What A Saturday

This hasn't been the greatest week for me. Working hard is leading to drinking hard. But that part creates good memories and recalls others as long as I'm drinking with my co-workers and not by myself. The bad part was having part of my garage ceiling collapse because the unit over the garage had leaky bathroom pipes. I own my own place, but the rest of the folks who live in my building rent, and I got to deal with the landlords of the place with the leak. Seem to be nice people and the husband is a pastor. They are going to have their sons come over next Saturday and fix my garage. I'm pretty sure they will since that unit will get cold next winter if the insulation doesn't get replaced.

With that done, I had to log in from home and work for the next 5 hours. Ruined my whole afternoon for gaming, but it was worth $200. The question I have is, is $200 enough to keep you from being ticked off about not being to play your favorite game at a time you wanted to?

Explosion of Podcast Goodness

I got home late last night and did a little surfing the net instead of logging into EverQuest 2. I went over to Virgin Worlds to check out the latest news. Oh my gosh, Brent posted the latest editions of both Shut Up We're Talking and the Free Play Podcast yesterday. Reading the show notes made things even better. Darren from SUWT is on the Free Play Podcast and Tim Dale (a.k.a. Van Hemlock) and Jon the Ancient Gaming Noob are on Shut Up We're Talking!

Things got even better when I checked the RSS feed on the blog and saw that the M team put up a new Channel Massive podcast last night.

Then this morning, Brent posted a new Van Hemlock podcast!

So many podcasts, so little time.

And don't forget that Tuesday night on Online Gaming Radio features EQ2's-day from 7-9pm Eastern and The Jethal Silverwing Show from 10pm - midnight Eastern.

WoW Video - Who's The Tank?

I found a World of Warcraft-based video yesterday based on the classic Abbot and Costello comedy routine "Who's on first?" With the baseball season entering the second week, I thought I'd post both the original and the WoW parody. Both videos are workplace safe. Enjoy!

Who's The Tank?


Who's On First?

What I've Been Listening To: April 5 - 11, 2009

Even as my time to listen to podcasts has shrunk of late, my favorite podcasts seem to get longer. Brent came out with a 2 ½ hour podcast and Van Hemlock and Sisters Julie and Fran came out with 1 ½ hour podcasts. Next week promises to be the same for me, with work still hectic and trying to write the last two installments of the “Confessions of a Grey Shard Runner” series. While I kept up with my podcast listening pretty well this past week, next week promises to be filled with lots of podcast goodness. So many podcasts, so little time.

Here is what I listened to over the past week.

Van Hemlock #46 (Hosts: Tim Dale and John Shute) – Another great podcast started with a review of the news. The news ranged from coverage of games in development like Warhammer 40K, Star Gate Worlds and Jump Gate Evolution to stupid politician tricks. The latest news came from Canada and Germany.

In episode 46, the hosts discussed The Daedalus Project. The project looked at MMO gamers over a 10 year period and recently went into hibernation. The results Van Hemlock and Jon talked about were fascinating. As someone who has worked in the market research industry for 12 years, I didn’t find anything too wrong with any of the duos analysis of the research methods. I do work more on the technical side, so some people might disagree, but I don’t think by much.

Virgin Worlds #142 (Host: Brent) – I’m just going to say this: 2 ½ hours of Brent covering the Game Developers’ Conference on-site with Shut Up, We're Talking's Darren Love in San Francisco. If you are into geeky technology and game industry news, give this podcast a listen.

The Instance #141 (Hosts: Scott Johnson and Randy Jordan) – 38 Studio chief (and former pitching great) Curt Schilling made an appearance on this episode as Scott and Randy discussed announced content being removed from patch 3.1 and Blizzard’s April Fool’s Day pranks. A real interesting discussion on whether Blizzard's April Fool's activities contributed to the patch 3.1 issues. A quick-fire response to email questions from listeners occurred and may become a new segment of the podcast.

Epic Dolls #63 (Hosts: Leala Turkey and Katerina) - Stompalina from the Rawrcast joins the hosts to discuss raiding. The trio discuss raiding from three approaches: casual (Leala) intermediate (Katerina) and hard-core (Stompalina). Once again, the Dolls have produced a podcast with a subject that applies to all games, not just the World of Warcraft.

No Prisoners, No Mercy #28 (Hosts: Sister Julie and Sister Fran) - The good sisters settled down a lot compared to their last few podcasts and I think produced a better podcast with episode #28. Sister Julie has always been a borderline shock jock in both her writings and the podcast, but I think she does better when she keeps the content on the edge.

The highlights of the podcast were the discussion of the announcements about the new streaming gaming technology coming out of GDC and a discussion on listener reaction to Sister Julie’s and Sister Fran’s reaction to The Watchman.

EQ2's-day broadcast from March 31, 2009 (Hosts: Dellmon and Zanadi) - The hosts discussed the upcoming SOE Fan Faire 2009 in Las Vegas and Game Update 51. Dellmon had a bit of a buzzing problem that diminished as the broadcast went on.

Confessions of a Grey Shard Runner: Motivation

Up until Kiara’s April 1st announcement on the official EverQuest 2 forums concerning the use of the mentoring mechanic to set a zone to level 50-60 characters so void shard missions could be done easier (a.k.a. a “grey shard run”), I honestly believed that the practice, while cheesy, was not an exploit. But as a guild mate pointed out to me, just because the devs allow a practice doesn’t mean you should do it. True. Also, if you’ve read the first post on The Nosy Gamer back in February, you know I stopped playing World of Warcraft partially because of the end game grind. So why would I engage in a practice that not only is cheesy but is the gaming equivalent of a rat running through a maze to poke a lever and receive a piece of cheese? After all, I play a wood elf, not a ratonga.

The first reason was simple. I had completed most of my crafting goals on my main and only had one more to accomplish: shard armor. While most of the server swarmed the Moors of Ykesha and The Shadow Odyssey instances scattered throughout Norrath, I, along with my guildies and a lot of crafters, swarmed over the new trade skill instances. This task was made a bit tougher due to bugs with the system that kept a lot of players (including myself) from entering the instances 2-3 days after the launch of the expansion. Eventually I did manage to acquire enough Far Seas Trading tokens to buy the limited use recipe books for alchemists, a complete set of crafting armor (although not the crafting jewelry), and the unicorn with the great harvesting bonuses. During this time I also completed the quest to get the Cloak of the Harvester, a cloak that not only gives harvesting bonuses but grants the wearer feather fall. But more importantly, at least as far as this post is concerned, is I acquired all four of the Far Seas Strategic Pricing Guides. The Far Seas Strategic Pricing Guides are the recipe books crafters use to make the tier 1 and tier 2 shard armor as well as jewelry, weapons, and charms. Once I discovered I could make my own armor, I determined that I wanted to run around in well-crafted armor with my name on it. In EQ2, the crafter’s name is displayed on armor, weapons, and jewelry. Cool!

The second reason is a bit more complex and goes to the differences in itemization between the Rise of Kunark and The Shadow Odyessy expansions. In RoK, I determined that once I stepped foot in the Kylong Plains that I would seek out and acquire the best non-raid equipment I could as I leveled up. I researched the various faction armor I could wear while progressing and found the sticky in the Ranger forums on the best non-raid tier 8 gear a Ranger could own. I was really pleased with that choice, not only because of the places I wound up visiting at a bit lower level than I should have, but with my performance. I didn’t realize how well I was doing until my guild joined into a raiding alliance with 2 other guilds and while level 75-77 was regularly outparsing the level 80 rangers in the raid and staying within shouting distance of a level 80 assassin’s dps. By the time TSO was released last November, the only piece of gear I wore that was not listed in the equipment list on the forums were my boots. Even though I could never get the Trooper Scale Boots to drop, I was really proud of what I achieved. Because of the hodge-podge of equipment I wore, I didn’t look like anything special, but an experienced player would know I packed a wallop.

The Shadow Odyssey is a whole different ballgame. Having the Far Seas Strategic Pricing Guides allowed me to see just how much better the shard armor was than my hard won RoK gear. The best non-raid gear was going to be found in the group instances. And the gear to get was the shard armor, which I knew would cost 38 shards to acquire the tier 1 set if I made it and an additional 112 shards to craft the tier 2 set. I also saw the writing on the wall for this expansion. In order to get into groups I was going to need to have at least a set of tier 1 armor and probably tier 2. Even those players who didn’t realize the importance of upgrading their spells and combat arts from apprentice 4s to adept 3s were going know enough about the expansion to know that shard armor is some of the best gear. While I’m a crafter, I do like to adventure on occasion and if I wanted to be able to get into groups six months after the launch of the expansion, I needed to get the shard armor.

I was already starting a month behind in the quest for the armor since I concentrated on my crafting. So how was I going to catch up, especially since I only had 60-90 minutes a night to play during the week? Simple, really. Since the devs had not declared doing the shard missions an exploit, I jumped at the chance to do grey shard runs when I was first invited about a month after the expansion launched.

I know I could have tried to get groups, but with so little available play time I figured the only groups I could get were guild groups and quite frankly, our small guild of tradeskillers and merchant adventurers didn’t have enough people to tackle the TSO instances at level. Back in November, we had 3 players with level 80 toons and no one had their fabled weapons. And at the time I started doing the grey shard runs, the guild’s level 80 healer left the game to play WoW because the launch went so poorly for the crafter content she bought the expansion to experience. Duo’ing the instances with the other level 80 in the guild just seemed the thing to do.

Before anyone tells me I should have left my guild for a bigger guild that would meet my needs better, I just want to say one thing. I’m in a high-end CRAFTING guild I have been a part of for almost 2 years filled with great people. A guild to which I have contributed almost 2 million guild status points to help level the guild to 76. And did I mention we have a tier 3 guild hall with all the amenities? If you think I’m going to leave my guild and the great people that make up my guild in order to play EverQuest 2 the way you think I should, you have another thing coming!

So why did I do grey shard runs? To make the best crafted gear I could make. To make gear not only for the joy of creating it, but to have cool gear I could wear that has my name on it. Cool gear that is amongst the best non-raid gear in the game that will help me find and join groups outside my guild when the feeling to plunge into an instance overtakes me. And to play the game in a way to allow me to stay in the guild where all of my on-line game friends reside.

Previous post: Confessions of a Grey Shard Runner: Justification
Next post: Confessions of a Grey Shard Runner: Implementation

Confessions of a Grey Shard Runner: Justification

The reaction on the official EverQuest 2 forums to Kiara’s statement that running the shard missions in The Shadow Odyssey instances with the mobs grey is an exploit has been interesting. Instead of adding to the storm, I’ll post my comments here.

My first comment is I really don’t like the way SOE has handled the whole grey shard issue. I’m not talking about Kiara’s statement or the decision to declare using the mentoring mechanic to make mobs grey in the TSO instances to make getting shard easy an exploit. My problem is the statement was not made four months ago. If the devs didn’t know about the situation before TSO launched in November, that means they weren’t listening to their beta testers. Seeing the s***storm that has erupted on the forums the past few days, I think I can fairly say, “Epic fail, SOE, epic fail!” I really want to see how SOE will clean up the mess.

Why would I be upset with the developers waiting over 4 months to declare grey shard runs an exploit? Because I did them. Why would I engage in an exploit? Back in December a really good argument could be made that the developers wanted casual players and players in small guilds to do grey shard runs. The argument runs something like this. The devs did not want to keep casual players or players from small guilds from being able to get the really good non-raid loot. Heck, the devs wanted to give those players the ability to someday be able to do the instances. But at the same time they wanted to provide challenging content to the not-so-casual to hardcore players. The TSO instances are designed to be challenging to full (6-toon) parties of well-geared players with up-to-date spells. To give an idea of the difficulty levels involved, Runny-Eye 2 was considered to be a moderately difficult zone. The question was: how were the devs going to allow the casual player to get phat lewt while providing the challenging content the other players demanded? After all, if casuals and small guild members could get the gear over a long period of time, they would stay subscribed to the game longer and SOE would rake in the bucks. And quite frankly, casual players outnumber the hard-core raiders.

The answer seemed to be to allow players to form groups with level 75-80 players and then allow them to group with a level 50-65 character, mentor that lower level character to set the zone to level 50-65, then unmentor the lowbie and do the shard mission. A dev apparently even suggested players do this mentoring trick on the beta forums for the expansion. I didn’t actually see the post in question, and apparently all the beta forum posts have been destroyed. But I heard of the post, and the post coincided with some things I had heard on blogs and on the official forums from casual players lamenting the fact that SOE made the instances too hard and their only recourse was to do grey shard runs to get the phat lewt.

The concept of allowing players to do grey shard runs also made sense in another way. The only rewards for players doing grey shard runs are the shard, 15 gold pieces, a few percent of an AA level plus whatever silver drops from the mobs. Players doing the missions at level 80 can get a second shard from a chest, have the ability to see and gather shinies (collectables), get chest drops, and win more money from mobs. Not only that, but the alternate achievement gain is greater as well. So players doing grey shard runs could eventually get the nice shiny shard armor, but not gain nearly as much as players running the instances as designed. In my mind SOE, or perhaps just the developers who coded the expansion, actually intended for casual players to do the shard missions with the mobs 20 levels lower than themselves.

So while grey shard runs were cheesy, by themselves, they were not an exploit. However, grey shard runs were part of a really big exploit involving the selling of the otherwise no-trade (or bind on pickup) void shards. The scam worked like this. The exploiter, a level 75 to 80 adventurer and a level 79 or 80 tradeskiller who has all 4 Far Seas Strategic Pricing Manuals, would do a number of instances grey and be able to collect 6-8 shards in 60 – 90 minutes each day. That’s 40-50 void shards per week. The exploiter would then offer to make shard items using the commission system. The catch in the system is that instead of shards being an ingredient in the receipe, shards are considered fuel. That meant that the exploiter could actually sell the no-trade shards to the buyer of the armor, usually at 5 platinum pieces (500 gold pieces) per shard. Can you see how a person could become very rich, very quickly using this exploit? And since doing grey void shard runs makes the scam work better, I can understand the rationale for opposing the runs.

Did you notice I wrote “were a part of a really big exploit”? That is because in Game Update 51 the devs fixed the commission system so the shards cannot be sold. So there goes that rationale. But I still won’t do any more grey shard runs. They are an exploit; SOE in the form of Kiara have told us so.

Next post: Confessions of a Grey Shard Runner: Motivation

What I've Been Listening To: March 29 - April 4, 2009

Last week was crazy at work. So crazy I didn’t log into EverQuest 2 on Thursday or Friday. So crazy that I didn’t even want to look at a computer away from work and started to read John Ringo’s The Last Centurion instead. The last few blog entries that I posted were written earlier in the week and I scheduled them to appear on Thursday and Friday. Reading that book got me excited to listen to the new episode of Through the Aftermath, so I’m back at the key board. Seeing the increase in traffic from the last few posts helps me to keep writing.

Below is what I listened to last week.

Van Hemlock #45 (Hosts: Van Hemlock and Jon Shute) – Listening to the commentary from the other side of the pond helped stave off the disgust of looking at my computer for a day. I could only listen to the podcast so many times before the desire to shut down my computer became too great and I picked up my book. Some things even the great Van Hemlock can’t stop.

The hosts didn’t have any great issues of the day to discuss; just news and what they were playing. The news covered ranged from Jack Thompson to the latest installment of “Are computer games dead?” to the Nerf Bat visiting Eve. I really enjoyed Van Hemlock’s description of his play time in City of Heroes. Circus characters!

Free Play Podcast #17 (Hosts: Riknas and Andras) – The Free Play Crew helped stave off my rage against the computer in the middle of the week with a very nice podcast. Riknas and Andras are no Jonathan Morris (see skits at the beginning of Through the Aftermath for examples of really good skits), but I liked the skit at the beginning of the podcast.

Riknas’ and Andras’ little podcast is getting mentioned this high in my podcast list because they bring the news of games that others overlook. If you want to know about F2P games, the Free Play Podcast is a good place to start. For instance, this episode’s news included subjects like same sex marriage in DOMO, voice-overs in Wizard 101, the popularity of Atlantica, Silk Road Online’s expansion, and a list of games that have entered beta.

Episode 17's reviewed game was BOTS. I won’t spoil the comedy involved in the review, except to say if you can’t get past the character creator, BOTS may not be the game for you.

The Instance #140 (Hosts: Scott Johnson and Randy "Delux" Jordan) - I should have known I was going to have a bad week when after working a 13 1/2 hour day on Monday listening to Scott and Randy didn't give me the same emotional lift it usually does. I don’t have a lot of notes from the show, but some of it seems important. For instance, is Gnome Soccer going to be the new in-game sport in World of Warcraft? And I think that the hosts offered a very important service in reminding all players that the United States Internal Revenue Service does not allow people to claim their alts as dependents. As the sole supporter of 7 alts in EQ2, I think that’s one Bush administration policy that needs to change!

Oh yes, and the pair offered up real news, like the changes in alchemy and how longs the effects of flasks last, speculation on whether Blizzard is developing a 5th game, and the news about OnLine that came out of the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco.

WoW Insider #83 – I decided that I was going to listen to WoW Insider for the first time this week. It was probably not a good week to start listening considering the way work was going downhill for me. The podcast had all the elements to be good. Patrick Beja from How I WoW and a contributor to The Instance and Alex Albrecht of Project Lore were guests. And the topics covered: alchemy changes, why players are leaving the Arenas and speculation about what is in the upcoming new battleground were good. I just had problems staying awake. Something tells me that the problem wasn’t boring hosts. Think the problem was me not getting enough sleep? I do. That’s why I’m going to listen to episode 84.

Through The Aftermath #6 (Hosts: Shawn Schuster and Jonathan Morris) – Yesterday when I finally got the urge to look at a computer again, I headed on over to Virgin Worlds and downloaded the podcast. Hey, there is a reason that farmers, raiders, and mutant hordes in the post-apocalyptic wastelands stop what they are doing to listen to Through The Aftermath.

The podcast took a break while Shawn went to San Francisco to cover GDC for Massively.com. As great as being the managing editor for a game site is, one of the drawbacks was Shawn could not play the latest Fallout 3 expansion, The Pitt. So Jonathan got to lead the discussion about Fallout 3 while Shawn relayed what he discovered about Fallen Earth, Earthrise, and Huxley at GDC. The podcast also features Shawn’s interview with the Earthrise team and Masthead Studios’ CEO Atanas Atanasov.

Just from listening to the podcast, I am now interested in playing Fallen Earth. If I am reading my notes correctly, the game sounds like crafters will have a key place in the game, and I’m all about the crafting!

Channel Massive #84 (Hosts: Noah, Jason & Mark) - I finished out the week listening to the M team talk about the latest news. The Channell Massive take on the news is a bit different than everyone else's, which makes it great for Saturday afternoon listening. Okay, the Channell Massive podcast is great to listen to anytime, but I digress.

This week's discussion ranged from what the creator of Pong is currently doing (EPIC FAIL?) to SOE's latest doings (game delays & women) to World of Warcraft news. The Blog-O-Steria segment was cut short due to real life issues. Mark's wife went into labor during the recording of episode #84. Congrats Mark on having a brand new baby girl!

Size Matters

Does size matter? When it comes to the size of a player’s inventory in an MMORPG, the answer is yes. Last week I wrote a post pointing out how much more “stuff” EverQuest 2 characters can own at one time than World of Warcraft toons. The question I did not answer was: what are the effects of this inventory design decision on the games?

The first effect I see is that WoW players are more likely to delete items from their bags than players in EQ2. From my experience in Vanilla WoW, I would start an adventuring session with one 16-slot bag empty and perhaps a few slot free in another bag. In EQ2, I never leave town without at least 30 free bag slots and often times with 50 free bag slots. So how does that affect the games? Well, WoW players can either have to delete items or they have to travel back to town a lot more often, especially since items like ore and plants only stack to 20 while similar items in EQ2 stack to 200. Not only do the inventory limits lead players in WoW to make more trips to town than in EQ2, but the decision also affects the economy in the games. Not only is it harder to gather lots of items to put up for sale on WoW’s auction house, but players can only list the item for sale for 24 hours before it is emailed back to the seller. Players not only can gather more stuff in EQ2, but they can list the items on the broker for as long as they have space in their sales crates and log in once a week.

The second effect I see is the greater use of mules in WoW than in EQ2. Mules are characters whose sole purpose in life is to serve as extra inventory slots. I didn’t use mules when I played WoW, but I know a lot of people who do. I know I had some issues with items at level 60; I can’t imagine all the things I would just sell to the vendor if I had stayed in the game and reached level 80. Of course, if I had used mules I could have kept more things. But mailing items to your mules has its own drawbacks. When I asked the mage at work if he wanted bigger bags, he told me no because managing his belongings was already such a chore. He also said he didn’t like putting items for sale on the auction house because his mail is already clogged with items he has mailed his mules and he doesn’t want to deal with the unsold items the auction house would send him.

In EQ2, I don’t need to create alts for extra inventory space. Yes, I do have 8 characters, but they are all mid-to-high level crafters. The items I put in their bags and banks are items they need for crafting. My alts aren’t mules; they are characters in their own right. They may not be able to fight very well, but my little crafting family can make almost anything I need in game. The important thing for me is that I don’t have to log in and out of my characters just to manage my inventory. I log in to play the character, not to sort through my bags and put items in the mail.

The question you may be asking at this point is why doesn’t Blizzard increase the inventory space? Two words: cost and performance. Quite frankly, Ron Pardo does not need to worry about competition from EverQuest 2, so Blizzard can worry about maximizing profit and ignore the competition from SOE. But the developers do need to worry about newer games like Age of Conan (don’t laugh!) and Warhammer Online coming onto the scene. In those battles, WoW relies on better game performance and faster executing SQL calls help capture market share more than giving players more inventory space. Also, because WoW keeps the SQL space used by each character to a minimum, the devs have the freedom to quickly add features in reaction to a competitor. For instance, WoW was able to add the Achievement system in response to Warhammer’s Tome of Knowledge.

I’ve mentioned the positives for WoW making the design choice of less inventory space. So what are the negatives for EQ2? The one that really bugs me is I only can have 7 characters on my account in the game. Seven? WoW players can have a total of 50 characters, with a limit of 10 characters per server. Think about how ridiculous only being able to have 7 characters in EQ2 is. EQ2 has 24 character classes and 14 character races! I guess I should be thankful that WoW beat EQ2 so badly, because at launch EQ2 players could only have 4 characters. With all the SQL servers going unused, SOE was able to give players 3 additional slots through the years.

I will have to admit the limit irks me more because I want to have all the crafting classes rather than the fact I can't have all of the adventure classes. As I mentioned previously, I have 8 characters, lacking only a carpenter. But I can have all my crafters on one account, if I pay more for the privilege. If you purchase the Sony Station Pass, not only do players get access to games like EverQuest, Vanguard and Pirates of the Burning Sea, but an additional 5 character slots in EQ2 as well. I have dabbled in Vanguard and PotBS, but I never made it past the newbie areas, so I guess that SOE has used the character limitations imposed by the large amount of inventory slots given to EQ2 toons lead players to try other games on the Sony Station Pass. At least it worked in my case.

So which approach is better, large or small? I'll let you decide.

Note to self: Aren't there 19 races? Failure to proof-read for the loss.

EQ2 Warning: Grey Shard Runs Now Officially An Exploit

For all players who were using EverQuest 2's mentoring mechanic to set zones to level 50-60 in order to complete shard missions with the instances grey, please take note of the following post by Kiara (last entry in this forum thread):

This is an exploit and we are currently working on a fix for it.

I'd suggest not doing it.

Whilst you won't have the shards you've gotten via this method removed, it is something we are actively working on removing from the game.

At first glance, doing the missions in zones is an exploit. But the devs seemed to give their okay to the practice, although I could not find a post with a dev explicitly stating doing so was okay. My guild split into two factions on this issue. One faction considered the practice an exploit and refused to do any shard runs in greyed-out zones. The second faction took the position that SOE devs had come out in the forums and stated the practice was not an exploit, and thus allowed. In talking amongst the members of the guild in the second faction (of which I was a member), we decided now that SOE staff have declared the practice an exploit that we will no longer engage in the practice.

Our small guild has determined we should be able to do the missions in Deep Forge to help level and equip our up and coming guildies who currently are level 75-80. Doing the missions at level 80 will allow us to gather the shinies that are not available unless a group consists solely of level 80 characters. Needless to say, those items sell very well on the broker. Did I mention my guild is filled with tradeskillers and merchant adventurers? Cha-ching!

The other benefit is now that SOE has come out and made the announcement, we should see the wall that formed among some of the members of my guild lower. In other words, less cause for guild drama.

I do hope that SOE will publicize this decision. The thread was locked right after Kiara made the announcement. Maybe SOE will allow players to continue to do grey shard runs until a fix is put in place. Personally though, I wouldn't risk it.

UPDATE: On July 7, 2009 Kiara posted the following on the official EQ2 forums...

Whilst grey shard runs are technically an exploit (in that we did not intend for the content to be used in this way) it's been part of gameplay for long enough that changing things now would simply be punishing to our players and a major buzz kill.

Going forward we're going to do our best to ensure that we prevent stuff like this, but we won't be "breaking" the current dynamic.

* puts the topic to bed *

Thanks all!

Related posts:
Confessions of a Grey Shard Runner: Justification
Confessions of a Grey Shard Runner: Motivation
Confessions of a Grey Shard Runner: Implementation
Confessions of a Grey Shard Runner: Epilogue

EQ2 to copy WoW's Name, Gender change policy?

Given that yesterday was April Fools Day I'm a little leery about posting this. I logged onto EQ2Players last night and discovered that Sony Online Entertainment has decided to copy Blizzard's policy of allowing World of Warcraft players to radically change their characters, including changing gender and names. EverQuest 2 players will be able to go to the Station Marketplace and purchase a Potion of Amnesia to change their name, and either a Potion of Disgenderment or a Norrathian Witness Protection Potion to change appearance and gender.

Currently, EQ2 players can pay one gold piece to go to the barber and change their appearance. The official EverQuest 2 site did not mention prices for the potions. If this is not an April Fool's joke, then I'm going to have to be on the lookout for some of my "favorite" people changing their names.