Feldon
From the EQ2 Forums: All EverQuest II Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, August 29th, 2017 at 7:00 AM PT (14:00 UTC) for an update. Estimated downtime is less than 2 hours. At the 3 1/2 hour mark, the forums were updated with this notification indicating a possible total 4 1/2 hour downtime: This morning’s downtime downtime is running longer than expected – EQ2 servers should be unlocked by approximately 11:30AM PT. From the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL Isle of Refuge (Free Trade) Random events in the Obulus Frontier are now more common on a Free-Trade server. All waves...
Free-to-Play (EQ2X)
EQ2 Extended (Free-to-Play Service)
The first two Server Merges are now under the EQ2 team’s belt, with Crushbone, Oasis, and Butcherblock becoming Maj’Dul while Guk, Unrest, and Everfrost were reborn as a unified Halls of Fate server. Soon we’ll see Freeport, Nagafen, and Permafrost become a new combined Skyfire server. The technical requirements of doing a three-way merge has certainly thrown the team some curve balls. In the hours after the Maj’Dul server came up, there were several server crashes due to memory usage. To keep Maj’Dul stable, a login queue was instituted for Free-to-Play accounts to lessen the load. The queue was then extended to the new newly merged Halls of Fate server...
It’s Bug Bash (and Altar of Malice heroic zone rebalancing) time! From the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL — BUG BASH WEEK Fixed an issue where you could lose your grandmaster spell if you betrayed. The tooltip and examine window information will now correctly display the damage type of missile weapons. Rejoice! Exiles can now use the shared bank! Exiles can now change suffix titles! SOE Live Request: Added the command /dump_items_to_log, which, true to its name, will write the contents of your inventory to your log. Please note that only items known to your game client will be logged; as...
Starting today, EverQuest II’s 11th expansion Altar of Malice will become available for purchase for Free-to-Play EQ2 players both at EverQuest2.com, and through Steam. All Access customers were able to buy and play the expansion some two weeks ago starting on November 11th. Pricing remains unchanged, at $39.99 for the standard edition and $89.99 for the collector’s edition. Coinciding with the platform changes to allow F2P players to buy the expansion, there are some login issues affecting EQ2 players. Update as of 35 minutes ago: From Afista on Twitter (also posted on the EQ2 Forums): Login issues should now...
Confirming speculation after the pricing for EverQuest’s own The Darkened Sea expansion was recently revealed, today the EverQuest II team have unveiled the pricing for their own Altar of Malice coming this November. As previously mentioned, there will be no Pre-order for this expansion. It’s believed that the team is hoping to avoid the kind of pre-order snafus that players have experienced in the past by just opening the door to purchases on launch day. All Access customers may purchase one of these two versions of Altar of Malice starting NOVEMBER 11th, 2014: Altar of Malice Standard Edition —...
From Afista on the EQ2 Forums: Who needs a mailbox? Not you, if you’re an All-Access Member! Are you tired of adventuring in far-off places and wondering what treasures are sitting in your mailbox at home? Do you want to be able to loot something awesome and send it to a friend immediately, without having to make the long journey to the mailbox? Well, beginning Tuesday, October 21, 2014, All-Access Members will be able send and receive mail attachments from anywhere in Norrath! That’s right Norrathians; you’ll never have to find one of these again! Starting tomorrow, All-Access members will...
From Holly “Windstalker” Longdale‘s twitter: Open Beta for everyone starting tomorrow after our update! #eq2 — Holly Longdale (@WindstalkerEQ2) October 14, 2014 UPDATE: At 5:00pm PDT last night, the Altar of Malice beta finally opened for all players, whether Free-to-Play or All Access subscriber. From the EQ2 Forums: Everyone can now join the Beta server and experience Altar of Malice before it launches. Are you interested in what’s become of the Isle of Refuge? Do you long to discover the treasures hidden in the Phantom Seas? Beta testing is a great opportunity for you to try out the features...
If you’ve never heard of Extra Credits, it’s a semi-weekly show by game designer James Portnow and animator/narrator Daniel Floyd, with various guest artists providing the sometimes comical artwork. The series of videos discuss issues pertinent to video games and game studies, particularly discussing issues concerning video game development, addressing the legitimacy of video games as art, and creating intellectual discourse on important issues in gaming culture. We try to watch it every week, and we have a sneaking suspicion the EQNext and Landmark teams do as well, as a lot of the concepts they talk about are raised on the...
As long last we’ve resumed posting videos recorded from SOE Live 2014. After this, we’ve still got the EQ2 Art & Animation panel, as well as three player panels and the Player Studio panel. Oy vey! This was the last panel at SOE Live 2014 for EverQuest II — Questions & Answers #2. Due to room acoustics, this recording took an inordinate amount of time to edit and normalize. Fortunately, Audio quality improves around the 3 minute mark when questions begin.
There were some technical difficulties during the first 10 minutes of the EverQuest II: Altar of Malice keynote which was livestreamed from SOE Live last week. Instead of clearly hearing the producer and designers of our game hyping their hard work, audiences at home mostly heard frustrated AV techs trying to get things working. Fortunately, we recorded the keynote in person and are now able to provide the complete event for those who missed it!
So a couple weeks ago, SOE had some DNS issues with one of their servers. As an apology for the up-to-3-days outage for players who couldn’t work around the DNS snafu, SOE granted 2 days extra All Access membership. This sounds great, but when this was announced, a few players were curious exactly how the 2 days time were being granted — either by moving the billing date back by 2 days, or by adding time at the end whenever people cancel. I don’t know that we ever got a concrete answer — until now. It looks like everyone’s...
EverQuest 2 has announced a “Summer Kickoff” event! First up, all players will see 30% off Appearance items and Mounts on the Marketplace. Now here’s where we split off into the Free-to-Play and All Access groups. All players will receive Double Bonus XP on Monday, May 26th All Access subscribers enjoy Double Bonus XP the entire weekend (May 23-May 26). From the EQ2 Forums: To celebrate the start of summer, we’re having double experience and sale action! All players will have double experience on Monday, May 26th, 2014 at 12:00 AM PDT to 11:59 PM PDT. All players will also have 30% off on...
Last night, EQ2 Community Manager Luperza posted: Hi everyone! Looks like most of the issues have been resolved! If you go to your SOE Account management page by going to https://www.soe.com/home > My Account >Membership Info, you should be able to see all the information needed as well as when you can claim your next 500 SC. Let me know if there’s anything that is still not working for you! This was naturally followed up by 3 pages (so far) of players still reporting issues in Europe, or on comped/lifetime subscriptions from game contests years ago, or players who used to...
From the EQ2 Forums: Thank you for your patience while we work to resolve matters surrounding the launch of SOE’s new All Access Membership – read all about it at this link! The implementation of this new membership plan across SOE’s game portfolio has been one of the most complicated updates to our billing system to date. As fellow gamers, we know that this has been frustrating and we sincerely regret any inconvenience this has caused. We’re working around the clock to ensure these account issues are resolved as quickly as possible. In the meantime, to show our appreciation for...
The EverQuest II Membership page has now been completely revamped with the All Access information! More specifically, there is a sale on a year of All Access membership which can be had for just $99.99 instead of the usual $119.88.
Reddit, that last bastion of 1990’s internet look-and-feel, hosted an “Ask Me Almost Anything” with the EQ2 developers and designers this morning and Cyliena of EQ2 ZAM has summarized the most interesting questions which received responses from the team. Here are a few of the more interesting responses: Q: “Any hints on the next expansion’s theme? Will the level cap finally raise to 100 with it?” A: “You may want to tune into the next EQ2 Insider livestream on http://www.twitch.tv/everquest2. 😉 It’ll be May 7th, 2014 at 2PM PDT! (We’ll have a YT vod up if you can’t watch it...
From the EQ2 Forums: Dear Members, My name is Mark Tuttle and I head up the All Access Membership team here at Sony Online Entertainment. We’ve been working around the clock to bring you SOE’s all-new game membership. Implementing this new All Access membership plan across our portfolio of games has been one of the most complicated changes to our billing system to date so we appreciate your patience while we completed these necessary updates. With that said, I am happy to inform you that we have officially launched our new All Access Membership! At SOE, we see our...
From the EQ2 Forums: Attention players: in order to roll out the new All Access Membership Plan, we will perform a maintenance beginning at 12:01 AM PDT on Tuesday, April 29, 2014. The downtime for this maintenance will be extensive and we will update you as each individual service becomes available. This will impact the following SOE services: All SOE Games All Official Forums Account management Commerce functions, including purchases Thank you for your patience!
For the third time, the transition from individual Gold subscriptions for each of SOE’s games to a single All Access pass has been postponed. From Dexella on the SOE forums: Dear Players, In an effort to ensure that the transition to the new All Access membership plan is as seamless as possible, we are going to be taking a little more time to test. So, we will be pushing the launch date of All Access to Tuesday, April 29th. Because of the portfolio-wide nature of this plan, this may prevent us from doing any individual game updates in EverQuest,...
So last Thursday, Holly “Windstalker” Longdale posted a Producer’s Letter for EverQuest II. The letter included a few phrases which seemed open to interpretation and so we waited to post these notes to see if there might be some clarification. There hasn’t been, so here’s the letter: Greetings Norrathians! It’s been an exciting year so far for EverQuest II and we have a lot more to come! Since All Access membership was announced earlier this year, as well as news on our new weekly update direction, we’re having a great time bringing more to the game each week. There’s...
As we found out recently, SOE is making all of their customers who currently have a Gold membership, through credit card, Krono, or game cards, into All Access customers. Players will be able to login to their favorite game once per month and claim 500SC for being loyal subscribers, as well as enjoying a 10% flat discount in all Marketplace prices. Finally, All Access customers will be able to access all of SOE’s games including DC Universe Online (PC), PlanetSide 2 (PC), EverQuest, EverQuest II, Dragon’s Prophet, EQN Landmark, and EQNext when it launches in 2015. NOTE: The upcoming changes...
From SOE President John Smedley‘s twitter: We have decided to treat krono and our prepaid cards exactly like a recurring sub in terms of benefits. — John Smedley (@j_smedley) January 8, 2014
SOE President John Smedley continues to peel back the curtain on the thinking behind Subscriptiongate and why he is trying to make this right for loyal customers, while addressing the Accounting and Tax Law issues which SOE could ignore no longer. First up, Smed posted his philosophy on game development and how these Subscription changes were never about squeezing players for more revenue: When I read through all the posts here and on our forums, it never ceases to amaze me how people can think we’re just money grubbing jerks because we’re trying to make money. I can tell you...
Last Friday, SOE announced changes to their Subscription services, replacing the 500 SC/month allowance for having a Gold Subscription in any of SOE’s games with a monthly voucher to buy ONE item per game, up to 2,000SC, to exclude Player Studio, “bundles“, and an unknown array of other items, presumably “Services“, Experience items (280AA bauble), and expansion unlocks like Mercenaries. Players who buy a number of 100-200SC items would have lost out with the deal, as the voucher only applied to a single item with exclusions. And while it’s a small pool of players, Vanguard players on an All Access subscription...
Our invite was once again misfiled, but if you are curious to catch all the info about Heroic Characters, including a few quotes from Holly “Windstalker” Longdale and Dave “SmokeJumper” Georegeson, you’ll want to check out the writeups by Cyliena (ZAM) and MJ (Massively) who endured SOE’s PR firm to bring you the scoop! Heroic Characters Come to EverQuest II @ ZAM Interview expounds on today’s Heroic Characters patch in EverQuest II @ Massively And is it just me, or are the 3 screenshots provided by PR kinda the opposite of what you’d expect to see in marketing Heroics?...