The upcoming Game Update 64: Qeynos Rises includes significant changes to Player vs Player and Battlegrounds, a light polish to Darklight Woods (Neriak), itemization tweaks (normal mode Dozekar gains Breastplates, Sevelak breastplates will be boosted to match the difficulty), a Public Quest in Antonica, and of course the revamp of Qeynos with 108 new quests.

Our hats off to Karen Bryan at Massively who has done not one, not two, but three preview articles on the upcoming update…

On July 19th, 2012, Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson interviewed Paul “Cronyn” Molina and Nathan “Kaitheel” McCall to tell the story and share the lore of Qeynos Rises, so don’t miss it! This webcast is now online at TwitchTV.

From the EQ2 Forums:

EverQuest II Webcast

Qeynos Rises on July 24th! Host Dave Georgeson will interview Paul Molina and Nathan McCall to tell the story and share the lore of Qeynos Rises, so don’t miss it!

Join us on Thursday, July 19, 2012, at 4:00 p.m. US Pacific Time* on Twitch TV! The webcast is expected to last about 20 minutes.

See you on Twitch TV!

Time Zone Conversions

• PDT: July 19 @ 4:00pm
• EDT: July 19 @ 7:00pm
• BST: July 20 @ 0:00
• CET: July 20 @ 1:00

It’s time for another in-game poll for EQ2 players. The two questions in this month’s poll address the recent Game Update 63: Skyshrine content as well as the upcoming Game Update 64: Qeynos Reborn. None of the questions touch on the quality or content of the question, only asking players to identify what content they have or have not been playing.

NOTE: As mentioned in the past, only the first poll entry for each account is measured.

After the jump, we provide the questions for posterity’s sake…

The ‘Future of EverQuest II’ webcast has concluded, and we have been left with more questions than answers. The webcast at a glance:

• the Qeynos Revamp
• a hint of the Sleeper’s Tomb (GU65) and Kerafyrm (2013)
• the next Expansion (December?) — more levels, more Prestige Points, includes a totally new area of Norrath rather than revisiting a part of the original EverQuest
• Play-as-your-Character in Dungeon Maker (using a feature called Level Agnostic Dungeons)
• On-the-Fly Beta Testing
• using Quest Items from your Quest Journal instead of fishing around in your inventory
• the Scope of the Marketplace (even the EQ2 team admits that more items should be available or craftable in-game)
• Softball player questions about Progression server, Armor dyes, temporary NPCs, and the Meatbeast

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 that has ever been made. We’ll be releasing content on a regular basis that continues to tell the “Age’s End Prophecy” saga, and the only price of admission is that you own DoV. The Age’s End story gets really big before it’s done and it’s going to take us a good chunk of time to tell it all, but we’ll do so by releasing chapters of it every few months and building the story a bit at a time. Velious is a big place, and so is this story. It’ll be a good ride.

Secondly, we’re going to revamp Freeport and make Evil an exciting place to be. Freeport (and next year, Qeynos) will become multi-level adventure hubs with instanced content at many levels. The city itself is also getting a facelift as Freeport reorganizes itself to retake its place as a driving power of the world. Additionally, it’s becoming a single zone (instead of many sub-divisions) and flyable. When we upgrade Qeynos, it will get the same visual upgrade and zone treatment, and will bring back the “Greater Good”.

The Gods of Norrath will be returning to once again directly muck about with the lives of mortals. Too long has the world of Norrath spun along on its own axis. It’s time again for it to feel the touch of the divine.

On the non-content side of things, we’re going to be working on a lot of stuff “under the hood” to make your gameplay better. We’re looking into ways to increase the speed of our game and graphics engine, some of which could be very significant, which would obviously make raids and public quests a lot more fun, as well as boosting smoothness of gameplay for everyone. We’re revamping the way that our terrain is created so that we can bring you content more quickly, but still with high quality, thus increasing how big the world can become.

And last but not least, we’re crafting a host of new features and fun ways to play the game. Some of our current ideas are way outside the box for an MMO and we’re pushing hard to bring you new experiences (more on these later!).

We’re already one of the best MMOs out there. This year we’re going to become even more unique and exciting. 2011 is a good year to be Norrathian.

— Dave “Smokejumper” Georgeson

P.S., A detailed feature list of the upcoming GU 60 will be announced soon, and more elements of the longer-ranged features will roll out in successive months. This letter is just to let you know the general direction of where we’re going and what to expect.

In furtherance of that less-than-optimistic thread about Destiny of Velious, SgtPmpkn had this to say:

Supposedly this content is already created, as the art/lore/mechanics/etc are mostly complete. Once the base Velious is released, they will tweaks any bugs that arise, but also then be testing the content for the next GU, which would be a larger amount of time, to test and tweak, if they already have the art assets and other items already done.

To which SmokeJumper (EQ2’s Senior Producer) responded:

Yup. That’s the plan. We didn’t want to release everything at once, or else we’d get the “rip through it and leave it behind” syndrome that we’ve had in past years. So we’re releasing some of the dungeons and raids after release…but that doesn’t mean we can just wait to do them until later.

As some of you have said in this thread, the GUs are important also, and we’ve got big plans for what we’d like to do this year in those GUs. We can’t create a “resource debt” by leaving DoV 1 content to be done later. So even though that stuff isn’t in at release, most of it is done already.

That lets us concentrate on other stuff we’ve been dying to do, like improve PvP/BGs and revamp Qeynos & Freeport.

Here are some news items we missed in the flurry of Server Merge and Freeblood news. They include Shaders 3 and Halas buildings, the look of the Freeblood, and Loitering NPCs in Freeport and Qeynos.

It seems we’ll be parting with two islands by May’s end. And while we’ll still be able to catch  John Locke, Jack, Hurley, Sawyer, and Kate in syndication, the Qeynos and Freeport starting islands seem destined for a more permanent fate. We are providing continuing (hopefully not excessive) coverage of the impending removal of the EQ2 starting islands.

Links to Isle of Refuge

I have done some Internet Archive and Google searches to try to find Writeups and history of the original Isle of Refuge quests. Here’s what I found:

• LISTEN to the Isle of Refuge/Queen’s Colony/Outpost of the Overlord theme music
• Read an old EQ2 Zam writeup about Isle of Refuge (on the Boat)
• Read an old writeup about Crafting on the Isle of Refuge
• Read an old writeup about Garven Tralk and the Isle of Refuge (Fighters)
• Read an old writeup about Collection Quests on the Isle of Refuge
• Read an old writeup about Other Quests on the Isle of Refuge

There seems to be some confusion in the In Testing Feedback thread regarding the removal of Qeynos and Freeport as starting choices. I stand by the original article I posted, but some clarification is worth mentioning.

Qeynos and Freeport Going Away?

Qeynos and Freeport are not being removed as cities. Furthermore to my knowledge, none of the level 6-20 quests in these city zones and surrounding suburbs are going away. Although further testing on the Test Server will be needed to confirm this.

Players wishing to experience the Qeynos and Freeport level 6-20 content would need to create a character in Kelethin or Halas, Neriak or Gorowyn and arrange travel to Qeynos or Freeport to do those quest lines.

It is also worth pointing out that changing Citizenship between Qeynos, Kelethin, and New Halas, or between Freeport, Neriak, and Gorowyn, is approximately a 15-30 minute process. It’s a single quest or short series of quests. It is nothing like Betrayal. Nor is changing your Citizenship required to play this content.

EQ2Wire would prefer if the islands are not removed, but de-emphasized from the Character Creation screen, with more options added on the Departure Boat to port the player to level 6-20 content in all 6 starting cities.

We stand by our belief that removing content is not necessary to improve the experience for new players.

In February, former EQ2 Senior Producer Alan “Brenlo” Crosby created a thread “What is the Golden Path?” It included this provocative passage:

The golden path is the first step in a larger revamp of our new player experience.   We took a look at the starting areas, other than Qeynos and Freeport as we plan to move away from those, and reworked content so that it had a better flow.  We wanted the quests in Darklight, Timorous and Greater Fay, to give you a better progression path.

When asked in the EQ2 ZAM Dev Chat to clarify this position, Brenlo responded further:

We plan to only allow new characters to start in the newer player areas. Timorous, Greater Fay, Darklight and soon Halas. The new player experience in Qeynos and Freeport are just not up to snuff anymore and do not provide as solid an experience when you enter the game for the first time.

Any hopes that this change would be canceled with the introduction of new EQ2 Senior Producer Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson, were dashed with his indication that he would “not be changing anything that was short-term” (short-term plans). So it seems this change was destined to go in one way or the other. Here are today’s Test Update notes which will not apply to Live Servers until Game Update 56 in mid- to late-May:

Test Update April / 27 / 2010
GENERAL

Qeynos and Freeport have been disabled as starting cities.