Game Update 54 “Will of a Tyrant” Trailer

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance

SOE have put out a pretty cool trailer for GU54: Will of a Tyrant update going live December 9th. Check it out:

Will of a Tyrant will contain the second prelude event leading up to the Sentinel’s Fate expansion arriving mid-February. The first event involved Thumore D’armer and was active during Thanksgiving week.

Also, on December 10th we will see the launch of Frostfell!!

Back soon with previews of the Sentinel’s Fate beta and hopefully that Sentinel’s Fate Collector’s Edition in-game mount. All rumors point to it being a lynx, and if they do it right, I might finally sell my Carpet of El’Khazi. No slobbery mounts for me, but a sleek lynx would rock! 🙂

   

Producer’s Letter: EQII Dev Team Update

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Commentary, Expansion News, Game Updates & Maintenance

Class Balance

As many readers of EQ2 Forums and EQ2Flames have sussed out, Chris Kozak (known on the forums and in-game as Aeralik) stepped down in his position of Game Mechanics (class balance, mechanics, etc.) in early November. Today’s Producer’s Letter announces his replacement, the scrapping of the unpopular Gear Scaling system and Fighter Revamp, and the rescheduling of Shaders 3.0 to Game Update #55:

Alan “Brenlo” Crosby, Senior Producer of EQ2, has posted a Producer’s Letter for December 2009:

Hello Norrathians!

Lots going on in the EQII world!  We are just about to release our next update, Will of a Tyrant and couldn’t be more excited!  With this update you are going to see a few hundred lingering bugs fixed in EQII.  Some of these bugs date back to launch and are being knocked out before we gear up for the expansion.  In fact, we have taken to calling this update our “bug bash” as we pulled out our hammers and smashed them into oblivion.  As for content in this update, it might feel a little lighter than recent updates however there is a reason for that. Actually, there are a couple of reasons.  The first is that it was a shorter development cycle for us, with only about two months of time between this update and last.  The second reason is that we are starting to shift many of our resources over to expansion work as it gets closer to its release.  In addition, we have some as yet to be announced surprises coming.  They’re some rather large features, which we hope will excite you.  More on those in the months ahead.

One feature we have been receiving a lot of questions about is the Item Ratings system, which some of you may know as item degradation.  I know that since it was announced there has been a great deal of confusion over the system and what it is intended to accomplish.  After many internal discussions, and listening to feedback from you, we have decided not to move forward with this system.  We are exploring alternatives that would allow us to continue to grow items and allow your gear to advance in meaningful ways, without giving the impression that you are going backward.

Another long announced and long awaited feature has been the rework on the “fighter revamp”. This is another project that is going to fall by the wayside as we now focus on small changes, rather than sweeping revamps.  Fighters are going to see some love here in the near future, thanks to Xelgad, who is taking on some of the class balance responsibilities. Other classes will be seeing improvements and tweaks as we take a hard look at how each class performs in solo, group and raid play.  Our goal is to make sure every class has a role and will be wanted in groups and raids, as well as being able to successfully solo.

Shader 3.0 work is pretty much complete at this point, with all of the shaders being converted to the new system.  That being said, we will not be releasing it with Will of a Tyrant.  We are not seeing the performance increases that we had hoped so we will continue to optimize and tweak until they provide not only a visual boost, but a performance boost as well.  We do not want to take a step backwards in performance just to make things look shiny.  Currently it looks as though this feature will land with the next game update, on expansion launch day.

I know you are all excited about the upcoming expansion, or at least I hope you are.  We are very excited as a lot of hard work has gone into making Sentinel’s Fate.  We still have a lot to do and the time for release is getting close!  So close in fact, that you can now sign up for beta which should begin admitting folks in less than two weeks. You can sign up on the EQII players site, so if you are interested in joining in, make sure you sign up soon.

Lots going on,

See you soon in Norrath and Merry Frostfell.

The EQII Team

Alan “Brenlo” Crosby

We can only assume that Aeralik’s departure was fueled by the aborted Fighter Revamp, unpopular Gear Rating/Scaling system, and untimely Avatar Loot nerfs (gear he designed and submitted in October 2008 was identified as overpowered in February 2009, and then finally substantially nerfed in August after players had invested many months of game time acquiring it).

Several classes in EQ2 have endured major shortcomings and balance issues, some all the way back to the Rise of Kunark expansion in November 2007. Druids and summoners have been described as outright “broken” by many players. These issues have received little attention, allowing as much as 2 years to elapse without necessary changes.

Class balance received very little focus in 2009, with no significant fixes in Game Updates 52, 53, or 54, even as the game has gotten more complex, raid encounters gotten more demanding, and groups have become more selective about which classes and players they accept. Tolerance for players who have elected to play a class that doesn’t have the same tools for curing, healing, tanking, or DPSing, as other classes have dropped to a point where players are routinely asked to give up and “re-roll”.

With this challenging stage set, and a frantic 2 1/2 months before the expansion, we see Xelgad stepping into this hotseat position. He has not been very visible on the forums, but we understand he has already been hard at work sorting through the changes we’ll see in Sentinel’s Fate.

We are cautiously optimistic that each class will finally be given the tools necessary to do their job. We are hopeful that a new approach of subtle changes, picking-and-choosing the best aspects of what was previewed at Fan Faire, along with Player Feedback, can be used to solve some long-standing problems. Of course, only time will tell what his vision of the game is.

We will continue to provide up-to-the-minute coverage of the upcoming EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate expansion with a critical, but fair eye for detail.

Flawless Achievements

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance, Itemization, Raiding

A new Achievement has been added for Raiders who are able to clear the original Shadow Odyssey raid mobs without dying (earning a Flawless Victory at least once on each mob). These are some pretty amazing awards, commensurate with the effort required to get them.

flawless_charm_of_combat flawless_symbol_of_stealth
flawless_gem_of_healing flawless_stone_of_destruction
  • \aITEM 92894355 -1176837326:[Flawless Charm of Combat]\/a
  • \aITEM -625928716 1415794346:[Flawless Symbol of Stealth]\/a
  • \aITEM 1132459187 -1244409981:[Flawless Gem of Healing]\/a
  • \aITEM 1381090014 420207800:[Flawless Stone of Destruction]\/a

Game Update 54 & Sentinel’s Fate Beta

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance

Game Update 54 — December 8th

We are now expecting Game Update #54 — Will of a Tyrant to go live on Wednesday, December 9th. EQ2 Forums Announcement

Game Update 54 contains:

  • Over 300 bugfixes
  • 40 slot crafted bags and strongboxes
  • choice of Melee or Ranged default AutoAttack
  • added tiles and house items to the Moonlight Enchantments event (20th of every month)

Game Update 54 also see the second prelude event leading up to the Sentinel’s Fate expansion. You can read the EQ2Players writeup on this Attack on the Crowns event, and when the event goes live, head over to EQ2 ZAM which already has a full walkthrough of the entire event.

In Game Update 54, we’ll also see the conclusion of the Spires event. It is currently unclear whether the Spires Merchants will be sticking around after GU54 goes live, so go ahead and run all your quests and buy everything off the vendor you wanted to buy.

Niami at EQ2Traders has a great writeup of everything in Game Update 54, check it out!

Sentinel’s Fate Beta

In other news, the Sentinel’s Fate expansion Beta registration process has begun. To sign up, visit EQ2Players.com and fill out the NDA and form. Sources indicate that the first Beta invites will go out mid-December, perhaps earlier. Currently the /beta command is not switched on on live servers.

And we have seen reports that players with a month-to-month or 30 day card subscriptions are currently not able to sign up for the Beta. They’ve been advised to contact Customer Service.

More news as we have it.

Start Anywhere

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance

Xalmat brings us this news from the Test server:

On Test, they opened up starting cities to all races that can be of that alignment. That means:

If you pick a good race, you can start in Qeynos or Kelethin.

If you pick an evil race, you can start in Neriak, Freeport, or Gorowyn.

If you pick a neutral race, you can start in any city.

In summary, the new starting locations for races:

  • Fae can now start in Qeynos (Willow Wood)
  • Frogloks and Halflings in Kelethin
  • Gnomes and Half Elves in Neriak
  • Barbarians, Erudites, Humans, and Kerrans in Kelethin and Neriak
  • Arasai in Freeport (Longshadow Alley) and Gorowyn
  • Sarnak in Freeport (Big Bend) and Neriak
  • Dark Elves, Iksar, Ogre, Ratonga, and Troll in Gorowyn

That will probably also mean, when New Halas is released, Dwarf, Fae, Froglok, Halfling, High Elf, Wood Elf, Barbarian, Erudite, Gnome, Half Elf, Human, and Kerra will be able to start there as well.

Game Update 54 Crafting & Event Preview @ EQTraders

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Art, Appearance, Housing, Game Updates & Maintenance, Live Events, Tradeskill

Niami DenMother and Kaisha of EQTraders.com can always be counted upon to provide excellent coverage of Crafting and Live Events.

There are 3 articles worth checking out, and they are still being updated as more items are discovered, so be sure to check them out again at the end of the month to see anything news! From Niami:

Check out the EQ2TC GU54 Crafting Overview for more details – it already has the furniture shots for the first City Festival event (clothing shots will be incoming as time permits), as well as a page showing both the returning and the new Glacial Furniture from the Icy Keep vendor in Frostfell.  Mmmm, love that bed!

and a word about the Quellthulian Spires event which will end with the launch of Game Update 54 slated for early December:

Finish your work on the spires event now, get your shopping done, earn your title, finish up any incomplete spires, etc. When GU54 goes live, you will no longer be able to quest and earn tokens.

Note that, by popular demand,  Titles were added to the Quellthulian Spires Merchant, but these are still only on Test. Hopefully these updated Merchants are available on the live servers long enough for everyone who is sitting on a stack of Tokens to get them.

Shader Shader Shader

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Art, Appearance, Housing, Game Updates & Maintenance

We’ve been closely monitoring the progress on the development of Shaders 3.0. This is the graphical revamp which will improve the lighting, reflections, and other effects on 99% of the textures in the game. So far, we know that Shaders 3.0 is running very well on certain systems, but has significant performance problems on other systems. As a result, it’s not yet on Test, and may not be released until after Game Update 54.

In response some pithy comments that Shaders 3.0 has slipped to the February expansion and will now be used as a selling point of said expansion, Rothgar has chimed in with this update:

This is not the case.  In fact, we can’t really use something as a selling point for the expansion when everyone gets it for free without buying the expansion.

We’ve been doing some internal benchmarking on the Shader 3.0 implementation and we still have a few major challenges with the lighting system.  The new shader system looks great and it performs very well in certain circumstances.  However, there are still common situations that players would run into where the framerate takes a significant dip compared to Shader 1.0.  We know why and we know how to fix it.  So that’s the good news.  The bad news is that it will take a little more time to do it right.

The lesson we’ve learned here is that we shouldn’t communicate a release date on such a large project, so far from completion.  But we’ve also learned from past issues that we don’t want to release something that doesn’t meet our own expectations.  We’ll certainly keep you informed in regards to our progress.

More news as we have it.

City Festivals on Test

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Commentary, DGC Wants Feedback, Game Updates & Maintenance, Live Events

Understandably, some players are taking a look at Game Update 54 (aka the Great Bug Stomp) and not seeing a lot of new content. Part of the issue is, normally, we would be just 2 weeks away from an entirely new expansion at this point. However Sentinel’s Fate won’t hit until February. Also, it is now unclear just when we can expect Shaders 3.0, although I’m hopeful that we’ll get it as an early Christmas present.

Of course, we have Frostfell 2009 to look forward to this December. If this year has proven anything, it is that live events get bigger and bigger, with significant new content each year (next year, I figure it will take all 20 days just to complete all the old and new content of Nights of the Dead!!). Seasonal and recurring live events (eg. Moonlight Enchantments) have been extremely popular, so a lot of attention is being focused on them.

And now it turns out that in response to many complaints that Guild Halls and other game design decisions have “emptied” the home cities, a new recurring event is being introduced in Norrath: City Festivals.

From Kaitheel‘s announcement:

The Far Seas Trading Company is proud to introduce a traveling festival for all to participate in! When this event goes live, a different city will be chosen to host a week long event, once each month. Gorowyn, Neriak, Kelethin and Freeport will each get their chance to host their version of the event. On Test and Test Copy the great city of Qeynos is the first to find the traveling caravan outside it’s gates in Antonica. Adventurers will find new quests, collections and rewards, many of which are city specific! And for those of us that don’t want to wait for the festival to reach our city’s gates, we don’t have to. City Tokens are now being given as further reward for completing city writs!

This event should now be available on Test and Test Copy and we’ll report back soon with the details.

Remember, the Spires event is still in-game and some of the rewards from that event may not re-appear in EQ2 for a long time. In addition to the variety of house items, there are some unique items like the Magic Mouth house/guild hall item which can be set up to make announcements to passers-by. And don’t forget in-home teleporters. You buy them in pairs, right-click to name each one, and then you can port between them.

Knapsacks and Wrecked Cities

One perhaps overlooked feature of Game Update 54 is larger Backpacks. The largest size using a rare component (Mahogany) is now a 40 slot backpack with 20% weight reduction. You can read more about these here.

And finally, if you have been on test and wandered through West Freeport, you may have been shocked at what you saw. Norrath is changing in the leadup to Sentinel’s Fate…

Game Update 54 “Will of a Tyrant” Test Notes

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Art, Appearance, Housing, DGC Wants Feedback, Game Updates & Maintenance

We know what’s in Game Update 55, which will coincide with the launch of Sentinel’s Fate in February. It’s the new good starting city of New Halas.

What is Game Update 54?

Game Update 54 (slated for release the first week of December) addresses the most annoying of beasts in EQ2: the bug. That random inconsistency in a item description. That bizarre issue in a quest that makes it impossible to complete. The unexpected roadblock in a zone. The mob that just doesn’t work right.

Game Update 54 contains a gob-smacking 304 BUG FIXES covering both recent and long-standing issues throughout the game. EQ2 developers have addressed hundreds of bugs, large and small, throughout the world of Norrath.

Game Update 54 also officially marks the availability of the EQ2 Streaming Launcher. As we’ve been talking about here on EQ2Wire, this launcher will allow new players to jump into Norrath in as little as 10-15 minutes instead of the current 6-10 hour download.

Not part of today’s Test Update, but soon, we’ll also see the updated Frostfell festivities on Test. I’m looking forward to new quests, new loots, and more things to do.

Shaders?

You’ve probably noticed something conspicuously absent from these Test Update Notes. What I know so far is that Shaders are “done and working” on Ryan’s development box. If only we all had Ryan’s development box, we could have Shaders tomorrow. However, Shaders has to work on all sorts of different configurations. From what I hear, Shaders are still undergoing Performance tuning and I hope to bring you some news soon about the results of this tuning.

Because the list of fixes in Game Update 54 is extensive, please click the Read More link below to view the notes.

Do a Little Dance, Run a Couple Quests

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Art, Appearance, Housing, Expansion News, Game Updates & Maintenance

EQ2 Producer Brenlo has Twittered a couple of interesting sneak peaks into the future of EQ2.

New Dance Moves

First up, if you’ve been thinking that what Barbarians really need is some new dance moves, you might enjoy this new video. No word on when we can expect Guitar Hero: EverQuest edition. 🙂

New Barbarian dance on YouTube

You can safely infer that since this dance is specific to male Barbarians, that EQ2 is getting a bunch of new dances unique to male and female members of each race. I wonder if they will all be pop culture references. 🙂

Quest Helper

And if you have been longing for the Quest Helper window that other MMOs have been enjoying, you’ll be thrilled to know that a Quest Helper is now coming to EQ2 as well. Check out all those stacked up quests on the right side.

quest_helper

It is unknown if this will be part of Game Update 54 or Game Update 55/Sentinel’s Fate in February.

Speaking of Game Update 54, it should be going on Test Server soon enough, and we’ll have those notes for you as soon as possible.

Oct 28 and Nov 3 Hotfixes

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance, Grouping, Itemization

EQ2Wire is back in town and brings you some Hotfix notes.

October 28 Hotfix

ACHIEVEMENTS

  • New Achievements have been added! Test your skill with three new types of Achievements: Flawless Victory, Sense of Urgency and Shorthanded Victory achievements have been added to Rise of Kunark and The Shadow Odyssey zones.

ITEMS

  • Equipment with pet buffs should no longer experience stacking issues which cause the cancellation of multiple pet buffs when removing a single piece of armor.
  • Jewelry items purchased from Lavastorm and the Moors of Ykesha are now heirloom attuneable.
  • Jewelry items acquired with Void Shards is now Heirloom.
  • The “Blanket of Fog” should now be placed as a red puzzle cube then after placed should retain its fog effects.
  • The “Blanket of Fog” should now change into a red puzzle box when turned off by the defogifier.
  • The Necklace of the Plague has been increased to 12% base damage.
  • Hallow’s Gallows now grants ranged crit.
  • Frostburn and Mutagenic Burst now give larger gains when stacked.
  • The appearance of the Ceremonial Robe of the Brethren has been corrected.

MIRAGUL’S PLANAR SHARD

  • Miragul Encounter (Hard mode) : Miragul’s Arcane impairment now only affects spells. Miragul’s Physical Impairment now only affects auto attack and combat arts.

USER INTERFACE

  • The placeholder detriment icons were removed from the raid window.
  • The raid window’s font-size was decreased and the overall window is a little more compact.

November 3 Hotfix

ITEMS

  • The Collar of Ice is now Heirloom.

Butcherblock/Lucan D’Lere Downtime

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance

“1:10PM SYSTEM MESSAGE: Greetings Norrath! The server will be coming down in 30 minutes for brief maintenance. Please plan accordingly to be logged out during this time. Thank you!”

“1:25PM SYSTEM MESSAGE: Greetings Norrath! The server will be coming down in 10 minutes for a brief maintenance. Please get to a safe location and camp out as soon as possible. Thank you!”

“1:26PM SYSTEM MESSAGE: Sorry Norrath! That’s 15 minutes, not 10. But, please get to a safe location and camp out as soon as possible. Thank you!”

No idea yet the duration or cause of this downtime. No other servers are going down to my knowledge.

EQ2Wire On the Road

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Art, Appearance, Housing, Game Updates & Maintenance

EQ2Wire is on the road this week, so updates will be a bit less frequent.

Nagafen/Venekor Server Merge

The Nagafen/Venekor Server Merge was completed Friday night. We’d certainly like to hear comments from folks on what the new 64-bit server experience is like (I know Butcherblock is a lot snappier with the new hardware), as well as having more folks to kill. 🙂

Issues with using the Broker, Banker, and World Chat channels were all related to the last stages of this merge, and should long have since been resolved.

New Shaders 3.0 Snapshots

Imago-Quem (Ryan) surprised us over the weekend with the news that Shaders 3.0 is getting very close to completion now. He also posted some new screen shots. Hopefully there will be enough time to get Shaders 3.0 onto the Test server and for everyone to test them out before Game Update 54 now slated for early December.

All 416 zones and 29,000+ objects have been converted over with a very small set of exceptions, those I am working on and those that will stay 1.0.  There’s about 1% left in the game that is still shader 1.0.  Right now I’m working on remaining bugs and optimizations for better performance.

EQ2_000398 EQ2_000403 EQ2_000411

EQ2_000414 EQ2_000417 EQ2_000423

EQ2_000425 EQ2_000426 EQ2_000430

EQ2_000434 EQ2_000438

When can we expect to see Shaders 3.0?

The plan is to have it out on Test first thing November and on Live with GU54 on December 1.

I’m working my very hardest to get all the major bugs out right now.  I’ll continue working on bugs and performance over the next month or so.

EQ2 Streaming Client

Testing continues on the EQ2 Streaming Client. This, along with the EQ2 Complete Collection ($19.95) now in stores, are our best opportunities to get new players into EQ2. The Streaming Client will allow new players to get into EQ2, create a character, and get started in the newbie area with as little as 10-15 minutes of downloading. Compare this to the current digital download option, which is a 6-10 hour download.

What Bugs You Most 2009

Players continue to post their ideas in the What Bugs You Most 2009 Edition thread. What is interesting is that unlike the What Bugs You Most thread from Feb 2008, the vast majority of the issues being brought up are not User Interface fixes (which Rothgar is a champ at) but long-term design changes. It’s not known just how many of the issues being brought up will be possible to address between now and the expansion.

Silverwing

Speaking of bugs… Some folks are having trouble with Silverwing in Veeshan’s Peak since Game Update 53. Some workarounds to prevent his massive healing while the issue is addressed have been posted in this Silverwing Issues thread.

   

October 21 Hotfix

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance, Grouping, Itemization, Live Events, Raiding

Here are your Hotfix Notes for October 21, 2009:

GENERAL

  • Nu’roga now has plunderable loot!
  • Malicious Thoughts and Icicle Explosion now trigger on ranged and melee attacks.
  • Frostburn and Mutagenic Burst now correctly modify each other’s damage.
  • Purifying Persistence should properly modify the caster’s heals rather than the targets.

LoN

  • The Cloak of Crystal Shards, Assassin Master’s Cloak and Cloak of Runes returned from Collector Rattelis are now Heirloom.

ITEMS

  • Icy Prison now has 3 shield effectiveness to match its deflection chance.
  • Charm of Solusek Ro once again triggers multiple times on AE casts, however its effect is now limited to 5 targets.

Miragul’s: Crucible

  • The Master’s spell reflect percentage has been greatly reduced.

Miragul’s Planar Shard

  • In the final hard mode fight with Miragul, his Brilliant Adepts will no longer stun/mez players within a second of initially spawning, but will wait 3-6 secs after spawning to start casting.
  • The Miragul encounter (Hard mode): Miragul will now cast Curse of Confusion on up to 2 players per cycle, rather than 3.

MISTMOORE’S INNER SANCTUM

  • The Vampiric Protectors that spawn during the Mayong encounter will now respawn in the center of the room if they break, rather than rapidly spawning and despawning near the point where the encounter broke.

MUNZOK’S MATERIAL BASTION

  • Certain items that drop from Munzok have become slightly more powerful.
  • Overlapping unstable void protrusions should provide protection from Munzok’s edict as expected, and no longer conflict with one another.  Additionally void protrusion protection now more closely matches the sphere’s size.
  • Munzok’s max health has been reduced.

NIGHTS OF THE DEAD

  • Altius Volfban in the Hollow Hedge should be much easier for mage classes to handle.
  • The Headless Horseman now spawns somewhere near his tree instead of just in the same spot every time. He also requires someone offer him the necklace instead of simply taking the necklace near him to activate. His respawn has also been lengthened slightly.
  • The Nightmarish Ceremonial Armor has gotten a slight change to color.
  • The Nightmarish Ceremonial armor should now all have an equal chance of dropping.
  • Altius Volfban now has a chance to drop a piece of the Nightmarish armor when killed.
  • The Blanket of Fog now comes with a remote so you can turn them on and off. In the off state it should be much easier to tell where they are!

USER INTERFACE

  • The option to always show the threat window has been moved from Game Features to Options->User Interface->Game Windows.

Nagafen-Venekor Merger On Track, Hotfix for Wed Oct 21

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance

Rothgar, who has been up for how many hours now? brings us this update…

The upgrade is looking good and we should have the servers up soon.  The QA department is just doing their final pass.

We have a 30 minute downtime scheduled tomorrow morning to roll out a hotfix for all servers.  Since we had to skip our normal hotfix window this morning due to the database migration, we are doing it tomorrow instead.

We’re still planning on going forward with the PvP server merge Wednesday night at midnight PST.  Initially only Venekor will be brought down to backup the database and export all of the data.  When the export is complete, Nagafen will be brought down for us to merge the data.  After the merge takes place, we have some other background tasks that could take a few hours.  This includes cleaning up universal-chat, merging shared banks and updating player names and guild names that had conflicts.  Be prepared for as much as a 24-hour downtime for Venekor players.  Nagafen players will experience around 12 hours of downtime depending on how fast the processes go.

We’re hoping that the newer hardware will help the process go faster than our test runs.

Thanks for enduring the downtime this week.  We know it’s never at a good time but the final outcome will be worth it.

Tomorrow’s hotfix is expected to include some changes to the Headless Horseman x2 encounter.

Servers Could Be Up as soon as 7pm PDT

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance

From Rothgar on the EQ2 Forums:

All 3 servers are currently up and locked while our QA department goes through the normal testing process to confirm everything looks good after the upgrade.  We are specifically testing characters and guild halls on each of the three servers that had problems copying over last time.  So far those are loading fine so everything is looking great.

I’m hoping that we will be ready to bring the servers up within the hour.

and Glip the Gnome:

Hey all! We are smoketesting the servers right now before we open them back up. Right now it looks as though we’ll have them up around 7:00pm PDT. We’ll let you know if that changes.

Butcherblock, Nagafen, Lucan D’Lere down until 10PM

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance

The latest news

Update:

The downtime for Nagafen, Butcherblock, and LDL has been extended to around 10pm PDT this evening.

We apologize for the extended downtime.  As a result of this, the team has already extended the Moonlight Enchantments event an extra day to make up for all the time that these servers will be missing.

Thank you again for your continued patience.

This makes 22 hours estimated downtime.

Server Confusion – ALL west coast servers to be rebooted

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance

Due to two mistakes in how the Server Downtime scripts were triggered last night, ALL servers must be rebooted. This will happen in a few minutes. The issue:

  • All West Coast servers, not just Butcherblock, Lucan D’Lere, Nagafen, were set to stop allowing instances (dungeons) from being created starting at noon today.

Announcement by Rothgar:

I just wanted to take a moment to explain some of the broadcasts you may have seen and what is happening with the servers.

Last night, prior to the maintenance for Butcherblock, Nagafen and Lucan D’lere, we scheduled the downtime which is responsible for notifying the worlds via broadcast and also safely shutdown and lock persistent instances until the worlds come down.

There were two mistakes made.  This notice was scheduled for all west coast servers, not just the three that needed it.  We also mistakenly set the time for today at noon instead of last night at midnight.  This is why BB, LDL and Nagafen didn’t get the notice last night.

Unfortunately once the servers have gone into maintenance mode and the instances become locked, there is no way to reset it unless we reboot them.

So we are planning on taking all of the west-coast servers down in 5-10 minutes for a reboot.  This will clear them so you’ll be able to create instances once again.

The reboot shouldn’t take long, maybe 10-20 minutes at most.  We apologize for this confusion.  Unfortunately some processes still require human interaction and occasionally we can make a mistake like this.

We hope to have all servers except for BB, LDL and Nagafen back up very shortly.  The DB migration is going well.  Nagafen is the only remaining DB to be copied and we’re hoping that it will complete in a few hours.  After the DB has been moved, we will need some additional time for QA to verify the migration.  Once we have the green light from QA, the remaining 3 servers will come back up.

Thanks for your patience!

Server Downtimes — Now looking at 4pm PDT

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance

The latest news on those 64-bit Upgrades:

Things are still going well, however it is looking like it’s going to take a bit longer than we had originally anticipated.

We’re now looking at an uptime of around 4pm PDT.  If we need to adjust the time again, we will be sure to update this thread.

Thank you again for your patience.

Rothgar is posting updates regarding the downtime to a discussion thread on EQ2 Forums.

I apologize that the server downtime was not made more clear.  We discussed it a few times in other threads while the maintenance was still tentative.

We weren’t able to make a decision on the maintenance until our DB tests passed with our QA department which happened late on Monday.

The only option would have been to make an announcement and hold the DB upgrade for a couple of days to make sure everyone had ample time to plan for the maintenance.  Unfortunately this would have pushed the server merge back to next week and we wanted to avoid that since it has already moved back several times.  We’re still trying to get the database upgraded and server merge completed in as timely a manner as possible.  The compromise to this accelerated schedule is a little less notice on the maintenance.

Should the database upgrade happen successfully, we are still planning on performing the merge on Thursday of this week.  We also have a 12-hour maintenance window for the merge so please plan accordingly.

All 3 servers are definitely getting the database upgrade.

Stay tuned…


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