Today’s hotfix adds house items (furniture) to a merchant in Hua Mein, moves Research Assistants into the UI, fixes an exploit in StationCash Item Gifting, and offers additional tweaks to PvP and PvP Warfields. After the jump, your Hotfix Notes for December 7, 2010.
As has been widely reported, when StationCash Item Gifting was added to SOE games, players realized that they could create new accounts and sign up for trials of SWG, EQ2, and other games and receive free StationCash in each game. With the ability to Gift items, players were able to gift hundreds of StationCash items to themselves without spending a penny.
Item Gifting will be coming back sometime this week, with suitable controls to prevent further exploits. More details after the jump…
From the EQ2 Forums:
We’ve found a problem with the Gifting option for the EQII Marketplace, so the service will be temporarily disabled until early next week when we can patch a fix for this issue. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Commentary
It is unknown how many players exploited the StationCash Gifting feature, what punishment they can expect, or when exactly this feature will be restored.
In response to a conversation about the division of development time between EQ2, StationCash items, and Legends of Norrath, Calthine of EQ2 ZAM made a statement that elicited a response from SmokeJumper. That response confirmed on Thursday what many of us have believed but been unable to prove.
Since the introduction of StationCash Marketplace, StationCash Items have been designed and tested by the main EQ2 team and not, as has been posited, by a separate team of artists and programmers. SmokeJumper indicates that this is changing, and with the revenue from SC/LoN, SOE have been able to justify hiring an artist to create said items.
Editor’s Note: Post has been updated with 2 additional quotes.
SOE have brought back their StationCash Discount program ‘Super Fan’ again, this time offering 25% off and 35% large denominations, as well as special items each day for SOE’s major games. Remember, StationCash can be used for character slots (normally $10 to buy a lifetime character slot), character transfers, and other items. And in time for Frostfell, StationCash items can now be gifted to other players.
From the EQ2 Forums:
File this under “It was only a matter of time”.
New this week on the StationCash Marketplace is a 5 charge item for 250 SC ($2.50 normally, $1.25 if you stocked up during the sale) which opens a portal which you and nearby friends can use for up to 30 seconds to all World Travel Bell locations.
If you’ve been thinking you might want to stock up on StationCash to buy Character Slots, Name or Race change potions, Server Transfers, Vitality potions, etc. or the latest set of appearance armor, or even a set of furniture for your house, today is the last day to buy StationCash at a 50% price discount. Unlike past Double StationCash Weekends, this promotion works with credit cards and Paypal-funded StationCash and thus can be funded in Europe and other parts of the world.
As part of SOE Super Fan days, every day has also brought an additional 50% discount to one item. Today’s 50% off item (a total of 75% off if you buy StationCash at the discount as well) is the Smoked Leatherhide Armor Crate:
The latest news story on EverQuest2.com (formerly EQ2Players.com) is an article about a new SOE marketing program called “SOE Super Fan Days“. After reading the article, I still have some questions, especially as I am now stationed in Europe, where StationCash cards are not available. There seem to be two aspects to this promotion.
First, is that every day, one SOE game will have a special item that is 50% off. So on one day, it seems EQ2 will have 1 item for 50% off the StationCash price.
Second, it seems that under some circumstance(s), StationCash can be purchased at half price. It’s not clear which circumstances, and understanding is further clouded by the fine print:
Promotion does not include purchases made via SMS or pre-paid cards. See promotional email for details.
We haven’t seen the e-mail, but when we do, we’ll update this article as needed.
Is it time to just rip off the Band-Aid™ and be done with it?
Unannounced in this week’s additions to the StationCash Marketplace were the addition of in-game merchant-bought arrows (no great shakes compared to woodworker-made ones) to the StationCash Marketplace. When prompted on the EQ2 Forums, EQ2 Senior Producer Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson had this response:
They’re just the basic arrows you can get from merchants. It’s a convenience thing for folks that run out of arrows in the field.
and later in a similar topic in the Tradeskills forum:
It’s pure convenience. Some players are willing to spend a buck to avoid leaving a raid or dungeon to resupply with arrows.
Player response has varied from “Get this crap off the live servers and put it back on EQ2X“, to “if my group/raid expects me to buy items from the Marketplace to stay competitive, I’ll tell them to pound sand” to “Why not just rip off the Band-Aid and put RMT on the live servers, since that’s where we’re headed anyway.”
UPDATE: In response to player concerns, these arrows have been removed from the StationCash Marketplace. From SmokeJumper:
We never intended to start a fight here, folks.
They’re removed.
 |
I think SOE have demonstrated a lack of self-discipline in what items they will add to the Marketplace. They’ve continued to push the envelope, seemingly until players will accept full RMT on the live servers. Is it time to just rip off the Band-Aid and go full RMT on the live servers? Most of you probably clicked delete on this weekend’s announcement that Pirates of the Burning Sea is going full RMT/Free-to-Play. I read it with interest, because it’s like a pair of binoculars (or a spyglass and sextant, if you will) into the future of EQ2, EQ2Next, and beyond. |
A few months back, the frequency of StationCash item introductions was increased from a monthly schedule to a bi-weekly schedule. If EQ2Wire reported on all of these items, then 50% of our articles would be about items that, quite frankly, a lot of our readers aren’t that wild about. There was a time when $14.99 paid the bills, kept the lights on, and paid the staff. I’m not sure when we strayed from that.
But sometimes, an SC item is cool enough to warrant mentioning here, especially when it comes with cool art. There is a dearth of cool-looking mounts in EQ2. So this might help…
We leave it up to the reader to decide whether 2500SC (normally $25; $12.50 if you stocked up on SC during a double SC weekend) is reasonable for a large animated skeleton. 😉
If you have been /feedbacking to the EQ2 team for years that you would be ready, willing, and eager to sell family members, limbs, or just pony up a few extra bucks to increase your house item limit, then I have some great news.
If, however, you hate StationCash and everything it stands for, and SOE will never get a penny of your money over the $14.99 (or less depending on your subscription plan), then I have some bad news.
But first, let’s look at some cool changes to housing in Game Update 58. 😉
Here are your update notes for 5 October 2010:
EVERQUEST 2 EXTENDED
- Bronze members will now be able to view chat channels (Silver or higher is still required to participate in chat).
- You can now purchase Gold memberships directly in game.
MARKETPLACE
- You can now buy extra character slots in the marketplace!
- You can now redeem station cash cards directly in game by going to: Marketplace – Add Funds – Station Cash Card.
- You can now add a credit card to your file directly in game by going to: Marketplace – Add Funds – Credit Card – Add New Card.
- Check the marketplace for “New” and “Hot” items!
- Marketplace items that are discounted from normal price will now show “SALE” on the icon in both the welcome window and the marketplace window.
PERAH’CELSIS’ ABOMINABLE LABORATORY
Homicidal Madness (the charm spell) no longer affects fighters.
This just in from SmokeJumper on the official forums:
We’ve solved some technical issues recently and we can now offer character slots for sale. (Something previously unavailable.)
So as of October 5th (Tuesday), character slots will be available for purchase in the marketplace.
Here’s a couple quick facts to answer obvious questions:
- Slots are permanent. You pay for them once and they stay on your account forever.
- You can purchase any number of character slots. There is no limit. You want 20, 30 or even a bajillion character slots? Go for it.
Regarding Station Access subscriptions:
- Character slots sold are *in addition to* any slots you are getting by being an SA subscriber. (Example: If you had 12 slots available as an SC subscriber and you purchase two more slots in the marketplace, you’ll now have 14 slots available.)
- If you cancel your SA subscription, and then buy slots to replace the slots you were getting, your characters *will* still be present in those purchased slots (they won’t get deleted during the swapover).
Character slots will be available in the in-game marketplace for 1000 SC each.
This also applies to EQ2 Extended as well.
SmokeJumper is looking for feedback on placing F2P marketplace items on the test server. He posted this on the official forums:
Hey, folks,
We don’t have a big enough population on the Test server to run two different Test servers (one for EQII Live and one for EQ2X), and we’d like to get your feedback on whether you think it’s appropriate for us to allow the EQ2X marketplace items to show up on Test.
Since the items are optional, it shouldn’t make much of a difference in your play style, but it would allow us to test them on a real server before they go Live.
Additionally, for anyone interested, they’d probably help leveling a bit, which is always somewhat of a hurdle on this lower-population server.
What do you think?
Thanks for your feedback.
Commentary:
I personally agree with many of the other posters that have already replied who think this would work much better if done on Test Copy. Test Copy gets wiped periodically anyway and gives unlimited station cash. This would seem to be the perfect place to “test” marketplace items.
Players on standard EQ2 accounts with more than 7 characters in a region, or players on Station Access accounts with more than 12 characters in a region were locked out of accessing these “hidden” characters with a change in Game Update 57. Although intended to close an exploit, the primary motivation for this change has been to protect the monetization of character slots, which are for sale on EQ2 Extended servers.
Note: This change has been rolled back as of Tuesday, August 24th, to allow players to “get their house in order”. On Tuesday, August 31st, players who have more characters than are allowed by their account type will only have the option of deleting characters to access “hidden” characters. The /camp command will not load any character not visible on the character select screen, and changes to the character list INI file will be ignored.
If you have no more than 7 EQ2 characters on your EQ2 account, or no more than 12 EQ2 characters on your Station Account, you do not need to do anything.
On Thursday evening, a player logged in to discover that one of their gameplay-acquired mounts, a War-Barded Black Cavalry Horse, had unattuned itself. This led to the discovery that a variety of in-game mounts had vanished from the in-game Stable Merchants, only to be found later on the StationCash Marketplace for a cost of 1250SC ($12.50). Other mounts included the Two-Toned Warg , and the black-saddled Blue Flame Nightmare.
On April 14, 2009, a new Welcome Screen was added to EQ2. It was pitched to the players as an informational window with a small amount of StationCash Marketplace content. There was a lot of negative player reaction, but feedback was balanced against trying to keep the window useful.
And for those players who wanted to avoid the Welcome Screen window, a method was found to disable it. A configuration line (cl_show_welcome_screen_on_startup 0) could be added to your eq2.ini settings file. Eventually the EQ2 team relented and added a “Show this window at startup” checkbox so players could opt out of seeing this window.
EQ2Wire is currently trying to get to the bottom of a rumor regarding possible changes to Adventure (Combat), Alternate Advancement (AA), and Tradeskill XP.
In the mean time, we’ve got some hard facts. An unexpected feature of today’s Game Update 57 seems to be the doubling of all Combat, AA, and Tradeskill potions. 27.5% potions became 55% potions. 55% potions became 110% potions.
Left: the 55% XP potions “Draft of the Wise” and “Draft of the Skilled” provided as veteran rewards for every year of subscription.
Right: the 1000SC ($10) 110% “Flask of Advancement III” which boosts XP for all three XP types.
We do not know what, if any, other changes this may signify, but we will keep you informed.
Fan Faire is now over and one thing seems to be clear: SOE does not have a plan to balance the new players coming into the game between EQ2X and EQII Live, at least not one they are willing to share with us…
Apologies for any typos. They jacked up the AC in here!! Remember folks, lots of EQ2 t shirts, hoodies, and polos.
Live blog from Fan Faire with q&a on EverQuest II.
Our own Druidess gives her perspective on the long-term effects of StationCash and what Free-to-Play means for the future of EverQuest II.
Since SoE decided not to sugar coat the news on F2P, I figured I’d return the favor and save the sugar for cookies I plan on baking later.
With Game Update 57, various in-game Merchants will start carrying StationCash items.
If you think this is worthy of further comment, well read on… If not, well, the word of the day is “slippery slope”.
From EQ2Players:
The choosing of a guild name is a very important rite. To help ensure that your new name is considered carefully, we are introducing Guild Name Change potions at the price of 5500 SC. We believe this price is fair for those who do want a name change, but will also serve as a deterrent to those who might want to frivolously rename their guild every time they have a kerfuffle in the lands of Norrath.
There has always been the option to disband a guild and create a new one with the desired name, but think of all the work and sacrifice that went into Guild XP and levels!
Comments after the jump…
From the EQ2 Forums:
This weekend, from 4pm Pacific on Friday, July 2nd (23:00 GMT) until 10am Pacific on Tuesday, July 6th (17:00 GMT), we will be running BOTH a Double Station Cash promotion *and* a true Double XP (+100% XP) promotion.
We’ve gotten clarification that this is:
Double Adventure XP
Double Tradeskill XP
Double Alternate Advancement (AA) XP
Double StationCash
A StationCash Card Reminder:
The only StationCash cards currently available for purchase are branded as FreeRealms cards with StationCash value. Do not buy EverQuest II gameplay time 30 day cards (if you can even find them), they will not work.
StationCash Instructions on EQ2 Forums
Also, it appears there is a glimmer of hope that we may finally see some movement on European solutions for StationCash cards.
