Feldon 
Ready or Not, Game Update 61 is going live tomorrow, August 23rd, 2011 Thursday, August 25th, 2011.
As you’ve possibly already heard, Game Update 61 is pressing the big Reset button in the sky.
Gear Unattuning/Unadorning
Everyone’s going to login naked!
All armor, weapons, items, etc. on your character, in your bags, and in your bank will all be un-attuned. Further, your equipped (not necessarily appearance) jewelry, weapons, and armor will see their adornments ‘pop’ off. All equipped gear and adornments will appear in your Overflow slot.
Subclass AA Reset
Game Update 61 brings Alternate Advancement (AA) changes both subtle and not-so-subtle to every class. But the biggest overhaul can be found in the Subclass tree, which is cutting the cord and getting rid of the restrictive ‘spider-webbing’ that required you to spend points in certain arrangements to unlock end line avilities. This has been replaced with a consistent system common to all 24 classes. Spending 5 points per row will open up subsequent rows, and each 20 points you spend grants your choice of the four End line abilities. Some classes benefit from this change more than others.
Rebuilding of the Subclass tree has necessitated a reset of the Subclass tree for every class. This will undoubtedly affect any stored AA profiles on AA mirrors as well. If you haven’t already done so, we strongly suggest taking screenshots of your AA setups on all your characters before the update.
After Game Update 61, Level 10+ characters will continue to be able to spend points in the Class and Subclass tree, however the Shadows tree is now locked away until level 50. This has been a point of contention for high level crafters with less than 50 adventure levels, as they’ve previously been able to pickup health, mount speed, and other survivability choices from the first row of the Shadows tree.
A Matter of Thurgadin and Ry’Gorr Faction
Game Update 61 will provide some respite from the Thurgadin and Ry’Gorr faction grinds on your alts. From the Game Update 61 Test Notes:
Bugs on Test — Will They Go Live?
There are a few issues on Test which we hope will not make it to live. They include:
- Alternate Advancement (AA) Reset When Zoning
- Coldain Rings and Quivers cannot be equipped until after you zone at least once after logging in.
- Many Items have been down-tiered in quality. Crafted materials suddenly became UNCOMMON, most drops in Protector’s Realm dropped to LEGENDARY, etc. It’s been stated that at least some of this is unintentional.
- Spending AA points still prompts you (“Are you sure?”) before spending each point. It was stated at Fan Faire that this was going away. UPDATE: This is actually already an option in EQ2 under User Interface -> Game Features.
P.S. Consider this our “Contents Under Test Part 2”!
or thursday. =p
as of this post
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=505303
pushed til thursday
Oops! It got delayed until Thursday.
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=505303
Apparently not. From the official forums:
Hail, friends!
In order to make sure that Game Update 61: The War of Zek gets ample testing time, we will be launching this update on Thursday, August 25th.
We look forward to sharing the new features and content with you, and will have more specific information on the downtimes for the update later in the week.
According to Amnerys
Hail, friends!
In order to make sure that Game Update 61: The War of Zek gets ample testing time, we will be launching this update on Thursday, August 25th.
We look forward to sharing the new features and content with you, and will have more specific information on the downtimes for the update later in the week.
I heard two days will make a huge difference in the ample testing category.
Eh, two days is not nearly enough, but it at least lets people see whatever itemization fixes Gninja has included in the fix today that was not going to make it to test.
They really need multiple weeks in order to open actual dialogue with classes about their aa changes, as well as a more thorough review of the (fairly random) itemization that resulted from the re-itemize script. But two days is better than nothing.
been delayed to THURSDAY
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=505303
I think the first three posts in this thread already covered the delay admirably. 🙂
I blame lack of coffee !
Just in case anyone missed it; it’s been delayed to Thursday. 😛 lol
I didn’t quite understand. Are we losing our adornments? If so I’m glad i quit playing. I’m definitely not going out to grind/buy of those friggin things…
@eschia No they just go into your overflow. They figured they were messing with your gear’s stats so much they would give you a break by letting you switch up how you did your adorns without wasting totally the ones you already had made or purchased. This way they can atleast be used at a different date or resold if white adornments.
That and prolly had something todo with all t9 two handers getting their slot amounts doubled.
> Spending AA points still prompts you (“Are you sure?”) before spending each point. It was stated at Fan Faire that this was going away.
Why don’t they work a lil harder add a ok/cancel button, that would make it also much more usable as you could test out different ways to spread points, see the relevant bonuses in the tooltips, and then hit cancel before making your final choice.
Nijia,
Actually, this feature is already in EQ2. Under User Interface -> Game Features.
I was thrown off by SmokeJumper’s comment at Fan Faire that the feature was “coming”. It was already added with Velious apparently.
Actually, they added 2 more prompts. Now its “Are you sure?” > “Are you really sure?” > “Are you really sure your sure?” 😀
Be careful with this feature (unless they fixed it) On multiple machines I’ve seen a bug that causes a complete reset. If you over-click the amount you can put in there, the client won’t actually spend it… but sometimes it causes a full AA reset after logging out and logging back in. You hit your AA trees and see that you have 300 AA’s to spend the next time you log in.
When I contacted CS about it, they said, just turn on the (AA Confirm option) and that will cause it not to do that.
@Feldon
I think what Nijia actually means is a, so to say, built-in beetny.com.
SJ was referring positive to this wow-like AA-spending/setup.
You do basically ONE confirmation only, which is when your satisfied with your current setup and apply it. Until then you can move and shove your points around at will.
What you have in mind is just the confirmation-msg, which you can now turn on/off – but still has do be done for – every single point spend – meaning, you cant cancel a tree or whole tab currently.
@Harvy
Actually, after finishing spending points in your AA setup…you should first zone somewhere else so the server can save your AA data upon zoning THEN you can log out and back in to prevent full AA reset bug. It seems to be the workaround for me, at least.
OMG, that little nugget of knowledge would have saved me a few hours of sorting out what I had had selected 🙂 Great Tip Rixan!
Exodus1028,
SmokeJumper said at Fan Faire “We’re taking out the confirmation on each point spent” and later it was said by him or Rothgar I’m not sure “We want to do something where you can pick all the points and then apply it”. It’s in one of the Q&A panels.