Feldon
EQ2Wire are thrilled to announce that we have just posted all of our photos from the Fan Faire Banquet & Costume Contest, including multiple shots of every contestant, and a ton of photos of the wedding proposal you’ve been hearing about. It was a great moment and it was tremendous to be present for it.
Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire)
Now for the slides from the PvP/Battlegrounds panel. It’s really recap of what’s been done in the past year and then opening up the floor to questions. No big revelations but a lot of questions were asked, as you can read about in my notes from that panel.
Here are the EQ2 Tradeskill Panel slides. The last picture is folks lining up to ask questions…
While I’m working on getting my own photos posted… Billy! [Rystall] Costume contest winner “Billy”!!!
It has to be frustrating at home to read “We’ll look into it” or “We’ll talk about it”. Realize that my writeups of each panel are on-the-fly and I simplify and summarize questions and answers as best I can. So any answer from the devs like “That is something we can look at” or “This is something we weren’t aware of” or “We need to talk to the team about this” or “We’ll put it on our list” sometimes got distilled into the ubiquitous “We’ll look into it”. So what questions didn’t you see get asked at Fan Faire?...
This is EQ2Wire’s second anniversary and third year covering Fan Faire. We are proud to have documented this event and provided up-to-the-minute information for thousands of players who couldn’t make it. I say thousands because our previous record — the expansion launch on February 16th generated 6,300 unique visits. Yesterday, we nearly broke 10,000 unique visits. It was a pleasure to meet so many people in the EQ2 community at Fan Faire this year. We spent more time with devs and with players to get more on-the-ground information and reactions. I heard from so many that suggested to their...
If you have followed past Fan Faires particularly the costume contests, the big news tonight was Snickers, the froglok paladin, proposing to his long time on-again off-again girlfriend first outside EQ and then, by chance, meeting again in-game. She said yes. 🙂 I took over 500 photos of the costume contest. The clear winner was someone dressed up as Billy!! Did I mention I am really loving my new Canon 550D / T2i? I am getting better pictures without a flash than I used to WITH a flash. I hate how flash photos look (without a large diffuser), so...
Sorry to say the panels and live blogging are done for a bit. Although my hands are long past protesting the typing. 🙂 I filmed 5 of the panels and my computer is crunching them now to a usable state. A lot of folks had video cameras so hopefully I get to see panels I missed. Thanks for reading and there might be another brief update later tonight. Morgan
Apologies for any typos. They jacked up the AC in here!! Remember folks, lots of EQ2 t shirts, hoodies, and polos.
The Battlegrounds and PvP Panel, moderated by Olihin. Nandy “Zoltaroth” Szots, Greg “Rothgar” Spence, Paul “Frizznik” Carrico, Mike “Xelgad” Ganz, Juan “Olihin” Cardenas.
EQ2 Mechanics and Class Balance panel. Rich Waters, Greg “Rothgar” Spence, Paul “Frizznik” Carrico, Mike “Xelgad” Ganz. Update: As of 2:00AM CDT I have made some cleanup and additional information added to these notes based on memory. There are 3-4 missing questions which will get filled in after the video is reviewed.
The EQ2 Tradeskill panel…. Note: I have gone back and cleaned up these notes with additional details from memory as of 2:15AM PDT.
Friday night was the big Pool Party. We took up the entire Bally’s outdoor swimming pool area. There was live music, bars dispensing refreshing beverages at every corner, water misters, and crystal blue swimming pools. Dave Georgeson was making the rounds all night talking to anyone and everyone who wanted to give him the business about the EQ2 Extended service, and the long-term effects on the EQ2 servers. Say what you will, but he puts himself out there and communicates with the players. He is self-assured that this will work, and quotes his 20 year history of successful games....
More of a quick summary of this panel… Lots of clips of Othmir. Videos of enemies and friendlies. Showed bump maps and texture maps of Othmir. With the rewrite of mounts, they no longer have to make 42 animations of each mount. Now a mount can be done in 3-5 weeks. First saw this on the prowler. Part of this was to prevent tails going through mounts and fix problems with capes. For example when Tom added Othmir on a t-Rex as a demo he didn’t have to make animation of how the othmir moves on the mount. It...
Live blog from Fan Faire with q&a on EverQuest II.
Sorry for blurry pics. Here’s what I got. I also recorded the first part on video, but didn’t get the Q&A. 🙁
EverQuest 2: Destiny of Velious PART ONE This is part 1 of Velious.
The #1 reaction SOE has been receiving from players re: station cash, rmt, and free to play has been a resounding Not in My Back Yard. We commented about this on Wednesday. And this may need to change if we want to have eq2x to eq2 transfers. If there is one thing I know about EQ2. If enough players ask for it, and it will make SOE money, they will add it. So who knows they might put Beastlord class on stationcash. 🙂
No doubt the best part of Fan Faire is talking to the developers. So far I’ve gotten to ask Rothgar both serious and geeky questions about the new UI, server upgrades, guild halls, and of course free-to-play. I’ve made no secret of my concerns about the logistics of free to play seemingly cutting off the flow of new players to the live subscription side of EQ2.
Presentation quality? Brenlo > Jace Hall Nuff said Basically a 20 minute commercial for Jace Hall. I mean… Smedley had more charisma. Seriously…
Here’s a canonical summary of the SOE Community Address. At under 50 minutes, this has to have been the shortest Community Address in the history of SOE Fan Faire events. We were advised to expect a ‘light’ event, but nothing could prepare us for nearly 20 minutes of banal, juvenile humor and heavy promotion for all things Jace Hall Productions. If you saw EverCracked, you get the idea.
Had a minute to talk to SmokeJumper 1 on 1. All has not been revealed. More incentives coming for subscription servers. Marketing will promote both games. More in tomorrow’s panel.