Game Update 52 Notes from Timetravelling:

As a New Year’s Resolution (a few days early, admittedly), we pledge to create within a few months (aka GU52):

• A brand new two-group instance with 9 bosses—over half of whom drop Void Shards—balanced for players in legendary gear
• A very challenging brand new four-group raid instance
• Brand new tradeskill instance in the Void
• A Lavastorm revamp
• Brand new areas added to Lavastorm with level 80 solo content
• A new faction with gear to gather from the new Lavastorm content
• 12 new armor sets
• All of them with brand new armor appearances
• Including a brand new robe model in which the Helm and Shoulders and Legs are all visible, separate pieces from the Chest
  • And it looks rad *cough* See also: Varsoon *cough*

December 18, 2008 Update

A ton of changes small and large have been implemented throughout Norrath, “as a special gift from the developers”

• The master scroll drop rate in Desert of Flames has been increased to more closely match those of the rest of the game.

• The twin dragons in the Pedestal of Sky now drop 3 pieces of fabled armor.

• Godking Anuk now drops 3 pieces of fabled armor.

• When clearing a filter your last scroll location will be restored.

• Collections can be sorted by:

• 1. Ready to turn in status (Default)
  2. Name
  3. Level
  4. Category
  5. Progress - sorts by the number of items needed to complete the collection, starting with the smallest number needed. (Does not including ready/completed collections)

• The Harvest Supply Depot can now hold up to 150 unique harvestables.

• The max player / detrimental spell effect icons displayed have been increased from 30 to 45.

• The player house window will now display the address of the house below the house name.
  Your full house address and location will be shown on the Details tab of the Persona window.
  Players who currently own a house will need to enter then exit their house before the data will appear.

• Many of the deity avatars have enhanced damage abilities, and will grow stronger during long fights.
• The Pythoness should no longer cast a de-level, and players should be able to obtain Clan Leader powers if they return to a saved instance.
• Void Shard and Far Seas Trading Company Tokens are now No Value to prevent accidentally selling them to merchants.
• When you /camp to a specific character the client will choose the character on the existing world if that character name exists.  (Thank you Blackburrow.Rheem for the feedback!)
• The guild bank transaction limit has been modified so you no longer become throttled for an hour.

• Swapped the 3 and 5 piece bonuses on the Dauntless void shard set back to their original places.
• Raid Armor Sets have been altered to better match progression from Veeshans Peak raid sets. Several of the effects on leggings have been improved.

• Empowered Essence now enhances Combat Arts granted by achievements.
• Displacement and Disruption will no longer refresh themselves while their stoneskins are still in effect.

And on December 22nd, a longstanding bug in what was the most accessible (and probably most often completed) Void Shard Quest — Liquid Hot Mag-ma in Najena’s Deep Forge – has finally been fixed after bugs were introduced to it on Frostfell. This quest now requires killing the Overseer.

On December 11th, Allakhazam had a developer chat with the EQ2 development team on Dec 11th.

Some relevant quotes:

Anon: Is there any plan to at Raid x 2 content to TSO?

• Ilucide: Yeah, absolutely. Though not necessarily ‘part’ of TSO, we will be adding a pretty nice sized chunk of x2 content in the not-so-distant future. Keep your eyes peeled, it will be part of a larger content release with a new x4 zone, and a whole bunch of new solo content in Lavastorm for level 80ish players.
• Ilucide: Timetravelling and Kander are hard at work on the x2 zone, and it’s shaping up beautifully!
• Ilucide: (Addendum: Domino totally reminds me that she’s got something special for tradeskillers as a part of that content update too.) *ducks*

It seems that a LOT of people have been raising a stink and filing /bugs and /petitions about how easy it is to get void shards in certain TSO dungeons. I will admit that the current situation is exploitable in a couple of different ways.

The first exploit that people discovered was the sharing of cleared instances so that other members who had not initially been present during the group could come into the zone and get harvest/clickable updates and get their Void Shard.

The first attempts by SoE to close these exploits was to close the Lava Wall in Deep Forge under certain conditions (i.e. turning in the void shard quest). However there were complaints that this locked people out of coming back and getting that named if they wanted. Recently, some of us noticed that the Automated Hammers (required to kill Doomsmith with lower DPS groups) despawn under similar conditions. I had suspicions but there seemed to be no good reason for this behavior. Now I have my answer:

Starting with the Frostfell patch, all the Deep Forge missions require a kill.

The Cold Heat mission I can deal with. It requires killing an automated hammer in addition to collecting the idols. This seems to have the desired effect of making it difficult to share an instance.

However the mission Liquid Hot Mag-ma now requires killing the named Overseer.

If you are a frequent reader, you know that Deep Forge has been my “Example A” of easier TSO instances that allow even casual groups of 4-6 players to work towards getting void shards.

It is obvious that the named mobs in Deep Forge — Doomsmith, Overseer, and Firelord Kaern — have been tuned up in difficulty the release of The Shadow Odyssey. With the recent tuning up of Deep Forge’s difficulty, I have been encouraging people to merely skip the nameds and work towards their void shards. I have recently found myself in groups who were not able to kill Overseer who were previously able to kill him with no problem.

I have not checked out the other missions, but if they put named kills on more missions then they’ll certainly be slowing down the flow of shards for at least one group of people: Casual Groupers. I’m sure well-informed players will be able to dodge the bullet and find more devious or coordinated methods to rack up the void shards. However the main people who will feel “screwed” are casual players.

I can tell you if you are in a low DPS group, Evernight Abbey is a one hell of a lot of clearing work for 1 shard if all you can get now is the Void Shard. Remember this zone was flagged “easy” by developers.

P.S. According to the recent SoE Developer chat, the 3 TSO instances which take place in The Void will soon reward Void Shards as well. I wonder what circumstances will be required to get them.

From http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?topic_id=144049

First of all wanted to say “what a crazy launch”! Many of the developers have spent countless hours in the Station Wallet design and implementation. Our morning started pretty early (1am) and we wanted to make the downtime as quick and painless as possible. As part of our new update roll out we aim to have the servers back up at 8am so that everyone can jump back into the game after getting a few hours rest

I know that Station Cash surprised many of you and I can assure you that we planned it that way! We debated back and forth on the offerings. Some items were far to powerful and others weren’t worth a players time. What we ended up with was a unique combination of items that any player in the game can benefit from. The key decision in each offering was… does this unbalance the game, or does this make the game more fun? Convenience was a critical part of the decision making process as well.

The initial items available for Station Cash can help anyone who wants to use them and they don’t ruin the experience for those who don’t want to participate. That is the balance we were looking to achieve.

I have been watching the boards and many of the devs have been in the game watching and listening to players’ feedback. Sure, some of it is good and some is bad… but that is what makes SOE so unique. Your feedback will directly impact the future offerings via Station Cash. I can assure you that we have some really cool things planned and this is a perfect time to get involved as a player with the dynamic relationship we have together.

If you have a suggestion… or if you have 10 suggestions… please share them. We are always looking for constructive feedback that has an angle we didn’t think of or a way to improve the current offerings.

Sure, Station Cash isn’t for everyone and that is OK. For those of you who are checking it out, let us know what you think. For those of you who are on the fence, we pre-funded it so you can check it out for free. Finally… for those of you who are steadfast against it, I think you might be surprised when that friend you have always been wanting to play EQ with can now lvl up quicker, fight longer and be able to join you on the front lines of our latest expansion!

It’s interesting to see this posting from John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment from Dec 22, 2007:

I’ve been a regular lurker on this site for a while but I wanted to step in here and dispel something that’s just plain not true – I don’t have my name highlighted here, but anyone that doubts it’s me can email me at jsmedley@soe.sony.com and I’ll happily reply.

We aren’t going to be allowing RMT in any way, shape or form on the non-exchange enabled EQ II servers. Period. End of statement.

EQ2Flames Posting by Smed

He responded today with:

Just to be clear here – We aren’t allowing RMT (i.e. players selling items to each other for real money) on servers other than the existing Live Gamer enabled servers. What I said still stands.

John Smedley

No response yet to this Smedley quote:

This [LoN] is not some slippery slope towards selling items directly in EQ & EQ II.

A quote from Brenlo:

Station Cash is not tradeable nor are the items purchased and they will not be. The items will remain “fluff” items for convenience or customization. House items, pets, etc. . . This will not take away from anyone’s hard work and no one is forced to purchase anything. If you like the items offered, you can buy them. If not, keep on playing the way you always have.

and further (in response to the idea of trading plat for cash):

Well again, I suppose, however you would not recieve cash for the plat. You would recieve Station Cash which is only usable on the Marketplace. Thus you would be trading plat for access to potions, house items, pets, etc. . . I guess for me I an not seeing the incentive to do this. I imagine that some folks out there would try but the payoff just does not seem to be there.

The discussion rages on in the main Station Cash forum topic.

Here’s the FAQ:
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=438343

Here’s the Official Website:
http://www.station.sony.com/stationcash/

Conversion Rate for Dec 9, 2008 is $1 (or 1 Euro) for 100 Station Cash.

But what I think most people are interested in is the LIST of items.

Cosmetic Pets

• Knight of Shadow’s End
  • Summons a pet shadow lich knight
  • Duration: until Cancelled
  • 400
• Zhog, Groz’s Little Brother
  • Summons a pet Zhog, Groz’s Little Brother
  • Duration: until cancelled
  • 700

Equipment

• Seafury Buccaneer Armor Crate
  • a 7 piece set of statless/appearance armor with only one adorned shoulder.
  • 1000
• Tunarian Alliance Armor Crate
  • a 7 piece set of statless/appearance armor (identical to Wilderness set but bare arms and 1 shoulder is bare)
  • 1000

House Pets

• Slimy
  • An electrically charged slimy ooze!
  • 100
• Grunting Warrior
  • An armored boarfiend
  • 300
• Handy Servant
  • Disembodied hand (Thing!)
  • 500

Potions

• Flask of Achievements I
  • Increase Achievement XP by 10% for 4 hours.
  • 100
• Flask of Adventuring I
  • Increase Combat XP by 10% for 4 hours.
  • 100
• Flask of Tradecrafting I
  • Increase Tradeskill XP by 10% for 4 hours.
  • 100
• Flask of Achievements II
  • Increase Achievement XP by 25% for 4 hours.
  • 300
• Flask of Adventuring II
  • Increase Combat XP by 25% for 4 hours.
  • 300
• Flask of Tradecrafting II
  • Increase Tradeskill XP by 25% for 4 hours.
  • 300
• Flask of Achievements III
  • Increase Achievement XP by 50% for 2 hours.
  • 1000
• Flask of Adventuring III
  • Increase Combat XP by 50% for 2 hours.
  • 1000
• Flask of Tradecrafting III
  • Increase Tradeskill XP by 50% for 2 hours.
  • 1000

Note these potions DO NOT STACK with any other potion.

Arctura has posted a bunch of screen snapshots here.

Grunting Warrior
Handy Servant
Slimy
Tunarian Alliance Armor
Seafury Buccaneer
Marketplace

Although there have been ways to get plat with money (for instance, buying packs of LoN cards and then selling them in-game), selling looting rights to items, and “buying” mythicals, there has been no official RMT in EQ2 other than the Station Exchange servers (which fell under the management of LiveGamer last year). Until now.

The servers are presently down and the Live Server has the following Update Notes:

Live Update December / 9 / 2008

STATION CASH

Station Cash is a new virtual currency from SOE that has been created to allow for the purchase of premium in-game items within EverQuest II.

To get started, access the “Marketplace” from the EQII Window within the game. Click on the “Add Funds” button to purchase Station Cash to fund your wallet and then select items to purchase.

EQ2 Forums (2 independent posters)

Click to view Update Notes

Frequent readers of EQ2Wire may be wondering where to buy the Ykeshan Warbears which were teased at Allakhazam last month. I know several folks were looking forward not only to the 65% runspeed but the various buffs available on these warbears.

A price of 50 void shards was given by Kiara late in the “Retail vs. Download” firestorm for this bear, but as yet nobody has been able to buy them. Turns out this was a bug. In a future hotfix, they will be available from the Void Shard Miscellania Merchant for 50 void shards.

EQ2 Forums: Void Shard Mount?

Frostfell
Frostfell appears to be in full testing mode, with some new zones and quests being added. There is supposed to be a group instance similar to the Haunted Mansion during Halloween.

Update Notes
Mobs in TSO dungeons will have an appropriate number of hitpoints for mentored instances; Tupta, Grobb, and Survival Accord faction merchants require less faction to sell; [Dec 3 2008]
Stability update for Windows Vista; [Dec 2 2008]
Fix for Repeatable Missions; [Nov 25 2008]

As you know, I had further problems with these Repeatable Missions. I was unable to get either the mission for Deep Forge or the Daily Tradeskill Group Mission yesterday. I petitioned and a GM deleted the quest from my “completed quests” journal which may be what people have to do if they are completely locked out of getting missions for certain zones.

Hey folks,

I’m back from Big Bend National Park.

First up, the bug with Void Shard Missions being unrepeatable was supposed to be corrected on the 25th. EDIT: This is still broken, as I am unable to get missions for Deep Forge or Tradeskill Group Missions. I hope it is properly fixed in the near future.

In other news, a bug with the amount of AoE damage being put out by the boss of the Atrocious Amalgam in Miragul’s Phylactery : the Anathema will be corrected in the next hotfix. Thanks Kander!

There were reports that the “Daily Double” 2 Void Shard quest NPC in Moors of Ykesha had been “nerfed” and was only offering 1 shard as a reward for his missions. This is being investigated.

Will check back as there is more to report.