Flourchild From EverQuest2.com:
SOEmote Your Way
SOEmote is finally ready to go live on August 7! After showing the feature at E3 in Los Angeles earlier this year and getting a lot of interest and feedback, we opted to spend more time developing it to make it fit easily into the game experience so it felt fun, natural, and easy. You will find the SOEmote listed in the main EQII menu in game, as well as in the game Options. Some features we added are:
- Auto-Enable SOEmote with Webcam. To start with, we wanted the feature to be easy to use. If you have a camera set up, SOEmote will automatically send you a message to enable the feature and options when you log in. After that, when you log in with a webcam, you will be reminded that the feature is active.
- SOEmote Group Window: Included by default if you set up SOEmote, you can easily watch group members’ faces next to their names in the user interface.
- Mini-Chat Bar Additions: We integrated SOEmote buttons into the mini-voice chat bar under the chat window for easy use and access.
- Mirror Me: As we’ve been using SOEmote in the studio a lot, we wanted a quick and intuitive way to be able to see ourselves (because it’s fun) and also to ensure SOEmote is calibrated without having to use the large set-up window view. With this addition, you see a small version of yourself with a quick Calibration button to set the default facial tracking position for those times when you leave your PC and return. TIP: When calibrating, make sure your own face is in a neutral position with no smile, eyes open and no expression. You get the best results this way!
- Voice Chat/SOEmote Options: We took some time to work on the usability of the existing voice chat controls as we integrated the SOEmote options. It seemed natural for us to pair voice chat and SOEmote options together.
- Local Proximity Chat in Guild Halls and Houses. With SOEmote or Voice Chat activated you’ll have the option to join a Local Channel so you can listen and talk based on your location just like walking and chatting into a room in real life.
- Voice Fonts. We added a selection of voice fonts for male and female voices for you to experiment with in the main SOEmote set-up options. You will find the voice font selections in a drop-down list. We also added an option to record and play back your voice so you can hear how it sounds with a font.
- FAQ. We wanted to add a fairly deep FAQ for SOEmote to help users with common questions. We can tell you now that if you are experiencing issues with tracking your facial movements, try increasing your lighting! And if that fails, you might want a better camera. Check out the FAQ and Tips at SOEmote.com/guide.
GENERAL
- Casting bars on raid mobs should be a lot more reliable.
POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Withered Lands
- Hexapola’s adds should no longer spawn at level 110.
PVP UPDATES
Scout
- Scout Combat Art damage has been increased.
Sorcerer
- Manashield now has a negative lethality component.
Conjuror
- Fixed a bug where elemental blast was not following max PVP spell damage rules.
- Elemental Blast now does less damage in PVP combat.
Mystic
- The damage of Stampede has been reduced in PVP combat.
TRADESKILLS
- Level 91 belt recipes now have appropriate reaction arts.
- The Swift Creation AA properly functions once more.
ITEMS
- Dracurion Buckler of Defense again has block chance.
- Fortified Drakizite-Studded Tunic of the Underdepths now has riposte chance.
- Tempered Drakizite Cuirass of the Underdepths now has riposte chance.
- Obsidian War Scimitar’s proc Obsidian Shatterstorm no longer debuffs Crit Bonus on the mob, it now buffs the user.
- Fierce Royal Sword is now correctly identified as a sword.
QUESTS
- The betrayal quest, “Freeport Bounty: Nor’sona A’tyel,” can now be completed.
- On the Qeynos froglok racial quest “Royal Recognition” the Spirit of Krys’lo will no longer kill higher level players outright.
- On the Qeynos priest quest “Divine Intervention” each player will now zone into their own instance.
- In the fae racial quest “A Rocky Beginning”, the completion of Freeport quests should no longer impair your ability to see the mysterious figure.
- In the Quellious deity quest “The Gathering”, purchasing the items on the second step should properly update the quest. Additionally, the pie salesman formerly found in the Baubbleshire has taken up residence among the other refugees near the shire entrance.
- Kaedrin Ironforge no longer reflects damage dealt to him by pets.
- You should no longer respond to Antonia as if you’ve defeated Kyle Bayle before you actually have when on the quest, “Blood Ties.”
- For the quest “Lending Your Skills”, players who fail to properly train their trainee in the arts of stealth and get him killed will now be able to speak with the trainee again within the caves in order to try again!
- Neezer’s Survey – Drundo Parn is now willing to speak with you, even if you’ve completed the halfling quest Helping Some ‘Friends’.
- Fixed Lilly Ironforge so that it is no longer necessary to press “h” to hail her when on the appropriate step of “Blood Ties”.
- Fixed Antonia so that it is no longer necessary to press “h” to hail her after the meeting with the members of the Circle of Ten in the quest “The Price of the Crown”.
- The Circle of Ten members should leave properly when the meeting is completed in the quest “The Price of the Crown”.
- The item “essence entanglement device” for the quest “Seeking Answers” will now show up as a bauble in the quest tracker.
BATTLEGROUNDS
- Fixed a bug where the number of tokens displayed in the leaderboard would be incorrect. NOTE: The Number of tokens shown in the chat window and awarded to you has always been correct, just the display in the leaderboard was not.
Is anyone else having trouble logging in? Can’t on either of my accounts.
The servers are still down. If you’re not sure of server status, look at the right hand side of EQ2Wire or go to soe.com/status
Yeah I can’t log in either, I get a problem completing request thing.
Maintenance Notice: Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Posted On 08/06/12
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SOE Maintenance
Important: We will perform maintenance beginning at 6:00 AM Pacific* on August 7, 2012. We expect this maintenance to take approximately 4 hours. This will impact the following services:
Login for all SOE games will be affected
Commerce transactions, including purchases on our websites and in-game marketplaces, will be unavailable
Forums will be read-only
Account management will be unavailable
All EverQuest II US Servers will be down from 7:00 AM Pacific* for a Hotfix. The estimated downtime is one hour with an estimated two hour downtime for the US Battleground server.
We apologize for this interruption and will resume all affected services as soon as the maintenance is completed.
I’m actually going to check this out. Who knows, it may actually be kinda fun…
I dunno. Hard to get excited about this when there is such a lack of compelling content in the game. 1 overland, 1 contested, 3 SS zones and UD? That’s it for GU63 (if you’re a non-raider). Where’s the beef SoE? Bring back Kunark Style expansions!
So by my reckoning they are still down an hour longer than they said the would be…
@Anaogi
It may have some small entertainment value when nothing else is goin on.
That said, all things considered I do not think that they are capable of implementing this and integrating into the game as it is described and it not be riddled with countless bugs. That would be fine by me if they were not going to extend into other areas of the game, but I am almost certain that this garbage is going to break other things not even chat related with the proximity feature. I shudder at the thought of the downtime we will have to put up with just so they can bumble around with fix after fix for this.
My sources?
Battlegrounds – lololol
Dungeon Maker –
Dungeon Finder – Not even in a comatose state at this point, just hasn’t withered up and died compeltely yet.
Tomatoh are you having trouble telling time good sir/madam?
I am one person who is glad they implemented this. It means there was nothing else to fix, nothing new to create, and no bugs needing worked out. Obviously, the game is perfection personified! /wrists
Ok.. so half hour? let’s see not counting EQ2 which would be down from 7AM PST to 8AM PST you have SOE which would be down from 6AM PST to 10AM PST so um yeah OK 34~ mins.. for my next trick I will bark like a dog.. Woof..
Sooooooo…… downtime is going to be a bit longerrrrrrrr than four hours. New estimated downtime is an additional six hours.
from facebook
“Our maintenance this morning is going to be longer than anticipated. We expect to be up by early afternoon (Pacific time), and thank you for your patience. – Piestro”
That proximity chat thing sounds nice. SecondLife has that, with a Doppler effect for distance. I understand why it’s only for guild halls and houses, because griefers in the cities could rickroll you or scream. I still wish we had some way to implement it everywhere. I guess it’s because I’m a .hack// fan, but I like it so we could socialize on-the-fly anywhere. They haven’t mentioned if we gotta pay for voice fonts. I’m wondering about that, because other games with voice make you buy voice packs. I hope there is one for ratongas. I know I’ll have to do the accent.
Personally, icgaf about soeMote…like i wanna look at you people :P…Lol jokes but anyway I hope this implementation doesn’t create more lag and or issues.
Oh great! So now, in addition to the annoyance of a couple of peeps running and jumping around in a circle for no reason while a raid gathers in a hall, we get to hear them burp, fart, and scream too.
Well played with SOEmote. held my attention for about 5 min. Then I turned it off. I am sure it is cool for some, but about all I saw it do was open the mouth really wide. So back to content.
@Thrennody:
Too late it already did.
But according to the illustrious Windstalker…
The Voice Chat issues are not as a result of SOEmote per se, but moreso because more channels are being requested as a result of the feature
Does this leave any doubt as to the level of contempt they have towards the playerbase as a whole?
Rasa we could always hear that. The local voice chat thing only works in GHs and houses, so it can’t be done in raid zones unless the raid voice channel is open.
nice the chat lag and the target’s casting bar are fixed now. lol don’t care about anything else…