From the EQ2 Forums:
Greetings fellow adventurers!
We’ve got more exciting news to talk about today with regard to Age of Discovery expansion as well as a few changes to our membership structure that will launch on Oct. 1. They are pretty simple, so I’ll get right to it!
From the EQ2 Forums (emphasis added by me):
Mighty Norrathians!
Since SOE Live and Game Update 67: Darkness Dawns there’s been a lot of focus and excitement here about Heroic Characters and this year’s expansion, Tears of Veeshan. We’re well on our way and working hard!
To begin with, we have some date adjustments. Our expansion launch date has moved out a bit to mid-November and our Level 85 Heroic Characters are likely coming in the first week of October.
We got some great feedback on Heroic Characters and we wanted to polish it up to make it more user-friendly before we launch! We are still working on fine-tuning the details and I will have more info soon, I promise. Until we nail it down, I don’t want to throw misinformation about.
The introduction of Heroic Characters also made us change a few other things, like including EverQuest II: Destiny of Velious zones into the Free and Silver account access so Heroic Characters have a place to play! And while we are still going to offer theEverQuest II: Age of Discovery expansion, we will also sell the features individually, including the Beastlord class, Mercenaries, Dungeon Maker, Reforging, and Tradeskill Apprentices. We’re still working on pricing and have some other cool things in progress we’ll announce shortly.
Our 10th expansion, EverQuest II: Tears of Veeshan, is getting closer to Beta. This team is putting together an expansion that will be something special! The overland — Vesspyr Isles, the Eternal Broodlands — is really amazing. Flying through it is incredible with more and more variety and flavor every day. The dungeons are coming together beautifully and the content is too! We appreciate all the feedback we got during SOE Live and are grateful for all the playtests of the Channeler class. We are putting final touches on that too.
When Beta opens on Oct. 15, we hope you’ll come take a look at Tears of Veeshan and give us feedback!
There will be lots more to come so you’ll be hearing from me sooner ™ rather than later!
Holly Longdale
Senior Producer
EverQuest II
Join members of the EverQuest II team including Michael “Xelgad” Ganz, Brian “Omougi” Ferguson, Nandy “Zoltaroth” Szots, and Kyle “Kander” Vallée as they talk about their comprehensive plan to make Itemization awesome again in EQ2.
Watch the EverQuest II: Itemization Evolves panel recorded on Friday, August 2nd at SOE Live 2013!
Join members of the EverQuest II team including Akil “Lyndro” Hooper, Carlos “Gninja” Mora, Nathan “Kaitheel” McCall, Michael “Xelgad” Ganz, Nandy “Zoltaroth” Szots, Kyle “Kander” Vallée, and Holly “Windstalker” Longdale as they talk about EverQuest II’s upcoming 10th expansion — Tears of Veeshan.
Watch the EverQuest II: Tears of Veeshan expansion panel recorded on Friday, August 2nd at SOE Live 2013!
When Kander told me that Sunday’s EverQuest II: Q&A panel from SOE Live 2013 had some good questions raised, I despaired that nobody had recorded it. That was, until I found a post on the EQ2 forums from Zictor (who I got to meet at SOE Live!) who had recorded the audio from this panel!
Download the SOE Live 2013 – EverQuest II Q&A panel Audio
Read Zictor‘s transcript of the SOE Live 2013 — EverQuest II Q&A panel
I provide a backup of Zictor‘s transcript of the Q&A panel after the jump…
Join members of the EverQuest II team including Michael “Xelgad” Ganz, Brian “Omougi” Ferguson, Nandy “Zoltaroth” Szots, and Kyle “Kander” Vallée as they talk about upcoming mechanics and systems changes in EQ2.
Watch the EverQuest II: Systems (Mechanics) panel recorded on Friday, August 2nd at SOE Live 2013!
Holly “Windstalker” Longdale couldn’t resist…
Heck ya! Goblins…with buckets on their heads! Coming to High Keep in the ToV expansion. #eq2 pic.twitter.com/snjTfR3997
— Holly Longdale (@WindstalkerEQ2) August 6, 2013
The above logo is a medium resolution screenshot from the EverQuest II keynote.
Highkeep
More screenshots after the jump…
If you didn’t see the EverQuest II keynote live on Twitch or on the replays, you can watch it on Youtube. I’ve set the video to start at 27:30 which is right after Holly “Windstalker” Longdale gives ladies man Mark Tuttle a well-earned hard time and launches into the keynote. 😉
Back: Carlos “Gninja” , Holly “Windstalker” , Akil “Lyndro”
Front: Kyle “Kander” , Nandy “Zoltaroth” , Mike “Xelgad“
Welcome to the EverQuest II: Itemization Evolves panel from SOE Live 2013. Panelists are Michael “Xelgad” Ganz, Brian “Omougi” Ferguson, and Kyle “Kander” Vallée.
Disclaimer: All things discussed about the expansions are subject to change!
More slides after the jump…
Welcome to the EverQuest II: Itemization Evolves panel from SOE Live 2013. Panelists are Michael “Xelgad” Ganz, Brian “Omougi” Ferguson, and Kyle “Kander” Vallée.
This is a LIVE BLOG hosted by Blyve:
http://blyve.com/event/5138f951143e787b3a000000
Welcome to the EverQuest II: Systems panel from SOE Live 2013. Panelists are Michael “Xelgad” Ganz, Brian “Omougi” Ferguson, and Kyle “Kander” Vallée.
Disclaimer: All things discussed about the expansion are subject to change!
Itemization will be discussed in our next systems panel: EverQuest II: Itemization Evolves.
More slides after the jump…
Welcome to the EverQuest II: Systems panel from SOE Live 2013. Panelists are Michael “Xelgad” Ganz, Brian “Omougi” Ferguson, and Kyle “Kander” Vallée.
This is a LIVE BLOG hosted by Blyve:
http://blyve.com/event/f936f951ce62705701000000
So Kinya from the Polish EQ2 fansite Babagra.pl caught something during the SOE Live 2013 keynote specifically the EverQuest II segment — that the Channeler class will not only be playtested here on Saturday in a 4 hour open workshop/panel, but that the class will be available on the EQ2 Beta server. The Beta server is currently down, but hopefully it is brought up at least for Friday-Sunday:
@EQ2Wire Windstalker said “we also are openning Channeler on Beta during SOE Live for evryone to try”…
— Kinya (@BabaGraPL) August 2, 2013
The EverQuest II keynote ended just over an hour ago here at SOE Live 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada, and we were given some great hints of things that will be expounded upon more tomorrow in the three EQ2 panels — Mechanics, Expansion, and Itemization Evolves. (please check our list of panels we’re covering)
First up, this fall’s expansion is Tears of Veeshan. It’s a high level expansion with a huge overland zone and 9 massive dungeons. Each of the dungeons in the expansion will have quests and storylines.
Dragons AA Tab — The Dragon’s tab has 4 lines to choose from which vary by Archetype. Depending on your archetype, the AA tab will have a different label — Dozekar, Yelenak, Woushi, and Trakanon. (This is just flavor text). With the expansion, the Alternate Advancement cap is going up to 340 points.
What can I say about tomorrow’s Itemization Evolves panel? (without being hunted down by Georgeson?) Not much, but just imagine me with duct tape over my mouth, two thumbs way up, and smiling. In Kander‘s EQ2Talk interview a few months back, he told us that linear, static, and boring itemization is going out and player choice is coming in. I am very excited about this panel and hope you don’t miss our Liveblog of it!
Welcome to the SOE Live 2013 Welcome Reception. Tonight includes a keynote about EverQuest and EverQuest II, no doubt with a teaser of their upcoming expansions.
The Keynote is scheduled for two hours starting at 7pm PDT Thursday (10pm EDT, 3am BST, 4am CET).
This was a liveblog hosted by Blyve.
http://blyve.com/event/e138f9510a57e7483c000000
I’ve got big hopes for EQ2 itemization and what we’ll see in the “Everquest II: Itemization Evolves” panel at SOE Live this year. For me, there are several things that go into itemization. It’s more extensive than just the items themselves. Here are a few notes on itemization that I hope will be included in that evolution:
These don’t sound like difficult things to do and they used to do things pretty much like this until the last couple of years. Hopefully they go back to this way of doing things and will give us heroic group runners something to work towards again other than Obols, Spirits, or whatever other new currency they come up with.
The time has arrived at last. The SOE Live 2013 schedule including all the events, announcements, official Developer, AND Player Panels has been released.
New Venue, Player Panels, No Problem!
Not only is SOE Live taking up a new venue this year at Planet Hollywood (SOE Community and Events team folks were in Vegas this week enduring 117°F/47.2°C temperatures to scope the place out and ensure that the events go smoothly), but this year is only the second year of the highly popular Player-run Panels. Not only is SOE Live unveiling a totally new game — EverQuest Next — but organizing these Player Panels so that they do not overlap Developer panels that those same players absolutely cannot miss is like a jigsaw puzzle inside a Rubik’s Cube.
I will once again be hosting a Data panel to talk about EQ2U, and I am proud to share the stage with Dedith who will be talking about his site Dragon’s Armory. We are both feverishly working on new features for our sites as well as collaborating on a feature which will hopefully blow everyone’s socks off!
EverQuest II and EverQuest Next
EverQuest II will, of course, be talking in depth about its 10th expansion coming this fall which should have some very interesting announcements for all play styles.
EverQuest Next has been a complete mystery, other than the 11:00am reveal which we’ve been told to expect on Friday, August 2nd, we didn’t know until today how many panels we might expect. The Events team have worked hard to try to mix up EQ, EQ2, and EQN panels so that even players of all 3 will be able to get something from all of them, but conflicts were inevitable. We don’t know the names of the EQN panels, but now we know there will be a whopping SEVEN of them.
So what are you waiting for? Head over to the SOE Live 2013 Schedule and start putting together your own personal list of the panels for your favorite games!
I am thrilled to announce that EQ2U now supports Spirit Stones (green adornments) which were added with the Chains of Eternity expansion, and for which we recently received the necessary data. We hope you will find that the progression of stats on this new type of adornment is a lot easier to follow with our choice of presentation/layout.
Spirit Stone shown on a character’s equipment with stats appropriate to the Spirit Level.
As awesome as it is that Raiders, Group, and yes Solo players get to experience the entire Drinal Signature Quest line which takes players through the entire Chains of Eternity storyline, the requirement to do this 8-12 hour quest on every Alt character just to gain access to the group zones, as well as loot [eq2u]Obol[/eq2u] and [eq2u]Greater Spirit[/eq2u]s was a bridge too far.
From EQ2 Lead Designer Akil “Lyndro” Hooper on the EQ2 Forums:
We’re going to remove the entrance requirements from all of the dungeons and raids in the expansion except for Harrow’s End. For Harrow’s End you’ll be able to get a Heirloom key from Drinal’s Steward that you can give to other characters on your account to gain access to the zone.
UPDATE from Lyndro about [eq2u]Obol[/eq2u] currency and [eq2u]Greater Spirit[/eq2u]s:
We’ve been chatting about this some, and it makes sense to allow your alts to collect the Obol and Spirit drops if you have a character that has completed the signature line. The “Key” for Harrows End will allow for you to start gathering Obols and Spirits (Which are Heirloom). You’ll still need to complete the signature line to see the merchant version of the Steward, but since the Obols and Spirits are Heirloom and the equipment that you buy from the Steward is all heirloom, you should be able to get the benefit on all your characters.
EQ2Wire answers 20 Frequently Asked Questions about EverQuest II: Chains of Eternity:
Like clockwork, Niami Denmother of EQ2Traders has turned out a fantastic guide to crafting in the Chains of Eternity expansion.
In this guide, she updates us on Handcrafted and Mastercrafted armor, jewelry, weapons, and so forth which have received a complete set of items (rather than being dragging out until level 100). She also delves into the new set of white Adornments, a new type of green Adornment called Spirit Stones, dramatic improvements to Tinkering, the powerful new Tradeskill Prestige abilities, and an update on the Tradeskill AAs tab which now has its own 40 points to spend. While there are no Tradeskill quests in the expansion, the number of new concepts being added to Tradeskills shows that the EQ2 team want crafting to remain relevant for the foreseeable future. Niami’s guide is broken out into 2 additional sections as shown:
Holly “Windstalker” Longdale just tweeted:
Servers are unlocked! Welcome to Chains of Eternity everyone! #EQ2
— Holly Longdale (@WindstalkerEQ2) November 13, 2012
EQ2Wire was invited to a Chains of Eternity Fansite Tour (yay! our first since Sentinel’s Fate!) on Friday, November 9th and we’re working on our writeup of that tour. In the mean time, check out some of the other previews which have been posted around the interwebs:
Karen Bryan and MJ Guthrie at Massively have been turning in some great writeups of SOE Live and the upcoming Chains of Eternity expansion:
TenTonHammer have also turned out their own preview:
Cyliena of EQ2 Zam has written a great writeup of her experience on the Chains of Eternity Press Tour she attended:
