Feldon
A handful of bored teenagers decided their celebrity status on Twitter is more important than us being able to play on DBG servers or participate in the forums this morning. I guess the job title of selling car insurance was already filled, so these reptiles are just wasting everyone’s time instead. UPDATE — Noonish PST DBG servers, games, and forums seem to be accepting connections reliably again, so we’re going to mark this one resolved!
Year: 2015
Jethal Silverwing of Kithicor.org has posted a new song based on Frozen’s “Let It Go” about the Daybreak Games Layoffs. I called it.. on Feb 11th.. the Gnoll Shit hit the Fan, and many.. MANY.. of our good friends got laid off. Our initial reaction was shock.. then the community took the next logical step to anger. One of the calm voices out there, among the mobs carrying pitchforks and torches.. was Linda “Brasse” Carlson. Now, former, director of global community relations.. and really, the face of SOE for the last 6 years. Perhaps her years dealing with the public...
From Holly “Windstalker” Longdale on the EQ2 Forums: Hello, Norrathians! As you’ve likely heard by now, there’s been some changes around here in staff. I want to assure you though that this team is still in full-time dev and operation mode, and we continue to have awesome plans for EQ2. We’re shuffling a few things about, but our goals in delivering fun stuff won’t change. For example, in a couple of weeks we’ll be releasing rare bosses for the AoM dungeons and more. We’re tinkering a bit so I apologize for the silence and certainly any concerns or worry...
Oakmiser has shared his latest Norrathian Chronicles epidoe, this one a guide on the nerve-wracking but infinitely useful tradeskill ability of Experimenting. Check it out!
What started out as a thread by players wondering why an interesting feature (Map Fogging) had been removed got a clear explanation from Gninja and Caith as the team tries to solve the crashing issues certain players have been reporting. Gninja started with: This was actually a quick change and the reason it was done was because the amount of data that had to be stored on each character was contributing negatively to individual performance. Caith added: This change directly reduces character data that is sent to the client when zoning, by a significant amount in many cases. Character...
More than a few players have looked at my EQ2 character‘s vacant adornment slots with incredulity. Why have I been so slack on adorning? The answer has multiple parts: I never knew when I will replace a piece of gear and thus be out the cost of the adornments or worse unable to carry those adornments forward. War Runes have been by-and-large out of reach of my casual heroic gameplay style. The purple adornments I really want have been drops behind an unfavorable RNG. Green adornments for the most part have lacked significant growth, or just haven’t been worth...
Not surprisingly, my article “Daybreak Games: It Didn’t Have to Be This Way” received a lukewarm response from its subject, Daybreak President John Smedley. @EQ2Wire Feldon I'll make it simple – your article was so offbase I actually laughed. so much of it is just factually incorrect. — John Smedley (@j_smedley) February 12, 2015 After exchanging a few candid e-mails with him, I’m able to release this comment: We absolutely made sure that taking care of our employees was the highest priority and this deal was by far and away the one that took care of people the best....
Have you ever wondered just how many status points it takes to level a guild? Fortunately EQ2 player Xanadin has done the math and made a table of guild XP levels that has the necessary numbers. Here’s the direct link to the site and the link where it’s mentioned on the EQ2 Forums. We meant to post this before all the news broke yesterday.
Bumping this article up as we’ve learned of two three more layoffs — Xelgad, Jeffrey Bard, and Fyreflyte. From EQ and EQ2 Creative Director and awesome fire dancer Akil “Lyndro” Hooper‘s facebook (a public post): Sitting in a room, getting laid off with some of the brightest and most talented developers I’ve had the pleasure to work with. No idea what comes next, but if history holds true I’m sure that it will be fun. From @Douglastweets (Endymion) who worked on EQ2 as a programmer and added a ton of stuff including Gear Sets to EQ2, helping EQ2U and Dragon’s Armory...
UPDATE: SOE President John Smedley has responded to this post. The day has arrived that I’ve been dreading since I heard the first rumors. Layoffs have befallen Daybreak Games, affecting H1Z1, Planetside 2, EQNext/Landmark, EverQuest, and EverQuest II. The Community Relations team was one of the hardest hit, with Brasse, Amnerys, Ashlanne, Hats, and Afista all let go. We haven’t confirmed any other layoffs in any other department such as QA, CS, Platform, Web, etc. I have to hand it to the EQ2 team who has pulled together as a family over the last week in the face of...
From former Planetside 2 producer David Carey on Planetside 2’s Reddit: Hey guys, I came on to say goodbye to you guys (at least in my current role, prepare for lurking), but after scanning the front page I wanted to change the flavor of the post a bit. Columbus Nova deserves no hate in all this. They are more like white knights than negative forces here. SOE needed a shake up/new direction, and CN provided that. They have done nothing but been gracious in their new ownership, and they went out of their way to make sure that Devs and...
There is a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt swirling around Daybreak Games and EverQuest II in particular today, for obvious reasons. We’re working on a more detailed reaction to today’s news which will be posted tomorrow morning. However EQ2 senior animator Tom Tobey took a moment today to do what he does best (other than animations of course!) and injected some humor into the day with this tweet: Alright, let's make this happen! pic.twitter.com/1gfujcUpzZ — Tom Tobey (@giganticrobot) February 11, 2015 and by resurrecting Errrorr’s “Official Duck Mount Request Thread“: The Official Duck Mount Request thread. Why does...
From the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL Map Fog has been removed. ABILITIES / ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT General Expert Spells of a higher tier will now do more damage than the same spell Master previous tier. For example: Level 91 Faith Strike (Expert) will now do more damage than level 81 Faith Strike (Master). ITEMS Bound transmutation stones purchased from the loyalty merchant may now be transmuted correctly. Corrected an issue where some pvp adornment added red gem armor lost its ability mod. QUESTS Altar of Malice and Tears of Veeshan Weekly Missions are now classified as Weekly Missions in the Quest...
From Kotaku: Daybreak, the game studio behind EverQuest and H1Z1, is laying off a number of staff including David Georgeson, the man who has served as the face of EverQuest for many years,Kotaku has learned. We don’t know just how many people Daybreak is letting go, as staff are being informed right now whether or not they will remain employed with the company. The newly-titled Daybreak, which was called Sony Online Entertainment for close to two decades, went independent and changed its name last week after Sony sold it to a New York-based management firm. Although the company was all smiles about the deal in public,...
Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson, Director of Development / Franchise Director for Everquest, EverQuest II, and EverQuest Next / Landmark has been laid off by Daybreak Games. Georgeson took over as Producer of a then-troubled EverQuest II team and made strides to support the game both inside and outside SOE, add Free-to-Play support, etc. He then moved on to work on EverQuest Next/Landmark and has been focused on those games for the last year and a half. Georgeson updated his Twitter profile a few minutes ago with this message: Just this guy, y’know? San Diego, CA (for now) We now have...
From Dexella on the DBG Forums: Dear Players, Partners & Friends, Last week we announced that we were acquired and are now operating independently as Daybreak Game Company. To better position our newly independent studio for future growth opportunities and to deliver on our legacy of making top online games, we have had to make some tough choices including realignment of resources. Unfortunately, this realignment means adjusting staffing as well. We announced today that we will eliminate positions in our San Diego and Austin studios. We deeply value our employees and never take these decisions lightly so we’ve done...
This week’s Daybreak Games layoffs have begun with a shocker. Linda “Brasse” Carlson, long the public face of Sony Online Entertainment as its Global Community Relations lead, and emcee of the annual SOE Live convention for the last five years, she first caught the attention of SOE through her popular TheBrasse.com fansite for EQ2 and her work in the player community. She has also spoken at conventions on behalf of SOE and also moderated panels on the subject of Community Management such as the popular Game Developer’s Conference. With the friendships she’s built in the gaming community, we expect she’ll...
From the EQ2 Forums: US EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, February 10, 2015 at approximately 4:00AM PST for an update. Estimated downtime is 1 hour. The Nagafen server will be undergoing additional maintenance during this time. Estimated downtime for Nagafen is 4 hours. EU EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, February 10, 2015 at approximately 9:00PM PST for an update. (Approx. 5:00AM London Time on February 11, 2015) Estimated downtime is 1 hour. Alle deutschsprachigen Server werden um 6:00 CET am 11.02.2015 zwecks einer Serveraktualisierung heruntergefahren. Die vorgesehene Stillstandszeit wird etwa...
In response to questions about the future of EverQuest II, Afista posted this official response: Daybreak and Columbus Nova management teams are working together closely to evaluate the situation and will make adjustments if needed This post lends credence to the trickle of rumors I’ve been hearing.
I’m proud to announce that a fellow player who I have twice met at SOE Live and then had the fortune of spending New Year’s Eve with is embarking on a new adventure in broadcasting with his own EverQuest II-themed weekly show! Oakmiser‘s new channel, which he calls The Norrathian Chronicles, will see 5-15 minute videos covering news, live events, content updates, and tutorials for in-game topics that tend to trip players up. Oakmiser, who shares the home server of Butcherblock with me and Dethdlr, has been getting advise from myself and Chuina, creator and former co-host of the popular EQN/Landmark...
Over the last few months, Dethdlr and I have discovered a some surprisingly obvious bugs on EQ2U which we can only guess at least one player noticed, but then couldn’t find an easy way to contact us, so the bug remained unfixed. To address this, we’ve added a dedicated Contact Us form for registered users of EQ2U. With this new form, we are hoping to hear from anyone who just wants to give us feedback about the site, pose a suggestion, or of course let us know if they find any issues with the site! It is through player suggestions that features such...
From the EQ2 Forums: Are you still chasing a few Legends of Norrath loot cards that have evaded your grasp? Or are you missing cards to fill out your collection? Whatever your reasons, you’re in luck! Starting today and running until 11:59PM PST on Monday, February 9, 2015, take UP TO 66% OFF most Legends of Norrath items in the Marketplace! There are lots of in-game rewards available from Legends of Norrath Booster packs. Appearance items, potions, houses, and furniture are just some of the awesome things you can receive from opening up a card pack! For example, check out the...
So far, at least from the in-game comments I’ve seen, Altar of Malice has been well-received. Not everyone agrees about the difficulty of the heroic zones, but there’s a clear progression that players can strive towards. With any expansion, there will always be balance tweaks needed and a bug fix or two. We saw such a fix just last night with the missing textures in Zavith’loa zones turning parts of the zone black or white. This has been addressed with a client patch. Some other fixes and features coming up soon: Scout Poisons overwriting each other Weekly Heroic/Raid Gems...
The servers are back up following the hotfix. Another update from Holly “Windstalker” Longdale: Erm…the US hotfix happened earlier than planned (i.e. 3:30pm instead of 5pm). Servers should be back up very soon. #eq2 — Holly Longdale (@WindstalkerEQ2) February 5, 2015 Update from Holly “Windstalker” Longdale: We’ll be doing a very quick update about 5pm PST to take care of an icky bug. Should be a short interruption. #eq2 — Holly Longdale (@WindstalkerEQ2) February 5, 2015 After much patience, here’s the Update note: LEVEL AGNOSTIC DUNGEONS Agnostic Dungeons will no longer drop level 90-100 masters.
If you’ve checked your in-game mail in EQ2 lately, you’ve hopefully received the Prestige Home Poll for Winter 2015. Players have been asked for vote for which Prestige Home they’d like to see added to the Marketplace next. From the EQ2 Forums: Greetings Everyone, We’ve received a lot of requests from players to create prestige homes based upon some existing Norrathian zones. We’d love to create another prestige home, so we’ve implemented a Prestige Home Poll in-game so we can have your opinion on what style home you’d like to see added!