Ah… the Shadow Odyssey. The land of milk and honey… The lost dungeons of… ok I’ll stop now.

Ask players of EQ2 during the Shadow Odyssey what they thought of the expansion, and you’ll get many different responses.

Ask a developer of the Shadow Odyssey for their frank opinion, and I bet you’d get something like “Ah yes, every level 80 player fully decked out in T2 heroic gear, fabled jewelry, and all carrying bagfuls of platinum coins.”

With now 16 neutral character classes, available in both good and evil alignments, and with recent expansions rarely distinguishing between good and evil when handing out quests, it’s not a surprise that the question of Alignment and the painful (and costly) process of Class Betrayal gets revisited on the forums frequently.

However thus far, the official response as been “We have no intention to make it easier, or take away any of the consequences. Betrayal is supposed to have a cost.”

Some of the buzz before Fan Faire was “Is the Skyblade Skiff housing option going to be one-per-account, or one-per-character?”

Now personally, I cannot imagine that anyone who is really into housing won’t already have elaborate houses on all of their characters. I would think most will already have to agonize about which of their characters they want to give up a house on.

Now, you might have to choose multiple characters to pull up stakes on… 😉

From SmokeJumper:

We did set this up for one skiff per account…but we’re not sure why.

We’ll be changing this soon (probably next Tuesday) so that it’s one skiff per character.

Remember the Skyblade Skiff is a super-sized version of the airship that travels between Sinking Sands and Moors of Ykesha. It is accessible (and can be toured without losing your current house) from South Qeynos and South Freeport. You may not have more than one house at a time, so you must relinquish your current house if you wish to take advantage of this Fan Faire Platinum pass item.

I have to admit I have been impressed at the speed of responses to issues on the EQ2 forums yesterday. If you are at all familiar with all of the various parlour tricks which have been necessary to gain XP at the maximum rate to help a character severely behind on AAs, you’ll know that one of these tricks has been to “lock” your character below the level cap.

Why? Because Vitality, a +200% XP bonus after yesterday’s update, is disabled at level cap (90). So there is a HUGE penalty for dinging that final level.

Good news from Rich Waters after the jump…

So the aftermath of our brouhaha yesterday about players who have been (admittedly) taking advantage of having more than 7 characters on an EQ2 account (or more than 12 characters on a Station Access account) has been rather swift and conciliatory.

The good news from SmokeJumper:

We’ve talked it over further and there is new news on this front:

1. We’re going to rollback this feature next Tuesday (8/24). You’ll be able to access all your characters at that time.
2. You’ll have seven days to get onto your account and pull items off any characters you desire if you want to shuffle stuff around.
3. On Tuesday (8/31), we’ll turn the feature back on and all accounts will be limited to the proper number of character slots.

If you ensure that the characters you want to keep are the last ones you have logged in before 8/31, then those are the ones that will be available when the feature is re-implemented.

Again, the feature rollback will be in this coming Tuesday’s hotfix (8/24) and you’ll have access to all your characters again starting on that day until the following Tuesday (8/31).

Asked why this wasn’t responded to sooner, or why such a grace period was not offered earlier:

Well…to be honest, I admit we made a mistake here. In hind sight, it’s kind of a “no duh” thing to do. Our only excuse is that we’ve been very busy, yet that’s a pretty lame excuse. But we’re making good as rapidly as possible.

After a lot of questions and a lot of waiting, we finally get an answer on what the “perks” will be for the EQ2 Live Subscription servers.  This thread on the official forums outlines the perks that you get for a multi-month subscription.

We may not have heard the last word for players with extra or “hidden” characters on their EQ2 accounts. From Rothgar:

Unfortunately this is not an easy fix, as I think the characters are sorted by code based on some pre-defined criteria.

I’ve reviewed the code and may have a potential solution but before I provide more details I’ll need to confirm this with Customer Service and make sure its something we can do.

We’ll keep you apprised. Although, most of you know, I’m on European time zone now, so most of the big news happens while I’m asleep. 🙁

UPDATE:

SmokeJumper has added these comments:

We’re discussing this internally and should have something to share with you either later today or tomorrow.

Just a heads-up to let you know this is not being ignored.

UPDATE: We have renamed this article, as there has been conciliatory action taken on this issue.

So if you read our article today about EQ2 customers who have had more than 7 characters on their EQ2 accounts who woke up to found that additional “hidden” characters are inaccessible, you probably have little sympathy for these players.

However, this is a customer-oriented business, and given such a situation, advanced warning so players can “get their house in order” is always the recommended course of action. Handled properly, some players would upgrade to Station Access again (maybe for a month or two to sort things out), most players would shuffle things around and delete characters to come “into compliance”, and a small handful of players would ragequit.

However SOE is trying something different it seems. Tough love? Too bad, so sad? We’re not clear. But here’s your answer ladies and gentlemen…

On April 14, 2009, a new Welcome Screen was added to EQ2. It was pitched to the players as an informational window with a small amount of StationCash Marketplace content. There was a lot of negative player reaction, but feedback was balanced against trying to keep the window useful.

And for those players who wanted to avoid the Welcome Screen window, a method was found to disable it. A configuration line (cl_show_welcome_screen_on_startup 0) could be added to your eq2.ini settings file. Eventually the EQ2 team relented and added a “Show this window at startup” checkbox so players could opt out of seeing this window.

Here are your hotfix notes for August 19, 2010:

UNDERFOOT DEPTHS
Changes to Zaalax, Xaalax, Saalax and Yaalax:
They no longer mitigate significant amounts of elemental damage.
The strength of the knockback on Zaalax’s Crushalanche spell has been reduced.
Call of the Underfoot curse now lasts longer before going off, players now have more time to move away from Zaalax’s fissures before being hit by a seismic shock, Zaalax splits now have lower maximum health.

SPELL FX REVAMP
Fixed an issue where some casting circles were not displaying correctly.

BETRAYAL
Players who do not meet the necessary requisites to become an Inquisitor will no longer be offered the option to change their profession by speaking with Seru Girondeaud.

EXPERIENCE
Vitality now provides a 200% XP bonus when active.

From the EQ2 Forums:

The US servers will come down on August 19, 2010, at 7am PDT for a hotfix.  The expected downtime is 2 hours.

Update Notes will be posted in the Game Update Notes forum when available.

The exact details of this update are not known, but may include a fix for the XP issues discussed previously.

For years, players have been asking for additional character slots, either for free, or as an optional one-time purchase.

Seven vs. Twelve

An EQ2 monthly subscription runs approximately $14-15 a month depending on your choice to pre-pay 3, 6, or 12 months in advance, or stick to month-to-month payments. Despite the introduction of new races, and a new expansion each year, currently, EQ2 subscribers have access to 7 character slots.

So far, the only option offered to increase the number of character slots has been to buy Station Access.  This $29.95/mo package was originally intended as a way to provide access to SOE’s entire stable of online games (EQ1, EQ2, SWG, etc.). But over the years, this deal has been sweetened with the addition of more character slots. An EQ2 player with Station Access receives 12 character slots.

It’s worth noting that those are 7 and 12 slots per region. Players can start 7 characters on US, EU, and Test servers, making for a total of 21 characters in all if you include all 3 regions.

What happens when you downgrade, and today’s changes after the jump…

Today we repost some player advice on how to switch from the new default Red UI to the optional Blue UI, without blowing away all your hotbars. This advice comes from the EQ2 Forums.

Players logging this morning after Game Update 57 went live discovered an NPC in North Qeynos that allowed them to change adventure class from Illusionist to Inquisitor. This NPC has been pulled out, but here’s the explanation of what we can expect here, from the EQ2 Lead Designer Rich Waters:

Actually, at one of the Fan Faire Q & A panels we agreed we’d look into letting players reset their adventure class on high level crafters. This will likely work the same way high level adventurers can reset their crafting profession now.

So, crafters can expect to be able to reset your adventure class to a low level (perhaps level 9) and pick a new adventure class in a future update.

Comments after the jump…

On the EQ2 Forums by Kander:

Changes to Zaalax, Xaalax, Saalax and Yaalax:

* They no longer mitigate significant amounts of elemental damage.
* The strength of the knockback on Zaalax’s Crushalanche spell has been reduced.
* Call of the Underfoot curse now lasts longer before going off
* Players now have more time to move away from Zaalax’s fissures before being hit by a seismic shock
* The splits off Zaalax now have lower maximum health.

Incidentally, the X,Y, Z encounter does indeed have loot.

and…

We are hoping for tomorrow with these changes. Watch for the patch in the morning.

Gloves are probably on the special chest you hate…

Our article on how XP Bonuses are calculated and stacked has stirred up a hornet’s next on both sides of the table. So I’m going to link to EQ2 ZAM’s own writeup which includes more developer quotes (including excellent comments from Rich Waters, EQ2 Lead Designer) to try to sort out the mess.

Experience Bonus Changes and XP Bug Explained @ EQ2 ZAM

Short Version

If you absolutely must have the reader’s digest edition, most XP will be restored to how it was before Game Update 57. That means increases to bonuses for Vitality, Mentoring, Bonus XP weekends, and Potions. They are doing whatever is necessary to keep the current XP rate — except Recruit-a-Friend. EQ2 Team consider it a ‘known issue’ that AA earn rate is slow and understand why people were using RAF to gain XP.

On the EQ2 Forums by Amnerys:

They should only be in game for the winners right now. I hope we can take care of that for you tomorrow.

I believe the paintings should be available to everyone at the next City Festival, which will be in Neriak starting on the 1st of September.

We do love the work you all submitted though and can’t wait for you to see it in game! So exciting!!

UPDATE: This article has been superceded by an article at EQ2 ZAM which explains the bug. In short, with the exception of Recruit-a-Friend, current XP earning rates are being restored to the same levels as before Game Update 57.

Players have been noticing a substantial reduction in XP since Game Update 57 went live.

Rich Waters, Lead Designer of EQ2, has stepped up and posted a report:

We’re checking into this now – if players are getting less experience than they were before the update, it is a bug and we’ll get it fixed promptly.

There are not different experience formulas for EQII live and EQII Extended.  Both games have the same leveling rate, and barring any bugs, it should be exactly what it was before today’s game update.

When we finish investigating, we’ll post more information.

Rothgar followed up with these notes:

I just wanted to also chime in to say that a change was made to fix an exploit situation in the XP gain when certain bonuses were stacked and this may be at the root of the problem.  Our intent was definitely not to modify the leveling curve that you experience in a normal situation.

Since the intended change did affect the stacking of bonuses such as the xp potions you bought from the marketplace, we decided to increase that percentage to make up for the difference in the change.

We are continuing to look for the source of the problem and will post more asap.

More information as we have it.

EQ2Wire is currently trying to get to the bottom of a rumor regarding possible changes to Adventure (Combat), Alternate Advancement (AA), and Tradeskill XP.

In the mean time, we’ve got some hard facts. An unexpected feature of today’s Game Update 57 seems to be the doubling of all Combat, AA, and Tradeskill potions. 27.5% potions became 55% potions. 55% potions became 110% potions.

Left: the 55% XP potions “Draft of the Wise” and “Draft of the Skilled” provided as veteran rewards for every year of subscription.

Right: the 1000SC ($10) 110% “Flask of Advancement III” which boosts XP for all three XP types.

We do not know what, if any, other changes this may signify, but we will keep you informed.

From the EQ2 Forums:

As happens in the world of technology, we’ve experienced some unexpected glitches and unfortunately we will be delaying the launch of EQ2X. We are now hoping to launch on Thursday, August 19th.

We apologize for the inconveniece, and thank you for your patience. Please watch this post for updated information as it is available.

Due to a code bug which allowed the EQ2X Marketplace to appear on international servers, all international servers are now down for a patch. From Amnerys:

All international servers were just taken offline (earlier than planned) due to today’s patch. It was unplanned but necessary, and we apologize for the inconvenience.

We are hoping to have all international servers back online by 1PM PDT (9PM GMT). Please watch this thread for updates.

EQ2Players is now reporting that all U.S. servers (EQ2 and EQ2X) are up and running with Game Update 57. Europe-based servers will be updated later today on their usual schedule.

EQ2X Marketplace Momentarily Appears on Runnyeye/Splitpaw?

Speaking of Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY), the EQ2X Marketplace (with mastercrafted and powerful items available for purchase) briefly appeared on European servers Runnyeye and Splitpaw before they were brought back down. We’ll update you as we hear more.

Update from SmokeJumper

There was a code bug with the international servers. They are coming down now so we can correct.

Free-to-play items will not be present when they come back up.

You might have heard that EQ2’s User Interface is getting some spit and polish. With today’s Game Update 57, the default User Interface (UI) for EQ2 is getting some subtle and some not so subtle tweaks.

Major additions include the introduction of an “EQ2 Dock” to replace the existing EQ2 “start” button and XP bars. Also, the Character, Inventory, and Options have been merged into a single Character superwindow accessible by pressing “C” (Crouch has moved to “Z”). Bags have been streamlined, the Welcome window has received a facelift, the Map window now shows some key update locations (not to replace EQ2Maps), and

Many players do use some or all of the default UI, so there has been concern that the default UI has shifted from a predominant blue hue to a red one. You’ll be happy to know that the default UI includes a Blue graphics set which can be activated in-game by typing /loadui.

As always, players have the choice of installing other UIs. Which is why Rothgar, Lead Programmer on EQ2, notified the EQ2 interface community just over one month ago. The UI Revamp does not add popular Click-to-Cure, Autoattack Status, or the Advanced Broker available either separately or in packages from UI developers. You’ll want to visit EQ2Interface.com to see what’s going on with your favorite modifications.

>> ProfitUI Fix for Game Update 57 <<

Note: There seems to be an obscure bug with the Blue EQ2 theme. Guild level is being reported significantly lower than it should be in some situations.

Although Niami has advised that she is still working on adding more information to her Game Update 57 article, if you are up early and want to keep up on everything EQ2 Tradeskills, by all means check out her Game Update 57 Tradeskill Preview @ EQ2Traders!