Feldon
Servers are back up after a 3 hour downtime. Today’s Update Notes
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If you’ve been planning the mass extinction of Rays and Bulls in the Hole to grind out those 50 shiny new AAs, some ice water has just been thrown on that idea… From Waters on the EQ2 Forums: We’ve been watching where folks are playing and keeping an eye on how experience and alternate advancement gain is going since Velious launched. While we make every effort to balance the game during the beta testing period, we sometimes see new information on live servers, and need to make a change based on that info.
Kwill
Of interest to some players who may play both EQ1 and EQ2… SOE has announced that a new time locked progression server for EverQuest 1, Fippy Darkpaw, is planned to go live on Tuesday at 10am PST. The server will use a normal player versus environment rule set. Players will take on challenges to unlock newer expansions, and when unlocked, will have the ability to vote using an in game poll for which expansion will be unlocked next. Various armors and other items will be limited on the server if SOE has determined they would give an unfair advantage....
Everseek.com, the ultimate EQ2 House Item Reference Guide, will be hosting a Frostfell Decorating Contest this year. I’m thrilled to be one of the four judges of this contest. From EverSeek.com: From Sunday, December 12, 2010 (12:01 a.m., US Pacific Time) through Wednesday, December 29, 2010 at (11:59 p.m., US Pacific Time), Everseek.com will be hosting a Frostfell decorating contest to celebrate the Frostfell holiday season. Submit your entry for a chance to win a cool item for your home! Depending on the number of entries, winners will be announced on or around January 17, 2011. The judges for...
Unrest returned after its Server Merge, but some additional fixes are required (regarding a Broker bug), so the server is down now to apply those fixes. In the mean time Zoltaroth is in the EQ2 Chat.
With the ability to gift StationCash items restored to Norrath, players with thousands or even tens of thousands of platinum want to know: Am I going to get banned for trading Platinum in exchange for StationCash items? An unexpected response from SmokeJumper after the jump…
From Rothgar: The merge process is still truckin’ along on schedule with no major issues. I hope that we will be able to have the servers up earlier than planned but that will depend on whether or not we find any merge problems after all the data has been moved. We’ll update you again in a few hours.
Latest update on the Server Merge from Amnerys: Good morning (or afternoon)! Hope everyone’s finding something to keep you busy during the downtime. 🙂 I also wanted to remind you that you can always log in to Test server if you start twitching too much. If all goes according to plan, you probably won’t be hearing too much from us today, so don’t worry if you don’t see red names for a while. Back-end teams are hard at work on the merge, and the dev team is still doing all the pre-expansion launch stuff, so they have a full...
I hope you got a chance to test all those changes on the Test Server over the weekend, cause they went live today. Once we sorted through the formatting of said Update notes, we were able to determine that the changes cover a broad spectrum of gameplay elements, including solving crashes related to Voice Chat, Battlegrounds tweaks, etc. The most notable line item might be a fix to a potential exploit in Roehn Theer as we discussed over the weekend. Your Update Notes for November 2, 2010 after the jump…
SmokeJumper dropped this hint in response to the question… *whistles innocently* Check back Monday’ish.
EQ2 Lead Designer Rich Waters is seeking player feedback on why players stick with Exile despite the huge disadvantages. He posed the question: Exiles were definitely a side-effect of the betrayal quest, and not an intentional feature. Some support was given to them in the past, but I wouldn’t plan on anything new. Other than a wider deity choice, what motivates players to stay as exiles on the PVE servers?
Dethdlr
There have been reports from several players that trying out EQ2X has wiped out all their entitlements on EQ2 Live with their Station Access account. I have two Station Access accounts myself and have tried EQ2X on both of them. One is fine, the other no longer has access to anything but the base game. Zoltaroth wrote on the EQ2Live Forums: We are looking into what is going on. I am going to be in touch with the people who PMed me via PMs. Until the account gets fixed, it’s as if you bought the base game at launch...
E3 took place this year from June 15-17. SmokeJumper was interviewed and said that the current subscription model would not change. When asked after the announcement of EQ2 Extended about that interview, he had this to say: Yes, at that time, we were discussing the concept. No, we were not ready to commit to it, nor did we have any details of what we might be doing. On July 27th, EQ2 Extended was announced. I counted up how many work days passed between the interview and the announcment. Guess how many work days went by?
From EQ2Players: Direct 2 Drive is offering a special deal on an EQII pack that will help new and returning players get into the game quickly. For a limited time, pick up EverQuest II Sentinel’s Fate, along with three Flask of Adventuring bonus potions, the Vestiges of Glory Armor Pack, and a 30-day subscription for new accounts, all for just $14.95. This offer expires July 26th, so don’t let it pass you (and your friends) by! Also available for purchase in Pounds (UK) and Euros (EU).
UPDATE: We heard about layoffs today, but linked to (and quoted) the 2009 article. Here is the correct link and quote: From IndustryGamers.com: The developer behind DC Universe Online and The Agency, Sony Online Entertainment, has laid off 35 employees, or just over 4% of its full-time workforce, in an effort to “better align the company’s resources…as well as improve operational efficiency,” says SOE’s Scott Gulbransen, senior director of global PR & corporate communications. The official statement: “In a move to better align the company’s resources against areas of growth that meet consumer demand in today’s online market as...
From the EQ2 Forums: Greetings Norrathians! We have been made aware of a potential threat to your account security, and ask you to read this, pass it on, link it and let others know. There is a serious phishing scam being perpetrated right now. You may receive an email telling you that your password has been changed or asking you to log into the linked site for some reason. Please double check the URL of the site that you are being asked to access. The legitimate SOE site will have this URL: http://auth.station.sony.com. Please do not enter your information...
Even though Amnerys (it’s pronounced “am-NAIR-iss”) has technically been EQ2 Community Manager for a few weeks now, she has posted an introduction on EQ2Players. You can read this intro at EQ2Players. She also references her original posting to the Station Blog when she was brought on as a Community Relations Rep.
Have you registered for Fan Faire yet? It’s less than a month away and registration closes in two weeks. That means it’s time for Calthine’s annual Fan Faire Tips! If you are planning to attend Fan Faire, I recommend reading her survival guide. Between tracking down guildies, meeting new friends, and trying to catch all the panels and events that affect your game(s) of choice, the Fan Faire weekend becomes a blur. It’s helpful to be prepared.
If you are wondering why there has been a whirlwind of changes and announcements about what new players experience from levels 1-20, it probably has a lot to do with the fact that Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson, EQ2’s Senior Producer, has been spending a lot of time creating new characters in each of the starting cities to find the rough spots and smooth them out.
Over on the official EQ2 Forums, Kiara writes: Greetings all! I wanted to let you know that we’ll be making some changes to the forums this week. We will be removing the server forums and replacing them with the following: Guide Events Player Events Guild Recruitment Roleplaying Live Gamer We will be leaving the server forums up for a little while to move some of the stickied threads that folks want to keep into the new forums. The new forums will appear tomorrow. If you see a thread in your server forum that you think really needs to be...
We’ve got reports that the following EQ2 servers are presently down: Befallen Crushbone Innovation Mistmoore Oasis Permafrost Runnyeye EQ2Players Network Status Page
The topic of PvP <-> PvE Character Transfers came up on Monday from a WoW player who has recently rejoined EQ2. The topic received an interesting response from EQ2 Senior Producer “SmokeJumper“: We’re currently investigating a lot of issues to make things friendlier for you folks. This is a decent idea, but to be honest, I’d have to ask about the technical and game balance issues involved. However, I will do so. I’m curious also. (by the way…”WoW does it” is not a valid reason for me. We aren’t WoW and don’t intend to be. But good ideas are...