Feldon
So I wanted an EverQuest II: Age of Discovery wallpaper for my desktop. I change wallpapers often, and thought hey, I’d like to get in the mood. Usually by this point, we’ve received some promotional material for the upcoming expansion, namely high resolution wallpapers, screenshots, etc. Since I haven’t seen hide nor hair of anything like that, I put together my own 16:9 widescreen EverQuest II: Age of Discovery wallpaper using key art provided to Zam. This is an unofficial wallpaper, but if you’d like to adorn your desktop, feel free to download! Download Age of Discovery Wallpaper (1476...
Expansion News
Last night, Linda “Brasse” Carlson (Director, Global Community Relations), Greg “Rothgar” Spence (EQ2 Lead Programmer) and Akil “Lyndro” Hooper (EQ2 Lead Designer) hosted a Webcast about the upcoming Dungeon Maker feature (previously known as Design Your Own Dungeon) in the upcoming EverQuest II: Age of Discovery expansion. Note: Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson was not able to make the webcast. Note 2: For the first ~5 minutes of the webcast, Rothgar’s mic was not working at all. At this point, he and Brasse started sharing a microphone. Note 3: Throughout the webcast, Rothgar refers to the Avatars you use to play...
To date, we still don’t have an exact launch date for EverQuest II: Age of Discovery. Well, we have a date — November 30, 2011 — but then we’ve seen two other more general time windows of “early December” and “Winter” which might well invalidate it. If Age of Discovery really hits on November 30th, then this would mean there are 11 days to go til the expansion launches and 2 of those days have become national holidays in the USA — Thanksgiving (a harvest festival) and Black Friday (a capitalism festival). If the Age of Discovery beta is...
UPDATE: According an EverQuestII Twitter post, tonight’s Webcast will be a Smoke-free environment: “Smokejumper” will not be joining us for the webcast today, as was previously indicated. It’ll still be great, though [Isulith] From EverQuest2.com: Come check out the EverQuest II Dungeon Maker Webcast! Host Linda “Brasse” Carlson (Director, Global Community Relations) will interview Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson (EQ2 Executive Producer), Greg “Rothgar” Spence (EQ2 Lead Programmer) and Akil “Lyndro” Hooper (EQ2 Lead Designer), and learn all about one of the most anticipated features for the new EverQuest II expansion: Age of Discovery. Join us on Thursday, November 17, 2011, at...
From the EQ2 Forums: EverQuest II: Free-to-Play Webcast Recap On Thursday, November 10, 2011, we had a very special webcast going over the big announcement: EverQuest II going free-to-play! This week’s webcast featured EverQuest II Executive Producer Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson and EverQuest II Associate Producer Emily “Domino” Taylor. The two were interviewed by SOE’s Director of Global Communication, Linda “Brasse” Carlson. We learned about many of the specifics associated with the free-to-play conversion and a bit about the new expansion “Age of Discovery.” At the end of the video, screenshots of the Collector’s Edition items were also shown. After...
From an e-mail I just received! NOTE: For most players, you do not need to do anything, as this entitlement will automatically be added to your account, but check your SOE.com account over the next week or so to make sure this is added.
One tantalising bit of information from tonight’s AoD/F2P Webcast was that the Age of Discovery Beta may start allowing Fan Faire attendees in tonight. It’s unknown how quickly others will be brought into the beta. Also, we were told that while Beastlords, the Freeport Revamp (a GU62 feature), Mercenaries, Tradeskill Apprentices, and Reforging would be in the Beta now (or soon), Design Your Own Dungeon won’t hit Beta until next week, to focus testing attention on the previously mentioned features. UPDATE: We have it on good authority that Fan Faire attendees are now receiving invites to the Age of...
The “Very Exciting News” Webcast (which with today’s revelation of EverQuest II going fully Free-to-Play was naturally on that subject) finished a little while ago on Twitch.tv. The new webcasting service produced a MUCH more reliable video picture and better sound quality as well. The webcast included Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson, Emily “Domino” Taylor, and Linda “Brasse” Carlson. Lots of questions were asked from SOE’s Facebook page, including a question I submitted and heck I even won some StationCash for submitting a question. In case you’re wondering, my question was: When is the new EQ2Players site being launched? and the...
If you’ve been waiting to buy EverQuest II: Age of Discovery and were expecting to get Destiny of Velious included, get ready for a surprise! Here’s the original announcement about the Age of Discovery Pre-Order: Digital Collector’s Edition The Digitial Collector’s Edition is a Station Exclusive and is specially priced at $59.99 for pre-order only. This version includes the base game, all seven expansions, a Cloak of the Truespirit, Dungeon Maker Unique Monster Spawner #1, Dungeon Maker Unique Monster Spawner #2, Armored Flying Pegasus Mount, Unique Beastlord Warder Pet, Lavastorm Prestige Home, Custom Dungeon Maker Map Layout, and a...
From EverQuest2.com: Pre-Order EverQuest II – Age of Discovery Today!EverQuest II – Age of Discovery is now available for pre-order! This exciting new expansion to the world of Norrath will be released on November 30, 2011. Digital Collector’s Edition $59.99 The Digitial Collector’s Edition is a Station Exclusive and is specially priced at $59.99 for pre-order only. This version includes the base game, all seven expansions, a Cloak of the Truespirit, Dungeon Maker Unique Monster Spawner #1, Dungeon Maker Unique Monster Spawner #2, Armored Flying Pegasus Mount, Unique Beastlord Warder Pet, Lavastorm Prestige Home, Custom Dungeon Maker Map Layout,...
EverQuest Executive Producer Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson has unveiled the news that EverQuest II is fully going Free-to-Play on all servers, and the segregation between EverQuest II and EverQuest II Extended (F2P) is going away (as is the ‘powerful cash shop’ and the LiveGamer service). From EverQuest2.com: Many of you reading this letter are long-time EverQuest and EverQuest II players. You’ve been part of the SOE family for a long time (earlier this week was EQII’s 7-year anniversary!) and our aim is to take care of you and keep you entertained for years to come. Part of caring for our...
Are you ready for some concrete info about Beastlords? The decision to bring Beastlords to EverQuest II was made less than a month before Fan Faire according to an SOE source, and a lot of things were said at Fan Faire, including what type of armor and weapons they’d use, what class they’d be, and how Warders would work. Now that the team has been working on them for four months, there have, not surprisingly, been a few changes. Here is EQ2’s Lead Designer Akil “Lyndro” Hooper talking about Beastlords on EverQuest2.com: Q. What is a beastlord? What makes...
So we’ve just posted our transcript of last night’s Freeport Revamp webcast. If you don’t want to read the whole thing and just want the top five items you should know, here you go: 5 You will not be able to fly/leap/glide in Freeport. This is something that was promised by SmokeJumper at this year’s Fan Faire before the art team had put in the development hours. They found that framerates were absolutely abysmal if you were able to fly, leap, glide, etc. 4 You will not be able to start characters in Freeport. The revamped Freeport provides a...
Last night’s SOE Community Webcast talked about EverQuest II’s Freeport Revamp. Present were Linda “Brasse” Carlson, Akil “Lyndro” Hooper (EQ2 Lead Designer), Nathan “Kaitheel” McCall (Designer), Jonathan “Prathun” Caraker (Designer), with Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson (EverQuest franchise Executive Producer). And here’s a transcript of most of the Webcast:
Brian “Omougi” Ferguson has spilled the beans on Tradeskill Apprentices at EverQuest2.com: What exactly IS a tradeskill apprentice? A tradeskill apprentice is an NPC that you can hire to work for you in your house. You will need to be tradeskill level 10 or higher before you can work with a tradeskill apprentice. Who are these tradeskill apprentices anyway? The first tradeskill apprentices available for hire will be Coldain dwarves. Now that Velious has been reconnected to the rest of Norrath, the Coldain are eager to learn the advances in tradeskills that have taken place during their years of...
If you’ve been following the somewhat unfortunate adventures of the Gnoob the Gnome character, you’ll recall he had a big part to play in the introduction of Mercenaries to the original EverQuest when it was faced with its own problem of no new blood to help new or returning players leveling up alts. There have been over a dozen Gnoob videos in the past but this one touches on the upcoming Age of Discovery and its Mercenaries feature. It’s worth a watch and comes with a laugh. From EverQuest2.com:
The upcoming Age of Discovery expansion will include the Mercenaries feature. These player-controlled (or perhaps just guided, depending) NPCs will help players in groups or raids, for a small fee. You can read a lore-based/mock interview with one of these upcoming mercenaries at EverQuest2.com: Recently, we have caught word that mercenaries will start to offer their services in Norrath come the end of the year. We were lucky enough to grab an interview with one of these soon to be job-seeking mercenaries! Her name Vittia Direshadow and she is a Teir’dal Shadowknight. She’s quite scary-looking but assures me she...
Dethdlr
Smokejumper responded to a thread from nine days ago on the EQ2 Forums asking for a clear answer to what exactly is Age of Discovery. He basically said what we already knew about the content included in Age of Discovery. Reading through it and some of his follow up posts, it looks as though the “expansion” will be coming out near the end of November but price and distribution information won’t be released until next week by the marketing folks.
When 85% of the news articles on EverQuest2.com are about other games, it’s easy to miss bonafide EQ2 items. That said, a new article has been posted outlining some of the Lore related to the Beastlord class coming in the Age of Discovery expansion. The beastlord class is coming in winter 2011 with the EverQuest II expansion: Age of Discovery! In North America, Winter is defined as the time period from 21 or 22 December and 20 or 21 March. With the last Beta invites scheduled to go out on November 16th, we were assuming that the Age of...
Information about the upcoming Age of Discovery expansion has been few and far between, however SmokeJumper did take a moment to clear up how XP and loot will work: Actually, you earn XP *and* tokens. The tokens are used to acquire items for any of your characters, not just the one you have currently logged-in. XP and tokens are awarded at the end of the dungeon run and based on a challenge rating system that should prevent exploiting. More on this soon. As we heard at Fan Faire (which may, of course, have changed since then) is that there...
From EverQuest2.com: Closed Beta registration for “Age of Discovery” is now open! Applications are available at this link. Beta testing is vital to ensure a great product launch. We appreciate your participation and welcome any and all feedback. Click the link above, sign in with your Station Account, complete the application process, and your application will go into the queue for approval. Please be sure to read and accept the NDA. All applicants must have accepted the NDA in order to be considered for participation. All applicants will receive an email to confirm that their application was received. Applications...
SOE has been exceedingly tight-lipped about the upcoming EverQuest II: Age of Discovery expansion, now just 5-6 weeks away by our estimates. In the process of searching for any kind of official press releases, we found two sites which covered EverQuest II at Fan Faire that we hadn’t seen mentioned before. Did you know that MMORPG.com interviewed Dave Georgeson about the EverQuest II: Age of Discovery expansion during Fan Faire? Did you know GameTrailers did a 4:54 interview with Dave Georgeson at this year’s Fan Faire where he talks about Design Your Own Dungeon?
NOTE: This article contains no new information since August’s SOE Fan Faire 2011 event, but since these questions have been coming up more and more frequently, I thought I’d do a recap. EverQuest II: Age of Discovery With its promise of new features rather than new content, EverQuest II’s eighth expansion has the makings of an atypical release. EverQuest II: Age of Discovery is touted to have: Beastlords — The most frequently requested feature of EQ1 arrives with the Beastlord class. The 25th class will wear Brawler equipment but otherwise have an archetype of Scout. Will have a separate...
I’ve posted our first video from SOE Fan Faire 2011 “EverQuest II: Freeport and Beyond” which is an overview of everything we can expect from the EQ2 team until November 2011. If you’d like to view the Slides from this panel in higher quality, check out the updated EQ2 Panel #1 – Freeport and Beyond writeup. We’ll upload an HD version of this video soon.
Starting Saturday’s EverQuest II Q&A Panel… Update: This is a video of EverQuest II Panel #7 “Q&A #2” added on July 24, 2011.