First Impressions (GU47)

GU47 was released today – and again, a huge congratulations to SOE for pulling it off. The servers have been up (and stable) for the last four hours and here are my first impressions of things that I interact with on a fairly frequent basis. Other updates you can of course read the proper notes about.

Number one the new in game voice chat is amazing. I played around with it some in group with a friend, and it was nice and clear, simple to use (would have been even more simple were it not for my UI). The only issue I had with it is the bind command. It would not recognize the 0 key on the number pad (or anything on the number pad for that matter). I have it set to the default Left Control key right now, but how many others out there use that to view gear in the changing room? That’s what I thought.

Number two, the live event with the storms. Surprised me, because I wasn’t expecting the actual storm to come to life as I did the ring event. People have been linking the amazingly detailed weapons and while they’re certainly under par as far as stats go, they are amazing for looks. Mannequins rejoice.

Number three, the crafting stuff. Ok, new red shinies in Enchanted Lands, and they reward you with of course another house item. Not so much an item though as a living creature. Get your epics and go hunting for this one, or you can read the spoilers over here at eq2traders.

A new crafting quest was also added, which rewards you with a new version of the formal gear you can purchase with guild levels and faction. It’s purple instead of the typical blue. If you’ve managed to get ally faction with any of the 4 major sections (mage, priest, scout, fighter) be sure to look for new titles (in a few cities) and new outfits (black version of the formal gear). Very nice looking things, and it’s nice to see rewards that are not based only on the level of your guild.

There were also new pieces of crafter gear (for appearance only) added to Gorowyn tradeskill merchants, and Kelethin, which I adore (and Silhouette is sporting proudly).

I have not noticed a significant stat increase to gear and items from 1-59 but then again I wasn’t exactly looking. I checked the broker briefly to look up some items and see if they’d change, they all remained (at level 17 gear) with +2 to stats and very low health and power (compared to the gear of TD which is what people term ‘the only place worthy of leveling up in’ these days).

The work on the guild halls seems to be coming at a steady pace, and leaves enough teasing to keep players wondering what’s next. There’s workers now found outside at the docks of the two major cities, stop by and take a look.

As a side note, those two books I quested for yesterday with Silhouette had their appearance changed, which I am happy for. There are some books that come in a “set” such as the Varsoon collection, and Blood of The Bear collection. Before today they were all different sizes and shapes, not matching at all. They certainly didn’t remind me of a “set”. As I placed the books today, I noticed they are all nicely shaped, blue, matching.

As for the faction bits. I’m not exactly happy about. I liked the amount of work it required to get those titles, and people who do have the titles worked really hard on them. I hate seeing things getting easier over time, though I know it happens as a game ages.

The epic changes didn’t affect any of my characters aside from the coercer, and that was quite minor. All in all, I’m happy with the update, and glad to see people excited about things.