Hello and welcome to the eighth edition of the Eorzea Examiner, ZAM’s column on Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. At the end of last week's column, I teased that I'd be talking about crafting again. Before anyone runs from another mountain of text on "here's what changes need to be made", this one's actually closer to last week's column where we brainstormed new classes for FFXIV. For this week's column we're going to talk about something that I think the Disciples of the Hand should have to be considered a true path for player progression: Jobs.

This information is from the alpha build of Landmark and is subject to change.

You discover early on in EverQuest Next Landmark that you don't begin with every building tool and have to climb some ropes to obtain the more powerful ones. The Add, Delete and Heal tools are easily made, but what about one of the first powerful building tools--the Selection Tool?

This tool allows you to select a size volume, whether it be of existing material or emptiness, and add or subtract to it as you need. The amount of materials consumed are relative to the size selected, so you can easily spend 30,000 or more of a material with a medium-sized volume. We recommend adding a very common material such as dirt or stone when filling a volume, and save those rarer resources for when you obtain the Paint Tool later on.

To make a Selection Tool you need several Tier 2 materials, which means you'll need to upgrade your picks. To upgrade to the appropriate pick (Iron), follow this path (subject to change):

A few weeks ago, StarCraft II received one of the most significant content patches to date in Patch 2.1. The beastly new patch included a great deal of content, including:

• "Arcade" features are now free: The custom maps of StarCraft II are contained in a portion called the arcade. It is now free with the Starter edition of SC2, and available for download. If you are new to StarCraft, I recommend starting with the games "Raynor Party" and "Mafia", they are great fun. Along with the Arcade, free players will have access to custom games and the beginning of the campaign.
• New extension mods feature: Players can now create custom games with zany modifiers, such as moving minerals and all units exploding on death. This feature allows for smaller mods to be more easily used by average players.
• New level cap for online play: The level cap has been raised from 30-35 for each race, and new StarCraft themed portraits can be unlocked.
• First win of the day bonus: The first win of the day in competitive ladder (only available to players who have purchased the full game) now grants 100,000 experience.
• Classic Soundtrack: The StarCraft: Broodwar soundtracks have been mastered and are available for free in StarCraft II.

If you haven't already, I encourage you to check out the StarCraft II Starter Edition, the quantity and quality of content available for free is overwhelming. We recently had the opportunity to talk to SC2 Senior Game Producer Tony Hsu about some of the patch 2.1 content.

ZAM's Brand Ambassador, Lindsay "Geektr0n" Ferguson, goes hands-on with the PS4 version of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, and then sits down with Yoshida-san to get the details!

Join us and discuss this in the ZAM Forums!

Tucked into their favorite Dimensions, a new order of artisans forge wonders from the fabric of magic itself. Meanwhile, a dark faction stirs in the planes, drawing the attention of Crucia and pitching all of Telara toward war.

RIFT 2.6 introduces the new Dream Weaver crafting class and an Air Saga storyline following Crucia’s flight from Mathosia to Dusken and beyond. Hunt the Queen of Air after the events of Frozen Tempest and uncover rich rewards (including new bounties and unstable artifact sets) along the way!

Key features include:

We were on-site at Sony Online Entertainment's community celebration last Friday, January 31. The Year of EverQuest has kicked off, celebrating EverQuest's 15th anniversary, EverQuest II's 10th anniversary, and the birth of EverQuest Next and EverQuest Next Landmark. Landmark launched into alpha testing for Explorer and Trailblazer level Founder's Packs that night and had its NDA drop the following day.

While we were at the event we captured some photos we think you will enjoy! Take a look!

This information is from the alpha build of Landmark and is subject to change.

Yesterday afternoon we put a call out on Twitter for some tips and hints to share with the EverQuest Next Landmark community. We were not disappointed as many players provided their own discoveries as well as some links to other helpful sources. Keep in mind that these are all associated with the Alpha build and could change or become obsolete over time.

Do you have more tips you don't see below? Add a comment or tweet me @Cyliena!

In celebration of the Goddess of Love and the Hunt, the Sisterhood of Erollisi, along with Aaronolis Swornlove, will be seeking assistance in New Halas throughout Erollisi Day. Dalron Pinot and his cheesy love lines makes a return while Diana Heartstrings and David Torchsong are hopeful that some adventurers will help them play matchmaker. The Hearts a'Flutter contests in Antonica and the Commonlands have had a new grand prize added.

A new achievement, Enamored of Erollisi, has been added this year. Craft, quest, and romance to complete it!

Creatures around Norrath will be dropping hard candies and love notes again, which can be used in crafting, consolidated into a single type, or exchanged for event currency. Spend your Erollisi Coins at Steven and Douglas, who are found in the East Freeport or Qeynos Harbor. Douglas offers eight new merchant goodies this year, including a new armor crate. Steven's newest recipe scroll has 18 additional holiday themed items, including curtains, to craft.

Erollisi Day will begin at 12:01am PST on February 6th and end at 11:59pm PST on February 19th. Don't forget to keep your alts in order with our Erollisi Day Quest Tracker!

Hello and welcome to the seventh edition of the Eorzea Examiner, ZAM’s column on Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. For this week’s column, rather than looking into one of FFXIV’s gameplay systems or their design philosophy, we’re going to play with one of the aspects I like the most, the classes and jobs. The Armoury System is one of FFXIV’s more unique areas, allowing players the option of taking abilities from a variety of different classes and mixing them together to make a unique build for their preferred main class/job. The system’s not perfect and there are some right and wrong choices for each role with the current implementation, but the concept is sound and the idea of having a variety of options is quite appealing. You know what would make it even better though? More choices, which the previous Final Fantasy games provide ample inspiration.

The EverQuest Franchise Director of Development Dave "Smokejumper" Georgeson took to the forums last Friday to explain how the EQ and EQII teams are tackling updates going forward.

We’ve decided to release regular improvements every week, then every month we’ll push something cool to you. Beyond that, we’re focusing the rest of our efforts into making great expansions!

Here’s a bit more detail:

What sorts of things will come out weekly?

These will be things like straight-up feature refinements, holiday events, short adventures, or pretty much anything that doesn’t merit being in the expansion or being a big monthly highlight. But something of this sort comes every week.

What sorts of things will you deliver monthly?

Each month, we’re going to do something interesting and fun, like aging a cool existing dungeon up to end-game levels and itemization, or adding a series of quests for players to find and explore. Maybe even a new zone sweeper or random world event, or that sort of thing. Something new and fun to experience with friends and guildies.

How will this impact the quality of the expansion?

We’re putting a huge emphasis on how important the expansion pack is to you. The feedback on that has been almost universal. “Make Our Expansion Matter.” So that’s what we intend to do.

Is SOE locked into this schedule? Do we mean EVERY week and EVERY month?

Answer: Yes, we mean it. We’re going to work hard to make it happen regularly and dependably.

We like this new strategy as a whole. The EQ and EQII team Producers (Thom and Holly) have created detailed schedules of how the rhythm of this stuff will play out across the coming months. And my reaction, as a player of these games, is that it all sounds pretty fantastic.

Again, this doesn’t reduce the amount of content we’re delivering to you. The EQ and EQII dev teams are robust in size and are constantly overhauling tools so that higher quality content can be created in even less time, so we can deliver even more. They work tirelessly throughout the year making our Norraths better because we (the dev teams and SOE) all love these worlds.

But what do you think? Does this sound like fun to you too?

• Weekly and monthly improvements and adventures
• Major focus on the annual expansion content and story

For the full announcement and to give your feedback, head over to either the EverQuest or EverQuest II forums.