These notes are in no particular order, and will only cover a fraction of what was discussed at SOELive. (There were too many conversations going on in too many places, as usual!)

Standard Disclaimer

News From SOE

Expansion The next expansion will be Altar of Malice. It will be released to All Access members on November 11, and to free-to-play on November 25. (ToV will be bundled with the expansion, so those needing both expansions can buy Altar of Malice and get both ToV and AoM.) Level caps (adventuring, crafting, guild) will raise to 100 and 96 to 100 will be treated as a new tier (full round of new recipes, new harvesting tier, etc.) There will be 25 more prestige points for adventuring, and 25 for crafting, and both will include new prestige trees. The tradeskill prestige will include one that allows the gathering of special resources (that will be harvest-only, not something you can get from goblins and ponies). It was also mentioned that tradeskillers would have "some" best-in-slot gear for raiders and casual players alike. (Some will still be best from drops, but we're supposed to be able to make some really desirable stuff with the expansion.) Beta for the expansion should start in late September or early October. It will include 2 overland zones, 2 contested zones, 14 heroic zones, 6 raids, 6 advanced solos and 4 avatars.

Other Goodness from the Devs In many cases, it was unclear when the items mentioned would be happening. In other cases, I just can't decipher my notes well enough to be sure. When a rough date was mentioned, I have included it.

• Aerakyn as a playable race is technically not part of the expansion, but will be happening at the same time as the expansion (according to secondhand information)
• You will be able to broker and receive mail attatchments anywhere in the game "Soon"
• There will be level-agnostic dungeons (about 10 to start with) that will allow adventurers between levels 20 and 89 to easily group together without the need for mentoring. (It will be part of dungeon finder.) Everyone will get level-appropriate individual loot. I'm sure we'll hear more details soon. (This is planned for somewhere in September or October.)
• They are planning on putting in a rare heroic loot vendor (which will initially offer just jewelry, to start with)
• They are working for a fix to an issue with scout stealth and mob AE abilities, which is apparently causing problems in raids and such
• Soon ("soon"? expansion?) all-access members will be able to research all spells/combat arts to Grandmaster level. "Some" will also be able to go to Ancient, via ultra-rare drops. (If you lose all-access status after scribing an ancient, the game remembers what level you had the spell at before that, and drops you back down to using it. If you then re-subscribe, it will remember that you have an ancient, and use the ancient version of the spell. If you need more clarification, I recommend asking in the forums.)
• There is a new dynamic PVP arena incoming, Balance of Theer, for those of you who like beating each other up. It will have moving debuff, buff, death penalty squares and more (positioning and alertness are key).
• There will be new uses incoming for ALL lower-level resources (this may be at the same time as the expansion, but I am unsure)
• There will be improvements and changes to refining and salvaging TS prestige abilities to make them more relevant/useful
• Crit avoidance is being removed, going forward, and three new types of critical hits will be added. It was mentioned that up to 4000 crit chance would be possible. (This sounded like another one going with the expansion.)
• Scout poisons are going to scale based on agility, crit bonus and potency. This sounded like another thing going with the expansion, but I'm not 100% sure on timing.
• New armor runes (purple adorns) in the expansion will stack to do set bonuses. (Multiple adorns of the same type, such as multiple potency.)
• Guild harvesters will be changed to have their menus split up like the pack pony does, instead of having that hugely long list of all the tiers at once
• There are no plans on adding any more recipes to the heroic and raid apprentices (the dracurions). We will be getting more normal apprentice recipes with the expansion. While they want to add more model choices for the normal apprentices, it is a wishlist item (no ETA, no promises it will happen).
• November 9 marks the 10-year anniversary of EQII and to celebrate, the 10-year annniversary gift is the Isle of Refuge prestige home, complete with a starter character pack of NPCs from Isle of Refuge fame
• They are planning a deity system revamp for next year sometime with new miracles and blessings, and Erollisi Marr is supposed to be added to the diety lineup at that time.
• Next year should also see a public quest redesign.
• They're also hoping for cross-server dungeons next year.

Requests From Players

• It was mentioned that colorblind folks have issues on raids with colored rings on the ground, as well as with some of the more heavily tinted zones (too much red, etc). SOE will look at ways that this can be addressed, as well as try to keep in mind the zone tinting issue moving forward.
• Another request was put in for status reduction for guildhalls. They'll discuss it.
• Requests for ways to more easily manage the plethora of appearance gear were once again voiced. The devs mentions plans with the expansion to allow players to set up outfits that could be equipped with 1 click. They also mentioned a wardrobe feature that they are working on. The current plan is that when you add items to the wardrobe, the item will be consumed, but the appearance is stored for later use. (This would free up a ton of inventory for a lot of folks!)
• Being able to market decorated homes on the marketplace was briefly discussed. They need to revisit the idea, and discuss it more with the community, etc. (The original plan of marketing decorated homes had to be shelved. The cost of the homes, plus cost of the decorations, time involved, etc. would result in homes that were hideously expensive in terms of real-world dollars.)
• There was mention that the final fight in the Coldain Ring HQ still requires an x4 raid in order to spawn the proper mob in the public quest, and it is extremely difficult to get a raid force willing to go back after this old content. It was requested that the quest could be completed with any version of the PQ. They'll look into it.
• The ability to do mass production with a commission was requested. It is not an easy thing to do, due to how the mass production system works. One suggestion mentioned was the possibility of getting special recipes for things like the yellow/green blue gemstone recipes that had higher yields (5, 10, etc.) They'll look into it.
• There was a request to get racial wings as appearances (for fae, arasai, and the upcoming aerakyn), since they lose their wing appearance if they use any flight wings for the stats. They'll discuss it.
• There was a request for a recall pet ability for channeler pets, that spurred a query of "I didn't give that to you?!" ... sounds like an oops that will be fixed soon.
• There was a request to put Call of the Veteran (CoV) on the loyalty merchant. They will not put that specific bauble on the merchant, but they might consider a charged version of the same sort of spell.
• There was a request for a filter on the portal to home guild amenity, to make it easier to find homes that you own vs ones you are trustee in, etc. They'll look into it.
• There was a request for things like textured crown molding. If (and this is a big if), such a thing were done, it would not be considered a building block for item count, due to the higher poly count of such a thing. (Building blocks all have extremely simple geometry and take little memory.)
• There was a request for some way to manage fluff pet summon baubles, petamorph wands and illusion baubles so they can still be used, but not eat up inventory space. They will look into it BUT all of the alternatives suggested so far have been ones that would put strains on the system as they increase the character file size (the worst file hog being the suggestion to turn them all into scribed spells, bloating up the knowledge book even more).
• There was a player request asking that Lore and Legend drops be "fixed" with regards to loot options. (Even if you have group loot set to need before greed for only legendary and better, the treasured L&L items still pop up with a loot window.) This is not actually a bug, but is due to the fact that loot windows pop up for all quest starters, regardless of loot options, and L&L drops can be quest starters.
• They didn't mention an ETA, but they are working on a way that all characters on your account can/will be trustees on all homes that you own on that account (without having to manually enter all of them). This will be SUCH a boon for those of us with alt-armies, and the room broke out in loud cheers.
• It was mentioned that when they added building block sets to various carpenter-made tiles, some were missed. I will be getting Kaitheel a list - some may have been intentionally skipped because they had patterns that didn't line up well for the other block types, but some may have been genuinely missed. They'll look into it and see what can be done.