Starseeker
Everquest2 Extended has launched into beta. I was curious to see what a new person to Everquest2 would see. When you first go to Everquest2, you do get two options, just as we were told:
Day: August 20, 2010
Feldon
Marks of Manaar are the heroic armor/jewelry/weapon-buying “currency” of Sentinel’s Fate. Much like the Void Shards of The Shadow Odyssey, Marks of Manaar allow players to buy baseline armor, jewelry, weapons, charms, cloaks, etc. although those players should continue to run dungeons in the hopes of finding rarer, more powerful items.
The EverQuest II Extended (Free-to-Play) website and Beta service have officially launched. Of note on the new EQ2X website is a tremendous 2 minute trailer for the game which is getting a lot of positive reaction so far on the EQ2X Forums. The cinematic trailers coming out of EQ2’s PR department are always worth a viewing. The folks over at DreamStation.cc have posted the EQ2 Extended Trailer in 720p High Definition:
Ah… the Shadow Odyssey. The land of milk and honey… The lost dungeons of… ok I’ll stop now. Ask players of EQ2 during the Shadow Odyssey what they thought of the expansion, and you’ll get many different responses. Ask a developer of the Shadow Odyssey for their frank opinion, and I bet you’d get something like “Ah yes, every level 80 player fully decked out in T2 heroic gear, fabled jewelry, and all carrying bagfuls of platinum coins.”
With now 16 neutral character classes, available in both good and evil alignments, and with recent expansions rarely distinguishing between good and evil when handing out quests, it’s not a surprise that the question of Alignment and the painful (and costly) process of Class Betrayal gets revisited on the forums frequently. However thus far, the official response as been “We have no intention to make it easier, or take away any of the consequences. Betrayal is supposed to have a cost.”
Some of the buzz before Fan Faire was “Is the Skyblade Skiff housing option going to be one-per-account, or one-per-character?” Now personally, I cannot imagine that anyone who is really into housing won’t already have elaborate houses on all of their characters. I would think most will already have to agonize about which of their characters they want to give up a house on. Now, you might have to choose multiple characters to pull up stakes on… 😉 From SmokeJumper: We did set this up for one skiff per account…but we’re not sure why. We’ll be changing this soon...
I have to admit I have been impressed at the speed of responses to issues on the EQ2 forums yesterday. If you are at all familiar with all of the various parlour tricks which have been necessary to gain XP at the maximum rate to help a character severely behind on AAs, you’ll know that one of these tricks has been to “lock” your character below the level cap. Why? Because Vitality, a +200% XP bonus after yesterday’s update, is disabled at level cap (90). So there is a HUGE penalty for dinging that final level. Good news from...
So the aftermath of our brouhaha yesterday about players who have been (admittedly) taking advantage of having more than 7 characters on an EQ2 account (or more than 12 characters on a Station Access account) has been rather swift and conciliatory. The good news from SmokeJumper: We’ve talked it over further and there is new news on this front: We’re going to rollback this feature next Tuesday (8/24). You’ll be able to access all your characters at that time. You’ll have seven days to get onto your account and pull items off any characters you desire if you want...
After a lot of questions and a lot of waiting, we finally get an answer on what the “perks” will be for the EQ2 Live Subscription servers. This thread on the official forums outlines the perks that you get for a multi-month subscription.