The Icy Keep (an easy x4 raid zone added in Game Update 56) seems to have taken its place as this expansion’s Ward of Elements. We’ve received reports that, with the exception of the final boss, this zone is appropriate for raid groups of as few as 11 players seeking to gear up and work their way into more difficult raiding.

There have been some issues with later bosses which Gninja has just submitted some fixes for:

[I've] just checked in a fix that cleans up the Vrewwx fight as well as fixed the respawn points. Now once you have defeated the Corrival you can respawn in his room. Once the Brothers have been killed you can respawn in there and once D’Ina has been killed the respawn resets to the front entrance since its a faster run from there.

I also made the front keep doors allowed to be openned if you have completed the quest “Knocked Out Cold” Thus having killed the dragon before in either normal or challenge mode and completed the questline from the zone. This means those wanting to fight the dragon can do so by openning those doors killing D’Ina and going after the dragon.

Hopefully these changes should make it live next hotfix.

Today’s hotfix included some additional lag fixes. Here’s Rothgar:

With this morning’s update we made a fundamental change to how our zone servers throttle their frame rate. Our hope is that this change will allow busier processes to consume more of the server resources and increase performance (reduce lag). Whether or not this change has a noticeable impact will depend on many variables that can only be observed in the live environment and under a significant load.

We’ll be watching things on our end as we ramp up to primetime tonight but I’m also looking for your feedback as to whether or not you’ve noticed an improvement after this morning’s changes.

Thanks!

Our friend Farrel over at Epic Slant has done a great article on player expectations for the Destiny of Velious expansion.

Velious is not something you do lightly. It was the defining expansion of EverQuest and to put it on such a short product cycle is dangerous.

Velious was one of the largest content additions ever to hit EverQuest. The whole expansion was simply massive in scale. Three major cities were added, several open world zones, shared access dungeons and a raid zone that could support more than a single guild at a time. The EQ2 trend of “two over world zones” and some instances will not work here.

From the EQ2 Forums:

The US servers will come down on June 29, 2010, at 7am PDT for a hotfix.

Runnyeye and Splitpaw will be patched at the usual 9pm PDT (4 am GMT on June 16, 2010, provided that Kiara’s gnomish time zone converterizer didn’t lie).

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From the EQ2 Forums:

Starting at 4:45am PDT on Tuesday, June 29, 2010, the Guk, Najena and Blackburrow servers will come down for an estimated 5 1/2-hour downtime, expected to be online again around 9:15am PDT. During this time the servers will be undergoing maintenance.

We apologize for any inconvenience. If any additional downtime is needed, we will update this post accordingly.

Breaking News: Christine “Kiara” Renzetti is hopping the fence from EverQuest II to a new role as EverQuest Community Manager.

More after the jump…

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Interviews with the EQ2 team have been popping up everywhere, but while interviewing Dave Georgeson (EQ2 Senior Producer) would seem the obvious choice, EQ2Wire prefers to take the road less traveled. Although never officially announced, Xelgad has been appointed the go-to guy for Class Balance and Mechanics changes, filling the position hastily vacated by Aeralik last fall.

We submitted 11 questions to Xelgad and are thrilled to be able to share the results of that exchange. There have been some gameplay changes of late that haven’t had a lot of developer response on the forums, so for our first exclusive EQ2Wire interview, we’ve brought these issues to light, hoping to get some additional insight. While there are few revelations, the community benefits from hearing from someone who has such day-to-day input into EQ2’s gameplay are huge.

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From EQ2 Senior Producer Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson:

We read your posts about wanting a Double XP weekend this coming 4th of July weekend. I went and discussed it with everyone concerned, and voila!, now it’s Christmas in July.

This weekend, from 4pm Pacific on Friday, July 2nd until 10am Pacific on Tuesday, July 6th, we will be running BOTH a Double Station Cash promotion *and* a true Double XP (+100% XP) promotion.

So go get those Station Cash cards so you can redeem them, and plan to play a ton this weekend! We’ll see you on line!

Due to the streamlining of spells and combat arts from levels 1-20, specifically several changes to fighter spells and arts, Fighter classes are finding it difficult or impossible to complete Heroic Opportunities.

Game Update 57 will see some changes to fighter classes to resolve this issue. From Xelgad on the EQ2 Forums:

Fighter heroic opportunities have been changed from requiring a taunt to complete them to requiring a ‘Fist’ icon to complete them. Paladins and Shadowknights should soon see that one of their primary spells is now a Fist rather than a sword (Judgment and Malice) and Berserkers will soon see that Body Check and Raging Blow now go up to Raging Blow/Body Check VIII, rathar than VII, and they receive those spells at levels two and three.

Everyone should be able to complete their solo heroic opportunity without toggling a buff or a stance as soon as the rest of the changes make it to test.

If you are wondering why there has been a whirlwind of changes and announcements about what new players experience from levels 1-20, it probably has a lot to do with the fact that Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson, EQ2’s Senior Producer, has been spending a lot of time creating new characters in each of the starting cities to find the rough spots and smooth them out.

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On Friday June 4th, 2010, Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO) made news by announcing that the entire game was going to a Free-to-Play (F2P) model. Players can maintain a subscription, and receive most of the game and game items, but they’ll need to spend real money to get access to new items which appear on their marketplace.

This begged the question of whether other games such as EverQuest, EverQuest II, or World of Warcraft would move to a F2P model, and if they did so, whether it would be gamewide or if we would see the addition of new isolated F2P servers.

F2P Goldmine?

Thus far, it remains unclear if F2P has been the financial goldmine that SOE expected when they spent millions developing and marketing their kid-friendly FreeRealms. The game is popular, but it’s unknown outside SOE if enough people are buying items in the Marketplace to continue the experiment. Already, there has been one major revamp to FreeRealms, shifting the target audience from 10-15 downwards by making gameplay, combat, and quest completion easier.

Thus far, every addition of RMT elements to EQ2 has been extremely unpopular with players, at least in discussion forums. Applying a F2P model to established Subscription-based MMOs seems to be the “third rail” in MMO discussions. LotRO has jumped into F2P headfirst, marking some classes as premium, reducing character slots for non-paying customers, and putting powerful items in the marketplace.

During the Stratics interview at E3, the Free-to-Play question was raised, and Dave Georgeson (EQ2 Senior Producer) took a swing:

The current subscription model isn’t going to change. The people that are playing the game as it stands right now really like the way it is. They don’t want us to sell items for power in the marketplace. They want to be able to earn their way through and achieve things on their own. They don’t really want people to be able to get ahead with their wallet. So the existing business that we have right now is not going to change. If we were to do something outside of it, it would be completely separate.

Georgeson had a followup clarification on the EQ2 Forums:

We will not be changing your subscription model. We’ve heard you folks loud and clear that you do not want items with stats introduced, you don’t want players buying their way to power, etc. Your world will stay the way it has been and we will continue to support it with new content, items, etc.

Commentary

At first glance, this would seem to shut the door on F2P in EverQuest and EverQuest II’s future. However careful consideration of the interview and reading of these comments would seem to leave a crack open for the possibility of Free-to-Play appearing on isolated servers, much as the  Bazaar and Vox servers allow isolated RMT in EQ2. Clearly we’re in the realm of speculation here.

By the way, some are using the acronym FTP to describe Free-to-Play, however FTP is so widely used for File Transfer Protocol, we will be using F2P.

Expansion Date Guesstimations

We have been guesstimating that the 6th expansion for EverQuest II: Destiny of Velious would make an appearance this November. However based on Georgeson’s comments in this most recent interview, we’re now estimating that the expansion will not hit until early 2011. We’re a little over 1 month away from Fan Faire (August 5-8) so no doubt this date will be locked down before then.

Game Update 57 could be a big update, based on some notes already posted in the Test forum, and hints of other changes coming down the wire. The biggest change thus far is the removal of certain group spells from the various player classes from levels 1-20. Because level 1-20, and especially levels 1-10 are considered solo play, those spells which are only useful in groups are being postponed to later levels.

From Rothgar:

These changes are PART (notice the emphasis on the word “part”) of a bigger change that wasn’t fully rolled out to the Test Server.

As you’ve probably guessed, these changes are part of a package to make the game more approachable to new players. There were many spells and abilities that were either useless or made no sense at such a low level.

We can also expect some changes to the default User Interface (UI) appearance of spells and combat arts. Of course, these will be customizable by installing third party UIs. Again from Rothgar:

I’d ask that you wait until you see the other changes that are going with it (to the default layout). Then decide if it fits or not for you.

From SmokeJumper:

You’re seeing some new changes on Test right now. We’re doing a bunch of revamping, some of it to make the game a lot faster when you play it, and a bunch more to make the game more intuitive and cool when start playing for the first time.

The skill progression for the lower levels was a) drowning new players in skills that they didn’t understand, and b) often giving players certain skills way before they needed them. Also, some classes just simply weren’t getting enough useful skills in order to have fun. So we’ve shuffled things around. Details of that shuffling are listed below.

After the jump, the changes to class abilities (mostly from levels 1-20) which have been submitted by Xelgad:

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Imago-Quem continues to work nose-to-the-grindstone on Shaders 3.0, improving not only the look, but the performance. A month’s worth of tweaks to Shaders 3.0 since Game Update 56 are now on Test. These improvements fix tons of issues with objects being too dark, too shiny, or just the wrong color. From SmokeJumper:

Shader 3.0 optimizations! Shader 3.0 is now way faster than it used to be. In most cases, it will outstrip Shader 1.0 by 10 fps or more. Very cool. (Okay, we snuck this one out already, but I’m talking about it now because we never really said how MUCH of an improvement it was.)

Ten Ton Hammer interviewed Dave Georgeson at E3. It’s very difficult to follow the interview, since it’s not clear whose comments are Georgeson’s and whose comments are those of the interviewer. But nonetheless, it’s worth a read. Hopefully they’ll post the video soon.

Meanwhile Stratics (which recently merged with TGN) has posted a video of their own interview with Dave Georgeson.

Despite some valiant attempts, players on UK servers are not yet able to jump into Battlegrounds against US players. Hopefully this will change next Tuesday. From Rothgar:

We will try again with the next hotfix which is scheduled for Tuesday.

Here are your June 22, 2010 Update Notes:

DRUID RING EVENT

• The druid rings in Feerrott and Loping Plains are now safe destinations for newbies to zone in.
• Kurista, Elwe, Dalarim and Tolla Clorto no longer change appearances every time they zone.
• The Defender of Growth guards are now much more powerful, to better protect the druid rings.
• A couple harvest nodes near the Stonebrunt Highlands druid ring were left floating when the terrain was adjusted. This has been fixed.

PVP WARFIELDS

• Antonica will once again broadcast the call to arms.

PVP ITEMS

• Fallen Foe Charms can now be used by Wardens.

PVP POPULATION

• The Priest of Discord in New Halas now resides closer to the PvP merchants.

UNDERFOOT DEPTHS

• Vaclaz Encounter: Crippling Nausea no longer stuns players.  Instead it causes their actions to have a chance to impede those around them.  Players hit with keen insight no longer can be hit with crippling nausea.  Players with crippling nausea will never be picked to handle the keen insight adds.  Roekillik beastmasters now have more health.
• The Taehric Construct and Vaclaz no longer debuff player’s physical and Noxious mitigation levels.
• Rathgar will now hit players with Deathblow once per 55 secs rather than once per 45 secs.
• Master Syfak’s Roekillik Deathbringers will not cast festing plague as quickly as they did before.

The Vigilant: Rescue

• Amahn Prime Nirel now summons flames and fire more quickly during the fight.

Overview

Welcome to the first installment of Dethdlr’s Dungeon. This is my little place on EQ2Wire to post my commentary on EQ2. Unlike the news items, this is more for opinion based articles from my own perspective. For my first article here I’m going to tackle: How to figure out an encounter.  I’m sure some of our readers know all of this information already but there’s probably a tidbit or two in there that may help someone out.  Here goes…

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Xelgad has created a thread on the EQ2 Forums laying bare some of the mechanics that go into stats, resistances, and gear.

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From EQ2Players:

Aaron “Gnobrin” Bisnett is the Community Team’s gnomish graphics guru by day and the EQII team’s art apprentice by night! When he isn’t dropping in and taking a few thousand screenshots that we absolutely must have tomorrow!! he’s turning his hand to drawing some really beautiful things that are being added to the stunning items already found in Norrath.

Hammers and Cleavers

Stained Glass (left) and Tinkerfest (right) Cloaks

You can read the full interview and look at more images of Gnobrin’s artwork at EQ2Players.

Ever walk up to the teleporter in Paineel and accidentally click it instead of right click it?  Did you enjoy your trip to the Airship docks when you did?  Neither did I.  Tagwen of Mistmoore decided to post about it on the EQ2Forums:

PLEASE PLEASE.. I’m so tired of right clicking it or accidentally going to the airship.. the launchpad is used 1000% time more often than people go to the airship…

After a couple posts of support for this change, Gninja wrote this:

I will look into changing this.

Woot!  Looks like soon the default will be where people want to go most of the time when they click the teleporter!

We’ve got a rollup post of news from the weekend on a few different topics.

UK-US Battlegrounds might be finally getting the necessary kick in the butt to start working tomorrow. There might be a solution in the pipeline for players on distant servers unable to acquire Smuggler’s Den Tokens. Tinkerfest is coming to Test with new quests and rewards. And finally, a new Class Mechanics forum has mysteriously appeared on the EQ2 Forums.

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EQ2 Servers will be coming down tomorrow morning at their usual time for the Tuesday hotfix. After the jump, check out the Hotfix notes for June 15, 2010:

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Several people have reported on the EQ2Forums that the progress bushes aren’t spawning in the Jarsath Wastes and Sinking Sands druid rings.  Windslasher chimed in with this update:

Drat!

I goofed with the spawns in Jarsath and Sinking Sands, so the progress signs aren’t appearing in those two zones. Unfortunately it’s not a server-specific thing or a setting that I can just change on the fly, so even though I have the fix in the pipeline I can’t tell you how soon it will be on the live servers, yet. It’ll be fixed as soon as possible.

Update: According to the update notes, this should be fixed with the hotfix going in tomorrow morning.

Over on the official EQ2 Forums, Kiara writes:

Greetings all!

I wanted to let you know that we’ll be making some changes to the forums this week.

We will be removing the server forums and replacing them with the following:

• Guide Events
• Player Events
• Guild Recruitment
• Roleplaying
• Live Gamer

We will be leaving the server forums up for a little while to move some of the stickied threads that folks want to keep into the new forums.

The new forums will appear tomorrow.  If you see a thread in your server forum that you think really needs to be in one of the new forums, please report it and we’ll review it and see if it needs to be transfered or if it would just be better to start a new one.

Rothgar has posted on the EQ2 Forums:

It looks like we’re going to have to bounce the US Battlegrounds world in order to get all of this [thje US-UK Battlegrounds bridging] working.

and

We are locking US Battlegrounds in order to bounce them in 30 minutes for a configuration change. Estimated downtime after the 30 minute lock is about 15 minutes.