Author: Stargrace

Just another gamer with too much time on her hands.

Want to buy a Vanguard character?

Sony Online Entertainment has partnered with Live Gamer to provide Vanguard: Saga of Heroes customers with the same exchange system that our EverQuest II customers on The Bazaar and Vox servers enjoy.  Live Gamer exchange provides the security and transparency needed to trade virtual items with confidence, and with the Live Gamer system, participants will be able to both auction and purchase virtual assets (characters, coin, and items) securely and safely and without the risk of the fraudulent activities that plague 3rd party websites that are not authorized by SOE to provide these services.

Participation in Live Gamer exchange is not mandatory or required, but those wishing to participate in this new service must first register an account with www.livegamer.com.  Once registered, you can then utilize the in-game system to upload virtual assets to your Live Gamer account and auction them to others.  You can also use your Live Gamer account to bid on and purchase virtual assets and to send them to your in-game characters / accounts.

Live Gamer is offering an in-game incentive for trying the system out.  Customers that register with Live Gamer within the first two weeks will receive a jewelry box which when opened will offer a choice between one of three items, each targeted towards one of the three key professions.  For more information about this offer, please visit www.livegamer.com after the service has launched.

We will append this post with availability dates for the new service as soon as possible.

For more information on how to set up your Live Gamer account, please visit this link in our Knowledge Base.

The following thread is available for discussion of the new Vanguard Live Gamer Exchange service.

 

I’ve posted my thoughts on RMT and how it affects SOE’s games in particular before – when Station Cash came out. My opinions over all have not changed a great deal. I don’t mind RMT in games that don’t already have a $15 monthly fee. I agree there’s money to be made out there. It’s the wave of the future (or the past depending on how you look at it) and why not. I feel it crosses a ‘greedy’ line when you have both RMT and monthly subscription fees (depending on the items, I don’t mind fluff stuff at all like the gear from station cash and pets – I am on the fence about potions and the rest), and I feel a little more strongly about the Vanguard changes for a few other reasons which I’ll mention below. 

Number one is that there’s no choice for Vanguard players. All servers will be changing towards this Live Gamer partnership and they’re not going to open a new server for it. For those people who have played since beta it’s a sudden change where they have no say in the matter. This is a reality of gaming, should players really even get that much of a say? I’m not really sure. I do know that people hate being forced into something – give them a choice and they’re MUCH more likely to give your idea a shot. 

Number two is that (my opinion remember! Not fact!) I think this will affect the markets in a big way. On one of the most populated servers (Seradon) it’s already hard to find items for sale on the broker. Once this is implemented, why bother putting anything up for sale at all. You can put it on LiveGamer and then just make real life money from it. Or you can play the market even better and purchase everything off of the broker for plat and then sell that on Live Gamer and make yourself a tidy profit. 

I think SOE is doing this as a guinea pig project. Vanguard already has a dwindled community. They (developers) have been working VERY hard to pull it out of the rough. It’s a fantastic game and I’ve enjoyed playing it for the past 2+ years. There’s very rarely been anything bad I’ve personally said about the game. However even with all that, it has a very small population. 

Which makes it perfect to test out new ideas on. If the loyal community of Vanguard deals with the change well, and it’s popular and makes money, then why not push it towards other more popular games. If it doesn’t work well and it’s a huge flop – well, at least it’s only the four servers of Vanguard and not one of the ‘bigger’ games. Harsh words? Maybe, but I don’t think it’s all that far from the truth.

I’ll continue to play, I don’t echo the thoughts of others about the sky falling, but I doubt the game will have the same over all feeling that it has for me right now. A community of amazing people who work really hard to accomplish their goals. I expect an influx of gold sellers making legit accounts to sell their money and yes I expect people to buy from them. This whole RMT thing wouldn’t be such a big hit were there not some sort of market for it out there. 

These sorts of announcements really don’t come as a surprise any more, and it’ll be interesting to see how it goes. 

Can I buy your stuff?

EverQuest Update Notes (March 12th)

The servers are down for an 8 hour patch (ack!) and here’s what has been added!

 

3/12/2009
*** Highlights ***

– Guild Creation Tool: Players can now get their guilds created in-game by using the Guild Management window. When opening the Guild Management Window (Alt + G) when you are not in a guild, you will be asked if you would like to create one. All existing guild naming rules still apply. Only one guild is permitted per server per account. Guilds cannot be created while in a shroud.

– Pet Window Improvements: The functionality of the Pet Window has been improved by allowing players to customize each button individually. These changes also allow players to add commands that they pick up via AAs. We’ve also added some new commands including a pet hold command. (See UI: Pet Window Improvements below)

– Enhanced Raid Window: We’ve updated the raid management window to allow for sorting and expedition / shared task management improvements. Also added AFK, dead, and out of zone status. (See UI: Enhanced Raid Window below)
*** Items ***

– Nakk’s Enduring Bauble now looks just like the gem from a ring, instead of a ring.
– The Durus Faycite Shard: Gorenaire’s Chant of Frost, and Durus Faycite Shard: Talendor’s Chant of Flame now increase the duration of their respective songs by 1 tick instead of increasing the damage.

 
*** Spells ***

– Cantata of Rodcet now increases HP and Mana regen by 61/70/75 and 50/58/62 for Ranks 1/2/3, up from 51/60/65 and 42/50/54
– Fixed a problem with Performance resonance that was causing it to focus a number of effects that it shouldn’t have.
– Lowered the endurance cost on Wheel of Fists to 253/288/307 down from 316/360/384.
– Lowered the endurance cost on Whorl of Fists to 308/351/374 down from 385/439/468.
– Modified the stacking order of the Calanin’s Synergy discipline to better stack with other similar abilities including the effect from Deceivers Blight Strike and other spells that use the same effect.
– Talisman of the Stalwart scrolls can now be scribed by druids.
– The combat proc granted by Arcane Arietta will now cause additional damage for bards based on their wind instrument mods. This only effects the procs for the bard herself, and not the rest of the group.
– The endurance cost for Calanin’s Synergy has been increased to 385/439/468 up from 308/351/374. The duration in the effect has been increased by 6 seconds.
– The Twincast Self Buff spells are no longer focused by duration extension focuses.

 

*** Tradeskills ***

– Fixed a bug with the Pure sealed power-sources made via tradeskills. They were opening one tier behind where they should (so the Tier 1 took Tier 2 raid to open.)  They should now open properly with the proper tier of content.
– Fixed an issue with Dull, Murky and Foggy Sealed Energeian Orbs that could prevent them from opening properly.
– The following spells created by spell research now create a duplicate scroll instead of the original scroll. The original scrolls are now no trade. This does mean that you may have a no trade version currently, unfortunately there is no reasonable solution for a refund that is not able to allow players to create infinite scrolls. This change is intended to prevent players from creating infinite scrolls for free. Skill: Champion’s Aura, Skill: Poison Spikes Trap, Skill: Master’s Aura, Skill: Bloodlust Aura, Spell: Blessed Aura, Spell: Decrepit Skin, Spell: Aura of the Muse, Spell: Elddar’s Grasp, Spell: Puratus, Spell: Moonshadow, Spell: Ghost of Renewal, Spell: Mind Shatter, Spell: Chaos Flame, Spell: Iceflame Guard, Spell: Mind Flay, and Spell: Spirit of Oroshar.
– The research spell Odium can now be researched by priests as intended.
*** NPCs ***

– Dragorn Muramites should be providing a normal amount of experience again.
– Fenden Helter has decided to mark down many of his items.
– Additional items have been added to Fenden Helter in Dragonscale and are available for purchase.
*** AA ***

– Modified how the AAs Animation Empathy and Advanced Pet Discipline function to support the new Pet changes to the User Interface and Pet controls.
– Replaced the Skill Cap adjustments on Third Spire of Ancestors and Third Spire of the Savage Lord with a bonus to minimum damage to avoid certain stacking conflicts.
– Adjusted the stacking order on Rogue’s Fury to better stack with various Rogue disciplines, including Deadeye and Deadly Precision.
*** Miscellaneous ***

– Made various zone stability improvements.
*** UI: General ***

– Enhanced the Raid Window. (See UI: Enhanced Raid Window)
– The Pet Window has received a revamp! (See UI: Pet Window Improvements)
– Added chat window text output for users being invited to raids even when the raid confirmation popup is turned on.
– Added a button in the options general tab that toggles display of pet owner names on pets.
– Fixed a bug that sometimes caused two players to appear to share ownership of the same mercenary when they zoned simultaneously with unsuspended mercenaries.
– You should no longer be spammed with focus effect messages when you have an active mercenary .
– For custom UI creators, ListboxColumns can now have their own tooltips instead of just the Listbox.
*** UI: Enhanced Raid Window ***

– Updated the raid management window to allow for sorting and expedition / shared task management improvements. Also added AFK, dead, and out of zone status.
– Created the /comparetaskraid (Shared Task – Raid) and /compareexpedraid (Expedition – Raid) commands to list the players that are not in both lists.
– Updated the expedition window to allow for simplified raid and shared task invitations.
– Updated the shared task window to allow for simplified raid and expedition invitations.
– The group numbers in the raid window are now color coded in order to better differentiate between groups when sorting by group.
– Column headers now each have their own tool tip.
*** UI: Pet Window Improvements ***
 
– You can now assign buttons to all pet commands in the pet window.
– Pet target will be displayed under your pets hp bar so you will always know who your pet is attacking.
– Added toggleable buttons throughout the pet UI for sit/stand, follow/guard, focus, hold, taunt, and spell hold.
– Added new pet text based commands. You will now be able to toggle all states off or on, or simply toggle the state with a pet text based command. For example, /pet focus on, /pet focus off, and /pet focus.
– Added a new pet attack command to switch your pet to attack the new target regardless of AA’s or level; great for new and low level players. The old command will still exist as qattack.
– Added a pet hold functionality.
– New pet focus + pet hold functionality (call this pet state “pet convergence” ). Now, when you turn on both the focus and hold states, your pet will attack SPECIFICALLY what you want it to and when finished won’t attack or aggro or do anything else.
– Improved /pet back off. Fully clears the hate list and stops your pet from doing whatever it was doing before.
– Pet follow is now on by default when entering zones.
– Added the pet owner’s name below the pet name text (i.e., “Soandso’s pet”).
– When right clicking a pet button, commands not available to you are filtered out.
– Added messages your pet will say when issued different commands to clarify the intended behavior.
– The state of all pet buttons are now persisted across zoning and logging (except sit and follow that default to their appropriate settings when zoning).
– The UI layout of the pet window is now stored across zoning and logging.
– Integrated pet help has now been implemented and put into the EverQuest pet info window. Click the question mark next to the pet close box to access the pet help dialog.
– When enchanter pets are summoned, they properly only have the Get Lost command, unless they have the special grant pet command SPA/AA.
– Pet spell hold is now available as a command in the pet window.

– New –

EQUI_GuildCreationWindow.xml

– Changed –

EQUI.xml
EQUI_DynamicZoneWnd.xml
EQUI_HotButtonWnd.xml
EQUI_OptionsWindow.xml
EQUI_RaidWindow.xml
EQUI_TaskWnd.xml
SIDL.xml

 

– The EverQuest Team

Exclusive Interview with EQ2 Team

Finally, it’s up!

A month ago I was granted an amazing opportunity to fly down to San Diego (all the way from Ottawa Ontaio) and interview various developer teams who work for SOE (EQ,EQ2,VG, and lets not forget the Community team!) – it was an incredible experience. Aside from celebrating the 10th anniversary of EverQuest in the latest issue of Beckett MOG (Massive Online Gamer), Beckett has posted the EQ2 team interview up for people to read. Keep your eyes open for future interviews (there’s still the VG one as well as an interview with Rich Waters, and the Community team) posted under their news section!

Read the exclusive interview here