Dethdlr Domino posted this heads up for the test update notes on the official forums. This is scheduled to go live with GU58:
The fuel that I’ve made since joining the team has had more standard names that I hoped would give some direction as to the level range, but the old fuel names were not easy to guess the appropriate level from the name. Although I realize it’s going to require some work updating notes, web sites, and habit, I think it’s worth while in the end to rename the fuel to a standard so that it all uses the same adjective.
Consequently, if all goes well this afternoon, by this evening on Test server you should see all the tradeskilled fuel convert to using the name of the imbued material for that level range (and the level 1-9 fuel is called “basic” so it will be listed right at the top of the list). Example names: glowing candle, glowing coal, glowing kindling, lambent candle, lambent incense, luminous candle, luminous coal. The examine descriptions on the fuel have also been standardize to say the level range they are used in. Nothing else has changed about the fuel, prices etc. are all the same, and if you have any fuel in your inventory it will simply be automatically renamed when the update hits. I hope that overall this will solve more confusion than it causes, but if you come across any NPC dialog or quest text that specifically references the name of a fuel that no longer exists, please do /bug it or post here so I can get that changed.
We wasted Dev time on this? Seriously?
Now we get 3 months of recipes not working because they missed a fuel name here or there.
Whew! Haven’t checked into anything EQ2 for awhile now. Good to see nothing has changed as far as anything useful being done, errrr no that’s not good /shakes head.
I played EQ2X the first weekend it went into beta and have been lotro’ing it ever since. Checking the eq2x forums just now and looks pretty dead over there, even the regulars aren’t posting anymore? Anything happen to drive everyone away that i missed?
As some peeps know already i hate subs, despise them, yet I subbed up to lotro???? I know, i know i can’t believe it either.
EQ2X really has to smarten up; FAST: Here are the reasons I’m subbing in lotro atm. Over all plan is to go 3 months earn enough points to unlock the game, i have expansions, and at the rate i play may go 6 months but lets stick to the 3 month plan.
3 months = $30 “PLUS” i get 5 bucks back in points per month.
Bottom line 15 bucks for three months / EQ2X $15 one month ZERO SC
I can earn points while i play, I’ve earned over 1000 Turbine Points already which can go to my unlock the game fund. / EQ2X NOTHING
I made another account to see what the game is like as F2P (maybe do some boxing), compared to EQ2X, it feels like i belong to the community after i bought one very small priced item from the lotro store and the entire game opened up, beautiful. EQ2X I’m closed in, no chat, no broker i could go on and people already know how restrictive EQ2X is but to get that FREEDOM in EQ2X i have to pay $15 a month???
This is another reason as well (this is using my f2p account). I log into lotro, I play, I group, I chat, I sell stuff on the broker, I equip excellent gear from my group runs, I have fun, I log out happy and entertained for NOTHING and NOT ONCE AM I HOUNDED ABOUT SUBBING UP. / EQ2X – pop ups while I’m playing begging me to sub, little hints on items i can’t use telling me to sub, and when i log out MY BROWSER LOADS ONE LAST TIME TO HARASS ME TO SUB, come on grow up SOE.
With all the things that are broken in this game, the last thing we need is more renaming of everything we have gotten used to.
/sigh
Yees, they better release the next GU early instead of fixing crap that was not broke to begin with. What raidzone will go defunct now when this goes live…
Brian, normally that would be correct, a simple find and replace. However the historical precedent here says not only does this take a lot of time but many things will be missed and broken for the next 3 months due to missed replaces. (Here’s to hoping they get it right the first time.)
Coming from a very experienced programmer… this should be extremely easy to do. All it “should” require is a database update, but I don’t know how this has been coded at sony. If they hardcoded the actual name instead of using a numeric key to the name, it could be a painful. I seriously doubt that it was coded thhe wrong way.
I’ve got to side with the other programmers commenting here as well. Unless the devs were complete fools when they coded this, they coded it using a number instead of a name and then reference the number.
You can even see this in links in chat. Take a fuel item and link it into chat but don’t send it yet. Now put your cursor right after the link. Hold down the Shift key and press the left arrow button to select the link. Now hit Ctrl-C. Open notepad and press Ctrl-V. You’ll see the actual link to the fuel item which contains the item number. You can replace the name of the item in that link, paste it back into the game, and it will show your new name but link to the same item since the number hasn’t changed.
All the places where the item is used should reference the item number, not the name. All they need to do is update the text for the item itself and all other references to it should get updated. The exceptions, as they said, are where a quest giver tells you to go grab x amount of a certain fuel. That quest text would have to be changed independently so it makes sense but since the item didn’t change, getting the new fuel item should still work for the quest.
This was most likely a very trivial change.
@Dethdlr Correct.. technically this task could be done in literally less than a minute.
Have no fear.. we won’t miss out a new piece of appearance gear because of this update.
Oh i’m so sorry, some one pointed out to me that you get about $6.25 back in points per month. So lotro really costs about 11 bucks for 3 months where EQ2X would cost 45 bucks, dang fair deal, lotro monthly = $3.75 compared to EQ2X $15, ouch. EQ2X should really revamp their approach to F2P before they remove the almighty BETA tag.
Well, I have over 20 years of development exeperience. I agree that it ‘should’ be a simple short task. However I have 5 years of $OE experience and the last time they changed fuel names we got the explanation that all of these thins are in flat xml files that cannot be simply search and replace because random text patterns might match the search criteria, so basically every instance has to be located and changed by hand. This is not SQL people.
I do hope you are correct and I don’t lose some recipe for the next 3 months, but historicaly don’t bet a lot of money against me.
Can we please edit out the blatant advertisements in the comments for other games? It’s off topic and unrelated to EQ2.
OK, the person who told me lotro was an even better deal than i first thought, well they were wrong too, LOTRO is an EVEN BETTER BETTER deal than we both figured. This is correct now.
You get back $8.10 in points back monthly monthly sooooo lotro to you is really 2 bucks a month compared to $15 for EQ2X, so 6 bucks for 3 months and eq2x would be $45 for 3 motnhs, ouch SOE, very ouch.
The beautiful thing about all of this is the points you are earning can go toward completely unlocking the game forever making it a truly free to play game, sweet!
What Rayco wrote here pretty much sums up many people opinions, but one thing he said bears the most truth.
“make the pricing more attractive and more people would buy into it. Get out of your own way with trying to greed players to death.”
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2x/posts/list.m?start=15&topic_id=2530
All hail Rayco. LOTRO made pricing attractive and myself and hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of other players are buying into it because we feel we aren’t being taken for fools.
I think Blockhead is definitely living up to his name.
I agree Steve, you’d have to be a complete Blockhead to not see how amazing the lotro deal actually is, no wonder the servers are over packed with players, and they even added more servers and those instantly filled right up too. I had to have two people point out that it was an even more amazing deal than i first thought.
I guess the old saying is true “Give a little, get a lot.” SOE should look into this concept.
Why is this the only future update you posted? It is not a very important update and certainly all it has done is create a forum full of people thinking SOE has nothing better to do. Let me copy and past a few updates from the “in testing” update notes below. Notice that there is a whole lot of nice changes in the works.
VITALITY
* Vitality will no longer be reset when you reach max level.
* Players at max level will accrue and use vitality as normal. The vitality bonus at max level will increase the amount of XP that is converted into AA XP.
BETRAYAL
* Spells above apprentice are now preserved after betraying in the following situations:
* Betraying to a different class:
* Shared spells will retain upgrades
* All new spells will start as apprentice
* Betraying back to original class:
* Shared spells will retain upgrades
* Any spells that were upgraded before betrayal will remain
* Betraying to the same class:
* No spell upgrades will be lost
COMBAT
* The stat “Double Attack” has been changed to “Multi Attack” it now can make you attack more than twice if your percent chance is over 100%. For example, if you have 150% Multi Attack, you will now have a 100% chance to make a second attack and a 50% chance to make a third attack!
ABILITIES
*Cure curse will no longer be used if the target does not have a curse to cure.
USER INTERFACE
*Your Target and Implied Target windows will now display the casting activity of NPC targets.
*You can now click the detriment icons in the player window, group window or raid window to attempt to cure those conditions.
PLAYER HOUSING
* Outdoor areas have been added to many player houses
COMBAT
* Increased the radius of ranged AE autoattacks to 3.5 meters from 2.5 meters.
WOOT! Dreiden you are one above the rest! What is with this post, and who cares?
I think Dethdlr has been doing a pretty darn good job keeping the site up to date ever since Feldon went on a break around the time lotro went F2P, so that’s been awhile now that Dethdlr has been running the site.
I did notice these updates were missing though, thanks Dreiden, and guys cut Dethdlr a break if not for him there wouldn’t be any updates at all. I’m pretty sure we all know how very hard Feldon works on this site so cut him a break too, everyone knows you need to take a break once and awhile. Think back to fanfair, Feldon was updating this site so fast i could barely keep up as a reader and pretty much felt like i was at fanfair.
that looks like a nice update. But if instincts serve right, then im guessing that updates a good 6 weeks out.
If they’re going to change the names of the TS fuels for simplicity’s sake, then why not go all the way and name the fuels after the Tier they’re used in.
You go to the fuel vendor and he has Tier 1 Coal, Tier 1 Candles, Tier 8 Kindling, Tier 8 Sandpaper, etc. Then, when you examine it, below the explanation of what fuel is and what its used for, then they can put the adjectives.
“This is used in trade skill recipes between levels x and x.
It Smolders. It Glows. It makes Julienne fries, whatever.”
While they’re at it, they could change the first tier designation from T1 to T0 (Tier Zero), so the Tier Number match up with that decade of levels. Meaning, T0 would be 1-9; T1: 10-19, T2: 20-29, etc.
I know a lot of us have learned it the way it is, and would prefer them not to change everything we’ve become accustomed to. However, if they want to make things simpler, why not give our ideas on how to make it easier for us, and not just rely on what they THINK we want / need.
BTW the “Multi Attack” change will not be uncapped till the next xpac, it was announced in a obscure post later the same day as the “Multi Attack” post change.
Dreiden wrote:
You may notice that its a pretty rare occurance that the actual test update notes like you posted in your comment above are posted here as an article. Some things on test get pulled out and turned into an article, most things don’t.
Test update notes generally represent a work in progress. Sometimes the changes make it to live. Sometimes they get adjusted based on player feedback. Sometimes they get pulled out completely. Sometimes they are things like this that are going to confuse the heck out of people when they go live. Because of that, I thought getting the word out ahead of time to prepare people was worthwhile. But as a general rule, test update notes aren’t posted here.
Thanks for the response Dethdlr, I think I was more upset at the rampant criticism in the thread. A lot of people just don’t think SOE does enough to make the game better and take an update about trade skill items names as meaning SOE is doing nothing worthwhile.
On a side note this is the only website I go to for my eq2 news and I think you guys do a great job.