Feldon
NOTE: No EQ2 News. Just a little bit of cross-promotion of EQNWire. EQNWire.com has checked in today with a speculative critique of the upcoming EQNext Landmark and its all-encompassing implementation of Player Studio. According to PC Gamer’s recent interview with Dave Georgeson, SOE will be looking to recoup its staggering development investment in EQNext as soon as servers are up. But if a price tag can be put on everything players create, will an in-game economy have any chance against players flush with cash? Op Ed: Will Monetizing Everything Leave Room for an In-Game Economy for EQNL? @ EQNWire
Commentary
An announcement intended for tomorrow morning briefly appeared in the EQ2 Forums RSS feed and then vanished, however a few players brought it to our attention. As you likely know, EverQuest II Gold and SOE All Access accounts currently receive a monthly allowance of 500 StationCash. Starting the first week of February 2014, in lieu of this StationCash allotment, all recurring Gold and All Access customers will be able to login to EverQuest II and buy one item (up to a value of 2,000SC) per month for FREE. If you are All Access, you’ll also be able to login to EQ, Planetside...
Dellmon and Aliscious have conducted a great post-launch interview with Kyle “Kander” Vallée about EQ2’s recent Tears of Veeshan expansion, talking about what worked and what didn’t, and sharing a few tidbits of the future. Our illustrious host Dellmon’s protestations that he shall never reforge nor adorn do wear a bit, but it’s nonetheless a fantastic interview worth listening to if you wish to hear the thought processes behind the expansion, as well as a look at EQ2’s coming months. As for prescient sneak peaks within the interview, look for more raid content, a fabled Kingdom of Sky zone...
As we’ve discussed in the past, Sony Online Entertainment got itself into a huge pickle with their unintentional devaluation of their StationCash currency. An overeager Marketing Dept held numerous Double and Triple StationCash promotions which devalued much of the StationCash entering SOE’s economy to just 1/4 of its value. This created an untenable situation and at SOE Live, SmokeJumper was heard to say “We were losing our shirts”. Compound this with the fact that Walmart demands special incentives from their vendors to carry product. The popular 1500 StationCash cards with 500 SC bonus further amplified the devaluation effects. We are just speculating at this point, but we’re going...
Anything can change in Beta, but at least right now on Tears of Veeshan beta, a new “Point of Need” option is being tested in the Revive window: The large “Revive Instantly!” text and Double Up icon at the bottom of the window ONLY APPEAR when the player selects the small yellow “Revive Instantly!” text within the list of revive spawn points. In last year’s Chains of Eternity beta, I believe this feature was much more “in your face” as I recall the large double arrow icon and text appearing at all times. At SOE Live 2012 in the Business of EverQuest Franchise...
NOTE: No EQ2 News. A few weeks ago, Joshua “Autenil” Kriegshauser, tweeted that it was his last night at SOE. Josh worked on EverQuest II for many years, dabbling in different SOE games but always contributing to EQ2. He also helped launch Clone Wars Adventures. It’s the night before my last day at @SonyOnline. What am I doing? Working. — Joshua Kriegshauser (@autenil) September 20, 2013 Just 5 days later, Greg “Rothgar” Spence, lead (or one of the chief) programmer for EverQuest Next and EverQuest Next Landmark followed up on Facebook: Today is a special day because it’s my...
It’s a slow EQ2 news week, and an interesting article came up about Diablo III, a game whose Auction house aligns with a desire expressed by a small but vocal group of EverQuest II players: Fully tradeable Fabled/Mythical raid drops, sellable on the broker. So what’s the verdict? Effective March 2014, Blizzard will be phasing out their Gold and Real Money Transaction Auction Houses. The video their lead designers have released (and which I have embedded below) leaves no doubt about how the Auction house was impacting Diablo III… From Ars Technica: The blog post and embedded video note that Diablo...
The curtain has gone down on another Grand Banquet, and just a few panels left to go due to the extended SOE Live schedule this year, it’s hard to believe that another event has come and gone so quickly! Every year things seem to go faster, with barely time for a breath. There are a few panels today for those folks who aren’t East coast or who are staying Sunday night) including EverQuest Next Writer‘s panel, Channeler feedback panel (naturally there will be more feedback taken in the Tears of Veeshan beta forums) and the EverQuest II Q&A panel....
Tonight’s EverQuest II keynote here at SOE Live included the revelation that Heroic Characters are coming to EQ2. I’m not against this idea, as the writing has been on the wall for insta-level 90 or 85 to come to EQ2 sooner or later. Due to multiple gear revamps plus Mercs, I feel that EverQuest II is a solo tutorial from level 1-89, and then the ‘real’ game starts at level 90. However the unsettling part of this announcement was that people would be able to create their FIRST character as a level 85 with full Legendary gear, spells, a...
SOE Live is once again upon us, ready to douse us in news about a number of SOE games including EverQuest Next, and refusing to be overshadowed, EverQuest II! The EQ2 team have been working their butts off on new content, itemization improvements (more choice, less cookie cutter!!), and more which has yet to be revealed. But while we wait for that news to break, (or if you need a podcast for your flight to Vegas), you ought to check out the latest EQ2Talk #67 episode which has been posted to EQ2Talk.com. If you didn’t listen to Episode #66,...
UPDATE I have removed the block of characters named “Malshandir” from EQ2U. I believe that a series of e-mails sent from a ISP address is insufficient to warrant blocking search results from a publicly accessible API. It also sets a dangerous precedent for other websites that merely index data from a third party source. This morning, I received an e-mail from one Thomas Freyer of Freyer Consulting in Frankfurt, Germany: From: Thomas Freyer Subject: Deleting of Profile URL: http://u.eq2wire.com/soe/character_detail/446677832604 We demand by law the deleting of this profile as the owner of the trademark “Malshandir” we gave you no permission...
EQ2Wire has been providing extensive coverage of EverQuest Next for some 4 years now, ever since its development was hinted in the EverCracked documentary. But now the time has finally come for our coverage of the next EverQuest game to venture out on its own as a dedicated site — EQNWire.com. There are a number of reasons for this division. While the EQ and EQ2 player communities have many things in common, they are still, at their core, quite different. I’ve seen this in the tenor of discussions on the EQ and EQ2 forums, in livecasts, and in chatrooms. There’s...
For the latter part of last year and into this year, I’ve been raiding Saturday mornings in mostly x4 EM content. Outside of that, I’ve done mostly Advanced Solo content and just a smattering of group zones. From that gameplay, via selling shinies, masters, drops, crafting spells for other players, etc. I’ve been able to accumulate more than enough Plat for my character needs. I am currently the co-owner of a Tier 1 level 62 guild hall with max amenities. I also have five level 95 characters (although my Ranger will always be my main). Between Reforging and Adornments, there...
This took a few months bit longer than anticipated, but at long last, EQ2Wire is now hosting a complete Forum Archive of the EQ2 Forums, as well as selected Station Forums.
This article contains no EverQuest II content. From PennyArcade.com by Ben Kuchera: Former LucasArts composer Jesse Harlin has written a eulogy for the company, and the words have been matched with a series of images taken of employees on what was reported to be their last day of work. The eulogy is moving, and it provides a look into a group of people who are passionate about what they did, but a few lines stand out as stark reminders of how much you give up to work in this industry. “In the trenches of game design, work was hard. Crippling crunches...
On Friday, a hilarious video of Tom Tobey and Christopher Atkins introducing new Meatbeast mounts and house pets was released. The video was extremely well-received and I and many others ran out to buy the new mounts and pets and galloped all over Norrath mooing all the way. But today, it seems the EQ2 team may have pushed the April Fools joke too far. As was announced on Friday, a pink version of the Meatbeast matriarch mount is available TODAY ONLY (April 1st). What has players stunned is the price: 5,000SC. If you stocked up on StationCash over the weekend...
At long last, the EverQuest2.com website has been updated with a current list of Community Fan Sites and News pages. This page can be reached under the Community menu under Links. Of course we’re happy to see EQ2Wire listed — hey it only took us 4 1/2 years! — as well as our sister site EQ2U and Dethdlr’s recently updated Adornment Calculator. It’s great to see the number of sites listed which have contributed so much to the EverQuest II world and player community. Thanks to Dexella who reached out to the Fan Site community to make sure she...
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...
I expected fierce responses to yesterday’s article about Drinal and the issues raiders have been facing in Harrow’s End. I wrote about issues that players have faced since the expansion launched, with a focus on the issues that still seem to exist based on player reports in the two Drinal threads I linked on the EQ2 forums. It was absolutely my intention to push some buttons and try to get some traction on fixing the Boss of the Chains of Eternity expansion. As to whether I went too far, that will be up to the reader. Let’s get some...
Enough is enough. It has been three full months since the launch of the Chains of Eternity expansion and the bosses of the expansion are hopelessly broken. During the Chains of Eternity beta, there were warning signs that something was seriously amiss. On one hand, the Skyshrine and Chains of Eternity raiding ended up being so easy that the top 10-15 guilds per server had cleared nearly ALL the content within 48-72 hours of release. On the other hand, Drinal launched essentially unkillable. Not challenging. Not difficult. Broken.
What makes people competitive? What makes people want to put their reputation on the line and be compared and judged by others? At the conclusion of any sports event, one team experiences the euphoria of victory while the other is left asking themselves where they went wrong with their offensive or defensive strategies and what they could do better. But while sports are the obvious example, competition can be found everywhere. In academics. In Barbecue. In growing the largest tomato. People will make fools of themselves on national TV just for the chance to win a few bucks. So it’s...
Due to some family health issues, things have been slow at the Wire the past couple of weeks short of Update Notes. That’s not to say there hasn’t been a slow resurgence in news on the EQ2 forums as the devs come back from winter break…. The Shortest Distance Between Two Points Ever since the first Massively Multiplayer Online game arrived on the market, players have been seeking the shortest route to fortune, glory, and player experience (XP). In EverQuest II, Pet classes (Beastlords, Summoners, and Enchanters) have always had an advantage with the TOS-bending concept of unattended gameplay....
A lot of you out there (myself included) will be on the road in the coming days so I just wanted to wish folks in the U.S. a Happy Thanksgiving. Alas, my well-wishes are a month late for Canadians, and as for Europe, well, the best description I’ve heard is: Thursday: We eat turkey and innumerable harvest foods ’til we want to die Friday: We nearly kill each other while retail shopping for marked down electronics Saturday: We engage in awkward social activities with crazy Cousin Eddie and odd Aunt Edna Sunday: We bid fare-thee-well to in-laws who we...
Today brought the stunning news that the Jethal Silverwing show which has hosted numerous guests from within Sony Online Entertainment including no less than SOE President John Smedley himself, has come to an end. It is hard to imagine the EQ2 Community without his show, his parodies, and his videos. It is also hard to ignore a trend — With this news, Dellmon and Aliscious‘ EQ2Talk becomes the sole EQ2-specific Podcast. Here’s the announcement from Kithicor.org: They say that “All good things must come to an end”. And, so it is with The Jethal Show. It’s been quite a...
From the EQ2 Forums: SONY ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT BREAKS NEW GROUND WITH FIRST ‘WIKIA OFFICIAL COMMUNITY’ FOR UPCOMING MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE FIRST-PERSON SHOOTER VIDEO GAME PLANETSIDE®2 Powered by the Fans, New Official Wiki Takes Community Collaboration to New Level with Tools that Support and Empower Players