Coinciding with today’s launch of Game Update 103, Kyle “Kander” Vallee, Tony “RadarX” Jones, and Chris “Chrol” Garlick held a livestream on Facebook to walk through some of what players can experience in the update going live today. This is not an exact transcription of the livestream but a rough outline. The Livestream, which requires a Facebook account, can be viewed here.

Proving Grounds

We’re now seeing a demo of the new Proving Grounds which takes place in an instance of New Tunaria. As with the Battlegrounds server, characters are copied to the Proving Grounds server and participate in a group event which takes about 30 minutes depending on players’ knowledge of the boss strategy. You and the opposing group do not directly interact, but you can do things that affect the other group.

• 1 zone to start, Battle of Felwithe
• 1 zone to be added later (Pirate ship themed)
• Gear is equalized, should be able to “Jump in and play” as a level 100. Skill-based.
• Cross-server. Group up and compete across server! Editor’s Note: Proving Grounds works like Battlegrounds — characters are copied there and must wait for events to start to participate.
• Will take around 30m-1hr to complete
• Timed group challenge, you compete against another group. You can see the other group’s progress but you can’t interact.
• Earn token currency, receive double if you’re a member.
• Each boss kill earns a token, last boss is 2 tokens, 3 tokens for winning (double for members)
• Proving ground lobby is old Battleground lobby. Merchants available for gear purchases with earned tokens.
• Upgraded white (wantia) adorns will be available.
• New orange slotted gear (ring, pants, and more)
• Proving Ground teleporters are in your home city.
• Missions are available, including a weekly mission for familiar crates.

From the EQ2 Forums:

The GU 103: The Menagerie stream will start on Tuesday, May 9th, 2017 at 10AM PDT (17:00 UTC)and we would like to invite YOU to join us!

We’ll be doing this stream from Facebook Live, and you can tune in here:www.facebook.com/EverQuest2

Join members of the team as they explore this new content and talk more about Proving Grounds and Familiars!

What’s in this update you ask? Check out Kander’s Candor to see what’s coming up for EverQuest II.

We look forward to hanging out with you next week!

Hail Norrathians,

We’re grateful for your patience as we worked through some technical issues with our servers. While our fixes seem stable so far, we want to take more time to test and verify our changes before launching GU103: The Menagerie. Since we want to ensure that the launch of our next game update is as smooth and stable as possible, we’ve decided to move the launch of GU103: The Menagerie to Tuesday, May 9, 2017.

To thank you for your patience and support, we’ll be activating Triple XP (AA, Adventure, Tradeskill) for ALL players and ALL servers starting now. This will run until Sunday, April 30, 2017 at 11:59PM PDT (07:00 UTC).

In addition, we’ll be activating Double Ascension Scrolls starting on Monday, May 1, 2017 at 12:01AM PDT (7:00 UTC). This will run through Sunday, May 7, 2017 at 11:59PM PDT (07:00 UTC).

—

We’ve updated the dates of GU103: The Menagerie, our next stream, our AMAs, and the level 100 character boost promotion.

• Our next stream will be the morning GU103 launches, Tuesday, May 9 @ 10AM PDT (17:00 UTC). We’re streaming on www.facebook.com/EverQuest2
• For an updated list of AMA dates/times, see the post here.
• The Level 100 Boost Bauble offer will begin on Tuesday, May 9 around noon PDT (19:00 UTC) and end on Monday, May 22, 2017 at 11:59PM PDT (07:00 UTC).

 

We’ve also updated dates in these posts. If you haven’t seen these posts about what we have coming up for EverQuest II, check them out here:

• Producers’ Letter – April 2017
• Kander’s Candor – What’s Coming Up in 2017

 

In the meanwhile, while we continue to monitor the performance of our servers, if you have any issues with servers please report them in the thread here.

US Servers: 7~10:00am PDT | 10:00am~1:00pm EDT | 15:00~18:00 BST | 16:00~19:00 CET 

From the EQ2 Forums:

GENERAL

• Updated underlying structure for handling Daily Objectives and Loyalty Tokens. There shouldn’t be any noticeable difference in functionality.

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Expert Raids

• Resolve values for expert raid zones have been reduced. Current combat mitigations remain unchanged.

Vaedenmoor: Heart of Nightmares [Raid]

• Added messaging to the Harrowing Hobgoblin Exploders if they attempt to drop their explosives

The backbone of any MMO is defined by character progression. That character is you, and that character reflects your hard work. Like any MMO that has been around as long as EQ2 has, you need to be creative, and come up with more ways to improve and increase potential with your character. Whether that means all or some of: new gear, new levels, alternative “systems” to increase power (AA’s), abilities, and then of course new areas to explore and quests to complete.  These things keep people engaged, something to work on with their character, and most importantly, playing the game.

EQ2’s latest expansion Kunark Ascending is no different.  Developer’s took a very creative and unique approach in the latest expansion instead of simply increasing the [Adventure] level cap (which was the de-facto standard set from EQ1 as well as previous EQ2 expansions); they introduced a “secondary” class, Ascension classes. These classes can be trained and used by any existing EQ2 class, and the ability to switch between all 4 if you’d like. These classes work and are synergistic with each other, as well as your existing class (such as a Bard & Geomancer).