Even if you don’t personally use Twitter, it’s worth following people in the EQ2 community to get their instant impressions on different subjects…

Arkenor: Anyone with a character on a European server has just been sold to a company they’ve never heard of, without their permission.

MMOYeti: SOE have once again thrown up the finger to Europeans. Our US guild member who played on euro times can not now join us in eqnext… we now have a US guildie that (if we play) eqnext he will be unable to join us.

MMOYeti: @j_smedley Ah you always give me a good laugh, I never cease to be amazed at the shocking conduct of the company you oversee.MMOYeti: @j_smedley In one quick move to make no doubt more than a few quick bucks you split guilds and friends playing your game.

MMOYeti: @CheesePirateEq2 You’d think the internet of all things was something that could remove barriers not set them up.

The news that SOE will be dividing the EQ2 community by Region, in order to secure a lucrative distribution deal with ProSiebenSat.1’s Alaplaya gaming division, has gone over like curry-flavoured ice cream. Besides the outrage at splitting up a community whose strength has been players hailing from all over the world, SOE seems to have neglected some of the more mundane technical and historical details. We’ve collected a few:

• U.S. players who play EQ2 during the daytime have always had the option of grouping with players on Splitpaw (UK) where it’s afternoon/evening.

• European players paid upwards of 30 Euros for SOE Authenticator keyfobs including shipping to Europe. They will not work with Alaplaya/PSS1

• French Canadian players have traditionally played on the Storms server. After the cutoff, North American players will no longer be able to connect to EU servers.

• U.S. Military and Expats residing in Europe won’t be able to start on US servers, and will instead be forced to roll on European servers. When they get orders back to the States, they won’t be able to access their established characters/guilds/alliances/friends.

Dilbert 2012-02-19

Last week the news broke that Holly Longdale, who previously developed for the original EverQuest was returning to SOE to take the role of Senior Producer of EverQuest II.

We were, of course, curious what her background and approach to game design might be. Fortunately the answer to some of those questions fell into our lap when we discovered Kwill, occasional EQ2Wire scribe, had interviewed her in 2006.

The interview focuses almost entirely on the design and development of specific zones and dungeons, so it will be interesting to see what her high level outlook on the game and MMOs in general will prove to be.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Paying for your EQ2 subscription has gotten more flexible over the years, leading many to migrate from providing their credit info to SOE to using 30-day game cards. But before you make the jump, realize there are a few drawbacks to consider:

• 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.

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…

Nobody likes to be picked last for a team, yet the days where any player with level-appropriate gear could contribute in a meaningful way to the majority of dungeons introduced in an EverQuest II expansion are long gone. The straightforward turn-and-burn fights up to and including Kunark zones have given way to heavily scripted 6-person mini-raids. All but the easiest Velious dungeons have substantial checks on Gear, Alternate Advancements, and Skill.

I’ve talked to several players over the last week about Dungeon Finder and the recurring theme has been — Players who have normally been skittish about asking to join a group are queueing themselves up for Dungeon Finder, regardless of Gear, AAs, or Skill. They seem to figure ‘What have I got to lose?’

Yesterday, Test received an update with these auspicious line items:

• Kael and Drunder group BPs have been modified to better fit within the progression.
• Temple of Rallos Zek Raid Hard mode BPs have had their power increased.

The result of these changes, however, has been less than desirable. The Mitigation (not crit mit, but the basic mitigation) of all the Breastplates (Robes, Cuirassen, Hauberks, Gis, Tunics, etc.) from Kael Drakkel: Fortress Spire and Drunder: Tower of Tactics has been reduced by over 90%.

On Friday, September 16th, Jennifer “Isulith” Bridges, interim EQ2 Community Manager while Amnerys is on leave, will be hosting a Meet and Greet on the Test Copy and Freeport (EQ2X) servers at 4-5pm PDT and 5-6pm PDT respectively.

We’re anxious to see what mark she’ll leave on the EQ2 community during her tenure. The natives have been getting restless, and forum trolls seem to have gained a foothold. I’m personally hoping more for “Stand and Deliver” or “The Substitute” and less “Kindergarten Cop“!

The announcement from EverQuest2.com:

Announced at Fan Faire and rolled out in late August, the long-awaited revamp of level 20-90 gear was staggering in its ambition. Some 7 years of items, numbering over 50,000, would go under the knife or be recreated entirely for the Revamp. Now just over two weeks since the launch of Game Update 61, it remains unclear just where we stand on the Great Reitemization of EverQuest II.

More than anything, players have wondered at the intent of the revamp, seeking out an overall vision of item progression that would flow from level 1 through to level 90 items. Thus far, there hasn’t been one. In fact, any kind of guidance whatsoever on this crucial Reitemization has been singularly lacking from both EQ2 Mechanics and Management.

While we applaud members of the EQ2 Design who have put in absurd hours trying to wrangle some sense of order to this monstrous undertaking, the chaos has been palpable. The lack of direction has led to conflicting announcements, and some items having undergone their fourth revision in just a few short weeks.

Tank and Spank vs. Complex Scripting vs. Fun

In recent years, I’ve seen numerous posts from people complaining about how the different group/raid encounters work.  A lot of the complaints say that they don’t want simple “Tank and Spank” encounters. But they also don’t want encounters with complex scripting, fail conditions, cure fests, etc. They want encounters that are fun and challenging without any of those things.

So it got me wondering, how do you do that? How do you make an encounter without complex scripting, fail conditions, cure fests, etc. without turning it into a tank and spank in the process?

We have received several reports that EQ2Flames.com was hacked late this afternoon and had been serving malware. The account currently displays as Suspended.

If the hackers were profiteering script kiddies, only able to inject malicious code but gaining no further access. then the damage may be minimal.

However if the hackers gained access to eq2flames’ MySQL database then they would be able to browse everything, including hidden forums and Private Messages.

vBulletin forum software does not store plaintext passwords so it is unlikely we will see identity theft.

UPDATE: EQ2Flames is now back online.

UPDATE #2: EQ2Flames seems to have once again been hacked.

UPDATE #3: EQ2Flames is back after a complete reinstall and audit of the software.

From EverQuest2.com:

Hail and well met, fellow gamers! My name is Jennifer “Isulith” Bridges and I’m the newest addition to the SOE Community Team. I have to say, it’s truly an honor to be here.

I could write 50,000 words about the disappointing Game Update 61, with referenced links to the nearly 100 forum discussions about its flaws, plus countless player and developer quotes. But what difference would it make?

Despite a 2-day delay, and despite pushback from both Developers and Testers warning that the update still needed weeks, possibly a month of work to meet any reasonable measurement of build quality, Game Update 61 was released Thursday, August 25th.

It was clear on Monday the 22nd that there was no way the Reitemization of EQ2 would be completed in time for Game Update 61’s launch. Not only were thousands of items still in a bugged or unusable state on the Test server, but the scope of the project seemingly kept growing. Despite the incredible time pressure of trying to re-do 50,000 items in a span of 2 months, the project grew as the release deadline loomed. We were more alarmed than impressed by news that Sentinel’s Fate had been added to the already overwhelming slate.

As we reach August’s midway point, we are potentially in the “home stretch” on Game Update 61. If internal schedules hold true, we could see the next update pushed to live servers in 2 weeks. This is usually the point where player anxiety levels are highest, as what’s on Test seems  incomplete and not ready for prime time. Although it’s a well-worn cycle, the question is always “Will it be ready?” Will 2 weeks of dev crunch time result in a solid Game Update 61?

Level 20-80 Reitemization

We’d caught hints, but Fan Faire brought confirmation that level 20-80 gear was being reitemized.

When I first heard this announcement, I hoped that this would be done with a light touch. Despite organic development over 6 years, through several different producers, the itemization in EverQuest II from level 1-80 has been one of its strengths. Only through several revamps has Mastercrafted armor managed to disturb this progression. A revamp of level 20-80 gear should provide an opportunity to the EQ2 team to put this right, all while re-aligning Mastercrafted armor where it belongs, behind Legendary and Fabled dungeon drops. With a few minor tweaks, mostly adding Agility to any item wearable by Scouts, Intelligence to Mage-equippable items, and so forth, itemization would, at least from level 1-80, work with the changed mechanics, without losing its uniqueness.

Have you participated in a Plane of War group or raid zone on Test?

Care to share some comments/impressions about the zone for inclusion in a future EQ2Wire article?

Send us an e-mail or in-game message on Butcherblock.Feldon.

Massively’s Larry “Shaddoe” Everett is looking to trial some different MMOs and, perhaps, bring more attention to them. For the next six weeks he’ll be trying out MMOs based on a voting system. Included in his list are EverQuest II and another SOE property: FreeRealms.

Choose My Adventure is a chance for Massively readers to guide one member of the writing staff on an adventure in a game of the readers’ choosing. For the next six weeks, I want you to choose my adventure for me. I have tried nearly every major title in the last decade, but I haven’t necessarily spent a lot of time in all of them. After the break, I will describe some of the games that I believe will be great for this task, and you can choose one for me via poll. Then, as a special bonus, on Friday at 6 p.m. EDT I will introduce you to each of the games on Massively’s Livestream channel.

Amnerys, EQ2’s Community Manager, posted a thread on the EQ2 Forums, encouraging players to head to Massively and vote for EQ2.