• Tradeskill Apprentice Recipes for Provisioners
• Characters Stuck in Frostfell
• Character Transfer Server Tokens
• What House Items do you want?

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Here are your Update Notes for January 5, 2012:

GENERAL

• Fixed an issue where the client could get stuck trying to load a character into Mok Rent.

PLAYER HOUSING

• The City of Freeport: The Magical Academy housing portal should no longer vanish after being placed in a house.

• Fixed a bug where loading a layout of an invalid file could cause the house zone to crash.

DUNGEON MAKER

• Mystic Guardian avatar for Dungeon Maker has had the zombie scare attack changed.

• Fixed an issue with Dungeons being put into the Housing hall of fame.

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From Isulith on the EQ2 Facebook page:

On Thursday, 12/29/11 we announced a Bonus Experience Weekend from December 30th – January 3rd. This was an error on our part; it was supposed to end on January 2nd. Because of our mistake, we are extending the Double XP until January 4th at 9:00 AM PST. We greatly apologize for the inconvenience and understand your frustrations. The Double XP is live again so go out there and get adventuring!

On December 21st, SmokeJumper announced a Double XP weekend from December 30th through January 2nd. On December 30th, Isulith updated this announcement to include January 3rd, extending the event to 5 days. So it was a surprise to us to login this morning and find that Double XP has ended. Perhaps the server hamsters did not receive the updated schedule. Hopefully, we can get an extra day added at some point.

This is being discussed on the EQ2 Forums

UPDATE: Double XP has been extended until January 4th @ 9am.

Although the much lauded Dungeon Finder was quickly abandoned by all but mid-level players thirsty for a dungeon crawl, SOE seems confident they can breathe life into this feature with the announcement of upcoming improvements. However none of the announced changes address the core problem, which we will address after the jump.

From the EQ2 Forums:

Come check out the all-new changes to Dungeon Finder!

As of last Wednesday, we announced two new features for the Dungeon Finder system. This should help game play by giving more options for available dungeons and more incentive to use it. So go out there and get adventuring!

Last Thursday we noticed a curious tweet and Facebook post from EQ2’s Community Manager Isulith regarding the Freeport server and Free-to-Play players:

Just as a friendly reminder for Facebook users on the EverQuest II FB page: please do not use the term “freeps”.

If you have been playing on PvP servers for a while (especially back when there was more than one) you probably wondered how “freep” could be offensive, since it has traditionally referred to players aligned with City of Freeport faction.

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NOTE: Originally, Double XP was scheduled to run through January 2nd.  Apparently it’s now January 3rd.

From Isulith on the Official EQ2 Forums:

This coming weekend, from 12:01 AM PST on Friday, December 30th and ending at 11:59 PM PST on Tuesday, January 3rd, EverQuest II will be running a Double XP promotion (+100% XP). Take advantage of these four days and watch those XP bars fill up!

The bonus applies to AA, tradeskill, and adventure experience gained this weekend. Our French, German, Japanese and Test servers will also be enjoying the increase in XP gain.

Happy New Year and happy adventuring!

Time Zone Conversions

• PST: December 30 @ 12:01AM ~ January 3 @ 11:59PM
• EST: December 30 @ 3:01AM ~ January 4 @ 2:59AM
• GMT: December 30 @ 8:01 ~ January 4 @ 7:59
• CET: December 30 @ 9:01 ~ January 4 @ 8:59

News will be a bit light over the next few days, so we wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.  Whether you’re spending time with friends, family, or your in-game family, we hope you have a good holiday.

EQ2Wire has a huge year planned, including tackling the Dungeon Maker, delving further into Beastlords and Mercenaries, covering the new Velious content in February and May 2012, building a new site on the Data Feeds, and more.

Remember Double StationCash is still running through tomorrow and Double XP is December 30th to January 2nd. Frostfell runs through January 3rd.

Cartoon courtesy Bill Watterson