From the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
The Cavern of the Crustaceans

• The zone is now on a persistent timer instead of a lockout timer.

ITEMS

• The Sentinel: Rewards from the quest , The Crook Cook, are now tradable.
• AA respec cards can now be destroyed.
• [eq2u]Vision of the Tranquil[/eq2u] will now persist through death.
• [eq2u]The Orb of Theer[/eq2u] can no longer proc in PVP combat.
• Celestial Motes are now classified as Fabled items.

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!

After some less-than-pleasant debate about how the Avatar Spawn System in EQ2 was changing sans discussion, EQ2 lead designer Kander has now laid the cards on the table, spelling out exactly how (and when) Avatars will spawn in Norrath. This is a continuation of the transparency we first heard about in Kander’s interview on EQ2Talk, and is much appreciated.

Sure there are a few folks out there who prefer everything be mysterious, but when you are analyzing what’s fair and what’s not, what’s broken and what’s just maddeningly rare, having some numbers goes a long way to defusing arguments and reaching clarity instead.

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. 😉

From the EQ2 Forums:

The US and EU EverQuest 2 Servers will come down on Tuesday, August 6 at 5:30AM PDT (8:30am EDT, 13:30 BST, 14:30 CET, 10:30pm AEST) for an update. The expected downtime is one hour. Guk, Everfrost, Butcherblock, Crushbone, Permafrost, and Oasis will require an additional two hours of downtime.

and here are those update notes:

During the Expansion panel at SOE Live, the issue of returning players was raised, specifically the cost-prohibitive need to buy two expansions just to get back into the game. This is something we’ve been asking about since the day the EverQuest II:Age of Discovery expansion was announced. We always wondered — could we just buy the features we want like Reforging, Mercs, and Beastlords a la carte? It looks like all the roadblocks have been cleared and this will now be happening!

Holly responded that, in the near future, Age of Discovery will be broken up into separate features to buy. Also, Destiny of Velious will soon be included in the Free-to-Play entitlements. Included in all this news was that the 280 AA bauble — currently only available for buying Chains of Eternity — will also be made available as a separate item.

From Holly “Windstalker” Longdale‘s twitter:

I did say Destiny of Velious will be rolled into F2P and AoD will be split into features to buy! 280AA bauble too! #eq2 #SOELive

— Holly Longdale (@WindstalkerEQ2) August 3, 2013

Back: Carlos “Gninja” , Holly “Windstalker” , Akil “Lyndro”
Front: Kyle “Kander” , Nandy “Zoltaroth” , Mike “Xelgad“

The curtain has gone down on another Grand Banquet, and just a few panels left to go due to the extended SOE Live schedule this year, it’s hard to believe that another event has come and gone so quickly! Every year things seem to go faster, with barely time for a breath.

There are a few panels today for those folks who aren’t East coast or who are staying Sunday night) including EverQuest Next Writer‘s panel, Channeler feedback panel (naturally there will be more feedback taken in the Tears of Veeshan beta forums) and the EverQuest II Q&A panel. I imagine these panels will be lightly attended, but hopefully videos will be taken and posted! As I am on the East coast of the US these days, I’m heading out before some of those panels even get under way.

I saw so many EQ2 players this weekend, had a tremendous time talking about and answering questions about EQ2U at our Data panel, and just really enjoyed the weekend. It was fantastic to meet Aliscious of EQ2Talk, Arabel and Maergoth of Equilibrium, Striinger, Yadrizzle, Afista, Dedith of Dragon’s Armory, Chuina (Chad) and Tannlin of the new EverCast show, and so many others, as well as catching up with old friends like Leko, Dellmon, Cyliena, Atan, Jethal, and so many others that I should be remembering (Email me!) .It was also great to catch up with devs from the EQ2 and EQNext teams.

EQ2 Impressions

I’m really happy to see a lot of good decisions going forward on the EQ2 team, I liked the Mechanics and Itemization panels a lot, and really other than the Insta-85 thing (which I talked to Holly about), things are looking good for EQ2.

One thing I was blown away by with EQ2, which will be explained further when I post the Art & Animation panel video, is that the work of Alex (GermInUSA), who is a graphics programming wizard from the early console days, is now finally going to bear fruit. If you have watched past Art & Animation videos about EverQuest II, you know that building a large exterior zone takes weeks if not MONTHS. This is due to the archaic tools available which follow EQ2’s design rules. Also the tools have prevented things like blending multiple textures together to make a smooth transition from a dirt path to rocks at the side of the road, up to hardier terrain. Right now this is extremely arduous.

Demoed at the Art & Animation panel, EQ2’s new Terrain Editor allowed the creation of a large island zone in 10 HOURS. The zone was much more intricate and detailed, flora and landscape elements just looked so much better, and significantly improved pathing is built in as well. No more NPCs and characters flipping around at odd angles as non-flat surfaces are encountered. It was truly amazing and I can’t say enough about it. In the past, the Design team has had to ask the Art team for new zones 6-9 months in advance. Now, we’ll see zones rapidly prototyped and iterated so much faster that who knows, there might even be some time to goose up some older zones which are interesting lorewise but visually dull (like Thundering Steppes).

NOTE: Nobody said they are redoing any zone!! It was just given as an example of a zone built early on that could look so much more awesome.

So I’m signing off for now and will start crunching videos tomorrow! Seriously!

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: Tears of Veeshan Expansion panel from SOE Live 2013.

This is a LIVE BLOG hosted by Blyve:
http://blyve.com/event/dc37f951bddea0042f000000

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!

Tonight’s EverQuest II keynote here at SOE Live included the revelation that Heroic Characters are coming to EQ2. I’m not against this idea, as the writing has been on the wall for insta-level 90 or 85 to come to EQ2 sooner or later. Due to multiple gear revamps plus Mercs, I feel that EverQuest II is a solo tutorial from level 1-89, and then the ‘real’ game starts at level 90.

However the unsettling part of this announcement was that people would be able to create their FIRST character as a level 85 with full Legendary gear, spells, a chunk of AAs, and have those AAs automatically spent for them with Character Advancement Templates.

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:

• Go back to the days when gear was less cookie cutter. The days when you looked at more than just the Stamina stat to see if you were already wearing better.
• Bring back heroic zone progression meaning make the top level heroic instance hard. As in “need to gear up in the easier instances before you have any chance at clearing it” hard. Remember zones like Palace of Ferzhul, Estate of Unrest,  Tower of Tactics, Elements of War?  This was something we used to work towards so it gave us a goal. Lately, we can clear the harder zones the first or second time we go in. If we can clear the hardest zone, what are we working towards?
• Put the items in places that make sense. If zone X is required to get access to zone Y, and the quest sending me into zone X rewards me with boots, don’t put worse boots in the loot tables for zone Y. Nobody will ever wear them and it makes it seem like nobody was paying attention when placing the loot.
• Put ultra-rare items into the heroic zones again that are desirable even by raiders. This gives us something to do. I remember people asking to run zones like Cella, Maidens, Najena’s Hollow Tower, even Obelisk of Blight way back when because they wanted an ultra-rare item that dropped in there. Quite often the next GU or expansion would come out before everybody got what they wanted out of all the zones. Again, this gave us something to work towards.

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 Public Beta for the overhauled Dragon’s Armory has now begun! The new site has numerous improvements and features, from better font choices, the ability to link directly to a Character, and more importantly, a completely overhauled Upgrades page which lets you shop for item and adornment upgrades in a visual, meaningful way which always keeps you informed on how your stats will increase or decrease based on different item choices.

Check out the Dragon’s Armory Beta!

Dedith will also be presenting a talk at SOE Live 2013 from 2-3:00pm PDT alongside me (I’ll be talking about EQ2U). We’ll both be taking feedback — I know I’ll be asking about that Comic Sans font… We’ll also be recording an HD video of this panel in case you can’t be at SOE Live.

SOE Live is once again upon us, ready to douse us in news about a number of SOE games including EverQuest Next, and refusing to be overshadowed, EverQuest II! The EQ2 team have been working their butts off on new content, itemization improvements (more choice, less cookie cutter!!), and more which has yet to be revealed.

But while we wait for that news to break, (or if you need a podcast for your flight to Vegas), you ought to check out the latest EQ2Talk #67 episode which has been posted to EQ2Talk.com. If you didn’t listen to Episode #66, you really should, as much of the #67 episode deals with listener e-mail responding to Dell and Ali’s impressions of the Challenge Duo zones which were discussed heavily in #66.

Both Dellmon and Aliscious are attending SOE Live this year and hopefully we can get some of their impressions about all the announcements and news, and of course I think we can expect a post-SOE Live show!

EQ2Wire will be (where else?) in Las Vegas this weekend for our sixth SOE Live covering EverQuest II, as well as the upcoming EverQuest Next on our sister site EQNWire.com. I’ll also be presenting a panel about our EQ2 armory site EQ2U as well as plans for the future.

You can read the official SOE Live 2013 Schedule here (hopefully with no more changes!), but here’s the list of panels I will be attending, with notations of which panels I will be Liveblogging and which I will be recording in 720p HD video. All times are Pacific Daylight Time!

• Thursday, August 1
  • EQ2Wire/Dragon’s Armory Meet Up! – 4-5pm — If you are in Vegas, join us in the Planet Hollywood Mezzanine. We’ll find a comfortable place to sit, either in the Lounge or Theater and chat.
  • Welcome Reception and Keynote Address – 7-9pm – Covering EverQuest and EverQuest II. This will also be livestreamed on Twitch.tv.

• Friday, August 2
  • EverQuest Next Debut – Noon-1:30pm – First look at EverQuest Next! This will also be livestreamed on Twitch.tv.
  • EQ2U & Dragon’s Armory Player Panel – 2-3pm – The future of EQ2U, plus Dragon’s Armory will unveil a major revamp! 
  • EverQuest II: Systems – 3-4pm – Classes, Tradeskills, PvP, and more.
  • EverQuest II: Expansion #10 – 4-5pm – EverQuest II’s 10th expansion.
  • EverQuest II: Itemization Evolves – 5-6pm – Hear about some great things coming to EQ2 Itemization.

UPDATE: Upon reflection of viewership numbers, lack of any kind of cellular data service in the conference rooms, and the high cost of Wifi in said rooms ($25 for 3 hours), and thus being unable to post photos in realtime, I’m NOT going to be Liveblogging on Saturday. A ton of EQNext info has been released on game sites and social media. So we’ll be recording a ton of panels in 720p HD video and releasing in the following days! Thank you!

• Saturday, August 3
  • EverQuest II: Art & Animation – 10-11am – Monsters, Dungeons, Animation, Armor and more!
  • EverQuest Next: Showing Off Your Creativity – 11am-Noon – 
  • EverQuest Next: The Classes of EQN – 1-2pm – 
  • EverQuest Next: The Lore of EQN – 2-3pm –
  • EverQuest Next: Creating a World – 3-4pm –
  • EverQuest Next: Q&A – 4-5pm –

Looking For Video

The biggest holes in my schedule are Friday’s “The World of EverQuest Next” (5-6pm) panel as it conflicts with an EQ2 panel, and Sunday’s “EverQuest Next: Inside the Writer’s Room” (Noon-1pm) and “EverQuest II Q&A” (1-2pm) which takes place after I’ve left Vegas. We are hopeful that at least one person will produce a High Definition tripod video of each of these three panels and then share them on Youtube.