Windslasher, who headed up the Rebuilding the Spires event has shared their insight into why we did not see a “Grand Finale” to the Spires Event:

Congratulations on finishing the spire!

While it would have given me great pleasure to have an epic-x4 dragon with 20 million hitpoints spawn and attack you, that simply would not have fit the theme or lore of this event. The idea here was to let everyone on the server contribute in a 100% cooperative effort that permanently affects the game world. So the bosses that attack the spires during construction have a lore reason to exist, and were intended to be beatable by a small pick-up raid. The real reward for completing one of these spires is the permanent teleportation portal that opens up in the middle platform. It’s a reward for the entire server, that anyone can use.

Now, I absolutely love competitive raid gameplay, but I couldn’t justify setting up this event as a race to spawn the boss mob for server-unique rewards and eternal bragging rights. It just would not have made sense in this case.  I certainly want to make events like that in the future, but this one isn’t a copy of the old Kingdom of Sky prelude.

and in another thread:

I remember the Kingdom of Sky prelude event, and the intent behind this event was much different from the previous one. While there are some contested epic spawns, they don’t give rewards that are unavailable to other participants. Everything you can take away from this event is purchased from the Quellithulian merchant.

I personally feel that enough precautions were taken, that a contested mob at the end would not have left hurt feelings like the Kingdom of Sky event did. Otherwise there is no question a ton of work went into making this event work.

It’s too bad EQ2 developers don’t really talk to the players about Live Events and instead make assumptions.

Over 2 years ago, the first Spires were being rebuilt. Tradeskillers did all the work, and then when the spire reached 100% completion, an Epic x4 dragon appeared, killing them all. Raid guilds swooped in and battled it out for the contested win. Some even swarmed the various zones by logging in dozens of alt characters to intentionally lag out other players to prevent them from successfully taking down the mob. In the end, the raid guilds got Titles and all the credit, and the tradeskillers, the ones who had done the work of building the Spires, got nothing but a bitter taste in their mouths.

This time around, I do believe the event developer wanted to make sure there was not a repeat of these hard feelings. Certainly, there were many precautions taken. First, participation in the Spire Rebuilding came in the form of solo quests, small group quests, harvesting, and tradeskilling. Second, there are a huge variety of awards available on the merchant, more than have ever been offered for a live event. Third, the quests varied depending on whether you were rebuilding a spire or attuning a spire.

With all of these precautions, I thought for certain that we could now safely and fairly have this Grand Finale when each spire neared completion. What with the event now encompassing 9 spires instead of 3, I thought more guilds would have a chance to participate in the event. And every player who had the smallest part to play in the event still got something.

I’ve taken a small part in these events myself. Not only the repeatable quests, but  when the spire in Zek reached 30%, a cry of frustration rang out from other players who gave up and moved on to other spires. Four of us grouped up and defeated the 84^^^, allowing the Zek Spire Rebuild to continue. So I had been looking forward to dealing with the forthcoming x2 mob, and eventually (presumably) a x4 raid mob.

.
So I was disappointed to read this account from Hellswrath of the Alliance Guilds of Blackburrow and how their completion of the Everfrost Spire turned out:

First, I would like to say a big congratulations to everyone in the Blackburrow Guild Alliance for their hard work over two days in first building the Everfrost spire to 100%, and then starting all over and aligning it to 100% too!  An awesome job and a lot of hard work for two days straight!  Also, thank you to everyone else who helped on the spire, even for a little while!

Next, I’ll give a quick breakdown of the spire event to all those who are wondering what goodies these spires hold for those willing to put in the effort to complete them!

As most know, the spires in Zek, Everfrost, Lavastorm, and Loping Plains need to be built while the ones in CL, ANT, EL, Feerrott, Nek, and TS are already built and need to be aligned.

While being built, the spire in EF spawned a lvl 84 ^^^ heroic mob at 30%.  The mob killed all npcs and most low level alts doing the spire quests until he was taken down.  The reward for killing the spawned heroic was a small chest that gave 20 spire tokens to each group member.

The spire progressed as normal until it hit 90%, when it spawned a x2 epic.  It was a mob that looked very similar to the heroic, and gave 50 spire tokens to each raid member for killing him.

At 100%…….the spire reset back to 0%.  lol, yes, after all that work we needed to start all over again.  So we picked up again the next day and ground it out again.  While we expected another spawned mob or two, nothing happened by 70%, so we figured the next one would be a logical progression to an epic x4.  By the time we approached 100%, we had a full raid of people who had all been spending time building this spire.  The lowest contributor was a couple hours, the highest was somewhere well over 20 active hours.

It was the way it should be, with most of the people who had spent all their time to build the spire being the ones to get the epic pull and the credit.  Even the people from other guilds who came to look at getting in on the kill were gracious about being politely turned away.

We hit 100%, the spire completed, and . . . . . nothing happened.

Not a thing.  We stood around looking for a mob, checked track, checked the quest npcs and the spire itself to see if we were missing something.

Nope.  There was simply no point to completing this live event.  I must say that a full raid of great people (and many who were cheering on from the sidelines who had helped as well) went away feeling dispirited about the complete lack of reward for all this work.

That being said, thanks again to all those from Alpha Legion that entertained this crazy notion and stayed with us for a ridiculous amount of time to finish this event!  And a huge thanks to everyone who joined us from Casual Alliance, Wayward Waifs, Vainglory, Solace, and everyone else in the Blackburrow Alliance (and outside, too) who took their time to come hang out and grind out this spire to completion!  Awesome job!

I believe if, during Testing, or even the planning of the event, a dialogue had been opened with players asking what they felt was Good or Bad about the past Spires event and how these concerns could have been mitigated, watering this event down would not have been necessary.

It seems there is a dichotomy within the EQ2 team of what is easy, what is just plain tedious, and what is difficult, and decision after decision proves that these definitions are unclear. There is only one reliable way they’re going to find out how players feel about difficulty and fairness– ask the players. Yet this tool is ignored far too often.

So far, today my coverage of Game Update 53 has been entirely positive. I think Game Update 53 is actually an excellent update, with the live quest, HEIRLOOM LORE-EQUIP flag, etc. However in the long term, I think all the great things about this update may be overshadowed by some colossal mistakes.

The bland Racial Trait revamp which I’ve already talked about. And an issue that a lot of people don’t take seriously, but I think needs to be discussed — the Avatar Loot Nerf. So far, I have refrained from covering these changes, hoping that cooler (and wiser) heads would prevail. However it seems that didn’t happen, so now I have to write this article…

Game Update 53 implements a massive reduction in the desirability and effectiveness to a large percentage of gear that drops from the Avatars of Norrath. The overwhelming majority of these items are now less effective than items that drop in instance raid zones and in some cases single group zones. In short, there was absolutely no point in anyone killing any of these mobs for the last 9 months.

Contested vs. Instanced

When EverQuest II came out, almost all of the content was contested. In dungeons, in outdoor zones, almost every enemy was free-roaming, able to be killed by anyone. As a result, players would camp these mobs, and contact each other when one appeared so they could quickly group up and kill it before anyone else could take it. It was contested content. However there has been a gradual shift to instanced zones in the last 4 years and this trend is no more obvious than with The Shadow Odyssey which contained not a single new contested zone or encounter.

Every time I zone into Deep Forge, or Ward of Elements, or Palace of the Ancient One, I am guaranteed the opportunity to kill every single named. I know they will be up, and I won’t have to compete with any other players to get to them. I can visit Ward of Elements twice a week and kill 7 named each time. The only competition here is against the Random Number Generator % chance that the item I want will drop.

The Shadow Odyssey started out with 3 instance raid zones. Certain mobs have certain patterns they drop. If you kill these mobs, you are guaranteed to get certain patterns to T4 armor set pieces.

What is an Avatar?

An Avatar is a Planar Manifestation. It is a Norrath-bound representation of a deity or God. And furthermore, Avatars are the only substantial Contested content left in EQ2 right now.

Three avatars spawn every 3~5 days. Every 3~5 days, if your guild has enough members logged in and with the right gear, and if you are quick enough, you can try to kill these 3 avatars. Avatars typically have 15 million hitpoints and you must kill them in 7 minutes or they put a debuff on your entire raid called Battle Weary which makes it almost impossible to kill them. This is not to mention the competition from other guilds, and the inevitable zone lag caused by ~50 spectators watching your guild try to defeat an avatar.

A few of the Avatars are slightly easier to kill than the hardest mobs in the hardest instance raid zones in the game, however they are not Contested. I think this point gets lost in the shuffle in many discussions.

On some servers, 1 guild has these Avatars on lockdown. On other servers, there is competition between 2 or 3 guilds to kill them. There are entire guilds that had their entire membership pay $20 to move their characters over to another server just to have a shot at killing avatars. In other words, they are contested. Each avatar that is killed drops 2 items from one of three shared loot tables (good, neutral, and evil) and a master spell. (details from Lithin.com)

The Problem

The big problem is, Contested Avatar gear was designed around crunch time in the development of The Shadow Odyssey. Some of it had effects on it which were not fully understood until after the expansion was released. Simultaneously, the Tier 4 armor, which is the set piece armor obtained by completing Instance Raid zones, is very powerful, to the point where there are concerns that this armor will be effective even when the Sentinel’s Fate expansion increases the level cap to 90 next February.

So there was discussion by the EQ2 Developers as early as February that some of this Avatar Gear would be nerfed. When the changes appeared on test, which rendered most of the items useless in comparison with Instance gear, there was unanimous negative reaction. The changes were shelved. For the next 6 months, players went about their business, playing the game as it was apparently designed — with contested mobs dropping the most powerful items in the game.

Players invested thousands of man-hours into playing the game as it has been presented since the Echoes of Faydwer expansion, namely that Avatars drop the best items in the game, and if you want this gear, you will need to invest the time and effort to get it.

Then in August, the changes appeared again on the Test server, with even more dramatic changes than the ones mentioned in February. For the next month, a 75 page thread developed trying to get some answers from the developers as to why such drastic changes were necessary. It was subsequently closed and a new thread created asking if we would be getting any developer explanation for these heavy-handed changes. That thread was also closed.

I have never been prouder of the EQ2 community for the detailed analysis of each item, screen shots, comparisons between Avatar Gear and other in-game items which are similar or better, in-game statistics, etc. they did in these two threads. Most importantly were many impassioned pleas from the players of these guilds that tackle these encounters week-after-week that they would no longer have any desire or need to participate in this content once the changes went live.

I was very frustrated to see these threads closed, and the result of that was I think some undeserved attacks have been made towards Kiara, who I think has done an excellent job turning the EQ2 forums from the Gestapo, uncomfortable place they were 2 years go, into the receptive place they are now that accepts feedback, even if it’s a viewpoint the devs might not like.

The blame for this Avatar Loot situation does not fall on Kiara’s shoulders. It belongs on the shoulders of the developers who let this go for so long.

On September 23rd, we saw the launch of the Shards of Destiny (Game Update 53). With few exceptions, every Avatar Gear item in the game has been reduced in effectiveness (nerfed) exactly how they appeared on Test in mid-August. Customer Feedback was completely ignored, and the suggestion that these changes wait until the expansion received no attention.

Regardless of whether some of these items may have been slightly overpowered, the point now is that I have never seen the players of EQ2 do such a good job explaining in intricate detail, with examples, screen shots, comparisons, Excel spreadsheets, ACT reports, exactly why the changes were flawed, and how they would break the game.

Why You Should Care

So far, all of the Raid content that has been added to EQ2 in Kunark and The Shadow Odyssey has gone live broken, with substantial bugs that make it impossible to kill mobs. Avatar-killing Guilds have been instrumental in providing detailed bug reports to get this content fixed.

I predict that a lot of raid content will be going live in the next expansion with a serious lack of testing and bugs as a result. I am really not looking forward to seeing some of the most experienced players, who have given me a lot of advice about how to be a better player, outright quit the game.

People try to classify members of raid guilds as players with “no life” who get woken up at 3am to kill these mobs. It is a fact that raid guilds successfully take down avatars without waking up at odd hours or playing “24/7”. Some do so playing as little as 20 hours a week.

Quotes

There is so much worth reading in the Avatar Nerf #1 and Avatar Nerf #2 threads, but I wanted to include some of it here without making this post too long. Yes, there is a lot of whining and nonsense in those threads, but there are also very detailed, constructive arguments.

I think you already have your feedback. Within hours you have seen that this massive nerf to an entire playstyle is completely unacceptable to most.

This goes beyond what is actually being done to avatar gear right now. This is showing a sense of disdain towards the high end content and the players that give the most back to the game in terms of feedback about mechanics and encounters. To me it shows that not only is a contested playstyle being destroyed right now, but that soe has no intention of having a contested level of loot/play/gear in the next expansion. Progression is a very important thing. Making encounters more difficult to progress through, and also having those encounters drop loot that also progresses.

This nerf will do massive damage to raiding guilds on every server, and will take away one of the aspirations of every raider. ~~ Korrupt @ Najena ~~

Many of the changes to avatar loot appears to be done arbitrarily without consideration for how the end result compares to existing items.

Further, some items that were -already- worse than instanced items have received additional nerfs. Since items that were regarded as ‘trash’ already were reduced, this does tend to reinforce the idea that these changes were largely arbitrary and done without a great deal of thought. Examples include the Pantaloons of the Visionary, which were already an inferior choice to set pants for people trying to get their set bonuses and use their free slot for something better. Other examples include the avatar belts, which were already inferior to mobs from instanced zones – which no one complained about. ~~ Chath of Bloodthorn on Antonia Bayle ~~

The problem is with the DESIGNERS not with the MECHANICS.  The designers continue to make items that are irreplaceable. They continue to make items that everyone knows are too good, and they continue to show they have no idea how their game actually works.

Take the base damage and the Bloodthirsty Choker for example.  They didn’t even realize why it was so good.  They had no idea that base damage affected poisons and procs.  They even went so far as to start adding base damage to LEGENDARY gear.

After two expansions of everyone wearing the choker and numerous posts about it, what do they do?  They add MORE base damage items to the game.  Even though Fyreflyte says himself “previously the highest you could hope to attain is 10% ~ 15%”.  He acts like the items made themselves.  HE MADE THEM.  The TEAM made them.

Stuff like this isn’t the player’s fault.  Its the team’s fault.  Continual design ignorance and a lack of the future of the game results in the mechanics changing every expansion and months of player’s time wasted. ~~ Gage ~~

Conclusions

EQ2 needs to be itemized from the top down. Really, if you look at it, almost all of the gear in The Shadow Odyssey is overpowered. Even the Tier 1 and Tier 2 armor. Even some of the quest gear. Going forward, if gear issues are identified early on, they need to be applied early in the expansion. Waiting until September is just really bad form. And needlessly reducing the effectiveness of gear to below the effectiveness of other items in the game, especially ones that drop in Heroic dungeons, is just plain wrong.

There is no doubt that due to the choice to apply these changes now, rather than February as they were strongly advised to do, will result in many people quitting the game, perhaps indefinitely. If SoE is serious about EQ2 having Contested content in the future, they need to understand the time investment that is made to playtest and participate in this content. There are only so many times players will come back from this kind of sea change.

Leaving the Game

Normally, when someone posts on the EQ2 forums or EQ2Flames that they intend to quit the game, they are met with ridicule, disbelief, and disingenuous requests “can I have your stuff?” However, you will find none of that here.

If you are considering leaving EQ2, please post a comment with your character name(s), guild, and server, and I will post them here.

Dracos Argent – Butcherblock
Grump, Emericant, Karmalina, Kindalar, Lucii, Merovius, Leisure

Validus – Splitpaw
Lithin, Cexi, Lineshta

Some very good news for Nagafen players who have been experiencing significant performance issues with the server for several months now. However this news is bittersweet for Venekor players who have been anticipating this server merge for several months now. Brenlo has posted this news on the EQ2 Forums:

I know many of you are looking forward to the upcoming server merge.  Sadly, you will have to wait just a bit longer.  We are postponing the merge until October 20th.  So an additional month.  As many of you know, Nagafen has had continued issues with the Database and while those have subsided some in recent days, we are not satisfied with the performance levels.  We feel that moving more players onto the server in its current state would exacerbate the existing issues.

So we are going to take that month to upgrade the backend DB hardware and software on Nagafen.  When we are done it will have the best array in the stack, significantly better as a matter of fact.  We hope that this news softens the blow of having to wait a bit longer.  During the month we will have a couple of extra downtimes as we migrate, first the hardware, and then the software.  As we have dates for you, we will have Kiara post them.

Again I apologize for making you wait.

Alan “Brenlo” Crosby
Senior Producer – EQII –

This is not a decision that was taken lightly. Nagafen will be the first EQ2 server that is upgraded in hardware and software to 64-bit and the additional database memory that allows. This should substantially help with zone lag. Rothgar has shed some light in the same thread:

Just an FYI, we’ve been evaluating the DB upgrade for almost a year.  This is not something to take lightly.  We’ve had the new database version running in our QA environment for quite awhile.  Deciding to push this new version to a live server in under one month’s time has risks of its own, but we feel this choice is by far better than going forward with the merge on existing hardware and risking performance problems that make the game unplayable.

This is not only a move to new hardware and a new database version, but also a move from 32bit to 64bit.  This will allow us to allocate a significantly larger amount of memory towards the database cache which translates to much better performance for you.

We know you want the merge to happen asap and postponing it was not something we did lightly.  We looked at every other option for insuring a smooth transition and felt that the other options could pose bigger issues.  It’s difficult to gauge what impact the merge will have on the database hardware but we know that Nagafen is already under a bit of strain.

When the merge is behind us and we’ve had a chance to see the new DB hardware in action, we’ll make a plan for migrating the rest of the servers.

Note that Game Update 53 (Shards of Destiny) which has some very nice tweaks and upgrades or PvP gameplay is still on schedule for the end of the month, regardless of server upgrades/merges. Kiara posted this on the same thread:

Shards of Destiny is a separate thing and won’t be affected by the postponement of the merge. We feel that the hardware upgrade is important… so you guys can actually PLAY when we get you merged…

I can certainly understand the frustration here from Venekor players who are on a server with a dwindling population, and perhaps something can be worked out to make this a little less painful. But the result should be a rock solid server that can handle any traffic that players want to throw at it.

UPDATE: We have migrated to https://eq2wire.com/

Please update your links to this site.

It’s time for a server defrag. From the announcement at the EQ2 Forums:

There will be maintenance on the Session databases across all games on Wednesday September 9, 2009.  It will begin at 12AM PDT and is estimated to last until 12PM PDT.  All game worlds will be unavailable for the estimated 12 hour maintenance, as well as the Station Store and all commerce avenues.  This may affect the performance of the forums and any or all accounts’ abilities to log in.

We apologize for the inconvenience and will update the information as we are able.

The Community team will provide updates via twitter for anyone who follows us:
Grimwell | Naylie | Kiara | Virrago | Zatozia | Soffrina | Momochii | Ashlanne | Gnobrin | Amnerys | Raijinn | MinervaSOE

You can also follow game twitters for updates:
Free Realms | EverQuest | EverQuest II | EQOA | VanguardSOH | Planetside | PoxNora

We apologize again for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

I have to admit, I have not dedicated as much thought to the races I play in EQ2 as perhaps others have. My Ranger was human because that was my first character and I guess I didn’t want anything too fantastic (in hindsight, I’d go for the wood elf). My Guardian was born around the introduction of Kunark, so is naturally a Sarnak. And lately I’ve been having a lot of fun developing my Ratonga Dirge.

While I’ve never chosen a race because of the benefits, I have really enjoyed the unique (but not overpowered) traits of the Sarnak (fire breathing AoE), and extra de-taunt on the Ratonga (Pitiful Plea). They’re not over-the-top or game-breaking, but they add some color, some flair, to the races which I have integrated into my gameplay.

So I am growing dismayed to see that the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater with the forthcoming Racial Traits revisions currently on Test. A few races have been overpowered (Dark Elf) for quite some time now. There has never been an argument there. However, rather than some subtle changes that would smooth out any truly overpowered abilities, and adding in a few more colorful, interesting traits to each race, the Racial Traits we seem to be looking forward to in Game Update 53 are just bland and unimaginative.

Some of these changes are just downright nonsensical. Trolls now seem to be classed as Priests. Ratongas will only ever succeed as Scouts.  Scout-specific abilities like Disarm Trap, Tracking, and Safe Fall have been given out willy-nilly to all kinds of races.

You know, I think some of us were excited to see Frizznik coming back to the EQ2 team after a 2+ year hiatus, but it seems his first project has already been so completely derailed by Aeralik, why bother? I hate to say it, but this whole thing just seems cut-and-paste and unencumbered by the thought process.

It is possible to add something interesting, something unique, without making it overpowered. It’s not easy, but that is the job of an MMO designer. Let’s try it again guys.

---

There are a lot of ideas being thrown around for how to fix Racial Traits for Gu53. Unfortunately the “details” at that beginning of that thread, and then endlessly copied and pasted throughout the thread are incorrect. (Please see my Racial Traits guide).

I would like to see the unique traits of most of the races come back, but receive adjustments if necessary:

Ratonga:

• Pitiful Plea – deagro
• Poisonous Bite – poison DoT

Human:

• Bayle’s Strike – extra melee attack

Sarnak:

• Fire Breath – AoE

Wood Elf:

• Faydark’s Champion – +2% Range Crit, +5 Ranged,+2% Heal Crit, +5 Ministration

I would also like to see some shuffling around of the “Packages” as they are being called to offer more variety and less pigeonholing of certain races into Priest, Scout, Mage, especially when those changes are the opposite of how the races are currently aligned. It should not be necessary for folks to have to buy a Racial Change just to stay as effective at their class as they are now.

Some breaking news for you!

As we’ve reported, in Game Update 53, almost all LEGENDARY and FABLED instance dungeon/raid loot except patterns will be picking up the new  LORE-EQUIP flag which, along with the HEIRLOOM and ATTUNEABLE flags will allow instance Fabled and Legendary loot items to be looted and transferred to alt characters on the same account. timetravelling clarifies:

-We do not currently have plans to change the looting options (by adding an Alt Need option between Need and Greed). However, it is something to monitor and we’ll keep an eye on it.

-This change is intended to grab nearly all instance, overland, and contested loots. But not items you can only ever get once such as epics, quest rewards, armor gained from patterns, LoN rewards, Station Cash items, etc.

We would greatly appreciate any feedback y’all have of items that may have been missed or flagged and shouldn’t have been! If you hadn’t noticed, EQ2 has, um, kind of a lot of items and we’d like to be as thorough as possible! =)

I know I’m very excited about this, as are many others. It will streamline what is currently a very tedious logout/login/zone out/zone in/loot process we curerntly do to give loot to alts. However there have been two limitations worth discussing:

Many folks have more than one account. Whether this is husband-and-wife paired accounts, dual- or multi-boxing, or simply because 7 or 12 character slots is just not enough, this is something that has grown increasingly popular. However there is currently no means to transfer any items between accounts. Folks with shared accounts wouldn’t benefit from this new LORE-EQUIP flag.

Second, there is a small and growing market for StationCash and Legends of Norrath items. However these items have always been flagged NO TRADE. In the past, requests to make these items tradeable have not gotten an affirmative from the team.

timetravelling has posted some great news on the EQ2 Forums. Keep in mind that this is future planning and we should not expect any of this in Game Update 53:

Y’all have given some great feedback, and brought up two of the main issues internally and wanted to give you updates:

Linking accounts:  I spoke with several of our coders and while there are limitations that prevent us from implementing it immediately, they thought it sounded feasible. We will keep it in mind and hopefully add it at some point in the future. No timetable promises, but hopefully we’ll be able to get the feature in for those of you with multiple accounts. It may even open up the possibility of some other features as a cool side effect!

LoN and SC items: Ye hast swayed us! Or…in less broken english, I am going to be going through our LoN and StationCash items and–where appropriate–adding the Heirloom flag.

A couple of examples of “where appropriate”:

• Items that have charges–such as the potions
• Items that must be equipped–such as appearance armor
• NOT items that can be used from your inventory–such as mounts

As always, stay tuned for more information about these late-breaking developments. 🙂

Kudos to Xalmat who worked overtime the moment Gu53 hit the Test Servers to create an Comprehensive Guide for the new Achievements system that EQ2 will be receiving.

As mentioned, this will be a way to track all kinds of in-game tasks such as killing 10,000 undead, completing 20 Heritage Quests, clearing Veeshan’s Peak, crafting 1,000 combines, Discovering all the locations in Lesser Faydark, etc. For some of them, the journey is the reward, for others there are more concrete rewards like Titles, Clothing, House Items, etc. This is also a replacement for the Slayer Title system.

P.S. This is the new Achievements system as part of Game Update 53 which will go live in late September. Not to be confused with the Alternate Achievements (AA) system which has a current limit of 200 points of character advancement points.

At the first of every month, the EQ2 forums accumulate questions for developers. Answers to the questions posted around the first of July have now been posted. There’s nothing earth-shattering this month, despite the large number of questions answered. You can read it yourself here:

Dev Q&A 2009.07.01 Answers @ EQ2 Forums

Even though we do not have a specific release date for Gu53 (Shards of Destiny), “late September” has been posited as a timeframe we should be watching for. As we approach the duly appointed time, more information is coming out about what we can expect in this update.

Unless you follow the EQ2 Dev Tracker, you’ve probably missed some salient details.

Skill Up Catch Up

Not every EQ2 player has access to a Guild Hall, specifically the Training Dummy amenity. This is relevant because at the great speed most folks now level up into their 50’s or 60’s, many players find themselves deficient in certain skills such as priest skills (Ordination), mage skills (Subjugation), scout/fighter skills (Piercing, Slashing) and want to “catch up”. So far, the only easy means to do this was to grind kill mobs or fight a training dummy.

You get better at Ranged (126/400).

According to Aeralik, this issue has been identified and in Gu53, if there is a large gulf between your skill level and the maximum, you will skill up faster. From this Dev Tracker post:

If you are really low in skill it will be much easier to level it up and the skill gains will come along much faster.  Then once you get closer in skill to your level you will then slow down to a more gradual level.

AA XP Slider

One of the features I am the most excited about in Gu53 will be the AA XP Slider. On PvE (regular) servers, we will be able to channel up to 100% of our combat XP into AA XP.  PvP servers will allow up to 50% of combat XP to be converted into AA XP (until the AA cap is reached). I intend to roll an alt and see how feasible it is to level from 20-80 entirely by grouping all while earning sufficient AA points.

I am very hopeful that this AA XP slider will encourage folks to group in the level 20-60 range again. Flying through Stormhold, Nek Castle, Runnyeye, Deathfyst Citadel, and getting a solid amount of both Alternative Achievement (AA) and levels will be a great thing. A lot of folks out there are soloing to 80 and have no clue what their character brings to a group/raid.

Once again Aeralik chimes in on the EQ2 Forums with the facts:

The aa slider enables at level 10.  Pve players can put all adv xp into aa if they want but pvp players will be limited to 50% while below the current maximum level.

The AA cap only applies on pvp servers and works to keep players relatively close in strength.  We don’t have any plans to adjust this cap because its just a spending cap and you can still earn additional AA levels while capped.

Racial Traits

When racial traits were added after the launch of EQ2, players were surprised at just how good some of the effects were. Specifically, erudites are clearly superior spellcasters, while ogres are the obvious choice for tanks due to their health buffs.

With the upcoming Racial Respec tokens we will be able to purchase with StationCash,  and with certain racial traits being such obviously good choices, there is a concern that all wizards will change to Erudite, all predators to Dark Elves, all tanks to Ogre, etc. As a result, we can expect racial traits to be rebalanced and reshuffled in Game Update #53.

Here are Aeralik‘s comments on the EQ2 Forums:

The racial trait changes are staying largely in line with how they have always really been oriented.  Fighter races get some nice fighter bonuses,, caster races get caster bonuses, etc.  This really goes back to the base race design.  The original stats favored certain archetypes for play and usually their racial packages complemented these using effects of the time.  The previous racial update made things a bit more specific with current effect packages but we tried to make each race a bit more unique.

This next race update tries to mix them together so you have a wider variety of choices but the race’s abilities come from common pools.  So if you picked a mage oriented race and play a mage you get some nice choices but nothing really amazing.  If you went off the normal path and chose something like an ogre mage you still get a lot of benefits to yourself but overall dps differences from a mage race will be minimal at best and easily overcome.  In fact the ogre mage is probably a really good choice for a number of playstyles because the fighter package is really nice in some aspects and the priest package shares a lot with the mage one.

Leather & Lace

And I leave you with some leather screenshots to tide you over until the next posting. Toodles!

Tier’Dal Executioner Leather Assassin appearance gear

-available today on StationCash-

Ratwarlock has chimed in with an article covering the appeal and drawbacks of both Instance and Contested Dungeons. It’s worth a read over at his site RatWarlock.Wordpress.com.

Sentinel’s Fate (The 6th EQ2 Expansion expected in February 2010) will ship with one large progressive contested dungeon (reportedly twice the size of Sanctum of Scaleborn, with a progression of shareable quests available as you traverse the depths).

Our Stand

EQ2Wire believes that both types of dungeon have their place. Folks have gotten a bit burned out on having to “stick to the script” each time they group up in the ~20 TSO instance dungeons and repetition over the life of the expansion can be an issue. While the guarantee of named mobs being up every time you run through the zones is a draw, variety is, as they say, the spice of life. Sometimes folks want to experience something unique each time they run a dungeon. That is where contested dungeons come in.

However, some contested dungeons are so target-rich (lots of mobs!) with such a short respawn (as little as 4 minutes) that they are rarely visited at the appropriate adventure level or only for quest updates essential to Epic Weapon and other questlines. The examples that come to mind are Kaladim and Mistmoore Castle.

These zones were designed as “end game” content, expecting multiple well-geared groups to be constantly clearing trash mobs. Now that these zones are not “current tier” content, groups often find themselves without other groups “clearing the way”. Average groups with average gear don’t have a chance at the appropriate level.

Perhaps we might see going forward smart contested dungeons that detect the presence of other groups and scale the zone up and down automatically by spawning additional mobs based on the number of players in a specific area.

Shard of Love Target Audience

Speaking of instances, it was not clear until last week that the Shard of Love would be a scaling instance dungeon for one group of players ranging from level 50~80. Kander provided us with the details.  Let’s hope the XP, AA XP, gear, and rewards from this zone make it desirable for the entire level range. So far, allowing folks under level 75 to do these zones hasn’t really paid the dividends of providing rewarding gameplay for level 50-70 players.

Fan Faire 2009 presented a lot of ideas and plans for the future. A scant few were nailed down to a specific time frame. We know that we are getting the Shard of Love and Miragul’s Shard in Gu53, as well as the amazing Shaders 3.0 graphics tweaks. However the rest of Gu53 and any part of Gu54 remain a mystery.

You’ll be happy to know that the AA XP Slider is slated to be contained in Gu53! Obviously there is still some time between now and September, so this may change, but this is certainly good news that we will not be waiting until February for these changes.

I think this, more than anything else, will bring folks back to the low level dungeons in EQ2. It will give folks complete flexibility to group with friends for AA, quest, etc.

July 7, 2009 Hotfix Update Notes

EMPEROR’S ATHENAEUM

• 4 Warriors in Emperor’s Athenaeum should reset less frequently.
• 4 Warriors have fewer buffs—especially defensive ones.

FENS OF NATHSAR

• Kaluhm the Northern Lord now drops his treasure correctly.
• Pulnil the Haggler is less confused about the quests he can offer and advance for those that have completed the quest “Everyone Loves a Snitch”.

GUILD HALLS

• Players at trustee or higher access can change the appearance of mailboxes placed within their guild hall.

ITEMS

• Focus: Lich III on necromancer item sets will now function properly.
• Focus: Bane of Warding V should now properly increase the amount of the ward.
• Scaling on a number of house items from the monthly “moonlight enchantments” live event has been adjusted.
• The cloaks from Munzok’s Material Bastion now have custom appearances!

KURN’S TOWER

• Sir Rouland now casts a detrimental warning on players he is about to kick off the platform (in addition to the onscreen message).
• The energy bursts in Sir Rouland’s encounter tic for 30% of a player’s max health, down from 40.

_________________

By the way, I have to say that Emperor’s Athenaeum is a pretty inventive zone. 3 of the boss fights have some real creativity to them. The cheering crowds in the Drago’s Arena I found really quite contagious. So much so that I typed /cheer myself!

Finally, if you submitted any questions to the EQ2 Team about the present and future of the game, or even if you didn’t, check out the June 2nd 2009 “Dev Answers” thread.

I’ve edited the “EQ2 Fan Faire Rollup” post so many times, trying to get it factually accurate and inclusive, I’m surprised I haven’t worn a spot on the hard drive.

We’ve had the facts and figures. Let’s play the game!

Soloing to 80?

I’ve always considered soloing to 80 a recipe for disaster as you will be at a huge disadvantage. Playing the game solo to 80 ill prepares most classes for grouping. You don’t know how to play your class in a group. You don’t know how other classes complement your class. Soloing to 80 can be bad if you have aspirations to group afterwards. You might even earn a bad reputation on your server which is hard to erase!!

Why have folks chosen to solo to 80? Out of fear. They would rather earn as much AA as possible while leveling up, rather than wait until 80 and then need to earn nearly 100 AAs in one long grind. Clearly there is an issue that needed to be addressed…

The AA Problem

If one thing is clear from both Gu52 and Fan Faire, the EQ2 dev team realizes there was an AA problem, which is now being addressed. Already, Gu52 nearly tripled the AA XP rewarded for running Shard quests, substantially increased the AA rewards for killing named encounters, and increased the Combat XP to AAXP conversion ratio to something reasonable.

So what’s coming in the expansion to further deal with the AA issue?

First of all, the much-requested AA slider. You’ll be able to choose how much AA vs. Combat XP you gain by grouping up and adventuring in dungeons and in overland zones. Your group may choose to set 100% AA and just crawl dungeons to build your character.

In the expansion, you’ll be able to mentor in 5 level increments just by hailing an NPC. If your group wants to run an old dungeon, perhaps one that rarely gets explored like the Forsaken City, and do so at the tier-appropriate level to earn AA and even loot, now you can, even if you don’t have a friend online to mentor.

There will even be missions to complete old content specifically killing bosses of older zones. And to prepare for this, respawn times on names are being analysed and populated zones will “instance” themselves, like Stormhold 1, Stormhold 2, etc.

I am hoping that with AAs being easier to earn, plus the expansion being in February instead of November, that folks will stop PANICKING about AAs and start playing the game again. Actually you know, GROUP in level 20-65. Because they won’t have to fear that endless AA grind when they hit 80.

Not Every Group Has Six

As for content doable without a full group, The Hole, the new level 82+ contested dungeon in the new expansion is going to be in the same vein as Sanctum of Scaleborn, but over twice as large. It will have 3 wings and you spawn in the middle, so you make a difficulty choice right there. Some of it will be tuned for 4 players. With the deepest reaches tuned for the strongest players. It will have a full progression within the zone. There will be quests picked up within the zone (which are NOT part of long linked chains of quests) which can be completed within the zone.

The new expansion is all about having a full range of game difficulty. Having a choice of zone difficulty (not clicking a door and choosing ‘Easy’, ‘Normal’, or ‘Hard’, but instead triggering this type of choice in how you pull an encounter, or choices you make while progressing through a dungeon, which will effect the drop rate or completely change the loot table.

They know how popular solo and 3-person instances (Haunted Mansion) are, and are looking at that as well.

Then they are looking at the other end for those hardcore folks who would like to be taking down avatar-difficulty mobs but are on servers whose avatars are already on lockdown by a successful guild.

I present the EverQuest II Expansion & Game Update News from Fan Faire in a rollup post. This is partly based on the Fan Faire 2009 Consolidated News by Kalyyn. I started with Kalyyn’s great writeup and have built upon it, adding dozens of new details and minor corrections based on everything I observed at the 2009 Fan Faire EQ2 event in Las Vegas.

I’ve archived the individual news posts I submitted over the weekend. If you still want to read them, they’re [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]

And now, without further ado, my writeup of EQ2’s future in 2009 and 2010. UPDATED AS OF JANUARY 29, 2010:

---

EverQuest II Expansion: Sentinel’s Fate

• EQ2: Sentinel’s Fate will be released on February 16, 2010.
• SF will be based around the EQ1 continent of Odus and will cover Erudin, Paineel, and Ratonga lore. The void storyline will be ending with this expansion.
• Adventure, Tradeskill, and Guild Level caps all increase to 90.
• 2 large overland zones (Stonebrunt Mountains)
• The Hole — a large level 82+ contested zone (similar to Sanctum of Scaleborn) with 3 wings, you spawn in the middle
• 12 New Group Instances
• Some existing TSO group instances will also be available in a T9 (level 80-90) version.
• Guild Level increases to 90. New Guild Hall Amenities and Amenity Slots.
• No new deities with expansion, nor will there be T9 solo deity quests.
• Deity miracles may be reconsidered.
• Group and raid zones will scale in difficulty (not adventure level). A choice will have to be made when pulling or fighting certain mobs that will set the encounter difficulty to easy, normal, or hard. The difficulty level will be set by the manner in which you start the encounter (i.e a boss may have a narrative, depending on your choice, you may get ‘easy mode’ where he sends his minions and escapes, or hard mode where you fight the boss himself)
• AA cap to 250. New abilities are going to be added to the bottom of the Class (KoS)  and Subclass (EoF) AA Trees, below what is now the end abilities. Some of these endline abilities will be passive, triggering based on specific chains of other abilities being cast.
• Mythical weapons will not be the ‘Number 1’ weapon, but will have another, important, use. It will be usable as a clicky item to get the unique class-defining abilities.
• Grouping, Soloing, and Questing will all be viable leveling options.

Artwork-by-Mail, and StationCash

• HP will be offering — through StationCash — high quality EQ2-related artwork (paintings of Antonia Bayle, Lucan, etc.) prints and eventually in-game items and prints of your character sent directly to your door. One being considered it a hardback book containing pictures of all of your guildmates.
• The plan is to make it possible, in the future, to purchase expansion packs and new game keys through station cash.

Game Update 55 — Halas and Streaming Launcher

NOTE: Halas has slipped to Game Update 56 and the Streaming Launcher was made available in November.

Halas is being added as a good starting city in Gu55 to coincide with the release of the new expansion, Sentinel’s Fate. Gu55 will be a free download whether you choose to purchase the expansion or not.

The starting race has not been confirmed, but in EQ1 Halas was the home of the Barbarians.

Incidentially, this new area will be considerably streamlined and will be built out as the new EQ2 Trial. The existing EQ2 Trial is a massive download and really not that great a tool at recruiting new players. The new EQ2 Trial will be optimized for download size, will have streaming download, and will really act as a marketing tool for new players.

Extremely preliminary zone art was shown of the new Halas.

Who Gives a Crit

Critical damage stats including Spell, Melee, Ranged, and Heal are being merged into a single ‘Crit’ statistic. Each class will have a critical coefficient. So the same item will offer taunt and melee crit to a fighter, ranged crit to a ranger, and heal crit to a healer.

Double Attack and Ranged Double Attack are being combined into DA, with an appropriate coefficient as RDA is c0nsidered more powerful to a ranger than DA is to other scouts.

Resistance types are being streamlined down to just Noxious, Elemental, Arcane and Physical. Naming on items will not change for variety/lore reasons.

Gear Scaling

NOTE: Gear Scaling has been canceled.

Once considered for the Rise of Kunark, items will now scale down in effectiveness starting at Level 60, eventually “greying out” when the item is 10 levels below your adventure level. The effectiveness of such items will be reduced by 33% at 10 levels.

Legends of Norrath

Set 7 of the LoN cards, Storm Break, goes live on July 9th. This will be the final part of the void series. New loot cards include a cloak with a, once-per-day, clicky effect that completely repairs your gear.

Buffs

The number of buffs and casting time of buffs is being considered, especially for support and healer classes. Certain classes always use the same self-buffs and these may be consolidated.

Class Balance (Bards, Enchanters, Summoners)

Typical raid lineups currently include 3-4 illusionists, 1 coercer, 3-4 dirges, and a troubador. Yet they often do not offer ANY slot to summoners or druids.

Some Enchanter and Bard buffs will become raidwide or applicable to one person in each of the 4 groups. The example given was an illusionist giving Time Compression to one member of all 4 groups. Other buffs could go raidwide. This will be done in such way so that having 4 illusionists will not be a significant advantage over having 1 or 2.

Currently, Brigand “Dispatched” and other debuffs are crucial for raiding and some group situations. Meanwhile, Summoners are finding they rarely get a seat at the table. As a result, Rogue debuffs are being refocused to work on melee, while Summoners step into a new role of debuffing spell abilities.

Also, with regards to Rogues, Brigands and Swashbucklers each have irreplaceable abilities such that most raids have 1 of each. Some of these abilities will become common between the two classes so that any Rogue can be effective in raid situations.

Summoner pet survivability is going to be looked into. Dumbfire pets will now act like a spell with appropriate graphics, rather than being affected by AoEs. These pets will also do spell debuffs in line with Summoner’s new role as spell debuffers.

Class Balance (Druids)

It has been recognised that Heal-over-Time spells come way behind wards and reactives when dealing with large spike damage (mainly in a raid and the hardest heroic settings).

A new component is going to be added to Heal-Over-Time spells for Druids which will save up the heal after each tick if the target is at full health, and further, any leftover heal will transfer to the group member with the lowest health on expiration.

Tradeskill

Over 2000 new recipes for Tier 9.

No Rare Loams in Tier 9. Instead, Ore and Gems will be used to make Expert (Adept III) spells. Ore nodes will always respawn as ore nodes, gem nodes as gem nodes.

Would like to completely revamp Adornment system, but at the very least, new adornment recipes will be Transmuter-crafted only.

Players will be able to be a Tinkerer and Transmuter.

Shaders 3.0

NOTE: Shaders 3.0 will likely slip to Game Update 56.

EQ2 is getting a graphical facelift!

Shaders are small pieces of code which take the textures and apply an effect to them, providing  metallic appearances, glows, bump mapping, caustics (rust, decay), lighting effects, etc.

These are being upgraded from the ancient Shaders 1.0 to Shaders 3.0. Nearly any graphics card since GeForce 3 will be able to handle the new GPU Shaders. At higher resolutions, preliminary tests have shown that framerates stay largely the same. At lower resolutions, framerates of GPU shaders seem significantly improved.

This will not be a substantial download. Each shader is just a few kilobytes. So far, 3,000 shaders have been upgraded.

Nek Forest looks awesome now. The whole idea of a torch in the darkness, lighting up trees, rocks, and enemy mobs looks head-and-shoulders above the current “flat” pea soup grey haze and flat colors on everything.

When the EQ2 developers saw the first screenshots, they thought it was another game.

In addition, Flora Displacement which moved to the GPU last year will still get further performance tweaks (known issue on nVidia cards).

Finally, he’d like to move particles to the GPU but due to some  design decisions, some particles are tied to animations. Will have to go back and separate them out.

There is developer interest in a torch slot, so this is being considered.  Devs would also like to do High Dynamic Range (HDR) in a future update, but nothing is immediately planned.

Mob Designs

Expect several new mob designs with more robust animations. Some seriously funny, cool, and creative new mob designs and revamped appearances to some existing mobs.

* fighting pandas
* displacer beasts
* two headed giants
* stalagmites
* scarecrows

EQ2 Potpourri

It is known that emergency “Stun-and-Heal” is a real detriment to healers and is required for too many encounters. Will be reconsidered.

Rangers — Stream of Arrows will be changed to an AoE. Originally intended as a fill in between auto attacks, but auto attacks are so large now that using it reduces DPS output.

Although it is higher than intended, there are no immediate plans to adjust Auto Attack damage.

Bruisers/Coercers — Drag, thought snap are so overpowered we have to disable them or mobs are trivialized

Conjuror Mythical Pet — This pet is class-defining for Conjurors. However with the current mechanic, that pet would stop leveling at low-to-mid 80’s. Will look at this going forward.

Certain raid encounters will benefit from crowd control, giving enchanters another job besides power regen and buffs.

Will void shards have value in T9? No. A different token system is being used for T9 armor.

Guild Rally Flag – Can we have some means to find out where the guild rally flag is located? Some coding has already been done for this. Putting it in guild window would be somewhat wasteful for those guilds that don’t have this amenity (one of the most expensive amenities FYI), so considering hailing the strategist.

Illusions Driving You Crazy? – A change was made in GU52 that racial illusions pick a random appearance each time they are displayed. This applies to guild hall NPCs as well. Even the devs are annoyed at this change, so are investigating a Magic Mirror house item to set your illusion appearances, and a similar mechanism for guild hall NPCs. Also, some folks make frequent use of different illusions. Look for an Illusion Manager window.

NOTE: Game Update 54 added this Magic Mirror ability.

Smart Loot is being implemented over time. Lock boxes in Mistmyr already have mini-smart loot for each person that loots.

Harvester NPCs could auto-deposit in Harvest supply depot in the future.

More new Armor Appearances in EQ2:SF are coming than are currently in the game. Substantial new choices for mage appearances other than robes, such as tops, pants, etc.

Devs would like to add more mannequin types such as Ratonga mannequin.

Current tier upgrades are coming for Bone Clasped Girdle. Not so much for the bloodthirsty choker.

Out-of-Control Curing

It is recognized that Curing is perhaps getting out-of-control. Casting time of individual cure potions may be considered. In addition, certain detriments are getting different effects on them such that curing that detriment can be worse than leaving it, or may cause another detriment to trigger. The intention was never to stare at the Profit Cure bar the entire fight.

---

EverQuest II Game Updates & Features

These are features and updates announced at Fan Faire which are now present in EQ2:

• AAXP Slider, when earning xp, you will be able to set a ratio that is earned as AA instead.
• Automated Server Transfers will be available on the Station Marketplace for $25.
• Buffs – Certain persistent buffs now persist through death.
• Wizard “Rays of Disintegration” has been changed to single-cast spell, instead of causing all mages in the wizard’s group to stop all casting to cast this spell. Rays of Disintegration was very disruptive for Enchanters who must maintain a certain casting order and rhythm to do their jobs.
• Quest Window received facelift. Namely side-by-side quest list and quest details.
• Revamped Player Inspect window shows regular and appearance slots  and many more stats.
• Daily Double and new Hot Zones are now shown in the Welcome Panel.
• ACT Parsing – Gravitas, Chimes of Blades, and Cures (some healers spend their entire time curing but don’t show up on the heal parse) are now parsed in ACT.
• The Lavastorm Elevator to WoE was fixed to continue to it’s destination.
• Kelethin houses received a transparent window. The most expensive Maj’dul house received additional rooms and a skylight.  Kelethin, Neriak, Freeport, and Qeynos houses gained an additional room.

• Auto-mentoring

Hail an NPC in one of the home cities and you will be able to mentor down in 5 level increments (20, 25, 30, 35, etc.) and complete quests, kill named encounters, etc. at the appropriate level. This does not require mentoring another person and will not offer the extra bonuses given to folks who naturally mentor one of their friends.

To prepare for this feature, a list of named mobs on long spawns in existing zones has already been assembled to have their timers tweaked. Also, low level contested zones will instance themselves (Sinking Sands 1, 2, 3, etc.) in case of large populations.

• EQ2 Achievements

Similar to XBox Live, EQ2 is getting an Achievements system. The expansion will launch with 500-700 achievements. This will merge the old Slayer titles (kill 5,000 Orcs), plus adventurer titles (complete 20 Heritage Quests), and introduce new titles. For example, number of level 80 characters you have. Whether you defeated a dungeon/raid on the hardest difficulty, Going back and completing old zones while mentored, etc.

The Alternative Achievement system in EQ2 (currently 200 points) is officially being renamed to Alternate Advancement to avoid confusion.

• Shard of Love & Miragul’s Planar Shard

In GU53 is Miragul’s Planar Shard, a raid zone which will use the new mechanic of difficulty scaling on certain bosses.

The Shard of Love — a casual group zone. The storyline for this zone will relate to Erolissi Marr.

---

There will be more commentary to come, but those are the salient points about the rest of 2009 as the EQ2 team takes some extra time balancing the live game before plunging into the expansion in February.

More Links!

• EQ2Wire Story Index — Continuing Coverage of Fan Faire 2009 & EverQuest II news
• Shard of Love (Gu53)  snapshots
• EQ2 Achievements System
• What to do for the next 8 months? Play the Game!

The comprehensive writeups on Fan Faire and the events and photos are always worth a read if you couldn’t make it. I admit I’m all about the details and the expansion news. I don’t try to cover the whole event as others do that better than I can… One writeup I want to mention is CompleteHeal. Calthine (great to meet her of course!) has a writeup at Zam as well.

I took some pics of the event last night, some general Fan Faire pics, and of course lots of pics from the EQ2Flames gathering last night. Hope to get them up soon. Meeting BigRon was cool as hell, as well as meeting a bunch of Saints of Norrath folks which is of course Lord Pantz’ guild. Oh, and Gage was there too. 😉 Hell, he went up and talked to Aeralik who was out and about and nobody died. 😉

So what am I doing now? I’m logged in right now helping a guildie get their epic after betraying.

Gonna catch as many EQ2 panels as I can. Of course the big announcement will be tonight at 7 as far as the name of the expansion and then tomorrow from 4-6 will be the epic panels with nearly everyone from EQ2 telling us what’s coming and when. I know there is quite a bit a lot more content coming before the expansion.

If you caught this video at MMORPG.com, you know that there is some big news at Fan Faire with regards to Shaders 3.0 in EQ2. Namely boosting the look of the game and taking a lot more work off the CPU and putting it on the graphics card where it belongs. Already the new GPU shadows look awesome outdoors (indoors will require more work as I’m sure most instance zones lack point lights and use ambient light which doesn’t cast shadows). I will post some comments as soon as I see some side-by-side comparison screen shots.

If there is one awkward element to the event so far, I am kind of wondering why Bruce Ferguson is so publicly visible at Fan Faire, especially around EQ2 events. It’s clear that we’re moving in a different direction, so I guess I just don’t understand. I don’t have any ill will towards the guy, but he shepherded some decisions which are now being backed out of the game now. Maybe I’m overthinking it. 🙂

I’ll post more goodies about the future of EQ2 as soon as I have it…

An interesting day indeed, talking about the game. As much as people may doubt it, most of the Devs really do listen and want folks to play the game. It would pretty dumb if they didn’t.

They know the mistakes of Kunark, and the issues (to a lesser extent) in TSO.

Oh and talking to Pantz, Crabbok, Atan, and more isn’t too shabby either.

Record turnout for the eq2flames mashup. WTF are you Gage? 😛

A line of folks stretching out into the casino, ready to head into the main Fan Faire hall. Then at 8, the welcome by Brenlo, who couldn’t resist havimng a little fun, using every opportunity to hawk the game he is now Exec Producer for — EQ2.

Prizes included Turtle Beach headsets, 3d display goggles, and PNY 8800gts video cards. Well, if you could do an emote (you’d think folks would practice by now ;)).

My 4th Cirque de Soleil — Ka — freakin sweet!!

The engineering that went into the 360 pivoting tilting stage is incredible. And of course great performers.

Awesome!

While i do not feel entitled to special treatment (even though I’ve been asked enough basketball and weather inquiries to last a lifetime), in the end it came down to a stewardess getting me into a seat less likely to induce leg cramps. 😉 Thanks. 🙂

Now to get situated…

Getting ready to board the sorriest excuse for an airline around. First airline I’ve ever dealt with that cannot offer an exit row to a 6’9″ passenger online, at the ticket counter, at the gate, and when the gate rep made a rude comment about my height not being his fault, I notified customer service.

Maybe there is some small satisfaction in getting a cocky employee of the most customer-hostile airline in trouble. But as I stand in a completely backed up jetway, because three gate attendants haven’t learned the fine art of staging an aircraft boarding, I realize there can be no satisfaction.

See you in 4 hours.

From Curse.com.

Through a bit of internet sleuthing we’ve discovered that recently, Sony Online Entertainment decided to trademark two new titles, one each for EverQuest and EverQuest II. The trademarks in question took place on June 10th, 2009 and are EverQuest Underfoot, and EverQuest II Sentinel’s Fate. While nothing is announced yet, there’s a good chance these two titles are the names of each game’s respective expansions.

So why would SOE do this? Well, they have the annual SOE Fanfaire coming up in a week, in which they’ll no doubt continue their recent tradition of announcing expansions for their flagship MMO titles, so ensuring the trademark was in place prior to the announcement is always crucial.

EverQuest fans will no doubt recognize the Underfoot fairly quickly. It’s an area that many wished would be introduced to the game early on in its lifetime; the realm of Brell Serilis, deity whom created the dwarves. Coming off its 10th anniversary and a new server ruleset, this would be the 16th expansion for the game.

On the other hand, what Sentinel’s Fate will bring is questionable. Will this be the much-anticipated Velious expansion for EverQuest II, related to the dragons of the continent? Or will it continue the story laid out by The Shadow Odyssey?

Regardless, I think it’s safe to say we’ll hear these new expansions announced at the SOE Fanfaire during John Smedley’s Community Address on Friday, June 26th at 7PM PDT. Stay tuned next week as we’ll no doubt have more information not only on EverQuest and EverQuest II, but other titles shown at the Fanfaire as well!

For your viewing pleasure if you have not yet been able to make it over to the Test Servers, look what washed up on the northern shores of Fens of Nathsar not 500 yards from our old friend the Tangrin…

It is unexpected to see humans, halflings, giants, and ratonga working so closely together. What could their mission be?

Note also that this is not just a temporary event, but that it will persist into the next expansion. Whether we should read further into that is a question that I just don’t have enough information to know the answer to. Some have suggested that this is confirmation that Velious is on the way. Others have suggested that this may be the beginning of the reviled ‘Discord’ expansion (primarily because it signaled an increase in the difficulty of group and raid content beyond what even most hardcore raiders would find reasonable).

Hopefully I’ll know for certain in exactly one month, when the EQ2 expansion is revealed at Fan Faire 2009. Yes, I’ll be there. 😉

That’s a lot of notes to read, so I will distill some of the key points.

Procs

If you read Bruce Ferguson’s parting comments, and you generate a good potion of your DPS from gear with effects like Goblin Bane, Void Bane, or Vampire Bane, or if you are an Assassin wearing Soul Lancer armor, you might want to read the relevant section again:

We’ve discovered that with the items that we released with The Shadow Odyssey, that proc additional damage, the amount of damage being caused has grown considerably, and we need to adjust it. So, in the next game update, we’re going to be adjusting to the way triggered procs on items work.

We’re removing critical damage from the item’s base proc.

Procs can no longer be modified, with a few notable exception.

Generic bonuses will no longer apply to triggered damage generated from items

Predators will see a change to Toxic Expertise. We are refocusing affected combat arts back to improved poison damage, rather than spell crit damage. Spell Crit is going away as a benefit to Rangers and Assassins.

and the relevant lines from the Test Update notes:

Item based triggered effects can no longer critical or have their damage components modified unless done directly through something like an achievement or set bonus.

We were told that Soul Lancer’s days of generating massive dps for Assassins would come to a close, and this confirms it.

Of course GU52 also brings 2 new dungeons including Charasis 3 and Kurn’s Tower, 80 new quests, an overall improvement in Achievement Experience earned, Research Assistants, Player-made Books, etc. but I wanted to highlight these points.

I’ve made my points on Research Assistants elsewhere. I do believe it will kill the market for Masters if every month, everyone can get one for free without any questing or effort. I think other measures such as producing T8 upgrades for all non-upgraded spells would have been a great idea. Also adding more mobs that have these rare masters on their loot tables would have worked. Hailing an NPC twice 30 days apart and rewarding people for NOT playing the game seems very odd to me. But we shall see…

I really do encourage everyone to head over to the Test Server and try out GU52, check out the Test Server FAQ.