We’re now just 1 month away from SOE’s Fan Faire convention in Las Vegas and we have some news regarding those who intend to participate in the EQ2 tournament and/or costume contest. Unlike past EQ2 tournaments, this year’s will have little to do with actual EQ2 gameplay and instead be an Aether flying race, with players being selected for earning the fastest times.

SOE Costume Contest

The ever-popular SOE Fan Faire Costume Contest will be returning this year, and it’s going to be better than ever.

We’ll be doing a few things differently this year. All contestants will need to be pre-registered at the Information Booth in the Grand Bally Room. Sign up will start on Thursday, July 7th, after 6:00 p.m. and will continue until 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, July 9th.

More at EverQuest2.com

EQ2 Fan Faire Tournament

Spring Training for the EQII Fan Faire Tournament

If you’re attending Fan Faire 2011 and plan to participate in the EQII Tournament, then you’ll want to log in to Test or Test Copy server and practice on the tournament course…available for a limited time only!

This week we’ll be showing off the Great Divide Aether Race at E3 in Los Angeles, and this is your shot to do a few laps ahead of time and learn the ins and outs! The course was activated on Monday morning, June 6th, and will be available until around 11:00 PM PDT on Thursday, June 9th.

More at EverQuest2.com.

EQ2Wire would like to know, will you attend Fan Faire 2011?

Do you have a question you’d like asked at Fan Faire by EQ2Wire? If so, post it in the Comments, or send us an e-mail!

If you watched yesterday afternoon’s SOE Fan Faire webcast, then you already know that Linda “Brasse” Carlson will be stepping up as this year’s official Host of Fan Faire. A Jace Hall-free weekend in Vegas  is certainly something to celebrate with lots of Dwarvish Ale. 🙂

I’ve been wracking my brain on stuff that I can say that won’t get me fired! We’ll see how that turns out. I’ve already got approval from Legal on a couple of them. Now we just have to get approval from Community and Smed.

The EQ2 special in-game item for our Fan Faire attendees has just been announced on SOE’s Facebook page.

• “Prismatic Cloud” – This magical rainbowed mount is sure to carry you all the way!

From EverQuest2.com:

We’re back up and Early Bird pricing has been extended until May 31st!  We’ve been busy planning and have announced several updates to the schedule and will continue to do so over the coming weeks, so please continuously check back for details!  Thank you again for your patience and we look forward to seeing you in July!

All-Access Passes to the expanded SOE Fan Faire are now available for purchase at the early bird price of $119.00 USD which includes access to developer forums, panels and roundtables along with goody-bags and giveaways.

Attendees who register after May 6, 2011 can purchase an All-Access Pass for $129.00 USD.

Less than 7 weeks out, we are rather short on details about the Fan Faire itinerary of events. Still if you want to save $10, you’ve got until May 31st to register at the reduced rate.

From EverQuest2.com:

Time is running out to register for Fan Faire 2011 at the early bird price of $119.00 US!

All-Access passes to the expanded SOE Fan Faire are now available for purchase at the early bird price of $119.00 USD which includes access developer forums, panels and roundtables along with goody-bags and giveaways.

This year, Fan Faire has eschewed the different levels of access to Fan Faire in favor of a single All-Access ticket price of $129 with an early bird discount of $10.

From EverQuest2.com:

Get ready to celebrate this summer at SOE’s annual Fan Faire with your fellow gamers and the creators of your favorite SOE games! Register now and join us at Fan Faire, the prime time to meet up with old friends and make plenty of new ones while getting a behind-the-scenes look at your favorite SOE titles, participate in live game tournaments, experience live quests, attend developer panels and more!

All-Access passes to the expanded SOE Fan Faire are now available for purchase at the early bird price of $119.00 USD which includes access developer forums, panels and roundtables along with goody-bags and giveaways.

From the EQ2 Forums:

Attention Fan Faire Attendees and EverQuest II: Extended Platinum Members: We have some hot news that we think will make your day!

You’re already slated to receive the EverQuest II: Destiny of Velious Digital Standard Edition on 2/22/11 as part of your EverQuest II: Extended Platinum Membership or Fan Faire 2010 attendance, but we understand that many of you wished to upgrade to the Digital Collector’s Edition of Destiny of Velious so you can enjoy the bonus items and content.

Here’s the great news! It is now possible to pre-order the Digital Collector’s Edition and pay an upgrade cost of just $20.00 (USD). That’s right! You will not be charged the full $59.99 for the pre-order, but rather pay an upgrade cost of just $20.00.

From EverQuest2.com:

The Station Store has been stocked with the great T-shirts, Sweatshirts, and Hoodies from Fan Faire. Alas, the Hooded Sweatshirts are only available in 3XL, but other items are available in a range of sizes. If you’ve been looking for a good EQ2 shirt, check out the Station Store.

From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums:

Fan Faire folks will be authorized to enter the beta on Jan 5th with everyone else but are automatically authorized (after they fill out the application!)

From SOEFanFaire.com:

SAVE THE DATE FOR FAN FAIRE 2011

July 7-9, 2011 @ Bally’s Las Vegas

Make the Trek, Meet New Friends and Get Your Game On!

SOE wants to know where and when people would prefer to have Fan Faire 2011.  Your choices are Vegas or Vegas.  Go vote for your prefered hotel and dates.   Amnerys posted this on the official forums:

It’s that time again folks! Time to tell us where and when you want to attend Fan Faire 2011! We have two choices for you, both of them in Las Vegas. The first one sends us back to Bally’s, July 7th through the 9th. The other option takes us to the Hilton, August 4th through the 6th. Head on over to the Fan Faire forums to vote in the official poll and let us know which dates you prefer.

The poll includes hotel room prices, as well, to help you make your decision. Registration prices will be announced at a later date.

Thanks so much for your input on this year’s Fan Faire! We can’t wait to see you there, at whichever option is chosen!

Remember that contest that SOE held prior to Fan Faire? The one where the winners would get a Bloggie camera to record things? Well SOE has announced the winners and uploaded their footage to YouTube. Details and links after the break.

Players have been advised about The Dangers of Buying Plat and/or Power Leveling services for a couple of years now, including the consequences such as compromised accounts.

However this July, SOE became aware of a more insidious and direct attack upon the EQ2 playerbase. We’re talking about an Account Phishing Scam that encourages players to login to an official-looking website using their SOE Station credentials. Personal information including logins, passwords, e-mail addresses, account names, are logged and eventually used to strip characters and otherwise compromise accounts for plat and item distribution within the game.

In the Account Fraud panel at Fan Faire, as well as some discussions with SOE staff, we have determined some sobering data points.

SmokeJumper posted on the EQ2 Forums:

Hey, folks,

Just wanted to let you know that we recorded all the sessions at Fan Faire, transcribed all the questions, and the team leads have spent the last couple of days pouring over the lists and prioritizing them for action.

We’ll be spending several weeks making fixes and changes based on the feedback we got there and then update the game with those fixes in mid-October.

We’ll post the list of what’s changing much closer to when we launch so that we don’t accidentally overcommit, but we think you’ll be pleased with a lot of the fixes.

Thought you’d be interested to know this is happening. More later!

Xelgad has responded to a detailed thread on Illusionist Class Issues:

Hey guys, long time no see! We got some good feedback at Fan Faire which I wanted to share.
I agree that Time Warp ended up being more annoying than it is fun or rewarding. Unfortunately, it was one of those things that looked okay on paper but didn’t work in practice. We have it changed internally so that there is no longer an immunity timer associated with the spell, and it now grants the Illusionist the buff as well as the target. This should be coming to the test servers with (or before) GU58. If you want, you can just macro the spell to a group member and spam it as a self-buff, but I envision some players being more tactical with it. You can even spam it on yourself, but you don’t get double benefit – unless, of course, you cast it on your pet. We also changed the icon so that the warning icon looks different than the actual buff, and the buff now looks like the Tsunami (Monk ability) icon, so that it shouldn’t be shared with any other mage abilities.

Some of your other issues, such as buffs providing no benefit due to being capped, will be addressed with the upcoming expansion. There are some other changes that we hope to make before the expansion, but I can’t promise anything yet.

Please feel free to continue to post constructive feedback.

Xelgad has posted a flurry of responses to specific class issues today.

This one, in regards to Critical Heals which have been removed from all fighters. For some fighter classes, critical heals might have been overpowered, but for Paladins (joshingly referred to as Healadins), losing all crititical heals has had class altering effects not only in solo situations (which this nerf was intended to fix) but in group and raid setups.

We’ve been hearing about some ranger love for about 3 expansions now, but at Fan Faire, we heard the first concrete info. Xelgad has elaborated on just what we can expect in an update falling between GU57 and GU58 (hopefully 4-6 weeks from now:

Greetings, Mighty Forces!

AE Auto-Attack and Flurry are indeed on the way for bows. We’re also removing the 20% damage penalty for bows, and we’re increasing the damage rating on all 81-90 bows (along with throwing weapons) by about 10%. The intent is to allow you guys to get full benefit from buffs and gear, not to make the class entirely focused on Auto-Attack.

You know how you get more auto-attack damage from your melee weapons in many cases than from your bow? These changes should fix that, unless your melee weapons are simply of much higher quality than your bow. At most, your auto-attack may jump from ~20% of your parse up to ~30% on raids, but I’d be surprised if many people end up with it higher than that.

Thanks for all of your feedback.

You can join the discussion on this issue in the thread What’s this all about? (bow changes) on the EQ2 Forums.

Here is the 4-part Destiny of Velious panel for EQ2 from Saturday at Fan Faire 2010. I cut out my own off-the-screen capture of the Destiny of Velious preview trailer because it has been released to the press in High Definition.

[EQ2Wire] EQ2 Expansion “Destiny of Velious” Panel (playlist)

Here is the 6-part Question & Answer panel for EQ2 from Saturday at Fan Faire 2010.

[EQ2Wire] Fan Faire 2010 – EQ2 Q&A Saturday Panel (playlist)

I have just posted all 6 parts of the EQ2 Mechanics / Class Balance panel from Fan Faire 2010.

[EQ2Wire] Fan Faire 2010 – EQ2 Mechanics Panel (playlist)

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

EQ2Wire was borne out of the desire and thrilling concept of having a LIVE blog of Fan Faire. For the last 2 years, the EQ2-related panels have been about 50-50 with 50% presentations/content, and 50% Questions & Answers. This year, the panels were significantly lighter on content, with closer to 75% of each panel focused on Questions & Answers.

This put me, as the sole blogger trying to tackle 6 panels, at a genuine disadvantage. As I found out during Fan Faire, Questions & Answers are much more difficult to capture and blog live without inaccuracies and misinterpretations slipping in.

No panel has been put under more scrutiny than the EQ2 Extended panel. Hundreds of players at home were refreshing the EQ2Wire live blog for this panel, hanging on every word to see if the game they love — EverQuest II — would be changed forever. Readers have been scrambling for details on this emotional topic.

If you checked out our Fan Faire Banquet & Costume Contest, you’ll know that “Billy” was the popular winner, by far. “Billy” (played by Marlee of Mistmoore) has posted a comment to the EQ2Wire with more info:

Billy won a a $200 gift card and $10 in Station cash. It was the wickedest fun I have had in a long time and I hope I provided good entertainment. I was proud to represent my guild (Company of Wolves), server (Mistmoore), and raid alliance (Fortune Hunters of Mistmoore). And the coolest thing? I could scratch myself in public and get away with it!

Calthine over at EQ2 ZAM has just posted high resolution concept art as well as the teaser trailer for EverQuest II: Destiny of Velious.

If you are looking for the teaser trailer in High Definition, look no further than OnlineGamerPortal-DE who have posted the Destiny of Velious teaser trailer in 720p.