Feldon
So if you’ve clicked on this article looking for a transcript of last month’s Game Update 63: Skyshrine Part 1 webcast, we have a last minute change. This won’t be a transcript but a summary. If this seems like bait-and-switch, realize that we tuned into the webcast to see: Holly “Windstalker” Longdale, EQ2 Senior Producer Akil “Lyndro” Hooper, EQ2 Lead Designer Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson, EverQuest Franchise Director of Development and there was a slight change in the guest list to: Kyle “Kander” Vallee, Assistant Lead Designer Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson After the jump, what we were able to take away...
destiny of velious
Steve Merghart, EQII Senior Character Artist and Chris Myers, EQII Senior Animator, show off Honvar, a dragon who will be appearing in the upcoming Game Update 63 this April. Honvar roamed the Western Wastes in the original EverQuest. Steve and Chris are hoping that someone will make a plushie or maybe show up in costume at Fan Faire as Honvar, or as he seems to have been known internally “Lumpy”. GamesRadar Exclusive: Watch as EverQuest II’s upcoming dragon is brought to life
Note: This article will be periodically bumped to the top of EQ2Wire. UPDATED: JUNE 18th, 2011 If you miss the pre-Expansion Zone Previews, Interviews with Artists, Animators, and Developers, as well as the quarterly Question & Answer , Developer Chats, and ‘What Bugs You Most?‘, you’ve got company. We’re not sure that 20 minute Stickam videos fully replace all those forms of communication. That said… There have already been several hotfixes tackling some of the bigger issues introduced by Game Update 60, but there are others which have yet to receive confirmation from developers. We delve into this category...
Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson has lent another timely interview to Massively, this time on Game Update 60 and plans for the future. Some theories are confirmed, but most of Georgeson’s cards remain close to the chest. Interview at Massively
From Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson on the EQ2 Forums: So, you’re probably curious how EQII will be growing and changing in 2011, right? Well, it’s finally time to share. This year is all about content and entertainment and we intend to give you plenty of both. The following outlines some of the broad strokes to get you thinking about what’s coming…and possibly just a little excited, as well. First of all, if you’re a “Destiny of Velious” owner, you’re going to be *extremely* happy that you made that purchase. Why? Because DoV is going to be the biggest, best expansion...
From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums: We’re making some changes to make dungeons more attractive to players in DoV. We’re adjusting base pop and boss health so that the dungeons take less time to complete so they’re more fun for folks, as well as to allow more frequent chances at boss loot drops on revisits. We’re also making a few changes so that bosses don’t wipe parties so easily since they seem to be a bit tougher than we’d originally planned. We’re approaching these changes conservatively so that we don’t overshoot the mark. If these changes don’t do the...
Kwill
The zone crashes occurring in the x2 Tower of Frozen Shadow instances involving boss Tserrina have been identified by the development team, but cannot be immediately fixed, says Gninja: We have found the crash issue with Tserrina and it should be getting cleared up within a patch or two. For now if you do not cure the curses it should not crash. Looks like Tserrina found a way to make her curses stick!
EQ2 Designer Windslasher is working on the lag issues in the Storm Gorge public quests, but apparently it’s not an easy problem to solve: I am working on changes to reduce lag. I’m very aware of how bad it is, and I consider that the #1 problem to fix. It also happens to be the hardest, which is why the going is slow. That is all.
I have a confession to make… I did few quests in The Shadow Odyssey, and fewer still in Sentinel’s Fate (Odus). Beyond grouping, raiding, and the quests associated with such, my heart just has not been “in it”. After dragging three characters each through Kunark‘s 400 mostly runaround timesink errand quests, few of which had much impact on the overall storylines of Norrath, I vowed to level and earn AAs in future expansions by grouping — even if it had the rush of excitement and expedience of watching paint dry. So after basically taking Sentinel’s Fate off, I vowed...
If you’ve been keeping your Burynai house pet (from the Kunark Pre-Order) on a steady diet of fertilizers and letting the shinies roll in, you’ve probably noticed that they have had no luck producing any of the collections from Odus (Sundered Frontier, Stonebrunt Mountains), Velious (Great Divide, Eastern Wastes), or associated dungeons. It turns out, a new Guild Hall amenity has been added for these Tier 9 zones. Here’s Gninja to explain the new Herbalist Hirelings which accept fertilizer items in exchange for collectable rewards: .. Right now you should be able to feed the “Herbalist Hireling” any combination of...
When Velious was announced, lots of folks asked for Faction to matter. Wish granted! 🙂 Faction must be acquired with the Othmir, Snowfang Gnolls, Thurgadin, and Ry’Gorr to buy their adornments (unique to each faction) and gear, and it can be rather slow-going! The Othmir, Snowfang Gnolls, and Ry’Gorr all have daily (18 hour repeatable) quests to kill overland mobs and gain faction. Crabs for the Othmir quests occasionally drop an item which provides an additional faction boost. Alas, Thurgadin faction must be gained by running dungeons. A variety of rewards become available once faction milestones of 10,000, 20,000,...
For the last day of the Destiny of Velious launch celebrations, every EQ2 and EQ2X player from level 1-90 is able to travel to Lavastorm, Butcherblock Mountains, or Tenebrous Tangle and fly around using a Tinkered flying machine. The quest and event has been placed near the entrance of the zone, thus the level of enemies should not prevent celebrations by all players of all levels. Once you compete in a race through airborne rings in the allotted time, you receive a temporary flying contraption which is NO ZONE but which you can use to fully explore the entire...
Kael Drakkel is making Contested Dungeons in EQ2 sexy again. With 15 names, and the largest zone ever added to EQ2 (it’s larger than Solusek’s Eye), there is a lot to live up to here. The zone is intended to be difficult, with loot somewhere between the hardest Velious instances and beginning raids. It’s a new way of approaching contested dungeons compared to The Hole, Karnor’s Castle, Sebilis, and Chardok which all struggled to keep our attention after a few weeks. Players have been looking for an old school dungeon crawl and Kael Drakkel seems to deliver. It shows...
Dethdlr
Tomorrow marks a week that Destiny of Velious has been live. I’ve had time to run through the Icy Fingers quest series on three characters, get my flying mount, check out Thurgadin, and even run through the first quest area in the Eastern Wastes. I’ve also poked my head into the Tower of Frozen Shadows: Shadowed Corridors. I’ve learned a few things during this time that I’d like to pass on. This is mainly meant for the non-raiding portion of our audience since the raiders most likely know all of this information already or have the level of gear...
From EverQuest2.com: February 26: Double XP Day Adventure, tradeskill, and AA XP gain are doubled. Saturday only! February 27: Loot Bonanza Day Today only, all named monsters will drop loot at 100% probability. Rare mobs will have doubled loot drop chances. February 28: Expansion Upgrade Day If you already own the Standard Edition, upgrade to Destiny of Velious Collector’s Edition for $25 on this day only. Pick up the Digital Collector’s Edition and enjoy the bonus items; Cryomantic Armor, the Stormfeather Brood Guardian Mount, Tserinna’s Wedding Present, and the Everfrost Summer Home (seen at this link).
Public Quests provide different kinds of rewards than we’ve seen in the past. Right now there are 2 Public Quests: Storm Gorge which is Southeast of Thurgadin and the Ring War which is Northeast of Thurgadin. There are plans to add several more Public Quests as we heard about in Beta (possibly the Sleeper!).
From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums: Hey, folks, I just wanted to post and let you know that a bunch of accounts (less than 100) got a temporary suspension tonight. Why? Because some of them were invited to Beta and then found a way to shortcut the gryphon quest series, which takes a minimum of five days to complete, and were able to do it in minutes. They then told others how to do it and the rest followed along, duplicating the exploit.
The Tower of Frozen Shadow presents a unique, but familiar approach to dungeon progression. Although the seven (or is it eight?!?) floors of the Tower of Frozen Shadow are split up into 3 group instanced dungeons (Shadowed Corridors, Umbral Halls, and Haunt of Syl’Tor), there are quests that span all three. Completion of those quests is necessary to unlock different floors in the Tower. UPDATE: Added quotes from Gninja.
When do the Public Quests (live events that any player, from solo to a full raid of 24, can participate in) run? From Windslasher: Storm Gorge runs at even hours — noon, 2, 4, 6 etc. while Ring War starts on odd hours. So one of them starts every hour on the hour.
So if you played in the Beta, or heard tales, you know that like past betas, the solo overland content was rather… challenging. We’re talking badgers and gnolls that ignore 30-40% of damage done to them, have upwards of 100,000 hp, and put out damage in the thousands. Notorious were the crystal spiders needed for the flying mount quest which, if they successfully poisoned you, were doing upwards of 4,000 damage *per tick* until cured. If you didn’t whip out a potion or use that click-to-cure, you were dead in seconds. 2 weeks before Velious Beta ended, SmokeJumper admitted...
If there is any doubt that EQ2 devs are working as hard as they can to resolve the persistent Receiving Zone Info issues affecting Freeport and (to some extent) other servers, know that Zoltaroth and Rothgar put in 16 hours on Tuesday, and I know that Zoltaroth worked again until midnight this morning. Sleep is overrated!
It seems every year, thousands of bug reports are submitted to the EQ2 team during Beta. And it seems every year, a few highly visible bugs/exploits make it through. Last year, it was large encounters in The Hole that would respawn if all but one mob were killed. In The Shadow Odyssey beta it was widely reported that most of the dungeons could be completed when mentored down and greyed out. So this year, so far we know of two: Lord Doljonijiarnimorinar (Lord Bob) could be exploited to provide loot over and over. Lord Bob was fixed in today’s...
From EverQuest2.com: February 22: Othmir Day Everyone who logs in on Launch Day, February 22nd, will receive an Othmir illusion potion. (Even those who aren’t playing in Velious!) The potion has 50 charges, and is available one per character. Just be sure to log in each of your characters during the day to claim a potion, if you want the illusion for more than one character. This event will run at least until 10am pst (1pm cst, 18:00 gmt). According to some posts by SmokeJumper, this may be extended especially on Everfrost and Freeport which weren’t up until late...
In a thread pondering when we might see the rest of Velious, SmokeJumper hinted much: We didn’t do the Wakening Lands. We just have that one small tribute area to it. Think of it as a doorway to a potential future area. and: We intend to grow a lot of the Velious stuff you’re missing. I have to stay mum for a bit until I get approval on *how* we want to roll it out to you, so I can’t say much else at the moment. Sorry.
If you have been abusing milking enjoying the Refer-a-Friend 300% XP bonus for its high speed leveling (and thus AA earning) goodness, especially by parking a level 1 trial account character at the zone-in, well, I’m afraid that has finally come to an end. From Rich Waters 0n the EQ2 forums: The Recruit-a-friend program is a great way for you to bring your friends into EverQuest II and help them level up a bit faster by playing together. When you group with a character you’ve recruited, you both gain a hefty 200% experience bonus. Unfortunately, many people were recruiting...