Feldon
I could write 50,000 words about the disappointing Game Update 61, with referenced links to the nearly 100 forum discussions about its flaws, plus countless player and developer quotes. But what difference would it make? Despite a 2-day delay, and despite pushback from both Developers and Testers warning that the update still needed weeks, possibly a month of work to meet any reasonable measurement of build quality, Game Update 61 was released Thursday, August 25th. It was clear on Monday the 22nd that there was no way the Reitemization of EQ2 would be completed in time for Game Update...
Year: 2011
Double XP Weekend Although it wasn’t included in the announcement of the Back to School Bonanza Double StationCash e-mail blast, visitors to the SOE.com website discovered that in addition to Double StationCash, EQ2 players can expect Double XP through the duration of the event. The EverQuest II Double XP weekend should last during these times: PDT: September 2 12:01am ~ September 5 11:59pm EDT: September 2 3:01am ~ September 6 2:59am BST: September 2 8:01am ~ September 6 7:59am CET: September 2 9:01am ~ September 6 8:59am
Due to the widespread changes to Itemization in Game Update 61 for level 20-90 items (including Sentinel’s Fate and Velious gear which were rushed for inclusion), a complementary Global Unattune was provided. This was supposed to include every item including Equipment, Appearance, Inventory (bags), and your Bank. However this did not quite work out that way, at least not permanently. Players have discovered that when they login for the first time, most or all of their items are Unattuned, but if they log out that character and log back in, all Bank items get Reattuned. Why? Rothgar explains: The...
After weeks of testers reporting getting stuck in their Guild Halls, or being unable to zone into their Guild Halls, especially Tier 2 halls in South Qeynos, this bug went live with Game Update 61, and was not corrected with today’s update. Your only recourse is to file a Petition with Customer Service with a status of “Stuck” and see if they will Reset your Guild Hall instance. Good luck!
From an e-mail I just received: Back to School Bonanza Double StationCash and Double XP!! September 2-5, 2011 Purchase StationCash in-game, via your Station Account, or redeem an SOE Pre-Paid Game Card at http://www.soe.com/gamecards/ (between 12:01am PDT Sept 2, 2011 and 11:59pm PDT September 5, 2011) to get Double StationCash. EverQuest II players also get Double XP during this weekend. Purchases made via SMS are excluded from the promotion.
The first Flying Squirrel mount, first premiered at Fan Faire, has been introduced to EverQuest II. It’s been added to the StationCash Marketplace for 1950SC ($19.50 or $6.50 if you stocked up during a triple SC weekend). Despite the name, the Flying Squirrel is a glider and thus available at level 60. We presume that there will be other color choices in the future, perhaps a darker brown, red, or even silver. According to Tom “ttobey” Tobey, this mount was modeled by Steve Merghart and animated by Chris Myers. After the jump, a bit less fanciful screenshot of the...
Here are your Update Notes for today, August 26, 2011. The US update will be at 7:00am PDT and last approximately 1 hour. That’s 10:00am EDT, 15:00 BST, 16:00 CET. The EU update will be at 5:00am PDT (13:00 BST or 14:00 CET) and last 2 hours. From the EQ2 Patcher Notes: GENERAL Due to an issue with GU61, all characters will have their items unattuned and adornments on equipped gear refunded once again. In addition, all AA trees should reset upon login. The LoN prestige house Residence of the Blades no longer gets confused if you own an...
Dethdlr
Apparently, two additional days wasn’t adequate to fully test everything coming in with GU61. Who could have guessed? There are reports that gear is randomly re-attuning itself when you zone or log off. There is also some strangeness going on with AAs. Rothgar has posted this on the official forums: We will be hotifixing this bug tomorrow. The downside is that all of your items will become unattuned again and we will refund adornments applied to any equipped gear. After this runs tomorrow, the items should remain unattuned until you decide to attune them again. Tomorrow’s hotfix will also...
Note that the trailer mentions the Dungeon Finder which is not currently available. When the Dungeon Finder goes live, it will be specific to each server/realm at first, and won’t be cross-server, which may take months/years to implement.
From SmokeJumper on the EQ2X Forums: We’re going multi-pronged on this. 1) We’re spending money again on ads. You should start seeing banner ads. 2) We’re doing a winback campaign to reactivate interest with old players after Dungeon Finder rolls out, and pushing even harder when Freeport and the Age of Discovery launch later this year. 3) We added the video recording feature so that word spreads organically as you post any videos you think are interesting. There’s more than this planned, but these are a few of the things that should be most effective. To record a YouTube...
If you’ve ever wondered why EU patches and Game Updates always seem to take twice as long as US ones, you’re not alone. We’ve never been able to understand why the files aren’t sent earlier, or some steps taken ahead of time to make the update more quickly. Apparently there is some work being done. From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums: The international team has developed a way to parallel process some of the update in the future, so we should hopefully see an update speed increase for non-US servers. Taylen of Splitpaw asked: Does that mean we would...
When one creates a character in EQ2, even for the sole purpose of tradeskilling, they must first select an Adventure class. There are a surprising number of characters out there which are max level Tradeskillers who have explored and completed every Tradeskill aspect EQ2 has to offer. Later on, they realize that they may have chosen their Adventure class hastily. These are not players who wish to respec their Adventure class and keep their AAs or quest discoveries (except Tradeskill-specific ones). Even though such a feature is intended for crafters, it would of course also be available to adventurers,...
After some issues with extended downtime (6 hours, but it took 3 hours for any explanation) on the EU servers, Game Update 61 has officially launched. From EverQuest2.com: The time is near for the great Fortress of Drunder to reveal its true purpose to all. The very bedrock of the Eastern Wastes shudders as a massive portal rips itself open within the fortress walls. The sounds of battle echo through its halls as the God of War himself prepares his innumerable armies to march across the frozen face of Velious and seize control of the lands of Norrath for...
PC Gamer has landed a time-lapse video of SOE production artist Nate Temple conceptualizing the Raptor mount recently added to EQ2. He takes the raptor from a blank page to full color concept art which was then passed off to the 3D modeling and texturing team.
ZAM’s Cyliena, who has taken a larger role handling in-depth coverage of EQ2 and specifically Game Update 61, took a moment to appear on the Jethal Silverwing Show this week. She joined Jethal and Elquinjena to talk about EverQuest II’s Game Update 61 and more. Download Jethal Silverwing Show for August 23, 2011 featuring Cyliena
Game Update 61: “The War of Zek” UPDATE NOTES A GENERAL SUMMARY OF WHAT’S IN GAME UPDATE 61: All dungeon and overland loot items have been re-itemized. What does this mean? It means loot everywhere should be legitimate for the level it drops for, no matter where you go now. Go explore some nooks and crannies you haven’t seen for a long time and get off the Golden Path! The loot’s good again. The Velious saga continues as you journey past the Citadel of Drunder to the Plane of War itself in a new dungeon and raid, and a...
The War of Zek, or Game Update 61, will go live on Thursday, August 25, 2011. The US servers will be offline at the usual update time of 7:00 am PDT and are expected to be back online around 10:00 am PDT. UK worlds will be updated at 3:00 PM London Time. The estimated downtime will be 3 hours. Pacific Daylight Time (PDT): 7:00am-10:00am Eastern Daylight Time (EDT): 10:00am-01:00pm British Summer Time (BST): 03:00pm-06:00pm Central Europe Time (CET): 04:00pm-07:00pm We will post the Game Update 61: Update Notes as soon as we have them.
One year ago, the EverQuest II Extended “Free-to-Play” service launched. In its wake, the EverQuest II Free Trial was unceremoniously discontinued. At Fan Faire, we learned that the Trial was coming back, and today it has. Past trials have been very limited: Play the Fae — A 7 day trial of one starting zone (Faydwer) and limited to level 20. Trial of the Isle — A trial limited to level 6 on the Qeynos and Freeport starting islands. Both had limited access to chat channels, private messaging, and joining groups and/or guilds. Unlike those past trials, this one is...
The Age’s End Prophecy So perhaps you’ve skipped a few quests, or clicked through the dialogue of yet another quest NPC standing between you and phat loots. Or you just haven’t gotten into the necessary groups or raids to experience the continuing storyline. Point is, there is an overarching storyline about the Swords of Destiny (the Qeynos Claymore and Lucan D’Lere’s Soulfire) that carries from Echoes of Faydwer. And leading up to Game Update 61, the EQ2 Lore designers have shared a comprehensive overview of what’s going on in case you missed it. Check out the writeup at EverQuest2.com.
Summoners, Enchanters, and Shamans have been curious at exactly how Shared Pet Stats work. Fortunately some details have been provided by Maevianiu on the EQ2 Forums: NOTE: Any buffs that affect a group/raid do not transfer from the owner to the pet (that would be doubling up) but single target ones that grant the stats below should go to both the owner and the pet when cast on the owner. The following stats are copied from the owner to the pet: Attributes, potency, ability mod, crit bonus (pvp and pve), crit chance, toughness, doublecast chance (pve and pvp), ability...
From Amnerys on the EQ2 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.
Ready or Not, Game Update 61 is going live tomorrow, August 23rd, 2011 Thursday, August 25th, 2011.
From Domino on the EQ2 Forums: Just wanted to post a quick update since I know folks are looking forward to hearing whose houses we picked, and how. Due to the large number of submissions we couldn’t visit each house in-game, so we looked over all the linked screenshots that Amnerys compiled from the submissions in various places and made a short list of what we thought were the most outstanding houses, which we could then visit in game. There were some really fantastic submissions and it was a great to look through them all!
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...
In response to a thread about the lack of Battlegrounds activity, SmokeJumper had this surprising comment: We hope to roll out solutions for the [Battlegrounds] matchmaking at the same time as the Dungeon Finder roll out next week (which also uses the matchmaker). If the fixes don’t go in then, they will roll out (very) shortly thereafter!