Game Update 56 next Tuesday will include a new scenario specifically for the PvP servers. Antonica and Commonlands will become home to Warfields, a scheduled PvP campaign with specific rewards. Here’s PvP developer Olihin‘s update notes:

PvP WARFIELDS

• Antonica and Commonlands have once again become hotbeds of conflict! Will your lands be overrun or will your forces prevail against the siege?

• Warfields are Good vs. Evil faction based.

• Rewards will be Discord Tokens with a higher quantity to the winning team.

• The event will stagger between Antonica and 2 hours later in Commonlands and last for 30 minutes.

• The Antonica and Commonlands zones have been CHANGED to 10 level ranges from 4 to allow a wider range of skirmishes.

An interesting topic has popped up on the EQ2 Forums asking the question:

Is there Raid Progression for Small Guilds?

The Shadow Odyssey ended up offering many choices for Casual Raid Guilds. Sentinel’s Fate has not been quite so generous with such progression choices. Game Update 56 will add two raid zones, but both are intended for 24-person raids. We compare the expansions in today’s commentary.

Tired of getting a swift kick or a punch in the mouth from the surly and unwelcome Thexian and Dreadnaught goons occupying parts of Freeport?

Did you know…

• Killing Thexian and Dreadnaught “guards” in Freeport does not affect your faction with Freeport?
• If you kill enough Thexians and Dreadnaughts (about 10 of each), they will grow afraid of you and STOP WITH THE BEATINGS ALREADY?

Fun Facts from the EQ2 Forums

The Underfoot Depths from EQ2Players:

Halas Reborn, scheduled to launch at the end of May, brings us two new raid zones. The first of which is the Underfoot Depths, accessed via The Hole.

Brett “Timetravelling” Scheinert gave EQ2Players a brief interview about this new raid zone.

Players have cleared all of Sentinel’s Fate’s normal-mode encounters and all but one of the challenge-mode encounters…just in time for us to add 20 more normal-mode encounters and eight more challenge-mode encounters (which practically doubles the raid content available at level 90). I am very excited at the chance for players to test their mettle against both the Underfoot Depths and the new Icy Keep raid!

Game Update 56 will contain minor tweaks to Betrayal and changing one’s Citizenship.

Changing citizenship is being streamlined, as some cities require more busywork from players than others to switch between cities of the same alignment. Contacting one of the new Ambassadors in each city is your first step.

No changes to the actual betrayal quests are being made (changing alignment ) are being as far as we can tell, but an Ambassador NPC is being added in every city who must be contacted prior to deliberating the Betrayal process. You can read more about these Betrayal changes which have been extensively documented by Domino at the EQ2 Forums.

These changes are likely an additional safeguard to reduce the number of customer service tickets resulting from accidental betrayal.

From EQ2Players:

One of the exciting features coming with Halas Reborn is the revamp of the travel system. Salim “Silius” Grant has made traveling throughout Norrath smoother and took a few minutes to explain in detail some of the changes that adventurers will see.

Here are your hotfix notes for May 12, 2010:

ITEMS

• Summoning Brace of the Wyrmkind now properly adds Molten Carnage IV to the caster’s pet.

THE HOLE

The following mobs will no longer attack you if you have faction points equal to or above -39,999 points with them. The faction point requirement should now be consistent with other standard mobs under the same faction.

• “an animated watcher”

• “a disheveled refugee”

• The “Caetaxian dominator” located on the fallen pillar bridge in the Old Paineel section of the zone.

• Killing “disheveled refugee” should now have an effect on your faction status with “Caertaxian Legion” as well as factions that are against them.

Players were surprised when servers went down at midnight PST last night for a Hotfix. This hotfix is targeted at Performance issues which continue to dog EQ2. From the EQ2 Forums by Rothgar:

Tonight’s hotfix introduced a few changes that have been on the test server for a few weeks. I’d like to hear your feedback to see if any of these performance issues have gotten better after tonight.

First, we made a change to the zoning processes that should hopefully speed it up. In addition we’ve extended our logging in this area to help us better troubleshoot long zoning times. If you’re someone who occasionally hits long zoning times, let us know if you see an improvement after tonight.

Second, we’ve made some changes to the game servers related to the spell system. This should hopefully improve server lag but the amount can be difficult to quantify. Let us know how your lag situation looks after tonight.

These are only the first changes to come. We will continue to look at performance improvements over the next few updates.

Thanks!

As for why the downtime happened at midnight instead of at the usual 6 or 7am time, the cause is related to the Free Armbands promotion which we’ll be posting about momentarily. Rothgar again with the great communication:

Sorry for the miscommunication about the downtime. There was a last minute change to avoid two downtimes in a single day.

Due to a marketing promotion that begins tonight at midnight, the servers needed to be rebooted. Rather than taking them down again at 7am for the hotfix, it was decided that we’d update the servers with the hotfix during the midnight downtime.

So in essence, you’ve been saved a downtime.

This information was part of our Game Update 56 post on May 4th. However considering the importance of its content, we have reprinted it as a separate article and rewritten it for clarity.

GU56 Travel Revamp

Travel in Norrath has been substantially consolidated. Changes and bugfixes continue to be applied on Test, so this information may change before May 25th.

Worldwide Travel Revamp

• Players may travel from and to nearly every zone in Norrath by using the Worldwide Globe system, which have consolidated all existing bells and gained many unexpected destinations.
• Flying carpets, boats, and airships are now entirely optional means of travel. The destinations offered by these modes of transport have been added to the Worldwide Globe system.
• Individual mariner’s bells which connect to only one or two zones (i.e. Everfrost, Lavastorm, Isle of Mara, etc.) have been removed.
• Travel within cities is maintained through the City Mariner’s Bell.
• Worldwide Gryffons continue to provide travel between Butcherblock Mountains, Neriak (Darklight Wood), and Gorowyn (Timorous Deep), and have gained a new destination — New Halas (Frostfang Sea).
• Druid Rings no longer require players to have visited them prior to use. Rumor has it, a live or prelude event will rebuild additional druid rings and connect them, allowing travel between the Rings.
• Wizard Spires, as rebuilt in a previous Game Update, continue to provide access to over a dozen interconnected wizard spires. With GU56, six additional Wizard Spire destinations have been added that players can travel directly to (previously these spires could only be reached with the help of a Wizard or Warlock).
• All Call of Qeynos, Call of the Overlord, Call of Kelethin, etc. spells have had their cast time reduced to 10 seconds.

Intrazone Travel Revamp

• Sokokar posts within the 4 Kunark zones no longer require having visited each post prior to using them and the sokokar item requirement has been eliminated (players must have completed either the tradeskill or adventure sokokar quest).
• A Gryffon Tower has been added to the Gorowyn Beach so that players may easily reach the newbie area.
• A Gryffon hitching post has been added to the Butcherblock Mountains dock so that players may easily reach the cliffs.
• Gryffon Towers in Thundering Steppes and Nek Forest no longer require your assistance in gathering gryffon eggs before allowing travel.
• Flying Carpets within Sinking Sands and Pillars of Flame have learned all of the intra-zone routes available to them.
• Horses have been added to the Steamfont Mountains, Zek, Feerrott, Enchanted Lands, Everfrost.
• Gryffon Towers in Greater Faydark and Nektulos Forest have been updated with additional destinations.
• Guild Hall decorators will be interested to note that the various (now redundant) Mariner’s Bell amenities have been given unique appearances as a player choice. Choices include a boat captain npc in front of a large steering wheel, and a sculpture of the Worldwide Globe item.

Performance Motivation?

For the last 2 1/2 months, players have been reporting severe delays when traveling from one zone to another. Players have reported 20-30 minute delays when switching from zone to zone, a process normally taking 20-30 seconds. So it seems likely that these changes are being made for player convenience, or to put nearly every zone in the game into the reach of players with just 1 zoning screen!

EQ2Players is highlighting another team member, this time Jeff Jonas, player artist for EverQuest II.

My role on the EQII team is to create objects that our player characters use, wear, or ride. I am known as a “wearables” guy. A project like this needs thousands of items to make it fun and exciting. Wearables run the gamut from Barbarian helmets, to collector’s capes, and full vampire armor sets, to wieldables such as swords and staffs, to rideables like the hover discs I have created. Other wearables can be backpacks, or armbands.

What’s your favourite thing that you’ve done for EQII?

To keep things fresh we have incorporated ways to streamline and add to our character templates. Since we support over 50 male and female player characters, we need to be careful to change our templates. One way we have made things more interesting is our “snap-on” system that uses offset to add objects to existing templates.

The newest exciting technology we implemented was designed by Bill Yeatts, and coded by Brian Belfield. This cool system allows our backpacks to have items swivel and bounce around like real objects kind of do- without additional animator time. This allowed me to make a few popular backpack items such as the Frostfell backpacks of last year, and the latest Brewmeister barrel backpacks. Other backpacks are coming for other tradeskills as well. It’s a lot of fun to see the items bouncing along in our test viewer.

Do you have any special (or just super fun) projects you’re working on now for EQII?

I reckon the new backpacks I alluded to above are the most exciting things upcoming in my work path. Right now I’m focusing on warm garments for certain icy areas, and tinkering with some other items. EQII always has something interesting lined up for me down the trail.

You can read the complete interview as well as see additional screen shots of character artwork that Jeff has created at EQ2Players.

The tireless Niami Denmother of EQ2Traders has turned in another great preview, this time New Halas.

Free Item

Players logging into EQ2 in the days immediately following the launch of Game Update 56: Halas Reborn (specifically May 25 ~ 28) will receive a free item, a Frostpaw Kitten.

A new website has been added to EQ2Players with the skinny on Game Update 56: Halas Reborn, introducing the player city of Halas, as well as a new character starting area with level 1-20 content. Halas is essentially a neutral-good aligned city, as evil-aligned characters can visit and complete most of the same quests.

Game Update 56 includes substantial features and changes:

• Halas Reborn — new player city with new housing options (2, 4, and 6 room houses)
• Frostfang Sea — new level 1~20 starting area leading to Halas
• The Underfoot Depths — A new x4 level 90 raid zone added to The Hole
• Icy Keep: Retribution — A new x4 level 90 raid zone similar in theme to Permafrost and the Icy Keep.
• Storyteller System — Major quest lines within EQ2 which have widespread impacts on the characters and world of Norrath can now be followed in the Storyteller system.
• Druid Ring Live Event — An in-game event to rebuild some of the Druid Rings throughout Norrath which have fallen to neglect. This questline is slated to resolve some of the mysteries regarding the forthcoming Velious expansion.

Visit the EQ2Players GU56: Halas Reborn page for numerous details and
screen shots of this coming update!

Raid Targets in Sentinel’s Fate continue to receive nips and tucks in their behavior and strategies. Today’s change to the 3 Sages fight is not without controversy. Check out the discussion thread on EQ2 Forums.

Here are your Hotfix Notes for May 4th, 2010:

THE PALACE OF ROEHN THEER

• 3 Sage Encounter (Challenge Mode)- If the incorrect character class (according to the Idolic Stone that sage possesses) keeps agro on that sage for more than 3 secs after that sage has lost it’s prismatic sphere, that character will be hit by a bolt of slaying.

SANCTUM OF THE SCALEBORN

• The Trial of the Reaver no longer requires a Trial Stone to start. The statue that starts the event, “Rites of the Scaleborn,” now becomes usable right after it spawns.

The Halas Prelude event is now available on Live servers. Currently, this quest is only available from Guides (a sanctioned group of volunteer players), GMs, CMs, and other SOE staff. Stay tuned to open chat channels!

It’s a brief quest, dealing with the rediscovery of Halas. The quest rewards 2 books. We’ll post a link to a writeup of the quest soon.

How to Get the Quest

From Domino:

The Halas Prelude Event will initially be given out by Guides and SOE staff until shortly before the update launch.

Although there are no guides on PvP and exchange servers, the CS and Community staff are able to give out the quest on these servers. So keep your eyes open, you never know who might be around!

The last week before Game Update 56 launch, NPCs will be added to give out the quest on all live servers, since it’s not possible for guides, CS, and community to catch every last person who may want the quest.

New Halas Livin’

We are following New Halas (both the level 1-20 starting content, and as a new player city) on Test, and player comments about both the newbie experience, and how Halas works as a full-fledged city.

Living up to the  expectations and nostalgia of EQ1 veterans was an impossible task, but there has been a raft-load of comments on the EQ2 forums (and presumably through /feedback) and the art team is making some much-appreciated changes. First impressions of New Halas have regarded the buildings (inside and out) as some of the most impressive and realistic in the game, but the number and size of buildings both claustrophobic and sparse. Hopefully with the addition of more NPCs, adjustment of structures, and other accessories, the city can be given a more ‘lived in’ feel.

From Kaitheel on the EQ2 Forums:

The city of New Halas is under further construction and more NPCs are showing up. In the coming updates you will see more and more ambient life, as well as a few more merchants around the city. And with the addition of new buildings, some of the current city life will be moved around a bit.

Cronyn has jumped into the fray again with some further details about why the Isle of Refuge is being removed in GU56:

Heya folks.  I wanted to clear a couple of things up really fast, if I may.

As I said, we’re not abandoning Freeport and Qeynos themselves.  The existing content that is there will not be different with this change, and we are planning even more things for the cities going forward.  Players with citizenship currently in either city will retain it – we’re not removing housing, guild halls, the suburbs, or the quests that exist there.  They will continue to be hubs for live events, and we are still hoping to add even more reasons to have you visit the two major cities of our game.

For those who do not have citizenship in these cities, we’re making the path to changing citizenship much clearer.  If you want to change your citizenship from one of the starting cities to Freeport or Qeynos, you can speak with one of the <Change of Citizenship> NPC’s, who will offer information and get you started on your paperwork to switch over.  From there, you can use the new travel system to make your way to the city of your choice, then follow the steps to change your citizenship.  The newbie content within the cities themselves will remain, so you should still have access to that content, if you choose to use it.

Also, just to be clear, there is a lore reason for this as well.  The decision to turn off the islands is a functional one, to be sure, but it is also supported by storyline, which is something I am hoping to start giving out to you here soon.  There are NPC’s in place in both cities who should actually be handing out the first clues right now on Test, so if you’d like to start piecing together what is happening, you should be able to get started.

As far as removing content – yes, the Isle of Refuge are being disabled from character select.  However, we consistently add new content to the game, and will be continuing to do so – EverQuest 2 is a much larger game now than it has ever been, and we are looking forward to expanding and adding to the world even more.

The notes for upcoming Game Update 56 included this notation:

Many rare drops from the heroic Sentinel’s Fate Zones are now available by speaking to Kaliba Des’Sers in Moonfield Hamlet!

Once Game Update 56 was patched onto the Test Server, we were provided screen shots of some of this loot:

New Fabled Loot Vendor on Test

What’s on the Menu?

While a similar vendor was available during the Shadow Odyssey expansion, 150 void shards only gave you access to the most common Fabled drops from each zone (with the exception of the Mistmoore Battle Drums).

So this time around, the vendor is picking up all the current rare Fabled loot, but only because more powerful Fabled loot is being added to these zones at the same time. From Kander:

All of the current rare drops for the heroic zones have been added to a Manaar merchant for (Game Update) 56.

New rare drops have been also been added to all heroic bosses that will not be on the Manaar merchant. These new rare drops and the old rare drops are on separate tables, so you will have a chance at both.

You can see how a comprehensive Itemization article has been nearly impossible to write. We may resort to a Wiki or collaborative article on Itemization taking feedback from EQ2Wire readers.

On Tuesday, 27 April 2010, this tidbit made it into the update notes for test:

Mounts will now be temporarily suspended while in combat.

Basically, in outside zones, mounts would disapear as soon as you enter combat and re-appear a few seconds after combat ended.  This had a general negative response on the official EQ2 Forums and led to speculation on how this would effect buffs.  Gninja responded with some clarification on the matter:

You would not lose any stats or anything you would have normally had your character will just no longer be visually mounted during combat the buff remains. Think of it like when you enter water on a mount.

This led to a few pages of responses, mostly negative, about this change.  Many people were asking for a new /hidemount command. EQ2 Senior Producer  SmokeJumper decided to chime in with some additional info:

Well, I guess it’s time to stick my head in the dragon’s mouth. Here goes nuthin’.

It seems we’ll be parting with two islands by May’s end. And while we’ll still be able to catch  John Locke, Jack, Hurley, Sawyer, and Kate in syndication, the Qeynos and Freeport starting islands seem destined for a more permanent fate. We are providing continuing (hopefully not excessive) coverage of the impending removal of the EQ2 starting islands.

Links to Isle of Refuge

I have done some Internet Archive and Google searches to try to find Writeups and history of the original Isle of Refuge quests. Here’s what I found:

• LISTEN to the Isle of Refuge/Queen’s Colony/Outpost of the Overlord theme music
• Read an old EQ2 Zam writeup about Isle of Refuge (on the Boat)
• Read an old writeup about Crafting on the Isle of Refuge
• Read an old writeup about Garven Tralk and the Isle of Refuge (Fighters)
• Read an old writeup about Collection Quests on the Isle of Refuge
• Read an old writeup about Other Quests on the Isle of Refuge

There seems to be some confusion in the In Testing Feedback thread regarding the removal of Qeynos and Freeport as starting choices. I stand by the original article I posted, but some clarification is worth mentioning.

Qeynos and Freeport Going Away?

Qeynos and Freeport are not being removed as cities. Furthermore to my knowledge, none of the level 6-20 quests in these city zones and surrounding suburbs are going away. Although further testing on the Test Server will be needed to confirm this.

Players wishing to experience the Qeynos and Freeport level 6-20 content would need to create a character in Kelethin or Halas, Neriak or Gorowyn and arrange travel to Qeynos or Freeport to do those quest lines.

It is also worth pointing out that changing Citizenship between Qeynos, Kelethin, and New Halas, or between Freeport, Neriak, and Gorowyn, is approximately a 15-30 minute process. It’s a single quest or short series of quests. It is nothing like Betrayal. Nor is changing your Citizenship required to play this content.

EQ2Wire would prefer if the islands are not removed, but de-emphasized from the Character Creation screen, with more options added on the Departure Boat to port the player to level 6-20 content in all 6 starting cities.

We stand by our belief that removing content is not necessary to improve the experience for new players.

In February, former EQ2 Senior Producer Alan “Brenlo” Crosby created a thread “What is the Golden Path?” It included this provocative passage:

The golden path is the first step in a larger revamp of our new player experience.   We took a look at the starting areas, other than Qeynos and Freeport as we plan to move away from those, and reworked content so that it had a better flow.  We wanted the quests in Darklight, Timorous and Greater Fay, to give you a better progression path.

When asked in the EQ2 ZAM Dev Chat to clarify this position, Brenlo responded further:

We plan to only allow new characters to start in the newer player areas. Timorous, Greater Fay, Darklight and soon Halas. The new player experience in Qeynos and Freeport are just not up to snuff anymore and do not provide as solid an experience when you enter the game for the first time.

Any hopes that this change would be canceled with the introduction of new EQ2 Senior Producer Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson, were dashed with his indication that he would “not be changing anything that was short-term” (short-term plans). So it seems this change was destined to go in one way or the other. Here are today’s Test Update notes which will not apply to Live Servers until Game Update 56 in mid- to late-May:

Test Update April / 27 / 2010
GENERAL

Qeynos and Freeport have been disabled as starting cities.

Today’s hotfix:

ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENTS

• Fiery Blast and Rhythmic Overture should no longer apply extra damage if cast by multiple people at the same time.

ITEMS

• Many items that had nude appearances have been corrected.

PERAH’CELSIS’ ABOMINABLE LABORATORY

• Arkatanthis’ benthic warlord adds will try and pick a more balanced group of 3 players when they spawn during the challenge mode encounter.

The nude appearance items were caused by a bug that slipped in last week which caused female characters to appear to wear nothing but pasties in the chest area.  (May want to exercise discretion when viewing that thread since it includes screen shots.)

Leading up to the launch of Game Update 56, there will be a prelude quest “A Vision of Valor” with a storyline leading to the rediscovery of New Halas. When this quest goes live mid-May, before the launch of Game Update 56, you’ll be able to pick it up in one of the home cities.

From Domino on the EQ2 Forums:

You will find NPCs in North Qeynos (at the temple), West Freeport (near the inn), Neriak (by the entrance), Kelethin (near Bayden Cauldthorn), and Gorowyn (at the dock) have a prelude quest to offer.

As this content is currently on Test, if you are interested, you may test this content out, as well as New Halas, on the Test Server.

Lessing (known on EQ2Flames as mafoe) has taken screen snapshots of the FABLED loot offered by the new Vendor being added in Game Update 56.

Here are links to these screen snapshots:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_XvWh6xG4qE0/S9LAenf-rcI/AAAAAAAAAKQ/2KuKWlshkgY/EQ2_000868.jpg

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_XvWh6xG4qE0/S9LAe1IsMHI/AAAAAAAAAKU/Ttdtjvu6500/EQ2_000869.jpg

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_XvWh6xG4qE0/S9LAfTEriRI/AAAAAAAAAKY/MaEJl-oV8RM/EQ2_000870.jpg

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_XvWh6xG4qE0/S9LAfsymb7I/AAAAAAAAAKc/HmsbcyoJvm0/EQ2_000871.jpg

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_XvWh6xG4qE0/S9LAgXpQbpI/AAAAAAAAAKg/0g0DOHH5GSk/EQ2_000872.jpg