There was a request for "fluff" clothing that tailors could make. The response was that it's one of the many things the artists are working on, and that it's really time-consuming (making sure they fit/drape/move properly on that many races across both genders, as well as varying sizes within each race).

Work is being done on a tradeskill quest that continues onwards from Dreak's quest on the Isle of Refuge. This will guide the new artisan through their various crafting profession choices, hopefully making the decision of which class to be a tad easier.

Some folks may have noticed or heard of tradeskill equipment out in Everfrost. Plans are underway to add more such equipment in safe spots in other outdoor areas (as well as tradeskill vendors) so that crafters can get a change of scenery and not have to stare at the same 4 walls all the time.

Additional tradeskill quests were mentioned as being in the works:

• A quest which will earn you the ability to perform batch combines on refines (and only refines). You will be able to process up to a stack (20) of raw materials at a time, to cut down on some of the combine tedium. Experience gained on bulk combines is the same as if you were making a single piece of that item. (i.e., this won't be a way to grind xp making refines, but more a time-saver when you're working on refines for finished products)
• A quest to cut in half the required progress to complete an item. For example, if an item requires 800 progress, you'd be able to complete the item in 400 progress instead, once you've completed the quest.
• A quest for tradeskilling bonus gear

There's no ETA on these, but they're being worked on now. For those who have gone past the need for Dreak's quest, you won't have to backtrack to do the quest in order to complete the other tradeskill quests. Some mention was also made of adding the ability for NPCs to email players of the appropriate skill, so that they know there's quest content available, but no word on how/when this will be implemented.

There was a question with regards to why people can't sit on chairs. Sadly, due to the fact that there are a) wayyyy too many chair sizes/shapes, and b) wayyyyy too many unique skeleton models (various races, 2 genders, then a ton of heights within each race/gender combination), there's no easy way to do it. So, don't hold your breath. :D

Tradeskill society levels were brought up, and the fact that they're pretty much useless. While they hope to eventually address this, it's pretty low on a very long priority list.

A request was made to be able to change your tradeskill profession. While they're hoping that the continuation of Dreak's quest will help cut down on folks picking the wrong profession due to misunderstanding, there's no plans for a global reset at this time. (With a comparison made to the fact that they don't allow changes in your combat profession after various changes to that, so it's not realistic to expect it on the crafting end, either.)

The issue of desirability (or perceived lack thereof) of player made weapons was brought up. While the imbues may have helped some, there's still not a lot comparable to some of the quested and dropped weapons. He'll be talking with the loot/item folks to see what can be done. There was also mention of some possible changes to the imbue process.

The question of dyeing/tinting armor was brought up. Much of the items that already exist don't have anything built in for such a thing (and redoing them all would spend a ton of time that is needed elsewhere), but there may be a chance that new armor types may be more tint friendly ... maybe ... eventually.

There was a request that all 4 quality types for WORTs (washes, oils, resins, tempers) stack together. He seemed to think that was a good idea. No ETA.

Sage love IS intended, but it's not really detailed out yet.

It was brought up that provisioner reaction arts have no detrimental effects if you use the wrong (or no) counter. Conversely, some negative effects on the forge are too harsh (doing X% of damage compared to your max health instead of your current health, etc.) This is something that he wants to work on.

Why is there no rare food harvest? Can you imagine getting all excited about finding a rare, only to make it into something that's eaten and gone in no time flat? While there are possibilities such as having the rare make a multi-yield food/drink or something like that, there are no plans for such a thing at this time.

He wants to work on harvesting more and has a few suggestions submitted, but he's not sure yet what will get implemented or when. This includes the issue of the harvesting tools that were on vendors at launch.

The issue of the missing golden acorn (quest recipe ingredient) was brought up. He'll look into it.

The rare arrowhead recipes sort of "snuck in" when all the other cross-skill recipes were being added. No ETA on when arrow recipes will be added to go along with them.

The rare event that returns a rare item is supposed to go off the item that you are making, not what your class is. If you're seeing odd results (such as the tailor who got a rare pelt when making thylakoid wash), please let us know.

Mention was made of a Zek quest recipe and item imbalance (I've no details on which quest/item/recipe this is). He agrees that it needs to be revisted as time permits.

EQ2 Expansion - Desert of Flames

Imagine what happens when you have a moon explode and impact the planet, then you leave the dervish cutthroats in the Desert of Ro to their own devices for many generations. That's the loose underlying premise of the expansion, but it goes a lot further than that. With this expansion, they're going to be pushing the art envelope a bit more, but moving towards a bit more of a "high fantasy" look. To see the preview for this expansion, check out this link.

The Arabian Nights comparison was thrown around many times. Expect there to be dragons and djinn, as well as a neutral city where players from both Freeport and Qeynos can mingle. (Sorry folks, you won't be able to bind there, though they may consider some sort of call ability with a faction cost tied to it.)

The city will have 3 factions, and depending on which faction you are aligned with, and who is in power in which section of town at the time, it may not always be the safest place to be, but it's sure to be interesting! Progressive quests and content are opened up as you work on your faction with one of the three groups. While you can't be friendly with all 3 factions at the same time, you can switch factions at will, so that you can experience all three story arcs, and the dynamic content that changes based on the efforts of you and other players on your server. (The city name is Maj'Doul, or something like that. Sadly, I forgot to get the proper spelling of it while there ...)

For those not really familiar with "dynamic content" and what it means to you, the player, basically, what you do, and what other players do, will have a noticeable impact on the city and the storyline, so expect things to change as you and others combat and quest for your chosen factions. What once was a safe area of town may not be so friendly the next time you wander through, and vice versa.

PVP is being introduced in an arena setting inside the city ... with a few interesting twists. Among other things, you can either fight as yourself, or as one of several monsters. If you win, you can earn reputation and fame with the city. There will, however, be penalties for the losers. (Y'know, that whole risk/reward sort of thing.) Since they want the city to be sort of newbie friendly, they're not planning on allowing the killing of guards and quest NPCs within the city.

With regards to fighting as a creature, you'll be able to expand your arsenal of available "arena champions" via collecting, arena winnings, and possibly also named kills. These creatures will also be able to be kept as room pets. Unlike other creature dueling systems, you play as the creature - it's not something where you play with a pet, or send in a critter to fight for you, but rather where you temporarily become the creature.

In some zones, you'll also be able to climb up walls of varying heights, either to avoid monsters, or to access new areas/content.

For those who are lore buffs, they plan to add more book and lore quests, which will reveal more of the history of the area.

The level limit will be raised to level 60 for both adventuring and crafting.

Guilds will also see some changes with the expansion. The guild level limit will be raised above level 30. There will be a guild vault, and the plan is to have separate "bins" set up, with individual access control on each bin set up based on guild ranks. Withdrawal limits can be set, and there will be logging of deposits and withdrawals. Additionally, there won't be faction limits on access to your guild vault, so if you're a good guild with a few evil folks wandering around, they, too, can access the bins, provided you've set them up with the proper rank to access the bin. There are also plans for some true guild housing, instead of the current high-end houses that have guild level limits, but that currently have to be "owned" by a single player.

Other EQ2 Info from Various Panels

One possible future change for writs will be to have "reverse writs", where you get random drops from mobs that can be then handed in for faction/status.

They're looking at broadening the range of the respawn timer for highly contested mobs, so that it will spawn within a range of time, instead of exactly X amount of time since it was killed. This would allow more access to such mobs to folks from varying timezones, rather than it being "locked in" to a specific time once it's been killed for the first time.

Itemization and drops are being worked on, especially for named mobs. It's not a fast process, as they want to "do it right". They're also looking at the items that scale with level, as it's not as nice in implementation as it looked in theory.

As time permits, heritage quests are being looked at so there are less long group camps (as in, as an individual, you're still expected to spend a good chunk of time on these, but the amount of time you have to have a group sitting around cooling their heels waiting on a spawn should be decreased. No ETA).

There was a suggestion that triggered mobs be auto-locked onto the person that triggers the spawn, not just a free-for-all, such is happening now.

The lack of usefulness of bard instruments was brought up, but there was no concrete solution proferred, nor is it sure if it will be addressed any time soon.

There was a question raised about new looks for old armor, as well as a request for more gi looks. It's not likely, given how the armor sets were constructed and colored, that much will be done with existing armor sets with regards to new looks and tinting. (That's really a LOT of race/class/size combinations to work on new art for.) There are, however, plans for new armor sets to be added over time, and there are new weapon drops being added pretty much weekly. More higher-level gi graphics for you brawlers and the like are also planned.

Epic weapons are definitely NOT being planned at this time. Epics are supposed to be the "best" of their type, and that really limits weapon choice options, as well as leaving no room to grow and expand.

There are no plans at this time to add more classes. They want to address current issues with classes (including the combat/spell upgrade) before even considering adding anything new that would need to be balanced.

Did you know that Zek, the Orcish Waste, is what is left of Jaggedpine Forest?

Soga(sp?) models will eventually be added as a client-side option, where you can choose to use the current character models, or the new ones. They eventually plan on allowing folks to customize their looks more (possibly at the same time as the new models are pronounced to be bug-free and ready for use?) The joke was made: "Combat hairdresser!"

Someone requested map upgrades. They were pointed to the EQ2 Maps site. Yes, folks, it's not only EULA-friendly, but very strongly recommended by Gallenite et al.

Questions/concerns about Heroic Opportunities (HO's) will be looked at AFTER the in-progress combat/spell revamp. It's possible that there may be some instances in the expansion where certain mobs will have their own special HO, etc. ... but before changing things around too much, they really want to get everything changed and rebalanced based on the combat revamp, before worrying about potential balance issues from changing HOs.

Training tomes (from the coin/rainbow quests) are "just" for experience. There is not any special reward/item for completing the entire set of 12(?) for your class, etc. The master tome that requires thought bleeders will be changed to something a bit less rare (expected next publish, if all goes well).

The issue with (not) staying logged in to the EQII forums continues to be worked on.

Folks want the ability to echo chat text to more than one chat window to be added back in. (It was removed due to too many folks having problems with chat windows, things echoing oddly, etc.) They'll look at having a checkbox added so that you can have channels echo if you so desire.

There was a request for a concentration increase as you progress in levels. The system is balanced for the current level of concentration, which often requires that you pick and choose your buffs carefully. There are currently no plans for this to change.

Complaints of ranger tracking were brought up. While red con mobs and X2 mobs are not supposed to be able to be tracked, other issues were being reported with "normal" mobs. It'll be looked into.

Raid buffs were requested. There are no plans on revamping the sub-50 spells to include such, but there MAY be a chance for some in the 50-60 spell range. However, there would be issues with stacking to be addressed, as well as concerns that it would trivialize raid encounters.

The waypoint system continues to have problems, as does mob pathing. (They use the same pathing engine.) There is ongoing development regarding mob pathing and waypoints, so expect changes to be made over time.

A question about adding AA or similar advancement paths was raised. The issue would be to find a way to do it without adding in something akin to the AA grind we see in EQ, as well as issues with certain abilities that guilds would suddenly "require" of all their members, etc. When/if they can find a solution they're happy with, they may revisit this.

Plans for more involved raids are in the works, instead of just trampling into an area with the goal of killing a single mob.

There was a request to make player-pets invisible to tab targeting, as they often get in the way of mob targeting. There are plans in the works for some revamps to the targeting system, and an example was cited for plans to have a key to cycle through all mobs currently engaged to you. (This is in the works.) They'll also look into reports of problems with tab-targeting in 3rd person view having issues with being unable/unwilling to target mobs that are slightly off-center of you.

Mention was made by a pet owner of a way in which she could consistently fail to be able to mentor. (Mentor, stop mentoring, try to start mentoring again, and be unable to until you get rid of and resummon your pet.) If you can find a consistent way in which you can cause mentoring to fail, please post to the SOE forums with details to help troubleshoot, as they're having problems reproducing it enough to fix it.

There were comments/complaints about one item for lore and legend quests not dropping if it doesn't drop at the same time the other two main items needed. They ARE dropping, you CAN get it even if you got the other two parts, and not the last one, but they're rare. The model works something like this. Say you need a spirit, brain and heart. Kill a mob. The game does a random 1-100. If it's a 5, you get the heart. If it's a 2, you get the brain and the heart (if needed), and only on a 1 will you get the spirit (plus brain and heart, if still needed.) So, if you're one of those folks that the RNG hates (like me), you're going to be waiting a long time for your spirit. (1 in 100 is going to be the average, as with ALL things having to do with random number generators, it may take you 1 drop, or it make take you 500 drops ... over all players, it balances out, you're just one of the unluckier ones.)

A request was made for pet health bars to be displayed in the group health bar.

A request was made for /target to be added to aid in assisting.

There was a query on the role of furies. This will be part of the above-mentioned combat and spell revamp and balancing. It sounds like furies are expected to get more DD's (direct damage spells) in return for having less debuffs than comparable classes.

If you've noticed the guards in Zek killing each other, don't panic. It was an unexpected feature of some faction system changes and will be fixed soon.

Notes From Frizznik

Here is what I got from the Vegas Fan Faire, the questions asked in quotes.

• "We want to be able to utilize furniture, I want to be able to sit on a chair or lay in a bed."
• Yeah, me too. This is a pretty big deal and involved a lot of art and coder time though. I passed it along for review.
• "What are society levels for?"
• Not a whole lot right now. This is a major blip on my radar that I want to get something in for.
• "Weaponsmiths want to be able to make something that can compare with dropped weapons, can you add imbues to boss dropped components like Rubicite?"
• I will discuss this with the items team and make sure that no imbalances are reached, but this seems reasonable to me.
• "Add designators to duplicate recipes, it is annoying to mouse over to figure out which recipe uses each skill."
• I changed this today. All secondary tradeskills (Apothecary, Weaving, Timbercraft, and Geomancy) will now carry a designator in the recipe name, such as: "Neolith Temper: Apothecary". This should make it much more visually easy to deal with.
• "Please look at culinary and fix recipes that require a component that can only be made at a higher level than your current level."
• Sorry about this, I want to get this fixed as soon as possible. Does anyone have a list of the current items like this so I can fix it quickly? (Thread started on the EQ2TC forums to help track this)
• "Add tinting."
• This is another major system that would require code. I like tinting a lot, hopefully it can be added as a feature in the future that incorporates tradeskills (and limits the colors you can use... not pinks and neon greens).
• "Change WORTs to be the same product, quality doesn't really matter... only the amount produced."
• Agreed, I changed this today. You will now only produce pristine versions of WORTs. Quality level will determine how many you get. This should clean up a lot of inventory confusion.
• "Forge keeps killing me, help."
• I looked at the data today for failed events, and some of the health hits were too unforgiving. I have halved them across the board. You should no longer die in two unlucky hits at a forge.
• "Where are acorns, for my golden acorn recipe?"
• These didn't appear to be harvestable, so I added them to the level 10 harvest tables since this is a level 9 recipe. They are a little uncommon, but they produce multiple quantities at different quality levels.
• "Are stats used in harvesting, my guy has low INT and never harvests anything."
• Not that I am aware of. It should only look at your skill. I am sending a request to code to check into this.
• "What are harvesting tools on vendors for?"
• Initially these were supposed to be required for harvesting but missed live release by one patch. Instead I went back today and put mods on them. They will now increase the appropriate skill by a small amount if equipped. How much will be displayed on the item.
• "Thylakoid wash gave me a pelt when I got my innovation event, shouldn't it give me the same rare that alchemy would?"
• Yes it should, the rare that you get from Favor of Innovation is based on the recipe you are using, not your class. I checked the data and I can see no indication that a pelt would be given, has anyone else had this problem?
• "Yew Bow is not so hot, can you review it and make sure it is in line with it's rareness?"
• I think this is a product of not being able to imbue it. I will check with the item guys to make sure that the stats, and the ability to imbue this item is acceptable.
• "Do harvest nodes share a table, I can clear all the rocks in an area and then there will be only bushes as far as the eye can see?"
• I didn't set them up initially, but if this is how they are set up I will get them changed. You should never be "locked" out of harvesting due to your node not spawning. Additionally it was mentioned that nodes should appear in places that make sense. Rocks near mountains, trees near forests. I agree with this also... I will move to get this changed soon if possible.
• "Can I buy a merchant that sells fuel, I have pristine tradeskill devices, but they are worthless cause I have to leave my house to go buy fuel."
• Seems like a good idea to me. I will see about getting Gnomish Fuel Vending Machines added.

Those were the questions that I could scribble down. I also announced what I have been working on lately. It is a series of quests that will allow you to progress as a tradeskiller. The first level quests will be tied to reading Dreak's Note. It will offer a longer tutorial on how to find a tradeskill society, how to join it, and how to get into tradeskilling. It will show you the difference between the different classes and help you make a more informed decision about which profession you wish to take.

If you have seen the tradeskill island in Everfrost, this is a preview of things to come. I wanted to move tradeskillers out of the damp dark tradeskill dungeon and out into the world for some excitement. The giver of these quests and merchants will be available here. There will be tradeskill areas set up in Nektulos, Steppes, Enchanted Lands, and Everfrost. I tried to get to the places that they will be with a level 3 adventurer and didn't have so much trouble as long as I was careful, so adventure level shouldn't be an issue, especially if you can get friends to help you out.

The quests after the extended tutorial will first teach you how to do batch refines. This means if you have 20 Metal Clusters, 20 Tempers, and 20 Fuels then you can produce 20 Metal Bars at once.

The next set of quests will teach you how to create items more quickly, they will upgrade your recipes so that they only require half of the progress that was previously needed.

The final set of quests will net you different pieces of tradeskill clothing that will give you an increase in technique that your profession uses.

This is a lot of quests, and a lot of work but I am working as quickly as possible to get these additions in. I will post more information on the above issues as they are resolved.