Summer seems to have arrived in San Diego this weekend; the weather is sunny and hot, the beaches and pools all over San Diego are filled, and my cats are lying around the balcony in the shade, basking in the heat. 

I went to a renaissance faire up near LA yesterday with some friends; I hadn’t been to one before so I didn’t known what to expect.  It was interesting, but in the 35 C (~100F) heat, I was astounded by the number of people managing to walk around in full skirts, bodices, leather doublets, armor, and all sorts of heavy things I would probably have passed out in if I’d been wearing them.  It made me appreciate how much work it actually is to get into and to wear that kind of outfit.  I logged into EQII this afternoon – the first chance I’ve had to even play since Game Update 45 went live – and did the Rodcet Nife live event quests on one of my evil characters.  In the game, you see people jogging around in the desert in full platemail, and it somehow looks so cool and effortless.  For actual realism we should probably have everyone in metal armor pass out flat after spending more than an hour in the Sinking Sands … but I suppose that wouldn’t really be “fun” gameplay, no matter how realistic it might be.

In theory this week past I have been working on tradeskill content for the upcoming expansion.  However, there have been quite a number of interruptions in the form of meetings and bug fixes that have needed doing, and last Friday we had some issues with one of our internal servers that meant I couldn’t do all the testing I’d planned.  So instead I ended up doing some other stuff on Friday.  The next game update will be accompanied closely by the launch of our next Legends of Norrath expansion, Oathbreaker; LoN is our trading card game, which ties into both the original EverQuest as well as EQII.  The game is played in an independent client and doesn’t directly affect either of the original EQ games, but some special LoN cards can be exchanged for a small prize in EQ or EQII.  LoN is not developed by SOE in San Diego, it’s managed by an entirely separate branch up in Denver and for the most part we in San Diego are not involved.  However, these particular in-game rewards are an area where the teams overlap a bit, since we have to work together to come up with reward items that are fun and desirable, while ensuring they are not overpowering or would cause any kind of game balance problems.

Thus far the rewards have been along the lines of fluff: fun items such as fancy cloaks, illusions, mounts with unique colours or graphics, personal spell effects, house items, that sort of thing.  It is a careful balance: supporting our LoN players with cool and fun rewards, while at the same time ensuring EQII players are not neglected in any way either.  And even though house items are basically fun fluff with little game impact, there’s a portion of our player population who do care a lot about getting new and unique house items.  So, to this end I have been plotting the addition of a number of nice new house items which will be added in to EQII at the same time as LoN comes out… only the question is, exactly how to add them?  I have the house items all prepared, as they don’t take long to make, but there are a number of ways that things like this can be added.  Carpenters of course can make house items, and they will likely be getting some recipes for a number of the new things.  Carpenters have had a fair number of new recipes over the past year, however, and aren’t as desperately in need of more as they were previously.  So some of the rewards could also be put in as quest rewards, or purchased faction items, dropped from dungeons, or goodies for the Guide program to give out, or a variety of other options, each of which has pros and cons.  In addition to the furniture, weaponsmiths will also be getting a new recipe timed with the release of LoN’s Oathbreaker.  Hopefully, EQII players and LoN players alike will be excited by the new fun stuff coming up.

Overall, GU46 is going to be a fairly quiet update, for tradeskills anyway.  I’ve been focused on the upcoming expansion work for the main part, and so apart from bug fixing and a few additional tweaks to the crafted weapons, I don’t anticipate any major changes.  I do like to slip in a few surprises for the tradeskill community when it’s possible, however, and I do have a little something up my sleeve about which I will say no more at this point.  Time will tell how well that is received next month!

Emily “Domino” Taylor