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The next Legends of Norrath Loot Tournament is knocking at your door and offering sweet, sweet loot for your participation this weekend. For 10 Event Passes, you're guaranteed at least three boosters packs, as well as a unique promotional card (Talisman of Pure Chaos) and one of two loot cards (Cloak of Dark Energy for EverQuest II and Familiar of Warden Hanwar for EverQuest). Placing in the top 25 will mean even more booster packs.

Kicking off on the 19th of July, the event will be all wrapped up just one day later, so you'll need to get involved this weekend if you want those prizes -- only U.S. residents are eligible, unfortunately.

The EQ2Players community site has a short preview of EverQuest II's next major patch, Game Update 47, the "Storm Break". As we already knew, GU47 is the patch that will finally bring Vivox voice integration to EQII. Here's the list of features that will be available straight away:

• Create your own password-protected custom channels
• Automatic channels for Guilds, Raids and Groups
• Group and Raid windows have speaking indicators
• Leaders can invite any other players into Guild, Group and Raid channels
• Moderator controls (kick, ban, mute, etc.)
• Logitech G15 keyboard integration
• Ability to individually mute and set volume per user that you can hear
• Troubleshooting tools to get you chatting instantly

Just a bit over a month ago, SOE introduced EverQuest II fans to a new Community Manager by the name of Amnerys, and this week another CM will join the team. Christie Renzetti (or "Kiara"), formerly of Ten Ton Hammer and Allakhazam, will now be looking after the EQII community along with Amnerys, Gnobrin and Grimwell.

Having started playing EverQuest in 1999, and EQII since its beta, Kiara is certainly qualified to be representing the interests of Norrathians. She has also been very active on the community forums, something which she enjoys and is now lucky enough to be paid for. You can find out more about Kiara and her love of Dark Elves, and add your own personal greeting, at her welcome thread on the official forums.

Playing EverQuest 2 and dying to dig into the game's lore? Why not explore the huge number of heritage quests the game has on offer?

The official EverQuest 2 site has put up a quickie guide to the Norrathian economy, for folks who may have just hopped back into the game. It can be a challenge to make enough cash, especially at low levels. The easy, common-sense suggestion they offer is to always check a broker before selling an item to a merchant - even a quest reward. Rewards in EQ2 aren't always immediately bound to your character. It's easy to do a price check, too - just head to a broker NPC, put the item into the broker window, and hit the 'search broker' button. A listing will pop up with all the other current auctions for that item. If the price other players are asking is even slightly higher than the merchant sale cost, it's probably worth it to put it up.

Other suggestions from the EQ2 team include selling harvested items, especially low-level ones. Lots of higher level players have need of lower-level items, but have no interest in going back to the Commonlands or Antonica to gather them. They're saleable on the broker, the same as any other item, for a neat profit. Tradeskilling also offers a lucrative way to make some coin. We suggest the Sage profession; they're the fine scribes that sell Cleric and Mage spells, always high demand and high price items. There are several other options outlined in the guide, including breaking down unwanted gear, snagging collectibles while you adventure, and even goblin gambling. Go check out the site for the full rundown.

Massively Speaking Episode 13 is a special episode covering a unique topic. The summer pre-E3 slumps left us wanting to do something a little different, so this week Shawn and Michael are joined by three very special guests. Darren and Karen of the "Shut Up, We're Talking" Podcast hop on to help us put some questions to former EverQuest 2 Senior Producer Scott Hartsman. We talk about the transformation of EQ2 from the game at launch into what it is now, run down some of Scott's favorite moments from his time at SOE, and even dance around what he's working on now. Join us!

Have a comment for the podcasters? Shoot us an email to podcast AT massively DOT com. Maybe we'll read your letter on the air!

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The much-anticipated addition of Vivox voice chat isn't the only thing being added to EverQuest II in the upcoming Game Update 47. Developer Ilucide dropped into the forums for a chat with the players, to lay out changes being made to a few Rise of Kunark content areas and a source of much frustration: writs. Judging by player response in the fourm thread, the change to writs will be most welcome. The previous number of writs required to go from 0 to ally faction was 267. The new number is 80. As Kunark faction was already relatively easy to climb through, this is primarily intended to make city faction more palateable. Additional changes may be in the works for these items, as the developers mull ways to make this particular part of the game more meaningful for players.

The content changes center around two dungeons. Karnor's Castle has been tuned to be more receptive to small group play in the 72-76 bracket. Difficulty has been generally lowered, and the mob spawns thinned out, to allow for players to have a better time in that playing mode. Meanwhile Sebilis and Chardok have been made less generally annoying. Lower level magical treasure has been removed from the loot tables, ensuring only loot commensurate with the areas will drop. Placeholders for some named critters have also been removed, meaning that a named monster is either 'up' or not - spawn camping will not be a requirement in these zone any longer.

Sound off EQ2 players! How do these changes sound to you?

MMO players are a devoted lot. When we're not actually in our game of choice, we're often on forums arguing about the latest patches, researching new talent builds to make better use of our given class' abilities, or blogging about recent experiences. A tremendous amount of energy goes into making an MMO community what it is, both in and out of the game. But as wonderful as player enthusiasm can be in its many forms, it is frequently ignored or utterly under-utilized by game developers. And as blogger Aspendawn reflects in a recent post, when they do throw their weight behind community events, their support tends can be quite hollow -- as was the case with the EQ2 "Guild Recruitment Fair" pictured above.

Her call for more developer-sanctioned mentoring systems is also spot-on, particularly for games that have been around for a while. Even if a community is friendly and welcoming, it can be intimidating jumping into a PUG when you don't quite have a grasp on your class' role just yet. We'd also love to see more events like Tabula Rasa's Friday Night Fights--events blossoming from the minds of creative gamers and taking official form with the addition of actual in-game assets to support them. It's not all fancy graphics and epic lootz, we want community too!

Reached the endgame in EverQuest 2? You're not really uber until you have your epic weapon. Find out how!

About two weeks ago we asked you to pass on some questions we could give to the EverQuest 2 team. Our own team of bloggers and columnists pitched in a few questions as well, and we brought the best of those to the attention of EQ2's Senior Producer Bruce Ferguson. He answered several of our questions in-depth, though some of his answers may not be exactly what you were hoping to hear.

Read on below the cut to see your questions answered! Mr. Ferguson chats about the purpose of the Living Legacy program, future plans for developing PvP in the game, and even tackles that burning question about solo vs. group play. Also, about the possibility of flying mounts in Norrath ...

As part of the Living Legacy promotion that is taking place in EverQuest II right now, SOE has announced a brand new campaign that is kicking off today. Called "Fight with Legends", this initiative is aimed at bringing even more people to EQII by getting players to recruit their friends, and rewarding them for it.

For each account invitee that converts to a paying subscriber within 30 days of their trial conclusion, the inviting player will receive 1 month of EQII game time (added to the end of their current subscription). The number of friends you can do this with is limited to 20, which would mean a whopping 20 months of free game time; but even 1 month is a pretty nice bonus, so if you've got some bored friends, perhaps it's time to introduce them to Norrath.

The official SOE boards are abuzz with two small pieces of big news. Last weekend was an extra XP opportunity for players of EverQuest 2, but a lot of people missed out. "Why didn't you offer that over the holiday weekend?", it was asked. Players asked, and the devs answered, so this weekend is going to be a bonux extra XP weekend for the adventurers of Norrath. Make sure to jump in-game and check it out.

Also from the boards: the official Sony Online Entertainment Block Party is slated to occur during Comic-Con. This will be the company's third annual meet-and-greet, and if the last few years have been any indication it will be hot as heck and fun as hell. There's a shuttle that goes directly from Comic-Con to SOE's HQ, so players have no excuses if they're in the area and want to attend. The Block Party will be on from 4-8pm on Saturday the 26th of July. Full details are available in the post. Have fun, and don't forget to tell em' Massively says hi!

We get the distinct impression that EverQuest 2 players might not appreciate it when World of Warcraft players come to their forums. Call it a territorial thing, call it something else, but the beauty of this interaction is when we get a gem of an article like the one posted by SpyderBite over at Allakhazam. The topic pretty much says it all, but we'll let you read through these yourself, nodding your head in agreement (if you're an EQ2 player) or getting frustrated and ready to flame this post in the comments (if you're a WoW player). Enjoy!

10. Where's the auction? How do you people trade with each other?
9. My mods aren't working. Can somebody help me get them to work in this game?
8. Where's the Battlegrounds? I tried a PvP server but people kept killing me.

It seems like just yesterday that the 46th Game Update to EverQuest 2 was released, but with GU 47 already on the testing servers there's no time to look back. For us, anyway - the development team had the rare opportunity to reflect back on previous work in an interview with the folks at Ten Ton Hammer. The team there discussed a few general design ideas behind the recent revamp to Runnyeye, and puts the kibosh on the notion that we're going to see many more of these low-level-dungeons-turned-high-level-encounters.

Interestingly, they do note that Runnyeye is a sort of prototype for the strategic focus they're giving dungeons in the upcoming expansion. Rather than making them all cut from the same "tank and spank" cloth, some encounters in Runnyeye redux require a very clear head and innovative tactics. Said designer Kyle "Kander" Vallee, "I did not do anything super elaborate with ten boss fights and the amount of time I had, so I tried to make some of the fights a little more interesting, give them a little more sense of excitement. I really tried to make sure there was something for everyone and, at the same time, strive to preserve the fun and humor that Steve Kramer had originally started the zone with."

An interesting preview of what we can expect in the next EverQuest 2 expansion.

Looking to get into EverQuest II's rich crafting system but not sure how? Trader's Corner is the place to be!