Feldon
We got some clarification today on those free Character Transfer Tokens… One day only! Get a free character transfer token from the in-game Marketplace and choose your own server. Up to five moves allowed per account. UPDATE: Transfers are only valid on this day. All moves must be made during this day’s promotion. The item is NO RENT and will disappear after the day’s promotion is over.
Feldon
So if you played in the Beta, or heard tales, you know that like past betas, the solo overland content was rather… challenging. We’re talking badgers and gnolls that ignore 30-40% of damage done to them, have upwards of 100,000 hp, and put out damage in the thousands. Notorious were the crystal spiders needed for the flying mount quest which, if they successfully poisoned you, were doing upwards of 4,000 damage *per tick* until cured. If you didn’t whip out a potion or use that click-to-cure, you were dead in seconds. 2 weeks before Velious Beta ended, SmokeJumper admitted...
If you’ve been planning the mass extinction of Rays and Bulls in the Hole to grind out those 50 shiny new AAs, some ice water has just been thrown on that idea… From Waters on the EQ2 Forums: We’ve been watching where folks are playing and keeping an eye on how experience and alternate advancement gain is going since Velious launched. While we make every effort to balance the game during the beta testing period, we sometimes see new information on live servers, and need to make a change based on that info.
From Windslasher: I just got done checking this out and reproduced the bug. It’s not server lag or bad pathing, and doesn’t have anything to do with flying. A small number of spawns that were set up in a certain way have simply stopped working. The worst case of this is the entry room for Obelisk of Ahkzul, but there are other affected creatures as well. Thanks for reporting this! It will be fixed ASAP.
From covic on the EQ2 Forums: The classic looking Erudites wear everything a human does from the neck down. They also use the human skeleton so they have all animations of human character. The problem comes with the head. Since their code looks for human outfits they try to put on human helmets which their head would shoot out the top. We made some specific head pieces for them to be used as NPCs.
If there is any doubt that EQ2 devs are working as hard as they can to resolve the persistent Receiving Zone Info issues affecting Freeport and (to some extent) other servers, know that Zoltaroth and Rothgar put in 16 hours on Tuesday, and I know that Zoltaroth worked again until midnight this morning. Sleep is overrated!
It seems every year, thousands of bug reports are submitted to the EQ2 team during Beta. And it seems every year, a few highly visible bugs/exploits make it through. Last year, it was large encounters in The Hole that would respawn if all but one mob were killed. In The Shadow Odyssey beta it was widely reported that most of the dungeons could be completed when mentored down and greyed out. So this year, so far we know of two: Lord Doljonijiarnimorinar (Lord Bob) could be exploited to provide loot over and over. Lord Bob was fixed in today’s...
The EQ2 Update Notes for February 24, 2011 include a variety of fixes and tweaks, and a couple of nerfs. Check them out after the jump… UPDATE: These are actually the Update Notes for February 24th.
From EverQuest2.com: February 22: Othmir Day Everyone who logs in on Launch Day, February 22nd, will receive an Othmir illusion potion. (Even those who aren’t playing in Velious!) The potion has 50 charges, and is available one per character. Just be sure to log in each of your characters during the day to claim a potion, if you want the illusion for more than one character. This event will run at least until 10am pst (1pm cst, 18:00 gmt). According to some posts by SmokeJumper, this may be extended especially on Everfrost and Freeport which weren’t up until late...
After reading the Upcoming Housing Improvements! thread on the EQ2 Forums, and then hearing more about these changes in the Velious Webcasts, one might have logically concluded that these changes would be IN Velious. You’ll recall that SmokeJumper referred to the Freeblood Estate, as well as Miragul’s Summer Home (part of the Velious Digital Collector’s Edition) as being smaller prestige homes that would connect to your main house once these changes went into effect. After the jump, we get an estimate about when we might see Multiple Housing Ownership…
In a thread pondering when we might see the rest of Velious, SmokeJumper hinted much: We didn’t do the Wakening Lands. We just have that one small tribute area to it. Think of it as a doorway to a potential future area. and: We intend to grow a lot of the Velious stuff you’re missing. I have to stay mum for a bit until I get approval on *how* we want to roll it out to you, so I can’t say much else at the moment. Sorry.
If you have been abusing milking enjoying the Refer-a-Friend 300% XP bonus for its high speed leveling (and thus AA earning) goodness, especially by parking a level 1 trial account character at the zone-in, well, I’m afraid that has finally come to an end. From Rich Waters 0n the EQ2 forums: The Recruit-a-friend program is a great way for you to bring your friends into EverQuest II and help them level up a bit faster by playing together. When you group with a character you’ve recruited, you both gain a hefty 200% experience bonus. Unfortunately, many people were recruiting...
From Domino on the EQ2 Forums: I spent the afternoon today lurking around listening in channels, including the homeshow channel, and heard quite a few comments about some changes to water textures and reflections. (Thanks to all who provided details!) I talked to GermInUSA, who has been working on improving water and reflections lately. The quick fix is to turn on this display option: Ctrl-O (open your options); click the advanced button; under the display options, in the “water” section, tick the “water reflections” tick box. (Despite the name, this also affects non-water reflections.)
Rothgar, Zoltaroth, and others on the EQ2 team, as well as OPS (Operations) were up until all hours trying to wrangle Everfrost and the Freeport [EQ2X] servers into behaving reliably. But first, a quick fix for Everfrost players who are missing characters: Everfrost players who are still missing characters are encouraged to follow the instructions on the EQ2 Forums. In short, go to your EQ2 folder and delete your LoginCache and LoginCache-US folders, as well as any <Servername>_characters.ini files.
After a 4 hour delayed launch, Destiny of Velious went live this afternoon at 1:00pm PST [4:00pm EST; 9:00pm GMT]. Here is an accounting of various issues players are reporting with today’s expansion…
Q: How do I get to the new Velious zones? A: Head to Sinking Sands and speak to an Othmir Ambassador. Q: Where do I find the Destiny of Velious Update Notes? A: Destiny of Velious/Game Update 59 Notes Q: How do I get my Othmir illusion with 50 charges? A: Go to the Marketplace, choose Expansion, then Nipik’s Gift. Q: How do I get started on Flying Mounts for adventure, tradeskill, or Freeblood? A: EQ2 ZAM’s Flying Mounts Guide More questions and answers after the jump…
UPDATE: Destiny of Velious is now LIVE after a 4 hour delay. Just 2 1/2 hours late, Destiny of Velious is now LIVE!! False alarms are the pits.
It seems that all has not gone smoothly for the Destiny of Velious expansion launch. We are now +45 minutes with no sign of time estimate on when Velious will make its appearance. No word on Script Rewrites, OSHA Violations (think of the poor gnomes), or Work Visa checks (are those Freebloods from Romania, Hungary, or Druidia?). From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums: Well…launches always have at least one “gotcha” in them to make sure we’re awake and paying attention, I suppose. We’ve got a missing asset issue that we’re troubleshooting right now. The gates will open as soon...
It seems we’re the only ones calling today’s update “Game Update 59”, but either way, the Update Notes have now been posted!! The patch notes from the EQ2 Forums (after heavy reformatting and cleanup): We are still over 2 hours away from the EQ2 servers coming up with the Destiny of Velious/Game Update 59.
Some players are now reporting that when they patch EQ2, they are getting an 800MB download of new Velious assets. There may be another mini-patch right before or right after servers come up.
EQ2 Servers will be going down in about 10 minutes to commence preparations for the Destiny of Velious expansion. We thought we’d take a quick look around the web to see how other press and EQ2 sites are covering the expansion. Calthine and Cyliena over at EQ2 ZAM have been working their fingers to the nubs catalogging every Quest, NPC, and Item in Velious. They plan to unlock their quest guides throughout the day. Niami Denmother at EQ2Traders has loaded up her site with tons of Tradeskill info about Velious. Karen Bryan at Massively has checked in another edition...
In the last Webcast, we were told to be on the lookout for a trailer for EverQuest II‘s seventh expansion Destiny of Velious. This trailer is now exclusively available for viewing at Massively.com. Watch the trailer at Massively.com and then come back and post your comments about the trailer, as well as your thoughts on what has, to us, been a very low-key (some would say hush-hush!) launch.
From EverQuest2.com: We’re just hours away from Destiny of Velious, and we’ve got a little bit of news to share for Launch Day! First, all EQII and EQ2X servers will be coming offline at 3:00 am PST [11:0o GMT] on Tuesday, February 22nd, and we anticipate having them back online around 9:00 am PST [17:00 GMT], for an estimated six-hour downtime. This includes both international and US servers. Second, if you had issues pre-ordering the expansion on Monday, February 21st, please try again! All of SOE’s authentication servers were offline briefly today and should now be restored to normal....
We’re working on an article about Shared Stats and Destiny of Velious. Share your comments about Destiny of Velious and shared stats and how they benefit: Summoners Conjurors Necromancers Enchanters Coercers Illusionists Shamans Defiler Mystic Also, any comments on Damage Over Time limitations for Necromancers and other pet classes above are appreciated.
Now the calm before the storm… Tomorrow morning at 3:00am PST (11:00 GMT), the EQ2 servers will go offline to begin the process of installing the Destiny of Velious expansion and its related Game Update 59 patch. According to the announcement, the servers are scheduled to come up at 9:00am (17:00 GMT). So what are you looking forward to? Public Quests Dungeons Kael Drakkel Contested Dungeon Tower of Frozen Shadow (x2 raid) Velious x4 raiding Tradeskills Flying Mounts Give us your comments, good, bad, or indifferent. Even if it’s just that there’s 2 days to go until Rift launches...