News

So how does a designer's mind work? Where do those ideas come from anyhow? It's tough to get insight into the creative process, but EQ II developer Keith Turkowski gives us a sneak peak:[blockquote]Here's a peek at my whiteboard circa 'The Buried Sea' expansion.

In the upper left is a cubic representation of the different elements used to create power sources. I wrote some background lore that never actually made it into the game, but I'll share here:

The Combine Alchemists fuse magic, science, and engineering together to achieve technological advancements.

The upper right quadrant contains a graph of some different resist curves that I plotted when I was trying different approaches to designing a new resist system. Just under the curves are some rough concepts I drew for the Katta Castrum Portal System before I ditched the whiteboard and pulled out the graph paper.

The "circuit diagram" in the lower right is actually a simple map of the lower floor of the small pyramids. I used it to map out the search patterns for the "Knowledge for Power" mission. If you look closely, there are some pretty solid clues on exactly how the search patterns work.

[blockquote]There's lots more to read at the link above, including some lore that never made it into the game.

The EQ Lorebook has been updated with an...appetizing story...

Kruzz dumped the bucket of viscera into the bubbling cauldron, watching as the long coil of an intestine floated to the surface and was tossed around by the bubbling of the stew. He snickered to himself slightly, and then turned, colliding with Ttzork, the head cook of Grobb. He rebounded off the mound of her belly and landed back against the cast iron of the pot, wincing as it singed his skin. His hand immediately went to the item at his neck - a dried monkey tail, harvested when the animal ran in front of him and was crushed by a falling boulder. He'd always regarded it as the luckiest moment of his life, and had refused to part with the charm since.

Anyone have a barf bag handy?

Event planners for this summer's Fan Faire are looking for fan ideas for panel discussions.

Since we have recently announced Fan Faire, I thought it would be a great time to ask the people planning on attending what type of panels that they would like to see. We always have the typical spells, content, and general topics that we cover but we all always open to suggestions! If you have always had an idea that you thought would work into our format please send in your comments.

I would love to see a few of the panels be more interactive. Thoughts???

Head over and give them your thoughts.

EQ 2 developers have posted a nifty sneak peek at the coming Update 45. The article includes lore and several great screenshots.

"A Prophet Returns" - Game Update 45 preview!

There's something going on at the Temple of Life in Qeynos and there's a blight that's spreading through some of the major cities! If you're of good alignment, seek to help those afflicted folks and travel to the Temple of Life to see if you can unravel this mystery!

If you're of an evil alignment, there's a fellow in Gorowyn that follows the Plaguebringer that may be able to explain what's going on. Take note too, with game Update 45, the present event ingame (the Shard of Hate event) shall come to a conclusion. If you're taking part in curing the hate or spreading the hate, please be sure to wrap up those quests while you have time!

There's lots more to see and read so hop on over to the link above.

As game worlds become more and more advanced, they also grow larger and larger. The by-product of this improvement is the long distances that must be traveled between locations. For some reason, with this increase in world size, there is not a corresponding improvement in traveling systems. Indeed, there seems to be almost a perverse joy in sending players on quests that involve running back and forth between two distant points with no other objective but carrying a bickering message between a pair of NPCs.

Jim Moreno tackles the difficult task of roleplaying a merchant in this edition of RoleCraft: "Even roleplayers are known to struggle with this cookie cutter gameplay, and with keeping their characters from looking and acting just like every other character in game. What to do? One sure way to avoid the pitfalls of routine is to realize that there are many other classes in game besides adventurer. It's time to become a professional roleplayer!"

Update 45 is live on the Everquest 2 test server. Devs have also published the list of changes coming in this update, subject to the testers' reports.

GAMEPLAY

* The time limit between repeatable faction quests in Sinking Sands has been removed.
* Damage that can not be resisted or mitigated will now be referred to as "focus" damage instead of crush/pierce/slash/poison/heat/cold/etc in combat chat messages.
* Corpses of powerful creatures will now stay locked for twenty minutes.
* Respawning near Jarsath Wastes in the Kylong Plains is slightly less dangerous.
* Mounts should now suspend while feigning death or riding on a griffon, sokokar or cloud.

QUESTS

* Grinash the Vicious and his pack will now trigger in the Steppes for players on "Vicious Assault". Previously he would only trigger while on "The Cove of Decay - Kraughl's Request".
* Squire Kivan in Antonica will now give out the quest "Getting the Axe" to characters that he previously thought were too advanced for his quest.
* The No-Trade flag has been removed from a large number of book pages that were dropped from mobs or harvested from page spawns. Check your inventories!
* Clay golem hearts for "The Heart of Fear" quest in Cazic-Thule now drop as corpse loot instead of chest loot. They also will only drop while you are on the quest now.
* Multiple players should now be able to receive an update from killing Pawbuster when on that portion of the Conjuror Epic quest.
* Both the dropped and tradeskilled pristine fashioned nacre earring will now update the quest "Dukaris, Hero of the People".

There's more so read on.

Character animator Steve Kim is being profiled on the official EQ2 site. The interview wanders over his job description and his journey into the business.

Can you tell me what you're doing for EQII?
I'm a character animator for EQII. I'm also responsible for most of the character rigging.

What titles have you worked on for SOE?
I've worked on EQII, EQII Kingdom of Sky, EQII Desert of Flames, EQII Echoes of Faydwer

How did you become an animator?
I got into it almost by accident. I initially went to college for architecture. I hated it so much that after two years of architecture, I switched my major to graphic design. In this major, we were required to take one computer animation class. I enjoyed it so much that I continued to work on computer animations on my own free time. It eventually became my senior project before graduating. After graduating, I kept in touch with one my college friends, Ben, who moved to San Diego to work in a comic book company, by emailing him animations that I was working on at that time. One of Ben's friends from a gaming company happened to visit his studio and saw my animations on his computer. Interested, he asked Ben for my contact information and the rest is history.

Head through for the rest.

Sean Bulger's periodic community column today looks at the concept of Open PvP (player vs. player) and what it does to games and their communities.

A while back we talked about conflict between players and what sort of a role that it can play in a game and for communities. During this, it was noted that player competition can be implemented in numerous different ways. This week, I would like to revisit this discussion and talk about one of those particular methods: the open PvP world.

Open PvP is one of the more controversial topics in MMO circles and plenty of people have fairly strong opinions one way or the other on the subject. That said, I would like to explore both the positive impacts and negative ones on the player community. Open PvP has the potential to help bond a community fairly tightly, but it also has the potential to truly tear it apart as well.

Read more after the leap.

The EQ 2 official site has been updated with the news that Episode 34 of the 'official' podcast is out and ready to rumble:

We finally hear officially from Robyn "Naylie" Vallee and 2 of our International Community Relations Reps! The Love Doctor stops in to give some "great" advice and we have 2 top 10 lists! Jason Ryan is back with the news, be sure to get all of the updates for your favorite game.

So tune in! You can get your Podcast goodness two different ways head over to the Podcast's official site, and click on your preferred bandwidth or if you have iTunes installed select iTunes store, type SOE into the search box and click Subscribe! Your feedback is always welcome either on the Station forums or via email at Brenlo@soe.sony.com!

Tune in and see what's what in Norrath.