Feldon
From the EQ2 Forums comes a recap of what we can expect in April. With the exception of a Double XP weekend over Easter, there’s little new to of note except some vague comments about bug fixes. And no word on DOV Dungeon Timers being Reduced to 90 Minutes, which was promised for March. Here are the April Update Plans for EverQuest II! The Skyshrine update (GU 63) is taking the lion’s share of the team’s focus right now (launching in mid-April), but other things are still happening as we continue to smash bugs, improve systems, and look to...
Month: March 2012
From Brasse on the EQ2 Forums: Friends, We promised that all players would be able to play together, to play on the servers of their choice. This was a huge undertaking, technically, but vital to keeping our players together. Accounts will necessarily be handled separately as games transition. We are working very closely together and we are all are fully committed to serving their customers well. While it will be impossible to address each and every post here, I would like to answer a few.
Five weeks after posting a Frequently Asked Questions that left many questions unanswered, today brings a revised FAQ which fills in some of the gaps. We’ve highlighted in blue the sections which contain new and notable information. From the EQ2 Forums: Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) recently announced a new multi-year partnership with ProSiebenSat.1 Games Group to license eight of its online games in Europe, including DC UniverseTM Online, EverQuest® II, Star Wars®: Clone Wars AdventuresTM, Free Realms®, Magic: The Gathering – Tactics®, Pox Nora®, the upcoming PlanetSide® 2, and the next installment of the EverQuest® franchise. This new partnership...
Eric “Piestro” Cleaver interviewed Brian “Omougi” Ferguson on the EQ2 Forums about the upcoming Game Update 63: As we continue on towards the release of Game Update 63: SKYSHRINE, I sat down with Game Designer Brian “Omougi” Ferguson to talk a little bit about tradeskills. Tradeskills are a big part of GU 63 and he had a lot of exciting information to share! [Piestro] So tell us a little bit about tradeskills in GU 63. What can tradeskillers expect to see once the Game Update is released? [BF] Game Update 63 contains the first step into the 10th tier...
From EverQuest2.com: Skyshrine, the ancient city of dragons, will make its way to the EverQuest II world in Game Update 63. In this week’s webcast your host Linda “Brasse” Carlson (Director of Global Community Relations) chats with Holly “Windstalker” Longdale (Producer), Akil “Lyndro” Hooper (Lead Designer), and Dave “Smoke Jumper” Georgeson (Director of Development) about the level increase, the prestige system, tradeskills, and more! Join us on Thursday, March 29, 2012, at 4:00 p.m. US Pacific Time* on Twitch TV! The webcast is expected to last about 20 minutes. Be there to hear about some of the exciting content in Game...
From EverQuest2.com: Get a first glimpse of the next EverQuest II Game Update – Skyshrine. Our talented Senior Artist, Tad Ehrlich, takes you through the Skyshrine courtyard giving a taste of this exciting new content coming this April. The Destiny of Velious saga continues as adventurers breach the barriers of the Withered Lands seeking entrance to Skyshrine, the glorious ancient dragon city! The great citadel of Skyshrine has long housed the group of dragons known as the Claws of Veeshan behind its massive walls and arcane protections. Now, the unthinkable has happened — it has become besieged by powerful...
From the EQ2 Forums: ITEMS The following items no longer have duplicates of the same stats, they now have the sum of the duplicated stats: Magi’s Bracelet of Eradication Hammer of Divine Retribution Zealot’s Breastplate Magi’s Earring of Eradication Magi’s Belt of Eradication Shoulder Pads of Meditation Magi’s Necklace of Eradication Spinestaff Magi’s Ring of Eradication
From Karen Bryan at Massively: As Massively reported this week, EverQuest II Game Update 63 is inching closer to going live, and it’s bringing some exciting changes. There are new zones, instances, quests, and lots of dragons on the way. For old Velious fans, the return of Skyshrine will be a welcome sight, although there’s new danger and turmoil both inside the city as well as through the land that surrounds it. We’re beginning to get more specifics on what is included in this update, and this week’s Tattered Notebook offers a rundown of what’s revealed so far. The...
A recurring controversy in EverQuest II is the ability to sell or gift looting rights to a player who was not present at the time the mob died. This could be an alternate raider who was sitting out, a player who went linkdead at the crucial moment during the fight, or it could be a player who “buys” the item in auction. Last night two forum topics were created on the EQ2 forums suggesting that SLR had become impossible on Test, and that only players who had been present at the time of the kill could loot items from...
Confirming rumors we’d heard last week, Blue’s News and StrategyInformer are reporting that SOE is renaming its annual fan gathering from “SOE Fan Faire” to “SOE Live“. Sony has announced the debut of a new convention devoted to Sony Online Entertainment MMOs, SOE Live. The convention will be located in Las Vegas, NV from the 18th through 21st October this year. The convention will take place at the Bally’s Casino. The games that will be showcased at the convention include DC Universe Online, EverQuest, EverQuest II, Free Realms, Magic: The Gathering – Tactics, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures and...
On January 12, 2012, Sony Online Entertainment announced an exclusive publishing and distribution deal with ProSiebenSat.1, a German TV media company whose gaming division Alaplaya has previously known for its pay-to-win browser games. After 2 weeks, we raised some questions about the deal. Yet it would be another four weeks before any official response would come. And if SOE hoped that a vague Frequently Asked Questions about the ProSiebenSat.1 deal would allay fears and reassure players, it couldn’t have had a more opposite effect. Never has the EQ2 playerbase been more united behind one issue than ensuring that ALL...
From the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL Fixed a bug where some NPCs were still critting on players. Charmed players will no longer crit at all.
Dethdlr
Akil “Lyndro” Hooper has posted a followup to his interview with Piestro on the official forums: Hey folks, I know that much of this is information that you already knew, but we wanted to get everything in a centralized place, so people don’t have to dig around to try and find the answers to these questions. The AA requirement won’t be 320 for sure (We don’t want to require AoD), the bar for earning XP in 90 is going to be 280, because you have your heroic endlines at that point (and I hate large primes so 277 wasn’t...
Lead Designer Akil “Lyndro” Hooper was interviewed by Piestro about Game Update 63. From EverQuest2.com: With the announcement of Game Update 63: SKYSHRINE, players have been speculating on the details. In the interest of answering some questions that were on players’ minds, I sat down with Lead Designer Akil “Lyndro” Hooper to ask a few questions about general design related topics for GU 63. We’ll continue to get into the meat of this game update in the coming weeks with specific subjects like Tradeskilling and more. Piestro: I’ve been looking over lists of items included with this Game Update,...
From the EQ2 Forums: Important: Antonia Bayle and the US Battlegrounds will be offline for maintenance beginning at 4:00 AM Pacific* on March 22, 2012. In addition, Antonia Bayle, US Battlegrounds and Nagafen chat will be unavailable during this time. We expect this downtime to last for approximately 10 hours. We apologize for this interruption and will bring the servers back online as soon as the maintenance is completed. Time Zone Conversions PDT: March 22 @ 4:00am~2:00pm EDT: March 22 @ 7:00am~5:00pm GMT: March 22 @ 11:00~21:00 CET: March 22 @ 12:00~22:00
From Gninja on the EQ2 Forums: We understand that some creatures are still critically hitting. Seems we missed a file or two for the integration to live. We are working to get it resolved asap! We are indeed going to be emergency hotfixing this today. Shouldn’t be too long of a downtime. However we did find one small issue that we are working on fixing but is not as high of a priority we felt it should hold up the hotfix. Just as a heads up if you are in battle with an NPC and it puts of dot...
From the EQ2 Forums: From 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, March 20th, through 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, March 28th, log in to EQII and take part in a look back at Norrathian days of yore. The EQII Team has created this fun event as an homage to EverQuest in honor of the anniversary of the EverQuest franchise, and although the lore doesn’t exactly fit the current story of EQII, they decided to make it extra enjoyable for those who were around for the first iteration of Norrath. Adventurers who take part in this journey through time will find some silly nods to...
From the EQ2 Forums: CRITICAL MITIGATION REMOVAL Critical Mitigation (the stat) has been removed from the game. NPCs no longer use Critical Bonus to add to critical damage. Buffs and debuffs that had Critical Mitigation elements to them have had those elements replaced with other elements instead, so that those buffs/debuffs do not lose effectiveness. Critical Mitigation values on adornments have been replaced with maximum health bonuses. NOTE: This change has no effect on PvP game play. The “PvP Critical Mitigation” stat is still useful for game balance in PvP play and is not being changed.
From Holly “Windstalker“ on the EQ2 Forums: Hey folks, I noticed there had been questions on exactly when Critical Mitigation will be removed from PvE items and Crit Bonus removed from NPCs. We have decided to push the change live with the Hotfix tomorrow. If anything changes on this front, I’ll stop in, but tomorrow’s the day! P.S. PvP Crit Mitigation will still exist on items.
When we gained the ability to buy EQ2 subscriptions 1, 3, 6, or even 12 months in advance on the StationCash Marketplace, players rejoiced. With Double and Triple SC weekends, compounded with those handy Walmart bonus SC cards, players have been able to get EQ2 subscriptions for as little as $3.33 a month. However there was an eventual price to be paid for this price discount. EQ2 Subscribers who have paid in advance for their subs with StationCash have had trouble buying Character Transfer Tokens, and been unable to Gift StationCash. We’ve talked about this in the past, and...
UPDATE: We are getting reports that the Wal-Mart exclusive StationCash cards with a +500 bonus are no longer doubling or tripling that bonus. This problem has been corrected, and redeemed cards are being retroactively credited. In honor of EverQuest’s 13th Anniversary, from noon today until tomorrow is Double StationCash. You should confirm that the SC point value shown is correct before completing your transactions. From the original EverQuest forums: In celebration of EverQuest’s 13th anniversary and transition to Free to Play. Your. Way. We will be offering double Station Cash! Hurry, only valid March 16, 12pm PDT to March...
Game Update 63 “Skyshrine” rolls out to the live servers on April 17th, but parts of it are now available for testing on the Test and Test Copy servers. In addition to the new Velious zones and a level cap raise to level 92, some of the biggest news is the opening of a new “Prestige” AA tab. From Xelgad on the EQ2 Forums: Hey all, it’s time for some new character progression, and this time there’s no NDA! With that in mind, the majority of this stuff still needs tweaking, polishing and balancing before it’s ready for live...
From the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL You will now be told to relinquish your player made dungeons before using the character transfer token. TRADESKILLS Several new sets of housing building blocks have been added to existing “carpenter essentials” recipe groups. The maximum scaling size of all building blocks has been increased.
We wish we could concretely confirm that this year’s Fan Faire will take place on October 18-21st. We wish we had twenty-seven 8×10 glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one as evidence. But we don’t. So this will be one of those preponderance of evidence cases. Last August we talked about the poll asking which three fall dates SOE should settle on for Fan Faire (since Bally’s had already been locked up tight for the usual suspects of July and August). Players overwhelmingly chose October 18-21, 2012. Then there was silence....
Due to EQ1’s transition to Free-to-Play, a scheduled Account Services downtime has been announced. It should not affect gameplay/logins for existing characters/accounts. UPDATE: The original announcement has been superseded with a new one including revised information indicating that game logins will be unavailable for the first six hours of the maintenance window. Maintenance Notice: Thursday, March 15, 2012 Important: In preparation for EverQuest’s transition to free-to-play, we will perform maintenance beginning at 12:01 AM Pacific* on March 15, 2012. This will impact the following services: Voice Chat will be unavailable for EverQuest II Players from 7:00 AM to approximately 9:00 AM...