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The Tattered Notebook: I'm in ur community, stalking ur threads
Last week's small little interview was fun, but this week it's time to get back to business. I haven't stalked threads in the forum for a while now, and I'm afraid that I'm losing my touch. So this week I've dived back into the official EverQuest II forums to bring up the most recent discussion topics -- many of them centered on the changes made during Halas Reborn. Freeport and Qeynos still dominate the hot topic list, suggestions for things Dave Georgeson should fix in the game are being collected, and one thread muses on the past and future of the game. In short, don't miss out on this week's entry in my Tattered Notebook. Do not disgrace the power of the Tier'dal, as the Community Manager Dark Elf has done! Otherwise I will have to invent stern punishments, like withholding lolcats from the internet. Do not force my hand!
The Tattered Notebook: Post-Halas Reborn interview with producer Dave Georgeson
Hello there, brave Norrathian adventurers! It is I, Seccia Ravenloft, back again from my recent excursion to track down "The One Final Truth." While I didn't find "The One Final Truth," I did run across Dave Georgeson again, and that made the whole excursion totally worth it. Last week, I noticed a fair number of you had some problems with Shader 3.0 in EverQuest II. I'm sorry to hear that your pathetic non-Tier'dal computers cannot handle the wonderous onslaught, but I certainly brought that up with Dave in this interview, as well as the controversial decision to remove the starting areas of Freeport and Qeynos. Plus, I may have even weaseled a small detail or two on the next expansion out of him, thanks to my incredible interrogation techniques. But why shall we delay the inevitable any longer? To the interview, quickly!
EQ2 nerfs Qeynos and Freeport starting areas
Lost amid the lengthy patch notes for Everquest II's recent Halas Reborn update is a curious decision by the developers at Sony Online Entertainment. The game's two traditional starting locations, the Isle of Refuge and the Outpost of the Overlord (which feed into the capital cities of Qeynos and Freeport, respectively), have been removed as choices at character creation. On the surface it doesn't seem like such a big deal, as the game has several unique starting locales including Neriak, Timorous Deep, Kelethin, and the newly minted frozen north of New Halas. That said, nostalgia can be a powerful thing, and a titanic thread lamenting the changes has erupted on the game's official forums. The epic post (clocking in at 68 pages as of press time) is overwhelmingly against the change, with a few dissenters piping up to say good riddance to the venerable newbie islands. Despite the player outrage, it seems as if the decision will stand and is in fact part of a larger revamp in progress. "Primarily, the starting islands and following content, simply put, are not up to the standards of the newer starting cities. Players who start in these zones are at a disadvantage when compared to players who start in the newer zones. In the more recent starting zones, the play experience is laid out better, with improved loot and quests. From an art and design standpoint, the islands were great five years ago when the game launched, but the game has changed and improved in many ways and we don't feel the newbie islands are as good as they should be today," said SOE's Cronyn. It's also worth noting that the island content has not been removed from the game entirely as some have speculated. Characters created (and not advanced) prior to the Halas Reborn patch are still on the two starting isles, and will still feed into Qeynos and Freeport upon completion of the quest line. [Thanks to Khrong for the heads up.]
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.
The Daily Grind: "Are we there yet?"
Some of you surely played EverQuest back in the day. Whether it was your first MMO or not, one thing's for sure: it was the first huge MMO. When we say huge, we're not referring to subscription numbers; we're talking about the size of the world. It was much grander than that of Ultima Online, Everyone who played EQ remembers his or her first trip from Freeport to Qeynos or vice versa.That trip was a very dire one, especially for a level 10 character. If memory serves, you had to go through Kithicor, the goblin dungeon of Runnyeye, the Beholder's maze (that was the most dangerous part, since it was all narrow canyons), the orc-sieged Highpass Hold, and of course all of the Karanas, griffins and giants be damned. It was not safe. It also took a really, really long time. If you were coming originally from Faydwer, before any of this you also had to take a fairly long boat ride -- certainly much longer than the almost-instant inter-continental rides in World of Warcraft.But the journey was exciting. It actually felt like it was an epic adventure. In most recent MMOs, fast travel is prevalent and everything is streamlined to take as little time as possible. As the genre has become more casual with regards to travel time and danger, have we lost something? Are there no more epic cross-continental treks full of thrilling close calls?
EQII Game Update 43 preview shows new features and lots of pics
EQ2Players has put up another preview for EverQuest II's Game Update 43, and not only does this one have a large amount of pretty pictures, it also details some new features that we didn't see in the last preview. As well as the group looting and shiny harvesting changes, major cities will be revamped with some new travel bells and extra banking/broker/mender NPCs, and significant renovations will be made to the Ironforge Exchange in Qeynos.For the tradeskillers, new Froglok mannequins will be available to craft, and there will also be some faction items for those those with good Riliss, Bathezid and Danak factions. An example of one of these items is shown above -- the Crafted Vault Expander -- and it makes you wonder what other kind of handy crafted goods might be coming. Check out the gallery we've compiled of all the pictures featured in the GU43 preview.%Gallery-17446%
