*Click links throughout for picture goodness

So I had a little time to peruse the new free content which will be coming with GU 35 hopefully at the end of May. I liked what I saw, in fact I’ll go so far as to say I was pretty impressed by everything. The new content will be a new race - the Arasai, a new starting city - Neriak, and a new overland zone for levels 1-20 - Darklight Wood. You can see full details here. All of the new content is meant to be evil in nature, and really has a great evil and foreboding feel throughout.

The new Arasai are as to be expected very much like the Fae. They have the same basic model and size, but they do have different skin colors and some pretty badass wing selections. I had a good time looking through some of the new character select options and even the skin colors seemed to have more variety, it looks as though you will be able to have a green-skinned Arasai if you wish.

As far as starting out as a new character the new content seems to be the usual goodness, and very much in line with what they did with the EoF starting character content. You start in a little town with plenty of npc’s that have a bunch of easy adventure and harvesting quests for you to do. They were decently fun to do, and within 30 minutes I easily got my new Arasai up to level 6.

Next some exploration was in order, I set out to find the city of Neriak and to find out what other treasures (and horrors) this new zone contained. Darklight woods was a big zone, now mind you not as big as say…Nektukulos Forest, but definately in line with the size of Lesser Fay and there were plenty of sights to see. I found an evil gypsy camp, where I also found a guard atop what I can only imagine is an upgraded version of the warg mount. I found a huge haunted tree, which had a big door leading inside. Inside I found the tree seemed to contain multiple levels but some of these were blocked off, I can only imagine these will be opened up through a series of quests as we saw in the tower in Fallen Dynasty. I also found a very cool looking vampire tower which seemed to be the top level of content in the zone (mobs were all 19-20). All around the zone many of the usual mobs were seen hanging about - skeletons en masse, bats, drakes, werewolves, evil vulture birds, plenty of vampires, etc.

So back to my search for Neriak; it took me awhile to find it, probably because the entrance is nothing more than a big door into the mountain with 2 half-naked ladies on either side. Don’t let the small entrance fool you though, Neriak is pretty awesome inside. As I have referenced many times, Neriak is an evil city within an evil land and does of great job of fitting the part. Many of the buildings emit eerie auras, the guards are on scary versions of the Mistrunner mounts, the dogs look like hell hounds, and there are vampires walking around town. I won’t go into great detail of every building and everything within, but the art and music of this zone definately blew me away.

I’ve heard this new free content was designed by the Taiwan SOE studio, the same ones that brought us the Fallen Dynasty adventure pack. I thought the Fallen Dynasty add-on had a great design and am already very impressed by this free add-on which is still on the test server. I also love the little things that remind me of Fallen Dynasty, such as the haunted tree I mentioned above and just the overall feel of Darklight Wood and Neriak. I’m not sure who did the music for this but make sure and crank it up and give it a listen when you get a chance to explore these new zones. Nothing better than spooky zones with some spooky music to go along with it. Well done

Day 2 turned out to be a rousing success for the Community Summit. The morning started out with a lovely poolside breakfast (which helped greatly with the slight hangover from the night before - thanks Smed). After breakfast we took a bus ride to SOE suburbs, and although we had to endure Brenlo’s cheesy jokes on the way it was it was good to see some of the area around San Diego as this was my first trip there.

Arriving at SOE headquarters was pretty exciting for me personally. I was looking forward to seeing where something was made that I had enjoyed for so long - in the same way I was excited to visit the Anheiser Busch headquarters last time I was in St. Louis The complex is located in a fairly nondescript business park, and encompasses 3 two-story buildings. The main building contains the Operations center (which was interesting as hell to see), marketing, community relations, and the executive offices. The other two buildings housed the development studios for EQ, EQ2, Planetside, and others; and they also contain customer service, hardware and software testing, and foreign relations and if you can believe it even a few GM’s. We also learned of some of the other SOE locations of note - Austin, TX where SWG is made and Seattle, WA where Matrix Online is made. Most of the offices were just that - offices mostly full of cubicles, although these offices did have a little better than average hardware in them and dual monitors. We did get to see the recording studio where they record the official SOE podcast, and even got to sit in with Brenlo, the host, for a little segment which you can hear on their next podcast.
The most exciting events of the day were getting to see some of the new things they are working on at SOE. Most of what we saw I cannot discuss, but I can tell you we got a chance to see some of the new game D.C. Universe, and it did not disappoint.

The coolest thing we saw that I can write about was the new Station Launchpad. Basically this will be a new launchpad for all of SOE’s games, and has some rockin’ new features. They include:

• -The ability to keep all of your games current with a patching system that downloads when your PC is inactive. This will mean hopefully no more coming home on a patch day and waiting on your game to update, you should be ready to play.
• -A new friends system built in to the launcher. Now you will be able to see what games all of your friends are playing, what server they are on, and you’ll be able to chat with them easily and at any time.
• -A system for finding potential new friends. I think this was one of the features I was most excited about. You’ll be able to search for new friends that play the same general times you play, play similar games, and even have similar level ranges to you. The system will suggest friends to you based on how much their play styles mirror your own.
• -Built in support for Ventrilo and Teamspeak. SOE will also be hosting these servers for free! Awesome system that I’m sure many of us will use and enjoy, and some in game functionality may even come later.
• -In the future movies, TV shows, and music will be able to be bought and rented through the new Launcher. You will even be able to rent a movie and watch it together with friends or your guild online in real time and talk about it if you wish.
• -Also a future function will be more robust parental controls and hopefully some kind of sub-account system for children.

All in all the launcher looks great, and the best thing is this is something we might be seeing in the next few months!

After our studio tour we travelled back to our hotel and then to the harbor for our very own pirate adventure! Well maybe less of a pirate adventure and more of a harbor tour on a luxury yacht, but in my mind the crew was slightly “piratey.” This was my first experience on a large sailboat, and it was quite cool. Shortly after boarding we were told to volunteer for sailraising duty, for which I heartily stepped up for. Then through fellow podcaster Brenlo and I’s brutish strength the sail was raised and we were off! (There might have been another dozen or so men helping us as well, but my memories are a little fuzzy on this) Afterwards the night was spent drinking rum and singing sailing songs of yore in true pirate fashion. Even though after the sun set a chill set upon our boisterous band of revilers, nothing was able to dash our spirits and we did eventually arrive back at our point of origin unscathed and no worse for wear.

The evening ended with a few drinks at the hotel bar, and a proclamation of a successful weekend by all. My thanks again to SOE for never forgetting their community and how to show some folks a good time.

Mecca or Fortress of Evil?

SOE’s battle bot

Coyote and his weird paper hat

Grimwell telling lies

You’d think a high roller would be happier

Kendricke and his appropriately named beer

Striking a pose

Brent and Val - Val is just about to cross that invisible line

Smed learning everything that is wrong with SWG

Random restaurant pic

Random restaurant pic

It looks kind of pirate-like doesn’t it?

Hoisting the sails

Boat Party 1

Boat Party 2

Sunset over San Diego Harbor

So I titled this post because it was the first full day of our summit, but I will have to mention that SOE had us flown out yesterday and had a really nice welcome reception for all of the community folks that were invited, in which Val and I got extremely drunk and talked our asses off about how PvP sucks now and all the things we love about EQ2. Val also got a lot of drunken video which you may or may not be seeing in the future Let me go ahead and preface this post by saying no there is no awesome news we can report yet. There are some realy cool things coming in 2007 for EQ2, but due to confidentiality we aren’t able to report a lot yet. Hopefully soon.

The majority of today was spent in discussion with the community management and marketing team over what’s going good with communication with the players and fan websites, what’s not going good and in that same sense what can they improve upon. Some great discussions were had, with a lot of talk with ideas for offering players better commuication with the games they play, and better ways for fansites (like this one for example) to bring better info to the public. The talks were great and hopefully we were all able to give the SOE team some good ideas for the future.

A side note: How cool is it that the makers of a game listen and get ideas from the community on what they can be doing better? One of the best things about this summit is that not all of the people invited are huge fans of SOE, so you’ve got a good mix of lovers and haters in the group. In addition, you’ve got most of the major games represented, from Eq1, Eq2, SWG, and even a Matrix person or two.

One of the best things about events like this summit is the opportunity to talk with people from other fansites. We made fast friends with Coyote from TenTonHammer and Kendricke from WarCry. Also, of course we had plenty to talk about with Brent and Brenden from VirginWorlds. They should have plenty of content coming from this summit as well.

Dev’s have been really readily available for us to talk to at this summit too. Not only has the entire community staff been on hand, but we’ve had most of the development staff on hand to address our questions and concerns. Smed (SOE Ceo) and others were able to join us for some of our sessions today, and they were very interested in player concerns. What was so cool about meeting some of the SOE exec’s is how they genuinely love games. We had a ton of conversations on current and upcoming games, and although I’m sure many of you think that the leadership at SOE are corporate pigs, I’m here to report to you that they are all very cool people who are passionate about the PC gaming world and all of SOE’s games. Hell I consider myself a pretty avid gamer but these guys put me to shame with their knowledge of the world of not only MMO’s but the gaming world in general.

Other dev’s of note I got a chance to talk to tonight were Vhalen, the EQ2 loremaster, and Saavedra, one of the guys on the development team that creates a lot of the in-game content we know and love. Very cool to hear stories of how Vhalen came up with the names for some of the main EQ2 NPC’s in the game, and to talk with Saavedra on item creation, uber loots, and even some tips for what zones give the best xp in the game. Oh how I wish I could share…..

All this being said a great first day to our summit. Tomorrow we visit the SOE headquarters where I hope I will have much more to report.

Both Brent from VW and Mrrx tagged me with this mem (do I need to write 10?), so here goes.

1.) I like podcasting because I don’t have to write. I am horrible at grammar and spelling. I actually push myself to write a lot on my non MMO blog just so that I get experience at it and continue to get better. I didn’t take Freshman English till my last year at college because I was so worried about it, and I think the only reason I got through it was my wife.

2.) I am scared of syrup. No real reason for it. I just hate it and it makes me cringe seeing it glop out of a plastic bottle and unlike Brent and his fear of rubber bands, I actually do run away from syrup (or really just kinda back away slowly and keep my cool).

3.) I am an Eagle scout. I was actually in Boy Scouts for 8 years total, and I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything in the world.

4.) I want to return to college and get my PhD. I really really enjoyed the academic atmosphere and would love to go back and get my PHd in computer science/mathematics (what my Bach. was in), and I would love to leave the private sector after making a few mill and go back to school with no worries.

5.) I am going to be a Dad soon (hence the need for the few mill in the previous item)

Looks like a lot of people have already been tagged so of course I will go with the two cohosts Val and Rot (who will probably post here), also I will tag Ogre, Brenlo, and Aggro.

Due to popular demand (and the fact I just got back from holiday and Val and Rot are in St. Louis till next weekend) instead of a podcast this week I compiled all of Vaddir’s excellent crafting segments into one podcast. Thanks again to Vaddir for putting so much work into these, they totally kick ass and are EXTREMELY informative. Also perfect timing for wrapping it up because once LU24 hits prod, I have a feeling that there will be more people who are looking for this information. So feel free to pass it round and let everyone in on Vaddir’s excellent advice.

You can download the show here (right click, save as)

The show is also up on our feed, and also on the flash player (just hit the play button to listen).

Heading back to mess with the Fallen Dynasty Beta
-Cyan