Olihin has checked in with some fixes and improvements for PvP and especially Warfields which will become available next week. From the EQ2 Forums:

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It was hinted after Fan Faire that new Spell Effects and Animations were on the way, and at one point we were listing it for Sentinel’s Fate/Game Update 55. Timetravelling has chipped in with some more info, and actually one of these new animations is available in-game.
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Believe it or not, the hard work of bolting Shaders 3 onto the antiquated EQ2 engine is done.

What remains is polish and cleanup. With all the combinations of armor, weapons, and with as many zones as there are in EQ2, this final bug sweep must take place with the help of the player.

Players have been diligently posting screen shots and even videos demonstrating the numerous areas of the game including guild halls, armor sets, etc. where Shaders 3 stumbles — it’s too dark, it’s washed out, there are halos on objects, or the colors are just plain wrong.

Imago-Quem needs your help now to finish the last mile of the race so he can move onto upgrading other things in EQ2. Don’t give up or just accept that items and armor you worked hard to get won’t look right with Shaders 3 enabled, bug it, or post screenshots on the EQ2 Forums.

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So you’ve got a tradeable Lore item that you’d like to pass from one of your characters to another on the same account. How do you do it?

You could hand it to a friend, change characters, and have them hand it back to you. If you’re in a guild, you could put it in the guild bank, change characters, and hope its still there for you to pull it back out. Wouldn’t it be much easier if you could just put the item in your own shared bank? Well now you can!

In response to a player query about this, TimeTraveling responded:

Tis intended, and apologies for it getting missed on the release notes!

So it’s official! You can now put LORE items in your shared bank!

The Contest

A trainer of mounted cats recently lost his head about the prospects of limitless wealth and ice (for iced tea naturally) in New Halas and so packed up overnight, leaving behind a manor full of trained battle cats — and no forwarding address.

We have managed to procure five of these highly prized felines and now need to find homes for them.

It has been difficult, but we have decided on selection criteria. Those players who reply to this posting with the name they intend to give to their cat will be entered into a drawing. Five names will be chosen at random to receive their very own Prowler mount of their choice.

This is the same Prowler mount which recently became available on the StationCash Marketplace.

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Inside SOE Broadcast on Ustream

From EQ2Players:

Join us on Wednesday, May 26, 2010, at 1:30 pm PDT, as we take a look behind the scenes in this edition of the Inside SOE Broadcast on Ustream! We’ll be in the SOE Ustream channel! The event is expected to last about 30 minutes.

1:30pm PDT | 2:30pm MDT | 3:30pm CDT | 4:30pm EDT |9:30pm GMT | 10:30pm CET

Activities include:

• Live Chat and Q&A! – Attendees can chat live and ask questions with members of the Community and Development teams.
• The Agency: Covert Ops and Pox Nora – Join us as we chat with our Tuscon office about these Facebook games.
• EverQuest II – Tune in to chat with the EQII team about the release of Halas Reborn!
• Free Realms – Find out more about the newly released Free Realms goodies!

To watch our live webcasts, you can visit the channel or you can create an account and log in to Ustream to chat via text with the Community Team and our special visitors.

See you on Ustream!

NOTE: The event is now 15 minutes late.

We’d like to thank everyone who has taken part in the EQ2Wire May 12th Reader Survey. If you haven’t yet filled it out, check it out here.

We’ve learned quite a bit from the entries so far, and we’ll be posting the aggregated results of this survey soon. Already, your comments are helping us improve EQ2Wire’s coverage. Readers are interested in articles about issues guilds face, player stories, and some general Lore background stories. These are items which EQ2Wire has not focused on before, but which we’d like to start dabbling in.

If you are interested in writing articles for EQ2Wire, even just a one-off article or one article a month, or cartoon strips, or illustrations, or basically anything you think is worthy of posting here, by all means, contact us!

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It seems that U.S. EQ2 servers are back up after today’s Game Update 56 patch.

Once the thread is unlocked, you can post your feedback about GU56: Halas Reborn on the EQ2 Forums.

The EQ2 Servers are now receiving the Game Update 56 patch. Servers are expected to come back up at 9am PDT.

While the servers are down, you can chat with us online! We will be in the EQ2 ZAM chatroom.

	For instructions on how to connect to the chat using mIRC, Trillian, or other chat client, check out the fantastic instructions at EQ2 ZAM.
	If you are not able to run chat software at work, or you just want to jump into the chat through your web browser, you can chat here.

See you in the chatroom!

It was only a matter of time.

Ballads has reported in from EQ2Flames that the Reinforced Slippers of Balance ( \aITEM -1095264150 2115375301:Reinforced Slippers of Balance\/a ) have been nerfed with Game Update 56. Despite being level 70 items, these were the best foot items in the game for tanking certain encounters due to the possible number of stoneskins this item could generate. We had already heard from developers that this item would not be replaced and that the effect would not be copied to other items. Indeed, a nerf was anticipated by players in fall 2009.

Instead of proccing (triggering) potentially dozens of times per minute providing dozens of stoneskins, this change means this item will only be able to absorb 3 attacks per minute.

Over two years after the introduction of Mythical weapons, Furies and Mystics logging after today’s Game Update 56 will notice a change in their mythical weapons which has neither been documented in any Update Notes, nor commented on publicly by any EQ2 developer.

Previously, the Mystic and Fury mythical weapons have added 10% of the character’s Wisdom to the character’s Potency. With today’s stealth change, furies and mystics will instead receive Ability Mod from their mythical weapon.

The result of this change, as per several players who have experienced the changes on Test and have thoroughly documented the results through statistics tracking software (ACT), will be a 15-30% decrease in healing effectiveness for most players, especially on Heal-over-Time spells.

Based on a Fury with 1,400 wisdom, this change will result in:

• -17.2% potency from the single target Heal-over-Time
• -17% potency from the group Heal-over-Time
• -27.4% potency from Death Swarm
• -26.7% potency from Tempest
• -2.9% potency from Thunderbolt
• -3.3% potency from Starnova

According to a player on the EQ2 Forums (Frametree) who contacted developers by PM and received a response this change is a “global bug-fix affecting more than just the healer classes weighing in here.”

You can read more about this change here:

• Fury, Mystic Mythical Nerf

• Just How Big a Nerf is Coming to your Healer?

• Mythical Nerf, again

The Sentinel’s Fate expansion (and its associated Game Update 55) opened the door to each character becoming a master of Tinkering, Transmuting, and Adorning. At least on Butcherblock, this change promptly doubled the price of all transmutable materials on the open market. Treasured weapons and armor, as well as Adept spells are now trading at record prices.

As a result, tradeskill societies of all major cities have received a visitor named Londiar Inygad who is interested in offering Adorning work to players. These are daily quests, appropriate to your Adorning level which allow you to make 10 adornments per day using materials provided to you by Londiar. These daily adorning quests can be picked up in West Freeport, Gorowyn, Kelethin (at Tunare’s Pages), Neriak, New Halas, and North Qeynos.

Completing these quests will reward you tradeskill experience, a city token, coin, and increase your faction with your city’s primary tradeskill faction.

Optional

These quests are completely optional and only add to the existing means of skilling up your Adorning, which is to transmute items, to make enough powders and fragments, to complete the standard Adorning recipes.

Max Skill Level

NOTE: Your maximum transmuting, tinkering, and adorning skills are based on your highest Adventure or Tradeskill level.

• A level 80 adventurer or tradeskiller has a maximum transmuting/tinkering/adorning skill of 400.

• A level 90 adventurer or tradeskiller has a maximum transmuting/tinkering/adorning skill of 450.

After the jump, we’ve got the complete Game Update 56 Notes for May 25, 2010:

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From Kiara:

As you know, our game update Halas Reborn, goes live May 25, 2010.

This will happen at the usual time of 7am PDT for the US servers and 9pm PDT (4am on 26 May GMT) on European servers.

The update notes are available here and the feedback thread will be unlocked for feedback once the update has been completed on the US servers.

EverQuest 2 does not natively support Anti-aliasing, however determined players have managed to enable it by adding “r_aa_blit” to their EQ2 INI file. Unfortunately, players will have to wait a bit longer if they want to experience Shaders 3.0 and Anti-aliasing at the same time. Players attempting to use both will see zones which are entirely blacked out. From Imago-Quem:

I just submitted a fix for this. Hopefully it passes QA and can get out to you in a hotfix here soon and you can run AA with Shader 3.

And as for the prospect of using CPU Shadows with Shaders 3.0, Imago-Quem gives us the backstory after the jump, and it’s not promising:

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In a recent post on the EQ2 Forums, Dave “Covic” Brown brought us news that he’s been able to bring on an apprentice to help with character design. Covic has now elaborated on what that will mean for the Destiny of Velious expansion:

I have an apprentice working on wieldables right now. His stuff is awesome. We are really trying to have every drop you get from the next expansion be new geo (geometry). There will be re-textures of the new geo, but little to no use of old geo if we can help it. He has already made items for 1h swords, 2h swords, 1h crush, 2h crush, pike, spear, shields (bucklers and round), and daggers. He still has to do some bows, and I think he has done some staffs already.

No word on crossbows or nunchucks just yet.

Upgrading a 9 year old game engine to support a feature it was never designed for is a daunting task. No-one knows that better than Ryan “Imago-Quem” who has been busting his butt since before Fan Faire 2009 to revamp the graphical pipeline of EverQuest 2 to support Shaders 3.0.

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One of the preamble events leading up to the Destiny of Velious expansion will be the reconstruction of several dilapidated and corrupted Druid Rings. Read the article on EQ2Players.

As we reported in April, we are expecting the druid rings in Nektulos Forest, Loping Plains, Zek, and Feerrott to be rebuilt.

Windslasher has posted extensively about how this event will work and what participants can expect…

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EQ2Players has a new Artist Highlight up for Dave “Covic” Brown. Covic is the artist behind Varsoon, Anshti Sul, Ice Mares, Rhoen Theer, and the new mounts on the marketplace. He also pops on to the official message boards from time to time.

Excerpts from the article:

What’s your favourite thing that you’ve done for EQII?

This is always changing form each new character I do. First it was Varsoon, then Anshti Sul, then Kraytok, and definitely Rhoen Theer. It seems every model I do becomes my next favorite, and I am starting to feel the same way about the model I am working on now. But I have to say that the one I will be working on next month, if done right could top them all.

Do you have any special (or just super fun) projects you’re working on now for EQII?

The project I will be working on after I finish my current model is going to be awesome. Its going to give players something they have never had in our game yet, I can’t wait to get started. Also it’s going to need a lot of QA time to get this right. So I want to get it done as soon as possible so we will have over half a year to work out the bugs.

The topic of PvP <-> PvE Character Transfers came up on Monday from a WoW player who has recently rejoined EQ2. The topic received an interesting response from EQ2 Senior Producer “SmokeJumper“:

We’re currently investigating a lot of issues to make things friendlier for you folks. This is a decent idea, but to be honest, I’d have to ask about the technical and game balance issues involved. However, I will do so. I’m curious also.

(by the way…”WoW does it” is not a valid reason for me. We aren’t WoW and don’t intend to be. But good ideas are good ideas. No need to shore them up with “WoW does it”.

Commentary

It is a perennial topic. Will EQ2 ever allow character transfers between PvP and PvE servers?

Player response has ranged amongst:

• “Where can I sign up?”
• “It will kill the game”
• “It will empty the PvP servers”
• “PvE characters who have never had to defend themselves against other players shouldn’t now be able to stroll onto a PvP server”
• “There are unique PvP items which shouldn’t be allowed on PvE servers”
• “There are unique PvE items which shouldn’t be allowed on PvP servers”

At one time, we were told flat out that the database wouldn’t support such transfers. But with the introduction of Battlegrounds, with players from PvP and PvE worls mixing it up together with a smattering of PvP and PvE equipment, it seems now the reasons not to allow such transfers are about game balance rather than technical in nature.

Tranfers Already Happening?

When Battlegrounds first came out, a variety of exploits were discovered. Most of them centered around platinum duplication and duplicating items via transmuting. But apparently some players have been able to transfer between PvP and PvE servers by visiting Battlegrounds and claiming a Character Transfer token.

We (as well as the developers) have been unable to confirm actual transfers, so at this point it remains an unsubstantiated rumor.

It seems likely that players who have successfully transferred are laying low to avoid their characters being rolled back or suspended.

The Icy Keep: Retribution x4 raid zone is still on Test and Gninja would appreciate any and all feedback on this zone. You can also contact him by PM on the EQ2 Forums and possibly arrange raids that he can monitor and get direct feedback on.

For those of you that have been most of the way thorugh Icy Keep: Retribution, How do you feel the difficulty of the encounters go? Do they fit with the order of the encounters are some fights much harder than they are currently placed in the zone or does it feel about right? Keep in mind the difficulty shouldnt jump as drastically as the TSO raids did but it should get slightly harder the further in the zone you get.

Also I am looking for feedback on the Ice Maiden D’Ina encounter if anyone has fought her. Is she too easy? Too hard? Too annoying? Anything will help.

You can read all the feedback and Gninja’s responses regarding Icy Keep: Retribution in this thread.

EQ2 Senior Producer SmokeJumper, as well as covic and Rothgar, have continued to respond to criticism about the introduction of the Prowler mounts on the EQ2 Forums. It’s impossible to quote everything they’re posting, so if you read one thread on the EQ2 Forums this weekend, I’d read this one.

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The big news yesterday about the new Prowler mounts available via StationCash in the Marketplace is being discussed in the First Ever Mount on the Marketplace thread on the EQ2 Forums.

But as part of the introduction of these SC mounts, the Highland Stalker mount which was included in the Sentinel’s Fate CE retail box has gotten some tweaks as well.

• First, the run animation created for the SC Prowler has been adapted to the Highland Stalker.

• Second, the gigantic, and I mean Sir Mix-a-lot sized rump on the Highland Stalker has undergone plastic surgery.

Some players find the new animation smoother, others find it more jarring. Go figure!

About That Featherfall

Marketing apparently unintentionally embellished one characteristic of the SC Prowler mounts. They do not, in fact, have Featherfall.

And I promise I won’t use the words apparently, unintentionally, and embellished all in 1 sentence ever again. Well, after that last one. Promise.

Previous EQ2 Senior Producers Alan “Brenlo” Crosby and Bruce Ferguson rarely responded directly to player inquiries. Thus we featured their posts here on EQ2Wire in separate posts.

However Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson has been tearing up the EQ2 Forums in two threads:

• Suggestions and requests for the new Senior Producer
• First Ever Mount on the Marketplace

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If you’re wanting to hear it from the horse’s (or battlecat’s) mouth, look no further than artist Covic’s EQ2 Forums post who designed the Prowler mounts now available for 2500SC.

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