According to Brenlo on his Twitter, work continues on getting Battlegrounds up today. This is resulting in a longer than expected downtime.
Maintenance is running a little long. We are working on some network settings for the Battlegrounds.
UPDATE:
We are restarting the servers and expect to have everything up and running about 10am PST.
If you read our coverage of Game Update 55 including Consolidated Stats and Primary Stat Changes and have checked out the EQ2Wire Mega-FAQ, you’re probably fully up to speed on the changes to Stats, Stat Consolidation, etc.
But if not, or you want to hear it from the source, timetravelling has posted a thread which covers these topics. He’s received several questions after the fact, so it’s likely that his writeup will continue to evolve.
With every expansion, a few of the guards in Qeynos and Freeport, especially the “stronghold” or most-defended area of each city, in this case North Qeynos and East Freeport, are dinged to a level that would make them perilous to invaders of the opposing alignment.
So imagine our surprise when we logged in after Game Update 55 (coinciding with Sentinel’s Fate) and found that every man, woman, and child guarding the cities of Qeynos and Freeport, in every area of the city, all magically dinged level 95. These guards are packing heat!
One of the unique characteristics of the Ranger mythical bow Eagle’s Talon is that it allowed the user to do ranged auto-attacks at point blank range (zero meters distance).
Once a ranger has completed the Epic Repercussions quests, they are awarded an enervated version of Eagle’s Talon with all of the special effects stripped off, and then zero-concentration spells are added to their Knowledge book to get all those unique effects on whatever bow they decide to use. The issue is that those persistent buffs do not grant the ability to use other bows at point blank (0m) range.
Fyreflyte has given some unexpected response on the subject of rangers always being able to use their bows from point blank range:
I feel rangers ought to be encouraged to deal their damage at range. I don’t plan on releasing any more bows with a min range of 0. Standard longbows have a minimum range of 2, which is close enough to use your CAs, so at present there is no benefit to 0 range except that it makes your positioning slightly more convenient.
The issue with having no 0m range bow is that some epic mobs are so gigantic, and their “hit boxes” are so large, that a ranger must back out 20-30 meters to get to a range where both melee and ranged combat arts are usable.
Flyreflyte continued with:
We’ve been discussing this internally, and have some good ideas for it. We’ve been holding off on touching this, however, until we can get a good idea of where everyone’s at after the stat changes and consolidation. Just to quell any suspicions, the ideas all focus on providing an incentive to attack from range, rather than a penalty for using the current melee range methods.
A ranger usually stands at 5 meters so that all of their ranged and melee attacks are available. A ranger that uses only ranged attacks is losing up to 40% of their DPS. It’s usually only done if the mob has a particularly nasty Area of Effect (AoE) attack. We’re not sure how this change will work. Although as he said it’s in the planning stages, not set in stone.
Battlegrounds have slipped again to February 25th. From the EQ2 Forums.
Since we’ve stated in this thread that the Battlegrounds feature is launching on the 23rd with the digital launch, I’m updating here to say that we’re actually going to be pushing it back a few days to put a few extra anti-cheating measures in place.
The plan is for Thursday the 25th
If there are any other updates, we’ll let you know!
We were thrilled to notice that Kanga‘s awesome EQ2 Adornments site is being updated for Sentinel’s Fate. Check it out!
EQ2 ZAM has coverage of Game Update 55 including the Golden Path questline, revamp to Butcherblock, etc.
And here are your massive Game Update 55 Notes from EQ2 Forums. After the jump…
The EQ2 Servers will be coming down shortly for the Sentinel’s Fate expansion and Game Update 55 patches. Servers are expected to come back up at 9am PDT.
Also some of the people who purchased Sentinel’s Fate digitally from international websites will be getting their keys by e-mail at this time. Some people have reported that DLGamer.co.uk is now accepting orders from Australia.
While the servers are down, you can chat with us online! We will be in the EQ2 ZAM chatroom. Kiara will be joining us as well and giving status updates.
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For instructions on how to connect to the chat using mIRC, Trillian, or other chat client, check out the fantastic instructions at EQ2 ZAM. |
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If you are not able to run chat software at work, or you just want to jump into the chat through your web browser, you can chat here. |
See you in the chatroom!
From EQ2Players:
Raiding is an important part of gameplay for many and is a part of every MMO. Roger “Patherpanchali” Uzun designs the raids for EQII and Brett “Timetravelling” Scheinert often works with him on these. Timetravelling was kind enough to sit down and give us an overview of the new raids coming with Sentinel’s Fate.
We have three x4 raid instances launching with:
- Sentinel’s Fate: Lair of the Dragon Queen (x4)
- Perah’Celsis’ Abominable Laboratory (x4)
- The Palace of Roehn Theer (x4)
For x4 content players will discover the Lair of the Dragon Queen first, then Perah’Celsis’ Abominable Laboratory, and finally The Palace of Roehn Theer. The relative difficulties progress in a similar pattern. One thing that is relatively new is that they are all built in a manner similar to Miragul’s Planar Shard—the normal mode encounters are challenging and offer internal progression. However, the challenge-mode versions within all zones are a step above and offer players a truly difficult foe!
There will also be a x2 raid — The Vigilant — based on the 3 Vigilant difficult level 90 group zones.
Further, Timetravelling has dropped the other shoe, so to speak, on the other Adornments which will be available to raiders. Instead of 12 sets or 24 sets of gear, there will be just a handful of raid gear sets. It would seem that the Sentinel’s Fate Raid Gear Sets will have a second adornment slot which will allow players to further specialize their gear how they see fit.
There were numerous balance issues in both TSO and RoK that came up again and again:
- Unique set bonuses were often so desirable, that players often worked very hard to avoid having to break the bonuses when upgrading to a later set
- With 24 classes and 24 sets, loot tables had a tendency to often be…unkind
In The Sentinel’s Fate we are addressing these issues by moving away from class-specific sets. Many of the sets will fulfill a role/playstyle—such as a plate-wearing tank, or a leather-wearing healer—instead of being the Berserker or Fury set. However, we certainly did not want to cause players to lose the unique focus effects and set bonuses received from their gear.
For that, we have created a new system of adornments based upon color. Gear in Sentinel’s Fate can be created to allow more than one adornment upon each item. Almost all items will have a ‘white’ adornment slot that will allow players to continue to apply adornments normally as on live. In addition, raid armor will receive an additional ‘red’ adornment slot that is restricted to raid-level adornments. These adornments can be either powerful generic effects (such as dps-enhancing stats or critical mitigation) or a number of class-specific adornment effects. For example, the Berserker might—in some bizarre Kiara-run-world—receive an adornment that causes them to spawn Rabid Bunny pets whenever their Berserk effect is activated.
These changes should help to reduce the often extremely wide range of loot on any particular encounter while additionally providing players with even more ways to tailor their characters to their playstyle and spec.
Check out the complete article at EQ2Players.
While we don’t have all the details on what perks will be available to Guilds reaching the new level 90 cap, we know that Game Update #55 will add 2 new Guild Hall Amenities.
The first is pretty straightforward. It’s a Wizard Portal NPC with all the destinations available from the Ulteran Spires. It does not include the Kingdom of Sky zones of Tenebrous Tangle, Barren Sky, or Bonemire: Realm of Dawn. You’ll still need that amenity if your guildies are making regular use of these zones.
The second new Guild Hall Amenity is the Guild Standard Bearer. If you’ve ever been on a group or raid and just didn’t have the right setup. If only you had a little more oomph, more defensive stats, more DPS, etc. you could clear the zone and claim your reward.
The Guild Standard Bearer is a bit like a vending machine, selling (at a steep platinum cost) zonewide buffs to your allies within a group or raid instance. No doubt there will be more items added to this amenity over time.
Guild Standard (Click to Enlarge)
Updated Notes from Beta (added Friday, Feb 5th)
The Adornments system in EQ2 has always been pretty confusing. And so far, there just have not been a lot of options for certain classes in certain slots for adornments.
Each of the 9 tradeskill classes and the 2 secondary tradeskill classes have each made a handful of adornments. necessitating adornment websites to keep it all straight. We are thrilled to see that the Kanga will be updating her fantastic EQ2 Adornments site for Game Update 55.
With Game Update 55, adornments have been rebuilt from the ground up. In fact some prized adornments (Parry) can no longer be crafted as the recipes have been removed.
Starting with Game Update 55, all adornments are crafted by those players who choose the secondary tradeskill of Adorning. If you were a 400 Transmuter, then you will be a 400 Transmuter and 400 Adorner on February 16th.
EQ2Wire is providing continuing coverage of Game Update #55 (now on Test) and the Sentinel’s Fate expansion.
News is coming hot and fast now, so we’ve improved how news items are labeled and have added a News Ticker at the top of the site.
Don’t forget the UStream Sentinel’s Fate Beta Tour which will be led by Alan “Brenlo” Crosby. This is tomorrow Friday at 4PM PDT.
We are currently working on articles about the new Adornments, Guild Amenities, Leveling Tweaks, and a Zone List for the expansion.
And just to bring out tour of the UI improvements in Game Update #55 full circle, the lowly Zone Timers (Lockouts) window has been the bane of many a raid leader, as they remind players over and over to reset their group/raid persistent zone timers.
While I didn’t see a /resetallzones command (there might be one, I’m just not aware of it), the new Filter function at the bottom of the Zone Timers window should help considerably at raid time.
Many of us have been faced with the prospect of trying to find a spell or combat art out of our Knowledge book, only to be frustrated by a wall of all our spells from levels 1-80. This will only get more difficult when another tier of spells is added with the expansion. Fortunately, the Knowledge book has gotten a great new Filter feature that lets you choose to only show the highest level version of each spell you have. This doesn’t just mean all the spells from 71-80. Some classes have abilities which do not get updated beyond level 35 or levels 51-55. These show up with this Filter option set.
Screen shot after the jump…
You’ve probably already seen screenshots of the Updated Quest Window. We saw it way back in November when Brenlo posted it as a twitter picture. It’s great to finally see it coming to the live game.
If you’ve ever been frustrated with having to constantly open the Quest Journal and flip through your quests to see what steps you need on all the quests you are working on in a certain area, you will be relieved to see the multi-quest tracking feature of the new Journal.
Now, you determine what quests appear in your Quest Helper floating window by clicking the checkbox next to each quest you want to track. You can track, I believe, up to 10 quests at a time. You’ll notice there’s even a diamond icon next to each quest with the color of the quest’s level. Also, when you get a quest update, the quest name flashes briefly to draw attention to which quest was updated.
Screen Shot after the jump…
Consolidating Stats
Sentinel’s Fate consolidates many separate stats in an effort to simplify itemization. Developers have been hounded on the EQ2 forums for “ignoring” healers, hybrid classes which need both spell and melee abilities, etc. in designing gear. Stat Consolidation is a huge step in making a smaller set of gear usable by a larger player population. Here is the list of changes:
Consolidated Stats naturally lead to a simplified Persona Window. Most classes will no longer have to hunt in Spell Stats and Melee Stats to find their Crit, Crit Bonus, Double Attack, etc. numbers. They’re all right there on the main Persona page. There isn’t even a Ranged Stats page anymore.
Inflated Stats?
If you think about how this consolidation works, you’ve probably realized that it’s going to be very easy for Druids, for example, to end up with 100% spell/heal/melee crit, or for rangers to end up with 100% self-buffed Double Attack/Ranged Double Attack. We already know that this expansion is going to be all about Crit Bonus. I think the developers have just accepted that even casual raiders are going to be at (or very close to) the 100% caps for Spell/Heal/Range/Melee Crit on day 1.
I’ve gotten a lot of questions about what changes we’ll be seeing to Transmuting come February 16th. So I thought it was worth a rehash as Transmuting is changing quite a bit.
The Way It Was
Transmuting started out as a secondary tradeskill. It granted the ability to not only break down unwanted Treasured, Legendary, Mastercrafted, and Fabled gear, but also make certain adornments. But the drawbacks have been many.
Transmuting could only be skilled up to 100 by breaking down items. Reaching 400 skill could only be achieved by crafting (at great expense) hundreds of worthless low level adornments. And because the adornment recipes were spread over all 9 primary tradeskill classes, as well as transmuters and tinkerers, there has never been a great demand for Transmuters. Really, only 1-2 Transmuters have been needed in any one guild just to break down unwanted No Trade group/raid loot.
Transmuting in Sentinel’s Fate
Domino, lead tradeskill developer, took a lot of player feedback at Fan Faire and on the EQ2 Forums in order to revamp Transmuting and the art of making Adornments. In the process, the entire array of adornments has received attention as well. A lot of gaps have been filled and more options opened.
The biggest change is that Transmuting has been split from Adorning. They are now two separate skills. Transmuting becomes just another harvesting ability which all players get like Mining, Foresting, Trapping, and Gathering. By breaking down items, you can skill up your Transmuting ability from 1-450.
Where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, is in the new Adorning skill. Adorners make EVERY player-made adornment in the game. Instead of adornment recipes being spread out through all of the tradeskill classes, Adorners will be the only game in town for getting your favorite adornments. Adorners can only skill up their ability by creating adornments.
Best of Both Worlds
As we have reported, with Sentinel’s Fate, you will now be able to be a skilled Tinkerer and experienced Adorner on the same character. Both skills can be raised to 450 on the same toon!
The Transition
Those who have already mastered the art of Transmuting will find their skill carries forward in Sentinel’s Fate. If you have a Transmuting ability of 362, then when you login on February 16th, you will find that your character has skills of Transmuting 362/450 and Adorning 362/450. You’ll probably need to pick up any new recipes for new adornments that have come out, but you don’t have to start over!
Since a lot more people are going to be Transmuting, I’m going to link to the Transmuting FAQ. Figuring out which items can be transmuted is tricky at first.
Everything you know about the main Character Stats is about to change.
For the past 5 years, in addition to the primary stats that each class uses:
These are just the most obvious examples, but all 24 classes had some unique benefits from the different Stats. Starting with Sentinel’s Fate, each class now benefits significantly from just ONE statistic, even if they are considered a “hybrid” class.
The EQ2 Test Server has just been updated with most of Game Update 55. GU55 will be the free content available to all EQ2 players on February 16th, to coincide with the release of the expansion.
The biggest part of GU55 (with the loss of New Halas, Shaders 3, and the TS Revamp) are Battlegrounds.
Players are being asked to run dungeons, etc. to see what effect combat changes may have had.