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 Stickam to TwitchTV.

Time Zone Conversions:

• PST: November 10, 2011 @ 4:30pm
• EST: November 10, 2011 @ 7:30pm
• GMT: November 11, 2011 @ 0:30
• CET: November 11, 2011 @ 1:30

Yes that means I’ll be staying up quite late to see what this is all about.

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 Stronghold [Challenge]

• During the Lieutenant Klaatuus fight the aviak trooper adds have even less health, no longer have symbiotic aura, and players have more time to move the mysterious totem away from him before he will begin healing.

ITEMS

• Fixed missing red slots on some ranged weapons.

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 suggest a Routing problem of some sort from the Amsterdam data center.

More information as we have it…

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 mounts. These are true flying mounts.

In-game item links if you want to check them out:

\aITEM 272055976 -771844514:Elemental Disc of Flame\/a – 150% speed flying mount
\aITEM 2075529796 123745388:Veteran Revival\/a – Rezzes group w/ 20% health and power – 10s casting time and 1 day reuse timer.
\aITEM 835506414 1725447049:Vision of the Thullosian\/a – Makes your eyes glow with green color
\aITEM 1036108679 297241924:Draft of the Wise\/a – 110% XP pot 1hr

Thanks to Kin for links to 2 of the other mounts:

\aITEM -89135461 804495077:Elemental Disc of Water\/a
\aITEM 1253672097 -1612317473:Elemental Disc of Earth\/a

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:

and a sneak about Beastlords:

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 isolation. They’re offering their considerable skills at research in exchange for the guidance and mentoring of crafters from the mainland of Norrath while they learn.

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 another half job as per usual.

Considering that Contested Kael Drakkel has been open for nearly 9 months and few people visit it these days except for Primal Velium Shards to get adornments, it’s odd that action is being taken now. You can see the update note that tells only half the story:

Kael Drakkel
All dropped quest items that were previously flagged no-trade now consume the dropped quest item once the quest has been taken.

The problem with such an unannounced change is that many raid guilds have migrated to running the zone and then splitting up and deciding loot AFTER the raid. With this change, guild leaders are now stuck holding all the loot from the entire raid and are unable to trade it. Customer Service reps are going to be awfully busy with Petitions.

UPDATE on November 4th from Customer Service Top Issues:

The recent update may have broke the ability to trade with those present at the kill for 48 hours.   Customer Service is happy to move the item to the  intended recipient providing it’s petitioned within those 48 hours, is not attuned and both were present for the kill.  This will be addressed in an upcoming hotfix.

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 way, or how our designers come up with it all? You won’t want to miss this exciting webcast!

Also, don’t forget to check out this recent article on the Freeport Revamp, which interviews Timothy “Haohmaru” Heydelaar (EQ2 Art Director) about the aesthetic changes to Freeport.

Join us on Thursday, November 3, 2011, at 4:30 p.m. US Pacific Time, as we live stream this webcast on the SOE channel on Stickam! You can also tune in through the Stickam tab on our Facebook page. The webcast is expected to last about 20 minutes.

As Europe is no longer on summer/daylight savings time, here’s the conversion:

PDT – Nov 3rd, 4:30-4:50pm

EDT – Nov 3rd, 7:30-7:50pm

GMT – Nov 3rd, 23:30-23:50

CET – Nov 4th, 0:30-0:50

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 new expansion: Age of Discovery! It will be available to all players.

Read the rest of the interview at EverQuest2.com…

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 dropped quest item once the quest has been taken.

ITEMS

• Fixed an issue that cause some bows, thrown, and wand weapon damage to be reduced.

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 will not try to kill me.

Q. What made you want to become a mercenary?

A. My extensive study with the Dread Guard was extremely worthwhile but not inexpensive, and tithes to Innoruuk are not cheap either, so when I finished my training I found myself with debt still to repay. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of a loan broker in Neriak, I can assure you. So, I started work as a mercenary to pay my debts, and have come to find it a valuable source of income as well as an excellent way to see the world and learn new things.

Continue Reading the story at EverQuest2.com…

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 casting times and they will start using them later in the fight as opposed to right away.
• Grolla Skullwielder will now say she is casting Sweeping Crash and it now has a longer casting time.

Strategist’s Stronghold

• Hypatia should now tell you when she will cast Fortification of Blades and it now has a 3 second cast time for her.
• War boars in Warmaster Korok Hai’s encounter should now stun a lot less.

Tower of Tactics

• Lady V’uul will only make her orbs vulnerable if she reaches 100% damage reduction. She should call out when this happens. All three orbs should be targetable and killable.

ITEMS

• Temple Guardian’s Shard of Illumination is now heirloom.
• Soul Touched Crystal Wand is now heirloom.

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 Discovery would launch on either November 22nd or November 29th. Should we revise that estimate?

You can read “The Path of the Beastlord” at EverQuest2.com.

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 around the tank. This has ranged from amusing to maddening for tanks.

Last month, some changes were pushed to the Test and Test Copy servers in an attempt to improve enemy “pathing”. Alas, these changes increased the occurrence of “orbiting” mobs and pets and other undesirable behavior.

It looks like we’re ready for another attempt as this note was posted by Bunji on the test forums:

The updated pathing has been turned back on for the Test servers.

These pathing updates should make ground mobs take more accurate routes to their targets.

With the old pathing, mobs would sometimes zig-zag toward their target (instead of moving in a more direct route) or sometimes run up walls (that PCs couldn’t) to get to their target, but this pathing should force mobs to take more direct routes to their targets while respecting the same geometry rules PCs do.

Ground mobs can still drop down from heights to get to their targets.

Also, the fix for mobs “circling” around the PC sometimes while in combat should be fixed on the current Test server build.

Please check it out and let us know what you think.

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 will be two vendors for DYOD, one selling armor/weapons/loot for your main characters, and one selling parts to add cool stuff to your own dungeons.

No additional information has been released about what choices there will be for DYOD Avatars (since you cannot play your own characters, you must pick one of the provided avatars), if you’ll be able to buy upgrades for them, etc.

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 offered to everyone correctly upon completion of the quest “The Troubling Truth”.
• An Essence of Fear and an Eerie Essence now have appropriate descriptions.
• The “Petrified Bone Tile” can now be scaled even larger.

ITEMS

• Titaniir, Aether Strike has been returned to a 4 second delay.

QUESTS

• The quest “Researching Lavastorm: Relics of Battle” once more rewards the Flame Researcher’s Robe.

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 will be reviewed starting on October 27th. Closed Beta will close on November 14th.

Players who are approved for Closed Beta will receive an email informing them of their acceptance, so please confirm that we have your correct email address during the registration process.

Beta acceptance emails will go out between October 27th and November 16th.

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 recurring theme has been — Players who have normally been skittish about asking to join a group are queueing themselves up for Dungeon Finder, regardless of Gear, AAs, or Skill. They seem to figure ‘What have I got to lose?’