Alert! Thievery at Fan Faire — Larry Elmore

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire)

From Kithicor.org:

I am outraged.  I was just informed that, fantasy artist, Larry Elmore was Ripped Off during the 2011 Fan Faire.  While he was with a potential customer, some thief stole his cash box, containing cash, and credit card receipts!

If you purchased anything from Larry’s table this weekend, PLEASE…

  • Check to make sure your purchase was completed through your bank
  • Contact your bank and alert them to possible credit card fraud
  • And most important.. If were NOT charged for your artwork, PLEASE contact Larry Elmore and do the right thing by making sure his work is compensated for.

Larry Elmore is a wonderful artist with strong ties to the Fantasy and Gaming community.

We encourage everyone to visit Larry’s Elmore’s website, and make a purchase.  We can not let this act go by the wayside.  Support Larry Elmore as thanks for everything he does for the gaming community.

http://larryelmore.com/

   

EQ2Wire Photos From Fan Faire 2011

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire)

Photos and Videos from SOE’s Fan Faire 2011 event in Las Vegas are making their way online on sites around the web. After the jump, you’ll get to browse our photos, but first a few links to other sites that have also posted theirs.

  • SOE posted Fan Faire Setup photos from July 7th, 2011.  Great if you want to check out some in-progress costumes.
  • Undoubtedly more photos will be posted at SOE’s Fan Faire Facebook page soon (and once they’re set right, don’t require a Facebook account to view!).

And now our photos from Fan Faire 2011. These exclude panel-specific photos and any slides, which will be back-added to the initial writeups.

EQ2Wire Post-Fan Faire Coverage Continues Monday

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire)

We will be back Monday with screen shots, panel slides, commentary, the first wave of videos, and answers to questions outside of the Q&A panels including some that were submitted by EQ2Wire Readers!

We’ll also make a pass through all of the Q&A sections of the Live Blog notes posted during the Panels to add a bit more detail and clean up a couple of typos. I don’t think there are any errors of meaning this time around (thanks Cyliena for catching one!). Bluetooth keyboard at 80wpm > trying to type on iPad screen!

Screenshots: Flying Squirrel Glider, Fire Gryphon

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Art, Appearance, Housing, Daybreak Cash, Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire)

Flying Squirrels (Glider), Fire Gryphons, and… is that Zarrakon?

Tom Tobey (and Chris Meyers) are always working on new and more complex mounts. The Flying Squirrel glider was particularly impressive due to how the character is mounted to it, yet the range of motion the squirrel can do. It crawls on all fours, leaps, glides, and all 26 races stick to it like glue. 🙂

UPDATE: Tom corrected us about Chris Meyers animating the Flying Squirrel glider.

The Fire Gryphon was no less impressive, with wisps of flames trailing behind it as the entire mount is engulfed in flames. It’s both a particle system and animated textures.

We also saw the infamous Ratonga riding a T-Rex mount, and finally, a mount which may or may not be headed for the game, a mount that looks to my eyes like Zarrakon, a boss of The Shadow Odyssey.

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EQ2 Panel #1 – Freeport and Beyond

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Art, Appearance, Housing, Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire), Expansion News, Game Updates & Maintenance, Grouping, Itemization, Live Events, Tradeskill

Starting the EverQuest II: Freeport and Beyond panel…

Pre-panel Buzz: EQ2Players is being replaced with a new site. Sometime this year, it’s a priority, which it hasn’t been before.

Dave Georgeson starting the panel. There’s so much info, they’ll be giving that first and then Q&A at the end.

Update: This is a video of EverQuest II Panel #1 “Freeport and Beyond” added on July 14, 2011.

EverQuest II: Age of Discovery

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire), Expansion News

eq2logo20110708-083231.jpg

Last night we got our first glimpse at the next EQ2 expansion, EverQuest II: Age of Discovery. And believe it or not, it’s coming this fall — November 2011. So much for my predictions that the next EQ2 expansion would be summer or fall 2012. Now you may be saying to yourself, wait a minute didn’t we have an expansion this February?

EverQuest II: Age of Discovery, while it will undoubtedly have new content, will be largely a Features expansion. Destiny of Velious content, including overland zones, group dungeons, and raids will continue to be released in content updates in August, November, and well into 2012 2013. This is a new approach to expansions as usually, once a new expansion has been released, previous expansions have rarely gotten new dungeons or content besides quest revamps, etc.

Live Blog of SOE Welcome Reception

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire), Expansion News

Linda “Brasse” Carlson is starting out with the sponsors and and then about GameBreaker.tv’s live cast of the event. Vivox is also broadcasting the event in-game.

Talking about the panels tomorrow including Dev War Stories, also tomorrow night’s Pool Party. Introducing Backstage Bloggers using Bloggie cameras. Showing pictures of Guides in different SOE games.

SOE President John Smedley coming to the stage… Prepare for big announcements…

EQ2Wire Fan Faire Coverage Schedule

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire)

This is EQ2Wire’s fourth year covering Fan Faire and we are getting a bit more organized about things this year!

I will be covering the various events today, Friday, and Saturday, but specifically, there are at least four panels on Friday and Saturday both of interest to EQ2 players. At this point, I’m committing to the four panels from 2pm-6pm on Friday and Saturday. 8 hours of live coverage and we’ll be recording everything in High Definition video with clear audio. This is barring any surprise panels such as EQNext, or any last-minute changes. All times are Pacific Daylight Time. Add 3 hours for Eastern Daylight Time, 8 hours for GMT, and 9 hours for Central Europe Time.

Thursday, July 7th

7:00pm — Welcome Reception & Community Address

Friday, July 8th

2-3:00pm — EverQuest II: Freeport and Beyond! (Expansion Preview)

3-4:00pm — EverQuest II: Art & Animation

4-5:00pm — EverQuest II: Tradeskills & Housing

5-6:00pm — EverQuest II: General Q&A

Saturday, July 9th

2-3:00pm — Programming for MMOGS with Greg “Rothgar” Spence, Nandy “Zoltaroth” Szots, and Josh “Autenil” Kriegshauser

3-4:00pm — EverQuest II: Mechanics (Class Balance & Itemization)

4-5:00pm — EverQuest II: Content and Zone Design

5-6:00pm — EverQuest II: General Q&A Part II

   

Fan Faire Welcome Reception Live Webcast @ GameBreaker.tv

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire)

The SOE Fan Faire Welcome Reception on Thursday July 7th @ 7PM PDT (10PM EDT, 04:00 CET) will be broadcast on GameBreaker.TV with a Pre-Show at 6PM and a Post-Show at 9PM.

As past Welcome Receptions have rarely run over 1 hour, it will be interesting to see what’s planned for the 2 hour timeslot scheduled. Last year’s Welcome Reception almost didn’t happen due to cost-cutting measures, but was brought back by popular demand in an abridged version. A lengthy Welcome program would seem at odds with the recent sacking of the Agency team, upcoming decommissioning of Star Wars Galaxies and all Facebook games, and other belt-tightening throughout SOE’s portfolio.

Less Than One Week to Fan Faire

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire)

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We’re less than one week away from Fan Faire and things are running a bit quiet. I’ve spared no expense to travel to Las Vegas from Europe to bring you breaking news and even get a few questions asked at this year’s event. With the loss of Star Wars Galaxies and The Agency, more pressure than ever rests upon the EverQuest franchise.

Karen Bryan over at Massively posted a summary of some of the questions leading into Fan Faire about EQ2 as well as the shrouded-in-secrecy EQNext.

We’ll have the news for you as it comes down the pike. 🙂

Submit Your EQ2 Fan Faire Questions!

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire), DGC Wants Feedback

Every year at Fan Faire, we get to watch EverQuest II Designers and Developers answer some really fantastic on-topic, valid questions from the Question & Answer panels. These questions help shape the future of the game and get problems addressed that the devs may not be entirely aware of.

However, every year, we also see some of the strangest, uninformed, facepalming (is that a verb?) questions that completely puzzle us (and the developers). Hey, they paid their Fan Faire admission price too, right?

Over the years, fastidious players have wised up and managed to intercept EQ2 devs in the breezeway between hotels  (or anywhere else they can find them including at the Pool Party) and get their questions posed. To quote a dev, “If you see me standing at a booth or demo all by myself, please come talk to me!  I’m probably bored!

ANSWERS to many of the Questions posed in this article have been posted in their own page: After the Q&A — More Answers from the EQ2 Team.

Level 20-80 Being Completely Reitemized Including Raid Gear

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire), Game Updates & Maintenance, Itemization

While we’ve heard indirectly from Silius that work on existing items from level 20-80 was being done, SmokeJumper has an official quote for us:

We have a full itemization plan in place now and we’ll be unveiling much of it at Fan Faire.

I’ll tell you this much though. We’re going to itemize *all* of the level 20-80 items by GU 61.

When asked if this includes raid Fabled items from levels 40-80:

“All” includes Raid items.

We’ve already been informed that crafted gear especially Mastercrafted gear from level 22-77 are being tweaked to have the right stats for the appropriate Archetypes. There’s also a chance that we may see a reversion of the unpopular revamp of all itemization for level 1-20 characters. Handing out coon skin caps and furs to Sarnak or Fae didn’t make a lick of sense.

We are hesitant to make any prediction about how this will all go. There are thousands of items in EQ2 with similar stats that exist mostly for appearance. We would be very disappointed to see those items washed away in favor of a single progression of items shared by all dungeon bosses and trash. We don’t know what form this revamp will take, but it seems an insurmountable amount of work to do it “right”.

No word on if we’ll see any improvement to Destiny of Velious itemization which has replaced cool items that people strive to acquire, with a stat odometer propelled by incrementally more powerful yet completely unmemorable items.

SOE ZAM Fan Faire Webcast – June 23, 4:00 PM PDT

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire)

From EverQuest2.com:

This Thursday, June 23rd, at 4:00PM PDT, Linda “Brasse” Carlson and Tiffany “Amnerys” Spence host ZAM diva and all-around EverQuest II expert, Amy “Calthine” Lanam! We’ll be talking about Fan Faire, ZAM, and definitely a bit of EverQuest II, so be sure to stop by!

Join us on Thursday, June 23, 2011, at 4:00 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.

Surviving Fan Faire Guides

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire)

As we prepare for our busiest weekend of the year we’re keeping an eye out for any and all advice on how to survive another blistering Las Vegas trip, cover EQ2 (and we’re guessing EQNext), and not forgetting to occasionally eat and/or sleep.

Calthine‘s annual Fan Faire Guide over at EQ2 ZAM is a favorite and includes helpful tips to save time and money.

Karen Bryan has turned in her own Fan Faire Survival Guide over at Massively and it’s worth a read with advice on food, meeting guildies, and the value of planning ahead.

You may want to download the Hotel Maps @ the SOE Fan Faire Forums to your phone.

If you haven’t already, download the  Fan Faire app for your iPhone by Greg “Rothgar” Spence.

UPDATE: The new version of this app has been revised for 2011 and is now available.

Rumor: Fan Faire Schedule Still Up-in-the-Air

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire)

We’re less than 3 weeks away from Fan Faire, and we have heard that there is some significant shuffling of the Fan Faire panel schedule still going on with some surprise panels planned. Although we expect the important panels to fall within the 9am-6pm time slots on Friday and Saturday, if you’ve been trying to nail down anything more specific, you may want to wait a bit.

We wouldn’t be surprised to see a few EQNext panels shoved into the morning hours. We’ve been told to expect a full reveal of PlanetSide Next and a lot of EverQuest II news including the 25th race CLASS.

UPDATE: I must have been half-asleep as I put race above. Of course I meant class. 😉

We’ve heard from a lot of folks who are absolute regulars of Fan Faire and have attended many years who can’t make it this year due to the economic calamity downturn that continues to ravage the US. Looks like registration numbers are on the lean side:

This just in! Fan Faire registration has been extended! You now have until 12:00PM PDT on Wednesday, June 22nd so get your passes before it’s too late!

Looking forward to seeing you there and bringing live instant coverage of Fan Faire to those who can’t make it.

SOE Fan Faire Webcast – June 16, 4:00 PM PDT

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire)

From EverQuest2.com:

If you’re looking for the inside scoop on SOE Fan Faire 2011, tune in on Thursday, June 16th, 2011, for an all access Fan Faire webcast. Find out what activities, panels, and goodies you’ll find at this year’s Fan Faire in Las Vegas!

Join us on Thursday, June 16, 2011, at 4:00 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 30 minutes.

SmokeJumper Tips Hand at E3: 25th Class, Expansion Strategy, Cross-Server Grouping

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire), Expansion News, Grouping

Massively.com is in Los Angeles covering this year’s E3 and spoke to Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson, Executive Producer of EQ1 and EQ2 about the future of EQ2. We have already heard some about the revamp of Freeport and Qeynos which will evolve these starting cities into full-fledged quest hubs that will drive character development from levels 1-90. The breaking news for today is that we can expect a 25th character class and the ability to group cross-server.

So what’s next for the game? Georgeson laughed when we asked this and said, “We’re going to start relying a lot less on expansion packs to create content for the game, and what we’re going to do is create lots and lots of content and put it out there on a quarterly basis for free.”

As we already learned in the last Producer’s Letter, Destiny of Velious will continue to be released/completed as free quarterly content updates rather than as a followup “part 2” expansion.

This means that the game’s next expansion will concentrate more on adding features to the game while the team will deliver the content through free updates. “People need new challenges on a regular basis,” he explained. He even speculated on a future model by which expansions are completely done away with, leaving players to purchase features on an individual basis.

SOE Fan Faire Schedule for EQ2 Revealed

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire)

The SOE Fan Faire schedule for the July 7-9th, 2011 event has been expanded to include game-specific information. We’ve cherry-picked the EQ2-specific stuff and put it here in one place:

Thursday, July 7

8:00pm – Welcome Reception & Community Address

Friday, July 8

10:30am – EverQuest® II Tournament

2:00-3:00pm – EverQuest II: Freeport and Beyond!

3:00-4:00pm – EverQuest II Art & Animation

  • David Brown and Tom Tobey

4:00-5:00pm – EverQuest II Tradeskills & Housing

  • Paul “Frizznik” Carrico, Emily “Domino” Taylor and Greg “Rothgar” Spence

5:00-6:00pm – EverQuest II General Q&A

8:00pm – late – 2nd Annual Bally’s Pool Party!!!

Saturday, July 9

12:00-2:00pm – EverQuest II Live Quest

2:00-3:00pm – Programming for MMOGs: Tools, Tips and the Truth!

  • Greg “Rothgar” Spence, Nandy “Zoltaroth” Szots and Josh “Autenil” Kriegshauser.
A unique opportunity to sit with some of SOE’s top programmers to discuss some of the challenges and rewards of programming for MMOGs, focusing on the tools and tricks that go with the territory. Whether you are just curious about what goes into building an MMOG or you are a future game programmer, this talk is sure to be interesting.

2:00-3:00pm – EverQuest II Mechanics

  • Salim “Silius” Grant, Rich Waters and Mike “Xelgad” Ganz

4:00-5:00pm – EverQuest II Content and Zone Design

  • Paul “Cronyn” Molina, Nathan “Kaitheel” McCall, Rich Waters and Jon “Prathun” Caraker.

5:00-6:00pm – EverQuest II General Q&A Part II

8:00pm – Grand Banquet and Costume Contest


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