Feldon
By even the most conservative estimate, EverQuest II has been a success for Sony Online Entertainment. How many MMORPGs are still running a decade later? SOE does not publish revenue breakdowns by game, but in the last decade, the EverQuest franchise must have raised some serious bread for SOE. The first two games funded a lengthy gestational development of EverQuest Next/Landmark, the smoothly launched Planetside 2, steady producer DC Universe Online, forthcoming zombie run-and-gun H1Z1, and a couple of valiant but costly efforts including FreeRealms and The Agency. I was initially excited when the “History of EverQuest II – 10th Anniversary...
Month: December 2014
Within any company of Sony Online Entertainment’s size, there will always be technical glitches in their public facing websites, launchpads, etc. that must be resolved. And I’ve been quick to jump to the defense of the overworked Customer Service team. They generally work as hard as they can to answer mountains of angry e-mails, and this time, they are doing so just days before the Christmas break. Yet this year, I am feeling somewhat less generous with my giving of slack. Last week’s Bonus Mystery StationCash promotion clearly required code development by the Web team and/or Platform. Someone had...
In addition to the Solo and Advanced Solo dungeons in Altar of Malice, there is actually quite a lot that soloers can do each day and each week to acquire armor and [eq2u]Far Seas Ferrin[/eq2u], this expansion’s currency. If you use the popular EQ2MAP UI modification, then the location of nearly all of these mission starters can be found there. There’s also some info on the EQ2 Forums. Thanks to Oakmiser for his assistance in composing this article!
If (like me) you haven’t received your Bonus Mystery StationCash code for today, it’s time to contact Customer Service. UPDATE: Early reports indicate that Sony Online’s e-mails sent out today are being throttled by intermediary ISPs. Players who submitted tickets earlier have subsequently received their e-mail notifications. This may be a matter of being patient. @Cyliena @Brasse I heard the emails are done. Several reasons multiples may not reach you (ISP spam blocks, etc.). Contact CS if an error. — Holly Longdale (@WindstalkerEQ2) December 19, 2014
First teased here, the Community team have now posted the first half of their EverQuest II 10th Anniversary Documentary. If you are a fan of perpetual dwarf roleplayer and SOE Director of Global Community Relations Linda “Brasse” Carlson, then you’ll love this. If you were hoping for some insight into the actual history of EQ2… Squirrel! We’ll let you know when the second half has been posted.
If you are a fan of watching videos/livecasts, or are a fan of or designer for Player Studio, then you won’t want to miss this week’s Inside the Player’s Studio as Rick “Storn” Reynolds interviews EQ2 Associate Art Director Dave “Covic” Brown about the Players Studio program. Rick and Dave go over recent submissions for EQ2 and critique and provide feedback on how to make the best possible items so that they are accepted! The big news this week is that the new Player Studio Viewer app which helps designers see how their items will look in the EQ2...
Remember how SOE really really really wanted us to opt-in to promotional SOE-wide mailings? The Kerran is now out of the bag as to why… It looks like today Friday December 19th, Saturday December 20th, and Sunday December 21st, players who opted into these e-mails (which come from info@e-sonyonline.com) will receive a random code each day which unlocks 25%, 50%, Double, or even Triple SC on their account until 11:59pm that night. And we thought there’d never be another Triple SC again! May the RNG be forever in your favor, and hopefully the Triple SC codes aren’t as rare...
From the EQ2 Forums: Have you been waiting for a way to show your EverQuest II gamer pride? We’re happy to announce that the Sony Online Entertainment portion of the J!NX store now includes apparel from your favorite SOE game! This EverQuest II shirt is joining other popular items from EverQuest, PlanetSide 2, and H1Z1.
From the EQ2 Forums: ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT SYSTEM CHANGES Up to 280 AAs will be granted as part of leveling up. Every level after 10 until level 90 characters will receive 3 AA points. Every 5th level characters will receive an additional 2 AA points, for a total of 5. Once a player reaches 280 AAs, all AA grants will cease. If characters are not at 280 AA points upon reaching level 90, they will receive additional points to reach 280. All existing characters will be grandfathered their missing additional AA points. For example, in the new system a level...
From the EQ2 Forums: Salutations Everyone! Are there some status items you’d love to purchase this season, but your personal status points are running a little low? Would you love to make a charitable donation to your guild hall escrow account this holiday? There’s a lot to celebrate this Frostfell, and we’re happy to announce the chance to earn some extra status this season! Beginning today, December 17th, at 12:00pm (Noon) PST until Sunday, December 28 at 11:59pm PST, All Access Members will earn double personal status. This holiday is too special to celebrate for just one day, so we’re celebrating the...
Given the choice between cold hard facts and the mystery of not knowing, I will almost always choose the facts. Guesswork and lack of information are the root of many misunderstandings in this life, and EQ2 is no exception. To date, EQ2 does not publish loot table data to Census, thus we have no official data from the game as far as who drops what. Fortunately, it has been possible to monitor loot and which mobs it drops from using Advanced Combat Tracker (ACT). Today, we’re happy to announce that Dedith of Dragon’s Armory developed his own ACT plugin which...
Have you taken the EverQuest II: Altar of Malice expansion survey? If not, head here: Personally as someone who has dedicated some time to writing good survey questions, this has to be one of the most generic surveys I’ve seen. On one hand, there is an entire page dedicated to the six raid zones in the expansion, yet the entirety of the tradeskill and heroic content are each distilled down to a single 1-10 rating question. What if you love the zones, animations, populations, humor, and the music, but you dislike difficulty, how would you rate that? It’s pretty...
Here are your update notes this week. Of course the biggest change is Dungeon Maker being nerfed into oblivion. Also don’t forget that there will be a 3 hours of e-commerce and voice chat maintenance today coinciding with the patch. From the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL Corrected an issue where coin would vanish when deposited into the shared bank as an exile. DUNGEON MAKER The Dungeon Maker feature is now available to all players. Dungeon Maker dungeons no longer grant experience or rewards. Players can still spend existing tokens in the Marketplace. Most avatars and toolbox objects are available to...
From the SOE Forums: Attention players: we will perform maintenance beginning at 6:00 AM PST* on Tuesday, December 16, 2014. We expect this maintenance to last about three hours. This will impact the following SOE services: Commerce functions, including purchases, for all games Voice chat functions for all games Thank you for your patience as we complete this maintenance. – SOE Community Team Time Zone Conversions PST: December 16 @ 6:00am ~ 9:00am EST: December 16 @ 9:00am ~ Noon GMT: December 16 @ 14:00 ~ 17:00 CET: December 16 @ 15:00 ~ 18:00 AEDT: December 17 @ 1:00am ~ 4:00am
From the EQ2 Forums: The Player Studio program gives players a chance to create, submit, and sell items in the Marketplace. EverQuest 2 has some amazing player artists who have been taking requests and working hard to make these items available in game. Many items are submitted, but only the most outstanding ones make it into Norrath! Last month, these were the most popular EQ2 Player Studio items: 1. Freeblood’s Tomb by NS6 This tomb has been making an appearance in eerie lands across Norrath. What lies inside? Well, that’s up to you!
After reading today’s announcement, your first comment will probably be “Why the **** wasn’t this announced yesterday?!?!“. Your second comment will probably be “I’m never moving my AA slider above 0% again!“. Starting Thursday, December 18th, all EQ2 characters as they level from up will receive an automatic amount of AA points based on their level. At level 10, you’ll be given 5 points. At level 11, you’ll get another 3 points. At level 15, you’ll have received 22 points and so forth. Any EQ2 character currently level 90 but with less than 280 AAs (I counted — it’s 9,785)...
After today’s announcement that Dungeon Maker XP and Rewards are going byebye resulted in some particularly grotesque language on the official forums, we’re looking for any positive news that might help soften the blow. A refund for those who purchased Dungeon Maker in the last 90 days would be nice, but in the meantime, Holly “Windstalker” Longdale’s has posted something mysterious on Twitter about AAs. Maybe the player-unfriendly 280AA/90 hard limit is being removed in favor of a curve or a polite warning or something other than “You shall not pass!” We've got an update coming to AAs next week...
Looks like today’s change to allow Exiles to use the Shared Bank did not go as planned, as players who are attempting to place coin in their shared bank are seeing it disappear. EQ2 designer Caith is investigating…
This morning’s game update included dozens of bugs reported by players, some since the launch of Destiny of Velious. From the EQ2 Forums: Do you enjoy adventuring and tradeskilling, but find the occasional bug rather pesky? We had an opportunity to talk with many of you directly at SOE Live 2014. Your feedback helps us find bugs and make improvements to the game we all love. Consider many of those bugs squashed, because we’ve made a lot of improvements in the Bug Bash update so that you can enjoy the activities you love even more! So what changed in the...
Each year, Frostfell gets even bigger with more quests, more collections, and more recipes with more items you can make for your home. It’s hard not to miss something without a writeup or two and fortunately EQ2 ZAM and EQ2Traders continue to deliver. Meanwhile Lera has fully updated EQ2Furniture to include multiple screenshots of every single house item available in EQ2, including all the new goodies for Frostfell! As of Noon pacific, Frostfell is open for business, and the remaining few EQ2 fan sites are all over this much-anticipated event.
In a long-awaited change that should come as a surprise to none, Dungeon Maker XP and rewards are being removed as of December 16th. Here’s EQ2 Senior Producer Holly “Windstalker” Longdale‘s announcement on the EQ2 Forums: Greetings Norrathians, Three years ago, we added the Dungeon Maker system to EverQuest 2. During that time you all have used it to create some amazing dungeons to explore, creating your own spins on the world of Norrath within your private instances. We could not be happier with the fantastic creativity that’s been shown and that’s exactly why we added the feature to the...
UPDATE: Frostfell went live at 12:00 noon Pacific Standard time. Original article after the jump…
So SOE really really really really really wants all of us to be on their e-mail distribution list. From the EQ2 Forums: There’s a lot of excitement happening here at SOE. In addition to news and updates about our games, we want to make sure you have the chance to participate in some of the great promotions we have to offer! This holiday season, one promotion is available through e-mails only. If you want to have the chance to participate, you need to make sure you’re “opted-in” (signed up to receive e-mails from Sony Online Entertainment)! In order to receive...
From the EQ2 Forums: The weather outside might be frightful, but the Norrathian streets are decorated and the citizens are so delightful! The Gigglegibber goblins and Frostfell elves are spreading cheer throughout Norrath this season and encouraging players to visit the Frostfell Wonderland Village. You can access the Wonderland through the Magic Closets in Qeynos Province District, Freeport, Haven, Kelethin, Neriak, Gorowyn and New Halas. In addition to the return of your favorite Frostell festivities, you can also look forward to plenty of exciting new content this season!
It’s Bug Bash (and Altar of Malice heroic zone rebalancing) time! From the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL — BUG BASH WEEK Fixed an issue where you could lose your grandmaster spell if you betrayed. The tooltip and examine window information will now correctly display the damage type of missile weapons. Rejoice! Exiles can now use the shared bank! Exiles can now change suffix titles! SOE Live Request: Added the command /dump_items_to_log, which, true to its name, will write the contents of your inventory to your log. Please note that only items known to your game client will be logged; as...