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.

updates and /rants

whew well, I don’t recommend a 10 day tag team stint of tummy bugs to anyone 😛  so unsurprisingly I’ve not been playing lotro or any other mmo recently, instead I’ve retreated back to Minecraft to knock stuff down and build it back up again but as I’m now feeling better (though am dreading jinxing myself here, now I’ve written that!) I will be back playing and blogging again 🙂

so yeah the rant – these two separate issues got me so cross that I actually posted on the forums /faint

The first is in lotro and the attempt to charge us £10 in turbine points for full functionality of the wallet and the choice of renting your overland skirmish soldier in either skirmish marks/medallions or wait for it…. TURBINE POINTS!!!!!!  jeesh I honestly didn’t see that one coming…  anyway HBA has got his /rant on and says it much better than I 😉

and the second… is the (now) old news that dear old SOE has decided to flog the EU playerbase to Prosiebensat.1 aka alaplaya, initially with region locks, they now seem to be backtracking somewhat over that and also seem to be ignoring the fact that many of the EU players will not touch this company with a bargepole let alone create an account with them.  205+ page forum thread unanimously against the changes (and that is after some very heavy handed moderation)  The EQ2 Wire has full coverage for those interested.  I won’t be transferring my account and I won’t even think about EQ next if I have to go through this company.

Strangely though, what we are thinking about is a weekly group with some friends in Everquest once its free-to-play.  We both have some leftover freebie Station Cash to use up too so that might be handy.  Should be some free fun I hope 😉

and lotro…  well its pretty quiet there for us at the moment. we may take a proper break when our sub comes up for renewal, we shall see 🙂

oh screenshots…  i made a sort of hobbit home with a little farm 😛

and a castle…

Happy New Year :)

Last year I did a roundup of 2010, so I thought I’d do a quick roundup of my gaming this year and share some of my favourite moments and screenshots too 🙂

Games I played:

Lord of the Rings online was my most played game but I also played (and finished!) Dragon Age: Origins, DA Awakenings and Dragon Age II.  I also played Minecraft, Skyrim and Everquest II.

Favourite moments (sort of in order):

5. The intro to Skyrim.  So there I was sitting on this bumpy wagon, looking around and going OMG! it looks amazing!  From there onto the  execution wondering how I was going to get out of this, THEN running away from a dragon (was amazing when it crashed through the tower), then going through a series of beautifully lit caves looting, killing, picking locks,  and finally out into the beautiful open world with it all set out before me to do as I please… ah bliss!

4. The Party Banter (Dragon Age series).  Ohgren’s filthy conversations with Wynne, Varric discussing Sebastien’s cocking ring, Zevran and his constant sleaze, Alistair’s one liners – great fun all 🙂

3.  The Thieves Guild (Skyrim).  I love the atmosphere here, the voice acting for Brynjolf and Karliah is superb (my only annoyance here is that now that I’m master of the guild, all Brynjolf says to me is ‘sorry lass, I’m too busy to talk’ pfft…)  Sneaking about and fighting alongside those two was just amazing…

2.  Volume 2 of the Epic Questline (lotro).  The story woven into Moria and Mirkwood was bleak with the Elves and Dwarves facing impossible odds and centuries worth of mistrust.  The session play (Moria) showing the awakening of the balrog (stop! you’re delving too deep!) and the last stand in the Chamber of Mazarbul was amazing – I was rooting for the dwarves even knowing it was futile… Moving on to Mirkwood, I loved seeing fighting alongside elves, I loved that my character was finally ‘home’ and was fighting the evil found there.  The twist in the story when Broín has ‘disappeared’ from the elven stronghold at Ost Galadh was brilliant (I had also felt some resentment and frustration at Broín’s determination to rescue Bori).  By the end, Broín was my absolute hero (I’ll just mention the scenes with the Nazgúl and Mazog as why without giving away too much) and if I’m ever captured by Orcs, please put him in charge of getting me back!

1.  oh noes I killed Alistair!  (DA: O) The story was so thoroughly absorbing in Dragon Age: Origins that I was rendered speechless and motionless when Alistair ran off to deal the final blow against the arch-demon.  My carefully orchestrated, self-sacrificial ending of the story was ruined by something I really didn’t expect –  Alistair’s refusal to allow my character to take the fall.   I have to admit, it was pretty awesome and even though I was so shocked, I did have a slightly silly grin on my face 😛  Well done to Bioware for foiling my carefully researched (though clearly not carefully enough) ending 😉

Some of my favourite screenshots:

sneaking 😀

northern lights

lothlorien

mirkwood

aieeeeeeee!

for 2012?

I will still be playing lotro as my main MMO but now EQ2 is free to play I’ll be popping on there to do some decorating and other noodly type activities.

I’m looking forward to the creation kit being released for Skyrim so I can mod the game some (mostly house tweaks I’m looking forward to I think) and also for the new dlc to be released.  I *may* start again with a resolution to not collect junk ‘just in case’ although that probably won’t work 😉

*cough* i haven’t started a new game of dragon age: origins… oh noes… oh no… not at all 😀

I haven’t heard of any games I’m interested in being released this year as yet, although of course I am on a countdown to go and see The Hobbit 😉