Feldon Today, November 8th, is officially EverQuest II’s 8th birthday. After the celebrations, long-time players want to know what presents they can expect! Specifically, they want to know — Will the EQ2 team try to outdo past unique Veteran Rewards?
Last year’s 8 year item — Veteran Revival — provided a groupwide resurrect which was a bit slow to cast but has still saved more than a few groups and raids from the jaws of death. Earlier today we talked about Call of the Veteran, or which must be known internally as the “Item From Hell”. It was a unique item, and I use it almost every day, but it does tend to bug out from time-to-time.
So you may be wondering why are we talking about a 9 year Veteran Reward when the game is just 8 years old. It so happens that the first four expansions each granted 90 days of additional accrued game time. This practice concluded with the Rise of Kunark, meaning the first four expansions credit one full extra year.
So what is it already? Sheesh!
Actually, the answer was right under my nose — in our super nifty “Last 100 Discovered Items” page on EQ2U. This page lists the last 100 items which have been discovered in EQ2 on any live server. Looking at the page, it seems there’s a very happy Beastlord in Validus on the Splitpaw server tonight. But I digress… the “Veteran Reward – 9 year” was first discovered Tuesday afternoon so let’s take a look at it:
- Gnom-o-Matic Equipment Unattuner [7]
- Field Repair Kit [3]
- Scroll of Resurrection [3]
- Health Potion [3]
- Power Potion [3]
- Expanded Veteran’s Display Case
The Good: Unattuners are always popular. Sometimes you have an amazing or difficult-to-attain item that you want to gift to an alt. And a new Veteran’s Display case with even more room will help those who struggle with Broker space.
The So-So: People are always looking for something new, and this year’s Vet Rewards mostly build on past rewards, plus a few rare (and not-so-rare) StationCash, Legends of Norrath and Goblin Game items. Incidentally, the EQ2 team have been talking about overhauling the EQ2 Veteran Reward system to be token-based so that players can buy specific rewards in a different order than they have traditionally been granted.
What do you think?
Is this a substantive pat-on-the-back for EQ2 lifers?
The unattuners and the expanded display case look really cool. The station cash ‘hero’s edge’ stuff… people thought it was crap for the CoE collectors edition. I don’t imagine they’ll find it more interesting as a veteran reward.
I wonder that SoE seems to be pushing these items that many would call ‘pay to win items’ like the ress scrolls and health/power pots.
That is the question I have had for a long time, do they realize that no one uses those pots or field repair kits, but I dont want to sound like a jerk and not say thank you for the attuner and display case.
No one uses any of those other lame items 🙂
Unattuner, before I get flamed
It’s a mixed bag of tricks, but I’m happy with it overall, I was slightly disappointed with the 8 year rewards, so this is an improvement for me.
The unattuners will definitely come in handy to pass down gear / marketplace items to alts, and I think its a fair assumption that the majority of veterans will have alts. The 50 slot / 50% commission discount Veteran’s Display Case is very welcome too, though I wish it had a 96 slot capacity, that’s just plain greedy though 😀
I haven’t really had much cause to use any of the items that could be deemed as pay to win, I suppose they’re trying to throw us a few freebies to get us into the habit of using them on a more regular basis, but I think many veterans will have little need to use them anyway. But they’re always there.
Overall it’s a thumbs up, but it’s definitely time to convert this to a token / catalog / points based system that SJ talked about a year or 2 ago now. Let the players pick and choose their rewards from a list that includes stuff like the above, throw in some exclusive vanity / fluff choices / exclusive mounts / exclusive prestige homes etc. Play your way and all that. Hopefully that can be put in place in time for the 10 year anniversary. I can dream 😀
This is some real neat stuff.
Now if only they had included the year I was Gold on Freeport (during the split) into my veteran time as they promised and failed to do. Then I might have this in a few months instead of late next year.
/bitter
They tried to do unique things in the past and ended up with features that aren’t reliable, but can’t be put on the top of the bugfix list due to how few players qualify. Can’t blame em for playing it safe this go around.
7 unattuners = not on the same usefulness level as Call of the Veteran, imo. The rest are just terrible, like really, lol.
I think I would’ve settled for “Call of the Unattuner” where you unattune an item per 24 hrs, instead of 7 unattuners.
Unattuners are a huge deal. 7 is pretty awesome. All the other stuff is meh.
Disappointed with the 50-slot item count on the Display Case; in fact, I’d almost call it a joke. In order to use it, I’d have to remove one of my 76-slot Eucalyptus Salesman’s Crates, or even worse, one of my 96-slot specialized Eucalyptus containers (Furniture Shelf, Scroll Stand, etc). Seriously, if you’re going to give us something, make it useful. A number of my broker boxes are completely full, and giving me something with HALF the usable size does me absolutely no good at all.
Sadly I unsubscribed back in July so I won’t be getting the display case…
What I would like as a reward is a free batch of unlockers so I can put my raid gear back on…
This is probably the most disappointing vet reward next to the 7 year one. Excellent.
Account time continues to accumulate now even if you aren’t “subscribed” (AKA a gold member). So if you mean July of 2012 then you are fine.
I think the expanded display case is pretty awesome personally. *shrug* To each their own. 🙂
Unfortunately, I won’t hit 9 years until next August.. /sigh
Is this item /claimable as 1 per character or 1 per account?
(I would imagine its 1 per character)
7 Unattuners per character isn’t so bad. The Display Case is a lot better than the old veteran one, which I actually still use.
Yeah I wish that had given the Vets “Gnom-o-Matic Equipment Unattuner v2.0” which had unlimited charges and worked on one piece per 24 hr period.. the rest is meh!
The un-attuners are nice but…still it’s only 7. I think the ‘unlimited charges’ with a delay timer would have made more sense. Overall I’m pretty underwhelmed by this vet reward, I wish they would re-think it in terms of what players actually need/want/use.
I use the Display Case on all of my adventuring toons, so the extended one will be a good thing. The Unattuner, definitely. I won two Gimlets out of the Gobby games yesterday and used them to move items from my Paladin to save for my leveling SK.
I have to agree with most, not real exciting, but I am glad for those two items.
@Niicolos
I thought they stopped doing that during the EQ2X days. I guess I’ll find out whenever I get it.
Lack of anything for crafters is pretty disappointing along with the charges on all the other stuff:( 9 years, I expected at least a gold watch some item useful to all my toons like orb of memories cov etc. This is pretty lackluster.
Cheaper sales is at least partly usable by crafters. What type of item were you hoping for?
Link fixed to:
http://eq2.me/i/Gnom-o-matic+Equipment+Unattuner
How embarrassing.
Cheaper sales is at least partly usable by crafters.
Due to unscrupulous folks buying stuff I put on broker and reselling it higher to profit off my work, I stopped crafting for broker. I have a few items up to clear from inventory, but that’s it. I do work either for guildies or case-by-case for-hire now.
It is called free market, not being unscrupulous – I can understand it is frustrating, but there are a lot of people who speculate on items and the supply and demand to make money and they enjoy that or work at it. Opportunistic is probably a better descriptor, but no less frustrating at times.
No there are laws against market manipulation like that in the real world Kaufman that is not how a free market is supposed to work. Though now we are a major topic derail.
Im with anaogi. I dont make crafting items for profit anymore.
I wonder if they can make any item purchased from the broker heirloom ? You can use it for any of your toons, but U can’t onsell it ?
It is called free market, not being unscrupulous
No, it’s hiking prices for folks who could actually use the stuff–that’s unscrupulous. If I wanted to gouge folks with less plat than I, I’d charge those rates myself.
Actually I wasn’t entirely correct–my Alchemist does do limited runs of stuff that go to broker and make bank. It’s mostly raider interest stuff so I’m not as peeved about it–the stuff that ticked me off was more general interest, kept reasonable to help the less plat-flush–but the principle still ticks me off.
I stand corrected – buying something someone put for a certain price on the broker and selling it to someone else who is willing to pay that price is unscrupulous. It couldn’t be you set your price too low – someone realized it, and purchased it and priced it to their advantage. It is the broker, not “charity selling”. Again, I am not saying it makes you feel good when it happens, or it isn’t a pain, or I like when it happens to me either – I am on your side there. I just think it is a bit harsh to call people who speculate on items being sold in the free broker market as unscrupulous. It is as fair a way to make plat in that game as any. Supply and demand.
/ontopic – I am excited about the Display case and unfortunately since I don’t play alts, have no need for the unatuners – but maybe someday. Some things I would have rather seen than gobo-game goodies would be a custom title, perhaps an extra krono, SC, LON packs or maybe something more wild like max faction with your deity, or a gem of zone reset, or small perks like a 10% time reduction on all “calls”
Supply and Demand folks. If you think prices are too high, manufacture more of the product and put it on the market.
There is nothing wrong with buying something that is underpriced and reselling it for a higher price. If you want to offer your crafting services for cheaper, take it to the chat channels.
This will be easier with the forthcoming Mass Production.
I ll get the 7 years vet reward this month… (better than this)
The 9 years look totaly flat, uninsterresting. Nothing i want, the extra sellcrate is not that great, i already have one hundred mastercrafted salesman crate like most veteran… and see this upgrade with 50 slot while i have 76 to 96 slot everywhere is not an upgrade for me. And the fee … is not really an issue most of the time.
I understand why they want stop to give free candy to loyal customer from so long.
All i see is old junk, unattuner ? 2 month later you ll get better stuff anyway. We keep getting new item. And why i would want pass to an alt an item that is obsolet ? In first place they just should get ride of NO TRADE so all items actually NO TRADE/ATTUNED become Heirloom.
Sériously the hp/mana potion, résurrect scroll ? look like a bad joke.
This or nothing is same.
PS: i agree with anaogi, it’s so easy to do plat with the work of other… that kill all good thing, for the free market. The free market should have strict rule. One easyest way is the price memory… if everyone had possibility to know ALL price, how many item got sold and his price (like zam have done in past)… it would be harder to be robed by someone rude that monopolize some part of the market. And antoher way is to put an history on each item, telling who first got it (craft or loot) then list all people who had it, and list price too… Not that hard to do, and totaly prevent bad comportement like hijack, buy for resell at higher price.
Not so long what people do telling it’s freemaket … leaded people at the end of a rope…
Then how is it a free market?
I call it playing the market. Same thing happens every day in real life all over the world. I invest my time and money in buying up things that are market below what I consider fair market value, reprice them, and resell them at a higher rate to compensate for my time invested. Sometimes it fails and the items won’t sell for the higher price an I eat the costs. that is part of the gamble.
I’ve been doing it in EQ2 for years and made thousands of plat. I do the same thing on Ebay on a daily basis and have made thousands of dollars as well. You put your items up for sale, I bought them. You made the profit that you were asking for when you sold your items. What the new owner chooses to do with the things they bought is up to them. It’s not unscrupulous, its called good business.
@Madcat: if everyone had possibility to know ALL price, how many item got sold and his price (like zam have done in past)
You do realize that this project at ZAMs failed due to a few factors and I could be misremembering, but it relied on active player update feeds and was skewed due to people inflating thier prices (a.k.a. using the Broker as an extended bank vault).
If SOE is going to do ANYTHING to fix the Broker system, then #1 on that list must be limited time “auction” style listings. Allowing people to place items up for an infinite amount of time does not encourage them to be price competitive. Nor does forcing the Buyer to pay the fees rather than the Lister.
With Seller fees and limited time listings (week/month/we) then the prices would not only be competitive they would also be cleaner, searches would run faster and the system would largely contain relevant items of interest.
You could always sneak in a bid/buyout system as well to make ‘snipping’ a little more fun and a mini-game unto itself.
@ Nrgy
Thank you, but no. I MUCH prefer EQ2’s broker system over the myriad ‘auction houses’ I’ve seen in other games.
I wouldn’t object to having a limited listing time for items… if the time was at -least- a month.
With the system as it is, people who like to ‘play the broker game’ can still do so, but it isn’t required to buy/sell things.
The worst thing about most of the ‘auction house’ systems is that, unless you’re willing to pay obsenely high buy-out prices, you can’t just go and buy things. You have to ‘attempt’ to buy something a week or so ahead of time and constantly go back to see if you have to up your bid. Thanks, but no thanks.
The display case is cool, but I am saddened to see no ‘show off’ items, like a mount, house or title. If you’ve been playing since launch it is nice to have something appearance-related in some way that shows everyone what you’ve earned.
But then, SOE give no title for doing 5000 unique (non-repeat) quests, yet they do for flying through some rings badly a few times, so I have no faith that SOE know what a decent reward for ‘side’ achievements is anyway.
@Pipsissiwa – I have absolutely no idea why in a game called EverQuest that you do not receive some amazing title for 5,000 quests and maybe even again each thousand after that. The game is is called EverQuest… 5,000 quests takes years to accomplish. the EverQuester, Master of Quests, Quest Master, – something… the cloak was pretty sad.
Yeah, receiving the cloak is one of those letdown moments. It took years to get to 5k quests just for them to go…let’s see here…here’s an art asset we used before. Tom throw that on a cloak and tell them to shut up.
i don’t care for any of this but the unattuner would be of use at some point much longer down the road after many 95 raids . hell just give us a good 95 mount and call it good and keep this crap . vet year rewards other than the rides and vet call that works most of the time are of very little use .
Wasnt it not to long ago SOE made it to where you can have 100 mounts? Why not make the quest journal size unlimited? After all it is called Everquest2. Having a quest amount limit is just dumb. Ide also like to see adornment unattuners, like a NPC that does unattuning of all sorts.
The problem is how Quests work. As you are walking through a zone, near NPCs, near other players, etc. the game is constantly checking if any of your quests have updates, or if any of the other NPCs or players in your area have quest updates for you. Take 100 people in an area each on 100 quests and it is murder on the servers. Increasing the Quest journal would increase Server Lag.
Crafters can make Adornment Removers for you in the expansion.
@ ppl complaining about getting unattuners….you can send them all to me 🙂
Well I am about to collect my 8 year reward, (I lost a year somewhere, no idea where). I don’t know if I will be around in EQ2 to collect my 9 year vet reward but there is nothing in that package that interests me.
Item unattuners? useless, it takes a 5 minute run in DC to get at least 2 legendary items, often 3 and fairly often a Fabled or Ethereal. I have 4 maxed toons almost completely equipped.
Who the hell needs the potions at maxed level?
I already have veterans display cases on all my toons and rarely use all the slots as it is so the new display case is not of much use to me either.
I would have liked maybe a Krono or something along the lines of the Call of the Veteran item, maybe a Transport Bell that I could use in my house. Now that would be neat.
Why not have a cool mount for each year of play? You can actually use mounts. Or have a merc for each year of play? Or both?