Feldon
On Friday, September 16th, Jennifer “Isulith” Bridges, interim EQ2 Community Manager while Amnerys is on leave, will be hosting a Meet and Greet on the Test Copy and Freeport (EQ2X) servers at 4-5pm PDT and 5-6pm PDT respectively. We’re anxious to see what mark she’ll leave on the EQ2 community during her tenure. The natives have been getting restless, and forum trolls seem to have gained a foothold. I’m personally hoping more for “Stand and Deliver” or “The Substitute” and less “Kindergarten Cop“! The announcement from EverQuest2.com:
Year: 2011
From Kaitheel on the EQ2 Forums: Nights of the Dead 2011 has been activated on Test and Test Copy! Nights of the Dead once again brings goblins and ghoulies out from the shadows. Those inclined to celebrate the holiday through crafting will find a new book of recipes full of new house items being sold by official event merchants. And those feeling more adventurous can trick-or-treat within Qeynos or Freeport or investigate the multiple haunted locations! But be wary as the mysterious Setri Lur’eth has been spotted at the beach in Nektulos Forest and the headless guardsman has been...
From the EQ2 Forums: POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION Kunark Creatures found within Kylong Plains, Kunzar Jungle, Fens of Nathsar and Jarsath Wastes are once again dropping items. Stonebrunt Highlands Vreshana Kestral will no longer send characters to The Palace of Roehn Theer if they opt not to go.
Gninja provided some great news on Friday for players carrying unadorned gear from Velious’ two x2 raid zones (Tower of Frozen Shadow and Tower of Vuul): The X2 zones drop items with red adornment slots, so those are the shards that will start dropping once my change makes it to the current build. Both X2 zones should be getting the pure primal velium shards dropping from all the named. Providing the means to buy Red Adornments for items with red adornment slots is certainly a welcome change. And the more powerful War Runes retain their rarity as they still...
Announced at Fan Faire and rolled out in late August, the long-awaited revamp of level 20-90 gear was staggering in its ambition. Some 7 years of items, numbering over 50,000, would go under the knife or be recreated entirely for the Revamp. Now just over two weeks since the launch of Game Update 61, it remains unclear just where we stand on the Great Reitemization of EverQuest II. More than anything, players have wondered at the intent of the revamp, seeking out an overall vision of item progression that would flow from level 1 through to level 90 items....
In July, an Aether Flying Race was added to the Thundering Steppes on the Test server. Turns out, this was created specifically for the Community, Customer Service, and Guide teams as something they can turn on for specific events, weekends, etc. This unique Aether Race was activated today, September 10th, on all EQ2 servers. It will be activated next week on the EQ2X Freeport server. Dellmon and Aliscious of EQ2Talk have been running the course like crazy trying to set an all-time track record. Although there is no unique title for completing the course within a specific time, there...
SOE Games, Websites, and Services are back up after yesterday’s San Diego Power Outage caused by a faulty main supply line and some maintenance being performed in Arizona. The Freeport (EQ2X free-to-play) server seemed to come up first, followed by most of the EQ2 servers. Nagafen experienced some database issues due to the power outage and required some additional work. The Marketplace, Character Transfers, and Server Status pages all experienced some outages and additional glitches may occur for the next 24-48 hours.
The increasingly permeable barrier between Test and Live seems to be fluctuating. Someone call Fringe Division! A bullet point in yesterday’s update notes elicited widespread commentary on the EQ2 Forums, leading some to theorize that it was a typo. It wasn’t: Critical chance should no longer appear on items below level 80. The result was many items lost some or all Crit Chance, Crit Bonus, Reuse, etc. Further, items from the new Elements of War heroic zone also got hit with the Nerf[TM] bat, seeing reductions from 42 Crit Chance to just 12%.
While we were sleeping, a power outage in San Diego knocked out all SOE games and websites. Some service has been restored, but intermittent problems persist and likely will for the next few hours. From SignonSanDiego.com: An unprecedented power outage led to controlled chaos Thursday throughout San Diego County and surrounding areas as up to 5 million people coped with the sudden loss of electricity, and officials said power would be restored in waves through Saturday. The outage began at 3:38 p.m. after a 500-kilovolt high-voltage transmission line from Arizona to California failed, triggering a cascade of events that...
Dethdlr
Tank and Spank vs. Complex Scripting vs. Fun In recent years, I’ve seen numerous posts from people complaining about how the different group/raid encounters work. A lot of the complaints say that they don’t want simple “Tank and Spank” encounters. But they also don’t want encounters with complex scripting, fail conditions, cure fests, etc. They want encounters that are fun and challenging without any of those things. So it got me wondering, how do you do that? How do you make an encounter without complex scripting, fail conditions, cure fests, etc. without turning it into a tank and spank...
Here are your update notes for today, September 8, 2011. Of note, War Runes (red, raid-only adornments) are going Heirloom! We’re not really sure what the removal of Crit Chance from lower level items is about — maybe it’s a typo and they meant Critical Mitigation. Considering they just went through and added Crit Bonus to thousands of items (which does nothing without its sister stat Crit Chance), removing Crit Chance would make no sense. From the EQ2 Forums: POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION Silent City: The Delving Dead If you have completed all the collection quests for the Delving...
Here are your September 7, 2011 EQ2 Patch Notes: POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION Pedestal of Sky Fixed the missing geometry in this zone. Foundations of Stone [Challenge] The blink portion of Icy Snap AOE that the Statue of Rallos Zek casts will now only blink players a max of 2m, and will only affect players a certain distance away from the statue, not players close to it. Sullon’s Spire x4 raid [Challenge Mode] Aaranae Acrimae: Her debuff to max health and mana is greatly reduced. Leechweb does less mana damage on its initial hit.
EQ2 has always had a series of “flavor” items. These are loot drops which serve no purpose other than a bit of interest (a colorful description), and a fixed price at which they can be sold to a vendor. It has not always been easy to pick out these items, although in recent years most have been flagged with a statement such as “You might be able to find a merchant who would give you a few coins for this.” So it would seem the groundwork has partly been laid for a “Sell All Junk” button. Well, it looks...
Progression is a funny thing. Funnel players into too strict a progression path of gear, of levels, of dungeons, and you take away player choice and limit options. Provide too many options or no clear path, and you have player confusion about what they’re supposed to do next in the line of progression. The Shadow Odyssey had a straightforward (if restricting for developers) progression, with 3 and later 4 tiers of armor from Heroic through to x4 Raiding. This is not to mention the open-to-all Shard of Hate raid zone which had internal progression from a named encounter that...
Last week, SOE released their new server status page. I took a look at this to see if there was anything there that I might be able to use myself. There was. I’ve put together three different versions of an EQ2 server status page, two of which can be embedded into your own website.
From EverQuest2.com: Come Back to EverQuest II Free For This Weekend! This weekend, players who have quit the game between November 5, 2010 and August 2, 2011 can come back for free! It’s a great time to come back, too. It’s Bonus Experience Weekend and Back to School Bonanza for double Station Cash! If your friends haven’t heard about it yet, don’t forget to tell them! The free play time starts this evening and ends Monday evening. All players will need to do is patch their game client and log into the game!
From SmokeJumper on the EQ2X Forums: We’re aiming to put it on the Test server this weekend and then take it to Live in a week or two.
We have received several reports that EQ2Flames.com was hacked late this afternoon and had been serving malware. The account currently displays as Suspended. If the hackers were profiteering script kiddies, only able to inject malicious code but gaining no further access. then the damage may be minimal. However if the hackers gained access to eq2flames’ MySQL database then they would be able to browse everything, including hidden forums and Private Messages. vBulletin forum software does not store plaintext passwords so it is unlikely we will see identity theft. UPDATE: EQ2Flames is now back online. UPDATE #2: EQ2Flames seems to...
As we reported last week, we’re coming up on a Double XP weekend. Now the official announcement from EverQuest2.com: This coming weekend, from 12:01 AM PDT on Friday, September 2 and ending at 11:59 PM PDT on Sunday, September 5, EverQuest II will be running a Double XP promotion (+100% XP). Take advantage of these three days and watch those XP bars fill up! The bonus applies to AA, tradeskill, and adventure experience gained this weekend. Our French, German, Japanese, Test, and EQ2 Extended servers will also be enjoying the increase in XP gain. The localised times for this...
From the EQ2 Patcher: POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION Silent City: The Delving Dead Levels below 90 should actually have collections. TRADESKILLS Appearances on some tranquil threadbare crafted armor have been updated. The Scroll of Fire Seeds is now heirloom rather than no trade.
From EverQuest2.com: We’ve got some really great news! We now have an official SOE Server Status Page! The page includes server status information for the following games: EverQuest II Extended EverQuest II EverQuest Star Wars: Galaxies DC Universe Online Check it out here: http://www.soe.com/status. The information on this page will include up-to-date region, server name, status, and server load information. UPDATE: The Server Status page has been redone to add other games (Vanguard, EQ Mac, EQOA, FreeRealms, and PlanetSide). They’ve also added a time readout for the last time each server’s status was updated. This seems to have changed...
From EverQuest2.com: Hail and well met, fellow gamers! My name is Jennifer “Isulith” Bridges and I’m the newest addition to the SOE Community Team. I have to say, it’s truly an honor to be here.
After people started wondering where oh where has the Shady Swashbuckler gone, Gninja had this to say on the EQ2Forums: Shady is currently permakilled for an exploit he will be returning tomorrow after the update. Sorry for not letting you guys know.
This just in from Smokejumper on the EQ2 Forums: There are a number of things that we’re going to revisit on items: a) The green stats matter. Progression of green stats will be attended to in the new pass. b) There will be more variability between the value of stats on items. This was removed erroneously at the last minute. It will be returned. (Getting rid of the “all items have +29 STR on them in the same zone” effect.) There will be more “min/max-ability” on the items. c) The dev team will be playing a lot over the...
From the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL Fixed an issue with Guild Halls. Fixed an issue causing the streaming client to use old assets. Fixed an issue which could cause the streaming client to crash on startup. Fixed a disconnect bug where some characters would get dropped to character select upon login. Players will now be prompted for a one-time, free item unattuning: If you answer yes, all items will be immediately unattuned. Any equipped items will be popped into overflow. If you answer no, items will not be unattuned and you will not be asked again.