Procs. We’ve all seen them.

“On a successful healing spell.”

“On a successful attack.”

“On a successful melee attack.” (this one makes Rangers cry)

But how often do they really trigger? How big a part do they play in actual healing, spell damage, combat art damage?

Aidis, newly minted EQ2Wire contributor has crunched the numbers and found that one such special effect — Flash of Intuition — isn’t so special:

After a review of several healing procs, and how important base is for healers, many items that proc a temporary increase to base [for the players next ward or heal] have been sought after. However, there is a problem with Flash of Intuition. It effects other heal procs before main healing abilities.

After one test of 500 casts, Flash of Intuition activated 32 times. Out of those 32 activations only 3 were used by a main healing ability, as the rest were used up by other heal and ward procs. This is counter productive some say, and have tossed these items to their backpacks in hope of some fix to these procs effecting procs issues, while others continue to gamble on luck.

We’ve got Today’s Hotfix Notes straight from the Patcher for you. They include the aforementioned changes to various instances in Desert of Flames and Kingdom of Sky, some itemization fixes, and tweaks to raid mobs in Underfoot Depths and Icy Keep.

Hirofortis has posted a thought-provoking thread on the EQ2 Forums regarding Critical Mitigation on raid gear and pondering just how much Crit Mit is needed to proceed in raiding. Just looking at the Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 raid gear available in-game, a player can acquire critical mitigation amounts of 110%, 127.8%, and 141% respectively, not including any critical mitigation achieved by having high numbers in the necessary stats.

Critical Mitigation from Raid Armor Sets

	T1	T2	T3
Head	10.00%	12.00%	15.00%
Chest	20.00%	20.00%	20.00%
Shoulders	10.00%	12.00%	15.00%
Forearms	5.00%	9.60%	12.00%
Hands	5.00%	9.60%	12.00%
Legs	20.00%	20.00%	20.00%
Feet	5.00%	9.60%	12.00%
Sum	75.00%	92.80%	106.00%
Max from Gear and Adorns	110.00%	127.80%	141.00%
Max with Gear and Stats	120.00%	137.80%	151.00%

Increase Critical Mitigation (Red Adornments)

Head	5%
Chest	5%
Gloves	5%
Boots	5%
Shoulders	5%
Bracers	5%
Leg	5%
Total Crit Mit	35%

Critical Mitigation from Intelligence/Agility

AGI/INT 500	5%
AGI/INT 1000	10%

Critical Mitigation is a measurement of how much your armor (plus a small amount of innate protection from Agility (for scouts/fighters) or Intelligence (for mages/priests) reduces the Critical damage abilities of the enemies you are fighting.

There is a lot of useful information in this thread already — it’s worth a read.

Test Copy has always been a temporary server, subject to complete wipes of all characters and guilds. In fact, the Test Copy server started out as a PvP Test server, and while it has been a PvE server for over 2 years now, the PvP switch has been “flipped” a few times for testing of Battlegrounds and PvP content leading up to Sentinel’s Fate.

Despite all cautions to the contrary, some players have built up characters and guilds on Test Copy, so they may be interested to know that another wipe is happening. Test Copy is currently down (we’re a bit late on the news) and when it comes back, we are hearing that it will be in a fresh state for testing, with no characters or guilds.

From Bunji on the EQ2 Forums:

Just a heads up that Test Copy is being brought offline (as early as today) and its database is being wiped.

We’re going to try and get Test Copy back up sometime tomorrow (7/13).

From the EQ2 Forums:

The US servers will come down on July 14, 2010, at 7am PDT for a hotfix.  The Update Notes will be posted in the Update Notes forum when available.

Runnyeye and Splitpaw will be patched at 9pm PDT (4am GMT) on July 14, 2010.

The second opportunity for players to submit their own artwork to be turned into in-game EQ2 paintings has come and gone, and the results have been announced!

From EQ2Players:

Greetings, Norrathians! We are thrilled to make the highly-anticipated announcement of the winners of our Notable Norrathians Forum Challenege!

It was not easy to choose just ten out of the amazing entries we received. The talent and creativty displayed were truly wonderful and there’s a certiain very-jealous dark elf in the office right now!

We’d like to thank everyone who submitted an entry (the dark elf made note that she’s saving a few for her own desktop wallpaper) and we invite everyone who didn’t win this time to resubmit the next time we have a similar challenge.

….

Discuss the Notable Norrathians Winners (EQ2 Forums)

It is our understanding that the Art Dept. judged and selected the 10 winners of this contest and we’re looking forward to seeing them added as in-game paintings. We’re hopeful that there will be as few time, status, and guild restrictions on the in-game items as possible.

We’ve been following the Notable Norrathians Challenge and there were some fantastic entries posted during the contest. Hopefully in a future contest, some that didn’t win this time can be included.

So we just had a Double XP weekend over the July 4th holiday. It was heavily promoted, and featured in an e-mail and on the forums. EQ2 Senior Producer SmokeJumper posted about spending almost the entire weekend playing and how quickly he earned levels, AAs, and how many groups he got.

Now, apparently, it’s time for the pendulum to swing the other way.

Yesterday’s Test Server Update Notes include the following details which will eventually make it to Live servers:

GENERAL

Many instances from Deserts of Flame and Kingdom of Sky are now persistent.  This includes Ancient’s Table, Cazel’s Mesa, Scornfeather Roost, The Halls of Fate, The Blackscale Sepulcher, The Den of the Devourer, The Vaults of El’Arad, and The Nest of the Great Egg.

It will be impossible to repeatedly zone into and out of these zones, killing all the mobs inside multiple times.

There are just two weeks left to register for Fan Faire and the number of Gold and Silver passes available is limited! Platinum passes have been sold out for some time now.

You can read more at EQ2Players.

Plane ticket prices are already rebounding fast, so if you are on the fence, either buy your tickets now, or roll the dice and wait another week. That’s not a bet I’d take!

As we have for the last 2 years, EQ2Wire will be providing Continuing Live Coverage of EverQuest II and Fan Faire.

Oh hey, we had a hotfix! The July 7, 2010 Update Notes include several fixes to raid targets and live events. After the jump…

UPDATE: Blizzard has cancelled their plans to require real names to post on their forums.

Unable to handle the avalanche of trolls overloading their community support forums (with 11.5 million players and over $20 billion in revenue after 5 1/2 years, you’d think they could afford to hire a few Kiara’s), Blizzard has decided to not just touch, but grasp firmly the third rail of MMORPGs — online anonymity.

The Blizzard Announcement:

The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID — that is, their real-life first and last name…

Community Reaction

Since the announcement yesterday, there have been 13,000 responses, many of them announcing their depature from the forums for good.

Massively is calling this the WoW Killer.

SOE Reaction?

The irony of their current company spokesman “Mr. T” being a chosen moniker, is not lost on us. Will he be forced to start calling himself Laurence Tureaud in all future marketing? “I’m Laurence Tureaud and I pity the fool” neither intimidates nor rolls off the tongue.

If I were Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley, I would put my marketing department to work getting a slogan like this printed on every flat surface within reach:

Get lost in our worlds, without having to show ID.

Expectations are high that we might see DC Universe Online this winter:

Your secret identity is safe with us.

SOE has released The Agency: Covert Ops Facebook game:

We won’t break your cover.

Identity Theft

WoWRiot is covering this story, and have documented some instant karma reaped by one of the WoW developers.

Now I think it’s fairly safe to say that this is perhaps the dumbest idea that anyone has ever had ever.

To alleviate people’s concerns, Blizzard employee Bashiok decided to say his real name on the forums, his real name is Micah Whipple.

Within a few hours, a full report of Mr Whipple’s personal life was posted online, including full address, phone number, age, parents names and ages, and his Facebook page with extensive personal details.

In the end, it may be the threat of hundreds of employee resignations that nixes this idea.

The Funny Papers

I leave you with this hilarious (and scary) comic strip:

http://www.thenoobcomic.com/headquarters/comics/00378_2.jpg

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

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

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

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

Hopefully these changes should make it live next hotfix.

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

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

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

Thanks!

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

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

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

From the EQ2 Forums:

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

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

From the EQ2 Forums:

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

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

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

More after the jump…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

F2P Goldmine?

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

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

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

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

Georgeson had a followup clarification on the EQ2 Forums:

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

Commentary

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

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

Expansion Date Guesstimations

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

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

From Rothgar:

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

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

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

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

From SmokeJumper:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are your June 22, 2010 Update Notes:

DRUID RING EVENT

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

PVP WARFIELDS

• Antonica will once again broadcast the call to arms.

PVP ITEMS

• Fallen Foe Charms can now be used by Wardens.

PVP POPULATION

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

UNDERFOOT DEPTHS

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

The Vigilant: Rescue

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

Overview

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