FFLiveblog: EQ2 news 5

Deity quests will not get updated.
Deity miracles might get looked at.

Halas starting race — Barbarians? Not 100% confirmed

Friznik is back on dev team.

Gu53 shaders 3.0 graphic upgrades to eq2 engine.
*moved to GPU for any shaders 3.0 card
*3,000 shaders upgraded so far
*Same performance at high res
*Higher framerate at lower res
Flora displacement on GPU performance getting further tweaks
*textures are not changing, So it won’t be a large download. just the old 1.0 shaders (bump mapping, reflections, item/gear glows, etc. are being batch replaced.

Nek Forest looks awesome now. The whole idea of a torch in the darkness, lighting up trees, rocks, and enemy mobs, rather than a flat pea soup grey haze and flat colors on everything.

When eq2 devs say first screenshots, they thought it was another game.

Metal armor with glow effects is particularly striking.

Would like to move particles to GPU but due to some design decisions, particles are tied to animations. Will have to go back and separate them out.

Torch slot on the to do list
Would like to do HDR in a future update