Feldon
Today’s Hotfix include some anticipated tweaks to Itemization and Battlegrounds, such as resists and fixes to adornments. It also includes a cutback in the amount of damage put out by the 3-headed dog in The Vigilant: Final Destruction x2 raid zone. Even during the Beta, this particular mob was completely out of progression for the difficulty of the zone, gear players are expected to have at this point in the expansion, and intended audience of the zone. The complete April 7, 2010 Patch Notes after the jump:
Feldon
Registration has opened for the annual Fan Faire 2010 event hosted by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE). Fan Faire is returning to Bally’s Las Vegas Hotel & Casino August 5th ~ 8th, 2010. Official schedule information for the event is not yet available, but we have been advised that, barring any unforeseen changes, the schedule will be similar to that of past years. I’ve written an outline of what to expect based on previous Fan Faire events. This may be helpful for choosing flights and accommodations. Fan Faire has added another Pricing tier. In addition to the Silver Pass ($89)...
We missed this EQ2Players post from Friday but considering the excitement leading up to New Halas, we thought we’d post it. Nathan “Kaitheel” McCall has posted some of the Lore about what we can expect from New Halas and the twists and turns of the storyline. Meanwhile, Stacey Norman, Zone Artist, posted about her experiences in designing the city of New Halas. New Halas Lore @ EQ2Players By the way, this EQ2Players writeup has a thumbnail image of some of the concept art for New Halas. We wrangled up a link to a large version of this image.
Over a year ago, the EQ2 Guild window gained a new column — Guild Points. This often misunderstood feature allows your guild leader and management to award points for anything they (or the guild) decides to track. Some guilds award players who earn a certain amount of status, help level the guild, assist other players, or any number of ‘gold star’ type measurements of players. Of course, some guilds don’t use Guild Points at all. DKP in-game or website? Raid Guilds have the unique challenge of divvying up the limited amount of Loot acquired each night to 24 (or...
Ah… I remember the days… When low-level Adept spells and Treasured gear could be had for a mere 4-5 gold from the nearest broker. Those were the Salad Days (mmmm…Grilled Chicken Caesar). Then the Transmuters came. Like the Others on the far side of the island, a new wave of Adorners and Transmuters, desparate for raw materials, have unwittingly jacked things up for the rest of us. When everyone can be an Adorner, and only Adorners can make the cool toys, the market has, not surprisingly, shifted. And inflation, it turns out, is not just for bicycle tires and...
Bristlebane Day (April 1st) always brings out festivities and a bit of zanyness to EQ2. In past years, we’ve seen /cutemode (also try /cutemode 3 ) and in EQ1, turning everyone into wireframes. But this year, Bristlebane Day has put practicality in the place of tomfoolery. Today, Bristlebane Day, a unique quest has appeared in the Enchanted Lands, offered by a Sphinx, which pays tribute to the father of Dungeons & Dragons — Gary Gygax. The folks at ZAM were first to note that 2 of the 3 riddles given were also found in a FreeRealms quest. Further exploration...
A Story of Dark and Light Perhaps some Bristlebane Gremlins got into the works because briefly this morning, the monthly City Festival rolled into both Qeynos AND Freeport. According to this report, a few quick-thinking (and possibly light fingered) individuals snapped up a few Freeport furniture items before they vanished. The polished white marble of the regal Qeynos decorations have been countered by Freeport accoutrements with a decidely black color scheme. Alas, this was a short-term glitch and only those who were quick on the trigger were able to buy these items before the event reset and Qeynos became...
While Norrathians will get to celebrate Bristlebane for an extended time (March 30 -> April 12th), there is a special quest only available on April 1st. Kiara’s Bristlebane Day Preview @ EQ2Players Bristlebane Coverage @ EQ2 ZAM Bristlebane Crafting & Event Guide @ EQTraders
During the Sentinel’s Fate beta, many of us were surprised at just how powerful the armor and jewelry available from participating in Battlegrounds were. Many of us warned SOE during beta that having Battlegrounds gear that’s better than TSO raid jewelry would make Battlegrounds an expected/required part of progression for guilds. Battlegrounds gear launched with a new stat — Toughness — which is a type of Critical Mitigation that only works in Battlegrounds. Later, the most powerful effects on Battlegrounds gear (i.e. +10% Base Damage) became PvP-only. With the March 30th Update, the Resists and Physical Mitigation on the...
The feature set for the Sentinel’s Fate expansion has always included a bullet point indicating that Sentinel’s Fate would contain “more new armor appearances than currently exist in the game“. Yet players have been surprised that a lot of the brand new armor, weapons, shields, etc. dropping in Sentinel’s Fate look exactly like existing items. Kander has shed some light on this issue: Yes, many of these items got missed on the appearance pass. I am unsure why or how. We will start changing them for newer appearances ASAP. Please PM me if you have any other specific instances...
Luminata contacted me, hoping I would draw some attention to EQ2Players and the fact it has not been updated since the launch of Sentinel’s Fate. There was plenty of activity and postings on the EQ2Players Discussion area from the SOE Platform team around the time of the site revamp, but this renewed communication has again faded since the expansion launched. No characters, guilds, rankings, or any other statistical data has been updated since February 16th. The EQ2Players site now seems to be at a standstill. EQ2 Forum Discussions: How long before SF updates start to appear on EQ2Players ?...
From ZAM: Astute ZAM user MarisolBluesurf spotted this spash screen in Free Realms, annoucing a double Station Cash weekend! The promotional period is April 2, 2010 (after 4pm Pacific Time) through April 4, 2010 (before 11pm Pacific Time). Only retail card redemptions will receive double Station Cash. It doesn’t matter when you purchased the retail cards, only that you redeem them during the promotional period. While this is a Free Realms promotion, anyone with a Station account can redeem retail cards for double Station Cash during the promotional period. Once successfully redeemed, the cardholder’s wallet balance will reflect the...
Imago-Quem, who has long been working on the Shaders 3.0 project, has posted a new Shaders 3.0 FAQ thread summing up all the key details. Originally hatched as a graphical engine bump, and then expanded into an optimization of graphical performance, Shaders 3.0 are now slated for release with Game Update 56 in May.
Here are your update notes for March 30, 2010, after the jump:
I don’t know if you got this e-mail, but I did chuckle aloud… Become the EverQuest II Producer for a Month! Psych! Bristlebane Day Kicks Off Tomorrow! Bards, jokesters and thieves unite, this is the holiday for you! Now’s the time to let it all hang out for the holiday named in honor of Fizzlethorpe Bristlebane, the King of Thieves and the Grand Prankster. Now that everyone has recovered (we hope!) from Brewday and paying their respects to Brell, it’s time to celebrate that sneaky, prank-playing halfling, Bristlebane! The Bristlebane fesitivities will begin on March 30th and conclude on...
From EQ2Players: EQ2 Artist Gary Daugherty does the effects for everything you see in-game. Everything from spell effects to the nifty mists and sparkles on epic weapons. Gary was kind enough to sit down and answer some questions! And the news that many players have been waiting for, regarding Spell Animations… Do you have any special (or just super fun) projects you’re working on now for EQII? I’m currently updating, optimizing and standardizing every class spell visual in the game. My hope is that players won’t have to turn the FX off when they group or raid and will...
In an unusual move, Alan “Brenlo” Crosby, Senior Producer of EverQuest II, has posted some high level updates on what we can expect from Game Update 56 coming in May. As many of you know, several items planned for the expansion and corresponding Game Update 55 slipped: New Halas, Shaders 3.0, New Spell Animations, Thundering Steppes revamp, etc. Also, there have been major performance problems with many of the live servers, which have been alternately attributed to Battlegrounds, Database Issues, or the expansion itself. After the jump, you can read Brenlo‘s response to these issues, copied from the EQ2...
As you all know, this is “season 1” of Battlegrounds. Specifically, that the EQ2 team did not get the load testing they wanted to on Test, and so now this test is going on on live servers. But as much as we have gotten reassurances that Battlegrounds are having no significant impact on live servers, this seems to be exactly what is happening. We’ve heard reports of servers rebooting, inability to open instances, and Battlegrounds have been down several days a week for adjustments, tweaking, maintenance, etc. Hopefully this will all be worth it, but Rothgar did shed some...
From the EQ2 Forums: The US servers will be down from 2am to 5am PDT on Wednesday, March 31st for some hardware maintenance.
We have been trying to get Google AdSense to display better ads, but after months of trying different settings, blacklisting hundreds of vendors our readers have no interest in (plumbing supply cos, wiring companies, really?), now all we’re getting is Plat Farmer and Account Selling ads. It seems Google AdSense doesn’t have any ads that you guys would like to actually see. I am currently looking for a banner ad company that will show appropriate ads, such as movie banners (non-flash, no scary music!), upcoming MMOs and other games, and just cool stuff people might actually click on. For...
EQ2Wire is on the road again. Sorry for the delays in part 2 of that Sentinel’s Fate Itemization Puzzle article. If you’ve ever fancied yourself a writer for EQ2Wire, whether it’s just updates on the happenings around Norrath, including updates on Live Events, shoot us an e-mail thru Contact Us.
Rothgar has advised on the EQ2 Forums, due to the extreme database loads continuing to be caused by Battlegrounds, the EQ2 team will be throttling back the number of concurrent Battlegrounds sessions that can be running at once.
The previous Thursday and Tuesday hotfixes have brought some itemization changes, specifically with the increase in the number of items holding Red Adornment slots, the introduction of Yellow Adornments for heroic gear, and the addition of Resists to Legendary and Fabled gear (previously, players were expected to run around with 2-3 pieces of Mastercrafted jewelry). Now, we are starting to see the second prong of these changes, intended to fix the itemization mess that Sentinel’s Fate launched with. Frizznik brings us: Thanks for your patience with us as we look at items, spells, and combat arts. We are reading...
Thursday night saw the first post-expansion developer chat of 2010. Hosted by ZAM, this chat had previously been scheduled for March 4th, but was postponed to March 18th as developers focused on issues with Battlegrounds. You would have assumed, with the key issues of Battlegrounds and Itemization consuming a great deal of development effort in the month since Sentinel’s Fate launched, AND the 2 week postponement in the EQ2 Developer Chat, that Calthine at ZAM would have received an avalanche of hardball questions. Instead, we saw just a few of these critical issues raised, with the rest running the...
Your Hotfix notes for March 18th include tweaks to Tier 3 (raid armor). NOTE: Make sure your EQ2 client patches before trying to log into EQ2. Due to an oversight, EQ2 servers are allowing out-of-date clients to login, resulting in bugs with the Broker, Group window, etc. After the jump…