From here

…plus tons of info about the expansion - enjoy!  http://eq2.allakhazam.com/sdetail.html?story=14718

Well this looks bloody fantastic!!! 

http://eq2.allakhazam.com/sdetail.html?story=14688

The new EQII site, when completed, will feature:

• A complete database with detailed information that you can only get directly from the game itself. Maps of Mob Locations. Mob spells and skills. Complete drop information including the percentage chance of something dropping. Full item stats, including the normally hidden stuff. Complete quest walk throughs with all the text from in game. Spell, skill and AA lists.
• Live Broker Data. You will be able to log onto our site and see exactly what is for sale at that moment. You will also be able to request that you get e-mailed or texted when certain items come up for sale at certain prices.
• 3D Models of everything in the game including mobs, items and your profile. You will be able to try on outfits and see what they look like.
• Profile Upgrade Search. Put in your parameters, like solo only or quest only or exclude raid and search your profile for easy upgrades to your current equipment, then print out the directions on how to get it and go.

http://eq2dev.wordpress.com/2008/08/16/fan-faire-and-the-shadow-odyssey/

“Not so much into the Adventuring side, but fascinated by Tradeskilling? We’re going to be introducing several new Tradeskill dungeons, and provide a raid like experience for you, where you’ll group together to complete a goal of crafting in order to earn faction and purchase recipes.”

From here:  http://eq2.eqtraders.com/articles/article_page.php?article=g270&menustr=040000000000#faire

Fan Faire 2008 Guild Hall Preview

The first of two informational panels on guild halls let out just a few minutes ago, and some of the first solid information on them is now available.

As you read this, be aware that some details may change a bit before these are released, and that not everything will be available at release. (There was brief mention of a Phase 2 for some features, for example.) The information was also coming at a pretty rapid pace, and my notes had to be sketchy in order to keep up.

That having been said, this information is hot off the presses, and there’s enough in here of interest to crafters that I felt I should put something up now, instead of waiting the few days it will take to get then to send me art resources and the like.

The Basics

Any guild of level 30 or higher can purchase a guild hall. The level of the guild will determine what tier(s) of hall the guild can purchase. (You can always purchase a lower tier hall.)

• Tier 1: Level 30+ guild. Halls are available in every city, and use the current 5-room house model. Purchase price will be 100 plat.
• Tier 2: Level 50+ guild. Halls are in North Freeport near Stonestair Byway, and in South Qeynos in the Hall of Thunder. They will be 10-room halls, and will have a 500 plat price tag.
• Tier 3: Level 70+ guild. Halls are in Antonica and Commonlands, accessible via bells at the docks. They’re absolutely ginormous, with a huge courtyad, a docks area where bells can be placed, etc., etc. Purchase price is 1,000 plat.

There will be a 1500 item limit.

Purchasing and Upkeep

Your guildleader will be able to purchase the guildhall for the guild, and their citizenship will decide which zone the guildhall is located in. Since the purchase is made by a single person, there will be no personal status cost involved in the purchase of the hall, but a lot of uses for status within the halls. Only one hall can be owned by a guild at any time.

There will be weekly upkeep costs for the guildhall amounting to 1% of the purchase price, plus status. Using the same sort of interface as player homes, guildmembers can donate money and personal guildstatus to the hall’s escrow, to be put towards maintenance and Amenities (more on amenities in a bit). As with personal home escrow, once money and status is placed into escrow, it cannot be withdrawn.

Moving to a new guild hall, such as moving from a Tier 1 to a Tier 2 guildhall works mostly the same as with player homes - go to the new place, click to buy, it says you already have one, and do you REALLY want to move? If yes, then it packs up the furniture into a moving crate, transfers the escrow, and fun stuff like that. (See the Amenities information on important info about Amenities and moving.)

Access

Just like player housing, there will be Trustee, Friend, Visitor and No access settings. However, you can set it so certain ranks in the guild have certain access right off the bat, you can choose to allow no non-guild visitors, or allow them, as you wish. (Default access will be Officer+ as Trustess, Member+ as Friend, Applicant+ as Visitor, but as mentioned, this can be changed.

Amenities

Amenities are items or Hirelings that can be puchased for your guildhall, from an interface available while you are in the hall. They will cost coin and status, and there will be a limit on how many you can have, based on guild level.

Once amenities are purchased, they can be moved around the hall by folks with Friend or higher access, but they cannot be picked up and placed in inventory. They can be removed from the hall from the amenity purchase panel.

There will be 42 different amenities available at launch of guildhalls. A level 30 guild can have 15 of these amenities in their hall at any given time. A level 80 guild will be able to have up 30 amenities.

Every amenity will have a coin and status cost, and a weekly upkeep cost, except for the courtyard statues. The statues are just meant to be massive and impressive, and will cast coin and status to purchase, but have no upkeep.

So, just what are these amenities, and why would you want to spend on them? They are various items or NPCs that will make your guild’s life easier.

Various things that were covered were mariner bells for various locations, a druid portal NPC, banker, broker, mender, portals, guild strategist, crafting equipment, fuel merchant, guild strategist, harvesting storage depot, creature conjuror, a harvesting NPC and much, much more.

Please, watch the saliva, folks. It is bad for your keyboards! Let me cover some of these in a bit more detail before I rush to another panel.

There will be a world broker. Eventually, they hope to also have a special guild broker where you can sell items that only your guildmates can access and purchase. (This is phenomenal for guild crafters who want to have items for guildmates available at-cost, or at a cheaper rate than they’d sell it to strangers, etc.)

There will be a harvesting depot, where you can drop off harvesting resources for other guildmates to access. (A guildmate of mine has much fun mailbombing me with a ton of surplus raws, which I often then bounce around to other guildies in need, so one of these will be divine for us!)

The mender can be set to take the full cost of mending from the player, or partially pay for it, and part come from the escrow.

The “guild strategist” will allow a player to purchase flags that can then be planted in any non-instanced location. The rest of the guild can then use the strategist to travel from the guild hall to that location. The flags will stay planted for 2 hours, and only one can be planted by the guild at a time. This is a great way to prep for something big, but the purchase price of the amenity is also going to be pretty big.

The creature conjuror will allow you to summon various arena champions for you to practice fighting with them.

The harvesting NPCs will be of a specific type (miner, gatherer, etc.), and you can tell them to go out and harvest for a certain tier of resources. In a couple hours, you can then check back in with him and get the results of 100 random pulls from the proper node type.

Since the Tier 3 guild hall is so amazingly huge, there will also be a portal amenity that will allow you to buy and place 5 portals in various spots in the hall, for faster travel between them.

You will be able to customize the various hirelings (NPCs) to set name, race, and gender. You will also be able to purchase a uniform amenity if you wish, so that you can dress them in matching uniforms if you wish.

What About Player Furniture?

You can place the current player furniture and house pets in a guild hall, but here comes a big BUT or two:

Any furniture item placed in the guild hall is likely to then become the property of the guild, so if you don’t have trustee access, you may not be able to get the item back.

The rent status reduction on player housing items will NOT reduce the upkeep costs on the hall and the amenities. It would just be too unbalancing, with the 1500 item limit and so on. They may look into some other ways to reduce in Phase 2 - time will tell.

Setting the Stage - the Next GU

The next game update should see a few more world events as they build up to releasing guild halls. There will be building and harvesting writs to be run, with rewards for certain levels of completion. (The rewards mentioned were: 10 times and you get a house status item, 20 times and get a statue, 30 times and get a title)

What Next?

I’m sure this just scratches the surface of the upcoming guild halls, and I saw notes being taken based on various little bits mentioned by fans attending the panel. We do not have a release date for guild halls yet, but, as you can guess from the above, there’s some amazing progress done, and halls finished enough that we got to see a bit of a tour around the inside of them. As more information becomes available, we’ll keep you posted.

I’m one VERY exhausted halfling, but hopefully this will get you a bit of information on the halls until more formal writeups can be done and art assets obtained.

LU47 preview is on test.  Here’s a few images of the construction happening off the docks in Antonica and Commonlands.

Plus some highlights from the Test Server update notes:

All named and boss NPCs in Kunark now drop Adept I and Master I scrolls equal to or less than their level.  (No more farming Karnor’s Castle to track down those remaining 71-74 scrolls.)

Many of the named creatures in Sebilis, Chardok, and Karnor’s Castle no longer have place holders. The also have a longer respawn time and will now always drop legendary rewards.

New mid-zone respawn locations have been added to Chardok and Sebilis.

When creatures in the level 1-20 range randomly drop Adept I and Master spells, they will only be ones that you or the members of your group can use.

Worldwide equipment, ranging from level 1-59 (including heritage quest rewards), have been updated to bring pre-RoK items more in line with the newer rewards and loot drops from Timorous Deep and other Rise of Kunark zones. This increase includes accessories, armor, and weapons, as well as many tradeskill items. Shields and items with special effects have not yet been changed, but will be included in a future update.

Spirit of the Wolf will now apply to the entire group within a 50m radius instead of being single target.

Developer information about game update 47:

The much-anticipated addition of Vivox voice chat isn’t the only thing being added to EverQuest II in the upcoming Game Update 47. Developer Ilucide dropped into the forums for a chat with the players, to lay out changes being made to a few Rise of Kunark content areas and a source of much frustration: writs. Judging by player response in the fourm thread, the change to writs will be most welcome. The previous number of writs required to go from 0 to ally faction was 267. The new number is 80. As Kunark faction was already relatively easy to climb through, this is primarily intended to make city faction more palateable. Additional changes may be in the works for these items, as the developers mull ways to make this particular part of the game more meaningful for players.

The content changes center around two dungeons. Karnor’s Castle has been tuned to be more receptive to small group play in the 72-76 bracket. Difficulty has been generally lowered, and the mob spawns thinned out, to allow for players to have a better time in that playing mode. Meanwhile Sebilis and Chardok have been made less generally annoying. Lower level magical treasure has been removed from the loot tables, ensuring only loot commensurate with the areas will drop. Placeholders for some named critters have also been removed, meaning that a named monster is either ‘up’ or not - spawn camping will not be a requirement in these zone any longer.

Everyone’s favourtie burrow-dweller is moving on.  He’s got some RL things that are going very well for him that require his focus, and we wish him all the best with his endeavours. 

From all the Aussie Battlers, we’ll miss you Wombat.  You ugly, ugly creature.

Very exciting!  What a great feature!

Click here for the full store on how this great new feature will work.

The instance is now live on Test server, and discussions have started about the loot.  Here’s another quote from Kander, the developer:

“There are nicer items as you get deeper and there are also some nice fabled items. Again, none of these items should overshadow raid gear. So raiders most likely will not run this zone for gear.

There is however 71 to 80 masters on a smart loot table.”

Masters on a smart loot table!!!!  I do believe that means it takes into account the classes in group.  Woohoo!!!!  Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to farm!

 … ok another quote that clarifies the smart loot quote:

“Smart loot means it should drop a master for someone in your group. It does not look at what you have in your spell book.”

It also looks like you need to be level 80 to zone in.  Mobs sound very difficult.  Sounds like one of the nameds has a DoT that does 20% damage to everyone in the group every second (ouch!) and the end boss is Epic x2.   M0bs are all over 80.  Good luck!!!

 Quote from the developer:

“Initially the zone was started by Steve ‘Saavedra’ Kramer, he did a total rebuild of the inside moved and added a lot of art assets.  When it was handed to me I went in and tried keep the zone challenging and add a lot of flavor and humor as well. There are nine boss fights and only two or three of them are your typical tank and spank. I tried to make them fun but yet interactive with the environment and also a challenge. There are a couple bosses that have some serious surprises in store. The zone boss is an x2 who should provide quite the challenge for a single group.

Jason ‘Fyreflyte’ Woerner and I are working together to make sure the rewards and loot are the same, fun yet good rewards that hopefully match the challenge. Obviously everything isn’t going to be the toilet made of solid gold! The zone is large and will progressively get more difficult as you get deeper inside. When you see a goblin called an Elite, beware because he is Elite. The other challenge is that everything socials so be careful to body pull!

There are a few other surprises I think people will find enjoyable inside the halls of Runnyeye: The Gathering.”

On the forums, the developer also made these posts.  Great to see so much info coming out.

“It’s an 18 to 72 hour instance. We gave it 3 days to expire because it is rather large. However you can reset it after 18. It feels like your own personal contested dungeon.  I added 71 to 79 Master Drops.  Also there is no treasured gear, it’s legendary and the zone boss drops a few fabled items.”

“There is a good mix of 1, 2, 3 and 4 mob encounters and a few that are a little bigger inside the new Runnyeye. Just as note, we are trying to include a lot more multiple mob encounters through out the content for the coming expansion. Get ready for lots of single group action.”

“We actually tried to make sure that drops in the instance do not overshadow raid gear. It was on our minds. “

“Let’s see if I can try to answer a few questions! 
Someone said it, but I will say it again. It’s not replacing the original Runnyeye, it will remain the same. It is a new level 80+ version.
Yes, there are fabled drops; however they have been tuned to not overshadow the items available at the raid level.
We probably should look at adding status to the bosses for some of the other lower level zones.
And finally, yes we all have status coming out of our ears. You’re going to need it. Vague, but there it is. lol
Oh and incidentally, the guild halls are perhaps, in my opinion, the coolest thing this team has ever done! But that will be up to Jindrack to tell more about when the time comes.  That is all.”

I wonder what he means about the status thing… something to do with the next expansion maybe?

More official SoE news that will help our guild level up:

“Adventuring in the following group instances will now yield status points when the bosses are killed! Sharpen your blades, ready your spells, now there is more reason than ever to take on the challenges that these group instances present! Bosses in the following zones are affected:

Chelsith, Charasis: Maiden’s Chamber, Charasis: Vault of Eternal Sleep, Crypt of Agony, Court of Korucust, Shard of Fear, Estate of Unrest, Crypt of Valdoon, Obelisk of Blight, The Acadechism, Court of Innovation, Halls of Fate, Den of the Devourer, Blackscale Sepulcher, Nest of the Great Egg, Vault of El’Arad, Cazel’s Mesa, and Scornfeather Roost.”