Feldon 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.
As is his schtick, he worked quickly to turn the audience against him. He wheeled out his World of Warcraft music video and let it play for a good 2-3 minutes before nixing it. Jace Hall is an Exec Producer on the current suspense TV series “V”, but we mostly saw clips from Series 3 and previews of Series 4 of the absurd slapstick Jace Hall show, as well as outtakes of his EQ doc EverCracked.
It wasn’t long until we were all secretly wishing that Alan “Brenlo” Crosby would walk out on stage and get this weekend launched right.
Brasse did her best to add some levity to the proceedings, but probably the most charismatic speaker of the evening was SOE President John Smedley. Yes, you read that right.
Jace Hall’s intros/icebreaker was the Top 10 Things Not to do at Fan Faire, which was worth a few chuckles. After various clips of his shows, we saw the 2007 Fan Faire Wedding clip again.
Then, he called in the midget. I’m not kidding. It looks like a character “Gnoob” is being brought up to put some humor into how EQ2 is perceived. We’ll see if it works…
The last section before the Cap’n took the stage was the presentation of the four winners of the Backstage Blogger contest, including clips of their tryout videos. I believe they each receive a nice camera and other items and their videos will be posted to SOE over the duration of the weekend.
Game Lineup
SOE President John Smedley touted only a few games in this year’s address.
EverQuest: House of Thule releases on October 14th. It adds a plethora of new dungeons and content, as well as the addition of player housing.
EQ2 expansion is The Return of the Void…ok just kidding. It’s…
EverQuest II: Destiny of Velious releases February 8th and, amongst other things, will introduce flying mounts in most zones. It is unclear which zones are being configured to allow this. Say what you will about Brenlo, but this was an initiative he pushed for. Glad to see it’s coming.
EQ2 Extended — Beta launches August 17th. New optional free adventure service. Live subscription remains unchanged. Yadda yadda.
FreeRealms coming to Mac and PS3 in ~2 months. Currently 13 million players (unknown how many are paying)
Clone Wars Adventures — shown at E3, targeted at FreeRealms crowd. Based closely on the Cartoon Network series and will have heavy cross-promotion.
Magic the Gathering strategy game will be something quite different. It’s not a TCG.
DC Universe Online — Releases November 2nd. PC and PS3, Action-based physics. Newsworthy bit: Pre-ordering will be huge and allow you to play as Batman, as well as get a basketful of free items. Shown the astonishingly good trailer from last week featuring Lex Luthor.
One more thing…
and then we’re Rick rolled… Oh boy…
Ok really…
slide: The future of Everquest…
Smedley: We’re not done with EverQuest.
Concept Art shots.
The “Evolution of EverQuest” panel surprise announcement for Friday and Saturday at 10am.
He strongly suggested we attend either of the 2 identical panels to give as much feedback and input as possible on the development of EverQuest Next.
That’s the end of the Community Address. That was SHORT. It almost took longer to queue. 😉
Thanks, can’t wait to see what tomorrow’s news brings.
Yes, thank you Feldon for the updates throughout the reception 🙂 Much appreciated!
Thanks Feldon, one question: did you mean that flying mounts will be useable in the “old world” as in pre expansion or has that been specified?
thx for the updates
Feldon, try to get in some questions for us rangers at the panels man=)
No wonder they didn’t broadcast it on a webcast or in game. Disappointed Sony, very disappointed.
Return of the Void ?!
woohoo flying mounts..4 years too late sadly if this is its main selling point then the game is in real trouble shame theres no level cap raise the game will suffer for it mark my words.
Flying mounts most likely only purchasable on the marketplace. If the new mounts, prowler & cloud, cost 2500sc I bet flying mounts cost double that. I wouldn’t be supprised if they tried to charge $50 per. Nothing cool will ever be available through adventuring or by paying plat ever again.
Yes, i think getting excited about anything EQ2 will only lead to further disappointment when reality comes to pass.
I almost have a sneaking suspicion that the F2P to them is a two fold operation for them to prepare for Everquest 3.
1) Introduces people to everquest for free so when EQ3 comes out they will be interested, kinda like free advertising and possibly make some money while thier at it.
2) Very Slowly over time kill old servers off so when EQ3 is ready they have a mass influx to EQ3, not like what happened going from EQ1 to EQ2, no one seemed to move away from EQ1.
Companies usually have 5 years down the road “big picture” plans, then figure out how to achieve them as they go along towards that goal. Sounds kinda familiar with the “We’ll figure it out as we go” replies we always get instead of firm answers. Feels like we are in year 2 or 3.
Another thing the F2P does for them is keeps people like me around, involved if you will. I canceled my accounts, ready to move on and still am, however F2P is going to keep me around and in the loop if you will.
For sure I’ll be poking around with EQ2X because it’s free, no reason to not have that on my desktop.
I can guarantee i will not spend money on it though (silver maybe). The fact is I’m still around when they blast EQ3 out the door right after the final blow to EQ2 so everyone moves to the new EQ3.
You can see the writing on the wall, you know full well EQ3 is coming, EQ2 was never a big hit with the mmo community and even EQ1 players didn’t take to it, they are not going to want to support EQ1, EQ2, EQ3, so which one do you think they will kill off?
I shudder at the thought of anyone investing anymore of their money and time into an EQ2 with a future. So glad i pulled the plug about a half a year ago. Whew! Got out just in time. Looking forward to EQ3 though, free EQ2 will help pass the time is the frame of mind they want peeps to get into.