From the EQ2 Forums:

Join Sony Online Entertainment at Bally’s Las Vegas, from August 5th through 8th, for three days of fun and games at Fan Faire 2010.  If you’ve never been to an SOE Fan Faire before, this is the time to make the trek to Sin City! Fan Faire is a great place for gamers to mix, mingle and meet with some of the faces behind their favorite SOE titles.

• Special announcements and sneak peaks of upcoming SOE titles
• In-game tournaments and live, game-themed competitions and quests
• Developer forums and roundtables
• Cool giveaways and other fun items!

And that’s just the beginning! Visit the Fan Faire website at www.soefanfaire.com for up-to-date information on registration, pricing and schedules. Tickets are expected to go on sale early this spring.

Hotel costs are looking fairly reasonable:

The special SOE rate at Bally’s Las Vegas is currently $65 plus tax on Thursday night, and $85 plus tax on Friday and Saturday night, while supplies last.

We noticed that a new Platinum package has been added at the $139 level:

• Second Fan Faire in-game item for your primary game!  Yes, this means you get two with a Platinum Pass!
• Unlimited green screen photos with the backgrounds of your choice!
• VIP Check-In Lounge for Platinum Pass Holders only!
• Premium Gift Bag with special giveaways (to be announced)
• Private VIP events for Platinum Pass Holders only!  You don’t want to miss out on this!  Details to follow!

Schedule

Although an official schedule has not yet been posted, and probably won’t be for another month or two, for those needing to make hotel and flight arrangements as early as possible, here is an outline of the schedule we’ve seen for the last few years:

• Thursday — Welcome Reception, Fan Faire weekend sneak preview.
• Friday morning — SOE sessions and panels, live events, and in-game tournaments.
• Friday afternoon — Game-specific Q&A sessions and panels, live events, and in-game tournaments.
• Friday night — SOE Fan Faire Party
• Saturday day — Game-specific Q&A sessions and panels, live events, and in-game tournaments.
• Saturday night — Banquet and closing ceremonies
• Sunday morning — Attendee check-out

NOTE: There is no guarantee they won’t change the schedule for this year.

For more information, and for the promotional code to book your hotel, check out the official SOE Fan Faire 2010 Website.

Brewday is coming to Norrath, with all new rewards, quests, and recipes. As always, the best previews of these live events can be found at Niami’s EQTraders site. Here’s her Brewday 2010 Preview. Brewday shall run from March 11 – 22nd this year. Check out that awesome backpack!!

The City Festival has rolled into its third destination since these Festivals began in January. The first event was in Kelethin, then Gorowyn. Today, the City Festival arrives just outside the gates of the city of all things dark and gloomy — Neriak.

Once again, a selection of both local and traveling rewards, house items, and temporary costumes become available.

The theme for Neriak seems to be all things blue. Here’s a sneak of what you can purchase with City Tokens for the next week, before the event rolls on to the next city:

As of 12:40pm PST From Kiara:

EU servers are now up.

The BG’s have not been enabled for any of the international servers, due to the database issue.

We’ll let you know when they will be available.

Thank you for your patience today, we appreciate it.

It has been an interesting week, to say the least. Expansion launch weeks always are. It’s also been a rather bumpy ride for the servers and developers resolving issues that made it through Beta.

We’re trying to get back into the habit at EQ2Wire of skimming the forums and finding the gems of info which may be of interest to our readers. Here’s the standouts for this week:

• What is the Golden Path?
• Adornment and Tinkering Recipes Not Dropping
• Guard Level bump to 95
• TSO Tradeskill Instance recipe books
• Will of aTyrant questlines remain
• nVidia 3D Vision
• Shaders 3.0

The phase of the moon is just right and the mushroom rings will be active again for a short time.

There are more house items and other rewards than ever for the Moonlight Enchantments event this time around.

The event will turn on at 12:01am PDT on February 20th and run until 11:59pm PDT on February 21st. These times apply directly with no time conversion to all servers.

Kiara has officially announced the Digital Download partners for International customers.

Greetings!

We’re pleased to announce the International Digital Download Distributors for Sentinel’s Fate.  Our international customers will be able to digitally download the expansion and begin playing on February 16th!  We appreciate your patience as we’ve worked out all the details.

Accepting Orders Today

DLGamer – £29.95 (34,95 €) ($46.88)
English | French | German

Direct2Drive – £29.95 (34,95 €) ($46.88)
English | French | German

Accepting orders February 16th

Steam
visit Steam

International customers will be able to DD the expansion on February 16th and take advantage of the headstart offer.

They will receive the DD version of the game and the things included in that package:

• These include:
  • 500 Station Cash
  • LoN Fall of Erudin scenario
  • 30 days free play time for new accounts
  • In-game armor piece – Guarding of the Learned

Continuing Coverage

EQ2Wire is continuing to follow this story. If you are unable to purchase the Digital Download through these sites outside of the United States and Canada, we’d like to know about it! If you find any tips or tricks on how to order the product through these websites, please let us know either by Comment or by sending us e-mail.

Sentinel’s Fate Digital Download

We are getting reports that the Sentinel’s Fate expansion has appeared on Digital Download websites for customers outside the United States and Canada. If you hear of other sites, please let us know! We are still expecting a formal announcement at 9:30am PST today of the Digital Download partners.

If you are outside the United States and Canada, you should now be able to purchase Sentinel’s Fate from these websites (of course we would be curious to know if any of you have trouble with these sites):

DLGamer – £29.95 (34,95 €) ($46.88)

Direct2Drive – £29.95 (34,95 €) ($46.88)

Bad News for Amazon.com Pre-Orders

We’ve gotten a report that Amazon is telling its Sentinel’s Fate pre-order customers the following:

Severe Weather Alert: Due to winter storms on the East Coast of the United States, many packages will be delayed.

With hardly a moment to spare, we will soon find out where the EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate expansion will be available for purchase as a Digital Download.

We will be releasing the distributors and the links to their sites tomorrow morning after 9am PST. It will be up in this thread about 9:30am PST as soon as I walk in the office. The list will be updated as more information comes in, but will be good to get everyone started. — Kiara

Current wisdom indicates that if your IP address is recognized as being outside of the United States and Canada, you will be able to play the DD on February 16th. If not, you will be waiting until February 23rd.

Commentary

I’d like to know…Are there any positions open in the SOE Marketing Dept? I’d love to be able to completely fumble the international launch of a top 10 MMORPG expansion, take late lunches, and not lose a wink of sleep at night, all while its Developers and Community team are working 14 hour days including weekends to develop and release a game that a lot of people won’t be able to play. Must be nice.

Erollisi Day festivities started at midnight, February 4th (after a brief hotfix) and will run until the expansion (February 16th).

Erollisi Day is the celebration of the goddess of love and all things related to the emotion that sets hearts to galloping!

With the return of Erollisi Day, many of your favourite activities from previous years’ celebrations are making comebacks with new rewards!

Erollisi Day @ EQ2Players

Erollisi Day 2010 Event @ EQ2 ZAM

Erollisi Day Crafting @ EQTraders

Erollisi Day is now on Test and according to a forum post by  Kaitheel, we should expect this event to be on Live servers from February 4th until the (February 16th).

Among other things we can expect in this event are another variation on Nektropos Castle related to this event, new quests in Antonica and Thundering Steppes, and more tradeskill and house item goodness.

It seems sanity has prevailed at SOE. From EQ2 Forums:

The status of retail distribution for Sentinel’s Fate at launch internationally is still uncertain. However in an effort to properly serve our international community we have partnered with several digital distributors who will be providing the expansion to our international customers only starting on Feb 16th 2010. The digital downloads will be IP locked so that only the international community can take advantage of this.

When it became apparent that whoever at SOE Marketing signed deals with Amazon, GameStop, and Best Buy forgot about the rest of the world, this should have been immediately addressed.

Instead, we’ve had 2 months of fear, uncertainty, and doubt about whether players in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Rim would even be able to play the expansion before late February.

I’d just like to personally thank whoever was SOE Marketing Dept‘s secret santa and got them this great gift:

City Festivals

City Festivals are now live. The first one is just outside of Kelethin near the Butcherblock Mts. ramp. City Festivals are held the first week of every month. If you have been doing city writs, tradeskill work orders, etc. you may have noticed a curious item — City Tokens — as quest rewards. City writs, tradeskill writs, and special quests only available during the City Festivals will all earn you City Tokens which can be spent to buy house items, special appearance gear, etc.

For all those folks wishing to see more activity in the cities, here’s your chance. These festivals are accessible to all alignments regardless of city due to them festival parking just outside the city gate and offering quests to all who visit.

Frostfell Ending Soon

If you haven’t run all of the Frostfell quests, including the Icy Keep: Return which requires a group, or any of the other quests, tradeskilling, etc. don’t miss out! Frostfell ends January 7th.

EQ2Wire would like to wish a Happy New Year to all of you. We’ll be back with more news about the EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate expansion and any other news in the world of Norrath soon.

SOE is bringing back Double Station Cash for nearly two weeks just in time for Christmas.

Starting December 23, 2009 and lasting through January 3, 2010, redeem any StationCash card for double credit. Cards may be purchased anytime in advance, but must be redeemed successfully during the promotional period in order to receive the bonus.  These are currently branded as FreeRealms Station Cash cards but are applicable to all SOE games. Points can be redeemed at FreeRealms.com or the Station website.

Starter and Month Subscription cards do not count.

Press Release at EQ2 ZAM

Some of you may be interested in these Frostfell-themed items coming to StationCash Marketplace on December 22, 2009.

Red Baby Dragon Plushie and Merry Frostfell Backpack

Posting on EQ2Players

The phase of the moon is just right and the mushroom rings will be active again for a short time.

There are more house items and other rewards than ever for the Moonlight Enchantments event this time around.

The event will turn on at 12:01am PDT on December 20th and run until 11:59pm PDT on December 21st. These times apply directly with no time conversion to all servers.

The servers are coming down in a few minutes for what will be a 9 hour downtime for some server maintenance, a hotfix to hopefully fix the multitude of bugs introduced with Game Update 54, and of course to patch in Frostfell!!

EQ2Players Downtime Announcement

Servers will be back up at 10am PST or 1pm EST.

It’s going to be a busy week for Norrathians.

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In other news, the Highland Stalker — the Sentinel’s Fate Collector’s Edition mount — will get a speed boost over the previous announcement. Out-of-the-box it will have a runspeed of 65%.

Looking Ahead

On December 20th, we’ll see the return of the monthly Moonlight Enchantments event which takes places in the forests of Norrath. These zones will have several new house item rewards including tiles with the textures of water, clouds, sand, etc.

Also around the first of January, we can expect the new City Festivals to start up. Every month, there will be a city festival just outside the gates of one city for the first week of that month. These offer many house item and other rewards.

Kiara has brought us the great news about the Six Year Veteran Rewards. I have to say these are some great items!! Check out the preview at EQ2Players.

Also, Frostfell is expected to appear in Norrath on December 10th.

Since our exposé on the lack of options for anyone outside the continental United States to order the EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate expansion, it seems we stirred up a hornet’s nest behind the scenes, causing the resolution of at least  some of the issues facing EverQuest II customers.

We are now able to report that BestBuy.com has corrected its release date to February 16th, Amazon.com is now offering shipping outside the U.S., and Amazon.ca is now offering Sentinel’s Fate for sale directly to Canadian customers. We are still awaiting word of the selection of one or more international distributors.

The official news from Marketing posted on the EQ2 forums by Kiara (who has been repeatedly and completely unjustly thrown under the bus on this issue):

Update from sales regarding shipping from Amazon, Best Buy, and GameStop:

Amazon.com – Amazon will have all the information fixed by Friday AM.  They will also have all the shipping options spelled out for both International and N.A. customers.  Players will be able to choose an option for release date delivery in the continental U.S.  International customers will have the ability to get the expansion day one but that all depends on how early the order is placed and willingness to pay shipping costs.  They are also working with Amazon to start shipping on the February 9th to get to international players on day one and working with Amazon Canada to have release day delivery.

Best Buy.com – Best buy has added the pre-order button and put the 16th as the date of release.  They will have the site perfect by Thursday night.  They do not guarantee same day delivery; but like Amazon, they may start shipping on the 10th to hit houses on the 16th.  They are working with Best Buy to on this.

GameStop – They know they need to add more information for our customers and will do so ASAP.  Also GameStop Canada is going to be ready for this release.  They just put the GameStop Canadian site up yesterday.

When I have further word on international distributors, I’ll pass that along as well.  There currently is no updated information on how those discussions are working out.

SOE are apparently in talks with 2 international distributors and looking at options to make sure that Sentinel’s Fate is available locally in countries outside the U.S.

EQ2Wire has been trying to get some answers about the EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate Pre-Order for the past 2 1/2 weeks.

We contacted the SOE PR department with a detailed list of questions. We received an e-mail which quoted the Press Release but which did not answer any of our submitted questions.

We sent an e-mail to SOE President John Smedley on November 19th with those same concerns and additional questions. At present, we have received no response to this e-mail.

Where do we Stand?

Going into December 2009, just where do American, North American (Canada, Mexico), and International customers stand with regards to the EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate expansion Pre-Order?

The answer: Left out in the cold.

Amazon.com

BestBuy.com

GameStop.com

Here’s the Reader’s Digest version of where we stand right now:

• Amazon.com is listing a Release Date of February 16, 2010 and will not ship until February 15. With standard shipping, Amazon.com is estimating an arrival date of February 22-24, 2010.
• Amazon.com refuses to ship the expansion outside of the U.S.

• BestBuy.com is listing a Release Date of February 17, 2010 and will not ship until February 16. With standard shipping, BestBuy.com is estimating an arrival date as late as February 23, 2010.
• BestBuy.com doesn’t even have box art for the expansion yet.

• GameStop.com is listing a Release Date of February 16, 2010 and will not ship until February 15. With standard shipping, GameStop.com is estimating an arrival date of February 22-24, 2010.
• GameStop.com is inexplicably limiting the number of EverQuest II: Collector’s Edition sets to 2 per household.

If you want to know where you can pre-order EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate Collector’s Edition (whether you live in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, or Asia) and receive it on February 16th, 2010, without spending $100~140, the answer is NOWHERE. If you want to buy 3 copies of the Collector’s Edition, then none of those 3 retailers will be able to help you, no matter how much money you offer.

Make no mistake folks, the Release Date, Street Date, Ship Dates, pricing, and regional shipping authorization are all determined by the SOE Marketing Department. Their complete failure to manage this situation and have an International Distributor selected before announcing this Pre-Order is a farce.

There has still been no explanation for why the game is not available from BestBuy.CA (serving Canada), Amazon.co.UK, Amazon.DE, Amazon.FR, etc.

So far, all polite, constructive attempts to contact SOE Marketing have failed. They are the division of SOE which seems the most insulated from the public (no Facebook or Twitter pages, rarely post on the SOE Forums), and yet seem to be the division that most needs to hear the public’s feedback.

At this point, it seems the biggest roadblock to customers being able to buy EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate in a timely fashion, are the SOE Marketing Dept.

Available for Thanksgiving week only, there are 10 new paintings available in Norrath from the City Merchants in Qeynos and Freeport. As I was writing this article, I discovered a writeup at EQ2 Wiki with the names, screen snapshots, and descriptions of each painting. A merchant window retouched to show the 10 winning paintings:

The First Prize winning “Destroyer of Ordanach” by Citadelli.

One of the nine Second Prize winners “Prayer of the Righteous” by Enna.

All 10 paintings can be viewed at your local City Merchant or at EQ2 Wikia.

These items may be available later on, but for the time being, they are only intended to be available for this 5th anniversary celebration week. Join the Discussion on EQ2 Forums.

From EQ2 Forums:

The Heroes’ Festival has begun!  A call has gone out to all Norrathian adventurers to commemorate the five years that have passed since the Refuge Islands first began collecting those lost in the turbulent oceans.  Celebrators, happy to share in the festivities, can be found in North and South Qeynos or West and South Freeport.

Quest starters are in North and South Qeynos, as well as West and NORTH Freeport.

• EQ2 ZAM Wiki page with Heroes’ Festival info
• EQ2 Forums discussion on Heroes’ Festival
• Post on Facebook

Note: This is the EQII 5th Anniversary event, which went live on November 24, 2009 and is expected to end on November 30, 2009.

Note: Currently these 5 year anniversary events require The Shadow Odyssey expansion. This was unintentional and a hotfix will correct the issue.

It seems very odd to the EQ2Wire that an event which will only last 7 days has a reward that will never be available again and there is no announcement on EQ2Players.

Windslasher brings us news that the Qeynos/Freeport World Event first mentioned a few weeks back will be activated on Test and Test Copy hopefully this evening. This should be the source of storylines and lore expected to lead us into the Sentinel’s Fate (Odus) expansion. As soon as we have more info about this event, and whether it will go live with Game Update 54 (Will of the Tyrant), we’ll let you know!

Kiara has posted the following update regarding SoE’s efforts to locate one or more international distributors for EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate.

Answers!  Not all the answers that everyone wants, naturally, but definitely better than nothing, for certain.

1)  The coupon in the retail box for the $10 in the Station Store is for the DD version of SF only.  Good for folks with more than one account or for those who want to gift to a friend to get them into the game.

2)  Still waiting on the lists of where Amazon and GameStop will ship.  Sharp sticks have been employed in the poking phase of “Can we please have this?”

3)  Best news for last!  I don’t have details and couldn’t release them even if I did… However, our sales team is speaking with a couple of publishers and trying to work out details of international distribution.  As soon as we have the deals signed, we’ll make sure to give you the details on this.

Thank you all very much for your patience with all of this as we try to smooth out wrinkles and get you the information you need.

EQ2Wire deduced that SoE were “between distributors” when international retail storefronts listed and then de-listed the expansion. When questioned, they reported that they had “no source” to order the product. EQ2Wire will keep you updated on further news as we hear it.