Feldon
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...
EQ2
From the EQ2 Forums: POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION Challenge Mode NPCs Several challenge mode NPC effects that were incurable are now curable as curses. These include Paralyzing Venom, Mesmerizing Web, and Corrosive Residue in the Aaranae Arcimae fight. Combat Madness in the General Aakita fight. Deathtouch in the Lichlord Skulldugger fight and several others. Cooperative Strike is no longer always fatal each tick, it does about half your max health in focus damage with each tick now. Temple of Rallos Zek: Foundations of Stone [Challenge] Greater warboars during the statue of rallos zek fight have less maximum health. Tallon’s...
A growing number of players on the Splitpaw, Valor, and Storms servers (located in Amsterdam and serving the UK and English-speaking Europe) have been reporting unplayable gameplay lag and connection delays. Some players are reporting no problems while others are experiencing 5-6 second cast delays. Further confusing matters, there seems to be no geographic pattern to the problems, as some living in close proximity to Amsterdam are reporting the biggest problems while those far away are getting fast responses. UPDATE: We’ve updated this article to address the Valor and Storms servers. In the absence of further information, this would...
A tip of the hat to Rixan of Antonia Bayle for bringing this to our attention. After hearing that there might or might not be an eight year vet reward at Fan Faire, it looks like we are getting a doozy of a set. We’re talking a once-every-24-hours group resurrect (20% health and power), a 150% flying disc mount, a 110% XP potion, and an equippable illusion that adds a green glow around your eyes. You also get a “the Veteran” player title. UPDATE: According to several sources, players will get a choice of several different 150% flying disc...
Yesterday we received an e-mail from SOE informing us of a 25% discount on their SOE Authenticator keyring security fobs licensed from Vasco. These devices can be ordered from the SOE Station Store for $7.49 plus shipping and handling. This promotion ends November 17, 2011 at 8:59am PDT (11:59am EDT; 16:59 GMT; 17:59 CET). Note the free SOE Mobile Authenticator app for iPhone and Android is still listed as ‘Coming Soon’. You can read the SOE Authenticator Frequently Asked Questions at SOE.com.
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...
Axe
From RadarX at 8:48 Pacific, 11/3/11 on the EQ2 Forums: We are currently investigating login issues with Launchpad and apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you for your patience as we resolve the problem. UPDATE: This issue was resolved approximately 30 minutes after the above status post.
Tuesday’s update seems to have disabled the 48 hour grace period for trading loot/items between the members of a group or raid. This change was pushed straight to Live with no testing. And now it may be that the reasoning for this “fix” was to stop a low-priority “exploit”. From Crismorn of Nagafen: SoE tried to fix Contested Kael quest pieces from being traded between group members and thought it was so important and such a huge issue that breaking the entire ability to trade any type of dropped loot would be an acceptable loss, or they [did] just...
Thursday, November 3, 2011 brings a new Webcast about the upcoming Game Update 62, specifically the Freeport revamp. If you have a Facebook account, you can Submit Questions for this Webcast by posting here. Those of us who refuse to get a Facebook account can apparently pound sand. 😉 From EverQuest2.com: Host Linda “Brasse” Carlson (Director, Global Community Relations) will interview Jonathan “Prathun” Caraker (EQ2 Game Designer) and Akil “Lyndro” Hooper (EQ2 Lead Designer) and learn all about the upcoming changes to Freeport. Are you wondering what this historic city will look like, what new quests are on the...
From EverQuest2.com: With the Everquest II: Age of Discovery expansion just around the corner, it’s the perfect time to give players the inside scoop on what exactly is going on with the Freeport re-design. EverQuest II Community Relations Manager, Jennifer “Isulith” Bridges got the chance to sit down with Timothy Heydelaar, Senior Artist for EverQuest II. He was able to give a great overview of what to expect and why the changes to Freeport were made. … The Freeport City revamp is coming winter 2011 with Game Update 62, which is coming out at the same time as the...
From EverQuest2.com: We will perform maintenance on all games and services beginning at 4:00 a.m. US Pacific Time on November 1, 2011. You may experience the following: Logins for all games, websites, and forums may be unavailable between 4:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. US Pacific Time. Commerce transactions, including purchases on our websites and in-game marketplaces, may be unavailable between 4:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. US Pacific Time. We apologize for this interruption and will resume all affected services as soon as the maintenance is completed. This maintenance window corresponds to 11:00-13:00 GMT or 12:00-14:00 CET.
From the EQ2 Forums: POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION Strategist’s Stronghold Severed Windpipe is now curable. Tallon’s Stronghold [Non-Challenge mode] During the Tallon Zek fight Decorin Deahbringer will cast Deathbringer’s Touch and Impending doom less frequently. Tallon’s Stronghold [Challenge mode] During the Lieutenant Klaatuus fight the aviak trooper adds have less health, no longer memwipe, and will always spawn at the bosses feet. Vallon’s Tower [Challenge Mode] During the Gindan Commander Angler fight the Diaku Deceptors will wait a while before casting their stunning strike spell. Kael Drakkel All dropped quest items that were previously flagged no-trade now consume the...
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.
From the EQ2Forums: POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION Temple of Rallos Zek [Challenge] Bosses should no longer get double buff packages. Temple of Rallos Zek: Foundations of Stone [Challenge] During the Statue of Rallos Zek fight the automatons of escalation have reduced abilities and should be easier to handle. The statue itself will wait much longer after its final text before it activates retaliation. Sullon’s Spire [Non-Challenge Mode] Hragdold the Frenzied: Ironclaw Priests now heal for less. Clawstorm mana drain is lessened, and it’s not cast quite so often. Spire of Rage Spells that the Sullonites use now have longer...
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...
Enemies in EQ2 have always tended to exhibit some odd behavior such as running long distances or zig-zagging around a room in an attempt to reach the player. Destiny of Velious greatly exacerbated this problem, causing enemies to “orbit” the player, or worse, warp or teleport around. Because raid mobs are often able to ignore certain movement speed limitations, this has been a major problem in certain raid zones that require the tank to slowly keep the mob moving in a circle around a room. The mobs will teleport on top of the tank, or start to orbit clockwise...
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 the EQ2 Forums: BATTLEGROUNDS Fixed an issue with queuing for a battleground as a group.
From the EQ2 Forums: DUNGEON FINDER Dungeons are now broken into categories. If a player declines a DF offer, they must wait 15 minutes before they can queue again. The dungeon finder will now give an indication of how many players of each archetype are queued for each dungeon. Any member of the group can now set group options, but everyone in the group must vote on the changes before they apply. LIVE EVENTS Nights of the Dead The headless Horseman should once again be patrolling Nektulos Forest. An Essence of Fear and an Eerie Essence are now being...
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...
“All level 90 characters are created equal, but some are more equal than others.” Nobody likes to be picked last for a team, yet the days where any player with level-appropriate gear could contribute in a meaningful way to the majority of dungeons introduced in an EverQuest II expansion are long gone. The straightforward turn-and-burn fights up to and including Kunark zones have given way to heavily scripted 6-person mini-raids. All but the easiest Velious dungeons have substantial checks on Gear, Alternate Advancements, and Skill. I’ve talked to several players over the last week about Dungeon Finder and the...