Tomorrow, Shards of Destiny is going to the Test server!  Woo Hoo!  We hope you are as excited as we are to see the new content and try it out for yourselves.  I encourage you, if you have time in your busy schedules, to jump onto Test and try the new content out.  We would love to hear your feedback and the more people that take part, the more solid we can make sure this update releases.

One thing you will notice missing from the update notes are the Shader 3.0 changes.  Unfortunately the work is turning out to be a little more time intensive than our initial estimates.  We did not want to rush it out, as it is a far reaching change that can impact many players and systems, so we are going to let it bake a little longer.  Working with it and testing it internally on as many system configs as our compatibility lab can put together, and they can put together a TON, to make sure it causes as little disruption as possible.  We want everyone to enjoy the vibrant lighting and shader changes this brings to the game and we hope you can be patient as we continue to tweak it until the next game update, which is tentatively scheduled for early December.

One of the new systems we are really excited about is the Chronomagic, formerly Auto-Mentoring, system.  This allows you to level down your character and experience lower level content that you may have missed, want to play over, or experience with new friends.

Houses are getting room upgrades! How exciting is that?  Most housing will soon have at least one additional room added to their architecture.  Maj’Dul housing gains multiple new rooms, I may finally up and move there.  Along with the new rooms, there is a modest increase in the number of items a house can hold, so we hope that you decorators out there make good use of the added space.  If you are a decorator and have something to show off, we encourage you to show images on the forums or even send them to us as we love to see the imaginative things you create.

There are a good deal of additional features and content pieces coming too, so check out those Test update notes and let us know what you think.

You may have noticed a hotfix this morning with a couple of small code changes.  One of which was a small change to the Welcome Screen.  Nothing huge, just a single new field in the lower right corner.  The welcome screen now displays each days Daily Mission!  A welcome and useful change I hope!  Above that you will see a new field that simply says Hot Zone.  “What is that Brenlo?” Well I am glad you asked!  Our brilliant coders and designers have come up with a new feature that each day increases the fabled drop rates in one dungeon.  The welcome screen will display which dungeon currently has the increased drop rate.  “But Brenlo, right now it says None!  I want my Hot Zone!” Do not fret my friends, we will be turning it on soon.

In fact. . .  Because we were unable to provide our European and Japanese players with GU 52 at the same time as our North American servers, we will be turning the Hot Zones on for those servers this weekend!   Look for an announcement from Kiara on the specific time it turns on and then watch the welcome screen.  For our North American servers, you will get this new hotness, yes I just said new hotness, let the hate mail begin, the following weekend.  Just in time for Labor Day.

We have lots going on here in the EQII laboratory so we will continue to keep you updated and keep that feedback coming as we love to hear from you.  Well most of you, you know who you are . . . Kendricke.  =P

I hope to see you in Atlanta at Dragon Con.

Alan “Brenlo” Crosby
Senior Producer EverQuest II

You know, the most awkward part of writing one of these is the introduction; it almost always comes across as cliché.

So, now that we have that out of the way….

I am extremely pleased to join the creative and passionate EQII team as the Senior Producer.  Bruce has always been wonderful to work with and leaves me some rather large shoes to fill (speaking of clichés; they are actually about the same size as my own).  Bruce has been a strong shepherd for the team and the game and we all wish him well as he moves into his new role here at SOE.  I know he will do well, as he carries the dedication he shows in all things with him.

As far as Community Relations, I am leaving the team in very capable hands.  Richard “Greeblen” Schmelter will be giving that team the love they need now, and I know he will shine.  Why the change for me?  Well, first you should understand that it is not as different a career as you might think.  A producer is a manager, just like a director.  So, many of the skills are the same.  Just different processes, more people, more assets.  More, more, more.  And of course, now I have these large looming deadlines.  What was I thinking?  I love games, especially MMO’s.  EQ was my first love and brought me to SOE, but it was EQII that held me longer than any other.  I love the game and when the opportunity arose to work with this team, I could not pass it up.

This team is amazing!  I have spent the last two days in meetings as they talk about their work and their passion for this product; I am excited, as I could not be blessed with a better group to help me make this transition into Production.  Coders, Designers and Artists are all working very hard to make sure EQII stays the quality game it is today.  Over the next few weeks you will see some of their plans come to fruition as we publish Monument and Might (GU 52) to Test and then Live servers sometime in June (possibly before Fan Faire).

But that ain’t all we have in store for you.  As we sat together and went over the plans for GU 53 and beyond, the player in me was piqued.  I wanted this new stuff NOW.  I wanted to play with the new zones, items, and dungeons.  I smiled and laughed as I saw new creatures and their animations (complete with sound effects provided by Tom Tobey, one of our Senior Artists), and I know that you will love them too.

We also have some not so much fun stuff to get to, maintenance to the game to allow us to continue to develop content, expansions, and items for years to come.  Some of those pills will be tough to swallow (cliché).  The team and I will work hard to make certain you understand why we’re making these changes, why they are necessary.  We will discuss them with you and listen to your feedback.  While that doesn’t mean we can always go the way some players feel is correct, it does mean we want you to know the WHY of our decisions.  I used the word “shepherd” for Bruce and it is fitting, as that is what a producer does.  They make sure the game is headed in the right direction, away from cliffs and pitfalls so that it stays around, competitive, and most importantly fun, for a good long time.

I will be available on the forums occasionally, on Twitter often (handle is Brenlo) and in game when I can log in to chat with you.  I look forward to hearing from you.  I look forward to playing with you.   I look forward to being a shepherd for this game and development team.  Leading them, shaping their plans and guiding their passion.  A passion you, I and the team share.

See you in Norrath.

Alan Crosby
Senior Producer – EQII

This is a big week around SOE. We’ve launched Free Realms! Free Realms now joins the wide selection of games we already have in the SOE portfolio.  It’s a different kind of game for us, and one we hope will reach a much broader audience than our other titles. Free Realms isn’t the typical  MMO that we’ve done in the past, but a much more accessible and light hearted look at a world. This game was designed with the idea that it would be playable by a much wider range of ages, the 8 to 80 that you hear so much about. I’ve seen children playing this as young as 3, and folks my age (and that’s old!) having just as much fun. With a plethora of minigames, to more 3D style events like kart racing and combat, there’s fun for everyone.
 
There’s a new business model involved, too. As the name implies, you can play for free. Just hit the website, sign up for an account and you are off and running! If you already have a station account, then just sign in! There’s an optional membership available for purchase that gives you access to even more stuff like additional jobs, more character slots, leaderboards and much more for only $4.99 per month. There is the opportunity to engage in microtransanctions to purchase items for use in-game, from clothing to pets, trading cards for the card game, potions and other boosts, weapons, tools, racing karts, food…and I’m pretty sure I saw the proverbial kitchen sink! Of course, this is the first time we’ve done a game like this, and it’s pretty darn exciting for all of us.

I would heartily encourage you to jump in and have some fun. Check it out at:  www.FreeRealms.com.

Bruce “Froech” Ferguson

One of the upcoming features for GU52 is a new system that will allow players to write and distribute their own books in the world of Norrath. These books look and act just like the current books in the game. You can hold them in your inventory or place them in your house or guild hall for other players to read.

These user-written books can be obtained from a crafter and will start out blank. Any player can write in a blank book, but as soon as you write the first word you become the author of that book. From that point forward, only the author may edit the contents of the book.

The book window will display an “Edit” button whenever you read a blank book or a book you have authored. Clicking the edit button will reveal controls that allow you to enter text and see the layout from page to page.

There is no limit to the number of pages, but books are limited by the amount of text. A progress bar will let you know how much more text your book can hold as you are typing. There is also an auto-save feature that will periodically write the contents of the book to your hard drive in case of a crash.

When you’ve completed the book and you’d like to distribute it, you can make as many copies as you like. All you need is the original book and a blank book.  Right-click the original book and choose “Copy”. Your cursor will turn into an arrow allowing you to select the blank book in your inventory that you’d like to copy it to.

User-written books are tradable allowing you to give them to friends or place them on the broker. We’re really excited about this new feature and look forward to seeing your creativity!

Come join the discussion in the official EverQuest II Forums.

We have some exciting new features in the works for EQII! One of the first we’ll be talking about is Research Assistants. 

These hardworking researchers will help you acquire upgrades to your spells and combat arts while you’re off adventuring in the deepest darkest dungeon or asleep in your own warm cozy bed. Even though they’re hardworking, they’re not a speedy service and they are limited in how much they’ll help you.  Because this kind of research is complicated, they’ll only be able to work on one spell or combat art for one character per server.

All research requires a base amount of information to work with. In the case of the Research Assistants, this manifests in that they require you to have the previous tier of the spell being upgraded before they can begin work for you. So, in order to research that Master I, you’ll need to first know the Adept III version, though it doesn’t matter whether that Adept III version came from researching or from your friendly neighborhood sage, jeweler or alchemist. The time required to research a spell increase will vary based on the level and tier of the spell. A level 20 Adept I may only take an hour, while a level 80 master will likely take a month or longer.

We’re still working out the details of how these assistants will work in Norrath and we want to hear your feedback.  Do you have a preference on how these researchers would look or how you interact with them?

All those and anything else you’d like to share with us is welcome feedback on the official forums.

Kirstie

Hello, my friends! It seems as though my letter that was posted last Friday has had the desired effect. What I tried to say was ‘Hey, we appreciate your feedback’, and ‘we’re not going to release the additional changes to fighters while we continue to evaluate your feedback and continue to make any necessary changes”. And it has indeed caused a significant increase in feedback, so thank you very much. Now we need to parse all the data that you’ve presented, and continue that process.

So, what is our goal on EQII? It really is two-fold. One is to provide Tanks an opportunity to have more control over their own destiny, rather than requiring others in a group to channel hate to them, by dealing directly with the aggro. Secondly, we’re trying to make them slightly more versatile in a group setting that has multiple tanks, by allowing them change their stance and do something a little different, without significantly impinging on the roles of others. It comes down to allowing the Fighters to be more versatile, and consequently give them a higher level of desirability in groups.

It may surprise some of you, but we don’t sit around discussing the best way to break any specific class. Sure, we tease you about working on Beastlords, or deleting the healing classes, but that’s just good natured ribbing. What we do, on a rather frequent basis, is to look at the way that things are working out in the game, and try to make adjustments to it that will make game play more fun for more people. Game balance itself is a very funny thing, as I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a game that is properly and consistently balanced across all classes. And the fun part for us is to see all of the innovative and previously unexpected ways that people play. As many folks that have been on EQII from the beginning, I can assure you that we’re constantly amazed to see what we call “emergent gameplay” in the biz, which is just a fancy way of saying “huh, I never thought they’d do that!”. But our ideal really is that every class is equal, in different ways. (Go ahead, make sense of that statement, I dare you!) Each class needs to have something they can do that’s fun, and important in a group. At the same time, and often in direct conflict to that goal, each class needs to be able to solo effectively. Finding the balance between those two goals is what we do, over and over. Every time we add some new item, boss, combat effect, spell, whatever change there happens to be, we end up having to look at balance again, as the landscape is constantly changing. And as developers, it hurts our pride to have one single class combination that is clearly better than another. For every min/maxer out there, there’s an equally passionate developer saying “I can fix that!”, or so it seems. We’re trying to balance each class in relation to all of the others, rather than off by themselves. Sure, it would be easier to do each alone, but the fact is that in an MMO, you play with other people, and we really want to encourage that. We have solo content, and we’ll continue to work on it, but there is an extra payoff of fun when you share your time in game with others. So, we want to move forward with our intention to make each class meaningful and useful in a group, with a unique play style that doesn’t get duplicated too much by any other class.

We do feel as though the direction we are heading for the fighters will be good for the game in the long run. We also recognize that the concept needs to be thoroughly tested by many folks, so we can optimize the way it affects gameplay, and even then not everyone will be ardent supporters. I can assure you that we’re trying to make the game more fun as a whole, not less. And when we’re done with this pass on the Tanks, we’ll move on to the next class, looking to make additional tweaks, to ensure that there isn’t a class or play style the feels as though they are being neglected, and that the game remains fun for all.

I’ll continue to say it….thanks for all the feedback. All of us appreciate it. See you in EverQuest II !

Bruce “Froech” Ferguson, Senior Producer

So, here we are in the afterglow (cough) of shipping our expansion, The Shadow Odyssey™. I have to say thanks, not only to you, our players, for the inspiration, but also to all of the individual teams at SOE who pulled together and worked so hard to bring you this monumental achievement. Often, it’s the game team who gets to be in the limelight, and they certainly did an outstanding job, but there is a whole crew of other folks who support us in all sorts of ways and deserve praise as well. We couldn’t do the things we do if we weren’t part of a great big family.
 
But what lies ahead for EverQuest® II? We realize that there is a great diversity of games for you to choose from, with different play styles, rewards and even payment methods. Every day it seems existing online games are offering deeper, more robust commerce systems, and that, coupled with the players’ desires, led us down this exciting path.

Over the last several years, we’ve been asking you about what kinds of things you generally want from SOE and specifically from EverQuest II from different forums. At the last two Fan Faires, and other venues as well, we’ve seen an increasingly large number of players indicate that they want new methods for achieving convenience, customization and avenues for fun.  So, we’ve designed a system to satisfy that need. We’ve tried to tailor it so that you can choose to participate or not, as you prefer.
 
Our new system is called Station Cash™, which opens up new options and gameplay choices for players. We’ve developed three main categories for items – convenience, customization and fun – without significantly impacting the core gameplay experience. For convenience, we’re offering potions of various types, from health to experience boosts broken down into adventure, tradeskill and achievement.  For customization, we have several appearance packs in various armor types, and, for fun, a wide selection of pets for your house and out in the virtual world. Of course, one of our most important concerns when implementing this was to ensure that the game balance wasn’t impacted. These items, and any future offerings, are intended for convenience and fun, and shouldn’t be required equipment to achieve a goal in game.  
 
We’re really trying to target everyone by making these items available in a wide variety of sizes, uses, effects and costs. They should be useful for almost every player level, whether a new character/alt or an experienced raider. And, of course, we’ll be continuing to create new items, giving you an even wider variety to choose from in the future. We’re very excited by this new step forward and welcome your feedback to help us refine our offerings to meet your needs.

Thanks again for your support and feedback!
 
Sincerely,

Bruce A. Ferguson
Senior Producer, EverQuest II
Sony Online Entertainment

We on the EverQuest II team are excited!  We’re less than a week away from launching our Fifth expansion, The Shadow Odyssey!  For some on the team, this will be the first title that they’re credited on.  For others, it’s another box on the shelf that joins a vast array of excellent titles bearing their name.  Everyone on the team shares feelings of joy, triumph and pride as we prepare for next Tuesday.  Very soon, you will be able to experience the fruits of our labor over the past year.

The work that goes into an expansion pack is an enormous and highly-coordinated event.  There are many people beside the Development Team involved.  Sure, there are Artists, Designers and Programmers who make the content, but many other departments at SOE contribute too.  We have a Quality Assurance team that meticulously tests all of the new content and previous content as well.  Our Marketing and PR departments are responsible for getting the word out and proliferating news of the great features.  The Internationalization group (or i18n as we call them) translates thousands upon thousands of words into other languages to portray items and quests to other cultures around the globe.  The Compatibility Lab tests the software on many different machine configurations and verifies that the DVD installs correctly.  Our Community group interacts with the players and the Beta Testers for feedback and excitement.  Finally, our Distributors work with the Retail Channels to get the game boxes onto the shelves and eventually into your hands.

Launch Day is always heavily anticipated, but it’s a busy and tiring day.  This will be my seventh expansion pack launch, but make no mistake: every one is different and there is no secret formula.  Launches don’t always go smoothly, but we have an excellent and capable team here at SOE.  Last year during the Rise of Kunark launch, I blogged the days activities on my personal blog.  This year I plan to do the same, but through the magic of Twitter.  However, unlike the 8am time to be in the office last year, I (and several other members of the various groups mentioned above) will be at my desk dark and early at 3am.

We on the EQII team are looking forward to next Tuesday and the opportunity to bring you The Shadow Odyssey!

Joshua “Autenil” Kriegshauser
Technical Director, EverQuest II

So what is an Associate Producer supposed to do in between two big updates (Guild Halls just past and The Shadow Odyssey around the corner)?
 
Aside from watching for live issues and trying to figure out how to make the launch go as smooth as possible on November 18th, I’ve been spending time deciding what zone in the upcoming expansion is my favorite. 
 
I was pretty biased when I started.  When I found out what the expansion was going to be I had a really strong leanings toward being able to return to the Guk dungeons.  Although ducks are my absolute favorite in game and in real life, frogs and frogloks are a big favorite of mine in game.  I spent many many formative levels in EverQuest killing frogloks.  I knew the spawn camps and locations in those dungeons better than I knew my own house.
 
But frogloks were a given for the Guk dungeons.  My first question to our character artists was “Can we have those big creepy hands in our Guk?” and of course they had already decided we would.  And did they ever deliver.  

 
 
Not only are these hands creepy in their own right, but they bring back lots of memories for me of happy days in Guk.
 
The other thing I’ve been up to is making sure the Nights of the Dead event got out live properly.  We had a lot of great feedback from the Test community this year before it went live and I think its turned into a really fun event.
 
If you haven’t already I’d point you over to the video that we made this year, it’s a nice teaser on the event that is running now.

-Jennifer “Kristie” Gerull

It seems as if Fan Faire was only last week, so it’s hard to believe that it was in fact almost two whole months ago!  Since we got back there have been two game updates, although really only one from our point of view – the changes that went live in Game Update 48 had all been done and checked in by us before we ever left for Fan Faire.  Since we completed the changes for Game Update 49, we have been hard at work on the upcoming expansion, The Shadow Odyssey. 

We were working on it long before this of course; an expansion the size of EQII’s expansions takes at least a year, and I know that the early work for the NEXT expansion has already begun, even before we have launched the current one.  However, up till the content for Game Update 49 was checked in, we were still thinking about other things at the same time; once that deadline passed we could all focus purely on the expansion. 

Beta testing is underway, and the folks who attended Fan Faire and got their beta invitations are running around in our new zones exploring, testing, bug reporting, and occasionally dying in unexpected ways – but such is the joy of beta, after all!  Their feedback is extremely useful to us.  Of course our QA team does a great job of testing things, but sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s fun or not, or what may be confusing, until you see a significant number of people trying it out.  Also, of course, at this point in the updating cycle QA hasn’t always had time to thoroughly test all the changes we make before they get pushed to beta server, or even if they have we might not have had time to fix the bugs, and having large numbers of people poking at it is certain to uncover any bugs that haven’t been addressed yet!

The number of ways that people can find to break things is a never-ending source of surprise and amazement to me.  I’m always impressed at how many ways our QA team finds to test things, and yet when the content goes to test or beta server (or even live, in some unfortunate cases) there will often be some determined player out there who just somehow manages to find a way to do something nobody expected at all.

My favorite example of this was probably a bug report I received from the tradeskill epic quest line, in the scholar instance.  This step of the quest has you zone into the Library of Light in Maj’dul, where you have to dodge annoyed djinn librarians in order to search the shelves for scraps of some old halfling crafting notes.  Once you have found all the scraps of paper, you use a scribing desk and a bookbinding recipe book that you pick up on the far side of the library to bind the papers into a readable scroll which you take back to the quest-giver.  I carefully made this final scroll “no destroy” just to be sure nobody would delete it and then get stuck on the quest after leaving the library.  The librarians are very high level and very irritable and will kill you if you get too close, so you can pull heavy books from the bookshelves around you and throw the books at the librarians to stun them temporarily.  The stuns last for about a minute and give you time to get past.

This was my first time making a quest this complicated, and so there were a lot of new things I was doing for the first time, and I tested all the stages pretty obsessively before sending them off to QA for testing.  Optimistically, I hoped to avoid getting bugs back.  And I had tested this instance through from beginning to end and hadn’t found anything broken or not working.

The bug report I received read thus:  “If a player doing the library instance for the epic quest deletes the quest after scribing the recipe, then repeats the quest and crafts the scroll before completing the step to obtain the recipe, they will become gated.  Because they crafted the recipe before the quest says to craft it, and the item is lore and no-destroy”.

…Which just goes to show that no matter how well you think you’ve tested a quest, somebody else can generally always think of a new way to try and break it that you never even thought of!

My second favorite example of an obscure bug that slipped past both me and QA is probably what we could call “the case of the disappearing pants”.  The tradeskill faction merchant in Freeport has always sold a set of casual clothing which looks like a nice cloth tunic and leggings (or skirt, on females).  I made this outfit available to the other evil cities, and I wanted to give a similar version to the tradeskill faction merchants in the good cities for players to buy, so I put in an art request asking if it was possible to have a lighter tinted version of the outfit made.  This wasn’t a high priority of course, but after a few months one of the artists found time to take a look, and retinted an unused version of the darker set into a very nice lighter colored version.  I tested it out on a number of my test characters – usually a halfling, but often I use a ratonga or a half elf too, and I checked both the male and female outfits looked correct.  QA also checked it out and didn’t see any problems, and so the outfit proceeded to Test server. 

At which point it was discovered that the new light tinted leggings of the outfit looked perfectly fine on all females, and also perfectly fine on male barbarians, high elves, dark elves, half elves, wood elves, halflings, gnomes, ogres, trolls, ratongas, erudites, sarnak, iksar, kerra, fae, arasai, and dwarves … but on human males (and ONLY human males) they actually turned the wearer’s legs invisible!  Apparently this was the one single appearance in about 36 (actually much more, counting SOGA versions) that didn’t work, but coincidentally nobody had happened to test it on a male human.

It wasn’t so much a problem for players, since the player-wearable items were only brand new and nobody was wearing them yet, so we could just pull those off the merchant until they were fixed.  However, a number of NPCs around the world had apparently been using these leggings, and in all cases where the NPC happened to be a human male, they were now suffering a rather strange case of entire lower body amputation. 

Unfortunately, art changes are much more difficult than design changes to push in hastily, and it wasn’t possible to fix the human male leggings before it was time for the game update to go to the live servers.  As a result, Jindrack ended up getting a bug report and had to search through all our NPCs to find out which ones had outfits using these leggings, and replace them temporarily with other leggings.  This was in fact the first time that I heard of the bug, when I started seeing him checking in a series of outfit fixes with header comments like “Further adventures of changing pants.”

Apart from the entertainment value we all got from reading Jindrack’s update notes as he apparently went around Norrath changing people’s pants on every continent, this bug definitely highlighted to me how hard it can be to test every possible thing that could go wrong with what seems like a fairly simple change.

So now we are in the last countdown to the expansion launch, and trying hard to avoid any other such peculiar bugs, and trying to second-guess ways in which people might be able to break or otherwise have problems with any of the new content that we have put in.  No invisible pants so far this expansion, though there have been plenty of other interesting issues, and no doubt many more to come.  Hopefully the folks on beta are enjoying their beta testing despite the occasional interesting bugs, and with their help and QA’s hard work we can get it all tidied up in plenty of time for the launch!

Emily “Domino” Taylor