Tomorrow marks a week that Destiny of Velious has been live.  I’ve had time to run through the Icy Fingers quest series on three characters, get my flying mount, check out Thurgadin, and even run through the first quest area in the Eastern Wastes.  I’ve also poked my head into the Tower of Frozen Shadows: Shadowed Corridors.  I’ve learned a few things during this time that I’d like to pass on.  This is mainly meant for the non-raiding portion of our audience since the raiders most likely know all of this information already or have the level of gear so that this doesn’t really apply.
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From EverQuest2.com:

February 26: Double XP Day

Adventure, tradeskill, and AA XP gain are doubled. Saturday only!

February 27: Loot Bonanza Day

Today only, all named monsters will drop loot at 100% probability. Rare mobs will have doubled loot drop chances.

February 28: Expansion Upgrade Day

If you already own the Standard Edition, upgrade to Destiny of Velious Collector’s Edition for $25 on this day only. Pick up the Digital Collector’s Edition and enjoy the bonus items; Cryomantic Armor, the Stormfeather Brood Guardian Mount, Tserinna’s Wedding Present, and the Everfrost Summer Home (seen at this link).

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A syndrome that I think many people who write about MMOs experience is that find ourselves actually PLAYING the game less and less. I’m certainly guilty of this myself. We get interested in a game, start writing about it based on our experience, and next thing you know we aren’t catching groups or raids anymore. So with Velious I made a commitment to get back in the game.

So one of my first experiences has been getting into Public Quests, which spawned the article yesterday. The concept certainly makes for an interesting type of content, one that was popular in Warhammer and is a huge draw for the new Rift. So far, I have heard feedback from quite a few players who have checked out Public Quests and have gotten mixed results.

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Since the launch of the Destiny of Velious, there have been nearly 250 posts by Developers, Producers, and Animators on the EQ2 Team. While we appreciate this degree of feedback (it’s refreshing after the tight-lipped Velious Beta), it has been challenging to keep with it all, much less compose it into news stories that have context and are useful for our readers.

No doubt if you are already familiar with the EQ2 Dev Tracker, you check it out on occasion. I personally follow the EQ2 Dev Tracker at EQ2Flames because it’s easy to read, however the comments and feedback may be a bit blue for your tastes.

There is an avalanche of feedback about bugs and design issues with Quests, Armor, Reflections, Public Quests, Heroic and Raid Dungeons, Access Quests, etc. etc. If you haven’t been reading it, you may not be aware that there is renewed discussion about a /sit command (and possibly others), or about incoming fixes to any number of things which were discovered during or after Beta.

Tom “ttobey” Tobey is asking for feedback on what emotes players would like to see added to the game.  Head over to the official forums and let him know your ideas.

Pretend I got sitting working…

What 5 emotes would you want to see?

Roleplaying type emotes I mean….

After seeing a few suggestions, he added the following:

i thinking more on the lines of /sit /sleep etc… /read is a good one.

From EverQuest2.com:

The U.S. servers will come down on February 25, 2011, at 7am PDT for a hotfix. The expected downtime is 2 hours. UK worlds will be updated at 5:00 AM London Time on February 25, 2011, with an estimated downtime will be 2 hours. Here are the notes:

GENERAL

• Depth of Field, SSAO and Sunshafts should be working correctly now.
• Fixed a crash bug.

Public Quests provide different kinds of rewards than we’ve seen in the past. Right now there are 2 Public Quests: Storm Gorge which is Southeast of Thurgadin and the Ring War which is Northeast of Thurgadin. There are plans to add several more Public Quests as we heard about in Beta (possibly the Sleeper!).

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From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums:

Hey, folks,

I just wanted to post and let you know that a bunch of accounts (less than 100) got a temporary suspension tonight.

Why?

Because some of them were invited to Beta and then found a way to shortcut the gryphon quest series, which takes a minimum of five days to complete, and were able to do it in minutes. They then told others how to do it and the rest followed along, duplicating the exploit.

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The Tower of Frozen Shadow presents a unique, but familiar approach to dungeon progression. Although the seven (or is it eight?!?) floors of the Tower of Frozen Shadow are split up into 3 group instanced dungeons (Shadowed Corridors, Umbral Halls, and Haunt of Syl’Tor), there are quests that span all three. Completion of those quests is necessary to unlock different floors in the Tower.

UPDATE: Added quotes from Gninja.

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When do the Public Quests (live events that any player, from solo to a full raid of 24, can participate in) run?

From Windslasher:

Storm Gorge runs at even hours — noon, 2, 4, 6 etc. while Ring War starts on odd hours. So one of them starts every hour on the hour.

From covic on  the EQ2 Forums:

Update is that we started them and where trying to figure a way around skinning issues. Well our new graphic programmer says he can give me better skinning code. Right now a vert (point at the edge of polygon) can only have two bone influences, making it really hard for long skirt type cloth. Well Alex (GermInUSA) our graphic programmer says he can get me 4 influences. It’s on his task list for about April. Then we will probably block more time for the creating of kilt art assets.

You will laugh at this, but EQ1 has four influences per vert, why we didnt get that, I am not sure.

Dave

Servers are back up after a 3 hour downtime.

Today’s Update Notes

All US servers are still down 2 1/2 hours into a 1 hour Update.

EQ2 Network Status Page

Yesterday we read in the EQ2 Dev Tracker that several tweaks and fixes as well as additional debug code were being added for Freeport and Everfrost servers to try to get to the bottom of the problems.

UPDATE: The Network Status Page has been updated to indicate this is now a 3 hour downtime. So much for Double Guild XP.

We got some clarification today on those free Character Transfer Tokens…

One day only! Get a free character transfer token from the in-game Marketplace and choose your own server. Up to five moves allowed per account. UPDATE: Transfers are only valid on this day. All moves must be made during this day’s promotion. The item is NO RENT and will disappear after the day’s promotion is over.

So if you played in the Beta, or heard tales, you know that like past betas, the solo overland content was rather… challenging. We’re talking badgers and gnolls that ignore 30-40% of damage done to them, have upwards of 100,000 hp, and put out damage in the thousands. Notorious were the crystal spiders needed for the flying mount quest which, if they successfully poisoned you, were doing upwards of 4,000 damage *per tick* until cured. If you didn’t whip out a potion or use that click-to-cure, you were dead in seconds.

2 weeks before Velious Beta ended, SmokeJumper admitted that it was too difficult and so sweeping changes were made. Players who were originally getting slaughtered in Velious overland zones were then able to with stand 2-3 mobs beating on them with few ill effects. When Beta closed, we had been told that more changes would be made to try to strike a balance.

What we’ve seen so far in Velious is that things were tweaked to still present a challenge, but some of the tougher effects have been dialed down.

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If you’ve been planning the mass extinction of Rays and Bulls in the Hole to grind out those 50 shiny new AAs, some ice water has just been thrown on that idea…

From Waters on the EQ2 Forums:

We’ve been watching where folks are playing and keeping an eye on how experience and alternate advancement gain is going since Velious launched. While we make every effort to balance the game during the beta testing period, we sometimes see new information on live servers, and need to make a change based on that info.

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From Windslasher:

I just got done checking this out and reproduced the bug. It’s not server lag or bad pathing, and doesn’t have anything to do with flying. A small number of spawns that were set up in a certain way have simply stopped working. The worst case of this is the entry room for Obelisk of Ahkzul, but there are other affected creatures as well.

Thanks for reporting this! It will be fixed ASAP.

From covic on the EQ2 Forums:

The classic looking Erudites wear everything a human does from the neck down. They also use the human skeleton so they have all animations of human character. The problem comes with the head. Since their code looks for human outfits they try to put on human helmets which their head would shoot out the top. We made some specific head pieces for them to be used as NPCs.

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If there is any doubt that EQ2 devs are working as hard as they can to resolve the persistent Receiving Zone Info issues affecting Freeport and (to some extent) other servers, know that Zoltaroth and Rothgar put in 16 hours on Tuesday, and I know that Zoltaroth worked again until midnight this morning. Sleep is overrated!

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It seems every year, thousands of bug reports are submitted to the EQ2 team during Beta. And it seems every year, a few highly visible bugs/exploits make it through. Last year, it was large encounters in The Hole that would respawn if all but one mob were killed. In The Shadow Odyssey beta it was widely reported that most of the dungeons could be completed when mentored down and greyed out.

So this year, so far we know of two:

Lord Doljonijiarnimorinar (Lord Bob) could be exploited to provide loot over and over. Lord Bob was fixed in today’s hotfix.

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The EQ2 Update Notes for February 24, 2011 include a variety of fixes and tweaks, and a couple of nerfs. Check them out after the jump…

UPDATE: These are actually the Update Notes for February 24th.

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From EverQuest2.com:

February 22: Othmir Day
Everyone who logs in on Launch Day, February 22nd, will receive an Othmir illusion potion. (Even those who aren’t playing in Velious!) The potion has 50 charges, and is available one per character. Just be sure to log in each of your characters during the day to claim a potion, if you want the illusion for more than one character.

This event will run at least until 10am pst (1pm cst, 18:00 gmt). According to some posts by SmokeJumper, this may be extended especially on Everfrost and Freeport which weren’t up until late last night. Remember, to claim this item, go to the Marketplace and select Expansion, then Nipik’s Gift.

February 23: Guild Double XP Day
Build up your guild and your guild spirit with Double Guild XP, today only!

Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but this seems an odd day to do Guild Double XP. It will likely give something to do for people who didn’t buy Velious or don’t have a level 86+.

February 24: Free Transfer Day
One day only! Get a free character transfer token from the in-game Marketplace and choose your own server. Up to five moves allowed per account.

NOTE: This is transfers WITHIN an account, but not BETWEEN accounts, as this still requires the involvement of Customer Service.

February 25: Snow Days Discounts
Every day’s a snow day in Velious, but today you’ll find lots of cool prices on frosty-themed items in the Marketplace.

After reading the Upcoming Housing Improvements! thread on the EQ2 Forums, and then hearing more about these changes in the Velious Webcasts, one might have logically concluded that these changes would be IN Velious.

You’ll recall that SmokeJumper referred to the Freeblood Estate, as well as Miragul’s Summer Home (part of the Velious Digital Collector’s Edition) as being smaller prestige homes that would connect to your main house once these changes went into effect.

After the jump, we get an estimate about when we might see Multiple Housing Ownership…

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In a thread pondering when we might see the rest of Velious, SmokeJumper hinted much:

We didn’t do the Wakening Lands. We just have that one small tribute area to it. Think of it as a doorway to a potential future area.

and:

We intend to grow a lot of the Velious stuff you’re missing. I have to stay mum for a bit until I get approval on *how* we want to roll it out to you, so I can’t say much else at the moment. Sorry.

If you have been abusing milking enjoying the Refer-a-Friend 300% XP bonus for its high speed leveling (and thus AA earning) goodness, especially by parking a level 1 trial account character at the zone-in, well, I’m afraid that has finally come to an end.

From Rich Waters 0n the EQ2 forums:

The Recruit-a-friend program is a great way for you to bring your friends into EverQuest II and help them level up a bit faster by playing together. When you group with a character you’ve recruited, you both gain a hefty 200% experience bonus. Unfortunately, many people were recruiting themselves and using it as a way to power-level their main character, rather than actually playing with a friend.

We’ve added a couple of limitations to the recruit-a-friend bonus to prevent it from being a solo leveling tool. In order to get the recruit-a-friend experience bonus:

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