EQ2 Chronoportal Event, Moonlight Enchantments, and more

There's a few things going on in Everquest 2 this week. One is the annual Chronoportal Event which starts today and runs until the 28th. This event comes around during original Everquest's birthday. EQ is celebrating 13 years this year. During the event you can hop through portals in 8 different zones which take you to an instance that might bring back some memories of your EQ days. The instances are intended for groups but as an Illusionist I found all but the Lavastorm portals soloable when using a tank mercenary like the Shadowknight. Each instance is a different level and you are automatically mentored down to an appropriate level. You will not however have your level raised should you want to do an instance much higher than your actual adventure level. The instances have an 18 hour lock out after you kill a named. The final boss of each will drop a chest containing 2 platinum coins, an adornment and some gear that is appropriate to the level of the instance. From what I can tell all items are tradeable or heirloom so you can give the items from the lower level instances to your alts. You can spend the platinum coins at merchants in Antonica and Commonlands. They sell replicas of the bosses for your home, books, paintings and a harp. HERE is all the details over at ZAM.

Also today and tomorrow is Moonlight Enchantments. This is the monthly event where mushroom rings pop up in certain zones and you complete quests for tokens to buy house and vanity items. HERE's the post I have written about them in the past.

There will be a new backpack on the Marketplace soon. The devs couldn't keep the news to themselves so they gave us a preview. The backpack called the Heraldry Flag Backpack holds a flag which will display your guild's logo on it. No word on the price yet.

I also missed posting about the latest Marketplace items so here they are...

Shadowforged Cinder Gi- 1200SC

Guilded Vanity Set- 400SC

Dragon Fang- 500SC

WoW Mists of Pandaria News.

There was a World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria press event and the Non disclosure agreement was lifted so we were flooded with news about MoP this morning. We had already heard about some features of the expansion like the pokemon style vanity pet fighting ring and scenarios.

One major point was that MoP is being set up to be the new vanilla WoW. If you're not familiar with the term, vanilla refers to the basic World of Warcraft game pre expansions. During this time there was no major bad guys that gave a goal to the overall game. You didn't know what was going to happen. In the last 3 expansions you pretty much knew what you were in for. There was a goal, Kill Kil'Jaeden, Kill Arthas, Kill Deathwing. Blizzard is making MoP like vanilla, there is no announced final encounter. This allows them to drop whatever they want on us at any time. There will just be general badness in the world that we have to fight until they say "time to kill a BIG baddie". I didn't have a chance to play vanilla WoW in it's most vanilla form. I wasn't introduced to the game until Burning Crusade had just come out so this will be an interesting change to the game for me and may even get me interested in raiding again.

Another thing being talked about today across the interwebs is that they once again have left the old character models...old. We didn't get upgraded character models for the original races like many of us hoped for. Kind of on this topic is reveal of the female Pandaren. She's super cute.

Some other things announced were changes to reputation grinding. From what it seems like you'll no longer be able to throw on a tabard and grind dungeons until you have the rep level you want. You will have to gain the trust of the factions in Pandaria. You'll probably have to grind out quests for them to prove yourself worthy. With this comes a new way to obtain a mount from the Pandaren factions. They will have serpent mounts you can purchase with a certain amount of faction. You will purchase an egg and have to do a series of daily quests revolved around your egg and it's hatchling until it grows into a mount. Starting as a baby which becomes a pet that will fight beside you and then into a ground mount (If you're familar with Everquest 2 think of the griffon quest line in Velious where you have to take your griffon to do certain dailies until it's grown.) To get your Pandaria serpent to fly you need to then obtain more faction. They also announced Challenge modes to dungeons in Pandaria. Similar to the old Zul'Aman timed run for the bear mount. As you run dungeons you will receive medals of bronze, silver or gold depending on how fast you complete the zone. You can receive achievement titles by obtaining medals. There's a ton of other news being thrown around so please go ahead and visit some of my favorite sites so I don't have to retype all of it.

• GamebreakerTV
• MMORPG.com 
• MMO-Champion.com
• WoWhead
• PC Gamer
• WoW Insider

Everquest goes Free to Play Today

About 6 years ago I did that Coke rewards points thing. I turned in my bottle caps all the time and eventually had enough points to get something cool. I decided to get an Everquest game. They had both original EQ and EQ2. I asked a friend for their opinion and they said since EQ2 was newer it had better graphics etc. so I should go with that. Because of this decision to skip the original and go right to the sequel I have no freakin' clue what is going on in EQ2. For 6 years I've done my best to enjoy the game ignoring lore for the most part. But today original EQ went F2P. I now have a chance to play the original game and maybe understand what the heck is going on in the world around me when I hop back over to EQ2. I have been playing Aion and just got Minecraft so not sure when I'll do it, but it's nice to know the option to play for free is there. http://www.everquest.com/free

Aion NA F2P and 3.0 April 11th

Aion's North American Free to Play model will launch on April 11th along with the release of Game Update 3.0. The game update will increase level cap, introduce mounts and player housing along with a ton of other stuff.

The F2P model for North America will be different than the current Euro F2P model. Instead of having different tiers of subscription level the game introduces C.U.B.E. Customizable User Bundling Experience. You will be able to purchase a C.U.B.E. from the Aion store. You fill your C.U.B.E. with the game features YOU want. You want more goodies? You buy a bigger more expensive C.U.B.E.. As of now I haven't found a list of the features that will be accessed through C.U.B.E. but I'll post more info when I do. C.U.B.E.s will be on the Aion store April 4th and available for use on the 11th. Purchasing a C.U.B.E. will get you bonus items as well, you get bigger and better bonuses with bigger cubes. I was personally hoping for the Euro Free to Play model. Hopefully we aren't forced to purchase too many features in this NA model like character slots or bag space.


Also announced is a new Atreian Atlas system. A sort of guide that will help you through the game. It will offer a customized gaming plan for your play style. It will offer maps, video guides, and extended quest information like difficulty. I'm really curious and excited to see how this works. Hopefully I can tell mine to avoid all group instances and PvP. *snicker*


You can read the full Massively article detailing these new features HERE. 

EQ2 Game Update 63 Skyshrine. New Level cap and content. April 17th

A lot of people were upset when they found out the latest Everquest 2 expansion, Age of Discovery had no new content. It implemented a lot of new features instead. The folks over at SOE explained that it was because new instances, zones and other playable content were now going to be added in game updates instead. So with the expansion came mercenaries, design your own dungeon, beastlords, and tradeskill apprentices and coming April 17th the next major game update will add all the content people have been waiting for.

If you have Destiny of Velious you will get...

• a new level cap of 92 (up from 90). 
• A new zone with over 100 quests. 
• Multi mode instances, so now if you can't find a group, heck, do the solo version. 
• Heroic group and raid instances. 
• Prestige class talents and all new tradeskill quests. 
• New drake mount

If you have the Age of Discovery expansion you will get...

• a new dungeon map and items with a Poet's Palace theme. 
• New dungeon maker adventurers. 
• Tradeskill apprentices with new recipes including one ELITE recipe. 
• Elite Mercenary
• New warders for beastlords to tame.

Here's the whole scoop on Everquest2.com

Guild Wars 2 Pre Order Announced. SWTOR Free Trial Weekend.

Guild Wars 2 has announced that Pre-Orders will begin on April 10th. The standard game is $60, Delux Digital is $80, and Collectors is $150. All pre-orders will get access to the weekend beta events and a 3 day headstart. You can see all the other goodies that come with the pre-order packages HERE.

In other news Bioware is offering a free trial weekend for Star Wars: The Old Republic. The trial weekend begins Thursday, March 15th at 11am PST and ends Monday, March 19th at 1am PST. It does not apply to players who have a previously active account. The new players who sign up for this free weekend will have access to all 8 classes, the starting zones, the capital cities and PvP warzones and Flashpoints (instanced dungeons). Find out more info HERE.

World of Warcraft news. New resurrection scroll and Padaren female reveal date.

The moment I've been waiting for in Mists of Pandaria news is almost here. The reveal of the Pandaren female model is coming on March 19th. WoW posted a little teaser on their facebook page.

Also there is a new Scroll of Resurrection available. This one gives a flying mount to the person issuing the scroll if the friend you send it to resubscribes. Just for sending the scroll to a friend they will get 7 free days of play time, a free character transfer to the recruiters server, and an upgrade to cataclysm for free. For a limited time they also get the ability to jump a character straight to level 80. Here's all the details.

Rift offers FREE reactivation until March 14th

I haven't played Rift in some time but today I saw a Twitter post from them announcing that if you own the game you can play it for free from March 8th-14th. There seems to be some sort of in game carnival going on as well so it might be fun to pop in and see what's changed. I do have a lot going on in other games though so I might not make it back for this reactivation event. But if you are interested HERE's the link for more information.

EQ2 players pull together to cheer a terminally ill child.

A few days ago an Everquest 2 player posted on the Decorators forum on the EQ2 website, the Norrathian Homeshow, asking for some help. Here is her post...

This is a depressing post but I need some help.  My 6 yr old son has cancer and was recently given 6 - 12 weeks to live.

He has a frog that he likes to run around Tenebrous Tangle Island on; however, it is sparse and he has requested to add trees, fences, stairs, animals and all kinds of  other  items to make his  island fun and exciting.

Are there any decorators out there that would be willing to assist in adding these items (and any others their imagination poses) to help me make the island even more fun for him.  I don't know how much I'll be able to accomplish on my own while still providing him quality time to enjoy it.

The boy's in game name is Ribbitribbitt.

This post was not only read by people on her home server of Guk but also by players of other servers who wanted to help. Many of the Guk players donated items and their time. Players from other servers copied layout files of fun items they had built in their homes and made temporary characters on the Guk server to load those layouts onto the island home that belongs to the young boy. Within two days a whole playground has been erected complete with a tree house, carousel, games, forts, aquarium, rollercoaster and more.

Not only did tons of crafters and decorators help but Adventurers came to help as well. A guild was created for the boy and since yesterday Players of all types have been raiding, grinding writs and whatever else they can do to gain status to help level up the guild in hopes that on Saturday they'll have a Tier 3 guild hall to give to him.

On Saturday the guild hall as well as the island will be presented to him by his parents. They have promised to take pictures and video of his reaction to his incredible play island. At 4pm EST/1pm PST an event will be held on Ribbitribbitt's Tenebrous Island home. There will be donations and duel bets taken to help buy even more stuff for the island and guild hall.

I was happy to put in a few hours today building a rollercoaster on the island and I hope to make the event on Saturday. Please come out and show your support for Ribbitribbitt and his family. HERE is more info on Saturdays event.  If you'd like to read and/or get involved in the decorating aspect of the event please read  THIS thread to find out what's been going on and what items are still needed.

EQ2 Brewday starts today and Newest Marketplace Items include a new fish!

The Neriak City Festival ended yesterday in EQ2 and you'll have to wait 6 months for it to come back. Next month is Qeynos. If you weren't able to get your hands on enough of the blue marble building blocks during the festival and don't want to dish out the plat to buy them off the broker from people who put them up for sale, they have been added to the Station Cash Marketplace. Price is 50SC per item or you can purchase a set of 10 tiles or the set pictured below for 250SC.

Here's the other 2 items added yesterday to the Marketplace. One is a new fish. If you're a decorator like me fish are treasured items. Most of the ones in game are no-trade or can only be obtained one per character so building multiple fish tanks can become difficult unless you have a lot of alts to run the quests for more fish.

Luxurious Fur Cloak- 800SC

Piranah Plushie- 200SC

Also Brewday starts today. It's the celebration of the diety Brell. It's kind of like a St. Patrick's Day or Oktoberfest type event and of course is a favorite of dwarves. If there's ale, they will come. Here's the write ups on the event from 2 of our favorite sites, ZAM and EQ2traders. Although it's called Brew-DAY it does run from the 8th to the 19th of March. Hic!

Aion 3.0 Crafting changes.

According to Massively there's some nice changes coming to crafting in Aion in 3.0 which is said to come out this spring along with the Free to Play conversion. Among the changes are the ability to spend a little kinah and end your current crafting mastery so you can pick up a different one. Also furniture recipes will be added to the game for the new player housing being added in the game update. Here's the whole story.

March Game Changes in EQ2

There's a few changes being added to EQ2. The much talked about removal of critical mitigation will be implemented. This will not effect PvP crit mit. Here's a forum conversation all about that.

Another change is to mob pathing code. Pathing is the path mobs and pets take when they walk.

There will be an addition to the Destiny of Velious signature quest line as well.

A MAJOR change for those who are dungeon grinders is that DoV dungeon timers will be reduced significantly from 18 hours to only 90 minutes.

Several of these changes are still on the Test server but hopefully they all make it in this month. A recent letter from the game's new producer said they're also working on that pesky bug that has been turning quest feathers and other items into white wisps.

There's also several in game events and holidays coming in March but I'll talk about them when they get closer.

Neriak City Festival this week in EQ2

The Neriak City Festival started at midnight and will continue until the 7th. There are some new items at the city fest this time around. Just like last month's Kelethin festival different shaped blocks and dividers have been added to match the Neriak blue marble theme. Along with the blocks there is also a new Neriak roof tile. The festival items are purchased with city tokens which can be earned in many ways. One way is available at any time by doing crafting or adventuring writs. A faster way is to wait until the festival comes around and pick up one of the repeatable quests at the festival. I find doing the crafting quest is the fastest way as I can place a portable stove and keg right at the quest giver. A final way to earn tokens is by doing the aether race. Doing these races in a certain amount of time will also give you a title. Each city has a different one. Here are some helpful links about City Festivals. Have fun.

• General City Festival Info
• Aether Race Info
• City Fest Items
• Neriak Specific Items (newest items not shown)