The SOE main EQII forums have a handy little tool called a Dev Tracker. I'm as guilty as others of not using it to check for posts of note from the devs recently, but a guildmate pointed me to a couple things of definite interest to the crafting community. (Since we have folks hit our forums before they have the game, and hence, have no station login for the SOE forums, links to our forums will be provided, instead of direct links to the dev posts.)

• Status Furniture - some city housing requires spending not only cash, but also guild status for rent and for maintenance. Suleman announced that furniture can reduce/remove the weekly status costs on this type of housing This will make the furniture that we believed to be "just fluff" a bit more worthwhile.
• City Tasks for Artisans - we have no ETA on when it will happen (contrary to some rumors, it's not in place yet), but there are going to be some changes to how guilds work, including crafting tasks that artisans can perform that will earn them guild status.

Given that we're firmly into the holiday season, I don't expect we'll see a lot of sweeping changes immediately, but they are in the works!

November 30, 2004 - The Best Laid Plans ...

We thought we'd planned ahead. We bought extra bandwidth this month to cover the extra message board traffic (the two forums are a separate bandwidth package, and on separate server, from the sites). However, it seems we misjudged traffic by a day, and hit our board bandwidth limit. We've got a request in to fix that.

Meanwhile, that lovely little box with the "find" button on it to your left can search out many of the tier 1 recipes for you, before it runs into the fact that the data entry folks have been working from data on the forums and the forums kinda sorta aren't available for them to pull data from. :)

Edit: Back up now ... thanks Racknine!!

November 17, 2004 - Notes from Today\'s Patch

Below are some of the notes from today's patch that are of extra interest to tradeskillers. As always, you can find the full patch notes up on SOE's official EQII community forums.

• Collection quests now make use of the Collection skill as you gather items.
• Market bulletin boards were added to all general city and village/district merchants to make them more accessible.
• Corrected a typo on the Tailored Rawhide Satchel.
• Society tasks now give their coin rewards in the reward window instead of directly putting them into inventory.
• Brokers who were not correctly displaying the player merchant lists have been fixed.
• Harvestable objects within the adventure zones around Freeport and Qeynos respawn faster.
• Fixed the sell-back price of threadbare thread and a few other incorrectly priced items.
• Removing some fishing harvest areas from shallow water.
• Added suspensions and solutions to the refined merchant lists
• Increased the rewards for the wholesale social structure tasks
• prices for many of the alchemy items were modified

November 16, 2004 - Suspensions!

There weren't patch notes on the login screen to go with this morning's patch, but we can confirm that the various suspensions needed for poisons, potions and fighter skill upgrades went on the tradeskill society vendors today.

While I've got your attention, I'd like to remind folks that are looking for information that there's more than one spot for them to look. The "How To" section over there on your left navbar has had several more articles added. The "Quests" section has not only the writeup on the Isle of Refuge tradeskill quest, but also a bit about the tasks for your tradeskill societies. Then, of course, there are the forums. We do ask that when you're coming to the fourms with a question that you check the sticky FAQ in the General forum, then do a quick search to see if there is a thread or ten on the subject already. We're getting a LOT of repeat questions over there of things that have been answered several times in that same day, and a bit of research on your part will save you from having egg on your face when folks point you to the multiple spots where that's already been answered. {grins}

Meanwhile, know that we're hard at work on getting not only the database up and running, but also on getting more helpful guides in place to handle some of the more common questions that require detailed responses. It may seem like slow progress to some of you who are eagerly awaiting every scrap of information, but we're getting quite a bit accomplished every day, and hope to be more fleshed out with our site offerings soon.

November 13, 2004 - Harvesting Hint

A lot of folks have been having issues getting their harvesting skills up. It often seems there just aren't enough tier 1 nodes to go around. There's a bit that you can to do to help the situation in some zones, though. Each zone has a set number of resource/quest nodes available at a given time, zonewide. Lots of times, after a zone has been picked over by folks for a bit, it seems there's not only a lot of gardens lying around, but a ton of fish nodes. Make sure your clearing the fish nodes out of the water (if the hand icon shows up when you mouse over a fish, it's harvestable) in order to clear up some spawns and have a chance at random respawn of something more useful. It won't totally make up for the fact that there's the standard "just after launch" crowding at the lower levels, but it will help a bit. (As an example, I found twenty fish nodes active at the same time in the front pond in the Forest Ruins yesterday - no wonder nobody could find anything else there!)

November 08, 2004 - EQ2 Live!

Whether you're already in-game, or, like hubby and I, still waiting for your copies of the software (our local EB won't have our preorders available until the 10th), you've probably figured out by now that the initial servers are up, and the long-awaited release of EverQuest II has happened. While I know it's frustrating for those not in the game already, and you're eager for more information about tradeskills, etc., try to keep it semi-tame in the forums, k? ;)

Meanwhile, while hubby and I are champing at the bit and faced with up to 2 more days before we can get into the game, work is being done on the site's database. While some of the basic structure from the EQTC site could be used, there's a lot that's different with items, recipes, and such, so Ngreth's having to do a lot of extra recoding while I'm working on various guides and some of the data entry (assisted in the data entry, of course, by a lovely team of volunteers!). We can't give you an exact ETA right now, but know that we are working on getting up all the recipes and such as soon as possible.

November 05, 2004 - Beta Ending Annoucement

Please note that since this announcement (which had been circulated to our site seecondhand), SOE has decided to extend the duration of beta another 12 hours, putting the new end time at noon Pacific tomorrow (Saturday). I have personally confirmed this directly with Sean, who was kind enough to respond to my email after the close of business today. :)

On behalf of the entire EverQuest II team, I want to thank everyone who has participated in our beta test over the last several months on the English, French, and German servers. Your feedback has been immeasurably valuable throughout the testing process by helping us find bugs and polish our gameplay. EverQuest II wouldn't be what it is today without your involvement.

We're very excited that EverQuest II will be launching on November 8. In preparation for the release of the game, our beta test will be concluding Friday night, November 5. At midnight PST, we will be shutting down the beta servers and deleting all characters and items. Our official forums will be temporarily closing at the same time so that we can restructure the boards and be ready for a fresh start when the game goes live.

EverQuest II will begin shipping to retailers in the US on Monday, November 8, with dozens of servers awaiting the arrival of thousands of players into a brand new world. The European versions of EverQuest II will begin shipping across Europe on November 11, with French and German language servers ready for play.

EverQuest II comes in three versions, all of which include a 30-day subscription (excluding Station Access subscriptions) to the game’s online world. The CD and DVD versions of the game carry an SRP of $49.99 and include the game, an in-game item and an in-box item. Limited quantities of the EverQuest II Collector’s Edition (DVD) are available at an SRP of $89.99.

We hope you enjoy your last hours in the EverQuest II beta. Though the testing process has come to an end, your adventure in Norrath has only just begun.

Sean Kauppinen
Gaming Public Relations Manager
Sony Online Entertainment

November 02, 2004 - The Best Laid Plans ...

... sometimes go awry. It was with the best of intentions that they added the ability for artisans to gain citizenship without completing the citizenship, but it didn't quite work the way that they intended. From today's patch message on beta:

Due to some quest-related issues, artisans above level 6 will no longer be automatically granted citizenship. For now they will have to complete the adventurer's path toward citizenship. We apologize to artisans, and plan to revisit the situation after launch.

October 29, 2004 - Saturday, Oct. 30 - beta test day!

For those of you in the EQ2 beta, but not able to access the beta forums, here's a snippet of news about tomorrow from SOE:

Yes, that's right, we're going to be doing some odd testing on Saturday, in preparation for our release. Tomorrow morning around 10AM Pacific time, we're going to be opening up several more servers for testing. If you haven't filled up your character slots, please join us in testing the new servers. Go in, have some fun, and play a bit. We'll probably shut them back down at Noon, so don't get too attached to your characters there. They will be wiped :) Secondly, at 6 PM Pacific time, we'll be shutting down all English servers (Beta 1, 2 and 3) for about 2 minutes. We'll then open them back up, and we'll see how they handle the stress of every logging in at the same time. We appreciate your help in these two tests. If you've got time, we'd love to see you there! Bruce Producer, EverQuest II Sony Online Entertainment

October 28, 2004 - Artisan Feel the Love!

While some of us are planning on being a solid mix of artisan and adventurer, some folks have expressed a desire to be a "pure" artisan, avoiding combat wherever possible. One of thie biggest sticking points for folks has been that they have to kill several mobs to complete their citizenship quest and gain access to the city. Fear not! There is love for artisans!

Today's beta patch message included the following item:

The cities of Freeport and Qeynos now place a higher importance on the craftsmanship of their skilled laborers. Artisans who are not already citizens will automatically be granted citizenship when they've obtained artisan level 6.

October 25, 2004 - The 800 Pound Gorilla ...

Taken from the press release regarding the launch of EQ2:

SONY ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT’S EVERQUEST® II SHIPPING NOVEMBER 8th

-The 800-Pound Gorilla of Online Gaming Is Ready to Play -

SAN DIEGO, CA – October 25, 2004 – Sony Online Entertainment Inc. (SOE), a worldwide leader in massively multiplayer online (MMO) gaming, today announced that EverQuest II is scheduled to simultaneously ship to North American and European retail stores on November 8, 2004. EverQuest II is the highly-anticipated follow-up to Sony Online Entertainment’s original EverQuest, the most successful and longest-running 3D MMO role-playing game in North America.

The complete press release can be found here.

Meanwhile, we're going to be scrambling for the next little bit trying to get the site more fleshed out while we simultaneously continue to test tradeskills, run the main EQTC site, etc. ... and finish one last beta giveaway for those who want a sneak peek before November 8. Until we've got the database and other content ready, the EQ2TC message boards are your best bet for details on EQ2 tradeskills.

October 18, 2004 - Welcome to EQ2 Traders Corner

Welcome to EQ2 Traders Corner. Please pardon the dust while we get this up and going. You will see new articles up very soon, and the start of the meat and bones of the site within the next week or two.

Meanwhile feel free to visit our forums, and check out all the information we already have there and the current Beta giveaway. Note you must be registered to the EQ2 Traderes Corner boards to post/enter - the two boards do NOT share a registration system.

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