Feldon
If you thought all the bases had been covered on Character Slots with November 12th’s announcement about the Free-to-Play conversion of EQ2, there was one group who still had questions. These players are in the unique position of having characters on both the EQ2 and EQ2X servers AND having also bought character slots. If you feel a math headache coming on, feel free to run away. To quote SmokeJumper “This situation only affects players that have characters *both* on Live server(s) and EQ2X.If you don’t have characters on Freeport, then this is a non-issue.”
Free-to-Play (EQ2X)
EQ2 Extended (Free-to-Play Service)
So despite the exhaustive EQ2: Free-to-Play Frequently Asked Questions, as well as SmokeJumper‘s lengthy Producer’s Letter, there were still a few details and questions that got missed in last Thursday’s announcements. These EQ2X items are leaving the Marketplace (some previously announced): ‘Wand of Obliteration’ ‘Rune of Devastation’ Mastercrafted Gear Tradeskill Rares Crafted Arrows Self-Rez Scrolls ‘Guild Charter’ unlocks for creating guilds These EQ2X items are staying in the Marketplace: Research Reducers (for researching Adept, Expert, and Master spells faster) Regular Bags Other Points of Interest: Free StationCash for recurring EQ2 subscriptions paid with a Credit Card. What do Gear/Spell/Class/Race...
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...
So there will have been a lot of myths and “the sky is falling” posts since Thursday’s announcement of EverQuest II going Free-to-Play and eliminating the “separate but equal” EQ2X service. Let’s see if we can knock out a few… 1 The price of my EverQuest II subscription is going up. According to SmokeJumper, “nothing is changing”. An EQ2 subscription will continue to be $14.99/month and will continue at that pricing for the foreseeable future. In fact, you’ll be able to pay your account with StationCash. If you stockpiled SC (up to the annoyingly low limits allowed), then you...
SmokeJumper has answers for four of the biggest questions regarding the changes announced this week with EverQuest II becoming a Free-to-Play game rather than having a separate EQ2X service. Okay, folks, We promised you answers to four big questions that kept coming up on the forums yesterday. (We promised info by early next week, but we’re ready with the info now, so here ya go.)
You’ll likely remember last year’s EverQuest II: Extended Trailer. It had great music, good editing, and was quite attractive to watch. Now that EverQuest II is going Free-to-Play without a separate service, that trailer has been remixed with some new clips. We provide the new trailer below with the new motto “EverQuest II Free to Play. Your Way!™”.
So the biggest kerfuffle about today’s announcement about EverQuest II going fully free-to-play was an unexpected one for me. A larger-than-expected number of players have multiple characters on both the EQ2 and EQ2X services and they are concerned that they’ll get locked out of some of those characters when the transition completes and will be forced to buy character slots to continue playing those characters. A player asked: I have 12 slots on live full and 14 on eq2x.. when the merge what happens to all the characters? do I need to delete toons before hand that I don’t...
Here is the updated Free-to-Play Frequently Asked Questions page from EverQuest2.com. You may also go straight to the Membership Comparison Grid which compares Free, Silver, and Gold subscription levels. 1. When will I be able to play EverQuest II for free? We do not have an exact date at this time, but we are anticipating releasing EverQuest II as Free-to-Play early December 2011. 2. How much does EverQuest II cost to play? Basic access in EverQuest II is free! This includes access to a large portion of the game. However, there are also paid memberships that grant access to...
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...
From EverQuest2.com comes this notice about ‘very exciting news for EverQuest II’: Come check out this week’s EverQuest II Webcast! Host Linda “Brasse” Carlson (Director, Global Community Relations) will interview Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson (EQ2 Executive Producer) and Emily “Domino” Taylor (EQ2 Associate Producer) to talk about some very exciting news for EverQuest II! You won’t want to miss it! Join us on Thursday, November 10, 2011, at 4:30 p.m. US Pacific Time*, as we live stream this webcast on the Twitch TV! The webcast is expected to last about 20 minutes. Note that SOE has switched live stream services from...
One year ago, the EverQuest II Extended “Free-to-Play” service launched. In its wake, the EverQuest II Free Trial was unceremoniously discontinued. At Fan Faire, we learned that the Trial was coming back, and today it has. Past trials have been very limited: Play the Fae — A 7 day trial of one starting zone (Faydwer) and limited to level 20. Trial of the Isle — A trial limited to level 6 on the Qeynos and Freeport starting islands. Both had limited access to chat channels, private messaging, and joining groups and/or guilds. Unlike those past trials, this one is...
It was easy to interpret SmokeJumper‘s suggestion that StationCash purchases could count as “time” towards Veteran Rewards and, taken to its logical conclusion, allow players on EQ2X or even Live to “buy” Veteran time. However this is not what he meant! Here’s a clarification: Veteran subscribers that have been here forever have already received their rewards. That would be a “no” for [taking previous time into account]. We’d only give them “backlog” credits from the last vet reward time to now. But for EQ2X’ers, you’ve never received credit, so you’d get credits as far back as August last year...
The announcement of EverQuest 2 Extended (EQ2X Free-to-Play) to the world was not a complete surprise to everyone. In addition to the various individuals within the EQ2 team and SOE involved in its planning and implementation, a few players were notified and their feedback solicited. What would be the community reaction? Should the services stay separate? There were many questions. At last year’s Fan Faire, once the EQ2X cat was out of the bag, I spoke to Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson about the future of EQ2 and EQ2X, and how the latter might choke off the former. My feedback was...
In an interesting turn of events, Bronze and Silver players of EQ2X are being given 30 days of Gold access as part of SOE’s “Make Good” program. You’ll recall that Bronze is the free-to-play level of service, while Silver pay a one-time fee. Although players of both Bronze and Silver levels can and do buy various race and item unlocks, some have played EQ2 entirely for free. From SmokeJumper on the EQ2X forums: Hi, folks, We don’t want the Silver and Bronze members to feel like they’re being left out in the cold on this Make Good program that...
When prodded about upgrading the graphics engine of EQ2, if not to improve the graphics, at least to address the spate of flickering graphics and shadows which seem to have plagued the game for some players (including me) since the launch of Velious. SmokeJumper addressed this concern and others including graphical glitches and performance slowdowns in Public Quests: We redirected our efforts yesterday to trying to resolve some of the PQ issues. We fixed one issue last night, and although I had been getting similar behavior to what you describe on my home rig, I couldn’t make that duplicate...
If there is any doubt that EQ2 devs are working as hard as they can to resolve the persistent Receiving Zone Info issues affecting Freeport and (to some extent) other servers, know that Zoltaroth and Rothgar put in 16 hours on Tuesday, and I know that Zoltaroth worked again until midnight this morning. Sleep is overrated!
If you are an EQ2X player with Bronze or Silver access (a Gold monthly subscription is roughly analygous to an EQ2 live subscription), and are thinking about buying Destiny of Velious, you may wish to read this excellent post by Claviarm on the EQ2 Extended Forums about some extra fees you may be on the hook for: So now that the NDA has been lifted, I just wanted to let all the bronze and silver players out there know ahead of time that Destiny of Velious may not be a wise purchase unless you also set aside some money...
Despite prophecies and predictions declaring EQ2X overpriced and underdelivered, it seems EQ2X’s popularity has nonetheless led it to be a victim of its own success in recent weeks. Several threads on the EQ2X forums about server crashes, instability, and lag have been created which got some reaction from SmokeJumper. Currently, EQ2X runs on but a single server called Freeport. Hmm, lets make SOE notice us.. Sony, you’re going to have to allow Freeport copies to live. Now I keep getting flung back to character select screen…. BING BANG SONY WAKE UP After the jump, responses from SmokeJumper…
Believe it or not SmokeJumper posted a bit about Game Update 60, which will be anywhere from 1-3 months after the Destiny of Velious expansion launches. It’s expected to have some Battlegrounds and PvP tweaks. His post also talks about EQ2X marketing and EQ2X PvP servers: Answers (but you might not like them): 1) We haven’t started spending marketing cash for Extended yet. That’s slated for January. The reason I bring that up is until we bring more people into Extended, we have no plans to open up a PvP server because too many servers dilutes the population and...
So it was put forward that the Big Marketing Push for EQ2X that was promised for late summer never materialized. SmokeJumper tackled this one: The decision was made to delay the marketing spend until January after the Christmas cage fights over banner slots and other advertising have died down a bit. So…January now.
Dethdlr
Remember that patch that went in yesterday? The one that caused raid zones to crash over and over again? Today we get the patch for the patch. “Fixed a crash issue related to pet immunity” apparently means, “we fixed the raid zone crashing bug that we introduced yesterday“. This bug was apparently reported on the website late last week but the info didn’t make it to the developers. Remember, always /bug when you find a bug. That doesn’t mean they will always see it, but at least that gets it into their system. Notes after the break…
Is it time to just rip off the Band-Aid™ and be done with it? Unannounced in this week’s additions to the StationCash Marketplace were the addition of in-game merchant-bought arrows (no great shakes compared to woodworker-made ones) to the StationCash Marketplace. When prompted on the EQ2 Forums, EQ2 Senior Producer Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson had this response: They’re just the basic arrows you can get from merchants. It’s a convenience thing for folks that run out of arrows in the field. and later in a similar topic in the Tradeskills forum: It’s pure convenience. Some players are willing to spend...
SmokeJumper posted this on the EQ2X forums: Silver members can now buy items from the Broker. They still need to purchase broker credits to *place* items onto the Broker, but they now have unlimited capacity to BUY from the Broker. Enjoy!
Here are your update notes for 5 October 2010: EVERQUEST 2 EXTENDED Bronze members will now be able to view chat channels (Silver or higher is still required to participate in chat). You can now purchase Gold memberships directly in game. MARKETPLACE You can now buy extra character slots in the marketplace! You can now redeem station cash cards directly in game by going to: Marketplace – Add Funds – Station Cash Card. You can now add a credit card to your file directly in game by going to: Marketplace – Add Funds – Credit Card – Add New...
SmokeJumper just announced some changes to the bronze level chat channel restirctions on the EQ2X Forums: As of Tuesday, October 5th, the chat restrictions for Bronze players will be eased somewhat. Bronze players will now be able to *see* the chat that’s occurring in broadcast chat channels (like /auction, /Level 1-9, etc.). However, they will still be unable to *send* chat in those channels. In theory, this allows Bronze players to hear what’s going on in the world, and opens up a huge pool of potential customers for Silver and Gold players that are /auctioning items in chat. (Bronze players...