Producer Letter: What's to come Sept to Nov!

Greetings Norrathians,

We’re all charged up and busy after a great time at SOE Live! The team is hunkered down and focused on the expansion, fixes, and updates on the schedule. Here are some details!

When is the EverQuest II: Altar of Malice Beta?

On Oct. 7 we will launch Limited Beta for All Access members. Most of the content will be focused on the Overlands and level increase content. We need your support!

Oct. 14 will be Open Beta for everyone. We’d love you to come check out the content and help us make sure it’s good, clean fun.

When is Altar of Malice Launch?

The expansion launch for All Access members will be on Nov. 11, just a few days after we celebrate our 10th anniversary!

On Nov. 25, the expansion will be available to everyone.

When can I buy the expansion?

It’s a bit different this year as we aren’t having a pre-order period. If you are an All Access member, you can buy and play the expansion on Nov. 11.

If you’re not a member, you can purchase it on Nov. 25 and gain access to the expansion.

Prices haven’t been determined yet, but we’ll let you know soon!
What is included in the expansion?

Here’s the overview:

· Level 95-100 Adventurer and Tradeskill levels
· Level 95-100 Adventurer and Tradeskill Prestige Abilities
· Level 95-100 Grandmaster spells/combat arts
· Rare Ancient Spell scrolls to Level 100
· Over 100 quests
· Level 95-100 Tradeskill quests
· New Tradeskill Recipes
· Lots and lots of loot!
· 14 heroic zones
· 6 raid zones
· 6 advanced solo zones
· 2 Contested zones
· 2 Overlands
· 4 new Avatars of the Gods raids

What isn’t included in the expansion?

The new player race -- the Aerakyn -- is what we call a “live” feature and not included in the expansion. Everyone can access the new race on Nov. 11. Like the Freeblood race, it is a separate purchase. We aren’t settled on the pricing yet, but we’ll share that info as soon as it’s available. The Aerakyn player race comes with built-in wings that become a flying mount at level 85 as well as custom wing-attack animations too!

Guild Level 100 is another live feature that's available to everyone which will come with upgraded amenities.

Will there be a Collector’s Edition?

Yep, we are working on the awesome stuff we want to package together right now to make it memorable and special.

What’s coming in the Update schedule?!

Here’s the schedule we have at the moment. During late September through November, we’ll be adjusting our weekly content update schedule with a few breaks so we can focus on the expansion beta and launch:

· September

o Sept 9: PvP Deathmatch Zone: Balance of Theer

o Sept 16: Broker anywhere for All Access members

o Sept 23: Performance Updates. This includes code updates that have shown performance improvements in the player clients and servers. (For details, see Dave “Maevianiu” Kish’s and Douglas “Endymion” VanDerveer’s posts in the Beta Server Updates thread: https://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/index.php?threads/beta-server-updates.550828/#post-6096895)

o Sept. 30: 5 Level-Agnostic Dungeons & Grandmasters released!

· October

o Oct. 1: Friends and Family Beta

o Oct. 7: All Access Beta Begins

o Oct. 9: Nights of the Dead begins

o Oct. 14: Open Beta begins

o Oct. 21: Send/Receive email attachments anywhere (All Access Only)

· November

o Nov. 7: Heroes’ Festival launch

o Nov. 8: EverQuest II’s 10th Anniversary!

o Nov. 9: Tenth Anniversary Veteran Reward: Isle of Refuge Prestige home

o Nov. 11: Altar of Malice Expansion Launch for All Access members

o Nov. 25: Altar of Malice Expansion Launch for all

Lots of stuff coming! We’ll be sharing more details as we go along too, from expansion lore to feature details in articles and EQ2 Insider.

We can’t wait to see you in game!

Can you fix the adventure writs?? It would be nice to have T10 adventure writs

Guild level 100 NOT included with the expansion? Very lame.

Sooo lame that they are giving it to everyone for free.


Looking forward to seeing how the level agnostic dungeons/grandmasters work and hurrah for performance enhancements. I've played around a little on beta but it's hard to tell exactly how much changes until I see it on live =). Thanks for the update on what to expect Holly.

so no cross server Dungeon Finder 2.0? at least for AoM heroics.

also to prevent a 40-50 page thread again like last year when ToV launched, any plans on making the shaman class useful again? both pve and pvp that is.

Can the expansion bet set to "purchase" a day or so prior to launch?

I just feel it would be nice to have (especially given that EQ2 crosses all time zones). Whether or not it charges until the moment of launch is a null issue (imo), either at launch or before launch.. The people in accounting can take their pick, as far as I'm concerned.

Mine is already bought & paid for via the SOE Live pass... I don't really see the issue/harm with letting people pre-pay or set up a scheduled payment for expansions. (Pre-pay would have potential issues with refund requests and scheduled pay would have "similar" issues ("I forgot I had it on!")). The potential issues, there, could be thwarted by an acknowledged agreement of no refund.

Eh.. Anyways... I just don't see the point for "no pre-orders," when 1000+ SOE Live attendees have one.

well well ... another disappointment by soe. not offering preorder is a bad decision. Generally i buy my xpac for my account months in advance so i dont have to struggle to find $$ in the middle of the month. this year i have 2 to buy thus making it even more difficult than normal. please change your mind on the preorder. next point i never bout freeblood and i was looking forward to aerakyn but with needing to buy 2 xpac this year i wont ave the funds to buy that either. I thought it was a bad choice to charge members for a race, especially when that race has advantages over the old races. I guess that is all for now. thank you!

As I recall even with preorder you weren't charged until release day, so it wont make a difference to your finances as far as timing goes.

i cant agree more Greye i always preorder my xpacs. i have 2 to buy this year and $$ is tight. besides that i couldn't afford the thousands of dollars it would have cost me to go to soe live. ( maybe if it wasn't held in one of the most expensive cities in america i could afford it.)

meh always had them charge the account immediately for me. that way my bank will hold the funds available for SOE

5 Level Agnostic Dungeons. ..can someone please explain this to me. Is this supposed to be dungeon finder 2.0 or what?

Yeah, this probably works in the same way as the Double Status weekend and the Double Guild Status weekends in that there is no check anywhere to see what membership level the "owner" or "majority" of the guild is, so it's simpler for them to simply apply the new level cap to all guilds regardless of membership levels of the guild members.

@Grundge
From what I've heard it's a new Dungeon Finder system that will work with a level agnostic system like the DM's, and give loot appropriate for each member. Though I have also heard the cap on the high-end level is going to be 89 or something else sub-95.

Sorta. Kinda. Nah, not really.

However, it does bridge the queue issues a bit, since they'll group anyone between levels 20~89 and give them level-appropriate gear upon dungeon completion. A lot of them are oldworld throwbacks to some of the most popular/challenging dungeons, and then Temple of the Faceless randomly thrown in there

Sadly, Totem of Succulent still works in them (ATM on test/beta anywho...hope they restrict it) so tanks can dummy their way through instead of learning anything even remotely helpful but it does solve the 'no groups before 95' issue quite well.

sounds great.. and new pvp gear, new pvp tokens?

Agreed...

I just don't think it's right to have to make two separate purchases to get the "Full" Xpac. It feels too greedy and penny-pinching by SOE. At least put the new race in the Collector's Edition - then I can justify getting it. I feel like I was misled by previous announcements that it would actually be part of the new expansion.

If the Aerakyn player race is not part of the xpac - let me buy the race now!!!

You mean 11th. We got 10th year vet rewards last year. Unless you mean that this is a reward associated with the EQ2 10yr anniversary event and that veterans will be getting a different 11th year vet reward also. I believe this was previously confirmed to NOT be the case, but really, you guys need to figure out how to count past 10

Ok, I will say now, I have been buying the collectors edition on pre-order for years. This is the first time I am thinking I am not going to get it because we all know the after pre-order price it ludicrously high for what you get. So unless you are changing something this year, not having a pre-order or discounted price in some form will severely diminish my desire to spend the extra money.

Being an all-access subscriber / gold member/ paying subscriber from day 1 as well as EQ1 player for many years before that, I am feeling a bit abused at the very thought that you are going to try and soak us with a over priced collectors edition/ regular edition.

I hope you prove me wrong and are willing to give those of us who support the game every month the discount that the pre-order affords us. Otherwise it will be one more reason to spend less and maybe not at all.

If they have another 40% off (or more) in their store, I'll probably buy a race change and make my main an Aerakyn. It would be nice if they had a deal on race changes with the Aerakyn release.

I'm just going to put it out there that so far, no developer has confirmed that the Collector's Edition will feature a duck mount.