By Akil “Lyndro” Hooper on the EQ2 Forums:

Many years ago, while lost in a storm on the Tranquil Seas, the Brokenskull Pirates came upon an uncharted island. The pirates found a secluded cavern to the leeward side of the island to weather the storm. When the seas calmed, they set out to explore the new land, hoping to make a permanent port in the bay that protected them from the storm. Instead they found the urzarach, a sentient race of creatures that are part bear and part spider, who claimed the land as their own.

Continue reading after the jump…

It’s time for another zone preview from this fall’s expansion Altar of Malice, this time the overland Phantom Sea. From Nathan “Kaitheel“ on the EQ2 Forums:

Unswayed in their quest to find Captain Greymast, the heroes sent by the Overlord of Freeport and by the benevolent Queen of Qeynos, arrive in the Phantom Sea, a body of water peppered with mysterious islands that have not been seen by eyes outside of the Far Seas Trading Company since the Age of Cataclysms.

The island of North Dshinn shares a great many commonalities with its southern sister in Tranquil Sea, but here the zealous Allu’thoa have succeeded in decimating the pygmy population. The last few survivors have been forced to flee their village, Gazanti, leaving the revered deinodons on the island to fend for themselves. This abandonment has gained the attention of the Far Seas Trading Company, who has sent a small band of members to investigate.

From master of live events and senior designer Nathan “Kaitheel“, we have our first zone preview for the upcoming Altar of Malice expansion. And before anyone asks, this is NOT repurposed zone geometry, but an entirely new continent developed with the new Terrain Tool.

Long had the Far Seas Trading Company provided Norrath’s displaced citizens a place of refuge, an island where they found respite from the chaos of the Shattered Seas, before being transported to the last great cities of Freeport and Qeynos. But strange tidings came and without another word, the seafaring merchants stopped honoring the Pact of Tserrin. The refugees that should have been arriving at the cities’ docks were replaced by rumors and speculation.

For years, the mystery remained.

Meanwhile, the future of Norrath hung in the balance of Age’s End, forcing tenuous alliances to be forged, and inevitably broken between the kingdoms. When all seemed lost, the great heroes of Norrath pushed the squabbling rulers aside, taking matters into their own hands. Kerafyrm the Awakened, the great Prismatic dragon, fell at last!

Continue reading after the jump…

EQ2Wire will be liveblogging EQ2 Insider Episode #4, which as it turns out will be Maggie “Luperza” Krohn‘s last episode as she has taken a position at Curse.com. You can watch EverQuest II Insider #4 at Twitch right now.

This was a live blog of today’s EQ2 Insider Episode #4.

• Talking about SOE Live and how positive and fun it was.
• Talking about updates later this year.
• Kander encouraging people to play Altar of Malice beta as players will earn very nice rewards on Live for their efforts on Beta.
• Nathan (Kaitheel) will be talking today about Altar of Malice Lore.
• They’ll be talking about Level Agnostic Dungeons today.
• Grandmasters.
• Nights of the Dead.
• Kaitheel will be going over House Decorating Dev Picks.

As long last we’ve resumed posting videos recorded from SOE Live 2014. After this, we’ve still got the EQ2 Art & Animation panel, as well as three player panels and the Player Studio panel. Oy vey!

This was the last panel at SOE Live 2014 for EverQuest II — Questions & Answers #2. Due to room acoustics, this recording took an inordinate amount of time to edit and normalize. Fortunately, Audio quality improves around the 3 minute mark when questions begin.

From Holly “Windstalker” Longdale on the EQ2 Forums:

Greetings Norrathians,

We’re all charged up and busy after a great time at SOE Live! The team is hunkered down and focused on the expansion, fixes, and updates on the schedule. Here are some details!

When is the EverQuest II: Altar of Malice Beta?

On Oct. 7 we will launch Limited Beta for All Access members. Most of the content will be focused on the Overlands and level increase content. We need your support!

Oct. 14 will be Open Beta for everyone. We’d love you to come check out the content and help us make sure it’s good, clean fun.

When is Altar of Malice Launch?

The expansion launch for All Access members will be on Nov. 11, just a few days after we celebrate our 10th anniversary!

On Nov. 25, the expansion will be available to everyone.

I think these days, most players don’t consider their characters complete, competitive, or at least capable until they have upgraded a significant number of their combat arts or spells to Master level. It was not always so…

Are We Entitled to Masters?

It may be hard to remember, but there was a time before the Research tab and before Research Assistants when the only way to get Master spells was to defeat enemies. At launch, Masters were unbelievably rare and only dropped from Epic names. Over the years, they have trickled down to Epic trash, then to Heroic bosses. At some point, a global loot table was added to any slain non-trivial enemy with something like a 1 in 10,000 chance to drop a level-appropriate Master. Every year, Masters seem to become more widely available.

Because sleep is overrated, EQ2 fan Afista spent the weekend meticulously transcribing the two EverQuest II Q&A panels and has posted them on EQ2 ZAM. Also don’t miss the notes from the all-important Mechanics panel posted by Cyliena as linked below. I got a kick out of hanging out with both of them at SOE Live and seeing what they’re doing for the EQ2 community. I’m starting to feel like a bit of a slacker now… 😉

At SOE Live 2014, the community had questions and the devs had answers! ZAM was there to keep track of what everyone wanted to know. Afista has written a full recap of what happened during the Q&A following the EQ2 keynote, as well as the AMAA Sessions Part 1 & Part 2.

Read the entire Q&A recap over on ZAM!

(also check out our Systems & Mechanics panel recap from last week!)

In the EverQuest II: Systems panel, the EverQuest II team talks about the upcoming expansion, specifically class balance, mechanics, some new features, and takes player questions. On the panel: Akil “Lyndro” Hooper, Kyle “Kander” Vallee, Michael “Xelgad” Ganz, Robert “Caith” Fouts, Dave “Maevianiu” Kish, Douglas “Endymion” VanDerveer, and Justin “Jamiss” Michael. We recorded this at SOE Live 2014 in Las Vegas and are happy to be able to share it.

On YouTube:

We recorded the EverQuest II: Altar of Malice keynote, which included about seven minutes of Q&A at the end. We also recorded the EverQuest II Q&A #1 panel and we’ve assembled it into a single video.

NOTE: Audio quality improves at 8:45 as we started using an external mic at this point.

There were some technical difficulties during the first 10 minutes of the EverQuest II: Altar of Malice keynote which was livestreamed from SOE Live last week.  Instead of clearly hearing the producer and designers of our game hyping their hard work, audiences at home mostly heard frustrated AV techs trying to get things working. Fortunately, we recorded the keynote in person and are now able to provide the complete event for those who missed it!

Zone previews of EverQuest II: Altar of Malice were released at SOE Live so that we get to see flythroughs of all the zones which the EQ2 designers and environment artists have been working on. We present the best possible version of each of these videos below, edited together with some music from ToV zones…

Here are the slides presented by the EverQuest II team specifically the mechanics/systems guys. Akil “Lyndro” Hooper, Kyle “Kander” Vallee, Michael “Xelgad” Ganz, Robert “Caith” Fouts, Dave “Maevianiu” Kish, and Douglas “Endymion” VanDerveer were presenting.

Now it’s time for the EverQuest II Systems panel. Akil “Lyndro” Hooper, Kyle “Kander” Vallee, Michael “Xelgad” Ganz, Robert “Caith” Fouts, Dave “Maevianiu” Kish, and Douglas “Endymion” VanDerveer are presenting. We’re liveblogging this panel as well as recording a video of this panel in 720p HD.

Liveblog begins at 1:00pm PDT and ends at 2:00pm PDT on Saturday August 16th.

Fix for Stealth and AE Abilities

New Spell Qualities

• All spells go to Grandmaster
• Certain spells go to Ancient

Battleground 6v6 Balance of Theer

• Deathmatch
• Penalty for dying
• Tiles to stand on and get buffs/debuffs

EQ2Wire is boots on the ground in Las Vegas and we’ve been covering all things EQ2. Yesterday we reported all the Altar of Malice news. Today, we continue to record panels in HD, including this morning’s Art and Animation panel. We’ll be Liveblogging the EQ2 Mechanics this afternoon. We’re slso recording Q&A panels and will post them this coming week.

Now it’s time for the EverQuest II: Altar of Malice expansion panel with nearly the entire EQ2 team. We’re liveblogging as well as recording a video of this panel in 720p HD. This panel is also being livecast on Twitch.

Liveblog began at 12:00pm PDT and ended at 1:00pm PDT on Friday August 15th.

Holly “Windstalker” Longdale to the stage. Tim Heydalaar and Dave Brown to the stage.

Showing PlayerStudio items.

Looks like Press gets a healthy headstart on posting expansion news for EverQuest and EverQuest II this year. After their private meetings with Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson and EQ2 Producer Holly “Windstalker” Longdale on Tuesday, they’ve had time to draft their articles and now, they’re available for all to read. My issue is, people at home have more information than those at SOE Live who may not yet have read these articles. Some Press sites (notably excluding Massively and ZAM) get a full boat ride from SOE, paying for hotel and sometimes even airfare, dinners, etc.). EQ2Wire covers EverQuest II all 365 days a year, and we do it without VIP treatment.

Anyway, enough politics. On to the news! These are the sites we’ve found so far:

• Massively
• ShackNews
• Destructoid
• GameZone
• EQ2 ZAM
• MMORPG
• MMO Attack

The totally kickass key art is at the top of the article. And now the bullet points:

• Level 100 increase for Adventure, Tradeskill, and Guild levels.
• 14 Dungeons
• 6 Raids
• 6 Advanced Solo Zones
• 2 Contested Dungeons
• 2 Massive Overland zones created with the new unbelievable Layout Editor. I’ve heard that the new zones are so stunning that players will hardly believe they are running in the EQ2 engine.
  • Tranquil Sea: composed of the devastated Isle of Refuge, Deathweave Isle, and the Pygmie-and-dinosaur-inhabited Island of Dichen
  • Phantom Sea: composed of the haunted forest of Kithicor, the trading company’s home base Highhold, and Grimshales, an island made from a shard of Luclin
• 4 new Avatars

More after the jump…

And here’s the super high res logo for EverQuest II: Altar of Malice expansion.

Another logo seems to have been posted on Twitter by the official EverQuestII account, and at least one player thinks the logo somehow relates to Erollisi Marr….

Here’s the Twitch Livestream schedule for SOE Live this year. Keep in mind that EQ2Wire will be recording all EQ2 panels, several Player panels, and even a few EQNext panels if Curse doesn’t show. All times are in Pacific Daylight Time, and all broadcasts are on SOE’s Twitch channel.

Thursday, August 14:

7:00 – 9:00 PM: SOE Live Welcome Reception and Keynote featuring President John Smedley

Friday, August 15:

9:00 – 10:00 AM: Landmark Keynote

10:00 – 11:00 AM: EverQuest Next Keynote

12:00 – 1:00 PM: EverQuest II Keynote

1:00 – 2:00 PM: EverQuest Keynote

2:00 – 3:00 PM: DC Universe Online Keynote

3:00 – 4:00 PM: H1Z1 Keynote

4:00 – 5:00 PM: PlanetSide 2 Keynote

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 getting a good 720p HD video recording of as many panels as possible and will then post them in the week after SOE Live. Please note that all times are Pacific Daylight Time.

Dethdlr and I will also be on hand to talk about EQ2Wire and EQ2U on the show floor as well as at our own panel alongside Dedith of Dragon’s Armory. This year, we’ll be talking less about the history of our websites and more about how players can improve their characters using all the tools we provide. We’ll also be going over our new Quest Journal and Checklist features which are currently in public beta.

EQ2Wire is providing a running transcript of today’s EQ2Insider Developer Q&A with questions posed by players on the EQ2 Forums, Facebook, Twitter, and even Google Plus. Present on the panel are EQ2 Community Manager Margaret “Luperza” Krohn, EQ2 Producer Holly “Windstalker” Longdale, EQ2 Game Designer Mike “Xelgad” Ganz, and EQ2 Lead Designer Kyle “Kander” Vallee.

Today’s livecast started with a hilarious 2D animation of the Age’s End story thus far.

Announcing the winners of the EQ2 summer contest.

After the jump, the Dev Q&A…

According to a player who goes by Liched on the EQ2 Forums, SOE just registered two trademarks on July 2nd. One, The Altar of Malace, would seem to feed into an existing storyline in EverQuest related to Neriak. The other trademark — The Darkened Sea — may be the name of the upcoming EverQuest II expansion, a whole other game, or just a red herring which doesn’t amount to a released product any time soon.

The next EverQuest II expansion, expected to be released this November, will raise the level cap to 100 (as per the EQ2 Insider webcast) and will have a strong dinosaur theme (as per last year’s EQ2 Art panel). The upcoming expansion is expected to add new overland areas built with the new terrain tool, as well as adding new dungeons , and raids.

Kinya, webmaster of the Polish multi-game fansite Babagra, has posted a summary and notes of the second EQ2 Insider webcast which was held last Wednesday.

What happen recently in EQ2:
– weekly updates;
– dreadscale maw – new raid;
– high keep contested;
– June promotion Gear Up, Level UP;
– heroic characters are on sale;
– discount on expansion if bought in June;
– new Loyalty items added to MarketPlace.

Team is focused mostly on the things which are coming to EQ2:
– fabled Deathtoll (around 20 July);
– big unnamed event in July;
– new challenge duo coming in August;
– lore and legends for Aerakyns (June/ July).

Ethereals and Artifacts – current items will be available until mid of July then comes another set of items: weapons.
Not all the Artifacts were discovered so far on all servers. There is around only 15 of them in game currently (11 servers x 4 artifacts = 44)

June Dev Picks (from 10:30): Magic Kingdom by Sairalindie on Antonia Bayle and Meta’s Enchanted Island Tours by Metamarra on Butcherblock.

Collectors edition ToV winners (selected from ppl watching stream): Psycha, Ladylove4, DonRipper

From the EQ2 Forums:

Check out the latest video featuring the Producers from EverQuest, EverQuest II, and Landmark talking about what happened during May and what’s coming up over summer!

Here are the bullet points for EQ2:

• The EQ2 team are looking forward to this year’s expansion which will increase the level cap to 100.
• In June, we want you to Gear Up and Level Up your characters.
  • All Access gets 25% Bonus XP, 25% off Heroic Characters (insta-level 85), four times the amount of Etyma currency from Tears of Veeshan missions, and 15% off the Tears of Veeshan expansion.
  • Free-to-Play gets double the amount of Etyma currency and 15% off the Tears of Veeshan expansion.
• Also in June, Dressable NPCs. These house-placeable NPCs will allow decorators to choose from a variety of races and dress these characters how you want to. You’ll also be able to choose from different animations.
• Also this month, Fabled Deathtoll x4 Raid based off the Deathtoll zone in Kingdom of Sky. As we saw in today’s EQ2 Insider webcast, the new Deathtoll encounters have been retooled and some new animations have been created as well.

Holly “Windstalker” Longdale has posted a new Producer’s Letter which can be found on the EQ2 Forums

Highlights include:

• New Matchmaking Code for Battlegrounds
• New PVP Warzone
• Converting old currencies
• House NPCs
• New Loyalty items
• New Deathtoll Fabled Dungeon
• Status Merchant Revamp
• June Promo – Gear Up, Level Up

Here’s the letter…

Dearest Norrathians,

We’re working to bring you a lot more information about what we’re doing, why, and when. To that end, here’s a quick overview on what we’ve done recently and what’s coming soon!

As a quick recap of our larger content releases in April and May so far, we launched:

• High Keep Contested dungeon
• High Keep Guild Halls
• Temple of Veeshan raid zone
• Ethereal/Artifact items (in Tears of Veeshan mission crates for a couple of months)