…Because Erollisi Day is coming to Norrath again! From February 4 through 16, you can participate in special quests and earn tokens to spend on lovey-dovey goodies for you and your home.
You can learn more about this year's festivities at EQ2Players.com, and get some in-depth details about the crafting side of things over at EQ2 Traders.
I've been immersed in the EQ2 Nights of the Dead celebrations for the last few weeks. The haunted house, haunted mansion, and trick-or-treating of years past have returned, and new for this year is a spooky hedge maze, the Hollow Hedge. All of the events are fun and not too grindy — you might find yourself wanting to run the events dozens of times to get your fill of all the goodies up for grabs. These range from a new appearance-only armor set to some appropriately ghoulish house items.
In other Halloween News, the Super Spooktacular in Free Realms is still going on. You can earn lots of cool costumes and prizes, and the quests to get them are short, sweet, and fun. Most of the festivities center around Sanctuary, although you'll find celebrators through Sacred Grove who will point you in the right direction.
This wasn't planned, but I noticed that my dog Moxy is dressed up as a Gay Pride parade! /thumbsup
(That's totally my Froglok Conjuror's catch phrase.)
I can't believe it's been a whole month since I've posted anything. It's not like I've been slacking, either…I've put in enough hours on a recent corporate project to warrant browsing for a laptop of my very own. Yvria, my Weaponsmith in EQ2, hit level 80 last week. Kharri, my Carpenter, finished her crafter epic yesterday. I'm steadily leveling up my combat jobs in Free Realms, one at a time. My Animal Crossing: City Folk town is still chugging along, and I log in daily to keep all my flowers watered and stuff.
With the weather changing from summer to fall, I've had a fibro flare-up or two that's slowed me down for a few days. Right now I'm suspicious of some intense coughing fits I've been having recently. If I feel myself passing away, I'll let everyone know well in advance. No, you can't have my stuff. :p
I've decided to move my guild's website from Dragonfly CMS to WordPress, since I've been really getting into making new themes lately. I'm even seriously considering making a WordPress port of Roster Master as a plugin, but we'll see how that goes when I have more time to concentrate on it.
I'm designing an AION website for an ex-EQ2 sig artist friend. It's going to be way cool and will be launching before the game is released later this month. The AetherNet — keep an eye on it!
We moved into our new guild hall (tier 2, in South Qeynos) on Friday, and I've been busily decorating since then. There's still a lot to do, but I wanted to toss up some screenshots of what I have accomplished so far.
Anyone on the Lucan D'Lere server is welcome to drop by for a visit! (You can see pics of our old guild hall here.)
This NPC's name made me LOL, especially after Monday night's Big Bang Theory ("The Dead Hooker Juxtaposition"):
The long, long, LONG-awaited GU51 has hit EQ2's live servers this morning. Lemme tell ya, I've been ready for this thing for a couple months now. My Inventory and Inspect Player UI mods have been ready for over a month now, and I've been itching to try out the new Lavastorm content. The Bristlebane day event is also now live, and I'm looking forward to digging into that as well.
In the meantime, here are a few preliminary screenshots of the new Lavastorm goodies, plus a before and after of the new ice texture for frosty house items:
A couple days ago, SOE announced their Recruit-a-Friend program. In a nutshell, I can invite new players to the game and both of us get rewards when an invitee converts to a paid account. Here's the breakdown:
If you convert to a paid subscription (basic account for just $14.99 a month) during or at the end of your trial, you get…
…And I get…
It's a win-win situation for both of us. This is a great deal and a wonderful opportunity to jump into EQ2, so won't you allow me to recruit you? Comment here or drop me an email! (Be sure to include a valid email address that I can send the invitation to.)
Fine print: This offer is only valid for new accounts. Please, serious inquiries only. I only have a certain number of invitations to give out!
C'mon…help me play my favorite game for free for a little while. 
I even have a kick-ass guild (with a kick-ass guild hall!) that you're free to join! 
***
EDIT: Here are the official super-important step-by-step instructions! Make sure you follow them to the letter, or neither of us will reap any benefits of this promotion.
I just got finished tinkering with my "top three" characters — Ria, Dio, and Kharri — and I'm already loooooving the new Heirloom item tag.
It took me about 15 seconds to warp Ria to Danak Shipyard once I logged in, and she made the rounds of Bathezid's Watch and Riliss too. All my alts now have shiny RoK faction recipe books waiting patiently for them in my shared bank.
As of right now, though, these three girls are the only ones high enough in their chosen tradeskill profession to actually scribe them, but I have a full set of crafters who will be ever so grateful for this new item flag once they reach level 70. I'm also going to be making use of this when it comes time for them all to do their Proof of the Pudding tradeskill epic.
You can't see it, but I'm doing the Snoopy dance right now.
I'm on my third go-round with the tradeskill Signature quest series, A Gathering Obsession. I did it with my 40-something (now 50-something) Defiler / 80 Carpenter Kharri, and with my 80 Templar / 80 Sage Riannon. This time, it's 60-something Fury / 70 Tailor Dionaea who's taken on the task.
It's worth noting that this quest is a LOT easier to complete with a crafter that also happens to be a high-level adventurer, but I'm sure that's been said plenty of times. Harvesting in the higher-tier zones is risky business, and lots of deaths are to be expected; you might as well unequip your gear now and have your Wand of Forgiveness ready! That being said, low-level adventurers can definitely complete this quest, but it will of course take more time and require a lot more care.
As of right now, Dio is on quest #7 and having fun dodging aggro (albeit green and blue aggro) around Tenebrous Tangle. Wish me dens!!
For every in-game Station Cash purchase of special Child's Play benefit items, SOE will donate $10 to the Child's Play charity.
The excellent bit about this — if it could be any more excellent — is that the items cost 500 SC credits, which is the equivalent of $5. You heard it right: SOE will match every $5 donation/purchase with another $5.
I, like everyone else, was quite wary of the Station Cash concept at first, but when you look at the available items, they're really no threat to the "pure" game world. Besides, this is a charity for kids…nobody loses here!
Peter bought me a load of SC for my birthday yesterday, and I had enough for 2 Bouncing Baby Bear Cubs (Riannon got "Bugaboo," and Dionaea will be getting "Boogaloo") plus a set of Ironforge Plate for Ria. Screenshots really don't do the set justice…it looks like it's made of pearl. Shiny!