Breaking News via The EQ2 Wire — Euro SOE players can stick with SOE

Smed: ProSiebenSat.1 Forced Migration is Dead — Euro SOE Players Can Stick With SOE

Written by Feldon on Tuesday, October 16, 2012 at 10:27 am

Well, this should change the tone and tenor of the ProSiebenSat.1 Panel at SOE Live a bit.

From SOE President John Smedley’s twitter:

[I] wanted to thank our players for continuing feedback. We’ve been listening along with our European partners at Prosieben.

We’ve found a way to let existing players of our current games that are migrating over to Prosieben (EQ, EQ II, Planetside 2) keep their SOE accounts and stay with SOE. Down the road we may offer an option to move over to Prosieben.

Just to be clear after these games launch on Prosieben’s service new accounts will be created on their sites. However all US and EU players can still play together no matter which service they are on.

I want to be clear that Prosieben will have better European CS and payment options IMO. That’s why we went with them in the first place. Also Prosieben has done a great job of listening and is working on changing some of their CS policies. More to come on that soon.

UPDATE

Just going back and forth with our partners at Prosieben. I can confirm that we WILL offer the ability to migrate to Prosieben. No word on timeframe just yet but shouldn’t take too long.

[I] want to make sure I’m crystal clear – after we launch Planetside 2 – new EU accounts can only be created on Prosieben.

This has subsequently been posted on the EQ2 Forums.

via The EQ2 Wire — EverQuest II News & Commentary.

 

Huzzah!!!!  Fantastic News!!!!!

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august challenge ~ part 2

Ambermist’s latest challenge and July’s recap can be found here.  The challenge is, what do you keep and why?

Part 2 ~ Collecting

As for collecting, I do…  books and bows mostly.

I collect bows as I tend to get quite attached to them, they are the defining characteristic of the type of class I play and generally the best bows available have a high level of challenge in order to get them.  Rain Caller in EQ2 was the result of a Signature quest which I managed to do on level with the help of my Guild, the Ghostly Bow of Bylze was part of an extremely long quest chain, to gain my Mythical bow Eagle’s Talon I had to raid in some very difficult and very scripted raid fights.  Obviously as you level and expansions are released you have new challenges and new bows to get so I was really happy I could make my old bows into house items and display them.  They end up being a visual reminder of past achievements which show your development and history within the game.

EQ2: right side of circular library

EQ2: Left side of circular library

EQ2: books in display cabinets

EQ2: books to be put away…

Skyrim: Bookshelves in Markarth House

Skyrim: Bookshelves in The Reserve

EQ2: Eagle’s Talon and Shard of Love bow

EQ2: Ghostly Bow of Bylze and Eagle’s Talon

EQ2: Rain Caller

Skyrim: Archery room in The Reserve

Collecting books in games really reflects my love of reading in real life. I would love a proper library but its not possible so I make do with virtual game libraries 😉

I sorely miss this in lotro.  I would love to be able to have books displayed in my house and weapons on the wall but its not possible with their housing system.  I have sort of replaced those with cosmetic items and horses in lotro, but its not the same and I don’t really care about it as much.

Having said that about outfits, I do collect them to a certain degree.  I generally put together an outfit which says hunter-ranger-sneak thief to me and then mostly stick with it or update within the theme.  I don’t really go for girly outfits, I occasionally stick a dress on a character for a change but it tends to be quite short lived and I go back to my favourite hunting outfit.  Even so, my wardrobe and house storage in lotro are still bursting at the seams with cosmetic items that I *might* use one day…..  When I saw my favourite outfits from the three games below, I suddenly realised that really I’m going for the same look no matter the game…

my trio of bow-wielding wood elves :

so there you have it.  A gamer with a stuffed-full inventory and a penchant for bows and books.  Could be worse I spose 😀

gimme six!

As I missed my weekly screenshot yesterday, I’m going to make up for it by posting 6 screenshots to join in the Gimme Six! challenge over at I rez therefore I am.  I found out about the challenge by a post on Ravalation – check her screenshots out, they’re fab 🙂

click first image for larger size and slideshow.

Dragon Age, Awakenings: Kal’hirol an abandoned Dwarven city and mine accessed via The Knotwood Hills. The architecture and lighting here is just stunning.

EQ2: This is Vasty Deep: The Conservatory accessed by entering The Vasty Deep via The Stonebrunt Highlands. This is the final boss of the zone and the colours and lighting in here are just beautiful.

Skyrim: The interior of the Bard’s College in Solitude. I just love the lighting in Skyrim 🙂

Skyrim: A view of the mountains and the aurora borealis from the city of Whiterun. Its located in the centre of Skyrim.

LOTRO: in contrast, Mirkwood is an elven homeland under siege. Pictured is the evil stronghold of Dol Guldur. Sauron (aka the Necromancer) has left at this point, but his Nazgul servant is still in charge…

LOTRO: the elven city of Lothlorien in Lord of the Rings Online. Its a beautiful place during the day but during the night-time it becomes very otherworldly and magical

 

**The final shot isn’t appearing for me if directly clicked or in the carousel slideshow (cannot see a reason why…) if this is bugging out for you too and you want to see it full size, right clicking and opening the image in a new tab seems to work.**

June challenge: tell me a story

So the challenge this month is to relate a gaming related story – just about managing to scrape into June here with this post 😉  I’d been delving through this blog’s archives for some reason and I found this post.  Which, amongst other things, details our EQ2 guild’s foray into the Halls of Seeing and I killed myself laughing again 😉  so here’s a recap:

We two grouped an old content raid zone (the aforementioned Halls of Seeing) half for something to do and half to get the dragon trophy for our guild hall.   The first half was very easy and we were all drinking and dpsing and chatting and generally having a good time.  I was on my inquisitor and had been seeing how high I could push my dps but the second half of the zone was a bit trickier so I switched to healing.

It still held a challenge for us with all the stuns and adds so we had a few comedy wipes (including one where I tried to rez a stone-giant thinking it was our ogre tank Eduthooha :P)  We were all slightly squiffy by the time we got to Venekor’s room and had a few bad attempts at it and were well… dying quite a lot 😛

We were all getting a bit tired and a little disheartened until Saskay commented that we could kill the mob just fine if we could JUST GET IN THE ROOM*  This had us in absolute stitches coined a new slogan – LoTW: they came, they saw, they got stuck at a door.

We did get into the room and we did kill Venekor 

first trophy on the left is Venekor 🙂

*to get into the room, you first have to pull a trap mob who is just across the threshold.  If you cross the threshold at the wrong spot, you start the Venekor ring event, you get ported into the room into the wrong tanking spot, you then get kicked into adds which are dotted around the edge of the room and raidforce is wiped.  Once the trap mob is killed, you have to do a conga line to the central pillar you then veer off at a 45 degree angle to the far left corner.  If you fight in this corner you don’t get the adds.  Oh and remember to use the amulet before /as you pull Venekor as it cannot be cast in combat

I do miss those days and our old guild, we used to have a lot of fun and silliness.

some blogging advice (nbi)

OK so, you want to blog about gaming but you’re not sure where to start or what to write?  Funnily enough… that’s exactly how I feel right now!  This blog is mostly an online gaming diary with a few creative efforts, guides etc thrown in, so the advice I give will obviously be from this angle 🙂

Subjects:
The first thing that I feel is important is that you write about what you enjoy, not what you think others will enjoy.  If you have a great screenshot, post it up.  If you’re proud of an outfit you’ve created or a house you’ve decorated post that up.  If you’ve had a blast running around X dungeon – describe your adventures.  If you roleplay, try developing your character on your blog.  Experiment too – you don’t have to publish the results 😉  The subjects you write about may stay varied and personal or they may develop into a theme – follow your interests 🙂

Schedule:
Writing regularly is really helpful to keep readers coming back to your blogs (something I’m not always good at!)  In order to balance gaming, life and blogging I settled on posting a screenshot every Wednesday and then doing other posts as and when.  When I take a break, I generally put a note up on my blog so that people know you’re on a break rather than think the blog’s been abandoned.

Writing:
Read your posts back to yourself, make sure it flows.  Ask someone to proof read for you if you’d like an opinion before you publish.  One of the best pieces of advice I can give is to write your post as a draft, let it sit for a few days and revise and revise and then revise some more before you publish.  I would also recommend trying to illustrate your post with a screenshot as blogs are very visual and it really can catch your reader’s attention.  Having said that, it may not suit some type of articles or your style of blogging so down to you.  You can also preview your posts to check formatting and it can be easier to proof read too (thanks to Feliz for reminding me :))

Writing about more than one game:
I tend to write about most games I’m playing, rather than just concentrating on just one.  Generally I tend to have one MMO going interspersed with various single RPG games.  I try to keep the majority of my posts about my long term MMO and throw in a few posts about the single RPGs here and there.  There may be other ways to combine this but I find this style of blogging works well with my gaming habits.

Getting your blog known:
Aside from the brilliant NBI there are other things you can do

• twitter… you can link your wordpress account with your twitter account and it will automatically tweet your post for you (don’t forget to add the hashtags – I always do ;))
• facebook… again you can link your accounts
• link to and comment on other blogs which post about the same games as you (make sure they are genuine comments though and not just flailing for attention ;))
• check out community resources for your game (e.g. lotro’s free people’s press) and submit a link to be advertised
• I use the same icon for all my gaming related accounts so people can recognise me immediately and for consistency
• add your blog’s link to your signature on any game related forums
• publish regularly (as often as you can cope with)

I’m going to try and get a post up with tips on using WordPress (I love this platform!)

newbie blogger initiative launches today!

May is the month for Newbie Bloggers!  The Newbie Blogger Initiative (organised by Syp of Biobreak/Massively) will give new bloggers help and support to get started plus a shedload of publicity once you’ve established your site – there are over 70 well known and established blogs lining up to support this!

During the month of May many blogs, incuding mine, will be posting at least one article giving advice and tips.  Then at the end of May we will be publishing on our blogs a list of all the new blogs and links to the advice columns.

so… why do I blog and why should YOU blog?

I started blogging because I started reading gaming blogs, really enjoyed them and thought I’d enjoy writing about my gaming experiences too.  The interaction with other bloggers is also pretty cool 🙂

I love reading about other people’s experiences with the games I play and their opinions, screenshots, creative efforts, news, speculation…

and that’s why YOU should blog – I want to read what you’re doing or thinking or writing or drawing about games 😀

how to get involved:

Head over to the Newbie Blogger Initiative forums, have a look around and register (a simple 5 min process).

Read the posts filed under Newbie Bloggers, especially the newbie blogger instructions.  If you have any questions, ASK us 😀

I’ll be posting my first advice column tomorrow (with suggestions for subjects and getting started) and will try to publish some further articles later in the month (will file under the menu above).

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