Too Soon? Too Late? Never Mind!

Sometimes it doesn't exactly pay to be too quick off the mark. Most of my questions about the arrival of Welcome Windfall Crates were answered in a news item on the official EverQuest II website just a few hours after I posted on Tuesday. 

Not all of them, mind you. There's no clear explanation of why Daybreak chose to hand out these particular freebies at this particular time, other than a bland "These are our gifts to you for being part of our community", followed by "Again, we can't thank you enough for being so passionate and dedicated to EverQuest II!"

I don't know, maybe it's because I studied English Literature at university, something that's given me a lifelong tendency to expose every last cereal packet and pizza delivery flier to close textual analysis, but I can't help noticing that "Again". What are they re-iterating or re-emphasizing there? Also, who exactly are they thanking? Have they read their own forums lately? It's not so much passion and dedication there as entitlement and oblivion.

Anyway, let's not pick holes in the fabric. Let's just look at the cut of the cloth.

As I extrapolated, the Welcome Windfall Crate that pops up on screen as soon as you log in right now is indeed available, nay unavoidable, for all accounts, free to play included. It's per character, too, so it really is about as universal as you can get.

We pretty much knew that but when I posted a couple of days ago we did not know the offer was time-limited. It very much is. The exact moment when the crates stop popping is "June 20, 2022 at 11:59 p.m. PDT." so although you have a while, I wouldn't leave it too long. 

So much for the fine print. More importantly, what about that other crate, the one I hadn't spotted when I wrote the previous post?

The Members Only crate is called the Welcome Windfall Subscriber's Crate and for reasons that are not immediately clear to me it's hidden away in the Claim window, where you won't find it unless you look. There's no in-game notification, neither in a MOTD or the mail nor any kind of pop-up.

Neither is the offer mentioned in the news ticker on the launcher or anywhere I could see other than on the website iself, which seems odd. On the other hand, I did get an email, telling me all about it, which is the main reason I'm here, posting about the offer today.

Inside the Subscriber's Crate you'll find a mount, a Vah Shir Heritage bundle and an Overseer crate. 

The Vah Shir would appear to be next in line in the seemingly endless procession of racial "heritages", each of which offers packs containing cosmetic armor and weapons, boosters, currencies and sundry other odds and ends. You can buy these in the cash shop but you can also get them for nothing by doing the daily Overseer Heritage mission. I do mine every day and as a result I have more cosmetic armor than I know what to do with. Literally.

The Overseer crate contains two Celestial quality agents, both new to me. They have three traits each and they don't duplicate. They're excellent additions to the roster for anyone who takes Overseer seriously.

Finally, there's the mount. Visually it's nothing special, using the same model as the various Clothwork Pegasuses (Pegasi?) already in the game. The colors may be slightly different but not enough to stand out.

Statwise, however, the Dreamdash Clothwork Pegasus is likely to be an upgrade to whatever a casual or solo player is riding. My Berserker is using Orita Skyquaker, the final reward from the VoV Tradeskill Signature questline. The new mount has better adventuring stats at Level one than Sqyquaker has at max level, although naturally it lacks the additional crafting and gathering bonuses.

It's very much worth claiming but be aware, as I was not when I claimed mine, that unlike the Welcome Windfall Crate, the Subscriber's Crate is strictly one per account. The items it contains are all Heirloom, so it's no big deal if you claim the whole lot on the "wrong" character, but it'll save you some housekeeping if you take the trouble to do it on the right one.

This offer is also time-limited, although the detail on that is less clear than it could be. The announcement says that the offer for both crates expires on June 20th but presumably once the Subscriber's Crate is in /Claim it will stay there forever. Everything else does.

I think what it means is that you'd have to log in before the cut-off for your account to populate Claim with the Subscriber Crate, after which you'll have as long as you'd like to take it out. It's an automatic process, so you'll get the crate in /Claim whether you want it or not, so long as you log in on any characer on the account before the twentieth of June. 

Most people paying a sub would do that anyway, if only because you also have to make the effort to log in to claim your free Daybreak Cash every month, but just in case anyone forgets... well, don't forget! I think that's about all I have to say on the subject for now but if any new information comes to light, since it seems EQII is currently my mmorpg of choice once again, I'm sure you'll hear about it.

A Welcome Surprise

I had a clear plan for today's post. I was going to write about my odd experience in EverQuest II's new Tinkerfest solo instance, Tinkerer's Trial. I had the screenshots all ready and everything. Now it's going to have to wait. I have something even odder to report.

I logged in this morning to set and collect my Overseer Missions and this happened. The EverQuest II Welcome Windfall Crate. Excuse me? 

At first, I thought it must be a reward for some Achievement I'd completed or some hand-in I'd done.

I'd been having yet more computer problems last night. They didn't affect me while I was playing but as soon as I tried to change characters or log out it was as if the entire machine had been dipped in molasses. EQII took forever to shut down. Something could easily have glitched and left a reward hanging.

But no, that's not what it was. It appears that for reasons unknown Daybreak have decided to give everyone a present. And I do mean everyone.

Well, I think I do. Certainly everyone with an All Access account. I logged on all my characters including the ones on Time Limited Expansion and other special ruleset servers and every one of them got the crate. The servers are down right now or I'd check one of my unsubbed accounts but for reasons I'll explain later, I'm fairly sure they won't miss out.

I was curious to know why the unheralded largesse. I googled to see if I could find out what it was all about but the only thing that came up was the automated update from EQ2U's item database. Reports had come in from ten servers about the new addition, providing a very interesting snapshot of activity across the game.

First to report, at seven seconds after seven this morning, was the new TLE server, Varsoon. All five Live servers followed in extremely short order with Antonia Bayle trailing the pack. It took less than a minute for the new item to register on all live servers.

There was then a ten minute wait before someone logged into Tarinax, the PvP server, followed a couple of minutes later by the first report from long-running TLE server Kaladim. Somewhat ominously, recent addition to the roster, Kael Drakkel, the Legend and Lore server, didn't return a result until 7:16, more than a quarter of an hour after the item was, presumably, added to the game.

Last but very much not least came Test, where the first player of the day didn't arrive for another hour and a half. Given that Test regularly has a concurrency measured in single figures that's hardly surprising but it's conclusive evidence that the item hadn't already been released on the Test server and therefore hadn't been tested by players before going Live. 

It's probably unwise to draw too many conclusions from a single event like this, not least because players have to opt in to the data-gathering tool that feeds EQ2U's database, something I have chosen not to do. I have no real impression of whether I'm the exception or the rule in that regard. It's entirely possible that plenty of people logged on to Tarinax, Kaladim or Kael Drakkel every bit as quickly as happened on the Live servers, just that none of them were running the data-gatherer. 

Still, it's an interesting new way to monitor relative activity on the various servers, one I'd never thought of referencing before. I'll bear it in mind in future, if and when new items get pushed to all players.

So, what's in the box? That's the important part. Is it anything worth having? Should I be prompting the handful of people reading this who play EQII to dust off their passwords and log in to grab the goodies while they can?

Yeah, well, I did that yesterday and my advice hasn't really changed. The freebies not to be missed right now are the Pride familiars. Definitely make the effort to pick those up. Then you'll get the Windfall crate as a bonus.

And it is worth having. There's no specific explanation but I'd guess it's intended to appeal mostly to new and returning players. There are four items inside:

• Veridian Horned Dragon Vanguard Crate
• Mercenary Unlock Scroll
• Portable Translocation Device
• Portable Circle of Growth

The first is a full set of cosmetic armor in green. I tried it in the dressing room on a Berserker and a Necromancer and it displays as plate armor on both, making it an interesting option for all classes.

I thought the Mercenary Unlock Scroll might be an actual, new mercenary but it turns out to be a free "use anywhere " unlock you can apply to any mercenary you might already have. That's a very useful item that will save you some Daybreak Cash. 

Not only is it pretty much essential to have your regular Merc unlocked for practical purposes, only unlocked Mercs can be sent on Overseer missions. I've unlocked a bunch of mine for just that reason and I'll be very happy to add another to the roster.

The other two items are consumables, stacks of five summonable Wizard Spires and Druid Rings. That lets you use the two transportation systems from anywhere, on demand. Well, until you run out of charges. 

The inclusion of those last two items strongly suggests this Windfall is going to all players, not just Members. Anyone with an All Access subscription already has access to the instant transportation system, which gives you unlimited use of all Wizard Spires and Druid rings from anywhere, just by clicking on the map. It's literally the best reason to subscribe. I use it constantly and it's game-changing.

It also means I have no use for a consumable that does exactly the same thing but if I was a F2P player I'd be very excited to be able to carry some of these portal tokens around for emergencies. As I said, if the servers weren't down for the weekly restart as I write this, I'd log in one of my unsubbed accounts to check but it seems exceedingly unlikely they'd be excluded.

The Game Update notes (if any) for today's downtime aren't up yet and there's no mention of the Windfall Welcome on the forums that I can see, so the reason for its appearance at this time remains opaque. If I find out any more I'll update the post but I very much doubt we'll get much of an explanation. It wouldn't be the first unexplained freebie I've received in EQII. 

Never look a gift crate in the lid, as they say, though, so thanks Daybreak! I don't know why you're giving it to me but I'll take it and Welcome.

*** Late Breaking News! ***  Report at 11. (Or more like Thursday.)