From the EverQuest2.com:

A Letter from Smokejumper

Hi there, Norrathians!

As many of you know, I’m the Executive Producer in charge of the entire EverQuest franchise, including EQ, EQII, and the upcoming (and very different) “EverQuest Next.” For the last two years, I’ve also been the Producer for your EverQuest II world, and it’s been absolutely a blast working with the team, the game, its features, and most of all, its players.

However, our company’s visions for the EQ Franchise are bigger in scope than what I can coordinate alone on EQII while also overseeing the rest of the franchise.

Therefore, we’ve brought Holly Longdale back to SOE to take over the Producer position for EQII. In fact, she’s been working with the EQII team since last December. (We delayed announcing her presence so she got a chance to come up to speed for a few weeks before needing to answer a thousand questions.) But, the honeymoon is over and it’s time for her to “take the con.”

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Posted by Ttobey on the EQ2 Forums:

Most of the bugs ingame didn’t have very fulls sets of animations, so they wouldn’t work all that well as a warder, but we are working on it.

EverQuest2.com has unveiled their new combined EQ2 Free-to-Play website. The EQ2Players side which allows players to lookup Characters, Items, and Guilds won’t relaunch until next week.

From EQ2’s Facebook:

Join Linda “Brasse” Carlson, Director of Global Community Relations at SOE on The Jethal Silverwing show tonight at 7 PM PST – http://kithicor.org/the-show/discovery

Beastlords may be the most complex, configurable, dynamic class in EQ2 for the foreseeable future. To try to explain this class without using screenshots is damn near impossible. And due to the surviving conditions of the NDA, we are forbidden to use any of our screenshots. So we are going to wait another day so we can start putting out complete articles that fully explain the Beastlord class, Reforging, Mercenaries, etc. with pictures.

In the mean time, we leave you with these artistic impressions of the Beastlord interface…

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Here’s some news we weren’t expecting. EQ2Talk’s Dellmon and Aliscious have interviewed Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson about the upcoming Age of Discovery expansion. Dellmon hasn’t been one to pull punches, so I’m listening to this podcast as I post this article.

Episode #36 – Smoke Signals

recorded on Dec 3

EQ2 Talk is thrilled to be joined by Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson, EverQuest franchise Executive Producer. This episode covers a lot of ground on things players have seen over the past year, from rebalancing content, to gear and stat changes, to EQ2’s free-to-play conversion. We ask him about some of the more controversial topics, such as exploits and the lively “insta-90” thread, and get a behind-the-scenes peek at what we can expect for the world of Norrath in the coming year and beyond. Smokejumper also offers some insight into the thinking behind the Age of Discovery expansion, and talks about his vision for EverQuest II.

Click here to listen to Episode 36.

Discuss this on the EQ2 Forums.

And that’s our LAST post this weekend barring any breaking news. We’ve posted almost a ridiculous amount of information since Thursday and you guys (and gals) need the weekend to digest it all. We’ll be back on Monday with more, including maybe some thoughts about the F2P transition!

If you use Twitter, you’re probably following EverQuest II. EQ2’s new Community Manager Isulith has been making use of the service largely by posting questions to readers. We found Yesterday’s question to be most interesting:

What are your most used fan sites?

If you’d like your opinion to be heard, reply on Facebook.

UPDATE: 33% of 71 respondents said they read EQ2Wire. Thanks for your support!

From Yahoo News:

TOKYO (AP) — Sony said Wednesday intruders staged a massive attempt to access user accounts on its PlayStation Network and other online entertainment services in the second major attack on its flagship gaming site this year.

The Tokyo-based company temporarily locked about 93,000 accounts whose IDs and passwords were successfully ascertained by the blitz. Sony sent email notifications and password reset procedures to affected customers on the PlayStation Network, Sony Entertainment Network and Sony Online Entertainment services.

Credit card numbers linked to the compromised accounts are not at risk, Sony said. It has “taken steps to mitigate the activity” and is investigating any wrongful use of the accounts themselves.

“Less than one tenth of one percent” of the service’s customers may have been affected, Sony said in a statement.

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If there’s one thing you don’t want to recycle, it’s passwords, as some EverQuest II players found recently out.

I think we’re all guilty of using the same login and password on many different sites such as e-mail, bank websites, and yes our SOE acounts. Recently, attempts were made by outsiders to login to some 33,000 SOE accounts using login and password credentials taken from other websites. SOE and PSN detected these login attempts and have pre-emptively disabled any accounts that matched the login/password credentials stolen from websites not affiliated with Sony. Note: This appears to be unrelated to this May’s SOE/PSN security breach.

But first, a message from the EQ2Wire The Sky is Not Falling So Keep Your Pants On Club:

This is NOT a security breach!

SOE has not been “hacked again”!

DON’T PANIC!

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From Zoltaroth on the EQ2 Forums:

LG Services should be back up and running.  Let us know if you run into any more issues.  Sorry for the delay.

and from SmokeJumper:

…LG is a third-party service. Coordinating with outside people is always more challenging, thus the delay.

We apologize for the delay, but it should be fixed now.

Ever since the San Diego power outage on which knocked out all SOE servers, players attempting to use the LiveGamer service to transfer/buy/sell items and characters on the Bazaar and Vox servers have been receiving the following error message:

Item not sent! Transfer Asset Failure

On September 13th, Bunji posted in a thread discussing this issue on the EQ2 Forums:

This issue is currently being investigated.

There were two followup posts from Bunji indicating that the service should be working, but whatever was fixed on SOE’s end did not resolve the situation, suggesting a problem on LiveGamer’s end.

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From EverQuest2.com:

We’ve got some really great news! We now have an official SOE Server Status Page! The page includes server status information for the following games:

• EverQuest II Extended
• EverQuest II
• EverQuest
• Star Wars: Galaxies
• DC Universe Online

Check it out here: http://www.soe.com/status.

The information on this page will include up-to-date region, server name, status, and server load information.

UPDATE: The Server Status page has been redone to add other games (Vanguard, EQ Mac, EQOA, FreeRealms, and PlanetSide). They’ve also added a time readout for the last time each server’s status was updated. This seems to have changed the structure of the JSON output.

From SmokeJumper on the EQ2X Forums:

We’re going multi-pronged on this.

1) We’re spending money again on ads. You should start seeing banner ads.

2) We’re doing a winback campaign to reactivate interest with old players after Dungeon Finder rolls out, and pushing even harder when Freeport and the Age of Discovery launch later this year.

3) We added the video recording feature so that word spreads organically as you post any videos you think are interesting.

There’s more than this planned, but these are a few of the things that should be most effective.

To record a YouTube video, the default key is Ctrl-PrintScrn. Some players have reported error messages which may get fixed in today’s Hotfix. Note that this is not intended to take the place of FRAPS or other screen recording software for more advanced users. It’s a feature allowing anyone to record and post a video of EQ2 online.

Rothgar has encouraged players to post their videos of EQ2 in this thread on the EQ2 Forums.

Now that some of the dust has settled from Sony Online Entertainment’s reorganization this spring and with the Denver office (housing Legends of Norrath) consolidation with SOE’s San Diego HQ is complete, Mark Tuttle, Executive Producer for Legends of Norrath, has posted a Producer’s Letter touting the next expansion. We’ve been told to expect ’smoking hot’ loot, especially if you like mounts and housing.

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SOE Security Authenticators are now available from SOE.com for $9.95 including domestic shipping and handling. They may be used on one or more Station accounts.

Pricing compares favorably to the WoW Battle.net security fobs which cost $6.50 plus shipping. Plus, you may use one SOE Authenticator on multiple Station accounts, a feature the Battle.net devices lack as of October 2010.

Note: Only after entering your credit card information does international shipping or handling rates appear. We’ve seen several reports that international shipping is more expensive than the security fob itself. In the range of $10-13 US, 10 Euros, $13 AUD, etc.

There is no word on when the announced free SOE Authenticator apps for iPhone, Android, and possibly other platforms will appear.

Check out our detailed guide SOE Puts Security in your Pocket — Vasco Security Fobs which we posted on July 11th.

SOE has posted a video of the Community Relations panel from Saturday afternoon. This talks about Forum Rules, Moderators, the Community Council, the Podcast and Webcast, etc.

From EverQuest2.com:

Station Access has a new name, lower fees and more plan options!

Why pick just one of our amazing games to play when you can get access to an exciting line-up of all of our most popular titles for one low price? We’ve listened to your feedback and we are happy to announce the launch of the SOE All Access game pass!

Formerly called Station Access, SOE All Access will allow you access to play many of our most popular games including: DC Universe™ Online (PC version), EverQuest® (PC and Mac versions), EverQuest II, EverQuest II Extended – Gold Membership,  EverQuest Online Adventures™ (PlayStation® 2), Pirates of the Burning Sea® – Captain’s Club Membership, PlanetSide®, Star Wars Galaxies™, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes®, Free Realms® (PC and Mac versions) Membership, and Star Wars®: Clone Wars Adventures™ (PC and Mac versions) Jedi Membership.

An upcoming event has mysteriously appeared on the in-game EQ2 calendar. Thanks to Jeehi on Everfrost for submitting this.

Summer Celebration Fireworks

Start Date: 07/01/2011 09:01AM

End Date: 07/05/2011 08:59PM

The cities of Norrath are celebrating the arrival of summer with fireworks displays! Collect your free festive sparkler, and visit fireworks coordinators in North Qeynos, West Freeport, Kelethin, Gorowyn, Neriak, and New Halas.

And in case you’re wondering, nobody on Test has heard of this event. Because the event happens over a weekend, during a time when devs will be busy getting ready for Fan Faire and not to mention a number of players already en route to Fan Faire or who may already be in Vegas making a whole week’s vacation, well, it could be interesting to say the least.

From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums:

This has been overdue for a very long time. We’re going to work on it this week and develop a plan to release old, no longer used names. We’ll post details after we finalize them. And don’t worry, we’ll ensure everyone gets a chance to log in if they want before we release the names so they can keep names they care about.

But at last…it’s coming.

EQ2 ZAM were paying attention during SOE’s live webcast from the E3 show floor and among other things picked up the news that the multi-game Station Access accounts will see a price cut to $19.99. Not only does Station Access grant 12 rather than the 7 character slots of a normal account (although additional character slots can be purchased for either), but it also allows players to access other games like EverQuest 1, Vanguard, Star Wars Galaxies, Pirates of the Burning Sea, etc.

From EQ2 ZAM:

Sony Online Entertainment just confirmed during their live E3 stream that Station Access will soon be dropping to $19.99 per month from the current price of $29.99 per month. That means you can get access to all of SOE’s games for a little more than the price of one game subscription!

From EverQuest2.com:

Join us for our first ever live cast from the E3 show floor. Your hosts Linda “Brasse” Carlson and Aimee “Ashlanne” Rekoske will bring you live to the 2011 SOE E3 booth! Meet the folks giving game demos and hear all about the SOE titles being shown. You don’t want to miss this cast!

Join us on Wednesday, June 08, 2011, at 2:00 pm PDT [5:00 pm EDT, 20:00 BST, 23:00 CET] as we live stream this webcast on the SOE channel on Stickam! You can also tune in through the Stickam tab on our Facebook page. The webcast is expected to last about an hour.

From EverQuest2.com:

As you may have heard in Podcast #110, Dave “Smokejumper” Georgeson has been promoted to Executive Producer! After the podcast, EverQuest Community Manager Eric “Piestro” Cleaver took the opportunity to sit down with Dave and find out a little more about his new role and what this means for the EverQuest franchise.

Piestro: How about EverQuest II? Will you still be actively involved with that game?

Smokejumper: I’m still very much attached to EQII and work closely with the leads on that project. We recently promoted Emily “Domino” Taylor to become the Associate Producer on EQII, specifically to shore up the fact that I would have less time in each day to spend on EQII. So far, it’s been working very well. The team didn’t skip a beat during the transition, and in fact, things are probably better now than they were previously because we’re able to split up the tasks and I can focus more on the game’s quality and business direction.

Piestro: Is EQ going to shift directions now and be more like EQII?

Smokejumper: Absolutely not. EQ is its own game and we are unlikely to do anything stupid like trying to make it more like “XYZ Game,” regardless of which game we’re talking about. In fact, the team is already focused on the next expansion pack, so there are unlikely to be a large number of changes happening anytime soon. But we are discussing some fun stuff to begin after the expansion. More on that later…

You can read more Questions & Answers at EverQuest2.com.

As part of the Welcome Back program for the Legends of Norrath card game (available in EQ2 by typing /lon, or using the standalone LoN client), EQ and EQ2 players can claim a Choose Your Own Loot card which, when Redeemed within the Legends of Norrath window, offers a choice of some 16 in-game items from cloaks, to house items, to a rent-free New Halas house, to new serpent wraps for your character’s arms.

Additional information about the Legends of Norrath Welcome Back program is available here.

This story was first brought to our attention by Kaozz on her site ECTmmo.com. If you’d like to check out the article, it’s LoN= More EQ & EQ2 Welcome Back Goodies!

Less than a week after restoring its PlayStation Network and Qriocity services, Sony temporarily took down the password reset pages to fix a vulnerability that allowed hackers to change a user’s password if their birthdate and e-mail address were known. These data were among the pieces of information believed to have been obtained by the attack last month.

There has been no known effect on Sony Online Entertainment and by extension EverQuest II, however this new problem has players nervous that Sony has not taken appropriate steps to lock down the most critical points of attack such as the Password Reset page.

“We temporarily took down the PSN and Qriocity password reset page,” Sony spokesman Patrick Seybold said in an update posted at the PlayStation blog.

“Contrary to some reports, there was no hack involved,” he explained. “In the process of resetting of passwords there was a URL exploit that we have subsequently fixed.”

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