Feldon
EQ2Wire‘s Morgan “Feldon” was invited to sit down (virtually at least) with Dellmon and Aliscious for their 29th episode of the EQ2Talk podcast. It was a great pleasure to talk about the present and future of EQ2, Fan Faire, and what goes into running EQ2Wire. From EQ2Talk.com: In this episode, Dellmon and Aliscious are joined by Feldon of EQ2Wire! He talks about how Wire got started and what’s involved in keeping it going. He also gives us his take on some of the things going on in EQ2. And, because we have such an insightful guest, we have our...
Commentary
If you read the above headline and immediately checked your bank statement, well, that’s probably not a bad habit to get into, but we weren’t actually talking about Account Security. In today’s article, we talk about how plat farmers have gotten more sophisticated and are picking SOE’s pocket via new (StationCash Gifting) and old tricks (Legends of Norrath packs). Fraud Happens Every online business has its share of Credit Card Fraud. However digital currencies like StationCash have been especially prone to this problem, due to the immediacy of the conversion from real dollars to virtual ones. Scammers can create...
If I had to summarize Fan Faire in one statement, one consolidated takeaway thought, it would be: We’re gamers too. If we can, let’s give the players what they want. Giving players options and trying new things were the prominent themes throughout Fan Faire’s EQ2 panels. SmokeJumper in particular seemed eager to break away from tradition if it could lead to better gameplay. “Because we’ve always done it that way” must undoubtedly be one of his pet peeves in EQ2 meetings. Yet, it’s been barely three weeks since Fan Faire, and the glossy slides and upbeat pronouncements of flexibility...
EQ2Wire wants to know… So how many AAs or Levels have you earned this weekend? Are you focusing on Tinkerfest? Are you checking out Game Update 61 on the Test servers?
From the EQ2 Forums: This week on the Jethal Silverwing Show.. Jethal and Elquin either have the show of their dreams, or get their accounts banned for life, as they are joined by Sony Online Entertainment President, John Smedley! Do YOU have a question for The Smed? Leave your question Here and we’ll make sure to get the answer you’re lookin for! Tuesdays at 10pm Eastern, 7pm Pacific As Always, Join us IN GAME by typing /join antonia_bayle.ogr
As borne out in several different threads on the EQ2 Forums, starting with the original Dragon Ring and Wizard Spire Event Feedback Testing thread created on May 15th, all has not gone smoothly during the Spires and Dragon Ring Events. These events are still running on most servers, although the lucrative Spires event has been completed on many. So what were the biggest problems? Let’s spell them out and address them one by one. UPDATE: We have corrected several mistakes from the original version of this article which erroneously attributed the need for x2 Fighter Debuffs to Ulbrow in...
Less than 18 hours after launching a new World Event to help Rebuild the Wizard Spires and Dragon Ring in Velious, the events have been suspended due to a series of issues including exceptionally fast completion rates. On Antonia Bayle, the event had already reached 99% when the event was shut down. Completion rates have been a chronic problem with Live Events in EverQuest 2 in the past 2 years. The lengthy, story-rich prelude quest for The Shadow Odyssey was unavailable to most players due to the time it took to be unlocked. Many players had less than 48...
There is a lot of psychology at work in getting a player to come back, month-after-month, year-after-year, to a single game. I wasn’t there, but I’m guessing that the designers of the original EverQuest probably didn’t have the luxury of having a behavioral psychologist on staff to tell them where to put the roadblocks, the sticks, and the carrots, let alone exactly how to balance everything to build a “sticky” audience that would still call EverQuest their ‘home’ 12 years later. The irony of Destiny of Velious is that it is one of the best expansions we’ve had in...
I posted my opinion about every ground-based mount in EQ2 getting increased to 130%. This change applied to everything from the 2 silver piece, level 1 horse, to 35 plat rhinos, to quested carpets, to raid-acquired war horses, to StationCash mounts. So far the responses to my Op Ed have been interesting, but we turn now to a comment by SmokeJumper. In one of the many threads on the EQ2 Forums about the 130% Runspeed change, a player (vamp548548) theorized that all mounts got the same speed in order to shift mount progression from a ‘speed’ basis to an...
When you see one occurrence of something, it’s unique. Two occurrences can be ascribed to coincidence. But three, that’s a pattern. What are we seeing? The replacement of progression. We’re seeing the abolishment of stratification and in its place, bland, uniform, one-size-fits-all rewards. It began with the starting gear acquired by new players in the four (originally six) starting cities. Rather than bringing parity to the items, which would have retained the uniqueness of items to each home city, this variety was paved over with one set of gear for everyone. The result was the absurd reality of Sarnak...
I saw this post on the EQ2 Forums and just had to share it. Mikbove asks: I’ve heard this phrase being bantered around a lot on this forum. However not being technological minded and all that, could someone please explain to me what it means on plain English. Thanks in advance Bawango of Antonia Bayle responded: It goes like this: game designers are a creative bunch and they want to make games which, like a great movie, move the story along at an exciting pace. In come the thugs from accounting who tie them down and whip them until...
EQ2Wire would like to know, will you attend Fan Faire 2011? Do you have a question you’d like asked at Fan Faire by EQ2Wire? If so, post it in the Comments, or send us an e-mail!
It’s hard to believe that it’s been a week and a half since EverQuest II service was restored, and harder still that EQ2 was offline for 12 days, an exceptional operational gap for a game modeled on “sticky” customers who login daily to check in on and advance their characters. During the downtime, EQ2Wire wanted to give the EQ2 team an opportunity to come out from behind the bushes and share a bit of what they’ve been working on and maybe break some of the tension. After all, the EQ2 team had only just taken the wraps off 3...
Today’s notifications at SOE Facebook and SOE Twitter explain that services will not be restored today. With no indication that we’re any closer to a resolution, the question on everyone’s minds is: When will SOE, and by extension EQ2, become available again? Crossed Wires About Dates Bloomberg.com latched onto a terse quote from a Sony spokesman and published a service restoration date of May 31st, leading many publications to report that the PlayStation Network and SOE networks had little hope of recovery before then. But that’s incorrect, according to Sony spokesman Patrick Seybold. In fact, Sony has yet to...
Our most commented post here on EQ2Wire so far has been the “What if?” discussion started by SmokeJumper pondering whether EQ2 should offer some sort of shortcut to level 90. Many players expressed their opinions from one extreme to the other and everything in between. Some players demanded that this take place on another server. Others made the fair point that many players would find themselves at 90 with utterly no idea how to play their class. I fell along the line that since 1-85 has *already* been trivialized due to itemization changes and neglect in the last ~18...
In a thread from a returning player who demanded a flying mount before he’d commit to coming back to EQ2 as a full-time player, SmokeJumper posited a rather interesting thought regarding flying mounts, Velious content, and the fact that both require level 86+. What would you think about being able to start a character at level 90? Read on… Hey folks, the OPs comment about not wanting to level up to play in Velious and get a cool mount is a reasonable discussion. At the risk of laying foundation for a flamewar here, I’d like to propose an idea...
Destiny of Velious introduced an unparalleled strict progression to both its group and raid zones. Players wanting to group up in Velious instances have discovered that there are 3 sets of group zones which each require completing the one before it in progression before being granted access. For instance, you must clear Tower of Frozen Shadow: Shadowed Corridors to gain access to ToFS: Umbral Halls, which must be cleared to gain access to ToFS: Haunt of Syl’Tor. And aspiring raiders must clear all 3 of these group zones in order to gain access to the Tower of Frozen Shadow...
After posting a promising thread on Friday entitled “Upcoming Itemization Changes (No Nerfs)“, it seems SmokeJumper has gotten egg on his face today. Players logged in after today’s Tuesday Game Update to find sweeping nerfs and huge reductions in the effectiveness of Velious gear across the line, especially Fighter items. In a cantankerous discussion on the EQ2 forums, players linked numerous items which underwent substantial losses in stats and desirability. SmokeJumper initially tried to defend the changes with: Please go back and take a look at my original post. I did say that we were being “intentionally conservative” with...
Let’s Be Honest… Public Quests completed even at the highest “x4 raid” level demand neither the coordination nor the discipline of any of the raid content in the last 3 expansions. Storm Gorge requires a little more focus than Ring War, but generally speaking, 24-40 players standing in the right place, killing the right mobs, in the right order, stand to inherit a wagonload of Legendary gear with Yellow adornment slots, all without such challenges as timing AOEs, switching to an Off-Tank, agro-juggling, or any complex strategy. The biggest enemy encountered is usually Server Lag. Public Quests offer a...
Today came down to a choice: Write or Play? So tomorrow we’ll be back with lots of news about Itemization, Server Performance, and continued roadblocks in Zone progression.
Many of EverQuest 2’s most dedicated players owe their gameplay roots to the original EverQuest and still carry strong memories of the patience and community the original game required. Soloing was almost unheard of. Camping mobs for hours (or days), the difficulties and perils of travel, and contested spawns of much-needed named mobs were all experiences players would not soon forget. It sure was a different game before WoW forced all MMOs to become approachable and remove any aspect that might be considered as a “waste” of the player’s time. When we heard about Chronoportals, a live event running...
Since the launch of the Destiny of Velious, there have been nearly 250 posts by Developers, Producers, and Animators on the EQ2 Team. While we appreciate this degree of feedback (it’s refreshing after the tight-lipped Velious Beta), it has been challenging to keep with it all, much less compose it into news stories that have context and are useful for our readers. No doubt if you are already familiar with the EQ2 Dev Tracker, you check it out on occasion. I personally follow the EQ2 Dev Tracker at EQ2Flames because it’s easy to read, however the comments and feedback...
It seems every year, thousands of bug reports are submitted to the EQ2 team during Beta. And it seems every year, a few highly visible bugs/exploits make it through. Last year, it was large encounters in The Hole that would respawn if all but one mob were killed. In The Shadow Odyssey beta it was widely reported that most of the dungeons could be completed when mentored down and greyed out. So this year, so far we know of two: Lord Doljonijiarnimorinar (Lord Bob) could be exploited to provide loot over and over. Lord Bob was fixed in today’s...
If you have been abusing milking enjoying the Refer-a-Friend 300% XP bonus for its high speed leveling (and thus AA earning) goodness, especially by parking a level 1 trial account character at the zone-in, well, I’m afraid that has finally come to an end. From Rich Waters 0n the EQ2 forums: The Recruit-a-friend program is a great way for you to bring your friends into EverQuest II and help them level up a bit faster by playing together. When you group with a character you’ve recruited, you both gain a hefty 200% experience bonus. Unfortunately, many people were recruiting...
EQ2 Servers will be going down in about 10 minutes to commence preparations for the Destiny of Velious expansion. We thought we’d take a quick look around the web to see how other press and EQ2 sites are covering the expansion. Calthine and Cyliena over at EQ2 ZAM have been working their fingers to the nubs catalogging every Quest, NPC, and Item in Velious. They plan to unlock their quest guides throughout the day. Niami Denmother at EQ2Traders has loaded up her site with tons of Tradeskill info about Velious. Karen Bryan at Massively has checked in another edition...