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Chaotic prelude in new EverQuest II game update
It's easy to become complacent in an MMO, and it's always good news for the players (though not so much the characters) when things get shaken up dramatically. Cue the most recent game update to EverQuest II, in which all sorts of madness is breaking loose. Two of the game's most central cities, Qeynos and Freeport, are both suffering from major disruption. Deathknell Citadel has vanished over Freeport, queueing up an almost immediate elimination of the city's tenuous peace with the Overlord's disappearance. Qeynos, meanwhile, is having information and the lineage of the royal family assaulted, preventing them from doing much beyond surveying the chaos in Freeport. There's an excellent trailer for the event that should help get players ready for what's coming in the near future. The update itself is a prelude to the upcoming Sentinel's Fate expansion, which launches early next year. While a great deal of the patch has been devoted to relentless bug-squishing, it's hard not to get into the energy of an update that attacks a very core part of the game, so if you're playing EverQuest II what are you waiting for? Log in and start helping to restore order... or attacking everything in sight and spreading chaos. It's really up to you.
Sixth-year Veteran Rewards announced for EQII
If you've faithfully stayed with EverQuest II since launch, then you've got a handful of new Veteran Rewards to look forward to just around the corner. The sixth-year rewards have been announced on EQ2Players, and one of the bonus items in particular has the community cheering. Beginning with that most celebrated item, the rewards are: Call of the Veteran: A charm-slot item that can be used to teleport to a group-member, or summon them to your own location. This functionality was confirmed by EverQuest II lead programmer Rothgar on the forums; the EQ2Players page only mentions teleporting to someone else but leaves out the summoning part. It has a reuse time of 60 minutes. Hammer of Adept Hands: A charm-slot item that can be clicked to completely refill your tradeskill vitality. Its reuse time is 7 days. Destiny Accessory Bag, containing the Hood of Fate and Shroud of Fate: A hood and cloak to let those around you know that you're part of the six-year club. Rothgar also stated in another thread that up until some time this year, eligibility for veteran rewards was not being tallied correctly, with credit being given even while accounts were inactive. Going forward, an account must be actively subscribed to keep adding time towards veteran rewards. The rewards will be available when the Will of a Tyrant patch goes live on December 9th.
EQII's producer discusses the next update and scrapped features
The latest EverQuest II producer's letter has shed some light on what the next game update, Will of a Tyrant, is likely to contain when it is released on the 9th of December. Senior producer Alan Crosby freely admitted that the patch will not bring as much new content as players might be used to getting; instead, the focus for this round of updating has been to fix lots of little bugs, some of which have been mildly irritating folks since EverQuest II's launch. Crosby said that this approach was chosen to give the game a nice clean slate for the coming expansion, Sentinel's Fate. The letter goes on to discuss a couple of features (that may or may not have once been considered a part of the Will of a Tyrant update) that have been scrapped altogether. The Item Ratings system was abandoned, at least partially due to feedback from the player base, and the Fighter revamp that was in the works has been considerably scaled back. Both of these negatives do have a silver lining though -- the developers are looking at alternative ways to enhance gear, and Fighters will still see some tweaks, albeit "small changes, rather than sweeping revamps". Crusaders will be among the first Fighter classes to be looked at -- see the full letter for some early details. While the producer's letter makes Will of a Tyrant sound overwhelmingly lacklustre, keep in mind that it doesn't go into some previously announced events that should give players something new to do for at least a little while. Hopefully the decision to squash all those bugs pays off with a smooth launch for Sentinel's Fate in February.
