DoV: Coldain Prayer Shawl HQ Angst

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Expansion News, Tradeskill

Emily “Domino” Taylor, Tradeskill developer for EQ2 has been fielding some intense comments from players regarding the first ever Tradeskill Heritage Quest coming to EverQuest II: Destiny of Velious, specifically the Coldain Prayer Shawl quest. This was previously an adventure quest in EQ1 so some players have expressed their concerns about this being a tradeskill quest rather than for adventurers.

You can follow this discussion of the Coldain Prayer Shawl Quest on EQ2 Forums.

   

[A View From The Top] #15 – Paul “Frizznik” Carrico

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire), Expansion News, Free-to-Play (EQ2X)

A View From the Top‘s Karen and Adam sat down with Paul “Frizznik” Carrico, SOE’s Lead Mechanics Designer at Fan Faire. On this episode they discuss a few different aspects of EverQuest II, the upcoming Velious expansion, and even a little about EQ2 Extended. Take a moment to listen to Frizznik’s thoughts on the game. Thanks to Kiara and Calthine for putting the meeting together.

Listen to A View From the Top Episode #15

Live: EQ2 Mechanics and Class Balance Panel

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire), DGC Wants Feedback, Expansion News, Game Updates & Maintenance, Grouping, Raiding

EQ2 Mechanics and Class Balance panel.

Rich Waters, Greg “Rothgar” Spence, Paul “Frizznik” Carrico, Mike “Xelgad” Ganz.

Update: As of 2:00AM CDT I have made some cleanup and additional information added to these notes based on memory. There are 3-4 missing questions which will get filled in after the video is reviewed.

EQ2 Art & Animation Panel Notes

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Art, Appearance, Housing, Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire), Expansion News

More of a quick summary of this panel…

Lots of clips of Othmir. Videos of enemies and friendlies.

Showed bump maps and texture maps of Othmir.

With the rewrite of mounts, they no longer have to make 42 animations of each mount. Now a mount can be done in 3-5 weeks. First saw this on the prowler. Part of this was to prevent tails going through mounts and fix problems with capes.

For example when Tom added Othmir on a t-Rex as a demo he didn’t have to make animation of how the othmir moves on the mount. It just worked.

Hats automatically equals bald. Can’t really fix it at this point because it would add a shader.

Still taking feedback on spell animations on Test. It’s not just “here it is”. He has been making a lot of changes from player feedback.

Talking Shop with EQ2 Devs

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Commentary, Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire), Expansion News, Free-to-Play (EQ2X), Grouping, Itemization

No doubt the best part of Fan Faire is talking to the developers. So far I’ve gotten to ask Rothgar both serious and geeky questions about the new UI, server upgrades, guild halls, and of course free-to-play.

I’ve made no secret of my concerns about the logistics of free to play seemingly cutting off the flow of new players to the live subscription side of EQ2.

SOE Community Address Rollup

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire), Expansion News, Free-to-Play (EQ2X)

Here’s a canonical summary of the SOE Community Address.

At under 50 minutes, this has to have been the shortest Community Address in the history of SOE Fan Faire events. We were advised to expect a ‘light’ event, but nothing could prepare us for nearly 20 minutes of banal, juvenile humor and heavy promotion for all things Jace Hall Productions. If you saw EverCracked, you get the idea.

   

Station Blog: EverQuest II Extended, Fan Faire, and Beyond

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Expansion News, Free-to-Play (EQ2X), Game Updates & Maintenance

Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson has followed up today’s big news with a blog post over on the Station Blog on what we can expect at Fan Faire, the future of the EverQuest II Extended (F2P) server, and some hints about what’s coming in updates surrounding the Destiny of Velious expansion. You can read his post on the Station Blog here.

Breaking: Big Announcement on Tuesday, More from SOE Block Party

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Expansion News, Game Updates & Maintenance, PvP/BG/Proving Grounds, Tradeskill

Breaking News from the SOE Block Party. Reporting by Serianna.

  • a big hint about larger item limit in houses, possibly from being able to use a 2nd expander.
  • new zone is going to be a guk zone.
  • possibly going to see a differentation in the lower guild halls (halas to look more like the halas housing etc) but still in way early stages on that. not green lighted but devs pushing for it.
  • new crafting quests in mid teirs.
  • some big announcement coming tuesday from smokejumper.
  • also talk about making BGs more dynamic. traps, levers, movable objects etc. with different ways to get points besides just kills and holding stuff and the like

Epic Slant: Hopes for Velious

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Expansion News

Our friend Farrel over at Epic Slant has done a great article on player expectations for the Destiny of Velious expansion.

Velious is not something you do lightly. It was the defining expansion of EverQuest and to put it on such a short product cycle is dangerous.

Velious was one of the largest content additions ever to hit EverQuest. The whole expansion was simply massive in scale. Three major cities were added, several open world zones, shared access dungeons and a raid zone that could support more than a single guild at a time. The EQ2 trend of “two over world zones” and some instances will not work here.

Georgeson Shuts the Door on F2P… or does he?

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Expansion News, Game Updates & Maintenance

On Friday June 4th, 2010, Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO) made news by announcing that the entire game was going to a Free-to-Play (F2P) model. Players can maintain a subscription, and receive most of the game and game items, but they’ll need to spend real money to get access to new items which appear on their marketplace.

This begged the question of whether other games such as EverQuest, EverQuest II, or World of Warcraft would move to a F2P model, and if they did so, whether it would be gamewide or if we would see the addition of new isolated F2P servers.

F2P Goldmine?

Thus far, it remains unclear if F2P has been the financial goldmine that SOE expected when they spent millions developing and marketing their kid-friendly FreeRealms. The game is popular, but it’s unknown outside SOE if enough people are buying items in the Marketplace to continue the experiment. Already, there has been one major revamp to FreeRealms, shifting the target audience from 10-15 downwards by making gameplay, combat, and quest completion easier.

Thus far, every addition of RMT elements to EQ2 has been extremely unpopular with players, at least in discussion forums. Applying a F2P model to established Subscription-based MMOs seems to be the “third rail” in MMO discussions. LotRO has jumped into F2P headfirst, marking some classes as premium, reducing character slots for non-paying customers, and putting powerful items in the marketplace.

During the Stratics interview at E3, the Free-to-Play question was raised, and Dave Georgeson (EQ2 Senior Producer) took a swing:

The current subscription model isn’t going to change. The people that are playing the game as it stands right now really like the way it is. They don’t want us to sell items for power in the marketplace. They want to be able to earn their way through and achieve things on their own. They don’t really want people to be able to get ahead with their wallet. So the existing business that we have right now is not going to change. If we were to do something outside of it, it would be completely separate.

Georgeson had a followup clarification on the EQ2 Forums:

We will not be changing your subscription model. We’ve heard you folks loud and clear that you do not want items with stats introduced, you don’t want players buying their way to power, etc. Your world will stay the way it has been and we will continue to support it with new content, items, etc.

Commentary

At first glance, this would seem to shut the door on F2P in EverQuest and EverQuest II’s future. However careful consideration of the interview and reading of these comments would seem to leave a crack open for the possibility of Free-to-Play appearing on isolated servers, much as the  Bazaar and Vox servers allow isolated RMT in EQ2. Clearly we’re in the realm of speculation here.

By the way, some are using the acronym FTP to describe Free-to-Play, however FTP is so widely used for File Transfer Protocol, we will be using F2P.

Expansion Date Guesstimations

We have been guesstimating that the 6th expansion for EverQuest II: Destiny of Velious would make an appearance this November. However based on Georgeson’s comments in this most recent interview, we’re now estimating that the expansion will not hit until early 2011. We’re a little over 1 month away from Fan Faire (August 5-8) so no doubt this date will be locked down before then.

Artist Highlight — Aaron “Gnobrin” Bisnett

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Art, Appearance, Housing, Expansion News

From EQ2Players:

Aaron “Gnobrin” Bisnett is the Community Team’s gnomish graphics guru by day and the EQII team’s art apprentice by night! When he isn’t dropping in and taking a few thousand screenshots that we absolutely must have tomorrow!! he’s turning his hand to drawing some really beautiful things that are being added to the stunning items already found in Norrath.


Hammers and Cleavers


Stained Glass (left) and Tinkerfest (right) Cloaks

You can read the full interview and look at more images of Gnobrin‘s artwork at EQ2Players.

EQ2 Senior Producer on Priorities

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Expansion News

Seccia Ravenloft, writing for The Tattered Notebook at Massively.com, posted the results of an interview with EQ2 Senior Producer Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson on the EQ2 Forums. In response, players expressed their opinion that the interviewers didn’t ask any hard questions.

The EQ2 Senior Producer had this to say:

I’ll be honest. I’m not one of those guys that creates a “mission statement”.

Online games are amorphous. We have two real purposes in life: a) To entertain as many people as we possibly can, and b) make some money along the way so that we can continue to create more entertainment.

How we do that changes on a regular basis as we push forward based on lots of things like: Public expectations; the industry changing around us; what constitutes entertainment (yes, that changes slowly, but steadily); and many other elements.

So for now, we’re doing three things:

  1. We’re developing the next big expansion (and a big update before that expansion comes out) so that we can keep new stuff rolling into the world of Norrath because new stuff is good entertainment. This includes new areas, new ways to play, new loot, balance changes and modifications to the current systems to make them more fun. NOTE: This is our primary focus at the moment and constitutes the bulk of our development resources and time.
  2. We’re working to make the game more easily entered by new folks so that we can keep the playerbase growing. Why? Because it’s really obvious to us that new folks bounce pretty hard because of the learning curve of our game, and without new folks coming in, the game will eventually stagnate…which would suck for all us, devs and players alike.
  3. We’re analyzing the “empty world” situation in the mid-level zones and thinking about possible solutions to revitalize all the fantastic content in this game and fill it with players so everyone’s not crowded into the end parts of the game.

Now…these directions are not permanent. We will always be staying flexible with our goals. And that’s why I will never issue a “mission statement”. But that’s what we’re focused on right now.

Fair enough?

Commentary

The suggestion that there is “a big update” before “the expansion comes out” further points to Velious (or part of Velious) arriving in November or December.

Velious Wieldables

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Art, Appearance, Housing, Expansion News

In a recent post on the EQ2 Forums, Dave “Covic” Brown brought us news that he’s been able to bring on an apprentice to help with character design. Covic has now elaborated on what that will mean for the Destiny of Velious expansion:

I have an apprentice working on wieldables right now. His stuff is awesome. We are really trying to have every drop you get from the next expansion be new geo (geometry). There will be re-textures of the new geo, but little to no use of old geo if we can help it. He has already made items for 1h swords, 2h swords, 1h crush, 2h crush, pike, spear, shields (bucklers and round), and daggers. He still has to do some bows, and I think he has done some staffs already.

No word on crossbows or nunchucks just yet.

EQ2 Senior Producer Responds to Feedback, SC Mounts

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Commentary, Daybreak Cash, Expansion News, Game Updates & Maintenance

Previous EQ2 Senior Producers Alan “Brenlo” Crosby and Bruce Ferguson rarely responded directly to player inquiries. Thus we featured their posts here on EQ2Wire in separate posts.

However Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson has been tearing up the EQ2 Forums in two threads:

EverQuest II: Destiny of Velious

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Expansion News

From EQ2 ZAM:

EverQuest II players have long hoped for an expansion returning players to Velious.  Scars of Velious, the second expansion in the original EverQuest, was a favorite of long-time players.  With the appearance of the the icy Order of Rime last summer many players were sure Velious was coming, and were surprised when Sentinel’s Fate took EQII players to the lost island of Odus.
Astute player Vulkoor found some interesting files downloading in April, which included othmir (an otter race from Velious) and Tserrina the near-legendary boss of the original Tower of Frozen Shadow.  The appearance of Coldain dwarves in New Halas (now on the EQII test servers), have expectations high.

Today, observant (and persistant) players found an entry at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.  Sony Online Entertainment has applied for the trademark on EVERQUEST II DESTINY OF VELIOUS.

While we’re sure SOE will not announce the 7th EverQuest II expansion before they’re ready, we feel confident in predicting that yes, the next expansion will return us to the land of snow bunnies and Thurgadin, frost giants and the Temple of Veeshan.

With the entire EQ2 team now back to work on EQ2 content, hopefully we get the Velious expansion we’d all like to see.

EQ2 Test Files Point to Expansion, Live Event

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Expansion News

Game Update 56, or least major chunks of it have been pushed to the Test Server. Already, I and other players have noted that certain textures are missing (especially with Shaders 3.0 enabled), and all housing is currently unavailable (making it impossible to take a peek inside the 2, 4, and 6 bedroom New Halas housing.

But what may be more interesting is not what files are missing, but what files are unexpected. Because the Live and Test Servers are just another development branch of EQ2, inevitably, some Expansion and future Game Update/Live Event files get tagged and download to our computers.

Close examination of these files have revealed some tantalizing peaks into the next expansion, as well as a preamble event.

* MAJOR SPOILER ALERT * MAJOR SPOILER ALERT *

If you don’t like spoilers about the next Expansion, then don’t read further.


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