Feldon
Olihin has checked in with some fixes and improvements for PvP and especially Warfields which will become available next week. From the EQ2 Forums:
Month: May 2010
It was hinted after Fan Faire that new Spell Effects and Animations were on the way, and at one point we were listing it for Sentinel’s Fate/Game Update 55. Timetravelling has chipped in with some more info, and actually one of these new animations is available in-game.
Believe it or not, the hard work of bolting Shaders 3 onto the antiquated EQ2 engine is done. What remains is polish and cleanup. With all the combinations of armor, weapons, and with as many zones as there are in EQ2, this final bug sweep must take place with the help of the player. Players have been diligently posting screen shots and even videos demonstrating the numerous areas of the game including guild halls, armor sets, etc. where Shaders 3 stumbles — it’s too dark, it’s washed out, there are halos on objects, or the colors are just plain...
Dethdlr
So you’ve got a tradeable Lore item that you’d like to pass from one of your characters to another on the same account. How do you do it? You could hand it to a friend, change characters, and have them hand it back to you. If you’re in a guild, you could put it in the guild bank, change characters, and hope its still there for you to pull it back out. Wouldn’t it be much easier if you could just put the item in your own shared bank? Well now you can! In response to a player query...
The Contest A trainer of mounted cats recently lost his head about the prospects of limitless wealth and ice (for iced tea naturally) in New Halas and so packed up overnight, leaving behind a manor full of trained battle cats — and no forwarding address. We have managed to procure five of these highly prized felines and now need to find homes for them. It has been difficult, but we have decided on selection criteria. Those players who reply to this posting with the name they intend to give to their cat will be entered into a drawing. Five...
Inside SOE Broadcast on Ustream From EQ2Players: Join us on Wednesday, May 26, 2010, at 1:30 pm PDT, as we take a look behind the scenes in this edition of the Inside SOE Broadcast on Ustream! We’ll be in the SOE Ustream channel! The event is expected to last about 30 minutes. 1:30pm PDT | 2:30pm MDT | 3:30pm CDT | 4:30pm EDT |9:30pm GMT | 10:30pm CET Activities include: Live Chat and Q&A! – Attendees can chat live and ask questions with members of the Community and Development teams. The Agency: Covert Ops and Pox Nora – Join...
We’d like to thank everyone who has taken part in the EQ2Wire May 12th Reader Survey. If you haven’t yet filled it out, check it out here. We’ve learned quite a bit from the entries so far, and we’ll be posting the aggregated results of this survey soon. Already, your comments are helping us improve EQ2Wire’s coverage. Readers are interested in articles about issues guilds face, player stories, and some general Lore background stories. These are items which EQ2Wire has not focused on before, but which we’d like to start dabbling in. If you are interested in writing articles...
It seems that U.S. EQ2 servers are back up after today’s Game Update 56 patch. Once the thread is unlocked, you can post your feedback about GU56: Halas Reborn on the EQ2 Forums. How do I get to New Halas? New Characters: Create a new character in New Halas from the Character Select screen. Existing Characters: To travel to New Halas, take a Gryffon from the Butcherblock Mountains docks. How do I get the new Kitten? Log into EQ2 between May 25th and May 28th, 2010 and type /marketplace to open the Marketplace. The kitten is a free item...
The EQ2 Servers are now receiving the Game Update 56 patch. Servers are expected to come back up at 9am PDT. While the servers are down, you can chat with us online! We will be in the EQ2 ZAM chatroom. For instructions on how to connect to the chat using mIRC, Trillian, or other chat client, check out the fantastic instructions at EQ2 ZAM. 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!
It was only a matter of time. Ballads has reported in from EQ2Flames that the Reinforced Slippers of Balance ( \aITEM -1095264150 2115375301:Reinforced Slippers of Balance\/a ) have been nerfed with Game Update 56. Despite being level 70 items, these were the best foot items in the game for tanking certain encounters due to the possible number of stoneskins this item could generate. We had already heard from developers that this item would not be replaced and that the effect would not be copied to other items. Indeed, a nerf was anticipated by players in fall 2009. Current Description:...
Over two years after the introduction of Mythical weapons, Furies and Mystics logging after today’s Game Update 56 will notice a change in their mythical weapons which has neither been documented in any Update Notes, nor commented on publicly by any EQ2 developer. Previously, the Mystic and Fury mythical weapons have added 10% of the character’s Wisdom to the character’s Potency. With today’s stealth change, furies and mystics will instead receive Ability Mod from their mythical weapon. The result of this change, as per several players who have experienced the changes on Test and have thoroughly documented the results...
The Sentinel’s Fate expansion (and its associated Game Update 55) opened the door to each character becoming a master of Tinkering, Transmuting, and Adorning. At least on Butcherblock, this change promptly doubled the price of all transmutable materials on the open market. Treasured weapons and armor, as well as Adept spells are now trading at record prices. As a result, tradeskill societies of all major cities have received a visitor named Londiar Inygad who is interested in offering Adorning work to players. These are daily quests, appropriate to your Adorning level which allow you to make 10 adornments per...
After the jump, we’ve got the complete Game Update 56 Notes for May 25, 2010:
From Kiara: As you know, our game update Halas Reborn, goes live May 25, 2010. This will happen at the usual time of 7am PDT for the US servers and 9pm PDT (4am on 26 May GMT) on European servers. The update notes are available here and the feedback thread will be unlocked for feedback once the update has been completed on the US servers.
EverQuest 2 does not natively support Anti-aliasing, however determined players have managed to enable it by adding “r_aa_blit” to their EQ2 INI file. Unfortunately, players will have to wait a bit longer if they want to experience Shaders 3.0 and Anti-aliasing at the same time. Players attempting to use both will see zones which are entirely blacked out. From Imago-Quem: I just submitted a fix for this. Hopefully it passes QA and can get out to you in a hotfix here soon and you can run AA with Shader 3. And as for the prospect of using CPU Shadows...
In a recent post on the EQ2 Forums, Dave “Covic” Brown brought us news that he’s been able to bring on an apprentice to help with character design. Covic has now elaborated on what that will mean for the Destiny of Velious expansion: I have an apprentice working on wieldables right now. His stuff is awesome. We are really trying to have every drop you get from the next expansion be new geo (geometry). There will be re-textures of the new geo, but little to no use of old geo if we can help it. He has already made...
Upgrading a 9 year old game engine to support a feature it was never designed for is a daunting task. No-one knows that better than Ryan “Imago-Quem” who has been busting his butt since before Fan Faire 2009 to revamp the graphical pipeline of EverQuest 2 to support Shaders 3.0.
One of the preamble events leading up to the Destiny of Velious expansion will be the reconstruction of several dilapidated and corrupted Druid Rings. Read the article on EQ2Players. As we reported in April, we are expecting the druid rings in Nektulos Forest, Loping Plains, Zek, and Feerrott to be rebuilt. Windslasher has posted extensively about how this event will work and what participants can expect…
EQ2Players has a new Artist Highlight up for Dave “Covic” Brown. Covic is the artist behind Varsoon, Anshti Sul, Ice Mares, Rhoen Theer, and the new mounts on the marketplace. He also pops on to the official message boards from time to time. Excerpts from the article: What’s your favourite thing that you’ve done for EQII? This is always changing form each new character I do. First it was Varsoon, then Anshti Sul, then Kraytok, and definitely Rhoen Theer. It seems every model I do becomes my next favorite, and I am starting to feel the same way about...
The topic of PvP <-> PvE Character Transfers came up on Monday from a WoW player who has recently rejoined EQ2. The topic received an interesting response from EQ2 Senior Producer “SmokeJumper“: We’re currently investigating a lot of issues to make things friendlier for you folks. This is a decent idea, but to be honest, I’d have to ask about the technical and game balance issues involved. However, I will do so. I’m curious also. (by the way…”WoW does it” is not a valid reason for me. We aren’t WoW and don’t intend to be. But good ideas are...
The Icy Keep: Retribution x4 raid zone is still on Test and Gninja would appreciate any and all feedback on this zone. You can also contact him by PM on the EQ2 Forums and possibly arrange raids that he can monitor and get direct feedback on. For those of you that have been most of the way thorugh Icy Keep: Retribution, How do you feel the difficulty of the encounters go? Do they fit with the order of the encounters are some fights much harder than they are currently placed in the zone or does it feel about right?...
EQ2 Senior Producer SmokeJumper, as well as covic and Rothgar, have continued to respond to criticism about the introduction of the Prowler mounts on the EQ2 Forums. It’s impossible to quote everything they’re posting, so if you read one thread on the EQ2 Forums this weekend, I’d read this one.
The big news yesterday about the new Prowler mounts available via StationCash in the Marketplace is being discussed in the First Ever Mount on the Marketplace thread on the EQ2 Forums. But as part of the introduction of these SC mounts, the Highland Stalker mount which was included in the Sentinel’s Fate CE retail box has gotten some tweaks as well. First, the run animation created for the SC Prowler has been adapted to the Highland Stalker. Second, the gigantic, and I mean Sir Mix-a-lot sized rump on the Highland Stalker has undergone plastic surgery. Some players find the...
Previous EQ2 Senior Producers Alan “Brenlo” Crosby and Bruce Ferguson rarely responded directly to player inquiries. Thus we featured their posts here on EQ2Wire in separate posts. However Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson has been tearing up the EQ2 Forums in two threads: Suggestions and requests for the new Senior Producer First Ever Mount on the Marketplace
If you’re wanting to hear it from the horse’s (or battlecat’s) mouth, look no further than artist Covic‘s EQ2 Forums post who designed the Prowler mounts now available for 2500SC.