Feldon
Tinkerfest opens this weekend, and what better place to find information about this event then at EQ2Traders? Niami Denmother‘s ever thorough writeup of this event includes all the new quests, collections, and new house items available. Among the many new crafting additions include both diamond plate and hammered steel deck plating. Perfect for adding a small factory or work area to your house or hall. Tinkerfest will be a limited duration Live Event. It is currently expected to be available from July 23 starting at 12:01 a.m. PDT, through August 2, 2010 at 11:59 p.m. PDT. We’re waiting for...
Feldon
From EQ2Players: Direct 2 Drive is offering a special deal on an EQII pack that will help new and returning players get into the game quickly. For a limited time, pick up EverQuest II Sentinel’s Fate, along with three Flask of Adventuring bonus potions, the Vestiges of Glory Armor Pack, and a 30-day subscription for new accounts, all for just $14.95. This offer expires July 26th, so don’t let it pass you (and your friends) by! Also available for purchase in Pounds (UK) and Euros (EU).
This week’s rollup post includes news about Antonia Bayle server upgrades, some out-of-whack procs, and further speculation about Free-to-Play (F2P). After the jump…
Xelgad has taken another measured step towards collecting player feedback. Last month, it was a shoutout for Top End Guilds to post some of their highest parses. Today’s request appears to be some light finally being shone on guardians after nearly 2 years at the lower middle of the “fighter” pack in tanking ability. Greetings Guardians! First off, allow me say that we understand that the class is being outshined at the moment, and we’re working on it. It’s going to take more than just one change to get Guardians back to working as a strong class again. I’m...
CORRECTION: Ikik is still on the Vanguard team. Today we learn from EQ2Flames just who was laid off from the EQ2 team. Timetravelling designed some of the more interesting raid encounters in the Sentinel’s Fate expansion, including Roehn Theer: I wanted to pop in and thank you all for playing EQ2 for the last few years. You helped make it an absolute joy of a job, and I’m sorry to be moving on, but I suppose that thems the breaks. Please keep on keepin’ on, having fun, and kicking the crap out of all of the encounters us poor...
UPDATE: We heard about layoffs today, but linked to (and quoted) the 2009 article. Here is the correct link and quote: From IndustryGamers.com: The developer behind DC Universe Online and The Agency, Sony Online Entertainment, has laid off 35 employees, or just over 4% of its full-time workforce, in an effort to “better align the company’s resources…as well as improve operational efficiency,” says SOE’s Scott Gulbransen, senior director of global PR & corporate communications. The official statement: “In a move to better align the company’s resources against areas of growth that meet consumer demand in today’s online market as...
From the EQ2 Forums: Greetings Norrathians! We have been made aware of a potential threat to your account security, and ask you to read this, pass it on, link it and let others know. There is a serious phishing scam being perpetrated right now. You may receive an email telling you that your password has been changed or asking you to log into the linked site for some reason. Please double check the URL of the site that you are being asked to access. The legitimate SOE site will have this URL: http://auth.station.sony.com. Please do not enter your information...
We’ve got Today’s Hotfix Notes straight from the Patcher for you. They include the aforementioned changes to various instances in Desert of Flames and Kingdom of Sky, some itemization fixes, and tweaks to raid mobs in Underfoot Depths and Icy Keep.
Will you be in the San Diego, CA area on Saturday, July 24th? The SOE Block Party at SOE Studios in sunny San Diego, CA brings a day you will never forget. Join fellow gamers and developers from SOE for music, food, tours, game previews, giveaways, raffles and much, much more. SOE will offer activities for the young ones, so bring everyone in the family! Attendance is free! The SOE Block Party is Saturday, July 24th, 2010, from 4:00 pm – 8:00 pm at the SOE Studio (8928 Terman Ct, San Diego, CA, 92121.). Shuttle buses are scheduled to...
Hirofortis has posted a thought-provoking thread on the EQ2 Forums regarding Critical Mitigation on raid gear and pondering just how much Crit Mit is needed to proceed in raiding. Just looking at the Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 raid gear available in-game, a player can acquire critical mitigation amounts of 110%, 127.8%, and 141% respectively, not including any critical mitigation achieved by having high numbers in the necessary stats. Critical Mitigation from Raid Armor Sets T1 T2 T3 Head 10.00% 12.00% 15.00% Chest 20.00% 20.00% 20.00% Shoulders 10.00% 12.00% 15.00% Forearms 5.00% 9.60% 12.00% Hands 5.00% 9.60%...
Even though Amnerys (it’s pronounced “am-NAIR-iss”) has technically been EQ2 Community Manager for a few weeks now, she has posted an introduction on EQ2Players. You can read this intro at EQ2Players. She also references her original posting to the Station Blog when she was brought on as a Community Relations Rep.
Have you registered for Fan Faire yet? It’s less than a month away and registration closes in two weeks. That means it’s time for Calthine’s annual Fan Faire Tips! If you are planning to attend Fan Faire, I recommend reading her survival guide. Between tracking down guildies, meeting new friends, and trying to catch all the panels and events that affect your game(s) of choice, the Fan Faire weekend becomes a blur. It’s helpful to be prepared.
Test Copy has always been a temporary server, subject to complete wipes of all characters and guilds. In fact, the Test Copy server started out as a PvP Test server, and while it has been a PvE server for over 2 years now, the PvP switch has been “flipped” a few times for testing of Battlegrounds and PvP content leading up to Sentinel’s Fate. Despite all cautions to the contrary, some players have built up characters and guilds on Test Copy, so they may be interested to know that another wipe is happening. Test Copy is currently down (we’re...
From the EQ2 Forums: The US servers will come down on July 14, 2010, at 7am PDT for a hotfix. The Update Notes will be posted in the Update Notes forum when available. Runnyeye and Splitpaw will be patched at 9pm PDT (4am GMT) on July 14, 2010.
The second opportunity for players to submit their own artwork to be turned into in-game EQ2 paintings has come and gone, and the results have been announced! From EQ2Players: Greetings, Norrathians! We are thrilled to make the highly-anticipated announcement of the winners of our Notable Norrathians Forum Challenege! It was not easy to choose just ten out of the amazing entries we received. The talent and creativty displayed were truly wonderful and there’s a certiain very-jealous dark elf in the office right now! We’d like to thank everyone who submitted an entry (the dark elf made note that she’s...
So we just had a Double XP weekend over the July 4th holiday. It was heavily promoted, and featured in an e-mail and on the forums. EQ2 Senior Producer SmokeJumper posted about spending almost the entire weekend playing and how quickly he earned levels, AAs, and how many groups he got. Now, apparently, it’s time for the pendulum to swing the other way. Yesterday’s Test Server Update Notes include the following details which will eventually make it to Live servers: GENERAL Many instances from Deserts of Flame and Kingdom of Sky are now persistent. This includes Ancient’s Table, Cazel’s...
There are just two weeks left to register for Fan Faire and the number of Gold and Silver passes available is limited! Platinum passes have been sold out for some time now. You can read more at EQ2Players. Plane ticket prices are already rebounding fast, so if you are on the fence, either buy your tickets now, or roll the dice and wait another week. That’s not a bet I’d take! As we have for the last 2 years, EQ2Wire will be providing Continuing Live Coverage of EverQuest II and Fan Faire.
From EQ2Players: The choosing of a guild name is a very important rite. To help ensure that your new name is considered carefully, we are introducing Guild Name Change potions at the price of 5500 SC. We believe this price is fair for those who do want a name change, but will also serve as a deterrent to those who might want to frivolously rename their guild every time they have a kerfuffle in the lands of Norrath. There has always been the option to disband a guild and create a new one with the desired name, but think...
From EQ2Players: With just over a month left until the big event we thought it would be fun to give you a behind the scenes look at Fan Faire! What goes into planning such a big event you may ask? When do we start? Just how many pallets of stuff are shipped to the event, and how many rolls of shrink wrap does it take to keep everything together? Look no further folks—we have all of the answers right here! In our quest for insider information we looked to the experts, the Events Team! Three wonderful ladies make up...
Oh hey, we had a hotfix! The July 7, 2010 Update Notes include several fixes to raid targets and live events. After the jump…
UPDATE: Blizzard has cancelled their plans to require real names to post on their forums. Unable to handle the avalanche of trolls overloading their community support forums (with 11.5 million players and over $20 billion in revenue after 5 1/2 years, you’d think they could afford to hire a few Kiara’s), Blizzard has decided to not just touch, but grasp firmly the third rail of MMORPGs — online anonymity. The Blizzard Announcement: The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so...
From the EQ2 Forums: This weekend, from 4pm Pacific on Friday, July 2nd (23:00 GMT) until 10am Pacific on Tuesday, July 6th (17:00 GMT), we will be running BOTH a Double Station Cash promotion *and* a true Double XP (+100% XP) promotion. We’ve gotten clarification that this is: Double Adventure XP Double Tradeskill XP Double Alternate Advancement (AA) XP Double StationCash A StationCash Card Reminder: The only StationCash cards currently available for purchase are branded as FreeRealms cards with StationCash value. Do not buy EverQuest II gameplay time 30 day cards (if you can even find them), they will...
The Icy Keep (an easy x4 raid zone added in Game Update 56) seems to have taken its place as this expansion’s Ward of Elements. We’ve received reports that, with the exception of the final boss, this zone is appropriate for raid groups of as few as 11 players seeking to gear up and work their way into more difficult raiding. There have been some issues with later bosses which Gninja has just submitted some fixes for: [I’ve] just checked in a fix that cleans up the Vrewwx fight as well as fixed the respawn points. Now once you...
Today’s hotfix included some additional lag fixes. Here’s Rothgar: With this morning’s update we made a fundamental change to how our zone servers throttle their frame rate. Our hope is that this change will allow busier processes to consume more of the server resources and increase performance (reduce lag). Whether or not this change has a noticeable impact will depend on many variables that can only be observed in the live environment and under a significant load. We’ll be watching things on our end as we ramp up to primetime tonight but I’m also looking for your feedback as...
Our friend Farrel over at Epic Slant has done a great article on player expectations for the Destiny of Velious expansion. Velious is not something you do lightly. It was the defining expansion of EverQuest and to put it on such a short product cycle is dangerous. Velious was one of the largest content additions ever to hit EverQuest. The whole expansion was simply massive in scale. Three major cities were added, several open world zones, shared access dungeons and a raid zone that could support more than a single guild at a time. The EQ2 trend of “two...