Feldon From EverQuest2.com:
Closed Beta registration for “Age of Discovery” is now open! Applications are available at this link. Beta testing is vital to ensure a great product launch. We appreciate your participation and welcome any and all feedback.
Click the link above, sign in with your Station Account, complete the application process, and your application will go into the queue for approval. Please be sure to read and accept the NDA. All applicants must have accepted the NDA in order to be considered for participation. All applicants will receive an email to confirm that their application was received.
Applications will be reviewed starting on October 27th. Closed Beta will close on November 14th.
Players who are approved for Closed Beta will receive an email informing them of their acceptance, so please confirm that we have your correct email address during the registration process.
Beta acceptance emails will go out between October 27th and November 16th.
Please remember that registering for the Beta does not guarantee admittance. Approved registrants will be put into the pool from which we will randomly select participants.
Fan Faire 2011 Attendees:
If you attended Fan Faire 2011, you will be admitted into the Beta program. However, you must still register and accept the NDA. Please make sure that you click the link above and register with the account that you used to register for Fan Faire.
Eligibility:
To be eligible to participate in the Age of Discovery Beta test, players must have an active EQII subscription in good standing and accept the Terms of Use, End User License Agreement and Non-Disclosure Agreement provided at the registration site.
In order to access the Beta server, an EQ2X subscription is required, and one will be applied to your account as needed if you are accepted into the Beta program. In order to allow both EQII and EQ2X players access to the Beta server and give us the most feedback possible, we’ve set the Beta server up in a way that can be accessed by players with both types of accounts. The subscription added to your account (if needed) is free and has no bearing on your existing EQII subscription.
About Age of Discovery:
EverQuest II Age of Discovery is the eigth expansion for the critically acclaimed EverQuest II franchise and follows the best-selling Destiny of Velious expansion.
Ever wanted to build your own dungeon? Now you can, with the Dungeon Maker system! Locate and collect a variety of floor layouts and styles, decorate your dungeon, select monsters to fill it, and then watch adventurers battle through the content you designed to win new rewards!
At last, the beastlord class returns to Norrath. Seek out new animals throughout the world to train as your warder pet. Work with your warder to build up your strengths and exploit your enemies’ weaknesses. In the Age of Discovery, beastlords will walk the lands of Norrath once again!
Are they really just doing a 2.5 week beta? I mean, I’ll sign up (zOMG Beastlord!) but migod, the severe doubts I have about enough time for bugs to be found are manifold. Add in the fact that several people will sign up for Beta just for a sneak-peek of their own class’ AAs and whatnot, and I find it hard to believe anything will be properly tested.
You know, rather than merely complain, I think I’ll hope for acceptance into this Beta and really give the thing my best testing. My focus will be on the new class, but there’s also the related issues of reforging and tradeskill apprentices that are near and dear to my heart. Obviously I can’t report back here until the NDA is evaporated, but I’ll give it my best so everybody can receive the best (possible) come launch. Anybody else care to give a similar pledge?
2 weeks or so for an expansion ? Do they realize how much content they have with potential big issues?
A minimum of 2 months would be safer.
Beta will be testing:
* Mercenaries
* Beastlords
* Design Your own Dungeon
* Tradeskill Apprentices
* Item Reforging
* Freeport revamp
2 weeks is absurdly short, but 2 months aren’t needed either.
why bother testing anything they don’t fix the problems we report till after it goes live and everyone else complains anyways. I am done working for free for SOE and not being heard when I do as they ask. I have been in every beta since launch and some of the bugs that were reported buring beta of DoV have still not been addressed and here they go making sure the deadline gets met wether it is ready or not.
From what I have seen, beta testing=waste of time. But it will be fun to get the sneak peaks anyways doubt I’ll do much testing though.
I liked this part…
“Applications will be reviewed starting on October 27th. Closed Beta will close on November 14th.
Beta acceptance emails will go out between October 27th and November 16th.”
Soooo… Acceptance emails will keep on flowing 2 days after the beta closes!
I am going to sooo love design your own dungeon. Beastmasters yes, Mercenary’s yes – I just hope everything is implemented right and there’s not some super plat dupe bug or xploit your way to 90 in minutes bug.
Hmmm Ok so mid november releae and still we dont have a clue of how much, and I am sure its going to be digital download only.
I don’t see a single positive in this entire expansion, and I’m normally an optimist.
Mercs – Yet another way to break up social groups, driving people towards a single players game
DYoD – I can not envision this being anything even remotely considering a success
Item Reforging – Oh, this is going to be epic. Items will either become so powerful by reforging that they will have to seriously scale back the reforging (complete item resets ftw) or it will have zero impact and waste yet more developer time.
Beastlord – The only slightly “positive” thing, just so all that bruiser / monk loot doesn’t rot as much.
YUP merc’s is going to hurt the game much like that PVP crap did (Thank god they revamped the gear and everyone came back ‘pvp was crap anyways’)DYOD is very interesting to me, i like to design more than decorate when im bored and there is only 1 person on in my guild, and dungeon finder is in Que for 2 hours straight maybe more…awesome now i have something to do, eq1 BURNED me on trade schilling i don’t think i could Force myself to do 10mins of it now.
Thanks. Signed up. I saw the side banner on the acceptance form. The revamped freeport’s got gold trimming? Looks nice. 😀
Reforging to me seams like a “we’ve fecked up itemization now you fix it for us” type thing..
Just a thought, Revamped Freeport is GU62. has nothing to do with the beta.
Too bad this is going to be one of the shortest expansion betas in MMO history.
I bet the mindset was a normal beta testing would have half feature testing, and half content testing… and if there isn’t any content, then they don’t need as much testing.
Of course, I’ll be pretty peeved if they charge 40 bucks for a expansion that requires such little testing. As a boxer those 40 USD expansions add up pretty quick when you have a few accounts.
They’re sending last wave of invites the 16th November.
Beta will launch the 27th.
Heroes Festival is between the 15th and 28th November. 29th November is a Tuesday (prefered launch day). Heroes Festival is announced as “not changing this year”. Kaitheel said that “Heroes Testing (starting the 1th) will not interract with Freeport revamp (aka no freeport revamp showing up in the middle of the Testing period)”.
This lets me suppose that expansion will launch on the 29th November, wich should make it a one-month testing like Velious.
If the Freeport revamp shows up the 1st november on Test, then I’m wrong of course.
Very depressing if thats all they can come up with,surely they wont have the brass neck to ask full price for this?
I am going to go on record that the design your own dungeon will be a good feature. There are plenty of very clever people out there with interesting ideas. Certainly will be a change of pace from the “professionally” designed ones!
The item reforging might indeed turn out to be a problem unless they make it VERY limited.
I like the Beastlords, that will be fun, too.
Mercs are a necessary evil but I feel bad for anyone starting out in the game, as all those altaholics will just use mercs and not have time for grouping with genuinely new players. I hope I am wrong. But then, are we getting new players, actually? Sad.
So DYOD, i see myself making a 4 x 4 with 50 triple ups within aoe distance
taking My Raiding Sk and Mentoring my Beaslord lvl 1 to 90 in 4 hrs, anyone?
Landacet, they’ve already said that you won’t be able to use your player characters in DYOD.
Despite my better judgement (it was clearly out sick) I’m signed up for it. Got this nasty feeling in my gut about it, though I dearly want this stuff to be good.
@Xalgan so the creator of the zone cant play with their own characters right?>
If so can my other 2 accounts make it and my other chars be in it?
Some of us keep 3 raid geared players around lol
Landacet, avatars. You cannot take a character from the EQ2 world into any dungeon that has been created by a player.
ah ty steve, the avatars have to be collected around norrath and so on right?
Ah ok hopefully the expansion isnt expensive, for me personally waste of time as mostly i will bypass it and just get it because of the aa’s.
I’m thinking that the two week period is ONLY referring to the registration time frame and NOT the time the expansion is in beta testing.