Feldon
From the EQ2 Forums: POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION Strategist’s Stronghold Severed Windpipe is now curable. Tallon’s Stronghold [Non-Challenge mode] During the Tallon Zek fight Decorin Deahbringer will cast Deathbringer’s Touch and Impending doom less frequently. Tallon’s Stronghold [Challenge mode] During the Lieutenant Klaatuus fight the aviak trooper adds have less health, no longer memwipe, and will always spawn at the bosses feet. Vallon’s Tower [Challenge Mode] During the Gindan Commander Angler fight the Diaku Deceptors will wait a while before casting their stunning strike spell. Kael Drakkel All dropped quest items that were previously flagged no-trade now consume the...
Month: October 2011
If you’ve been following the somewhat unfortunate adventures of the Gnoob the Gnome character, you’ll recall he had a big part to play in the introduction of Mercenaries to the original EverQuest when it was faced with its own problem of no new blood to help new or returning players leveling up alts. There have been over a dozen Gnoob videos in the past but this one touches on the upcoming Age of Discovery and its Mercenaries feature. It’s worth a watch and comes with a laugh. From EverQuest2.com:
The upcoming Age of Discovery expansion will include the Mercenaries feature. These player-controlled (or perhaps just guided, depending) NPCs will help players in groups or raids, for a small fee. You can read a lore-based/mock interview with one of these upcoming mercenaries at EverQuest2.com: Recently, we have caught word that mercenaries will start to offer their services in Norrath come the end of the year. We were lucky enough to grab an interview with one of these soon to be job-seeking mercenaries! Her name Vittia Direshadow and she is a Teir’dal Shadowknight. She’s quite scary-looking but assures me she...
Dethdlr
From Everquest2.com: SOE Trick-or-Treat Event is Here! It’s time to trick-or-treat in your favorite games*! Today through October 31, 2011, get treats and tricks when you visit your participating games each day. For EverQuest® II and EverQuest® II Extended, check the mailbox for your tricks and treats! For more details visit www.soe.com/trickortreat. Participating games include: EverQuest EverQuest® II,;EverQuest® II Extended, Free Realms®, Star Wars®: Clone Wars Adventures™, PoxNora® and Magic : The Gathering – Tactics™ Note: This actually started on Friday, Oct 28, 2011
From Everquest2.com: Trick-or-Treat! Double Your Treats on 10/29/11! What better way to fill your Halloween goody bag than with DOUBLE STATION CASH®! Get Double Station Cash on Saturday October 29, 2011 starting at 12:01 AM PDT when you redeem any SOE Pre-Paid Game Card or buy Station Cash*. Plus, we have more tricks and treats in participating games throughout the SOE Trick-or-Treat Event! For more details visit www.soe.com/trickortreat. *Offer runs October 29, 2011, 12:01 AM PDT through 11:59 PM PDT; excludes purchase by mobile/SMS. Participating games include: EverQuest® EverQuest® II,;EverQuest® II Extended, DC Universe™ Online, Free Realms®, Star Wars®:...
Smokejumper responded to a thread from nine days ago on the EQ2 Forums asking for a clear answer to what exactly is Age of Discovery. He basically said what we already knew about the content included in Age of Discovery. Reading through it and some of his follow up posts, it looks as though the “expansion” will be coming out near the end of November but price and distribution information won’t be released until next week by the marketing folks.
From the EQ2 Forums: There have been several reported issues of players who are unable to get the Nights of the Dead quests from Ponchy. If you have done them in previous years, there seems to be a bug where it won’t let you get them again. While we are working on fixing this, please petition Customer Service to have the old quests removed. We greatly apologize for the inconvenience and will message again when we have this working normally. http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=0&topic_id=508575#5649447
From the EQ2 Forums: We are inviting the most fearful, dreadful and simply awful creatures to the frighteningly decorated Community Lounge to celebrate the Nights of the Dead holiday with us. Show off with your costume creations, partake in a variety of unique drinks, and meet new players!
From the EQ2Forums: POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION Temple of Rallos Zek [Challenge] Bosses should no longer get double buff packages. Temple of Rallos Zek: Foundations of Stone [Challenge] During the Statue of Rallos Zek fight the automatons of escalation have reduced abilities and should be easier to handle. The statue itself will wait much longer after its final text before it activates retaliation. Sullon’s Spire [Non-Challenge Mode] Hragdold the Frenzied: Ironclaw Priests now heal for less. Clawstorm mana drain is lessened, and it’s not cast quite so often. Spire of Rage Spells that the Sullonites use now have longer...
When 85% of the news articles on EverQuest2.com are about other games, it’s easy to miss bonafide EQ2 items. That said, a new article has been posted outlining some of the Lore related to the Beastlord class coming in the Age of Discovery expansion. The beastlord class is coming in winter 2011 with the EverQuest II expansion: Age of Discovery! In North America, Winter is defined as the time period from 21 or 22 December and 20 or 21 March. With the last Beta invites scheduled to go out on November 16th, we were assuming that the Age of...
Enemies in EQ2 have always tended to exhibit some odd behavior such as running long distances or zig-zagging around a room in an attempt to reach the player. Destiny of Velious greatly exacerbated this problem, causing enemies to “orbit” the player, or worse, warp or teleport around. Because raid mobs are often able to ignore certain movement speed limitations, this has been a major problem in certain raid zones that require the tank to slowly keep the mob moving in a circle around a room. The mobs will teleport on top of the tank, or start to orbit clockwise...
Information about the upcoming Age of Discovery expansion has been few and far between, however SmokeJumper did take a moment to clear up how XP and loot will work: Actually, you earn XP *and* tokens. The tokens are used to acquire items for any of your characters, not just the one you have currently logged-in. XP and tokens are awarded at the end of the dungeon run and based on a challenge rating system that should prevent exploiting. More on this soon. As we heard at Fan Faire (which may, of course, have changed since then) is that there...
From the EQ2 Forums: BATTLEGROUNDS Fixed an issue with queuing for a battleground as a group.
From the EQ2 Forums: DUNGEON FINDER Dungeons are now broken into categories. If a player declines a DF offer, they must wait 15 minutes before they can queue again. The dungeon finder will now give an indication of how many players of each archetype are queued for each dungeon. Any member of the group can now set group options, but everyone in the group must vote on the changes before they apply. LIVE EVENTS Nights of the Dead The headless Horseman should once again be patrolling Nektulos Forest. An Essence of Fear and an Eerie Essence are now being...
From EverQuest2.com: Closed Beta registration for “Age of Discovery” is now open! Applications are available at this link. Beta testing is vital to ensure a great product launch. We appreciate your participation and welcome any and all feedback. Click the link above, sign in with your Station Account, complete the application process, and your application will go into the queue for approval. Please be sure to read and accept the NDA. All applicants must have accepted the NDA in order to be considered for participation. All applicants will receive an email to confirm that their application was received. Applications...
“All level 90 characters are created equal, but some are more equal than others.” Nobody likes to be picked last for a team, yet the days where any player with level-appropriate gear could contribute in a meaningful way to the majority of dungeons introduced in an EverQuest II expansion are long gone. The straightforward turn-and-burn fights up to and including Kunark zones have given way to heavily scripted 6-person mini-raids. All but the easiest Velious dungeons have substantial checks on Gear, Alternate Advancements, and Skill. I’ve talked to several players over the last week about Dungeon Finder and the...
From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums: Hey, folks, We’ve listened to feedback and there were four areas we agreed needed to be improved to make the feature more useful. Below the list of those four major improvements: 1) The problem: People were joining the DF queue as “Random” and then declining group after group until they got the dungeon they wanted. The solution: If you queue and then receive a group invite…and then decline it…you will then suffer a 15-minute time penalty before you can re-queue again. This solution has no effect on people using the DF normally, but...
From Rothgar on the EQ2 Forums: Thank you for all the feedback you guys have been giving. I'm sorry I haven’t come back and posted a response before now. I’ve been skimming the feedback and talking it over with other members of the team. The purpose of this post was to get a general feeling from you guys on what we need to look at and address in the future. We’re deep into our expansion cycle right now so it’s too early to give dates about when we can make additional changes, but I wanted to start the discussion...
The Nights of the Dead festival returns to Norrath today with a new quest and zone of mayhem as well as past events, craftable items, etc. Nights of the Dead is expected to run from Thursday, October 13 @ 12:01am PDT (08:01 BST) to November 7 @ 11:59 PST (07:59 BST). EQ2 ZAM has a detailed writeup of all the recurring Nights of the Dead quests, collectibles, and craftable items as well as what’s new this year. There are so many quests involved in Nights of the Dead that EQ2 ZAM provides a printable NoTD Quest Tracker for the...
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...
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...
Here are your update notes for today, October 12, 2011: POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION All Drunder x4 raid zones Sullon’s Spire, Tallon’s Stronghold, and Vallon’s Tower: The named boss NPCs do less damage and have slightly lower health. Tallon’s Stronghold x4 raid zone [non-challenge] The banners that spawn during the Tyrax Terrolus fight now have less health.
With today’s update, the entirely optional Beastlord Prelude #2 quest goes live. It provides an explanation for where Beastlords have been and why they’re now returning to Norrath. Don’t worry — whether you complete these brief lore quests or not, anyone who purchases the EverQuest II: Age of Discovery expansion (when it goes on sale) will be able to create new Beastlords in November. More controversial in today’s update is the removal of any “shard” cost from Thurgadin and Ry’Gorr armor. You can expect crafters to be exceedingly busy today as they fulfill orders for full sets of Thurgadin...
Here are the results of our Wednesday survey EQ2Wire Asks: Will You Use Dungeon Finder? Results are as of Oct 10, 2011 01:00 PDT. Do you think the Dungeon Finder will be popular? Definitely . 359 Votes (30%) Possibly . 435 Votes (36%) Probably Not . 285 Votes (24%) Definitely Not . 106 Votes (8%) Total Votes: 1185
This week we’ve seen the introduction of the Dungeon Finder, and what may be the end of “Shards” (Void Shards, Marks of Manaar, and Primal Velium Shards), at least for acquiring sets of armor. Primal Velium Shards First, let’s tackle the removal of Primal Velium Shards from the “shard armor” equation. The EQ2 team continues the minimalist approach to discussing and announcing mechanics changes, with this reactionary explanation from Gninja: The Thurgadin, Ry’gorr, and Drunder armor sets are direct upgrades to each other. They should scale in difficulty to obtain and that difficulty was off. That was one of...