Feldon
When SmokeJumper unveiled Build Your Own Dungeon at Fan Faire, it took the audience about 0.3 seconds to notice that a key item on the announcement Slide: Players would drive Adventurers or avatars through these Player-built Dungeons, rather than playing their own characters. From the look on SmokeJumper‘s face when he read this line, the collective unrest from the audience was not unexpected. Since the announcement, there has been plenty of discussion on the EQ2 Forums foretelling the feature’s doom, using the abandoned Arena system as an example. Players want to play their own characters in DYOD designed dungeons,...
From Gninja on the EQ2 Forums: The event will be turned back on Friday at 5pm PDT. That’s 8pm EDT, 01:00 BST, 02:00 CET. As previously stated, the events will be reset back to 50% complete per server if they’d reached that point. We’re hoping that the event will run for a few days at least so that players get a chance to participate. While the event is running, there are different quests and events to acquire tokens. Once the event concludes, I believe the only way to get tokens between then and Game Update 61 will be a...
From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums: Hmmm…Valor didn’t go off as planned and we got a hitch in our plans for the other US servers. But the upgrades are still coming! Valor should be upgraded next week (in other words, before the end of July). We’re still getting info back from the hardware folks for the remaining US server upgrades, but it shouldn’t be too long after that. More info soon.
Today’s update changs the flag on the new Incandescent Swiftwing (Phoenix Gryphon) to HEIRLOOM, restores the ability to switch accounts without completely closing the EQ2 client (previously ProfitUI users had been using /camp) with a new command /camp login, as well as a couple of other fixes in Zek and Drunder. From the EQ2 Update Notes: GENERAL You can now use “/camp login” to get back to the client login screen. POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION Temple of Rallos Zek [Challenge] The Idol of Rallos Zek’s falling debris should work normally now. ITEMS The Heirloom tag has been removed from...
The new gryphon mount demoed at Fan Faire during the Art & Animation panel drew a lot of Oohs and Aahs from the crowd. It might be called an Incandescent Swiftwing (will we need to replace it with a Fluorescent model soon? 😉 ) but I’ll always think of this stunning mount as a Phoenix Gryphon. From EverQuest2.com: Take to the skies and light up the night! Only an 85th and higher adventurer or tradeskiller is able to command this fiery gryphon, said to have been created by the experiments of Velketor himself. This mount is Lore, No-Trade and...
From the EQ2 Forums: Gifting has now been reenabled, with a 2 gifts per 24 hours limit. StationCash gifting had previously been disabled due to a resurgence in plat farming and a concern that money laundering might be taking place.
Today’s Update includes numerous tweaks to the harder Velious dungeons, further reducing the difficulty of many zones, as well as the aforementioned reduction in the cost of Velium Shard armor (Ry’Gorr armor is now 25 shards per piece, 20 if crafted). A glitch with Leaper or Glider mounts and pets (especially Coercer pets) has also been resolved.
While we don’t have a definite date when the Dragon Ring and Wizard Spire Rebuilding events will be coming back, there have been a series of updates and questions about them which is worth consolidating into one place. Due to the Spires event running every 30 minutes instead of the planned hourly interval, and some underestimation of players’ desire to participate, the event had been nearly completed on several servers less than 18 hours after it began. Perhaps the availability of Velium Shards on the vendor was a stimulating factor. Either way, the event was suspended and the devs...
Here’s another video from SOE Fan Faire 2011, this time “EverQuest II: Questions & Answers #2” which was actually the last EQ2 panel on Saturday. The EQ2 design and development teams were on hand to take player questions during this dedicated Question & Answer session at this year’s Fan Faire event. Yes, I’m posting these videos out-of-order. The Q&A panels required no editing so that’s why they get posted a bit earlier than some others.
If you’ve been thinking of plunking down your hard-earned Velium Shards on Ry’Gorr armor, or burning up stacks of Legendary and Fabled gear from Drunder zones to get enough ore to craft Drunder armor, you may want to wait. Wednesday July 13th’s Test Update Notes included an item we initially overlooked: ITEMS The first two tiers of Velium Shard Armor should now require less Velium Shards. The amount of ore obtained from smelting down a piece of Drunder loot has been doubled. Thurgadin shard armor currently costs anywhere from 33 to 90 shards per-piece when purchased from the vendor,...
Here’s our second video from SOE Fan Faire 2011 “EverQuest II: Art and Animation”. New this year are Kilts, Animation Retargeting, a New Outfit, and new flying mounts including a Flying Squirrel. If you’d like to view the Slides from this panel in higher quality, check out the updated EQ2 Panel #2 – Art and Animation writeup. We’ll upload an HD version of this video soon.
Less than 18 hours after launching a new World Event to help Rebuild the Wizard Spires and Dragon Ring in Velious, the events have been suspended due to a series of issues including exceptionally fast completion rates. On Antonia Bayle, the event had already reached 99% when the event was shut down. Completion rates have been a chronic problem with Live Events in EverQuest 2 in the past 2 years. The lengthy, story-rich prelude quest for The Shadow Odyssey was unavailable to most players due to the time it took to be unlocked. Many players had less than 48...
I’ve posted our first video from SOE Fan Faire 2011 “EverQuest II: Freeport and Beyond” which is an overview of everything we can expect from the EQ2 team until November 2011. If you’d like to view the Slides from this panel in higher quality, check out the updated EQ2 Panel #1 – Freeport and Beyond writeup. We’ll upload an HD version of this video soon.
Today at noon Pacific Daylight Time begins the Velious Spires and Dragon Ring Rebuilding Live Events. Your best place for info about this event is going to be the quest writeups at EQ2 ZAM. Fan Faire Videos? I’m getting used to Copenhagen time again, and am feverishly working on uploading those Fan Faire panel videos. We’re taking a little extra time to drop in the slides being show, so the videos are all-inclusive.
Today’s update notes for EQ2 are on the brief side: GENERAL Fixed a bug where clients could crash when viewing a flythrough.
From the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL Fixed a bug where you could relinquish your home and cause your guild hall to be relinquished too! MOUNTS Gliding mounts will no longer port up into the air after using certain teleports. Players using leapers and gliders should appear to move smoother when viewed on other player’s clients. POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION The normal mode x4 raid zones (Temple, Throne, Kraytoc’s and Drunder zones) require less critical mitigation than before. Players with less critical mitigation should have a better chance for survival.
(left is just the Kilt, right is the entire outfit) If you followed our live blog of the EQ2 Art & Animation panel from Fan Faire 2011, you know that Kilts is something the team has been working on and off for the last 18 months. It’s been a long road to get them done! So it is not a surprise that, at least the first kilts will be on the StationCash Marketplace. The first Kilt choice is the Clan Icereaver set and costs 950SC ($9.50 or $3.17 if you still have Triple SC leftover). When you buy it,...
EQ2 and EQ2X servers are back up after an SOE-wide maintenance window. The window was planned for 7 hours, so 9 hours isn’t too bad. 😉 As for whether there were any changes/patches specific to EQ2, unfortunately EverQuest2.com remains down, so we’re unable to view the EQ2 Patch Notes. we noticed a ~25MB patch before we were were able to login, with most of the patched files being character files, so maybe SmokeJumper‘s suggestion that we’d see Kilts on Tuesday (today) will come to pass. We’re keeping an eye on the Marketplace. More as we have it…
The Q&As and Panels are done, and it’s time to decompress in the Main Hall, or a hallway, or even “Kelethin”, a bar in Paris Hotel covered by faux trees. But that doesn’t mean the Questions & Answers have stopped. If you read our Fan Faire coverage and thirst for more, or if you posted a question to our Submit Your EQ2 Fan Faire Questions post, continue on. WARNING: These are more informal discussions and you SHOULD NOT make any assumptions or consider any of these comments to be PROMISES by the EQ2 team. Anything here is Subject to...
SOE President John Smedley opened the SOE Fan Faire 2011 Welcome Reception with a personal apology. He apologized for the downtime, the hassle of changing passwords, and the service outage that affected all of Sony Online Entertainment this May. He wasted no time in announcing that all Fan Faire attendees would receive a Vasco Security Authenticator key fob. I personally was provided with an EverQuest II-branded security key fob.
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...
SOE has posted a video of the Community Relations panel from Saturday afternoon. This talks about Forum Rules, Moderators, the Community Council, the Podcast and Webcast, etc.
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. Cyliena over at Zam has posted a large number of photos of Fan Faire 2011. Togikagi over at Zam posted complete photos of all the Costumes at the Fan Faire Costume Contest. SOE posted Fan Faire Setup photos from July 7th, 2011. Great if you want to check out some in-progress costumes. Events4Gamers posted some...
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!
This announcement was posted last week, but we knew it would get drowned out by Fan Faire coverage, so here we go… from EverQuest2.com: Beginning July 12, 2011 at 1:00 a.m. US Pacific Time, we’ll be performing maintenance on all games and services. During this maintenance, our forums, websites and games will also be unavailable. The estimated downtime for the maintenance is 7 hours. We apologize for this interruption and will resume the affected services as soon as the maintenance is completed.