Category: Gaming

More news trickled out yesterday at SOE Live and I thought I’d post it below with a few comments here and there. I’m commenting on notes that Feldon has written up on EQ2wire, as he live blogged the panels.

• If you buy Chains of Eternity, you get an item you can claim 2 per account (not 1 per character) that if you are level 90 it dings you to 280AAs. [A lot of people are upset about this, and a lot of people are happy. I don’t think grinding 280aa takes any skill and most people simply grind older zones and don’t actually obtain AA the way they were ‘meant’ to be obtained. The 280AA cap in order to reach level 92 is steep for people who have been away from game, and unless they remove that requirement – OR – use this item, I can see people not returning. Honestly, if someone doesn’t want to use it, they don’t have to. I don’t personally see it as game breaking.]
• The addition of incremental spells. These are new abilities that have stages. It was a bit confusing but basically the more you cast a spell, it will enable you to eventually cast a new bigger / better spell. Perhaps completely different than the spell you had been casting to begin with. [Sounds neat, and I wonder if the quality of the spell you’re casting affects the result of the new spell (ie: adept, mastercrafted etc).]
• Traderskillers are getting prestige abilities, and tradeskill AA will be their own point system now and not tied to the adventuring total AA. They’re also adding mass production, but no idea if this will be for everything, or only certain items, or consumables, or what. Will wait to hear more information. [VERY happy to hear this]
• Spirit Stones. Items that grow in power when you do what it says on them (ie: the more you heal your allies, the more passive abilities the stone gains). These sound neat, like a new type of adornment.

Of course there’s a lot of content coming, two massive overland zones, a bunch of dungeons, raids, solo and group content. Beta apparently starts on Monday, and a tentative release date has been set for November 13th (that seems quite soon, so I would expect this to change). Are you excited about the expansion? The last few have been slightly lack luster for me, and I haven’t decided quite yet how I feel about this one. The EQ expansion on the other hand, I am VERY excited about.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Tonight was the first keynote at SOE Live (Fan Faire Forever!) and while there wasn’t a whole lot of detail about the games that I’m most interested in, there were some aspects I thought I’d talk about.

To start it off, I found it amusing that John Smedley talked about how non-instanced housing is going to be the next big thing at DCUO and he asked the crowd when the last time that was even done (and he mentioned SWG) – uhms. Vanguard has non-instanced housing. I know it may be difficult to try to remember all of your companies games, but at least try. Now, the interesting points

• Live casting games is a big deal, and getting bigger. SOE is going to add a TwitchTV client into their games (starting with Planetside 2 I believe, November 1st). [I think this is a great idea, why not show off your games as much as you can, and let the players do it for you.]
• EQ2 Chains of Eternity is tentatively scheduled for November 13th. [That seems VERY early, so I’m not expecting it to actually release then. Is there even a beta for it yet? Maybe they’re not having one this year.]
• EQ Rain of Fear is releasing November 28th [About what I expected]
• Krono are being introduced October 29th! [If you’re familiar with Plex, you’ll know how krono work. They’re in-game virtual items that you can use to pay for a 30 day subscription to the game. You can also put them on the broker and sell them to other players. I am VERY excited about this because as it is now players just have to trust one another when selling game cards. It’s too easy to get a fake time code, and easy to not get paid for a valid one. This will help that, I hope. Of course making them into an in-game item comes with issues like account thefts, hacks, etc.]
• EQNext is being completely re-done. SOE was not pleased with where it was headed, so they’ve completely scrapped everything they did, and are redoing the game into a sandbox of measures no one has seen before. They should have something to show at next years SOE Live, but we’ll just have to wait and see. [A LOT of people were upset about this announcement, but for some reason, not me. I’m pleased they honestly told us what was up, point blank, and we’ll just see where it goes from there].
• Wizardry Online beta opens October 29th. [I’m excited about this game. I think a nice hardcore game with permadeath has a niche market that very few games take part of these days, and there’s room for it.]
• SOE is partnering with Runewaker (the folks who made Runes of Magic) and bringing us all Dragon’s Prophet in 2013. [I have heard nothing about this game, but they showed a lot of videos and it looked neat. Unique? Not sure.]
• Planetside 2 releasing November 20th [Been in the beta for this one a while now, but it’s not something that’s my ‘usual’ type of game. Some people are excited, some people are saying it’s way too soon.]

And there you have it. The keynotes addressing EQ/EQ2 are tomorrow, they should go into more detail about each expansion and the future of both games, which I’m looking forward to hearing about. I may not always agree with what any gaming company does, but I do understand that as time passes games need to change along with it. It’s not always change for the best or even change for the better, but at least they’re trying.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

The count down to SOE Live is underway, and if you’re unable to make it this year you can watch a few of the panels live on twitch tv. SOE has posted a schedule so people don’t miss anything. I was incredibly excited and pleased to see that Vanguard has two panels this year,  in previous years Vanguard was the game no one wanted to talk about and you wouldn’t even find it at Fan Faire.

I spent most of yesterday working on my defiler. So far only my swashbuckler had braved the Withered Lands and managed to inch her way to 92 (I did this back in April, and I barely remembered it) and I was not really looking forward to leveling another character. I found the experience incredibly slow, so instead of questing I headed to my favorite old haunts and boxed my way through old instances. I hate having to compete with other characters in zones, so I tend to stick to instances when I can. My rout included going to Barren Sky and completing Vaults (and poking my head into Palace of the Awakened to see how busy it was), then heading off to Halls of Fate in the Bonemire. From there I went to The Blackscale Sepulcher, and Den of the Devourer, and off to Jarsath Wastes to Vault of Eternal Sleep, and Maidens Chamber. Before I knew it I was 92, and made my way to Freeport to complete the Chains of Eternity pre-quest that rewards a really nice legendary necklace.

At 92 you can begin to work on Skyshrine quests, and one of the first things I wanted to do was get the tradeskill apprentice. Sure you can buy it from the broker, but what is the fun of that! Next I’ll be working on getting my aa to 320, and then that character will be all ready for the next expansion when it releases. Of course I still have 8 other characters to go, but it’s a nice start!

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!