F e a t u r e d     N e w s

Official SOE Podcast #66 is live! Listen to Brenlo and Ashlanne gab LIVE from Fan Faire 2009! They chat with two Fan Faire attendees, the Grumpy Ol' Gamer and keep you informed with some of the fun that went on Thursday and the fun that was incoming for the rest of the event..

So tune in!  You can get your Podcast goodness two different ways head over to the Podcast’s official site, and click on your preferred bandwidth or if you have iTunes installed select iTunes store, type SOE into the search box and click Subscribe!  Your feedback is always welcome either on the Station forums or via email.

It's been posted, Twittered, and emailed, but in case you didn't see it, we've got an extended bonus experience weekend coming for the 4th of July holiday!  Kiara posted:

To commemorate the holiday weekend, we'll be turning on bonus AA and Tradeskill exp starting at 4:00PM PDT tomorrow Thursday, July 2nd and running until 10:00AM PDT Monday, July 6th.

For the UK servers it will run from 12:00AM (midnight) Friday July 3rd until 8:00PM Monday, July 6th for folks residing in London (presuming I did my conversions correctly).

Hey, maybe I'll hit 80 this weekend!

At Fan Faire we got a chance to chat with Dan Kinney about the Station Launcher.  Dan's team has made a lot of advancements on the beta Launcher, and they've been very responsive to player feedback.

Dan told us that the next major version will have an improved UI, with much nicer menus.  The menus shown below are from left to right: Station Menu, Games Menu, Friends Menu,  and Help Menu.  Also coming soon is a web update for all SOE games, in the manner of Free Realms.

Guest contributor Sutures Woundmender brings us this report of the EQII Mechanically Speaking panel at Fan Faire.  Highlights include crafting news and a closer look at the upcoming class mechanics changes. 

PANELISTS:  Jen Gerull, Rich Waters, Jason Woerner, Greg Spence, Emily Taylor, Chris Kozak, Josh Kreighauser

The panel began with the panelists introducing themselves to the attendees. Jen Gerull stated that the panel would begin with a presentation by Emily “Domino” Taylor, followed by a presentation by Chris “Aeralik” Kozak, then the floor would open to questions from the audience.  This is from my notes, not a transcription.  Since the expansion is not due until February 2010 and game updates are now quarterly, the information below is subject to change. 

Kiara has posted on the official forums about a hotfix tomorrow.

• US Servers will patch at 7:00AM PDT
• UK Servers will patch at 9:00PM PDT (5:00AM July 2nd for GMT residents)

Plan accordingly!