Feldon 
For the last two weeks, players have been hard at work on the unforgiving Kunark Ascending quests, solo zones, and dungeons. Much of it has gone smoothly, but there are always issues, and with EQ2’s expansions coinciding with the American harvest celebration of Thanksgiving, the fixes seem to arrive at a Tryptophan-addled pace. Here are some issues we’re monitoring which will hopefully see patches tomorrow and possibly Thursday…
Census Updates
Over the last 5 years, Census — the public data API which makes sites like EQ2U and Dragon’s Armory possible — has been incredibly reliable, with only about 3 days worth of total downtime that I can recall. As time permits, the EQ2 team have also managed to keep pace with new functionality and adding new data to the service as needed to support Game Updates and new Expansions. However for Kunark Ascending, something went wrong. One of the most oft-requested Census features is the ability to track Character progress on completing shiny Collections. An unknown glitch with the new code that would have provided us with Collection data ended up blocking updates of every EQ2 characters who has even 1 collection complete. Basically we are dead in the water until a fix comes. Once the fix comes, we should be able to add significantly more data to EQ2U!
Ascension XP Scrolls
When an Ascension XP scroll is consumed, it casts a buff on the player which is supposed to collect player XP until it reaches 1 million XP. However this buff does not seem to persist if a player switches between Obulus Frontier zones (from OF 2 to OF 3 for example), Camps, or, something we’ve seen with alarming regularity, Crashes to desktop. To be on track to start Epic 2.0 Weapon quests, and to unlock the Ascension abilities, players need to earn 1 million Ascension XP per day over the next 30 days. With these roadblocks, some players haven’t been making anywhere near that progress. Fortunately we have a response about this (and some other concerns) via this post from Kander:
We’ve changed it so each ascension class will take take half the time of the previous. This will significantly reduce how long it would take for those who desire to level all 4 classes.
The Ascension classes have very powerful abilities, as well some features we didn’t show the public during beta. We intend to maintain and keep this system going indefinitely. There will also be double Ascension XP weeks, bonus baubles, etc, in the future. We know some people have had issues with the baubles and we will find a way to make that up to those individuals who suffered it.
City of Mist House
Players who purchased the top version of the Kunark Ascending expansion and then purchased a City of Mist estate deed while in the city of Freeport were alarmed to discover that the house (and their items) vanished last week. Caith is advising players to go ahead and “repurchase” the house. Here’s his post:
We’ve looked into the issue and found the source of the problem. Unfortunately the Freeport version of the City of Mist Waterfront Estate was linked to a bugged ID which caused the database to become confused, and it no longer has a link to those old houses. You will need to re-purchase your Freeport City of Mist houses and we will be restoring your items. Items missing from the old house will be automatically placed in your new house, in the same spot it was in the previous house, when we correct the issue in the database. If you do not re-purchase the house on a character this process cannot be run for that character, and the items will be restored to the characters inventory.
Marketplace Crashes
This one hurts Daybreak Games directly in the pocketbook. Some players have been reporting crashes when attempting to make Marketplace purchases over the Black Friday / Cyber Monday weekend.
The Itemization Rocket!
Player power in EQ2 continues to spiral out of control with rampant statflation. Heroic drops from last year’s Terrors of Thalumbra are like tissue paper and foam swords in the face of Kunark Ascending flora and fauna. Despite playing a high DPS class (Ranger), I experienced something many players have been reporting — solo quest mobs taking 10 minutes to die. Devs have informed us that the Resolve stat is not a factor in solo content. After consulting with several players, I was advised to purchase the “Twark” handcrafted gear from the Broker. This gear, mistakenly marked MASTERCRAFTED but using common materials from tier 11? 11.5? 12?– well who can keep the harvesting tiers straight anymore? — grants up to 600 Potency PER ITEM. By switching to this gear, I went from self-buffed Potency of about 800% to well over 4,500%. I’m now able to defeat quest mobs without needing to find something on Netflix to watch between encounters.
Miscellaneous
There are other unconfirmed concerns as well which may be just a few players or may be more widespread, but we have not been able to confirm:
- Chests not giving rewards.
- Timed quests not giving updates while grouped.
- Combat Mitigation on enemies over 5,800, while players can only reduce by very small amounts.
Let’s not forget about the ‘Black Friday Sale’ that advertised 50% off but was only 40% off.
The quality of EQ2 continues to decline. Itemization needs 2+ developers, not just one. That’s one of the biggest problems right there. And most of these issues have been identified since beta. Most of them revolve around one developer. He has way too much on his plate!
I think Itemization intra-expansion is in a pretty good state. There are no more generic templated items like in the “hey, let’s change stats on every item in the game” era, items have good variety in looks and type and are sensibly named so you can often even see which mob drops them, and there is a clear progression from solo legendary to heroic legendary, fabled, ethereal and mythical – though why they didn’t reintroduce treasured instead of adding ethereal now that items are blocked for F2P players via the prestige tag instead of via the fabled tag remains a mystery.
Inter-expansion however…helloooo statflation. 😐
Is there an ETA on fixing EQ2u census updates?
“Player power in EQ2 continues to spiral out of control with rampant statflation.” Feldon
It’s basic ‘lazy man’s’ construction; beef it up. The comedic version is, “More Power!”, Tim Taylor.
SOE and later DBG could have stopped inflation in it’s tracks by using a form of point system. Like main weapon (example only), 1000 (solo), 2000 (heroic), 3000 (raid) points. Each point ‘purchasing’ some packet ability, like Potency. Apply negative points for damages easily or high power cost. Something their database is useful for.
A weapon with super high damage potential, might have less potency. Armor might have good mitigation, but less STA. And so on.
The variety of gear would be as staggering as it is today. But players might actually use or keep stuff from years back. And players would remain challenged hunting for gear, and by making decisions on what gear to use; the right tool for the right job. The other benefit being, encounters would remain engaging for years.
Here’s two non-game examples, Conan (1932-) and Red Sonja (1934-). Most of their Swords & Sorcery encounters, they’re in their iconic gear. Abet recently Red Sonja’s attire uses more chain armor. 😥 😉
Like games, they gear up for the more difficult encounters. Unlike games, they’re been at it for decades (nearly a century) in the same gear.
The downside, from a Current game developer standpoint, is everything must be story driven. After all, how many times will players slaughter 100 orcs/goblins/flavor of the expansion mobs? Do the dynamic S&S duo kill pirates every story line?
Given the decimation of the company story tellers, I don’t see this happening. But if Daybreak Games wants to break out of the upward spiral, which increases work load and co$t, they should put a freeze on TOTAL item stats. And hire back good writers.
After all, through story telling the mythical Scheherazade managed staving off death for One Thousand and One Nights. The real Daybreak Games should be able to accomplish the same goal for EverQuest 2. Staving off shutdown.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3RNsZvdYZQ
“The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!”
Captain Jean-Luc Picard
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“See you around, Ahab”
Lily Sloane
We aren’t getting the benefits of having 3 years of level 100 content. It’s not like the original Kunark and TSO that complimented each other.
I miss the census working…..so easy to look it up rather then ask people to tell you all the information you are interested in 🙁
The agnostic dungeons are not dropping armor items AT ALL for anyone over level 95.