It all started with a simple post:

“If you’ve ever fancied yourself a writer for EQ2Wire, whether it’s just updates on the happenings around Norrath, including updates on Live Events, shoot us an e-mail thru Contact Us.”

Since then, I’ve gone from e-mailing articles to Feldon to full Author, Contributor, and Editor at EQ2Wire.
You may have noticed a few of my articles over the past few weeks.  Some of you are probably wondering, who is this Dethdlr person?  Allow me to introduce myself.
I started playing EQ2 on May 15th, 2005 but it wasn’t until August of 2006 that I convinced my wife to start playing as well.  That’s when EQ2 became a part of my daily routine.  Since then, I’ve done everything from casual player to just under hard core raider (was the OT for Society of Depravity/SoD for a while during EoF and RoK).  I’ve been in every beta since EoF and currently have a 90 Assassin(Decimatr), 89 Templar(Elinore), 86 Warlock(Ryncewynd), and an 86 Berserker(Dethdlr), as well as a few other lower level characters, all on Kithicor.
A few years ago, my guild needed a weaponsmith so I leveled Dethdlr up to a level 70 Weaponsmith.  When RoK came out, he became the 26th worldwide and 1st level 80 weaponsmith on Kithicor.  Since I was one of the only weaponsmiths in my guild, guildmates would ask me which weapons they should use for their characters.  To make things easier, I created www.eq2411.com which lists the mastercrafted weapons up through level 80 broken out by class and tier.  Dethdlr is still sitting at level 80 weaponsmith today but my alchemist is level 90.
I’ve done a little bit of UI development and created the first plug-in for the Fetish Nightfall UI.  I also added the AFK button to the player window and added the click to cure with potions to the player window in the same UI.
For years now, I’ve been checking the EQ2 websites several times a day to see what the latest news was that’s going on around Norrath.  When I would find something interesting, I would tell my guild about the new news.  Now I get to post it on EQ2Wire.
Feldon does a great job of searching through the sea of information that is created about EQ2 on a daily basis and posting it here so that everyone else doesn’t have to.  I have no delusions of being able to do as good a job as Feldon does at this but I’ll do my best.
I look forward to bringing you the latest information on the happenings around Norrath.

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.

Game Update 56, or least major chunks of it have been pushed to the Test Server. Already, I and other players have noted that certain textures are missing (especially with Shaders 3.0 enabled), and all housing is currently unavailable (making it impossible to take a peek inside the 2, 4, and 6 bedroom New Halas housing.

But what may be more interesting is not what files are missing, but what files are unexpected. Because the Live and Test Servers are just another development branch of EQ2, inevitably, some Expansion and future Game Update/Live Event files get tagged and download to our computers.

Close examination of these files have revealed some tantalizing peaks into the next expansion, as well as a preamble event.

* MAJOR SPOILER ALERT * MAJOR SPOILER ALERT *

If you don’t like spoilers about the next Expansion, then don’t read further.

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

Game Update 56 is looking to be a huge update, with many tweaks and adjustments throughout Norrath. In brief…

• a substantial Travel Revamp
• more quests in Stonebrunt Highlands to hopefully fill that level 87-90 solo questing gap
• a new Storyline feature
• a new Icy Keep x4 Raid
• Shaders 3.0 Graphical Revamp
• Research Assistants can help all your characters
• Blue PvP Adornments
• Yellow Adornments on T9 Mastercrafted gear
• Level 90 Character Traits
• PvP Warfields
• new Training Dummy options in your guild hall (solo, group, raid, and AE group)
• and of course New Halas

Also of note, is that a vendor has been added to Moonfield Hamlet selling some of the rare Heroic drops from Sentinel’s Fate zones. It will be interesting to see if this is like the vendor added late in the release of The Shadow Odyssey, where only the lesser Fabled items were available, and for a whopping 150 shards/marks each.

With the Test Server being updated nearly a month before we are estimating Game Update 56 will hit live servers, hopefully there will be plenty of time to test out all the changes.

Domino has posted some background and lore regarding the new tradeskill society, the Ravens of the North, in New Halas. From the EQ2 Forums:

The focus this week has been on new EQ2 Senior Producer Dave Georgeson, and EQ2 Server Performance, which has been a persistent black cloud over EQ2 for the last 2 months.

Test Copy

Test Copy is getting some major use as it is where PvP and Battlegrounds changes are tested.

Gninja advised us:

We will be working out a schedule as to when the test_copy server will be pvp vrs pve. We are working it out now and will get back to you guys shortly.

Stuck at Character Select

An issue with being stuck at Character Select on Thursday was caused by a Configuration issue which has been corrected. EQ2 Forums

Adventure/AA/Tradeskill XP Weekend

The e-mail and EQ2Players announcements for this weekend’s Bonus XP event neglected to mention that Tradeskills will also see a bonus. We have not yet been informed what % the bonus will be, but 30% is a good guess.

Game Update 56 Goes to Test Soon

We don’t have an exact date, but Game Update 56 will be moving to Test and Test Copy soon. When we know exactly what content will appear on Test and Test Copy, we’ll let you know. It would not be surprising if New Halas is not in the first build. EQ2 Forums

Thundering Steppes Revamp Mothballed

Gninja has confirmed the news we speculated about earlier this year.

Unfortunately we will not be making drastic changes to Thundering Steppes this time around. That doesn’t mean there will be no changes but we are not considering it being revamped. GU56 will be full of cool stuff though (Including but not limited to New Halas and some new raids) you should see it hitting test servers in the not too distant future.

A revamp of Thundering Steppes seems to be completely off the development radar at this point, with Butcherblock Mountains stepping in as the “place to be” for level 20-35 content.

Although subject to change, our understanding is that, just like Timorous Deep, level 20 players will be offered a quest guiding them from New Halas to the Butcherblock docks to begin level 20-35 content.

Level 82 Mastercrafted Armor

It seems the strength of level 80 Tier 1 and Tier 2 Shard armor from The Shadow Odyssey was always destined to overshadow Level 82 Mastercrafted armor. But that doesn’t mean the EQ2 team haven’t given up on it yet! Domino has managed to land some additional upgrades to the Level 82 set:

Look for some changes coming to level 82 mastercrafted armor with GU56 (for a start, it should all be level 82 now …) including the addition of yellow adornment slots and some resists. We are also in the process of discussing the possibilities of some stat tweaks.

It now seems even less likely that any of the Tier 1 Marks of Manaar gear will be an upgrade to any player. Note that Tier 2 Marks of Manaar gear (which has Critical Mitigation and better stats) must be sought out in Moonfield Hamlet in Stonebrunt Highlands.

From Rothgar on the EQ2 forums:

We’ve located the issue that was causing the slow performance last Tuesday. This problem had ZERO to do with battlegrounds but they were taken down as a precaution anyway. I know that battlegrounds tends to get the bad rap because it’s new, but they are not always the cause of problems. In fact, we’ve got the character loading issues under control now so that there are no performance spikes as a result of characters going to and from the BG world.

We’ve been making some general performance improvements that will help lower the game server lag (exhibited as spell lag) which will be going into testing soon. When we are confident that these changes are working correctly, we will get them out to live servers.

We have several engineers working on performance issues and this is currently our top priority.

After the widespread outages of the EQ2 servers the night prior, a thread was created on the EQ2 Forums to solicit an explanation from the EQ2 Developers, and/or new EQ2 Senior Producer Dave Georgeson, on the cause, and to seek reassurances that the issues are being identified and on track to be resolved.

As they tend to do, the thread branched into speculation on the origins of Dave Georgeson’s forum handle — SmokeJumper. Skywarrior posted his theory:

Hmmmm.  Smokejumpers are extremely brave (or crazy) and well-trained individuals who jump out of airplanes in order to reach remote areas involved in forest or brush fires, with the express purpose of helping extinguish the flames.  It seems to me that Dave’s handle is quite appropriate to the situation he finds himself in.

Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson, the new EQ2 Senior Producer responded with:

Ding, ding, ding. You have it in one, sir.

And yes, I still answer to “Qix” or “Qixter” also. (I’ll bore you with the story of where those names came from some other time.)

Regarding the performance issues: Yes, we’re completely aware of it, and yes, it’s our highest (and only) focus for the programming team currently.

It’s a two-pronged issue that affects multiple aspects of our architecture, and neither of the issues is a “quick fix”.

In other words, we have to gather more information and study that data to find out exactly where the problems are before we can create solutions.

That’s in progress now and we’ll get solutions made ASAP. But currently, I don’t know an exact date when “ASAP” will be completed…mostly because we don’t have the solutions figured out yet.

But as I said in the other thread…we *will* kill them.

Greetings Norrathians! Sharpen your swords and repair that armor. There will be bonus AA, Tradeskill, adventure experience (XP) this weekend starting at 3:00pm PDT on Friday, April 23rd until 11:59pm PDT Sunday, April 25th (2:59am EDT). Happy adventuring!

From the EQ2 Forums:

Greetings all.

An update on Battlegrounds and server issues.

Battlegrounds will be down until at least tomorrow.  While the BGs are down, we’ll be collecting data on the current server issues as an aid to tracking down what is causing the the lag and slow zoning times.

We’ll be tracking the data with the BGs both off and on.  If they appear to significantly affect the issues we’re seeing on the live servers, we’ll have them off over the weekend.

We’ll let you know any further information we can share when we have it.

We apologize for the inconvenience and greatly appreciate your patience as we try to track down the problems and iron out the bugs.

– EQII Team

With the powerful buffs and bonuses of our Mythical/Fabled Epic Weapons safely squirreled away to a separate permanent spell (thanks to the Epic Repercussions quest), we’ve been able to divert our attention towards finding other, better weapons.

While the choices are not plentiful (even with their buffs stripped, our Mythical weapons still have some formidable stats), the Sentinel’s Fate expansion is nonetheless supposed to offer us a variety of replacements for our now Enervated Weapons.

Thus far, there have been a scant few upgrade choices for healers. Fortunately Kander has responded to these concerns:

There will be some new 1 handed and 2 handed healer weapons with GU 56. In both heroic and epic content.

Battlegrounds For Levels 30-79

We’ve gotten some more details on the format that Battlegrounds from levels 30-79 will take from timetravelling:

After Game Update 56 the Battlegrounds tiers will be:

30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70-79, 80-89, and 90

Players in each tier will be auto-mentored down to the lowest common level (30, 40, 50, etc.).

Players in each tier will also have armor sets and accessories available for purchase from the existing PvP Merchants in the major cities.

The BG ‘starter’ sets will be the already-existing Mastercrafted armor sets (from levels 30 -> 70). Each has had a small amount of toughness added to its existing stats.

In other words, if you don’t already have Mastercrafted armor from levels 30-79, and want to do Battlegrounds, it’s recommended that you commission or pick up a set.

The Warfields of Antonica and Commonlands

Meanwhile we have gotten some clarification from Olihin on Antonica and Commonlands becoming PvP zones on Open PvP servers (currently Nagafen).

Warfields are restricted to PvP servers.

The writs are being changed to 6 kills for 5 tokens across all levels. A single currency regardless of the level will be used.

The new coin will be the Discord Token and I have set up a merchant to exchange the tokens for you in increments of 5 or 100. I know some will be able to gear up more of their characters quickly, but that is the point. I want you to be able to play on your account at whatever level you want and either save or spend your token when you want.

and from timetravelling:

[Warfields] is a new event that will be on PvP servers only that will give players the opportunity to fight for control of Antonica or the Commonlands.

This is clearly an effort to try to move at least some of the PvP community away from the “Token Vending Machine” that is currently the Kunark quest hub of Teren’s Grasp. Most players bent on earning Tokens live there 24/7.

We’ve received word that brand spanking new EQ2 Senior Producer Dave Georgeson also gave an interview to Massively. It’s an interesting contrast to the EQ2 ZAM interview and worth a read.

It may turn out that the only EQ2 fan site that didn’t get an interview with Dave Georgeson is EQ2Wire…

The Tattered Notebook: A moment with Dave Georgeson @ Massively

The Return of SmokeJumper

Dave Georgeson has already taken the time to post on the EQ2 Forums and respond to some player concerns. He’s brought back his nickname “SmokeJumper” from when he was a developer on Planetside. You can read his comments in the ZAM Interviews Dave Georgeson thread on EQ2 Forums.

It has been brought to our attention that the EQ2 Passport program contains verbiage which could be construed as condoning the exploit of Battlegrounds:

Penny Pinching Multiboxers

Running several subscriptions might be a bit expensive these days, but not with this program! Fire up your alt accounts for a weekend raid or even a Battlegrounds match all by yourself!

I’ve just received an unexpected e-mail from the EverQuest II team regarding a new program for players on the fence, considering returning to EQ2, wanting to participate in seasonal and special events, or wanting to spin up an inactive account to do some Multiboxing.

If you’ve let your any of your EQ2 account expire, and don’t want to commit for the whole $15 to restore access, you can now play for up to 3 days access for $5 through the new EQ2 Passport program.

Commentary

While it might seem a nice gesture to offer players who are short on cash the opportunity to login infrequently at a discounted rate, the seams begin to unravel when we consider the terms and key publicity points of this program.

The SOE Marketing Team, who have a penchant for operating as if the players do not exist, seem to have been pressed into service to create another whiz-bang program to increase revenues. However the devil is in the details.

It seems unlikely that players will bite at $5 for a 3 day subscription, when $15 buys 30 days. The math simply doesn’t add up.

It stands to reason that if the SOE Marketing Team sidesteps the players, surely they must give little weight to concerns expressed by developers and designers as well, regardless of their understanding of the players. If asked, any EQ2 dev would have told Marketing straightaway that 3 days was just not a large enough carrot.

Another startling angle to the EQ2 Passport announcement is the front-and-center publicity given to Multiboxing. While we have reported both sides of this topic, ending in a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” standoff, it seems surprising that Multiboxing, which some players have genuine ethical concerns about, would have earned such a prominent space in this announcement.

One wonders what performance indicators will be used to determine the success or failure of this program, if any. With the shaky Sentinel’s Fate launch, the Marketing team showed a staggering fearlessness about their job security.

If you have been poking and prodding the EQ2 forums hoping for even a brief Producer’s Letter from Dave Georgeson, you’ll be surprised to read the in-depth exclusive interview at EQ2 ZAM with new EQ2 Senior Producer Dave Georgeson who replaced Alan “Brenlo” Crosby last week.

EQ2 ZAM Interviews Dave Georgeson

Gninja wanted to get the word out that the quest Tending to Toxxicology will be getting a revamp which will result in quest progress being reset by anyone still on the quest. If you are on this quest, get it completed before Game Update 56 hits (late May). Or you can just wait until the change when the quest requirements will be reset to resolve the bugs people have been facing in trying to complete it.

We are aware of the issues with the quest in Sundered Frontier “Tending to Toxxicology” becoming gated if someone summons Sherra prior to someone else zoning in. And good news! We have a fix… Now the bad news… In order to fix this issue we are going to have to remove the stage of the quest that requires you to zone into Toxxulia’s Mound. When we do this it will reset everyone back to the first stage of this quest.

I just wanted to give you guys ample warning that this will go in with GU56 (Currently scheduled for late May) so if you have progressed the quest you might want to try to finish it before GU56 or lose your progress and possibly have to get the updates for the Wyrmlord and Wyvernlord again.

Today’s Hotfix grants Research Assistants the ability to research for all of your characters at once, instead of just one per account. Also included are tweaks to the UsabilityOnPlayer macro command, some adjustments to the Labs SF raid zone, and a change to the Focus: Death March adornment so that its effects are different between PvP and PvE.

We’ve been advised that some Database maintenance will be performed at the same time, so the Hotfix and associated downtime may exceed 1 hour.

It turns out yesterday’s news on changes to the Training Dummies guild hall amenity was just the beginning.

Xelgad has updated us with news that one of the choices on the menu when summoning a Training Dummy (in addition to Solo, as well as Heroic and Epic which are new to GU56) will be an Encounter:

We’ve added a new set of dummies for GU56 that come as a linked encounter of a total of eight heroic training dummies. Enjoy!

This should provide many more options for players wanting to work on what order they cast spells and/or combat arts in for maximum DPS output.

In addition to the bigger content additions, Game Updates always include smaller, but no less desirable changes and tweaks.

Research Assistants Learn to Multitask

UPDATE: Oops! Despite appearing in the headline, this item somehow got left out!

UPDATE #2: This feature is in the April 20, 2010 Hotfix.

Bunji, member of the EQ2 QA Team, has posted this info on the EQ2 In Testing Feedback forums:

With the new Test server build, each character on an account can research a spell at the same time (this should not affect existing research).

Research times are also being tweaked (lowered).

Floating Disc Mounts

In response to a query about the floating disc mounts introduced in Sentinel’s Fate being slower, and with less stats than the Order of Rime mounts, Kander had this response:

I have upped the speed on several of the disc mounts, they now have a few stats as previous. Level 90 guild mounts are now 68%. Will be in with GU 56 or sooner.

As for the question of Appearance mounts, while we can’t expect them in GU56, Kander advised us to keep an eye out:

This is something we really want to do in the future, yes. It’s being discussed for future GU or exp07.

Kunark Blue Shinies Still Lore?

Echoes of Faydwer, the Rise of Kunark, and the Shadow Odyssey all added 20 or so collections. Each collection has historically had a rare item which could be used either to complete that collection, or to help complete separate collections. These are the Faydwer Expert Collection, Kunark Expert Collection, and Shadow Odyssey Expert Collection. The reward for completing each of these collections is a pair of goggles, or glasses, or a ring which then allows the wearer to see blue shinies (which spawn in specific locations, instead of at random) for the appropriate expansion.

The difficulty of collecting these blue shinies is that many of them have been flagged LORE, allowing only one to be picked up at a time, until it’s sold or traded.

In response to a complaint that Kunark shinies are still LORE, even in Sebilis, which at level 90 still has many green mobs, Kander had this news:

I will take a look at making these (Kunark Blues) no longer lore. I think that would be fine!

Training Dummies Go Epic

The Training Dummy Guild Hall Amenity has been very useful, however we’ve only been able to spawn a solo dummy, which has far too few hitpoints for more than 1 player to really test.

Rothgar has heard the call and will be adding Heroic and Epic versions of the Training Dummy:

I’ve already made a change to the dummy chest, it just hasn’t been released yet. You’ll get it with GU56.

You have the option to spawn a solo, heroic and epic dummy. Each will scale slightly larger in size and their hitpoints will be on par with mobs of that tier and level.

So now you can raid a training dummy if you like. These changes should be on the Test server if you want to check them out.

Training dummies don’t fight back, but they provide a useful punching bag for testing spell and combat art casting rotations. No word if we’ll be able to pick the level of the dummy. At level 80, you really want a level 87 dummy to test debuffs, etc. For now Rothgar is leaving them as they are:

The new dummies are exactly like the old ones, so they shouldn’t have any high resists or buff packages on them, just plain-ol-dummies.

Did you start a guild years ago and and give it a silly name as a goof?  Did the guild manage to survive and now has lots of members but still has a silly name?  Ever wish you could change the name?  Help is on the way!  shotens recently posted a request on the EQ2 Forums:

So what I ask is for the Dev team to put out a product that we can spend our hard earned money on that allows us to change a guild name.

and got this startling response from Rothgar:

It’s done and should be available soon.

Commentary

On the one hand, I’m glad that those with silly names will be able to change them if they choose (nothing wrong with silly names btw). On the other hand, guilds that have gotten a bad name on a server will now be able to change their name and confuse the population.  On the third hand (three hands???)  it will allow guilds who have gotten a bad name to change their name if the leader who caused them to get the bad name in the first place decides to leave the guild.  Since it usually doesn’t take very long for the average person to figure out when a guild falls apart and gets re-formed under a different name, I don’t really see this as a problem.  Unless, of course, my guild decides to start taking votes on what to call our guild and “Pink Fairies of Norrath” starts leading in the polls. 🙂

EQ2Players has a new video showcasing Halas Reborn. Check it out below. And in case you missed it, here are Screenshots of Halas Reborn Housing.

Game Update 56 is coming soon to the Test and Test Copy servers, and in addition to the expected New Halas starting zone and city, which will have 2, 4, and 6 room housing as well as Tier 1 Guild Halls (unknown if it will be the same or different artwork), and in addition to a new raid zone, some substantial changes are happening to Battlegrounds and PvP combat in general. Battlegrounds in particular are being expanded from level 80-90 to level 30-90.

timetravelling gave this Battlegrounds preview:

• Brand new 1st Campaign armor sets and accessories
• Many of the accessories are based upon the currently BG-disabled RoK PvP accessories. Those adornments have had their effects adjusted and will be re-enabled for battlegrounds!
• Each armor piece will have a pvp-only Blue adornment slot!
• As such, we’ll all be introducing 20+ new Blue adornments!
• Battlegrounds at levels 30, 40, 50, 60, and 70 are being activated!
• Battleground armor sets and accessories will be on sale at each of those tiers
• Brand new open-pvp server battles for control of Antonica and Commonlands!

• Additionally, we’ve internally removed the ~15% damage reduction applied to all spells in pvp combat. I’d like to once again ask for y’all to copy over to test-copy and give us feedback on the change.

Although the line item about battle for control of Antonica and Commonlands was posted in the Battlegrounds forum, it is believed that this is a PvP-server only feature.

Olihin followed up with this preview specific to the PvP (Nagafen) server:

• Level locking enabled starting at level 30.
• Removal of level restrictions for Alternate Advancement distribution.*
• 100% achievement bar settings prior to max level.
• Single Currency for Open PVP, the Discord Token.
• Warfields! Antonica and Commonlands…
• Much more!

When asked whether the change to Alternate Advancement level restrictions meant that PvP players could spend all 250 points at any level, Olihin responded with:

It’ll allow your AA expenditures on a PvP server to match those of a PvE server instead of the current restrictions.

PvP servers currently restrict the number of AA points which can be spent based on your level, beyond those restrictions of the PvE servers.

Linda “Brasse” Carlson, Senior Community Manager for SOE has posted this update on the EQ2 Forums:

After many years of service, Alan “Brenlo” Crosby has decided to leave SOE to pursue other opportunities.  And while it is sad to see him leave, we wish him the best of luck in his new endeavors.

At this time, we’d like to take a moment to introduce EverQuest II’s new producer, Dave Georgeson.  Dave is excited to join the EQII Team and will be posting an introduction in the near future.

According to EQ2 Zam, Dave’s resume includes SOE’s Planetside and Free Realms, and his LinkedIn page says he’s been back at SOE since February.

Dave Georgeson is apparently coming back to SOE after working at MobyGames.

Dave is currently the Producer, Director and Lead Designer for the casually-oriented MMO at Gaia Online that has had over 500,000 players in the first month of Open Beta.

Dave has previously designed and produced : zOMG!, Planetside, Tribes 2, Heavy Gear II, Absolute Zero, and Crusaders of Might & Magic.