Feldon
Has it really been another year? Next week, EQ2Wire will be (where else?) in Las Vegas for our seventh SOE Live covering EverQuest II. This looks to be a light year for EQ2, with only 5 events to cover and no Tradeskill, Lore, or Itemization panels this time around. You can read the official SOE Live 2014 Schedule here, but scroll down to see the list of panels I will be attending, with notations of which panels I will be Liveblogging and Filming. Blogging an accurate transcription of a Q&A panel in realtime is almost impossible, so this year I will be focusing on...
EQ2 Data & EQ2U
Dethdlr and I are happy to announce that Quests are now available as an Open Beta on EQ2U! Here’s what we’ve added: Quests now appears under the Search menu A Quests tab has been added to the EQ2U Quick Search box on the homepage View your Active Quest Journal for any of your EQ2 characters View a Checklist of all 11,564 quests in EQ2 and see your character’s progress on those quests (Active, Complete, or Never Started) Items which offer a quest when examined now show the quest name and link to it Items which are required by a...
Thought I’d post a preview screenshot of something we’ve been working on for EQ2U for the last little while… This shows my Active Quest Journal side-by-side with an in-progress quest, which just shows how much of a slacker I am on getting quests done! Come back later today and I’ll have a screenshot of Quest Search as well as the Quest Checklist which shows EVERY quest in a Category (there are over 200) and then shows the progress of your character on all those quests. Oh and I’m really dating myself with this but…
From the EQ2 Forums: WEEKLY FEATURE The first round of Battlegrounds matchmaker fixes is live! Teams will now be more fair numbers wise. No more 24 reds against 3 blues! NOTE: teams could be a little off if not everyone picked to be on your team accepts the match. However, backfills will go to the lowest team first so as more people queue to fill in the backfills it will work to even up the teams. The getting dropped into Champion’s Respite instead of going straight to your match from your home server is still not fixed. If you...
On December 18th, I announced our Forum Signature Design Contest which would allow players to submit artwork and designs for EQ2U-driven signatures which players can post on the EQ2 forums, guild forums, and anywhere else they choose. Here we are 4 weeks later, and I’m happy to announce the winners of the contest. First up, Ainaree of Antonia Bayle submitted the winning entry which you can view below: I really liked how clean and easy it is to read, with great use of the headshot imagery, and good display of both adventure and crafter classes and levels. Next up, Ajiope submitted...
Last month, we introduced a Known Recipes and Recipe Books feature, however it was lacking the some optimization and was affecting the overall performance of the site, so we temporarily took the feature offline. I’m thrilled to announce that not only have we completed the optimization and restored these features, but we have also added full support for Recipes throughout EQ2U, including Recipe Search and Recipe Details! Search for Recipes at EQ2U! If you have not read it, please read our past article: Crack the Books with Recipes on EQ2U after the jump, our EQ2U Recipes FAQ…
EQ2Wire and EQ2U will be undergoing server maintenance over the next few hours, so these websites will be unavailable during this time.
From the moment we added a Forum Signature feature to EQ2U, we always intended to add additional looks and styles. However to date, all our signatures still look like this: In the last months, we have refactored our Signature code, and we can now support signatures that look a whole lot better. But to really go all-out on the look and style of these signatures, we need your help as we are not graphic artists! What Are We Looking For? We are looking for player-submitted signature designs that are visually appealing, and language-appropriate, which provide a clear space where...
We are proud to announce that EQ2U has been updated with a new “Recipes” tab which allows you view Known Recipes and Known Recipe Books for EQ2 Characters! When viewing Recipes, the Item, Book, and Level columns can sorted or reverse sorted by clicking the column headers or spinner (). To keep web browsers from exploding when trying to display 6,500 recipes, we’ve broken this data out into Tiers (0, 1-9, 10-19, 20-29, up to 90-95). Recipes can also be quickly filtered from the Category menu.
Dethdlr and I updated EQ2U this afternoon as new information rolled in from the Census data feeds. Here’s what’s been updated: Alternate Advancement data – Completely updated with new spell data. AA: Dragon tab – new Dragon AAs for all 4 archetypes. Channeler class Spells Support for Purple adornments on Character pages. Tears of Veeshan armor now shows gems. Things we are still working on: Tears of Veeshan armor with upgradeable gem slots is not exporting in a way that we can display the number of gems installed. Heroic Endlines Buying a 2nd Heroic endline costs 20 AA points....
A New Design It is 21 months to the day since we launched our EQ2U Character, Item, and Guild armory site. In that time, a staggering 840,000 characters in 30,000 guilds have been looked up. We have over 8,500 registered users, and we’ve generated over 8.5 million forum signatures. In that time, Dethdlr and I have never forgotten how we got here, and why so many players call EQ2U their home for keeping track of their characters, researching upgrades, and learning lessons from others. Believe it or not, when we launched EQ2U, the original style of the site was only ever...
Over the last year and a half that EQ2U has been in operation, we’ve always kept the functionality and usability of EQ2U at the forefront. However the look-and-feel of EQ2U has been gotten a bit long in the tooth. After seeing Google’s disastrous revamp of Gmail, and Apple’s controversial flattening of iOS7, we’ve thought “Let’s not go drastic, let’s not remove functionality, and let’s not change things for the sake of changing things!” With those thoughts in mind, I’m happy to unveil the new style for EQ2U. We are opening up the EQ2U Dev (beta) site to the public so...
There could be a hidden danger lurking on your character… A tragic mistake that could be costing your character dearly… CONFLICTING PROCS ! Many Procs/Effects in EQ2 will not stack with other procs of the same name (or same type) on other items or adornments. In the past, it has been difficult to find out if you have two or more of these overlapping procs/effects which aren’t giving you any additional benefit. EQ2U‘s new Procs & Adornments Report feature lets you see at-a-glance, which Procs you have (both on items and adornments), as well browse your complete Adornments list....
You’ve likely heard whispers of just how powerful Refined and Experimented items can be, but until you’ve seen the final “as delivered” stats on the best examples of said items, either in a screenshot, or by examining another player in-game, it’s hard to know just how awesome these processes are. A Refining/Experimentation Primer If you grasped everything in Niami‘s EQ2Traders primer on the subject back when the Chains of Eternity expansion was new, then you already know the how-to and formulas at work here, but if not… A Refined item is a Mastercrafted weapon, armor, or piece of jewelry which has been...
Dethdlr and I are thrilled to introduce support for Alternate Advancement Profiles to EQ2U. The new row of buttons just above your AA tabs let you view your Current AA Spec or view the contents of one of your three Stored profiles: It’s important to note that your Current AA Spec can either be one of your Stored AA profiles, or a Server-defined Template. It is our intention in a future update (once we get the right data) to light up your currently active Stored profile once we can determine it.
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...
UPDATE I have removed the block of characters named “Malshandir” from EQ2U. I believe that a series of e-mails sent from a ISP address is insufficient to warrant blocking search results from a publicly accessible API. It also sets a dangerous precedent for other websites that merely index data from a third party source. This morning, I received an e-mail from one Thomas Freyer of Freyer Consulting in Frankfurt, Germany: From: Thomas Freyer Subject: Deleting of Profile URL: http://u.eq2wire.com/soe/character_detail/446677832604 We demand by law the deleting of this profile as the owner of the trademark “Malshandir” we gave you no permission...
When the SOE Live 2013 schedule was released, I started reading. And reading. Before long, shock set in. Two hours later, I was discovered in the fetal position, mumbling something about sleep and time paradoxes. Despite consultation with a number of scholars, including Dr. Samuel Beckett, Dr. Emmett L. Brown, and the Doctor, as well as consulting the writings of Ray Bradbury, Mrs. Helena Wells, and so forth, I am no closer to a solution to attend ALL of the EverQuest II and EverQuest Next panels. However, I will make every effort. One panel I certainly won’t miss is the “EQ2U...
EQ2U Gear Report V1.1 I’m happy to report that the next version of the EQ2U Gear Report has just been pushed live and we have some new features that hopefully folks will appreciate! First up is Crit Bonus and Potency have had an amicable breakup and are now just going to be friends in their own separate columns. This should help melee-focused Priests and Mages going forward. Previously, only one of these stats was shown, biased towards certain Archetypes. Second, we’ve got a new Tooltip when you mouseover the White, Yellow, Red, and Green adornment summaries which shows you...
When EverQuest II added the StationCash Marketplace, beside all the discussion and debate about the merits of Subscriptions vs. Pay-as-you-Go gaming, slippery slopes, and so forth, I had another question on my mind: If SOE is betting the future on microtransactions in the Marketplace, shouldn’t EverQuest2.com’s flagship feature be an online catalogue of every item up for offer? But year after year, we have yet to see any such website materialize, likely due to the work required to build and then maintain such a site. Dethdlr and I have been very fortunate to be involved in Census right from...
Imagine the ability to view a spreadsheet of your characters, your friends’ characters, your guild, or your guild alliance, all with their most valuable stats and gear scores (Stamina). Now imagine being able to sort this view by columns, add characters, hide certain guild ranks based on participation or perhaps if you have a main or alt raid force. Or imagine you’ve just joined a group and want to see what gear they’ve got, what upgrades they’ll be rolling for, or what areas you could help them improve on. Today, EQ2U is happy to announce the introduction of the...
Today we’re happy to add Class Focuses and Racial Traits to EQ2U. This is something we’ve wanted to add for a while, but it took a little while longer to do as the spells and icon positions for each class and race required data entry. Please let us know if you find any stray icons or missing info.
EQ2Wire sits down with Dedith to talk about his new Data-driven EQ2 site which he launched over the weekend. Q: What made you want to create Dragons Armory? Is there a history to the name? Dedith: The reason behind the site was to help those players who may not know or not have the time to find the finer points of optimizing their characters. *grin* My wife insists that I wrote it for her. I did realize while researching the design of this site that everyone plays their characters differently, so I concentrated on making the tools so no...
We are thrilled to officially release Guild Achievements on EQ2U as well as an improved Guild Detail page with Guild Recruiting info including Cloak Heraldry! NOTE: The rounded corner blue style is temporary and we intend to replace it with something more becoming in the future!
From the EQ2 Forums: The update on February 26th was discussed in Podcast #143, as well as in articles about the PvP Updates and Bag Sorting Abilities. Now, it’s time to take a look at two more major features that round out the update: new raid content and guild achievements! X2 and X4 Raids