Feldon
If the EQ2 team are trying to keep the secrets of February’s expansion Sentinel’s Fate under wraps, they might want to avoid sending out data files containing Sentinel’s Fate textures and zone art with the EQ2 Patcher. We’re not even in Beta yet (expected sometime in December) 🙂 If you wish to remain ignorant about Sentinel’s Fate a bit longer and you’d rather be surprised in February, then don’t click:
Year: 2009
The trailer we saw yesterday for Sentinel’s Fate, the sixth expansion for EverQuest II, has been posted on EQ2Players in High Definition (1280 x 720). You can download it as well as grab some more screen snapshots at EQ2Players. Note it’s a large file (120MB) so I recommend downloading it to your PC first before trying to play it.
The news is coming quickly about EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate’s new Retail strategy. Kiara brings us this: Fan Faire attendees with accounts in good standing will receive a complimentary digital copy of the retail version. You will have the early access and items associated with the retail version of the game. We’re looking into Best Buy not having the listing yet. Amazon and GameStop are shipping overseas. I’m trying to get a list of the countries that will be shipped to. Retail boxes ordered online and shipped, SHOULD be shipped in time to arrive on release day to allow...
You can now watch the EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate Teaser Trailer at EQ2 Zam: and you can check out some EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate screen snapshots as well: To find more information about EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate, you can check out EQ2Wire’s recently updated Fan Faire News Rollup with all the information about the expansion. From watching the trailer, we’ve also learned the Sentinel’s Fate will contain: 4,000 new items 400 Quests 5 Heritage Quests
EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate Getting a jump on the holiday season (and a full 100 days before its official launch), the EverQuest II Sentinel’s Fate expansion has been made available for pre-order!! The most remarkable part of this announcement is the extraordinary measures being taken to get EverQuest II back onto Retail shelves and getting retailers to take the game seriously. With Sentinel’s Fate, it is now clear that the preferred version of EverQuest II will be the retail Collector’s Edition. Not only with in-box and in-game exclusive items, but the release schedule. The Retail version will be available...
We’ve been closely monitoring the progress on the development of Shaders 3.0. This is the graphical revamp which will improve the lighting, reflections, and other effects on 99% of the textures in the game. So far, we know that Shaders 3.0 is running very well on certain systems, but has significant performance problems on other systems. As a result, it’s not yet on Test, and may not be released until after Game Update 54. In response some pithy comments that Shaders 3.0 has slipped to the February expansion and will now be used as a selling point of said...
Note: No EQ2 content! I was posting some BBQ recipes for baby back ribs and grilled chicken breast on another forum and thought some folks here might like to read ’em. If you’d like more, post a Comment. Baby Back Ribs & Grilled Chicken Breast recipes after the jump.
On the EQ2 Forums, some discussion has sparked about the planned push to get EQ2 in retail stores and improve the experience for new players. I authored a post that I thought might be worth repeating. What is the Experience for New Players right now? Visit a half dozen retailers and not find any copies of EQ2 except maybe a dingy old cobwebby copy of Kunark priced $50. Let’s say you do manage to find a recent copy of EQ2 and take it home. You dutifully install 11GB of data off two DVDs. Then you fire it up and...
Understandably, some players are taking a look at Game Update 54 (aka the Great Bug Stomp) and not seeing a lot of new content. Part of the issue is, normally, we would be just 2 weeks away from an entirely new expansion at this point. However Sentinel’s Fate won’t hit until February. Also, it is now unclear just when we can expect Shaders 3.0, although I’m hopeful that we’ll get it as an early Christmas present. Of course, we have Frostfell 2009 to look forward to this December. If this year has proven anything, it is that live events...
We know what’s in Game Update 55, which will coincide with the launch of Sentinel’s Fate in February. It’s the new good starting city of New Halas. What is Game Update 54? Game Update 54 (slated for release the first week of December) addresses the most annoying of beasts in EQ2: the bug. That random inconsistency in a item description. That bizarre issue in a quest that makes it impossible to complete. The unexpected roadblock in a zone. The mob that just doesn’t work right. Game Update 54 contains a gob-smacking 304 BUG FIXES covering both recent and long-standing...
EQ2 Producer Brenlo has Twittered a couple of interesting sneak peaks into the future of EQ2. New Dance Moves First up, if you’ve been thinking that what Barbarians really need is some new dance moves, you might enjoy this new video. No word on when we can expect Guitar Hero: EverQuest edition. 🙂 New Barbarian dance on YouTube You can safely infer that since this dance is specific to male Barbarians, that EQ2 is getting a bunch of new dances unique to male and female members of each race. I wonder if they will all be pop culture references....
Note: No EverQuest II content. When FreeRealms was launched in April 29, 2009, Sony Online Entertainment pondered the question: Can a Massively Multiplayer Online game produced and sold in America support itself with Real Money Transactions (RMT)? On November 2nd we found out the answer: Effective November 2nd, the free-to-play classes available to NEW players of FreeRealms will shrink from Ninja, Chef, Postman, Kart Driver, Demo Derby Driver, Brawler, Adventurer, Card Duelist and Miner to just Adventurer and Card Duelist. Starting November 2nd, all players will be able to sample all character classes up to Level 5. Existing free-to-play...
EQ2Wire is back in town and brings you some Hotfix notes. October 28 Hotfix ACHIEVEMENTS New Achievements have been added! Test your skill with three new types of Achievements: Flawless Victory, Sense of Urgency and Shorthanded Victory achievements have been added to Rise of Kunark and The Shadow Odyssey zones. ITEMS Equipment with pet buffs should no longer experience stacking issues which cause the cancellation of multiple pet buffs when removing a single piece of armor. Jewelry items purchased from Lavastorm and the Moors of Ykesha are now heirloom attuneable. Jewelry items acquired with Void Shards is now Heirloom....
“1:10PM SYSTEM MESSAGE: Greetings Norrath! The server will be coming down in 30 minutes for brief maintenance. Please plan accordingly to be logged out during this time. Thank you!” “1:25PM SYSTEM MESSAGE: Greetings Norrath! The server will be coming down in 10 minutes for a brief maintenance. Please get to a safe location and camp out as soon as possible. Thank you!” “1:26PM SYSTEM MESSAGE: Sorry Norrath! That’s 15 minutes, not 10. But, please get to a safe location and camp out as soon as possible. Thank you!” No idea yet the duration or cause of this downtime. No...
EQ2Wire is on the road this week, so updates will be a bit less frequent. Nagafen/Venekor Server Merge The Nagafen/Venekor Server Merge was completed Friday night. We’d certainly like to hear comments from folks on what the new 64-bit server experience is like (I know Butcherblock is a lot snappier with the new hardware), as well as having more folks to kill. 🙂 Issues with using the Broker, Banker, and World Chat channels were all related to the last stages of this merge, and should long have since been resolved. New Shaders 3.0 Snapshots Imago-Quem (Ryan) surprised us over...
It seems Butcherblock & Lucan D’Lere are back online. Must’ve been a minor fix if the servers were down for less than 15 minutes. Perhaps some final housekeeping from the Server Upgrade.
Abbreviated quote from Rothgar (EQ2 Forums thread): At 7:00am this morning our export script experienced a crash. We’ve restarted the export process as of 7:00am PST on different hardware and are monitoring it closely. The current impact is an extended downtime for Venekor players of roughly 12 more hours. For Nagafen players, this would mean a delayed maintenance schedule, but hopefully not an extended downtime.
Who would have thought just 5 months ago that we would see these: Also, contrary to prior plans/rumors/hints, they are not restricted to Alignment. Any race can switch to any other race!! Just $25 ($44 in Europe).
If you live in the U.S. and play EQ2 (or FreeRealms), then even if you’ve never purchased any, you know that 1,000 SC costs $10. Furthermore, there was a promotion a few weeks back where you could redeem retail-purchased StationCash cards for double credit. 1,000 SC were just $5 for a weekend. So you may be surprised to learn that in Europe 1,000 SC costs $17.63. That’s 10 Euro for 1,000 SC plus 17.5% VAT (VAT should be 15%). I mean exchange rates are a pain, but the U.S. Dollar has been weak for over 2 years now. Remember...
Follow the news of the EQ2 PvP Merge on EQ2 Forums: Farewell to Venekor Nagafen/Venekor Merge!
If you’ve been following the EQ2 Streaming Client announcement thread, you’ll know that Rothgar is very excited about this new feature coming to EQ2. Remember, this is an optional client which will allow players to jump into EQ2 in as little as 5 minutes rather than waiting for a 5-10 hour download. So far, the streaming client delivers the most basic experience. It delivers content to the screen as fast as possible, sometimes before the game is even really ready for it. As soon as there is enough data to draw a zone, the zone appears. However this may...
Race Change Potions will appear on StationCash on Thursday, October 22nd for $25. Source UPDATE: Despite contrary rumors, there will be NO alignment restriction when choosing races. You will be able to change to any race (except, naturally, the race you already are).
Here are your Hotfix Notes for October 21, 2009: GENERAL Nu’roga now has plunderable loot! Malicious Thoughts and Icicle Explosion now trigger on ranged and melee attacks. Frostburn and Mutagenic Burst now correctly modify each other’s damage. Purifying Persistence should properly modify the caster’s heals rather than the targets. LoN The Cloak of Crystal Shards, Assassin Master’s Cloak and Cloak of Runes returned from Collector Rattelis are now Heirloom. ITEMS Icy Prison now has 3 shield effectiveness to match its deflection chance. Charm of Solusek Ro once again triggers multiple times on AE casts, however its effect is now...
From EQ2 Forums: We are proud to announce the release of our new streaming client into beta! The streaming client will allow players to get into the world of Norrath faster than ever before. We’d like your help testing this new technology. Please check out the announcement in the Testing forum and let us know what you think! http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/…topic_id=461076 Some of the key points of Rothgar’s posting (please go read the whole thing if you are interested): We’ve recognized for awhile that the current size of the EverQuest II installation (about 10gb) is a pretty large barrier to entry...
From Rothgar, Nagafen and Lucan D’Lere are now online.