If you haven’t read the Game Update 57 Feedback thread, it’s a real eye-opener, let me tell you.

I have always seen players who manage find a silver lining in every cloud, and always find something good in each Game Update, even the relatively content-light Game Update 54 “bug stomp” from last fall. However I have never seen such universal negativity as that directed towards Game Update 57. Players have overwhelmingly expressed their distaste for many policy initiatives included, and content excluded in GU57.

From Xelgad on the EQ2 Forums:

As a quick update, internally, we have changed Crane Twirl to grant a total of 20% AE Auto-Attack in addition to the proc it currently grants.

On Thursday evening, a player logged in to discover that one of their gameplay-acquired mounts, a War-Barded Black Cavalry Horse, had unattuned itself. This led to the discovery that a variety of in-game mounts had vanished from the in-game Stable Merchants, only to be found later on the StationCash Marketplace for a cost of 1250SC ($12.50). Other mounts included the Two-Toned Warg , and the black-saddled Blue Flame Nightmare.

Hotfix notes for Tuesday, August 24, 2010 after the jump:

Although there are no update notes or official announcement just yet, numerous forum posts from EQ2 devs have indicated that a Hotfix is expected on Tuesday to correct some issues caused by Game Update 57.

We’ll keep you posted as these notes become available.

Xalmat from Crushbone has deduced:

On Sunday, August 22, 2010, at 4:30am Pacific, one of the authentication servers for the login server seemed to crash.

Anyone that’s experiencing massive lag, or is unable to log in, this is the reason why.

Who would be logged into EQ2 at such an ungodly hour? Well it’s mid-afternoon for me, so I am such a person. 😉

Amnerys made it official:

Around 4:30 AM (PDT) this morning, some EQII servers experienced outage and connection issues. The problems were resolved within an hour, and the team at SOE is looking deeper into the issue.

We apologize for the inconvenience. All servers appear to be running fine now.

Game Update 57 added an interesting new UI feature. As you gain adventure levels, newer spells are now supposed to replace the previous tier’s spell on your hotbar. For instance, if you have Roped Shot III and you gain the requisite level, Roped Shot IV would replace it on your hotbar.

However two things are happening.

• First, the new spells acquired from leveling are replacing random existing spells on your hotbars.

• Second, Master spells are being replaced by Apprentice spells of the next tier. This is ok in the 30’s and possibly 40’s, but beyond this level range, Apprentice spells will almost always be a downgrade over the previous tier’s Master.

Here is Gninja‘s response on this issue:

There is actually a bug currently where spells and/or abilities are replacing the wrong versions. We are looking into it. The way it should work is it should only replace it if it actually a higher quality spell of the same type.

I file this change under completely unnecessary and possibly more confusing than the old method. I’ve always sequestered new Apprentice spells into their own hotbar until such point that I can login my sage, alchemist, or jeweler to craft Expert (Adept III) versions of those spells.

There have been reports from several players that trying out EQ2X has wiped out all their entitlements on EQ2 Live with their Station Access account.  I have two Station Access accounts myself and have tried EQ2X on both of them.  One is fine, the other no longer has access to anything but the base game.  Zoltaroth wrote on the EQ2Live Forums:

We are looking into what is going on.  I am going to be in touch with the people who PMed me via PMs.

Until the account gets fixed, it’s as if you bought the base game at launch and never bought anything after that.  You can’t even get into the TSO zones because it doesn’t think you bought that expansion.

Hopefully this will be fixed soon.  Until then, if you have a Station Access account and want to try out EQ2X, be aware that you’re rolling the dice.  Everything may be fine but there is a chance that your live account will be locked out of everything once you’re done on the EQ2X server.

It seems that ever since the new Inquisitor trainer in Qeynos prematurely offered the ability to reset any class to Inquisitor, players have let their imaginations run wild with the possibilities of switching between classes without losing their AAs, completed quests, etc. Imagine a character who has completed all 24 epic weapon quests!

Just to nip this idea in the bud, EQ2 Lead Designer Rich Waters has clarified further the purpose of this quest — to aid Tradeskillers who made a hasty choice on their adventure class and have not significantly advanced that character.

Xelgad has responded to a detailed thread on Illusionist Class Issues:

Hey guys, long time no see! We got some good feedback at Fan Faire which I wanted to share.
I agree that Time Warp ended up being more annoying than it is fun or rewarding. Unfortunately, it was one of those things that looked okay on paper but didn’t work in practice. We have it changed internally so that there is no longer an immunity timer associated with the spell, and it now grants the Illusionist the buff as well as the target. This should be coming to the test servers with (or before) GU58. If you want, you can just macro the spell to a group member and spam it as a self-buff, but I envision some players being more tactical with it. You can even spam it on yourself, but you don’t get double benefit – unless, of course, you cast it on your pet. We also changed the icon so that the warning icon looks different than the actual buff, and the buff now looks like the Tsunami (Monk ability) icon, so that it shouldn’t be shared with any other mage abilities.

Some of your other issues, such as buffs providing no benefit due to being capped, will be addressed with the upcoming expansion. There are some other changes that we hope to make before the expansion, but I can’t promise anything yet.

Please feel free to continue to post constructive feedback.

In response to a detailed list of issues with the Monk Class, Xelgad has provided an unexpected commentary:

Thanks for the up to date thread!

I can’t give an ETA, but we are looking for ways to make Monks more viable in AE-oriented content, especially with heroic content in mind. If the change benefits both brawlers, all the better. In that light, Crane Twirl would seem like a great candidate for a change, but I think the advancement is, at worst, balanced compared to other alternate advancements in the slot, and forcing everyone to take that one would not be an ideal solution. We may end up bitting the bullet on that, but a class ability change similar to the changes planned for Recapture and Plant would probably be a better way to go. If you have ideas for changes like that to the monk class, we’d love to hear them.

Again, we’re very busy here with all the mechanics changes we’re trying to get live and the upcoming expansion so I can’t give an exact time frame but Monks are on our radar.

You can provide your feedback on Monk issues and Xelgad’s response in the EQ2 Forums thread entitled Monk Changes Discussion.

Xelgad has posted a flurry of responses to specific class issues today.

This one, in regards to Critical Heals which have been removed from all fighters. For some fighter classes, critical heals might have been overpowered, but for Paladins (joshingly referred to as Healadins), losing all crititical heals has had class altering effects not only in solo situations (which this nerf was intended to fix) but in group and raid setups.

We’ve been hearing about some ranger love for about 3 expansions now, but at Fan Faire, we heard the first concrete info. Xelgad has elaborated on just what we can expect in an update falling between GU57 and GU58 (hopefully 4-6 weeks from now:

Greetings, Mighty Forces!

AE Auto-Attack and Flurry are indeed on the way for bows. We’re also removing the 20% damage penalty for bows, and we’re increasing the damage rating on all 81-90 bows (along with throwing weapons) by about 10%. The intent is to allow you guys to get full benefit from buffs and gear, not to make the class entirely focused on Auto-Attack.

You know how you get more auto-attack damage from your melee weapons in many cases than from your bow? These changes should fix that, unless your melee weapons are simply of much higher quality than your bow. At most, your auto-attack may jump from ~20% of your parse up to ~30% on raids, but I’d be surprised if many people end up with it higher than that.

Thanks for all of your feedback.

You can join the discussion on this issue in the thread What’s this all about? (bow changes) on the EQ2 Forums.

Marks of Manaar are the heroic armor/jewelry/weapon-buying “currency” of Sentinel’s Fate. Much like the Void Shards of The Shadow Odyssey, Marks of Manaar allow players to buy baseline armor, jewelry, weapons, charms, cloaks, etc. although those players should continue to run dungeons in the hopes of finding rarer, more powerful items.

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.”

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.

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…