Author Topic: Release Date Confirmed...perhaps.. (Read 11665 times)

Lorathir · « **on:** October 22, 2004, 06:15:28 PM »

Watching something interesting unfold right now.

A number of people who have preordered with EB Games have recieved an email.

"Thanks for pre-ordering from EBgames.com! As an added benefit to ordering from us, we’ll keep you informed of ship date changes. We are writing to let you know that the publisher has set a new ship date for Everquest 2 of November, 8th 2004."

Additionally, a few other game stockists such as Babbages and Gamestop have brought their expected release dates forward.

I'm looking at a thread on the official Sony site that's reporting this. What's interesting is the mod's reaction to the post. Usually unconfirmed release date posts are just locked with no explanation. There have been a few threads reporting the EB Games statement and have been locked, with a note from the mod informing them the info was being consolidated into the original thread. I saw the original thread at first get locked...now it's been unlocked.

Ooooohhh...

http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=general&message.id=226351

EDIT

And now the thread has been locked again. Fell deeds afoot...As an additional note of...err..note, UK stockists Gameplay, Amazon and Sony's European distributer Ubisoft have all changed their release dates to 12th Nov.

Calloran · « **Reply #1 on:** October 22, 2004, 06:51:15 PM »

Interesting. It's not ready. I doubt it will be ready in 3 weeks. Is it a decent game, yes, but there are still too many issues to be taken care of in only 3 weeks (actually, less). Ummm, it's not SWG all over again, at least it's not that bad, but, well, it's just not ready. Even by today's standards.

Then again, they've been holding out on us (the new traits), so I could be wrong...

Lorathir · « **Reply #2 on:** October 22, 2004, 06:55:43 PM »

Smedley posted a reply into the locked thread.

Quote from: Smedley

Keep in mind we haven't put out the offical announcement just yet... but it's coming.

John Smedley
President, Sony Online Entertainment

Jolrash · « **Reply #3 on:** October 22, 2004, 07:18:02 PM »

I'd rather see this thing get pushed than to have it as buggy as most people are saying it is. Going to give it a 3 month shot and see if its worth it.

Brungo · « **Reply #4 on:** October 23, 2004, 10:00:46 PM »

Nice, got the same email it looks like.

Dear EBgames.com Customer,

Thanks for pre-ordering from EBgames.com! As an added benefit to ordering from us, we’ll keep you informed of ship date changes. We are writing to let you know that the publisher has set a new ship date for Everquest 2 of November, 8th 2004. As always, EBgames.com will not charge your credit card until we ship your order.

To check the status of your order, please visit https://www.ebgames.com/ebx/myaccount/orderstatus/default.asp If you need further assistance, you can reply to this e-mail or give us a call at 1-877-432-9675 (internationally at 1-702-614-1570). We're here seven days a week from 8:00 AM to Midnight (EST).

Thank you for choosing EBgames.com.

Best Regards,

Iskandar · « **Reply #5 on:** October 25, 2004, 05:42:56 AM »

I do hope they're not rushing it out to try and be first on the market, or some other silly excuse. The game is functional as is, but still has a lot of issues to be addressed (water combat is a prime example -- I've sent over a dozen reports on problems with one aspect of it or another). Guess we'll know for sure in a few weeks.

Skanda · « **Reply #6 on:** October 25, 2004, 07:05:32 AM »

Quote

First and foremost, thanks for helping us test EQ2. We're getting great feedback and you're helping us find and fix problems at a very rapid rate.

I wanted to address a couple of concerns:

1) Login - these issues should be completely gone in the next few days. Sorry for the problems, but simply put there were problems that needed addressing.. and addressing them caused some bugs.. those will be gone quickly.

2) Lag - it's really 2 zones atm.. it's Antonica and Commonlands. The team has made great strides in this area..and they have some big stuff coming in within the next few days that we hope is really going to get things back to normal. It's gotten a lot better, but we see it too (we're all playing EQ 2 all the time). This will go away before we launch. Please also understand that we have very deliberately been running the servers at what we consider to be the maximum capacity. In the next day or so we'll add another server or two to the list that players can go to. This should help a lot since as we let in a lot of new people we won't be seeing them all go in to the existing ones. Our strategy here is a simple one - to keep the servers stressed out to make sure we address server performance issues. At launch we will have a significant number of servers, so in and of itself this should help a great deal.. but we're not relying on that. We're going to make sure the performance is good.

3) Launch - The offical announcement comes out tomorrow. While I understand that some of you may feel the game is coming out too early.. we feel very strongly that we can address the remaining issues and have a very smooth and successful launch. We have a lot of things that we're testing internally before we open them up to you all... and that does include a ton of bug fixes that are underway. The team is closing bugs out at a lightning fast rate. From the outside, when you see login issues it looks like we've taken a step backward.. and I can understand how it appears that way. But the people on this team are stone cold pros who have done this for a long time and are dedicated to making sure EQ2 is an enjoyable experience.

Thanks,

John Smedley
President, Sony Online Entertainment

I would have thought they learned something from SWG. The vast majority of testers I'm hearing from (both pro and anti Sony) are saying this game stlll needs a while in beta.

Lorathir · « **Reply #7 on:** October 25, 2004, 04:45:58 PM »

Quote

- The 800-Pound Gorilla of Online Gaming is Ready To Play -

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Sony Online Entertainment Inc. (SOE), a
worldwide leader in massively multiplayer online (MMO) gaming, today announced
that EverQuest II is scheduled to simultaneously ship to North American and
European retail stores on November 8, 2004.

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/10-25-2004/0002308367&EDATE

I'd rather they pushed it back a month or so. They haven't patched in the traits, class defining spells and other content yet. That's a lot of important stuff right there.

Oh well guys, after years in development, it looks like the adventure starts anew. Heeeere we go!

Skanda · « **Reply #8 on:** October 25, 2004, 06:21:58 PM »

SWG dev team strikes again (probably blame the marketing team and Smedley in reality though).

Seriously though after retail you're going to see the same class reworking as they did in the beginning of SWG because they're not giving enough testing time for all the new crap they're tossing in.

Jolrash · « **Reply #9 on:** October 26, 2004, 07:57:17 PM »

Looks like i'll be takeing Tuesday the 9th off to give this a shot!

Murkk Dakruul · « **Reply #10 on:** October 27, 2004, 06:47:11 AM »

Just make sure you have a backup plan for when the servers are down from the 9th to the 15th.

I might give EQ2 a try...

...In 2006 when it's done being beta tested.