Feldon 
The EQ2 design and mechanics teams have been working nose-to-the-grindstone for at least 2 1/2 months Reitemizing EverQuest 2. That’s every weapon, cloak, charm, piece of jewelry, armor, etc. We’re talking 50,000 items — the sum total of 7 years of overland zones, dungeons, and raid zones. To do so and make no mistakes would be a statistical improbability.
On June 24th, the first pass on reitemizing Mastercrafted gear appeared on Test. Silius (who has since moved up from “itemization guy” to Mechanics Lead) expressed appreciation for the bug reports that came in, but then 8 weeks of silence set in. To date, few of the bugs reported had been corrected, and there was little to no developer guidance on the testing process, such as when another pass of changes would be pushed to test. At press time, Mastercrafted gear remains an unfinished work, with frustrating inconsistencies and unavoidable gaps.
During this time, drops from Group instances and Raids, as well as Quest gear from levels 20-80 started have also gone under the knife. We’ve seen the expected stats changes, yet some of the tweaks have been more unpredictable, with items flip-flopping class or even archetype.
The question on everyone’s minds is, will the itemization be ready by tomorrow?
We’ve checked out just a fraction of the Itemization changes on Test, and there’s one undeniable trend in the revamped gear: Stats previously only seen at level 88-90 will now trickle down to gear as low as level 30. This includes Crit Bonus, Potency, Multiattack, and even Critical Mitigation which has previously only been required for level 80+ Raiding (TSO/SF/Velious) and level 86+ Grouping (Velious).
Game Update 61 seems set to bring level 70-80 gear parallel with its higher level 86-90 brethren. We’ve seen level 78 items that are one adornment slot away from being an upgrade from level 90 gear. Game Update 61 also seems set to reverse the trend of Stat Consolidation. After Sentinel’s Fate and Velious made a point of boiling down green and blue stats to their most basic components, Game Update 61 introduces a raftload of new blue stats for Priests and Mages to utilize the new Autoattack mechanic.
Whose Itemization Is It Anyway?
Only a few players were lucky enough to meet the new EQ2 itemization guy at Fan Faire. But just in the last week, we’ve seen a flurry of activity from Gninja who seems to have picked up the ball at least on the communication side and is trying to connect the dots for bewildered testers. The increased forum dev activity even in the last few hours suggests that the team will be burning the midnight oil to get as much done as possible before tomorrow’s update rolls out:
Instances and raids should have been done as well. Yes we are working on Mythicals as well as Enervated. Heritage Quest items should be getting a bump as well as soon as it makes it to build.
Also, not originally planned for the Reitemization, Sentinel’s Fate seems to have snuck into the plans as well:
[Sentinel’s Fate] did in fact get included but it was not included in our initial plan. We are trying to get through everything as we can.
These updates over the weekend suggested many long hours:
The raid gear should be getting updated this weekend. We obviously are not going to be able to get every single piece but the goal is to get them done as we can. This applies to merchant gear as well in some cases.
You will likely see some older gear that used to be a specific class changing to usable by a different class. We are keeping an eye on procs etc and making sure that items with class specific stuff on them stay class specific. If you find specific items that do not follow that then please PM them to me or Silius and we will get them corrected.
We just don’t know what to expect when the curtain comes up on Game Update 61. Long lists of issues have elicited the response:
The majority of those issues are already fixed just not pushed to test yet.
My suggestion — don’t transmute anything just yet!
Ghost in the Machine
It is clear to several observers that whatever computer program has been used to automatically adjust these items is still struggling with which items are intended for Mages vs. Priests, or what stats are most useful for a Fighter or Scout. SmokeJumper has defended the use of these tools as an aid to the designers , whose responsibility is to spot-check items and confirm that the changes have been performed correctly.
Yet this approach puts the onus squarely on the player’s shoulders to compare every item pre- and post-GU61 and then make educated guesses at which items need a bug report filed. Without any guidance or clear explanation of the development goals for this revamp, it has been difficult for players to even know if a set of items is “working as intended” or an unexpected oversight.
Several threads about the Itemization including Mastercrafted gear received little attention until just this past week when Gninja spent some time on Test and on the Forums to try to address the confusion.
Players have reported entire sets of gear which have flip-flopped class or archetype. A player reported that of the four Ward of Elements cloaks available from Aiden, 3 of them are now flagged Scout-only. Inconsistencies like this abound.
It’s good that level 20-89 gear is being made relevant again, moreso if the Sentinel’s Fate dungeons start dropping items which are, if not upgrades, at least interesting to level 80-87 players. However there will be some pain ahead before it all gets sorted out.
Thrael’Gorr and Stormfeather
Game Update 61 opens up new questlines in both the Eastern Wastes and the Great Divide. Friends of the Goahmari can continue the Stormfeather gryphon storyline in the Great Divide. Meanwhile, those who have pledged their allegiance (however temporary) to the Ry’Gorr can help reunite them with their long-suffering brethren the Thrael’Gorr
We checked out some of these quests on the Test server and found that both questlines provide gear which is an obvious upgrade from Public Quest and Thurgadin shard gear, while still keeping the Ry’Gorr shard gear desirable. The Critical Mitigation numbers on some of the Thrael’Gorr items did seem out of whack, suggesting that they may have situational value for guilds struggling to up their Critical Mitigation numbers. However in most other regards, the gear is a downgrade over the Ry’Gorr set.
Plane of War
We haven’t seen any of the items out of Plane of War heroic or raid zones just yet, although we understand NPU and other guilds have posted links to some of the spoils of those zones. If there’s a pattern to it, we’ll report back on the type of gear that can be found in the Plane. It may just be drops and crated armor though.
The sentiment behind most of GU61 is good.
It’s great that they are re-itemizing the rest of the game to match the mechanics changes they implemented six months ago. (It’s ludicrous that they would make a global mechanics change in the first place without updating everything to match, and I think the mechanic change (a move to archetype-focused itemization and single primary stat) was terrible, but hey…)
It’s good that they’re revisiting AAs and at least getting rid of the ‘web’ approach for subclass aa trees.
It’s good that they’re adding dynamic dungeons, a house rating system, and some lore for the beastlord.
Unfortunately, the implementation has been about as slipshod as anyone could have feared. Very little communication from devs on the official forums. Changes being made at the last moment that will go straight to live servers since they aren’t being made in time to be pushed to test. Tomorrow is going to be a disaster, and it’s one that is going to take a very, very long time to unravel, given the scope of what is changing. Business as usual, I guess.
I have a sinking feeling they are pushing this live in an unfinished state.
If this is correct, and this is a mass of bugs, I cannot expect the results to be good…for anyone.
I suspect they are about to make a huge mistake.
I think it’s pretty obvious that many features won’t be fixed, even with a 2 day delay. However, one thing in this article that perked me up was the reitemisation including SF. Now if they’d just include TSO dungeons too we’d have loads more content to do at max level.
Lots of bugs are only to be expected, but even 1000-2000 serious ones could be fixed in a week I guess with the size of EQ2’s dev team.
What still concerns me more is the inflation in power that seems to be hinted at for the lower levels, while I see some stats are being lost like +CA damage things like crit bonus can more then make up for it. I can see the lower level dungeon finder being a unused feature if players can solo the dungeons.
The other thing that is a mess is this requirement to put a little bit of every stat on each piece of gear, while not put just 3-4 stats and leave it to players to mix and match, 8 or so blue stats on a average item is a bit silly imo.
> Stats previously only seen at level 88-90 will now trickle down to gear as low as level 30
That’s not so great news. I love that in EQ even appearance is so gradual. It takes time to get to the good stuff. To see low level tier items with loads of blue stats on them is just wrong.
For the math challenged, this update seems extremely daunting. Just sayin.
you know i dont know what worries me more the fact that they are fixing sillus’s item mistakes 6 months later or the fact SOE has made him the Mechanics Lead
“The question on everyone’s minds is, will the itemization be ready by tomorrow?”
That’s not the question on my mind,or of every other player I talk to. The real question is “Why the F is SOE wasting valuable dev power on itemizing stuff that does not matter in the least?” Seriously, level 20-80 gear? Taking this from the lowest common denominator you may have first time players who want to take their time and enjoy the 20-80 ride, the great thing is that the game has been dumbed down and made so easy that you can realistically walk around naked and never get killed leveling up, certainly the existing quest rewards are more than enough for someone leveling up and going thru the soloquest grind and also doing all the group zones available at the appropriate level. I’ve leveled several alts the old fashioned way, no power leveling but just doing the quest timelines and an occasional group for the heroic zones and with the quest gear I’ve never noticed a mob that did not die in 2 or 3 swings or that made me fear for my life. At best the re itemization will make it easier for players to solo heroic zones, although I’ve never noted a problem with any character when doing this mentored down.
I just don’t get it, there are so many things that need attention. I would think with such a top heavy game that 80-90 gear would get the focus. Once again this is not to take away from the guys who truly want to enjoy 20-80, but business is business and the majority of players are at end game.
With that said the other thing against this itemization is this complete homogenizing of items which started in DOV and looks like it’s staying with us. You can tell exactly where an item dropped by it’s stats, hey I just got a 5.2cb/pot bracelet, I can’t wait to go to the x2 and get my 6cb/pot bracelet, and I’ll dream of going to a x4 and getting my 6.2cb/pot bracelet, come on SOE have we gotten to the point where you guys need to put in stats into a statgrinder and accept what comes out? It’s a shame because I remember when for example a battlepriest could wear melee/fighter items and really create something unique and very cool.
While I agree with Rick777 that the endgame does need some serious attention, and rightly so as he mentioned, but I do think the itemization is appropriate to include for 20-80.
One of EQ2’s strong suits is that it’s been around for 7 years. 7 years of fairly rich content. What are we going to do with it? Say, “Who cares about that crap, just get to 90 and PST for RW invite”? No. Because there is a, although smaller, group of players that do quest and group at the appropriate levels to enjoy content at which is was designed for.
Is this the majority of players? No, most will level to 90 to catch up to their friends.
Does this change affect the players that want to just level to 90 (or are at 90)at all? No, other than the fact that they’re not the center of attention of devs :p
How can we “re-vitalize” older content with a declining server population at the appropriate level?
Well, let’s reitemize or “fix” older content to put it in line with the new two primary stat system. Introduce some new scalable dungeons to allow characters of all different levels to enjoy _together_. While we’re at it, let’s introduce Merc’s too!
I do like the fact that this upcoming change should (hopefully) make TSO/RoK, and even SF content worthwhile to do. As it stands now, why bother with void shards @ 80, when you can just grind a few more levels to do DoV content and get gear that’s in some places 2x as better and easier to get? What happened to the classic RPG gear progression curve?
Have to agree with Rick for the most part. in almost every game I max out a toon and then enjoy the ride on the alts, but EQ2 has been dumbed down so much that even with the 45 days of free time they gave players, I just could not get back into the game. You used to have to make choices on your gear: Do I want more STR for attack or should I be using more WIS to resist that mage boss that does massive aoe. This single primary stat is, as someone else mentioned, a total crap move, but this is the direction it’s been heading for a while.