via eq2players.com:

Legends of Norrath™ is a bigger hit than we had ever imagined and we want to thank all of you that have helped by introducing four new loot cards to Legends of Norrath Oathbound booster packs. There will be two new loot cards each for EverQuest and EverQuest II.

Check out the details here:

EverQuest

EverQuest II

These addition to the Legends of Norrath packs will be retro-active to the launch of the game. Therefore, these cards will be added to the collection of every person that opened a pack that would have contained these loot cards had they been included as part of the initial assortment. If you opened a pack that would have received one of the cards, it will be automatically granted to your LoN account.

For more information visit Legends of Norrath website.

via eq2players.com:

 The Rise of Kunark expansion for EverQuest II is now available for pre-order! Can’t wait to get your hands on the expansion? Want to see what’s inside the box? Now you don’t have to wait to see it on the shelves, you can check out the RoK pre-order website and get all the details. As a special bonus, everyone who pre-orders EverQuest II, Rise of Kunark will receive a Burynai Seeker house pet!

Via the german eq2players.com site:

Gameupdate 39 wird morgen auf den US Servern aufgespielt. Da war sicherstellen wollen dass unsere Aktualisierungen qualitativ hochwertig sind, haben wir uns entschieden die internationalen Versionen für 1 Woche zu verschieben.

Damit gewährleisten wir dass die deutsche Version ausgiebiger getestet werden kann und die Übersetzung vollständig ist.

Die voraussichtlichte Freigabe von GU39 auf allen internationalen Servern, inklusive Runnyeye, ist nun für den 23.10.07 geplant..

Diskussionen dazu können auf unseren Foren geführt werden.

For those of you who are not speaking german here is a quick and dirty translation:

Gameupdate 39 will get pushed to the US servers tomorrow. To ensure the high quality of all our updates we decided to postpone the international versions for 1 week.

This ensures that the german version can get tested more extensive and translations are complete.

The anticipated release of GU39 for all international servers, incl. Runnyeye, is planned for Oct. 23th 2007.

Discussions about this can be dome on our forums.

I just stumbled upon this:

The new unified Station Launcher seems to be finally available as BETA. Go grab it now!

Station Launcher is a simple one-click application that delivers all your Station games, friends, and community news right to your desktop. Manage your Station gaming library like never before; it’s fast, easy and secure!

Via SOE EQ2 Forums: (link to Aaron “Gnobrin Gearbender” Bisnett/Community Relations Representative/Sony Online Entertainment post, link to Vanessa – Eovania – Barrera/Internationale deutsche Community Betreuerin/SOE – Community Relations post [in german]):

This is how the Rise of Kunark Retail Box should look like — artwise:

This does not really look any “kunarkish” but well it will do and actually it looks pretty descent. What do you think about it?

Via SOE EQ2 forums:

GAMEPLAY

• The Shard of Fear is now open for adventurous groups to explore (waiting for real text from a designer on this).
• Further sighting of mysterious visitors from Kunark have occurred in the waters near Freeport and Qeynos. See Admiral Marc Grenich in Qeynos Harbor and Livia Montellus in Freeport East to join in the investigations of these visitors.
• “The Tablets of the Blademaster” quest no longer requires that the player be in the Pillars of Flame zone to examine the spirit vessel.
• The Valley of the Magi instance off of the Commonlands should be functioning properly again.
• The Misty Mustang whistles should now summon pinto looking Misty Mustangs instead of Elddarian Chargers.
• The quest “A Portrait of Destiny” can no longer be shared.
• Vhalen’s Tools can now be examined outside of the Acadechism for a quest update.
• Server Performance Improvements for dungeons and raid encounters.
• Usable Items that are not usable from inventory will always show darkened out while not equipped.

PETS

• Deity pets can now be used along with collection pets.
• Pets with random names will now persist that name through zoning.

TRADESKILLS

• Provisioners now have a recipe for prickly pear pie, and no longer have two different recipes for prickly pear cookies.
• Carpenters, inspired by the Night of the Dead, have begun researching new and sinister furniture items. A limited selection is now available with more development expected to yield further results in the future!
• Harvested items will now display the level of recipes they are used in.

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Mystic
• Weapon Mastery should now improve the dps, max health, attributes and crushing skill of the shaman pet

• Fury
• Pact of Nature will scribe the spell for the player even if their inventory is full

SPELLS

• Clarified the Slaughter spell scrolls to be Assassin: Slaughter and Berserker: Slaughter to reduce confusion
• Instant cast non proc spells will now get a small bonus from +spell/heal/combat art mods
• Spells that summon multiple limited pets will display that information more concisely in the tooltip.
• Inquisitor
• Contempt now uses ordination like the other spells in the line do.

HOUSING

• You can no longer relinquish your home. Instead, while moving go to your new home and buy it, your items will be moved into the new home.

GUILD BANKS

• Guild banks have been extended with several new options:
• Each guild bank tab can have its own name.
• There is a space on each guild bank tab for a comment.
• Each guild bank tab can now be set so withdrawing any quantity from a stack is considered as withdrawing one item for the purposes of the withdrawal limit.

BROKER:

• Two-handed weapons will no longer be returned in broker searches for “Primary” slot weapons.

UI

• When you run out of a charged item (* totem) the tooltip will no longer say “Charges: 5 / 5″ it will instead say “Charges:0/5″ to reduce confusion.
• There is a new UI window that will show only debuffs on your character:
• The UI window is called MainHUD.DetrimentalEffect
• The old effects window will now only show beneficial effects

I was killing alot of colored mobs this saturday to get hold of at least a few of the new promocards — unfortunately with no avail. Meanwhile I was able to obtain the cards, 4 each, for ingame platin :-).

Here are the item links for the two promocards:

• \aITEM 371226533 819846666:Legends of Norrath Promotional Card: Hatred\/a
• \aITEM 1770258306 1333679661:Legends of Norrath Promotional Card: Switch\/a

After claiming my LoN cards I’ve also noticed the following at my SOE Account subscriptions:

Claiming the cards generates a 99 month non-recurring “pending” subscription to “Norrath Casual Strategy Game”.

Interesting to know is that the two promocards — despite the fact that the cardnumbers are 1P1 and 1P2 — are named #3 and #5 in the subscription details, I wonder where #1, #2 and #4 are hiding :-) :

EDIT 2007-10-01: The Promo weekend is over now. Overall I did not have the feeling that droprates for boosters or even the promo cards got significantly increased — it seemed as low as always. I’ve never hat a LoN ingame drop before so it is 0% chance for me against 0% chance whilst in the promo weekend. According to the broker on my server there must have been quite some promo drops as they are still on sale for a few platin. Even while I already grabbed 4 of each card I might go for a buyout on the broker. You never know if there could be a use for some surplus promo cards someday.

Checking my /claim window revealed two unclaimed items. I was a little bit confused and promptly claimed both. It looks like EQ2 Russia just happens to celebrate it’s 1st birthday — congratulations.

Players worldwide seem to be able to claim a birthdaycake and vodka.

Itemlinks:

• \aITEM -823740517 -1242563056:A 1-Year Birthday Cake\/a
• \aITEM -2076048093 639387762:Vodka Akellovka\/a

Screenshots will follow as soon as my english localized EQ2 client finished patching. I also apologize for only providing german named item links :-) I will followup with the english names ASAP.

UPDATE:Here are the promised screenshots. I’ve also edited the item links to reflect the english names.

I just encountered a strange thing. I went over to the SOE EQ2 Forum to check test patch notes. But there was nothing — and with nothing I mean there was not even a forum for the test updates, for the game updates and also no test feedback forum.

I’ve sent a PM to Grimwell and then noticed that as soon as I logout from the forums the update/test/feedback boards are visible again — but of course you cannot post a feedback since you are not logged in.

I hope this gets resolved quickly.

UPDATE (2007-09-28): This issue has been solved ;-)

I had no raid today so I was hanging out in Legends of Norrath. Suddenly a system Message announced a test tournament.

Actually the first tournament should have been completed last weekend, but servers kept crashing with 1000+ players in the tournament queue. This time it was more or less unannounced and only about 350 players took the opportunity to attend.

This tournament rewarded 3 booster packs to the first 5 ranks and had no entry fee. It was a constructed best of 8 with chessclock timed matches set at 30 minutes max (15 minutes for each player per match). Winners earned 3 points while the loser still got 1 point for the tournament ladder.

Congratulations to the winners.

PS: I managed to get ranked #147 out of 351 (16 points).