I saw the most terrifying quote today from the mechanics developer of EQ2, Aeralik.

this is the first part of trying to get people back into their core roles so to speak.  Tanks take the brunt of it now but we realize other classes are doing high damage when they shouldn’t be while some others don’t have the utility to match their role.  Some may even pick up new roles down the line.  So while we are currently tweaking the fighters we do have things in mind for the others albeit probably not as dramatic as the fighters( at least I hope not ).

I would respond to it, but I cannot think of better words than some of the quotes from other players in that thread:

Maroger said:

Is this rewriting of the game some form of job security? I really don’t see the point in overhauling a 4+ year old game that everyone but you seems to be happy playing. And the fact that you do not bother to answer question of why buff mergers, why nerfs to spells merely indicate that you honestly have no real justification for what you are doing. What you have just written seems like a job security description than a meaningful effort to improve the game.

Aeralik’s statement is truly scary. I cannot understand how he convinced some producer that what he was doing was the right thing and that he even knew what he was doing. Management should step in and stop him if they want to have a game with paying customer left when he is finished.

UntilitSleeps wrote:

Only when the last class is changed, the last decent raid loot is nerfed and the last bit of challenge is gone from that game you will realize that no playerbase = no money.

You are on your best way to destroying a game lots of people enjoy. I bet enchanters, bards, clerics and shamans can’t wait to be “balanced” by you.

The quoted statement makes me want to QUIT INSTANTLY.

STOP DESTROYING YOUR OLD GAME YOU NEVER ADVERTISED
BY PISSING OFF THE CUSTOMERS YOU HAVE LEFT.

Of course if there is one thing I can guarantee, Assassin DPS will not go down one point.

From EQ2Players.

In Game Update 51 (scheduled for a mid-March arrival), Tradeskillers will get some love:

1. A new Tradeskill Instance in the Void. This will be a bit different than the existing 3 group tradeskill instances which level 50-80 tradeskillers have been doing since TSO came out.
2. Updated recipes for shields, orbs, and other secondary slot items.
3. Guild Hall Trophies were mentioned at FanFaire ‘08 and will make their appearance here. These trophies consist of 2 raid “bosses” from the original launch and 2 additional raid bosses from each subsequent expansion. Tradeskillers will make a “trophy mount” which, when combined with some remnant of the boss (presumably its head) will created a guild hall-placeable item. The recipe for this comes from the master tradeskill delegate you bought your AA mirror recipe from.
4. The Far Seas Supply Division (the new TSO tradeskill faction) has work for you in Lavastorm! New mounts including a lava rhino and flying, flaming, carpet and of course there are the obligatory house furniture items as well.
5. 2 New Red Shiny Collection Collections in Lavastorm exclusively for tradeskillers (NO TRADE).

There’s a great writeup at EQ2Players about the new level 45-55 solo content coming to Lavastorm and which is currently on the Test and Test Copy servers. Note that they are patching and fixing things all the time, so some of this content may not yet be doable. When I logged in, faction and rewards were not fully functional.

You’ve probably heard a lot about the tanking changes which were put on hiatus. The cancelled Game Update #51 – Lucan’s Art of War was split into a couple of hotfixes and the fighter revamp got put on hold.

Currently, fighters hold agro through a combination of taunts, hate transfers from Assassins, Coercers, etc., and by putting out superior DPS. In the current situation Shadowknights are putting out more DPS in multi-target fights than some “DPS” classes.

The intention of this well-intentioned fighter revamp is for fighters to be able to hold agro in a fight entirely by taunting and taunt-based attacks. The theory is a fighter should be able to hold agro against classes doing 3-5 times as much damage entirely through taunting.

The issue with this is that taunting is not very exciting. And spam taunting defeats the current mechanism of timing autoattacks. It is well known that a substantial percentage of fighter and scout damage comes not from casting Combat Arts, but the gaps between your Combat Arts when “auto attacks” go off. Those occasional swings, whacks, or arrow volleys can account for 40-50% of your DPS if timed properly.

As proof of just how boring tanking might be under these expected changes, steelbadger has created a single Macro entitled “Tank” which, when pressed repeatedly during a battle, generates more hate and holds agro better than the most masterfully played combat.

Tank Macro

To quote Dasein:

Tanking in its current form is like chess –
the proposed changes reduce tanking to tic-tac-toe.

The response from EQ2 Dev Rothgar was startling:

I’m already seeing people do similar macros and this can’t be good for server performance, spamming it with so many commands in a short period of time.

If the trend moves more towards this type of play style we will be forced to limit the number of spells and command steps you can add to a macro.

Talk about treating the symptom and ignoring the disease!

From EQ2 Forums.

BROKERS

• Players should no longer get an erroneous message about vendor slots being full when first opening the broker after a fresh login.

ORCISH WASTES

• The Avatar of War will now cast Furious Axe of War at the start of each combat, rather than waiting.

QUESTS / MISSIONS

• An issue that could prevent some players from getting daily missions if they had completed the previous mission has been fixed.

TerraNova has a posting from one of the researchers on this EQ2 data dump on record. From the report linked here, I find the relevant quotes:

Players were sampled across the game’s servers by inviting all players to participate in a survey if they logged in during the study time window.

After providing consent, players completed an online web-based survey that took about 25 minutes. Players…were promised a special in-game item as compensation. This item, the “Greatstaff of the Sun Serpent” was created by Sony for this unique use. According to the Sony team, the item was made to be desirable for players of all levels because of its rarity and its usefulness in combat for any player, and proved to be a valuable recruiting tool for the survey. A total of 7,129 players (5,719 males and 1,406 females) participated in the survey in just over two days.

Sony Online’s game databases collected data on player actions across four different game types. Players were asked for their age, gender, race, personal income, education, and whether they had children. Relationship measures included questions about relationship quality (“If you are in a relationship, how would you describe the quality of that relationship?”) and co-play of EQ2 (“Do you regularly play EQ2with a romantic partner, e.g. spouse, fiancé, boyfriend/girlfriend?”).

ArsTechnica.com is reporting that 60 Terabytes of Raw Server Logs from the EverQuest II universe captured over the last 4 years have been provided to a collaborative group of academic researchers — including psychologists to epidemiologists — at a number of institutions.

Dmitri Williams introduced the project and described how researchers have been approaching various game developers over the years. He paraphrased the conversation with Sony as:

“What do you collect?”
“Well, everything—what do you want?”
“Can we have it all?”
“Sure.”

The end result is a log that includes four years of data for over 400,000 players that took part in the game, which was followed up with demographic surveys of the users.

The team can now track how individual customers dropping out of the game influenced others who they typically played or interacted with.

Gender turned out to be a negative influence on interactions: even after their low numbers were taken into account, female players avoided interacting with each other. Older women turned out to be some of the most committed players but significantly under-reported the amount of time they spent in the game by three hours per week

Time zones had some influence; players in the same time zone were 1.25 times more likely to partner than players even one time zone apart. But distance had a much larger effect; players within 10 kilometers of each other were five times more likely to interact.

For the most part, the companies that the researchers have approached either haven’t been interested in sharing their logs or the logs themselves don’t contain the sort of data that would make for fruitful research.

Some odd bugs have been introduced into the TSO Mission system and the Broker system as well.

The solution to the TSO Missions is to bring up your Completed Quests and click on any existing missions. They will vanish from the list.

The solution to the broker slots refusing to sell items is to send a mail or click Take Coin.

GENERAL

• The Legends of Norrath Museum is now open for visitors!  Talk to Angie Patterson in South Qeynos or Angus McPhergin in West Freeport to gain entry.  Once inside you can follow the guided tour given by Mott Muttle.
• Dispersion, Displacement, and Transposition no longer stack with each other. Additionally, their power increases have been lowered slightly.

HALLS OF THE FORSAKEN

• Hapless prisoners were spawning much too frequently and gating a quest in this zone. They have been sacked.

ITEMS

• The Eye Mounted Ring received an effect that was out of progression for the zone and intended for the zone boss. This effect has been removed.
• Diamond Dust is now toggleable.
• A display error was fixed on the Guardian Ether Champion’s 4-piece set bonus. The persona window will now show the proper shield block gain.
• Bangle of Polished Marble’s proc, Amplify Healing, now properly affects wards.

NAJENA’s HOLLOW TOWER

• Fitzfangle’s bombs will now properly scale to the level of the zone.
• An issue that sometimes would cause people to be killed at the zone by thrown lava has been fixed.

ORCISH WASTES

• Axltaxatus, the dog of war, associated with the Avatar of War is no longer rooted.

PERFORMANCE

• An issue that sometimes caused lag when several players entered into a zone has been addressed and should hopefully help reduce such occurrences.

SINKING SANDS

• Anashti Sul should cast her AoE spells more reliably now.

YKESHA’S INNER SANCTUM

• Tyrannus should cast Crushing Void Energy more reliably now.

Want these mounts?

\aITEM -1230427643 -1500374663:[Saryrn Deathcharger whistle]\/a (evil version in-game link)

Invite a friend, recruit them into EQ2, and off you go!

Details at EQ2Players.

Don’t you love unannounced tweaks?

There are some threads on the EQ2 Forums indicating that some graphics were revamped as part of the Feb 5th update. The ice in Everfrost is more translucent and looks really cool. However an inadvertent change was made to the grass in the Antonica Guild Hall. It looks rather black and spotty now. A hotfix is planned.

It is not easy to take a Game Update, remove a significant chunk of it, and release the rest. What was originally planned as Game Update 51 contained the much-maligned Fighter Revamp, as well as changes to Auto Follow, Spells, Items, the introduction of the HEIRLOOM tag, and some other items as well.

Most of those improvements went live on February 5th. According to EQ2 Devs, for the remaining components of what was formerly known as GU51 (minus the Fighter Revamp) “We’re aiming for the week of February 16th as early as possible. “

There is no official list of just what this update will contain, but a quick perusal of the original GU51 notes, minus the Fighter Revamp, minus the Feb 5th update, puts these items on tap for a Feb 15th update:

GUILD HALLS

• Guild Hall Fuel Merchants will now buy back tier 1 fuels.
• The guild hall mender will now correctly remember the new coverage setting after it is changed.

ZONES

• Milyex Vioren’s engineer should no longer occasionally become unkillable

• Ferzhul should no longer fail to unlock his portion of Varsoon’s portal if players kill all of his adds before killing him.

QUESTS

• Knight-Captain Santis will complete the quest, “Bog Sludge Hunt”.
• Zoning into the Nasin’s Library on Chapter 4 of The Shadow Odyssey should now automatically zone in a full party, regardless of whether all members have the quest.

MACROS

• You can now drag equipment from your appearance slots to the macro window.

GROUPS

• Group members can now use the /invite command to request that the group leader invite a player to the group. Just type /invite {playername}

Again, this is NOT an official list. This is just my armchair analysis and will likely change between now and February 15th.

Looks like the new HEIRLOOM tag was not fully tested for The Proof in the Pudding tradeskill epic updates. The following characteristics have been discovered:

• Pulling the completed items out of the Shared Bank will not update the quest. You must delete and reacquire the quest “The Proof in the Pudding”.
• Turning in the quest “The Proof in the Pudding” will consume ANY update items from your personal bags AND the Shared Bank. So if you created more than 1 of each item in the hopes of updating the quest for multiple characters, they will be ALL used up by the first person turning in the quest if these items are in your Shared Bank.

Solution:

• Make sure there is only 1 set of update items in Shared Bank.
• Log in the character that needs to turn in the quest.
• Delete and re-acquire the quest.
• Turn in the quest, making sure that there are no other update items in the Shared Bank.
  

UPDATE: Proof in the Pudding updates are now totally broken and the quest is now impossible to complete.

Hopefully this will be fixed soon!

From EQ2 Forums.

Looks like loot, AA, and the enjoyment of doing an x2 raid won’t be the only reasons folks will be packing like sardines into the new x2 raid zone.

Posted by fyreflyte here:

(The 12 new armor appearances being introduced in GU51) will indeed require some additional void shards (though not a staggering amount), but they won’t be directly purchased off the merchants. You’ll have to complete some of the x2 content to be able to get your hands on them =)

Thus far the appearances have only been used on loot that will require some running of the x2 zone to acquire. This is all very new stuff, however, and some of it will eventually be available through other channels as well.

So there you have it. The first application of these new appearances will be the x2 raid zones. You’ll need void shards, but you won’t be able to immediately buy these items.

No doubt these new appearances will be the “killer app” for StationCash. I’m certain that will be the second venue that these items will appear in. Followed eventually by faction recipes or faction rewards, etc. for soloers.

Glad I’m raiding these days.

Looks like it has been brought to the attention of developers that on the Atrebe’s Lab fight, folks were making sure all their bags were filled so the 200,000 lb stone wouldn’t get deposited in their bags.

Might want to comment in this thread if you feel any changes to it will break the fight:

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=442572

This was planned to be Game Update #51, but with the Fighter Revamp changes postponed, this is now just a big hotfix. There’s still some great stuff in here:

HIGHLIGHTS
A new (item tag) has been added: HEIRLOOM. These items are the same as NO-TRADE except that they can be placed into your shared bank. Characters on the same account and server can then pick them up out of the shared bank. Normal shared bank rules apply on PVP servers.

• Void Shards
• Proof in the Pudding update items (Master Tradeskiller)
• Certain Tradeskill Faction Reward items
• Kunark Faction Tradeskill Recipes

GENERAL

• The spider ability ‘Sticky Webbing’ (on overland trash mobs in the Moors of Ykesha) has changed from a 30 second root to a 3 second daze.
• Merchants in the Village of Shin will now buy as well as sell items.
• It should now be slightly easier to avoid the blood gorgers in the entry passage to Grobb, if you are careful.
• Spotting a business opportunity, a new fuel merchant has recently set up shop in Firmroot Moot near the mender.
• Large attribute values over the base cap will no longer cause your max hitpoints or power to decrease.
• Adornments which add additional damage to a weapon will now correctly report critical attacks.

ACHIEVEMENTS
General

• Bountiful Harvest should no longer display a combined harvest on root and foresting nodes. Instead you should see two messages similar to other nodes.

Assassin

• Frontload will no longer cause poisons to cancel when it is toggled off or expires.

Berserker

• Perseverance is now a buff and works in a similar fashion to Reversal with a hidden spell that can only trigger once every 15 seconds.

Shaman
Kindred Restoration will now cast properly if the shaman is casting another spell.

DUNGEONS/ENCOUNTERS
Anchor of Bazzul

• Imprisoner Y’nosii’s death now results in his weakened soul spawning. Killing the weakened soul gives a key that will open Ynosii’s treasure chest.

Cavern of the Afflicted

• A group of zombies near the first Maledictive Terror should no longer continue to respawn.

Evernight Abbey
Players on the quest A Brother’s Revenge should no longer be able to get a quest update and be asked to turn in Gabardine Obisgnul’s head when they do not have the item.

Halls of the Forsaken

• The mission End of the Forsaken should no longer occasionally have too few forsaken soldiers and conscripts present in the zone.

Nektulos

• The Avatar of Hate should cast crushing hatred more reliably on attackers now.

Palace of the Ancient One

• The Switchmaster should critically hit players somewhat less often now.
• Tythus can no longer have his Voidslide AOE interrupted.
• The duration of Nether Bolt, the reactive associated with Pentaclypse and Ultaclypse, has been reduced to 1.5 seconds.

Ravenscale Repository
The two parts of Mission of the Macabre can now be completed in any order, so that Noyle is no longer occasionally already dead once players reach that step.

ITEMS

• Atrebite Mantle of Destruction may now be worn by all plate tanks.
• Drum of the Ethernaut Chronicler’s proc now functions on both spells and melee attacks.
• Cloak of the Overlord and Cloak of Antonia Bayle now have additional ranged bonuses.
• The proc text on Ripper’s Stiletto now more clearly states that it triggers only from attacks made with that weapon.
• A number of the Frostfell reward armors have been changed to create a more balanced stat progression.
• Paladin’s Zealous Voidbeam 4-piece bonus now adds mitigation instead of Spell and Combat Art damage.
• Silk Robe of Summoning, Aramid Robe of Voidcaller, and Staff of Elemental Mastery no longer function on swarm pets, but should stack with other pet effects better than they did previously.
• The 5-piece bonus on the Conjuror and Necromancer raid sets has been improved slightly.
• Razhish’s Cloak of Flowing Power has a new proc.
• The effect on Ferhustr’s Furious Rolling-Pin should now add 20% to heals and runes.
• Overloaded heal procs will now trigger properly from reactives and wards
• Unholy Rift 4 piece bonus to Tenacity should now have a 35m range.
• The Neutral Avatar 2 piece charm bonus will now work correctly.
• Protective Platemail Helm of the Rising Sun is now properly classified as plate.
• Void-Etched Blade and Void Cutlass of the Lethe now have delays more suitable for offhand weapons.
• Extract Mana on the Illusionist robe from VP now functions properly.
• The collection reward Cape of Infatuation now has an appearance.
• Many of the fabled items within Palace of the Ancient One, Ykesha’s Inner Stronghold and Tomb of the Mad Crusader, have been upgraded and or had effects added.
• Gynok Moltor will no longer drop Stained Mummy Bandages or the Eye Mounted Ring. His drops have been upgraded and new items have been added in place of the ones that were shared.
• The Savage Wall was dropping from both Captain Ikalus and Xebnok the Wretched. Xebnok will no longer drop the Savage Wall and has had a new item added to his table to replace it.
• A few pet caster effects have been added to select mage items.
• The Silvered Link Chain is now usable by rogues.
• Zarrakon will now drop new items. In addition some of his existing drops have been upgraded or had effects added to them.

QUESTS
Moors of Ykesha
Captain Lip Marrsquire’s “Evidence?” quests are no longer impeded if completed after finishing the quest, “Who Dun It?” Return to Captain Lip Marrsquire to complete these quests.

SPELLS
General

• Examination Data will now show the critical damage multiplier if it differs from the base amount.
• Spells that are affected by achievements will no longer drop after being charmed.

Defiler

• Spiritual Circle will now apply properly to members of the raid.

Inquisitor

• Repenting Strike will now trigger if the inquisitor is stunned or stifled.

Necromancer

• Siphoning of Souls adept 3 will now trigger Soothing Soul properly.

TRADESKILLS

• A number of trade skill faction rewards are now considered heirlooms. The components required for “Proof of the Pudding” are also considered heirlooms.
• “Tools of the Trade” set bonuses are now slightly different for each set. (previously, the level 55, 65, and 75 items were identical, now they have 5%, 7%, and 9% bonuses to tradeskill durability).

User Interface

• Critical Mitigation display in the persona window will now show the attribute gains as well. (Each 100 points of AGI provides 1 point of innate Critical Mitigation ability to Scouts and Fighters. Each 100 points of INT provides 1 point of innate Critical Mitigation ability to Mages and Priests.)

EQ2Players is now hosting a lore-filled, if vague preview of what is now being called Game Update #51 “Elements of Corruption”. This is the Lavastorm revamp, adding means of travel, teleporters, x2 raid zone, new 45-55 content, new 80 content, etc. The release date for this update is unknown, partly because of the separation of the Fighter Revamp from the old Game Update 51, which is now being released as part of Erollisi Day.

Lavastorm Revamp Preview at EQ2Players

As I predicted, the Lavastorm revamp will take a page from the Everfrost revamp last fall. As posted by timetravelling here:

Travel around lavastorm will be MUCH MUCH easier. We’ve added more teleporters as well as travel mount paths.

None of the old content is slated to be removed, some of the mobs will see slight tweaks and might be moved around a bit, but we don’t plan to actually remove any quests or content.

The level 80 content is actually in brand new areas we’re adding to the island, none of the old areas are being overwritten.

Lots of new quests, both in the 45-55 range and at 80.

I know some purists will be upset but Lavastorm is 3 years old now. Most folks run through it just for quest updates, not because they want to explore the zone. This is great news that there will be questlines there for level 50-55 as this is one of the holes in EQ2 content right now.

I hope the mounts being added aren’t too “easy mode”, but additional teleporters will be great. You still have to get to these locations to get the teleporter update. And yay for more 80 content since a lot of folks are hitting a brick wall at ~165 AAs.

From timetravelling’s post here:

The x2 (new raid zone) is going to be balanced specifically for people who do Not have mythicals. Our aim is that once you get some good TSO gear, such as the tier2 legendary set, you’ll be able to clear–or at least begin clearing–this zone. Mythicals should not be required for any stage of the instance.

In fact, I created a brand new buffbot for test-copy so that we can put intrepid testers into legendary-ish gear and test the zone that way, sans-mythical.

And, when I said new armor appearances, I didn’t mean recolors. That’s not a new appearance, that’s a re-color. These are New Appearances with a plate, chain, leather And cloth version. =)

This is certainly some awesome news. Looks like EQ2 developers bit the bullet with the cancelled skeletal revamp and have created 12 new armor appearances, covering plate, chain, leather, and cloth. Because of all the difference races in the game, this means that this armor had to be created 12 times and then substantially tweaked or even re-created many many times to line up and look good on the different races.

I’m really looking forward to seeing these new GU51 Armor appearances. The existing armor appearances are starting to run out of steam.

It is unknown just what Void Shard armor sets will be added in GU51, but I would guess some will have these new appearances.

And I’m dying to jump into this new x2 raid zone which will have 9 bosses, some of whom drop void shards. My guild Shadow of Sun Tzu is starting to progress in Kunark and TSO raids and this will be a great training ground for us. Can’t wait!!

Looks like whenever the servers come down to patch in Erollisi Day (which will be sometime between now and February 10th), we will see most of the various patches, fixes, and changes expected to come in Game Update 51, minus the Fighter Revamp.

I know some f0lks have been anxiously awaiting the HEIRLOOM tag so they can move Void Shards from one character to another, do updates for Proof in the Pudding (Tradeskill Epic), etc. with alts, and buy faction recipes for alts as well.

Erollisi Day will be activated February 10th, but the patch will happen before then.

Extrapolated from several posts by Kiara in this thread.