Next up was a session on how quests are built in EQ2. See Lore’s post below for most of the details. I will say that, having worked with Hero Engine – the engine being used in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – their design tool looked extremely flexible but it’s that flexibility that can allow the bugs to creep in. This is especially true the more complex the quest gets. They showed the dialog tree for the tradeskill tutorial and it looked like a plate of spaghetti with all of the interconnections between the nodes.

Next up was the EQ2 game mechanics session. Again Lore talks about that below but I’ll rehash my notes. First up they announced Achievements. As part of the achievement system they’re revamping the journal window to be side by side to allow a better display of information. They’re also revamping the Persona window so that they can show he info from achievements. Achievements will be things like kill 10,000 rats – much like the slayer quests of today which will be retroactively added to your achievements. There will also be exploration and tradeskill based achievements as well as potentially Class specific achievements such as heal 100 people. Achievements can also be “meta”. The example given was a test one called “Love the Humans but hate the Goblins” which you got if you completed both the “Hug 100 Humans” and the “Kill 100 Goblins” achievements. None of these will give you anything game changing. They’ll mostly be titles if anything though I do think they might consider adding a house item for some things. They did say that there are no plans for giving a buff like rewards such as you get from the Lore & Legend series. These are supposed to be about bragging rights and not something that you feel you need to do to make your character better. Oh, and I’ve heard several people mention that EQ2 isn’t WoW or that they stole this from WoW etc. Remember WoW took this from XBox Live and they did it for a reason, players love it. The good news is if it’s not your cup of tea there’s nothing that say you have to participate other than by accidently completing an achievement. Oh, and the best news is that these are per account not per character since the idea is to show the achievements of the player. This means that if you get the kill 10,000 orcs achievement you only have to do it once. So, yes, it’s possible you’ll see a level 1 running around with a title that indicates he’s slain every raid boss in Kunark but so what, the player behind that level 1 earned that title.

The second big announcement was the Auto-Mentoring system that Lore described below. The interesting part was the idea of putting together a group of people and all auto-mentoring down to say 30 and doing one of the lower level raids. Since level 80′s mentored down to 30 are going to be way over powered that group could do 2x raid encounters and possibly even 4x. This will allow you to complete those encounters at the appropriate level.

Bullet points that I gathered from the keynote tonight:

• At launch the Station Cash system only had about 5% of the players use it in both EQ and EQ2. Now about 20% of EQ players make use of it and 30% of EQ2 players.
• A new Station Cash feature will be the partnership with HP to deliver art prints of the in game artwork to your home. They plan on having the ability to buy prints of many of the current in game paintings in July and in the near future add the ability for you to get a print of your character as well.
• Another addition to Station Cash will be the ability to do an automated server transfer for $25. This should go live in 2 weeks.
• They should announce 4 Million registered users for FreeRealms next week.
• FreeRealms is adding full progression for both Demolition Derby and Race driver professions. This will include quests and equipment. Also adding the ability to customize your car so putting in garages as well.
• New soccer mini game is coming as well. It’s no FIFA but it looked like a decent arcade soccer game.
• FreeRealms TCG is adding a Card Creator system that will allow you to create a card featuring your avatar. You’ll then be able to get 10 copies of he physical card, each with a claim code, that you can give away to your friends so they can use your card in the digital game as well as the physical game.
• SW:G will be adding some user generated content as well. The Star Wars chronicle system will allow you to create player quests that feature the Iconic characters such as Luke and Vader.
• Everyone was expecting the EQ2 expansion was going to be Vellious, boy were we off base. Looks like it’s going to be Odus instead. Hopefully they’ve done something to improve lighting in Tox Forrest but other than that I’m looking forward to checking out Stonebrunt again. Wonder if The Hole is still there.

Any questions please feel free to leave a comment and I’ll try and answer them.

For the final push, Sisca, Acsis and Loredena (all 63/64 at the time) collected all 4 of the ‘kill Sentries in Tenebrous Tangle’ writs and headed topside. We could get there, kill 20 sentries, and head back to Qeynos for a fresh batch of writs in less then 10 minutes per cycle. Three or four rounds later, we dinged 30!

After a fair amount of discussion, it was decided to purchase our guild hall in N Qeynos. We considered Gorowyn as being accessible to good and evil alike, but since we are primarily Qeynos based, and I liked the ‘look’ of the Qeynos halls better, that’s where we settled. Sisca, as original guildleader, did the honors. We failed to get a ‘now purchasing’ screen shot though, sorry!

We’ve designated one room as a library, and other as the crafting area. Kennet, Reyder’s monk alterego, is busily experimenting with housing items before decorating the room he called dibs on. He has some unique ideas, so I’ll be sure to post screenshots once he progresses a bit more!

Technorati Tags: eq2,everquest 2,the Revellers,guild Halls

This last update also added a murder mystery – the Seeress of the Temple of Life (Rodcet Nife’s prophet) was killed.   Everyone ran some of the (rather boring) bone chip quests to get the orb to 100%, and then we spent time solving the mystery on both sides.   I really enjoyed the first time through on either end, though it most definitely is time consuming!  But, the evil and good sides are of course close parallels, so not quite as entertaining the second time, and the third and fourth was rather boring.   The quest rewards are exceedingly good, so I’m glad I ran it with my main avatars, but it was a bit tedious towards the last.   One thing about the rewards is quite nifty – two of them grow with you!   They are at the x5 level, and they can be mounted to display in your room.   Mounting and then unmounting them (making them usable again) will set them at the closest x5 level.  Thus, should you acquire them at 25, you can level them to 35 and so on to 75.  This makes them exceedingly good rewards all told.

While listening to a recent Van Hemlock podcast [27 August 2008]  I came to realize that, for me at least, MMO’s in general and specifically the guilds or groups of friends that I play them with take the place of those social gatherings. They are primarily an excuse to get together and laugh, joke and talk about our common interests and maybe pick up some new interest.

Even the hardcore raiding guilds could be considered the natural evolution of those social structures. If you’ve ever been around a bowling alley on league night you’ll realize that while many of the leagues are an excuse to get together and drink beer, some of them are actually very intense and competitive with their members spending a lot of their time perfecting their game. (Hmmm…there’s a whole other post in this.)

Since Lore and I are hoping to grow our guild, The Revellers on Permafrost, I think I’m going to try and use this realization to craft our recruiting message to be something other than the standard “friendly, casual, group of friends” message that most casual guilds such as ours end up with.

So if you’re looking for a guild on Permafrost that’s more like popping in to your local pub than clocking in to your second job. Where you can find someone that can help you with your tradeskill questions or put together a group to help you finish off that heritage quest that’s been in your journal for months or just find someone to chat with while you run around harvesting/soloing. In short a place “Where everybody knows your name…” (NORM! – and if you get that you’re probably around the average age of the guild). Check out The Revellers either at our website or in game.

After killing off one last storm Klubya gated back and we decided to tackle the hideout mission again since it was the quickest that we had done. This basically involves going into an instance, slaughtering gnolls – any day you can slaughter gnolls is a good day as for as Klubya is concerned – then using the ever present explosive barrels to blow up their supplies. 30 minutes later we had blown up the last of their supply crates, woot, done lets get out of here…oh wait, it didn’t count for her shard?!?.

So we head back into the main lair and start looking at our options which boil down to doing this really annoying water area that neither of us likes or her figuring out how to solo the arena or attempting the Harclave solo mission – a pretty cool raiders of the lost ark kind of mission but extremely long and you end up fighting multiples so she’s not all gung ho.

Then I spotted a second arena entrance that’s labeled as heroic. This looks to be a group version of the standard arena mission so we decide to give it a whirl. It took us 3 tries to figure it out but we finally got through it and picked up some ok loot:

Sadly, it still didn’t complete her shard so we’ll have to figure something out on Thursday.

Some shots from earlier in the night (just because I want to play with Photoshop Express and Live Writer integration)

Beware the wrath of the golden Ogre.

Who says there are no flying mounts in EQ2

You have to admit, doesn’t look like your typical Paladin.

This, looks like your typical Paladin…well not really but still.