A funny thing happened when I was chatting with some folks about today’s news of Critical Mitigation being completely removed from EQ2. A few of them were surprised when I reminded them that Crit Mit has been part of EQ2 for over 3 years.

Critical Mitigation was introduced in November 2008 with The Shadow Odyssey expansion. At first, it played no part in solo quests or group zones, thus many people weren’t even aware of it at the time. But anyone who was into raiding x4 (24 person) zones, and later, Ward of Elements x2 raids, has been collecting this stat for a while.

The Shadow Odyssey was fairly gradual with the amount of Crit Mit required. At the time, exceptional healers could keep an undergeared character alive long enough to get necessary gear upgrades.

Sentinel’s Fate cranked things up a bit, requiring at least 1-2 Crit Mit adornments to do the harder content and making it a bit harder for healers to “cover” for a player who a few points short.

But Destiny of Velious went completely bananas, initially requiring Crit Mit to do all raid, group AND solo content. Many of us fondly remember getting one-shotted by badgers and sea urchins during the Velious Beta.

Everywhere Crit Mit

At the launch of Velious, each group zone had a progression of gear, and that progression HAD to be followed to get enough Crit Mit to even consider moving into the next set of group zones. And unlike the somewhat forgiving Crit Mit mechanic of past expansions, Velious made Crit Mit a “do or die” stat. Being a few points short became a death sentence.

Although the requirement of Crit Mit was eventually dropped for solo content, and more recently for all group content except Drunder, the requirements for raiding have remained incredibly steep.

As a result, Velious has attracted parallels to the merciless “back-flagging” that made the original EverQuest’s Planes of Power expansion so maddening. Every new applicant to a raiding guild has needed remedial trips to raid zones and targets which the guild has moved on from (typically EM or non-Challenge zones), just to get the right gear pieces to have enough Critical Mitigation to even dream of resuming work on their usual targets.

Ironically, it was into this climate of challenging progression that EQ2’s well-intentioned Dungeon Finder service blundered into and promptly collapsed. A system that randomizes player styles and skill levels into a random selection of zones only works if the content is interchangeable. Dungeon Finder would have been a fantastic introduction in Kunark or The Shadow Odyssey, but with Velious tiered content, it never had a chance.

If I recall correctly, Critical Mitigation was introduced as a way to mitigate the need for bi-annual level cap raises which tend to be a tremendous drain on development resources for content which, quite frankly, most people burn through in a week or two.

Ending the Crit Mit Rat Race

Before today’s news, I had been advocating a 20-30% across-the-board reduction in Critical Mitigation requirements. This would be a big enough change that raiders wouldn’t need to walk down memory lane quite so often, and players would have the option of equipping adornments other than Crit Mit.

You may recall that the mechanics changes in Velious (stripping cool effects/procs off most items and moving them to Adornments) were sold to players with the lofty idea that it would usher in an era of freedom of choice.

Yet acquiring new gear has been the definition of mixed emotions, as a a steady stream of Primal Velium Shards has been needed to re-purchase Crit Mit adornments for each new slightly upgraded piece of gear just to stay in the Crit Mit rat race.

The reality was, anyone serious about progressing through the harder group zones, into x2 raids, and finally into x4 raids had only one choice of adornment — Crit Mit. An EQ2 developer famously stated that any EQ2 player interested in progression should exclusively be using Critical Mitigation adornments.

A New Progression?

Love or hate Crit Mit, it has marked the progression of gear beyond level 90 for two going on three expansions. Short of raising the level cap, which seems unlikely based on past development comments, what will be the next “progression” stat?

The ugly truth is, every MMO is a treadmill. The art of MMO design is concealing that reality and doing so tastefully.

If you like posting on the EQ2 forums, you’ve probably been seeing a lot of the above screen.

Over 2 weeks ago, the SOE forums lost the ability to store login information using cookies. In other words, anyone who was not actively browsing an SOE forum or website was logged out after 15 minutes of activity. At the time, this was explained as a temporary glitch.

However last week, EQ2 Community Manager Amnerys (who returned to work at SOE in early January) had this unbelievable update on the issue:

The forum auto logout has been changed to 3-hours now. This should satisfy the security reasons for the change as well as allow a decent amount of time before needing to log back in.

EQ2Players is very much “coming soon.” I know you won’t believe it until you see it, but it truly shouldn’t be very long now. I haven’t seen it with my own eyes, but others on my team have.

Amnerys posted elsewhere:

I believe there is now a 3-hour auto logout on our forums. So it’s not indefinite like it used to be, but not so short that you’re having to log in again every few minutes. Hopefully this timing will be better for users and still accomplish the security goals.

A player who contacted a different forum administrator received this cryptic info:

Unfortunately, due to security reasons we had to disable that feature and change the way everyone logs in to the forums. We have recently adjusted the forums so that it will now keep you logged in for up to three hours.

It hasn’t been made clear what security reasons there were for invalidating cookies after 3 hours. I posted an explanation for why requiring a login every 3 hours is just Security Theater:

I’ve been administrating forums for 12 years. This is the first forum I’ve used that has a standard policy of logging you out every 3 hours.

The industry standard is 14 days. That’s Google, Wordpress, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Every forum I’ve ever set up or dealt with (I participate in about a dozen) actually allows you to stay logged in 30-90 days on a cookie. To date I’ve never seen a security problem on a forum that resulted from the cookie’s duration being “too long”.

Requiring a login multiple times a day DECREASES security because if a malicious zero-day keylogger program slips past your Anti-spyware prevention on your PC, it’s far more likely to grab your SOE/Station password because of how frequently you are having to type it.

Obvious trolling about people having “no life” for spending X hours a day on the forums is irrelevant blather and is just a nonsense smokescreen coverup for the reality. Web security has never and will never require invalidating cookies after 180 minutes.

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.

With this revised schedule, the gap between Game Update 62 (Freeport Reborn) and Game Update 63 (more Velious) will be 4 months, the original Game Update 64 goes away, and the gap between our next GU and the Qeynos Reborn will again be 4 months, leaving November as the natural time for Game Update 65 and Expansion #9 (which Domino vaguely tweeted about a few months back). In other words, we will only see 3 major content pushes for 2012, with only 2 (possibly 1) of them dedicated to new Destiny of Velious content.

Here’s a visual aid:

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.

Merc Confidence: “In Over Their Head”

One of the most talked about limits placed on non-fighter Mercenaries in EQ2 is the “In Over Their Head” mechanic.  Mercenaries will fight for you, but the pay isn’t necessarily worth dying for! If too many (or too powerful) enemies are wailing on your hired merc, they will cower in the corner and lose much effectiveness until the situation changes.

According to Gninja:

[Confidence] is a threshold value they have. Tank mercs can take on close to epic encounters(x4) but not quite so if the total number of creatures being fought equals up to that number with higher tier creatures costing more points then they will cower.

Tank mercs have much higher threshold than other mercs, and the [Shadowknight] merc has the same confidence as the other tank mercs.

[Mercs] should only get in over their head when creatures are targetting them. If they are getting in over their head with nothing targetting them it is a bug but I have yet to see that happen when I use them.

This came up in the context of the Forgotten Pools where Stamper, the inquisitor mercenary, stopped helping on the first named that drops noxious “goo” which players must avoid.

Ah that makes sense actually… The piles of goo that named summons are creatures casting spells so they were likely targetting him and there was nothing you could do about it. I will take a look at that situation and see if I can fix that.

Players have noted that mercenaries under this effect seem to stop all other actions and just stand there cowering. According to Gninja, they don’t stop fighting, healing, or curing, but instead their effectiveness is reduced:

Just because they cower does not mean they stop doing everything it just lowers their effectiveness.

The largest thing [In Over Their Head] affects is potency. Cures would not be affected by the “In over their head” debuff they gain when they hit their confidence threshold.

Gninja opened up the idea of adding other types of mercs that focus on certain tasks or roles in a group:

If there are certain roles you want a merc to fill and that doesn’t mean “Can do everything better than all other mercs” then I can take a look at adding new mercs in the future.

Player Response

Not everyone is impressed with the Mercenary AI. kahonen had this comment:

If mercs are meant to be like players (hence taking a split of the plat from mobs + chests) then why on earth are they cowering in the first place? When a pull goes bad our real tank players dont sit at home cowering in front of their keyboards do they? No, they knuckle down and try to make the best of it and end up with those “omg how did we survive that?” or “Wow that was rough but we got a couple of them at least!” moments. It seems its a “feature” for the sake of a feature that serves no real purpose.

LuckyPSD had a similar response:

Mercs are a waste of time and money as they are currently implemented.  Clearly, someone, somewhere has forgotten that the “I” in “AI” stands for INTELLIGENCE.  Think about it for a second:  if a healer merc realised we had a problem would he simply stand and watch me die while he did nothing?  Of course not!  If there are only 2 of us there, I’d suggest the fact that if I die, he’s gonna be next would play a large part in his reasoning

A few Frequently Asked Questions

When asked about Mercenaries using Area of Effect (AoE) attacks which tend to attract the attention of nearby enemies, Gninja had this response:

None of the mercs should have blue AEs at all. They were all changed into encounter AEs.

Even though mercenaries are now spread out to all 6 cities (excluding Maj’dul), remember you only have to track them down in their home city once. Thereafter, they will make an appearance in your home city when needed. From Gninja:

If you hire them from say Kelethin the next time you need to hire them you can go to Qeynos and they will be there. You only have to hire them the first time from their original city. I know its not quite as convenient as in a house or guildhall but at least they end up being centrally located.

Some players had drawn rather conspiratorial conclusions about how EQ2’s developers view wardens from the fact that the Warden mercenary heals from range and does not use any melee attacks. Gninja sought to debunk that:

In regards to the Warden merc being ranged vs. up close and personal: It is emulating a warden with no AAs and is meant to be a pure healer that doesn’t intentionally put itself in harms way and take ripostes etc. It is strictly a survivability mercenary. It has nothing to do with how players can play that class if they so choose.

Further:

The warden merc can cure but it has full priority given to healing over curing so they will likely only cure if your health is at a reasonable level or their heal spells are in refresh.

The warden mercenary is a ranged healer. She will not try to stand toe to toe and do any sort of damage. I have heard rumblings about her not healing if told to attack things but I havent been able to reproduce it thus far. But you can try to set her to assist none and that might help for the time being.

On the subject of mercs pulling agro or attacking too soon, Gninja had advice for fighters who have summoned mercenaries:

Using the assist drop down means he will attack what you attack so if you throw an arrow at something to pull it they will engage as well. I would suggest if you are the tank using a merc you should set them to follow another group member and assist someone else in group that way they dont engage till that person does and you are free to pull at will.

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

Excerpts from the Bloomberg Press Release:

ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG (PSM) will publish eight games from Sony Online Entertainment in Europe exclusively, including “Star Wars: Clone Adventures” and “DC Universe Online,” as the broadcaster expands online offerings.

The agreement with the Sony Corp. (6758) division also includes online multiplayer worlds “EverQuest II,” “Free Realms” and “Pox Nora,” Unterfoehring, Germany-based ProSieben said in a statement today.

ProSieben’s games, online video and other digital ventures had 243 million euros ($311 million) in revenue in the first nine months of last year.

ProSieben shares were up 2.2 percent to 14.83 euros at 1:39 a.m. in Frankfurt, valuing the company at 3.2 billion euros. Its shares lost 38 percent of their value last year.

“We didn’t feel we had the right reach in Europe,” said Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley at the Munich meeting. “Our goal is to become the leading free to play publisher in the world and with the help of ProSieben, we feel Europe is covered now.”

The companies will share revenue and risk under the terms of the multiyear agreement, executives said today.

The announcement that ProSiebenSat.1, better known in Europe as alaplaya, would be picking up Sony Online Entertainment’s games drew words of warning from existing players of alaplaya games which, according to several customers have been poorly supported and subject to thus-far unresolved hacks.

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.

In response to several questions from players, Isulith had this response:

The issue is when people are using it to say “freeps get off my server,” etc.

Using it in PvP is fine. It becomes an issue when players are using it against other players to be derogatory.

and:

Some players are using it as a term to encompass all free players in a derogatory way.

Certainly, we’ve noticed an influx of both new and returning players (who were automatically granted Silver access, and grandfathered use of character slots and races, but who must still buy item and broker unlocks) wondering why their gear is unequipped, and what other restrictions they now face as Free-to-Play members.

What do you think?

• Do you find “freeps” to be a derogatory term?
• Do you think it’s a good use of SOE’s time to sanitize such comments from their Facebook feed(s)?
• Do you feel the rest of us pay $14.99/month for a game other people are playing for free (plus unlocks)? Keep in mind some people pay as little as $2.50 a month if they took advantage of Triple SC and bought a year’s sub in advance.

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

• First, month-to-month players don’t get the 500SC monthly stipend which is now given to all Gold subscribers.

• Second, to use the in-game Character Transfer Tokens require an account to be on a recurring subscription.
• UPDATE: You can /petition customer service to initiate a Character Transfer.

• Third, if perchance you forget to renew your subscription at the end of the month, instead of receiving e-mails warning you that your subscription is about to run out, you might wake up to find your account at Silver. It could take some time in e-mails, petitions, or on the phone to sort out the problem. We’ve only heard this from 2 players but it’s a potential problem.

• Fourth, prior to the Destiny of Velious release, a variety of rewards were made available to recurring subscribers. Players with 30-day cards eventually won those rewards back, but it didn’t happen overnight.

So if you are on the fence about using a credit card or 30-day cards, think about whether you want the hassle of entering a card number every month, or dealing with the above limitations.

We can only speculate on why month-to-month can be a problem for SOE over the traditional recurring subscription, but spammers, scammers, and farmers are always looking for avenues to separate players and their money through fraud.

Press & Fan Sites

If you’re wanting to get the word out about your MMO’s upcoming expansion, you’d be a turkey to not focus your attention on multi-game MMO websites. Employing correspondents that attend gaming expos around the globe, these “Press” sites have come to expect a certain degree of red carpet treatment.

Press sites are one of the smartest places to drop a few bucks for a potentially big return. People have decried the lack of advertising in EverQuest II, while Press sites like TenTonHammer and Massively get thousands of eyeballs on their sites every day. There’s always a chance that an article about EverQuest II could bring back old players, or attract the interest of a gamer new to MMOs. Some would call this kind of quid pro quo a necessary evil, but these days, it’s just the cost of doing business. Last week, we saw plenty of that business with a series of tweets as these sites went through the Age of Discovery dog-and-pony show that is the Press Tour.

This Thanksgiving, we wanted to take a moment to be thankful for those EQ2 Fan Sites that didn’t go on Press or Beta Tours, yet continue to support the EQ2 community not just once or twice a year, but every day. Although Fan Sites don’t bring new gamers to EQ2, a vibrant supportive community can sure help to retain existing players.

It has not gone unnoticed that the gaggle of EQ2 Fan Sites supporting EQ2 has shrunk considerably over the years. Fully 65% of the domestic EverQuest II Fansites listed at EverQuest2.com have gone  idle or offline altogether. Players have moved on, and relentless mechanics and itemization revamps have pushed time-pressed volunteer site owners to the difficult decision of pulling the plug rather than throwing away hours of work to rebuild their sites on new data.

Meanwhile a host of new sites remain largely unrecognized. We wanted to rectify that by putting together our own list. I received a promise at Fan Faire that Fan Sites would get more support from SOE going forward. While we wait for that, I’m going to do my part to spotlight these great sites. I apologize in advance for any errors or sites that I’ve left out:

Beetny AA Calculator

There have been a few sites over the years which have allowed you to study your Alternate Advancement (AA) choices outside of EQ2, but Brett’s AA Calculator is the best by far, plus it’s been updated for Destiny of Velious. It’s not only an accurate recreation of all of the AA trees within EQ2, but it also provides you the ability to instantly spend (and un-spend) points in each tree, and then save a bookmark URL that remembers how those points were spent. Ask most people for a suggested AA setup for your character, and chances are, they’ll send you a link to Beetny.

EQ2Achieve

Launched shortly after the introduction of Achievement points to EQ2, Xalmat’s site documents over 1,300 Achievements, small and large, which you can accomplish in the world of Norrath from Quests to Raids to hugging complete strangers. If you just can’t get enough of Achievements in EQ2, I don’t know a better site to find them all.

EQ2Talk

EQ2Talk is a biweekly EverQuest II podcast by Dellmon and Aliscious. Each show includes a focused discussion about issues affecting the EQ2 playerbase, letters from readers, the nail-biting Are You Smarter Than a Dellmon? challenge, and guests to include EQ2 staff and others with a unique perspective on the game.

EQ2’s-Day

EQ2’s-Day (Tuesday, get it?) is a long-running biweekly EverQuest II podcast by Zanadi and Trueflight which has hosted a variety of EQ2 developers and producers over the years. The loose format encourages listener feedback via an IRC channel akin to the interactivity of a call-in radio show.

The Jethal Silverwing Show

This slapdash after-hours podcast features larger-than-life Jethal Silverwing and his co-host Elquinjena as they cover a variety of topics and themes each week. With segments like Ask a Drunken Dwarf and parody songs performed by Jethal himself, it’s a variety format which has also attracted no lesser guest than SOE President John Smedley himself. The Jethal Silverwing Show is part of Kithicor.org.

Fluffy.dk

Have you ever wished you could track your completed quests without having to log in your character and dig through the Completed Quests window? If so, your wish is Mazahs‘ command. Fluffy.dk contains virtually every quest in EQ2, and using the available plugin, you can have an automatically updated list which can be viewed anywhere online.

EQ2Traders

Every crafter worth their jumjum pie is aware of Niami Denmother’s exhaustively detailed Crafting previews, reviews, and expansion guides written from a tradeskill perspective. If you want to be prepared for upcoming Events, Game Updates, or the next Expansion, look no further than Niami’s detailed guides.

EverSeek.com

EverSeek is an online database of over 5,000 house-placeable decorations and items available within EQ2 from Events, Quests, Tokens, Looted, and via Crafting. A complete (or nearly so) index of Recipe books can be browsed to quickly find the item you’re interested in. One of the oldest sites on our list, EverSeek has existed in one form or another since 2005.

EQ2Decorators.com

If you are looking for a site with How-To Guides on house decoration, including example photos and guides to creating aquariums, kitchens, libraries, bars, bathrooms, bedrooms, themed houses, etc. then Elayine’s EQ2 Decorators site should be on your visit list.

EQ2Designers.com

We would be remiss if we did not mention Jesdyr’s EQ2 Layout Editor which has allowed the precise placement of house items, including pitch/roll and placing items on walls, floors, ceilings, and partly inside other items to produce incredible effects.

UltraMMO.com

This one-stop resource for researching and documenting EQ2 Heroic and Raiding Strategies requires simple registration before you too can unlock its wealth of knowledge. Formerly known as EQ2Zone.com.

EQ2Interface

If you’re looking to beef up EQ2’s User Interface, download an all-in-one UI replacement like ProfitUI, Fetish, or Drums, or want to try your hand at the arcane and bewildering language that makes up EQ2’s UI, look no further than EQ2Interface. This site catalogues every UI add-on and replacement for EQ2. EQ2Interface is also the home of EQ2MAP, the most popular UI addon for EQ2.

Adornments

There have been Adornment sites over the years but the best of the bunch has been Adornments.h0b0.net. Although it has not been updated for Velious, it’s still a useful guide for level 1~80 player-made adornments. If you’re looking for Velious adornments including player-made (white), yellow, or red, then you ought to check out Dethdlr’s Adornment Calculator hosted here at EQ2Wire.

Advanced Combat Tracker

The answer to the question “How do I get better?” usually starts with downloading and installing Advanced Combat Tracker for EQ2. This powerful log parser has grown leaps-and-bounds over the years and now supports all sorts of plugins, in-game triggers, and even other games. If you don’t want to play EQ2 “by-the-numbers” or feel no need to have your gaming performance “measured”, well hey, it’s a game not a job and that’s absolutely your right! But I think everyone could gain something by seeing how the spells and combat arts they cast affect (or don’t affect) the enemy.

Guild Connect and Volte

Every year, the EQ2 raid designers add more Curses, more calamitous Area-of-Effect hits, more Detrimentals, and more one-person-can-get-everyone-killed timed Events. In the raiding arms race, the players have been forced to get better tools too. Advanced Combat Tracker used to be enough, but the Curses have gotten faster and AoEs more brutal. Faced with these issues, crafty players have developed several tools which take the strengths of Advanced Combat Tracker and link the members of a raid together to allow faster reactions, more awareness of what’s going on in a raid, and also the ability to chat if someone gets disconnected.

• Guild Connect is a paid service and comes with preset timers and triggers for virtually every enemy in EQ2 that does anything hanky. Pricing scales based on the size of your guild.

• Volte is a bit more of a do-it-yourself affair, but it’s free and supports complex expressions to trigger on any sort of group spell, AoE, etc.

• Raid Hub is the new kid on the block and promises features not present in ether ACT, Guild Connect, or Volte. Pricing may be more attractive for larger guilds.

LootDB.com

LootDB is a community-driven EQ2 item database which makes use of a client program to grab items and submit them to LootDB. One of the site’s strengths is the ability to browse by zone or by mob (enemy). At last count, their database contains over 100,000 items, many of them with dungeon, mob, and drop rate information.

EQ2LLinks.com

If you’ve got the name of one of the tens of thousands of items in EQ2, and need that item’s unique link, your first stop is undoubtedly EQ2 Logger Links. The secret to their site is a client program which runs alongside EQ2 and grabs item links. At last count they have over 100,000 items logged.

EQ2 Xanadu

This site has largely flown under the radar as an EQ2 fan site since they are, first and foremost an EQ2 guild portal. However their Xanadu EQ2 Items Database with over 5,000 items presents a great way of categorizing and displaying Heroic and Raid gear from the last few expansions. Despite the recent dissolution of the Xanadu guild, the database has so far continued to get updates.

EQ2 Lore & Books

If you are looking for the “backstory” or history of EverQuest and how it ties into EverQuest II, the EQ2 Lore Forum on the official EQ2 forums, the Athenaeum, and the Archive of Ik are your three best places to go. You’ll find no more complete bibliography of EQ2 books than BiblioNorrath.com. The site was lovingly developed by Aurelis who has moved on to other things, but we hear that it has been picked up by another player.

EQ2 Wiki

Ask any EQ2 player who has been around for more than five minutes which website they look to for quest writeups and timelines, and EQ2 Wiki or EQ2 ZAM will be at the top of their list. EQ2 Wiki is completely dependent upon volunteer player submissions for its information.

EQ2 ZAM

Formerly known as Allakhazam, EQ2 ZAM is the granddaddy of all currently maintained EQ2 websites. Its coverage of EQ2 has grown a lot in the past three years under the stewardship of Calthine and Cyliena and includes the most comprehensive writeups for solo and event questlines available. The centerpiece of the EQ2 ZAM site is their item and recipe data provided by SOE which includes Quest Dialogue, Drop Rates on items, etc.

Some of you may be familiar with Adam “Ferrel” Trzonkowski, if not by name than from reading his gaming perspective site EpicSlant.com or from hearing the “A View From the Top” podcast which he co-hosted with Massively’s Karen Bryan, or perhaps his current Multiverse Podcast. What you may not know is that Adam is also a published author!

Earlier this year, Adam put down into words his many years of experience as a guild leader in a How To guide called The Guild Leader’s Companion. Containing tips, suggestions, and humorous anecdotes, it’s a virtual manual for running a guild and dealing with the interpersonal conflicts that inevitably arise. The Guild Leader’s Companion was self-published in hardcover form on Amazon and as an e-book.

Now Adam has written a new book — The Raider’s Companion — but he needs your help!

After the jump, an explanation and further backstory on the project…

Hello all!  My name is Kristen “Aurelis” and I’d like to have a chat with you about some things that may or may not be a part of your EQ2 experience: guilds, raiding, and books.  Or rather, books about guilds and raiding!

The community in EQ2 is a vast and varied one, ranging from those that solely roleplay to those that solely raid.  There are also those that just exist because someone likes or wants to have a certain tag under their name for the fun of it — I had one of these on Bazaar!  However, true guilds, true organizations of people striving toward some common goal, whatever that may be, usually need a leader or group of leaders.  How do these leaders gain the experience they need to guide others to victory in being the best band of singing bards or the most successful raiders?

Typically that is done through trial and error but it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way.  Adam “Ferrel” Trzonkowski has many years of experience when it comes to leading a guild under his belt and a while back he wrote a book to help others learn from his greatest triumphs and most painful mistakes, The Guild Leader’s Companion.  I really recommend picking up a copy either in physical book form (how can you resist the feel of a real book in your hands?) or as an e-book.  Even if you are an experienced guild leader, everyone has room to grow and learn and you might discover a new way to keep your people in line and happy.

Now, if you didn’t know about this book, you may not know that he is already working on a second one!  It is geared toward raiders and is aptly named The Raider’s Companion.  The manuscript is written but that is not all that goes into getting a book off his desk and into your hands.  A lot was learned from his first book and this time he wants to do an even better job including art assets (which look fantastic so far) and a more professional polish to the book itself.

Of course, all of these things cost money.  To counter this Ferrel has started a Kickstarter project to raise the funds.  Let me take a moment to make some things clear about how Kickstarter works, as I had never heard of it before, either!  Most importantly of all, you aren’t charged a cent until the end of the project date (November 24) and that is only if it succeeds.  If the project doesn’t reach the $4,000 goal, then it was like you never pledged your money.

However, if it does succeed, then not only have you made a gnoll very happy but you’ll also get something in return depending on how much you offer in support of the book.  You can get a full color print of the cover when it’s done for only $10.  There are rewards for higher pledges but honestly, think of it like DPS – sometimes having only a few people doing a lot of damage isn’t going to cut it, but a lot of people doing a little will add up.  Every person that increases the DPS by even 1 point pushes the bar closer toward success.  Yes, even $1 helps!

The book will have something both for those that are new to raiding and those that are seasoned raiders.  Even if you’re doing old raids like the Djinn Master, you’re delving into new content from the latest expansion, or you raid in an entirely different game altogether, there are universal concepts, strategies, and best practices you can pick up and run with to reach success.  And if you have no interest in the book at all, just think of the people that won’t be able to add it to their library because you didn’t pass the project link on to your friends that would have supported it!

Comments about his previous book:

This book is a great read, it covers a ton of issues that you will experience as a guild leader or even if you are a supervisor in a real job. If you are new to guild leadership, it will give you the tools to know what you are getting yourself in to. It has helped me think outside the box when dealing with my own guilds issues.

and:

[This book] is an absolute must-have for any player considering guild leadership or wanting to know the “best practices” of successful leadership. The author has a wealth of experience and had to learn — at least initially — under the pressure of having a leadership role thrust upon him.