Nobody likes to be picked last for a team, yet the days where any player with level-appropriate gear could contribute in a meaningful way to the majority of dungeons introduced in an EverQuest II expansion are long gone. The straightforward turn-and-burn fights up to and including Kunark zones have given way to heavily scripted 6-person mini-raids. All but the easiest Velious dungeons have substantial checks on Gear, Alternate Advancements, and Skill.

I’ve talked to several players over the last week about Dungeon Finder and the recurring theme has been — Players who have normally been skittish about asking to join a group are queueing themselves up for Dungeon Finder, regardless of Gear, AAs, or Skill. They seem to figure ‘What have I got to lose?’

From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums:

Hey, folks,

We’ve listened to feedback and there were four areas we agreed needed to be improved to make the feature more useful. Below the list of those four major improvements:

1) The problem: People were joining the DF queue as “Random” and then declining group after group until they got the dungeon they wanted. The solution: If you queue and then receive a group invite…and then decline it…you will then suffer a 15-minute time penalty before you can re-queue again. This solution has no effect on people using the DF normally, but penalizes those that are trying to exploit the +25% bonus XP element.

Here are the results of our Wednesday survey EQ2Wire Asks: Will You Use Dungeon Finder? Results are as of Oct 10, 2011 01:00 PDT.

Do you think the Dungeon Finder will be popular?

Total Votes: 1185

This week we’ve seen the introduction of the Dungeon Finder, and what may be the end of “Shards” (Void Shards, Marks of Manaar, and Primal Velium Shards), at least for acquiring sets of armor.

Primal Velium Shards

First, let’s tackle the removal of Primal Velium Shards from the “shard armor” equation. The EQ2 team continues the minimalist approach to discussing and announcing mechanics changes, with this reactionary explanation from Gninja:

The Thurgadin, Ry’gorr, and Drunder armor sets are direct upgrades to each other. They should scale in difficulty to obtain and that difficulty was off. That was one of the reasons the Thurgadin armor was rarely purchased. If its easier to obtain better armor somewhere else then why get that armor to begin with? With these changes the lower tier armors are a bit easier to obtain making the chase be more for the Drunder armor sets rather than having to do the shard grind repeated for each tier.

Here are your Update Notes for Friday, October 7, 2011:

DUNGEON FINDER

• You will no longer lose infamy (a PvP stat) when joining a dungeon finder group.
• The dungeon Cauldron Hollow should now be listed as a 30-40 dungeon instead of 30-45.

Meanwhile on the Test and Test Copy servers, a new feature which will help with Dungeon Finder:

Sentinel’s Fate and Destiny of Velious dungeons now have mission givers located within the entrance of the zones.

EQ2Wire wants to know… Will you use the Dungeon Finder? Will your friends? Take the reader survey and we’ll publish the anonymous results soon!

From EverQuest2.com:

You asked for it – we delivered! The Dungeon Finder matchmaking system for EverQuest II is finally here! No longer will you have to scour the Looking for Group, Trade, or Auction channels to find a dungeon group. We’ve developed an amazing tool that does the work for you. All you need is to come prepared with your best adventuring outfit and rations.

Tomorrow’s Update brings us a positively reviewed revamp to the Troubador class, as well as a nerf rebalancing of the Dirge mythical effect. However the biggest feature in Thursday’s patch is the widely anticipated Dungeon Finder group-forming tool. Dungeon Finder will be isolated to each server at first, becoming cross-server at some point in the future.

This update does not include the controversial removal of Primal Velium Shards from heroic armor. That change will likely go in next week.

After a couple of false starts, it looks like EverQuest II’s Dungeon Finder feature will be hitting the Test and Test Copy servers today. It’s important to note that the EQ2 Dungeon Finder feature will NOT allow cross-server grouping when it goes live. That’s planned for a distant future update.

From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums:

Hi, folks,

The GU 61 feature that got delayed, “Dungeon Finder” is coming to your Test server on Friday, 9/20, in the morning update.

Here’s an early peek at the release notes you see then. There are definitely still bugs in the system, but we need your help to shake out the issues.

Try it at different levels, if you can. Some of you may find that you rediscover forgotten content you haven’t seen for a long time.

Looks like Dungeon Finder is just about ready to go to Test and Test Copy.

From Zoltaroth‘s Twitter feed:

Just finished play testing Dungeon Finder for EQ2 again. It’s almost ready for test server, very exciting!

Friday September 16 UPDATE from SmokeJumper:

It should hit the Test server today. We have one last playtest to do this morning to be sure, and if it passes that, then to Test it goes!

From SmokeJumper on the EQ2X Forums:

We’re aiming to put it on the Test server this weekend and then take it to Live in a week or two.

Note that the trailer mentions the Dungeon Finder which is not currently available. When the Dungeon Finder goes live, it will be specific to each server/realm at first, and won’t be cross-server, which may take months/years to implement.

In response to a thread about the lack of Battlegrounds activity, SmokeJumper had this surprising comment:

We hope to roll out solutions for the [Battlegrounds] matchmaking at the same time as the Dungeon Finder roll out next week (which also uses the matchmaker). If the fixes don’t go in then, they will roll out (very) shortly thereafter!