Well, it seems that with Live Update #16, the folks at Sony decided to add Griffon towers to Thundering Steppes and Nektulos Forest. However, instead of the magical “poof, there’s a tower” method of adding content to the game, Sony took the player-focused approach and put in a world event where artisans and adventurers come together to build the griffon towers.

As soon as people logged in yesterday, there was a rush to start building the towers. Artisans were making tools, lumber and plans, all contributing to the growth of the tower. Adventurers were harvesting raw materials for the artisans and players who could not harvest were fighting off aggresive creatures in the area preventing the tower from being built. The whole experience was pretty slick, particularly when you got to see the tower actually grow as parts of it were completed.

Once the tower was complete, I capped it off with a few pops of fireworks to celebrate. Yes, with the 1st birthday of EQ2, Sony has given players a number of gifts to help with the celebration. From a range of vitality potions, debt forgiveness wands and shard recovery wands to a 12-slot bag, some house items and a trigger item to launch a fireworks display (with unlimited charges, woot), Sony offered players who have been members longer more items that newer players, but each player who had been a member for at least a week was granted gifts. Pretty slick promotion in my book. Sony has additional rewards to be offered at 18-month and 2-year milestones as well.

Despite all the great stuff in the patch, there were some quirks that irritated some players. In response, Sony filled up everyone’s adventure and tradeskill vitality to 100%. Talk about a shot in the arm in the race to 60, that’s going to help a ton. I’m about 1/3 of the way through 58, but now it’s going to be easier thanks to the extra vitality and the new potions on top of that.

On more thing. Dual-weild weapons got a very nice damage boost with the latest patch to account for the missed attacks due to combat art usage. I notice I’m hitting harder with each of my weapons now, so that’s a great bonus to those of us that are DPS challenged compared to level 56 rangers.

Have fun with LU16, it’s quite a kick!