Feldon
Other gaming sites have picked up today’s news about EQ/EQ2 Free-to-Play changes: Polygon: http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/7/407…-2-adding-more-customization-options-for-free Massively: http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/0…est-ii-repeal-f2p-restrictions-on-class-race/ MMORPG: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/…est-Big-News-for-the-EverQuest-Franchise.html
Feldon
From Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson the EQ2 Forums: Hi there, Norrathians! You may not realize it, but we talk about you all the time. All day, every day, we dream up ways to make these games better for you, the loyal players and fans of Norrath. EverQuest and EverQuest II have both been running as free-to-play games for a good chunk of time now. We’ve learned a lot while that’s been happening, and we can make things better for you. So, we’re going to take out a bunch of the free-to-play restrictions that you’re used to as a Free or...
From the EQ2 Forums: Many moons ago, the Dwarves started Brewday in honor of Brell. Now, each year, portals appear in Antonica, Commonlands, Haven, Greater Faydark, Timorous Deep, and Frostfang Sea to lead you to the Bar of Brell, where new and classic adventures await those thirsty and foolhardy enough to enter! Otengard Brauer has also set up a Beer Garden in the Butcherblock Mountains, but the ale seems to have attracted some goblins. Help him while competing against others in an effort to rid the area of the most goblins. And as you’re crawling through the bars and...
From Hellzelves on the EQ2 Forums: Last year on March 10, and in the week before that date, Norrathians made gaming history. Over 600 unique accounts came together from servers across Norrath for one purpose: To give a very special little Froglok some wonderful playgrounds and a very special party in his honor. For those of you who weren’t involved, we started a guild and leveled it to 70 for a [Tier 3] guild hall in less than 70 hours. We not only decorated Ribbitribbitt’s TT Island Retreat but 3 other prestige houses were donated and the T3 hall...
From the EQ2 Forums: QUESTS Obol Plains Lujien, Not Lycan now provides a group update when gathering moonstones. One Hungry Bug now provides a group update when gathering stone for Scuttles. The Harrowing Hoard now provides a group update when buying a Cardin Ward Stout. Jenni’s Stained Pants now requires fewer flower bulbs to gather. Throne of Fear Baelon should once again drop his monolith for Gulthga’s quest series.
One thing that made it into yesterday’s Update was a change to how loot drops in the Chains of Eternity Advanced Solo zones. Previously, after killing flattening laying to rest the boss of each zone, 1-3 Mystery Crates would be granted to the player, containing either Legendary jewelry, Fabled armor (very rare), or consumables like Research Reducers, temporary Adornments, or Food. Because the items were in a Mystery Crate, the items could not be traded to other players, even if you had done the zone with 2 players (rather than 1 player and a mercenary). Players reported a very...
From the EQ2 Forums: Last year we announced our partnership with Wikia to deliver players a unified, community-driven resource. For several months we’ve been working on developing even more wikis for our most popular games. Come join us as we’ll be showcasing our official Wikia sites for PlanetSide 2, Wizardry Online, EverQuest II, and the newly-added Vanguard. We’ll also be chatting about the benefits of the wikis, how you can get involved, and more wikis that are on the way. So come join us on Thursday, March 7, 2013 at 4:00 PM PST on Twitch TV for our very first Wikia...
From Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson’s twitter: Are you a free/silver EQ or EQII player? Look for a cool announcement later this week. You will like! — David Georgeson (@Qixter) March 5, 2013
From the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL You can now put a true/false parameter on the /hide_illusions command to force hide or force show instead of toggeling the hide illusions option. If you don’t use a parameter it will just toggle as before. The /hide command will once again default to /hide_illusions instead of /hide_guild_achievements. POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION Wurmbone’s End: Nox Incessit Prime Temple-Blocker Grudk now gives more time to kill his spider adds. Adds have less health. Wasp and bug encounters have been lowered in number to help reduce lag issues. ITEMS The experience required to increase the level...
From Holly “Windstalker” Longdale‘s twitter: Double Guild XP Weekend starts tomorrow at noon PST! Game on! #EQ2 — Holly Longdale (@WindstalkerEQ2) February 28, 2013 and from the EQ2 Forums: We are running a Double Guild XP Weekend starting tomorrow at noon PST until Sunday, March 3 at 11:59pm PST. Or should I say, Double XP weekend for Guilds…
From Holly “Windstalker” Longdale‘s twitter: We are scheduling a second maintenance for our Russian Harla Dar and Barren Sky servers tomorrow at 5pm PST to improve performance. #EQ2 — Holly Longdale (@WindstalkerEQ2) February 28, 2013
Today, Player Studio introduces three new categories of items which can be submitted to EverQuest II — Weapons, Shields, and Hair Styles. As with all PlayerStudio items, Weapons and Shields have very specific design parameters that must be followed to be accepted into the world of Norrath. This includes a maximum number of triangles (1,000), texture resolution, level of detail, etc. Weapons and Shields are submitted with at least 3 textures or “maps”, with an optional 4th map. Diffuse (color) map — This is the design or “painting” on the item Normal map — This is the relief of...
From the EQ2 Forums: POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION Sleeper’s Tomb: The Forgotten Catacombs The Eternal Sentinel now only needs to trample the smaller gargoyles once each to knock them over. Wurmbone Gulch (Crag) [Heroic] – Merglok the Slasher gives you more time to move away. He will give a message every time he is going to go into “Clawed Storm”. Clawed Storm has had its damage reduced. [Advanced Solo] – Merglok the Slasher will give a message every time he is going to go into “Clawed Storm”. He claws slower now and Clawed Storm has had its damage reduced.
We are thrilled to officially release Guild Achievements on EQ2U as well as an improved Guild Detail page with Guild Recruiting info including Cloak Heraldry! NOTE: The rounded corner blue style is temporary and we intend to replace it with something more becoming in the future!
Since the launch of the Player Studio program, EQ2 players exercising their hobby (or career) as gifted artists and 3D designers have deluged the EQ2 team with Cloak and House Item submissions. What was originally intended as a “maybe 4-5 items a month” thing has turned into a very popular program as these not-so-amateur designers continue to impress the EQ2 team with their creativity and attention to detail. Perhaps no better evidence of this is today’s introduction of the first animated Player Studio item. Although Player Studio has not released any instructions on how to animate items, a player’s...
Some of the big features of this week’s Game Update 65.5 were a number of class tweaks in PvP combat, the expansion of PvP’s Blue Adornments to other items (cloaks, charms, etc.), and the addition of PvP Set Bonuses on certain items. While the first two have been well-received, it seems that the new PvP Set Bonuses were bugged on Test and Beta and are now bugged on Live such that they are not effective at all. But perhaps the bigger issue is, some of the PvP Set Bonuses grant stats which even the most poorly-geared player has already...
The Advanced Solo zones in Chains of Eternity drop some amazing loot, including a full set of jewelry upgrades as well as (somewhat controversially), the basic raid gear that drops in Chains of Eternity raid zones. This has been nice for players who are either tackling them with a mercenary or a second player. However due to the way the loot in these Advanced Solo zones drop (in one or three mystery crates), most players end up with an item they cannot use. Worse, the items cannot be traded with group members. And more maddening still, the loot table...
From the EQ2 Forums: ITEMS Fixed an issue with the adornments Prime Fortified Soul Trap, Nexus of the Bastion and Nexus of Flame. Unfortunately, this fix is not retroactive to those already missing their adornments. Please submit a customer service ticket for reimbursement of any lost adornments.
From the EQ2 Forums: NEW RAID ZONES New x2 raid zone Wurmbone’s End: Nox Incessit (with normal and challenge versions). Entrance located in Jarsath Wastes. New x4 raid zone The Dreadcutter: The Pirate Kings. Entrance located in Obol Plains on the dock. NEW BAG SORTING, SWAPPING AND DUMPING FEATURES Bag Sorting: Open up the Bag Options window from the button on each bag to access the filters that you’d like to set for a respective inventory bag. After setting your options, hit the “Sort” button on your Character window. This will send a command up to the server with...
Within the same time window as tomorrow’s content update, there will be a maintenance window as well. From the EQ2 Forums: Important: We will perform maintenance beginning at 6:00 AM Pacific on February 26, 2013. We expect this maintenance to take approximately 2 hours. This will impact the following services: Account management will be unavailable. Commerce transactions, including purchases on our websites and in-game marketplaces will be unavailable. Login for all SOE forums may be affected, you may lose permissions and experience occasional disconnects. Players who are already logged in may be disconnected and unable to log back in....
From the EQ2 Forums: The update on February 26th was discussed in Podcast #143, as well as in articles about the PvP Updates and Bag Sorting Abilities. Now, it’s time to take a look at two more major features that round out the update: new raid content and guild achievements! X2 and X4 Raids
This likely won’t affect most EQ2 players even in Europe, since last year’s repreive allowed European EQ2 players to stick with SOE, but for those who play DCUO or PlanetSide 2 in Europe, or who started playing EQ2 after the switchover, you’ll want to read this announcement from the Alaplaya forums: Dear Community, We have detected that there recently has been unauthorized third-party access to one of our systems. The possibility that your data (Email address and password) has been accessed by an unauthorized third party cannot be excluded. We were able to detect the problem promptly and took...
As part of SOE’s very public efforts to stop cheating in PlanetSide 2, SOE is instituting more detection code into its Launchpad to try to stop troublemakers. Apparently some of this code has not been isolated to PS2 as a number of players of SOE games including EverQuest, EverQuest II, and Wizardry Online have all found themselves having trouble logging in. The culprit? A popular virtualization software called VMWare which allows PC users to run more than one instance of Windows (for keeping work and play separate, or for running multiple game instances), or in the case of Mac...
image courtesy Suzita Star Shadow Are your bags out of control? Do you spend hours each week just sorting your inventory? Next week, we’ll be getting some tools which will greatly facilitate this drudgery. From EverQuest2.com: Colette “Dexella” Murphy talks with Kenneth “Terrogaunt” Roecks about the new inventory abilities that will be launched with the update! Colette “Dexella” Murphy: Players have already heard a little bit about bag sorting during the Podcast, but let’s recap. How does the new bag sorting feature work? Kenneth “Terrogaunt” Roecks: The sorting process is essentially grabbing all of the items from your inventory and...
On February 21st, SOE Podcast #143 was posted and it includes a brief interview between Colette “Dexella” Murphy, EQ2’s Community Manager, and Kyle “Kander” Vallee, EQ2 Lead Designer, Brian “Omougi” Ferguson, EQ2 Systems Design, and Kenneth “Terrogaunt” Roecks, EQ2 Programmer. After the jump, we provide a transcript of the EQ2 part of the Podcast including: Wurmbone Crag: Nox Incessit [x2 Normal and Challenge Raids] Dreadcutter: The Pirate Kings [x4 Challenge Raid] Bag Sorting — one-click sort bags by Level or Name into 14 categories PvP Balance — continued tweaks PvP Blue Adornments — new slots PvP Guardian — buffed! confirmation...