Apologies for any typos. They jacked up the AC in here!! Remember folks, lots of EQ2 t shirts, hoodies, and polos.

The Battlegrounds and PvP Panel, moderated by Olihin.

Nandy “Zoltaroth” Szots, Greg “Rothgar” Spence, Paul “Frizznik” Carrico, Mike “Xelgad” Ganz, Juan “Olihin” Cardenas.

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.

The EQ2 Tradeskill panel….

Note: I have gone back and cleaned up these notes with additional details from memory as of 2:15AM PDT.

Domino (Domino_EQ2) tweeted:

Friday night was the big Pool Party. We took up the entire Bally’s outdoor swimming pool area. There was live music, bars dispensing refreshing beverages at every corner, water misters, and crystal blue swimming pools.

Dave Georgeson was making the rounds all night talking to anyone and everyone who wanted to give him the business about the EQ2 Extended service, and the long-term effects on the EQ2 servers. Say what you will, but he puts himself out there and communicates with the players. He is self-assured that this will work, and quotes his 20 year history of successful games.

Calthine of EQ2 ZAM and I questioned him mercilessly for about 30 minutes and I have to say he is very charismatic and understands the concerns. He wanted to reiterate that this is an experiment, that it’s not even beta yet, that many things can change, and that if they start to see a huge shift from EQ2 to EQ2X, they will add more incentives to the EQ2 subscription side. They want to use EQ2X to attract new players who aren’t currently staying in EQ2 after their 14-day trials end, not to siphon players off the live servers.

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.

Live blog from Fan Faire with q&a on EverQuest II.

Hope these are useful…

Sorry for blurry pics. Here’s what I got. I also recorded the first part on video, but didn’t get the Q&A. 🙁

EverQuest 2: Destiny of Velious PART ONE

This is part 1 of Velious.

The #1 reaction SOE has been receiving from players re: station cash, rmt, and free to play has been a resounding Not in My Back Yard. We commented about this on Wednesday.

And this may need to change if we want to have eq2x to eq2 transfers. If there is one thing I know about EQ2. If enough players ask for it, and it will make SOE money, they will add it. So who knows they might put Beastlord class on stationcash. 🙂

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.

Presentation quality?

Brenlo > Jace Hall

Nuff said

Basically a 20 minute commercial for Jace Hall.

I mean… Smedley had more charisma. Seriously…

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.

Had a minute to talk to SmokeJumper 1 on 1. All has not been revealed. More incentives coming for subscription servers. Marketing will promote both games.

More in tomorrow’s panel.

It’s dark!

E3 took place this year from June 15-17.  SmokeJumper was interviewed and said that the current subscription model would not change.  When asked after the announcement of EQ2 Extended about that interview, he had this to say:

Yes, at that time, we were discussing the concept. No, we were not ready to commit to it, nor did we have any details of what we might be doing.

On July 27th, EQ2 Extended was announced.  I counted up how many work days passed between the interview and the announcment.  Guess how many work days went by?

Fan Faire Rumor: The end of all those eq2 dev chat questions about /sit and /laydown may finally be coming. 🙂

In a taxi with Calthine of eq2 zam. F2p discussion has already begun.

From EQ2Players:

If you’re attending Fan Faire and interested in participating in the EQII Platinum-Pass Battlegrounds tournament or the Zraxth’s Unseen Arcanum tournament, you might want to compete with your own character.

If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch and you’re coming to Fan Faire 2010, be sure to download the free Fan Faire app!

Just visit the App Store, search for Fan Faire, and you’ll find the SOEFanFaire app.

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With the migration of Nagafen server last week and today’s moving day for Antonia Bayle complete, we should now see whether the new servers finally vanquish the lag monster.

Rothgar is seeking player feedback on the server upgrade and, if the move proves successful, we will hopefully see the migration of all servers to new hardware.

With this morning’s maintenance, Antonia Bayle received some new hardware which should greatly reduce, if not eliminate, the lag you’ve been experiencing. We will be monitoring the new hardware and phasing out the old hardware over time.

Please share your experiences with us.