You can now watch the EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate Teaser Trailer at EQ2 Zam:

and you can check out some EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate screen snapshots as well:

To find more information about EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate, you can check out EQ2Wire’s recently updated Fan Faire News Rollup with all the information about the expansion.

From watching the trailer, we’ve also learned the Sentinel’s Fate will contain:

• 4,000 new items
• 400 Quests
• 5 Heritage Quests

EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate

Getting a jump on the holiday season (and a full 100 days before its official launch), the EverQuest II Sentinel’s Fate expansion has been made available for pre-order!!

The most remarkable part of this announcement is the extraordinary measures being taken to get EverQuest II back onto Retail shelves and getting retailers to take the game seriously. With Sentinel’s Fate, it is now clear that the preferred version of EverQuest II will be the retail Collector’s Edition. Not only with in-box and in-game exclusive items, but the release schedule. The Retail version will be available fully 1 week before the Digital Download.

This is a ballsy move and one which will likely be greeted with some skepticism and anger. But many players have been clamoring for better retail presence of EverQuest II. Part of this is the in-box rewards, but perhaps a bigger part is that new players are more likely to come to the game if retail boxes are present. And I believe that having the digital download available on the same day as the retail version was, no doubt, a great demotivator to retailers to bother providing retail space or ordering sufficient boxes.

Now our spotlight rests squarely on the SoE Marketing Department. This is make-or-break time for them. They’ve let us down with the confusing Rise of Kunark pre-order Burynai reward, and they stumbled in providing Best Buy with the incorrect street date for The Shadow Odyssey. All eyes now rest on them to make Sentinel’s Fate a successful launch available to the widest possible audience of players in North America and worldwide.

They have a great opportunity here to surprise players and get EverQuest II back in stores and solve the availability problems we’ve faced in the past few years. Specifically, we will also be watching to see if there are any issues for International customers wishing to purchase EverQuest II as there have been in past years.

They say it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog, and I’m not ready to concede to WoW. Hopefully SoE isn’t either.

Sentinel’s Fate will be available for pre-order beginning on Thursday, November 12, 2009! Sentinel’s Fate will be a compilation pack, containing the previous five expansions and three adventure packs. Sentinel’s Fate is EverQuest II’s sixth expansion, and marks the return of Odus to Norrath. New and veteran players alike will find tons of new content for all playstyles to explore.. More information about this newest addition to the EQII universe will be revealed in the months to come at EQ2Players.

All versions, both retail and digital download come with the compilation all-in-one game. This includes the following expansions: Desert of Flames, Kingdom of Sky, Echoes of Faydwer, Rise of Kunark, The Shadow Odyssey, Sentinel’s Fate; and the following Adventure Packs: The Bloodline Chronicles, The Splitpaw Saga, and Fallen Dynasty.

The retail pre-order may be obtained solely through North American retailers: Best Buy, GameStop and Amazon. You may pre-order through these retailers online. International players wishing to order a retail box may purchase through GameStop and Amazon and have their box shipped.

Retail Pre-Order Links:

• Amazon.com EQ2:Sentinel’s Fate Collector’s $69.95
• Amazon.com EQ2:Sentinel’s Fate $39.95
• GameStop.com EQ2:Sentinel’s Fate Collector’s $69.95
• GameStop.com EQ2:Sentinel’s Fate $39.95

Links from BestBuy.com are forthcoming as their website has not yet been updated.

We’ve been closely monitoring the progress on the development of Shaders 3.0. This is the graphical revamp which will improve the lighting, reflections, and other effects on 99% of the textures in the game. So far, we know that Shaders 3.0 is running very well on certain systems, but has significant performance problems on other systems. As a result, it’s not yet on Test, and may not be released until after Game Update 54.

In response some pithy comments that Shaders 3.0 has slipped to the February expansion and will now be used as a selling point of said expansion, Rothgar has chimed in with this update:

This is not the case.  In fact, we can’t really use something as a selling point for the expansion when everyone gets it for free without buying the expansion.

We’ve been doing some internal benchmarking on the Shader 3.0 implementation and we still have a few major challenges with the lighting system.  The new shader system looks great and it performs very well in certain circumstances.  However, there are still common situations that players would run into where the framerate takes a significant dip compared to Shader 1.0.  We know why and we know how to fix it.  So that’s the good news.  The bad news is that it will take a little more time to do it right.

The lesson we’ve learned here is that we shouldn’t communicate a release date on such a large project, so far from completion.  But we’ve also learned from past issues that we don’t want to release something that doesn’t meet our own expectations.  We’ll certainly keep you informed in regards to our progress.

More news as we have it.

Note: No EQ2 content!

I was posting some BBQ recipes for baby back ribs and grilled chicken breast on another forum and thought some folks here might like to read ’em. If you’d like more, post a Comment. Baby Back Ribs & Grilled Chicken Breast recipes after the jump.

On the EQ2 Forums, some discussion has sparked about the planned push to get EQ2 in retail stores and improve the experience for new players. I authored a post that I thought might be worth repeating.

What is the Experience for New Players right now?

1. Visit a half dozen retailers and not find any copies of EQ2 except maybe a dingy old cobwebby copy of Kunark priced $50. Let’s say you do manage to find a recent copy of EQ2 and take it home. You dutifully install 11GB of data off two DVDs. Then you fire it up and find out you have to download another 3GB of data because the DVDs are hopelessly out of date. A 1-2 hour process for most users.

OR…

1. Thinking you’re smart, you do the DirectDrive or Station Launcher digital download. Well sonny, now you’re talking 11GB of data off the internet. A 6-12 hour download for most users.
2. Once you’re done with that, it’s time to go to Station.com, register an account, enter credit card info, enter the product key off a sticker inside the box, and finally fire up the game and start playing right?
3. Chances are most user’s graphic drivers need updating. So let’s do that.
4. After 2-14 hours of frustration, you finally get to start playing EQ2.

Not exactly a great Customer Experience! And I think SoE has realized that this has to change. Especially if the expansion adds another 2 GB of data. EQ2 is not picking up new players at a rate that I think SoE would like to see.

It’s almost impossible to find EQ2 in stores, and if you decide to download it, you’re talking 6-12 hours download. And even if you do buy the retail box, it’s so hopelessly out of date that you will spend another 1-2 hours downloading updates. Not a pretty picture, and it’s a wonder EQ2 is picking up new players.

So what is the New Player Experience?

Jedi as a choice on the EQ2 character creation screen? NO!!

For new players who want to get a taste of EQ2, the new Streaming Client currently being tested and  expecting to be officially launched in the next few weeks allows new players to start playing EQ2 in as little as 15 minutes. The Streaming Client has a list of prioritized downloads. It starts with the basic character models and armor, then the starting zones, then works its way through the content the user is most likely to see, in order of likely priority. If the player tries to jump straight to a zone that’s not loaded, it takes a couple of minutes to download and then they can proceed.

Also, for existing players, let’s say Game Update 55 has come out. But you don’t want to wait for Halas or any of the other new content to download. Let’s say you’re late for the raid and just want to get logged in. You’ll be able to just do the brief update and stream the rest of the updates in the background. Game Updates should no longer mean a mandatory 30-45 minute download.

And the second prong of the New Player Experience is deals with retailers to get them to carry EQ2 and to have it in stores on expansion day. It’s no secret that the retail strategy so far with EQ2 has pretty much been a fiasco, with players scrambling to find boxes just to get the in-game pet or in-game mount, and coming up short because retailers just plain didn’t get the message.

The first step in all this is the EQ2 Complete Collection in stores now for $20 which has everything up to TSO. I expect more announcements in the run up to the expansion.

Understandably, some players are taking a look at Game Update 54 (aka the Great Bug Stomp) and not seeing a lot of new content. Part of the issue is, normally, we would be just 2 weeks away from an entirely new expansion at this point. However Sentinel’s Fate won’t hit until February. Also, it is now unclear just when we can expect Shaders 3.0, although I’m hopeful that we’ll get it as an early Christmas present.

Of course, we have Frostfell 2009 to look forward to this December. If this year has proven anything, it is that live events get bigger and bigger, with significant new content each year (next year, I figure it will take all 20 days just to complete all the old and new content of Nights of the Dead!!). Seasonal and recurring live events (eg. Moonlight Enchantments) have been extremely popular, so a lot of attention is being focused on them.

And now it turns out that in response to many complaints that Guild Halls and other game design decisions have “emptied” the home cities, a new recurring event is being introduced in Norrath: City Festivals.

From Kaitheel‘s announcement:

The Far Seas Trading Company is proud to introduce a traveling festival for all to participate in! When this event goes live, a different city will be chosen to host a week long event, once each month. Gorowyn, Neriak, Kelethin and Freeport will each get their chance to host their version of the event. On Test and Test Copy the great city of Qeynos is the first to find the traveling caravan outside it’s gates in Antonica. Adventurers will find new quests, collections and rewards, many of which are city specific! And for those of us that don’t want to wait for the festival to reach our city’s gates, we don’t have to. City Tokens are now being given as further reward for completing city writs!

This event should now be available on Test and Test Copy and we’ll report back soon with the details.

Remember, the Spires event is still in-game and some of the rewards from that event may not re-appear in EQ2 for a long time. In addition to the variety of house items, there are some unique items like the Magic Mouth house/guild hall item which can be set up to make announcements to passers-by. And don’t forget in-home teleporters. You buy them in pairs, right-click to name each one, and then you can port between them.

Knapsacks and Wrecked Cities

One perhaps overlooked feature of Game Update 54 is larger Backpacks. The largest size using a rare component (Mahogany) is now a 40 slot backpack with 20% weight reduction. You can read more about these here.

And finally, if you have been on test and wandered through West Freeport, you may have been shocked at what you saw. Norrath is changing in the leadup to Sentinel’s Fate…

We know what’s in Game Update 55, which will coincide with the launch of Sentinel’s Fate in February. It’s the new good starting city of New Halas.

What is Game Update 54?

Game Update 54 (slated for release the first week of December) addresses the most annoying of beasts in EQ2: the bug. That random inconsistency in a item description. That bizarre issue in a quest that makes it impossible to complete. The unexpected roadblock in a zone. The mob that just doesn’t work right.

Game Update 54 contains a gob-smacking 304 BUG FIXES covering both recent and long-standing issues throughout the game. EQ2 developers have addressed hundreds of bugs, large and small, throughout the world of Norrath.

Game Update 54 also officially marks the availability of the EQ2 Streaming Launcher. As we’ve been talking about here on EQ2Wire, this launcher will allow new players to jump into Norrath in as little as 10-15 minutes instead of the current 6-10 hour download.

Not part of today’s Test Update, but soon, we’ll also see the updated Frostfell festivities on Test. I’m looking forward to new quests, new loots, and more things to do.

Shaders?

You’ve probably noticed something conspicuously absent from these Test Update Notes. What I know so far is that Shaders are “done and working” on Ryan’s development box. If only we all had Ryan’s development box, we could have Shaders tomorrow. However, Shaders has to work on all sorts of different configurations. From what I hear, Shaders are still undergoing Performance tuning and I hope to bring you some news soon about the results of this tuning.

Because the list of fixes in Game Update 54 is extensive, please click the Read More link below to view the notes.

EQ2 Producer Brenlo has Twittered a couple of interesting sneak peaks into the future of EQ2.

New Dance Moves

First up, if you’ve been thinking that what Barbarians really need is some new dance moves, you might enjoy this new video. No word on when we can expect Guitar Hero: EverQuest edition. 🙂

New Barbarian dance on YouTube

You can safely infer that since this dance is specific to male Barbarians, that EQ2 is getting a bunch of new dances unique to male and female members of each race. I wonder if they will all be pop culture references. 🙂

Quest Helper

And if you have been longing for the Quest Helper window that other MMOs have been enjoying, you’ll be thrilled to know that a Quest Helper is now coming to EQ2 as well. Check out all those stacked up quests on the right side.

It is unknown if this will be part of Game Update 54 or Game Update 55/Sentinel’s Fate in February.

Speaking of Game Update 54, it should be going on Test Server soon enough, and we’ll have those notes for you as soon as possible.

Note: No EverQuest II content.

When FreeRealms was launched in April 29, 2009, Sony Online Entertainment pondered the question: Can a Massively Multiplayer Online game produced and sold in America support itself with Real Money Transactions (RMT)?

On November 2nd we found out the answer:

Effective November 2nd, the free-to-play classes available to NEW players of FreeRealms will shrink from Ninja, Chef, Postman, Kart Driver, Demo Derby Driver, Brawler, Adventurer, Card Duelist and Miner to just Adventurer and Card Duelist. Starting November 2nd, all players will be able to sample all character classes up to Level 5. Existing free-to-play characters of those original classes are not affected at this time.

Not For Lack of Trying

I don’t think there is any question that Sony is putting their weight behind FreeRealms. If you read the FreeRealms Blog, you know a lot of new content is coming this year. Player Housing, new Pets, more Holiday events, Daily in-game events, a streamlined User Interface, a unified Coin Market (instead of visiting vendors around the world), Item Dyes, new Combat system, more Minigames, etc.

SOE has dumped a ton of money into promoting FreeRealms with various tie-ins, TV commercials, and getting FreeRealms-branded StationCash cards into major retailers. They went after an audience that were traditionally not MMO players. They launched the GIRL (Gamers In Real Life) program. But it’s clear that most of those 5 million players that FreeRealms managed to attract weren’t buying much.

Eastern Philosophy

So why didn’t the FreeRealms model work?

Was it something SOE did? Was the balance too much on the Subscription and not enough on “must have” RMT items? Was it the name? FreeRealms always implied to me that someone could play a good chunk of the game for Free, and that RMT and Subscription were optional. Perhaps a lot of other people felt the same way. Incidentally, the Free in FreeRealms, according to SOE, has always meant “free to do what you want”, not an implication that the game was free of charge.

Is it a cultural difference? Free-to-Play with RMT games are widespread and wildly popular in Asia. Microtransactions are just accepted. Americans in contrast are somewhat sensitive to being “nickle-and-dimed”. I received a link to an interesting article about the differences in Game Design between Asia and North America. It’s worth a read: Game Designers – Everything You Know is Wrong

A Transition

I see FreeRealms undergoing a transition. While nobody is being booted from the game (you can still keep your friends, play the game, travel the world, and still play a fair amount of content), the direction of the game is now clearly steering towards a “velvet rope” model. What was previously viewed as a “free” game becomes a generous Free Trial which lets you sample every class in the game and decide if you want to subscribe. Everything after that requires a Subscription. I’ve been told it’s similar to Toon Town and Club Penguin although I don’t know those games.

Frankly, the FreeRealms subscription is really not expensive. And it can be paid for with cards purchased at major retailers. For $4.99 a month, you get  some nice benefits, like additional Jobs, 3 Character slots vs. 1, and 400 more Items and Quests. It is unknown whether Housing and the other content will require a subscription, but I think it’s a safe assumption.

Resources

If you would like to read a more “Just the Facts” type of posting about the changes coming to FreeRealms, check out this posting. Also, there is a public discussion on the FreeRealms forums about the changes as well.

A Cautionary Tale

Normally I would have a witty conclusion to such news. However I don’t. FreeRealms has to do what makes sense for their business model. It was never advertised as a game where an incredible amount of hard work was required to receive certain rare, powerful items, followed by those items becoming available with RMT.

It was built from the ground up as a casual, fun, RMT game designed for the largest possible audience with a large variety of playstyles. I think there are a lot of folks having fun out there playing FreeRealms, and enough of those folks will upgrade to the subscription to make the game self-sufficient. I don’t see a lot of folks quitting, since nothing currently changes for those “free” players.

However, I do want to close this posting with a warning:

RMT clearly wasn’t enough to cover the costs on FreeRealms. This revelation should strongly guide the decision-making on how items are added to SOE’s existing subscription-based games like EverQuest and EverQuest II. Never assume that RMT will be able to keep a subscription-turned-RMT game alive, if it couldn’t keep a game built from the ground up for RMT afloat.

EQ2Wire is back in town and brings you some Hotfix notes.

October 28 Hotfix

ACHIEVEMENTS

• New Achievements have been added! Test your skill with three new types of Achievements: Flawless Victory, Sense of Urgency and Shorthanded Victory achievements have been added to Rise of Kunark and The Shadow Odyssey zones.

ITEMS

• Equipment with pet buffs should no longer experience stacking issues which cause the cancellation of multiple pet buffs when removing a single piece of armor.
• Jewelry items purchased from Lavastorm and the Moors of Ykesha are now heirloom attuneable.
• Jewelry items acquired with Void Shards is now Heirloom.
• The “Blanket of Fog” should now be placed as a red puzzle cube then after placed should retain its fog effects.
• The “Blanket of Fog” should now change into a red puzzle box when turned off by the defogifier.
• The Necklace of the Plague has been increased to 12% base damage.
• Hallow’s Gallows now grants ranged crit.
• Frostburn and Mutagenic Burst now give larger gains when stacked.
• The appearance of the Ceremonial Robe of the Brethren has been corrected.

MIRAGUL’S PLANAR SHARD

• Miragul Encounter (Hard mode) : Miragul’s Arcane impairment now only affects spells. Miragul’s Physical Impairment now only affects auto attack and combat arts.

USER INTERFACE

• The placeholder detriment icons were removed from the raid window.
• The raid window’s font-size was decreased and the overall window is a little more compact.

November 3 Hotfix

ITEMS

• The Collar of Ice is now Heirloom.

“1:10PM SYSTEM MESSAGE: Greetings Norrath! The server will be coming down in 30 minutes for brief maintenance. Please plan accordingly to be logged out during this time. Thank you!”

“1:25PM SYSTEM MESSAGE: Greetings Norrath! The server will be coming down in 10 minutes for a brief maintenance. Please get to a safe location and camp out as soon as possible. Thank you!”

“1:26PM SYSTEM MESSAGE: Sorry Norrath! That’s 15 minutes, not 10. But, please get to a safe location and camp out as soon as possible. Thank you!”

No idea yet the duration or cause of this downtime. No other servers are going down to my knowledge.

EQ2Wire is on the road this week, so updates will be a bit less frequent.

Nagafen/Venekor Server Merge

The Nagafen/Venekor Server Merge was completed Friday night. We’d certainly like to hear comments from folks on what the new 64-bit server experience is like (I know Butcherblock is a lot snappier with the new hardware), as well as having more folks to kill. 🙂

Issues with using the Broker, Banker, and World Chat channels were all related to the last stages of this merge, and should long have since been resolved.

New Shaders 3.0 Snapshots

Imago-Quem (Ryan) surprised us over the weekend with the news that Shaders 3.0 is getting very close to completion now. He also posted some new screen shots. Hopefully there will be enough time to get Shaders 3.0 onto the Test server and for everyone to test them out before Game Update 54 now slated for early December.

All 416 zones and 29,000+ objects have been converted over with a very small set of exceptions, those I am working on and those that will stay 1.0.  There’s about 1% left in the game that is still shader 1.0.  Right now I’m working on remaining bugs and optimizations for better performance.

When can we expect to see Shaders 3.0?

The plan is to have it out on Test first thing November and on Live with GU54 on December 1.

I’m working my very hardest to get all the major bugs out right now.  I’ll continue working on bugs and performance over the next month or so.

EQ2 Streaming Client

Testing continues on the EQ2 Streaming Client. This, along with the EQ2 Complete Collection ($19.95) now in stores, are our best opportunities to get new players into EQ2. The Streaming Client will allow new players to get into EQ2, create a character, and get started in the newbie area with as little as 10-15 minutes of downloading. Compare this to the current digital download option, which is a 6-10 hour download.

What Bugs You Most 2009

Players continue to post their ideas in the What Bugs You Most 2009 Edition thread. What is interesting is that unlike the What Bugs You Most thread from Feb 2008, the vast majority of the issues being brought up are not User Interface fixes (which Rothgar is a champ at) but long-term design changes. It’s not known just how many of the issues being brought up will be possible to address between now and the expansion.

Silverwing

Speaking of bugs… Some folks are having trouble with Silverwing in Veeshan’s Peak since Game Update 53. Some workarounds to prevent his massive healing while the issue is addressed have been posted in this Silverwing Issues thread.

It seems Butcherblock & Lucan D’Lere are back online. Must’ve been a minor fix if the servers were down for less than 15 minutes. Perhaps some final housekeeping from the Server Upgrade.

Abbreviated quote from Rothgar (EQ2 Forums thread):

At 7:00am this morning our export script experienced a crash.

We’ve restarted the export process as of 7:00am PST on different hardware and are monitoring it closely.  The current impact is an extended downtime for Venekor players of roughly 12 more hours.  For Nagafen players, this would mean a delayed maintenance schedule, but hopefully not an extended downtime.

Who would have thought just 5 months ago that we would see these:

Also, contrary to prior plans/rumors/hints, they are not restricted to Alignment. Any race can switch to any other race!! Just $25 ($44 in Europe).

If you live in the U.S. and play EQ2 (or FreeRealms), then even if you’ve never purchased any, you know that 1,000 SC costs $10. Furthermore, there was a promotion a few weeks back where you could redeem retail-purchased StationCash cards for double credit. 1,000 SC were just $5 for a weekend.

So you may be surprised to learn that in Europe 1,000 SC costs $17.63. That’s 10 Euro for 1,000 SC plus 17.5% VAT (VAT should be 15%). I mean exchange rates are a pain, but the U.S. Dollar has been weak for over 2 years now. Remember when the Canadian dollar was maybe 60 cents on the U.S. Dollar? Now they’re almost equal. For a few months, Canadian was more valuable.

To get around this problem, it used to be possible to pay in U.S. Dollars using a Visa or other payment technique, but SoE added an additional check to require Euro depending upon your address. What a completely unnecessary change!

If you live in Europe, or want to commiserate, you may want to check out this thread.

Follow the news of the EQ2 PvP Merge on EQ2 Forums:
Farewell to Venekor

Nagafen/Venekor Merge!

If you’ve been following the EQ2 Streaming Client announcement thread, you’ll know that Rothgar is very excited about this new feature coming to EQ2. Remember, this is an optional client which will allow players to jump into EQ2 in as little as 5 minutes rather than waiting for a 5-10 hour download.

So far, the streaming client delivers the most basic experience. It delivers content to the screen as fast as possible, sometimes before the game is even really ready for it. As soon as there is enough data to draw a zone, the zone appears. However this may mean other players, armor sets, enemies, etc. may all still need to be loaded before the character can safely move around. For example, players arriving at the Character Select screen start out with no appearance until the data is loaded.

The first grand step has been taken, now it’s time for the next step — Adjustments. First is setting some minimal limits before a zone will load. Then setting certain things to have priority to preload at certain times.

Here’s Rothgar‘s update:

We’re actually already working on this.  I’ll go ahead and fill you in on the things we are still trying to do in the next few weeks.

• The patcher will continue to download assets before you hit the “Play” button so if you walk away from the computer it will continue working.  The assets it downloads will be a prioritized list starting with character select assets, then starting zone assets.
• We will force download of the default character/race during the zoning into character select.  This way you don’t start character select with a missing model.
• During the race-selection part of character select we will fetch the other races in the background
• During the class-selection part of character select we will fetch the other class assets in the background
• While you’re in a starting zone we will prefetch assets to destination zones.

We should have another update going to test server today with a feature intended for slower connections.  Aggro mobs will render as a “red ghost” if they can’t be drawn within a certain amount of time and we’re still waiting on their textures to download.  The goal is to let you see the mobs that would attack you as soon as possible if you’re on a really slow connection.

Thanks for all the great feedback so far!  Please keep it coming.

Race Change Potions will appear on StationCash on Thursday, October 22nd for $25. Source

UPDATE: Despite contrary rumors, there will be NO alignment restriction when choosing races. You will be able to change to any race (except, naturally, the race you already are).

Here are your Hotfix Notes for October 21, 2009:

GENERAL

• Nu’roga now has plunderable loot!
• Malicious Thoughts and Icicle Explosion now trigger on ranged and melee attacks.
• Frostburn and Mutagenic Burst now correctly modify each other’s damage.
• Purifying Persistence should properly modify the caster’s heals rather than the targets.

LoN

• The Cloak of Crystal Shards, Assassin Master’s Cloak and Cloak of Runes returned from Collector Rattelis are now Heirloom.

ITEMS

• Icy Prison now has 3 shield effectiveness to match its deflection chance.
• Charm of Solusek Ro once again triggers multiple times on AE casts, however its effect is now limited to 5 targets.

Miragul’s: Crucible

• The Master’s spell reflect percentage has been greatly reduced.

Miragul’s Planar Shard

• In the final hard mode fight with Miragul, his Brilliant Adepts will no longer stun/mez players within a second of initially spawning, but will wait 3-6 secs after spawning to start casting.
• The Miragul encounter (Hard mode): Miragul will now cast Curse of Confusion on up to 2 players per cycle, rather than 3.

MISTMOORE’S INNER SANCTUM

• The Vampiric Protectors that spawn during the Mayong encounter will now respawn in the center of the room if they break, rather than rapidly spawning and despawning near the point where the encounter broke.

MUNZOK’S MATERIAL BASTION

• Certain items that drop from Munzok have become slightly more powerful.
• Overlapping unstable void protrusions should provide protection from Munzok’s edict as expected, and no longer conflict with one another.  Additionally void protrusion protection now more closely matches the sphere’s size.
• Munzok’s max health has been reduced.

NIGHTS OF THE DEAD

• Altius Volfban in the Hollow Hedge should be much easier for mage classes to handle.
• The Headless Horseman now spawns somewhere near his tree instead of just in the same spot every time. He also requires someone offer him the necklace instead of simply taking the necklace near him to activate. His respawn has also been lengthened slightly.
• The Nightmarish Ceremonial Armor has gotten a slight change to color.
• The Nightmarish Ceremonial armor should now all have an equal chance of dropping.
• Altius Volfban now has a chance to drop a piece of the Nightmarish armor when killed.
• The Blanket of Fog now comes with a remote so you can turn them on and off. In the off state it should be much easier to tell where they are!

USER INTERFACE

• The option to always show the threat window has been moved from Game Features to Options->User Interface->Game Windows.

From EQ2 Forums:

We are proud to announce the release of our new streaming client into beta!

The streaming client will allow players to get into the world of Norrath faster than ever before.  We’d like your help testing this new technology.  Please check out the announcement in the Testing forum and let us know what you think!

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/…topic_id=461076

Some of the key points of Rothgar’s posting (please go read the whole thing if you are interested):

We’ve recognized for awhile that the current size of the EverQuest II installation (about 10gb) is a pretty large barrier to entry for many people.  We’ve seen the posts on the forums where many players excited about trying the game never make it in due to the large download and sometimes unreliable patcher performance.

When the streaming client leaves beta we will not be forcing it on any existing players.  You will always have the choice of running the existing patcher and downloading all assets prior to entering the game.  The streaming client will provide a nice alternative for new installations or for computers that you don’t update often.

We’re looking for as many players as possible to download this new streaming client and give it a try.  We’re asking that you do a fresh installation into a new directory and see how fast you can get into the game.  The streaming client is currently available for the Test Server only.

Our marketing department has an aggressive campaign over the next few months leading up to the expansion with the primary goal of acquiring new players for EverQuest II.  The streaming client is an important part of this campaign and we would love your help evaluating this new technology.

Early Results

Already, some players have reported being able to start the EQ2 Streaming Client, create a character, and log into the game and start playing in as little as 5 minutes. Compare this to the existing 10GB download which even on a very fast cable or fiber connection could take 5 or more hours.

From Rothgar, Nagafen and Lucan D’Lere are now online.

From Rothgar:

We are going to begin unlocking servers as QA completes their test.  It looks like Butcherblock will be coming up in a few minutes.

Rothgar, who has been up for how many hours now? brings us this update…

The upgrade is looking good and we should have the servers up soon.  The QA department is just doing their final pass.

We have a 30 minute downtime scheduled tomorrow morning to roll out a hotfix for all servers.  Since we had to skip our normal hotfix window this morning due to the database migration, we are doing it tomorrow instead.

We’re still planning on going forward with the PvP server merge Wednesday night at midnight PST.  Initially only Venekor will be brought down to backup the database and export all of the data.  When the export is complete, Nagafen will be brought down for us to merge the data.  After the merge takes place, we have some other background tasks that could take a few hours.  This includes cleaning up universal-chat, merging shared banks and updating player names and guild names that had conflicts.  Be prepared for as much as a 24-hour downtime for Venekor players.  Nagafen players will experience around 12 hours of downtime depending on how fast the processes go.

We’re hoping that the newer hardware will help the process go faster than our test runs.

Thanks for enduring the downtime this week.  We know it’s never at a good time but the final outcome will be worth it.

Tomorrow’s hotfix is expected to include some changes to the Headless Horseman x2 encounter.

From Rothgar on the EQ2 Forums:

All 3 servers are currently up and locked while our QA department goes through the normal testing process to confirm everything looks good after the upgrade.  We are specifically testing characters and guild halls on each of the three servers that had problems copying over last time.  So far those are loading fine so everything is looking great.

I’m hoping that we will be ready to bring the servers up within the hour.

and Glip the Gnome:

Hey all! We are smoketesting the servers right now before we open them back up. Right now it looks as though we’ll have them up around 7:00pm PDT. We’ll let you know if that changes.