Feldon
Altar of Malice launch trailer @ Youtube From the EQ2 Forums: EverQuest II’s 11th expansion, Altar of Malice, launches today for All-Access Members! Are you ready to take up arms and unravel the mysteries of The Shattered Seas? This expansion is packed full of adventure and brings a ton of exciting new features to players! Let’s take a look at some of the things you can look forward to in Altar of Malice.
The Altar of Malice expansion is now available for purchase for All Access subscribers!! Answers to Frequent Questions If you Free-to-Play, or wish to purchase on the Steam platform, then you will be able to purchase the expansion on November 25, 2014. If you attended SOE Live, then you can verify that you have been granted the standard edition of Altar of Malice by visiting this hidden EQ2 Entitlements page and looking for “Entitlement: Altar of Malice“. Some users are receiving the message “You are not eligible to purchase this product. Please check available products below.” If you did not...
From buildmaster Bunji on the EQ2 Forums: ALTAR OF MALICE In the service of the monarchs, the bravest adventurers will journey across the mysterious Shattered Seas to face prehistoric deinodons, petite-yet-perilous pygmies, bone-armored lizard men, salty pirates, and other new, unseen creatures. And while there are dangers on the waters, beware the grotesque, thickening plot hidden deep in the Kithicor Woods. It’s so malicious it could make even the undead’s skin crawl… Features: Level 100 for Adventurers, Tradeskillers, and Guilds New Prestige Abilities to 100 15 Heroic zones 6 Raid zones 6 Advanced solo zones 2 Contested zones 2...
After some initial confusion, the downtime for tomorrow’s big update for the Altar of Malice expansion has been announced. ALL servers will go down at 5:00am PST tomorrow. Time Zone Conversions — Downtime for ALL SERVERS (US, EU, RU, JP) PST: November 11 @ 5:00am til Noon EST: November 11 @ 8:00am til 3:00pm GMT: November 11 @ 13:00 til 20:00 CET: November 11 @ 14:00 til 21:00 AEDT: November 11 @ Midnight til November 12 @ 7:00am
At long last we’ve tweaked and poked and edited together this year’s SOE Live 2014 panel “Leveraging EQ2 Data Feeds”. This panel was hosted by Dedith of Dragon’s Armory, Dethdlr and Morgan Feldon of EQ2U, Douglas “Endymion” from the EQ2 team, and Zoltaroth lead programmer of Landmark. We talk about Quests and Leaderboards and answer player questions and suggestions: We will be working hard tomorrow to support the rollout of the Altar of Malice expansion.
The Aerakyn race will become available for purchase sometime tomorrow and through internal testing, the EQ2 team have discovered an issue affecting hair color and the “hidden personal torch” feature. While this issue might not bother most players, if you’re going to drop $20 or $42 on a race, you might be a little miffed if your character customizations don’t turn out quite as expected. From Afista on the EQ2 Forums: Greetings Everyone, We want to identify a problem that some players might encounter when customizing your new Aerakyns. The Aerakyn have a VERY broad color palette for hair...
Today is the last day to run the Altar of Malice solo quest lines, heroic zones, or do the tradeskill questline and get rewards for your live characters. You Beta Believe These Rewards are Awesome From Afista on the EQ2 Forums: The Beta server will be coming down tomorrow morning with the game update. It will not be coming back online after tomorrow’s All-Access launch of Altar of Malice.
From EQ2 Senior Producer Holly “Windstalker” Longdale‘s twitter: Almost to AoM expansion! Servers will come down about 5am and we are aiming to be live at 12pm pst. Purchasing up about the same time. #EQ2 — Holly Longdale (@WindstalkerEQ2) November 10, 2014 Presumably this means we’ll be able to buy the Altar of Malice expansion around the same time servers come up, but possibly ambiguously sooner.
The 10th anniversary of EverQuest II was this Saturday, November 8th, and it looks like SOE is working on a retrospective documentary! Here’s the teaser video they’ve released.
At SOE Live this year, we found out that of all the internal test servers that the EQ2 team uses to build content, none of them behaves quite like the Live or production servers. EverQuest II’s 10th annivesary is being celebrated with the return of the Heroes’ Festival event and although we understand the event was extensively tested internally, things just did not work as planned when the event was pushed to the live servers. To force the event to run properly, members of the EQ2 team and Customer Service have been empowered to manually start up these events...
From Akil “Lyndro” Hooper on the EQ2 Forums: For centuries, Ssraeshza, the last bastion of the Shissar, loomed forebodingly over the gray plains of the moon, Luclin. During The Shattering, Ssraeshza was among the chunks of Luclin that rained down on Norrath. The temple landed inverted within the Phantom Sea, where it formed the island known as Grim Shales. The shattered walls of the temple created a terrible landscape, treacherous to even the hardiest of explorers. Though the great temple sits in near ruin, a dark force has begun its reconstruction. The Akheva and their subjugated Grimlings have been...
Tomorrow marks the 10th anniversary of the release of EverQuest II. To celebrate this, the annual Heroes’ Festival returns with some new events, specifically five open raid encounters which anyone can participate in and earn credit (like a Public Quest, you do not need to be grouped or even the right level to get credit). UPDATE: The Heroes Festival did not appear on Test or Beta, and so players are reporting a number of issues, specifically that the camps have despawned and vendors are unavailable. UPDATE #2: According to a dev update, the mobs have been respawned, but there...
Ever wondered what goes into making a quest in EverQuest II? Emily “Domino” Taylor walks through the steps of planning and creating a new tradeskill quest in this Twitch highlight video. Note that this is an unofficial video done with permission of SOE and is all shown with Google Docs and in-game, not using the development tools like Designer Dashboard, etc.
EQ/EQ2 Community Manager Ry “Roshen” Schueller interviews designers Jeffery “Extemper” Bard and Carlos “Gninja” Mora as they give us a sneak peek of the stunning The Tranquil Sea and elaborate Brokenskull Bay, two new zones in the upcoming Altar of Malice expansion releasing next Tuesday for All Access members and November 25th for everyone else. The Tranquil Sea is the first overland zone players encounter in the Altar of Malice, and contains the Isle of Refuge, Alla’thoa, and much much more. Brokenskull Bay is a swashbuckling instance styled after Tortuga and will be available in a few different heroic versions, an advanced...
Yesterday, two Press sites posted their articles about the upcoming Aerakyn race. At 8:00pm, the official news dropped on the EQ2 Forums: Are you ready to start an adventure with a unique new player race? Get ready, because Aerakyns will soon be available for you to customize and start your journeys! Players will be able to purchase the new Aerakyn race from the EverQuest II Marketplace beginning November 11, 2014. Want to learn more about the Aerakyns? Well, we’ve got the information ready for you! The Aerakyns were once the unwilling soldiers of the great Prismatic Dragon, Kerafyrm. Now...
We are now seven months past the “End of Life” date for Windows XP, but you wouldn’t know it from the number of players reporting issues with the Altar of Malice beta. While the crashes being reported are far from exclusive to any particular version of Windows, it’s a little frightening how many EQ2 players are still running a version of Windows which is not receiving any type of security updates and which is limited to just 3GB of memory (with a scant 2GB of that being made available to EQ2). No game developer wants to release an expansion that...
ZAM Managing Editor Cyliena recently interviewed EQ/EQ2 Creative Director Akil “Lyndro” Hooper and Holly “Windstalker” Longdale about the new Aerakyn race which will be available for purchase on November 11, 2014. She got the inside scoop and plenty of details about the new race and the different pricing tiers which will be available. As previously announced, the Aerakyn race will not be included in either the Standard or Collector’s Editions of the Altar of Malice expansions, but is instead being sold as a a standalone item. From the EQ2 ZAM article: Aerakyn will be available on the Marketplace [on November 11, 2014] through...
Tomorrow, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the release of EverQuest II, the 11-year Veteran Reward will become available to all EQ2 players who have been around since day one. Why 11 years? The first four expansions (Desert of Flames, Kingdom of Sky, Echoes of Faydwer, and Rise of Kunark) each granted 90 days of bonus time, so add it up, and you get 11-year Veteran Rewards for a 10 year old game! From Afista on the EQ2 Forums: It’s been ten years since some adventurers first came ashore on the Isle of Refuge. For some, there’s nothing more...
From the EQ2 Forums: US EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, November 4, 2014 at approximately 7:00AM PDT. Estimated downtime is 2 hours. It will include additional Database Maintenance. EU EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, November 4, 2014 at approximately 7:00AM PDT. (Aprox. 3:00PM London Time on 11/04/2014). Estimated downtime is 2 hours. Time Zone Conversions PST: Nov 4 @ 7:00am ~ 9:00am EST: Nov 4 @ 10:00am ~ Noon GMT: Nov 4 @ 15:00 ~ 17:00 CET: Nov 4 @ 16:00 ~ 18:00 Here are the patch notes from the EQ2...
From Akil “Lyndro” Hooper on the EQ2 Forums: Deep within Kithicor, the Primordial Malice, resides a cult devoted to the Demigoddess Lanys T’Vyl. As a show of dedication to their fallen matriarch, members of the Primordial Malice worship the state of undeath. They desecrate their bodies with bone piercings and intricate tattoos, flaying their skin to the muscle, in an attempt to ride the line between life and death. The Ossuary of Malevolence is the pinnacle of that devotion. The Ossuary of Malevolence is a massive cathedral built with bones as brick and mortar, constructed to harness and focus...
Not sure how we missed this, but Massively posted their sneak preview of the Altar of Malice expansion on October 14th. From MJ Guthrie on Massively.com: When EverQuest II’s next expansion, Altar of Malice, was announced at SOE Live in August, we heard about upcoming features, perused concept drawings, and even saw some screenshots. As exciting as all that can be, nothing compares to actually getting in the game and seeing the living breathing world of Norrath. And that’s exactly what I got to do last week on a tour with Senior Producer Holly Longdale and Creative Director Akil Hooper....
EverQuest II Senior Producer Holly “Windstalker” Longdale is now ready to go out for Nights of the Dead as a Dark Elf after undergoing the ministrations of the makeup effects folks at KBZFX. You can follow this link over to Massively to see the other games which got the makeup treatment including EverQuest, DCUO, H1Z1, and Planetside 2.
Sales/Marketing set a price of $90 for the Altar of Malice Collector’s Edition which has led to some concerns. So the EQ2 team — now currently between a rock-and-a-hard-place — are trying to make lemonade by adding some stats to the Pterodon mount which will ship with the Collector’s Edition. Here are the stats as per Afista on the EQ2 Forums: Striped Savage Pterodon Mount Each level 85 character on your account will be eligible to use this flying mount which grants 100% ground speed and 150% flying speed. At level 95 this mount will give its rider the...
From the EQ2 Forums: US EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, October 28, 2014 at approximately 7:00AM PDT. Estimated downtime is 2 hours. EU EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, October 28, 2014 at approximately 7:00AM PDT. (Aprox. 2:00PM London Time on 10/28/2014). Estimated downtime is 2 hours. Two hour downtimes are atypical, as is patching the European servers at the same time as the US ones, yet only a single update note was provided on the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL Beta mounts* should no longer spam a failure when zoning if you are below...
In a promotion that is sure to confuse more than a few players, I’ve just received an e-mail from SOE for EverQuest II: If I’m reading this correctly, then all EQ2 players with inactive accounts (no idea what qualifies as inactive but presumably a few months without logging into EQ2) are being temporarily granted All Access membership until November 10th, 2014, as well as receiving two 4 hour 100% XP potions and one 2 hour 50% Group XP potion just for logging in in the next 14 days. This promotion looks to expire the night before the Altar of Malice expansion launches...