Hello Gamers!
We're very proud to announce today's launch of the 15th full release for Legends of Norrath, Debt of the Ratonga!
The first launch since our fifth anniversary, Debt of the Ratonga, contains incredible new cards for your decks and a few old favorites brought back with some interesting changes. The Oathbound keyword Frenzy has been reworked and now offers powerful new options that we were just right to give to our new Ratonga and Roekillik units.
Loot
As always, the EverQuest and EverQuest II teams have provided us some great new loot for Debt of the Ratonga. For EQ, we have cool new mounts like the Highland Cragslither Saddle, Ornate Flying Carpet and the Steed of War Saddle. You can jazz up your weapons with the Lightforged Ornament set for dagger, shield and longsword. In EQII, we have the Pranster's Emerald Skystrider and Spellweaver's Red Flying Carpet, lots of Ratonga themed loot including two new items for your Dungeon Maker toolbox and even a three-cheese snack table for your house!
One of the things we heard loud and clear at SOE Live in October is that players wanted to see more of the cool LON art in painting form to hang in their in-MMO houses. Both EQ and EQII gets lots of new painting featuring some really awesome art INCLUDING a set featuring the Producers from EQ, EQII and LON!
Lobby Changes
The Casual Games menu has been removed! Instead of breaking the players into multiple lobbies, all Casual Games are now collapsed into a single lobby. This is just the start of many UI changes that we are working on to make the game easier to understand and play and more appealing for new and returning players. Stay tuned for more!
Collection
Another thing that players told us about at SOE Live was the clunkiness of the Collection Manager. Each time we add a new set of cards to LON, it just makes that load time longer. This is also affecting how long it takes to open packs. So with Debt of the Ratonga, we've made small changes while we work on some larger optimization tasks over the New Year.
When you open the Collection Manager now, you will see the following at the top of the screen.
These three quick tabs will allow you to access specific points of your Collection faster. The Collection will default to Packs so when this screen loads, it will only load your packs. This is a considerable savings in load time and if all you're doing is opening packs, it will happen much quicker now.
Please play around with this and watch how the "Filter" and "Jump To" options interact with the new quick tabs. We think you'll like it!
Membership Packs
There's been a slight change to the free packs that we award monthly to the Gold Members in EverQuest and EverQuest II. Starting with the launch of Debt of the Ratonga, free member packs will be awarded on the member's first log in that month. We've completely removed the "anniversary date" which confused a lot of players. Furthermore, the Gold Member MUST log in during a calendar month to get that month's worth of packs. Packs will no longer accumulate from month to month. Unopened packs and unredeemed Choose A Pack loot cards from previous months and prior to this change will not be touched. To get your packs moving forward, just log in each month! The Choose A Pack cards awarded in December may be redeemed for any regular LON booster pack from sets 1 – 14.
Legends of Norrath Fifth Anniversary Treasury
And by the way, the Legends of Norrath Fifth Anniversary Treasury is now live at www.magcloud.com. Check out the selected art and from sets 1-14 and more! The Legends of Norrath Fifth Anniversary Treasury is available in a 186 page full color paperback for $38.20 each or as a digital download for various tablets and formats for just $4.99. Log into MagCloud and search "Legends of Norrath".
We hope you enjoy our latest effort for Legends of Norrath. We have lots of cool plans that we're working on behind the scenes and want your input! Let us know what you think of Debt of the Ratonga and what you'd like to see in 2013.
Best,
Mark Tuttle
Executive Producer, Legends of Norrath