The latest news…

Update:

The downtime for Nagafen, Butcherblock, and LDL has been extended to around 10pm PDT this evening.

We apologize for the extended downtime.  As a result of this, the team has already extended the Moonlight Enchantments event an extra day to make up for all the time that these servers will be missing.

Thank you again for your continued patience.

This makes 22 hours estimated downtime.

To compensate for the server wonkyness, server downtimes, and slow start on the event, Moonlight Enchantments is extended through 11:59pm PDT October 22nd.

Due to two mistakes in how the Server Downtime scripts were triggered last night, ALL servers must be rebooted. This will happen in a few minutes. The issue:

• All West Coast servers, not just Butcherblock, Lucan D’Lere, Nagafen, were set to stop allowing instances (dungeons) from being created starting at noon today.

Announcement by Rothgar:

I just wanted to take a moment to explain some of the broadcasts you may have seen and what is happening with the servers.

Last night, prior to the maintenance for Butcherblock, Nagafen and Lucan D’lere, we scheduled the downtime which is responsible for notifying the worlds via broadcast and also safely shutdown and lock persistent instances until the worlds come down.

There were two mistakes made.  This notice was scheduled for all west coast servers, not just the three that needed it.  We also mistakenly set the time for today at noon instead of last night at midnight.  This is why BB, LDL and Nagafen didn’t get the notice last night.

Unfortunately once the servers have gone into maintenance mode and the instances become locked, there is no way to reset it unless we reboot them.

So we are planning on taking all of the west-coast servers down in 5-10 minutes for a reboot.  This will clear them so you’ll be able to create instances once again.

The reboot shouldn’t take long, maybe 10-20 minutes at most.  We apologize for this confusion.  Unfortunately some processes still require human interaction and occasionally we can make a mistake like this.

We hope to have all servers except for BB, LDL and Nagafen back up very shortly.  The DB migration is going well.  Nagafen is the only remaining DB to be copied and we’re hoping that it will complete in a few hours.  After the DB has been moved, we will need some additional time for QA to verify the migration.  Once we have the green light from QA, the remaining 3 servers will come back up.

Thanks for your patience!

The latest news on those 64-bit Upgrades:

Things are still going well, however it is looking like it’s going to take a bit longer than we had originally anticipated.

We’re now looking at an uptime of around 4pm PDT.  If we need to adjust the time again, we will be sure to update this thread.

Thank you again for your patience.

Rothgar is posting updates regarding the downtime to a discussion thread on EQ2 Forums.

I apologize that the server downtime was not made more clear.  We discussed it a few times in other threads while the maintenance was still tentative.

We weren’t able to make a decision on the maintenance until our DB tests passed with our QA department which happened late on Monday.

The only option would have been to make an announcement and hold the DB upgrade for a couple of days to make sure everyone had ample time to plan for the maintenance.  Unfortunately this would have pushed the server merge back to next week and we wanted to avoid that since it has already moved back several times.  We’re still trying to get the database upgraded and server merge completed in as timely a manner as possible.  The compromise to this accelerated schedule is a little less notice on the maintenance.

Should the database upgrade happen successfully, we are still planning on performing the merge on Thursday of this week.  We also have a 12-hour maintenance window for the merge so please plan accordingly.

All 3 servers are definitely getting the database upgrade.

Stay tuned…

Sorry for the late post on this but Butcherblock, Nagafen, and Lucan D’Lere servers are currently down to complete the maintenance which was attempted last week. Note that ALL 3 servers are being upgraded at this time. Hopefully at noonish Pacific time, we’ll be running 64-bit and see some significant improvements to zoning time, zone lag, etc.

The announcements on the EQ2 Forums:

Greetings all!

This is to let you know that Nagafen, Butcherblock, and Lucan D’Lere will be down from Midnight PDT tonight (October 19th) until Noon PDT Tuesday October 20th, while the team migrates Nagafen (only!) [all 3 servers] to the new DB structure.

As you all know from last week, the migration process did a little wonkiness with some of the longer character files.  In order to prevent this from happening again, Nagafen [the 3 servers] will be migrated by hand.

During this downtime, bonus exp will be enabled on Venekor and our Nagafen players are encouraged to make alts over there to take advantage of the exp boost.  We’ll also look into having the mushroom rings extended on the affected servers so that no one misses out.

The plan is then for the server merge between Nagafen and Venekor to take place on Thursday (more details on that will be forthcoming).

We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your patience!

and the followup:

Good news all!  We look to be on schedule for noon and from what I understand everything is going as planned.  Butcherblock and Lucan are being migrated as well, now, as things are going so smoothly.  So that means shiny new databases for all three servers

As previously mentioned, the Moonlight Enchantment event will be extended for these servers (and others as well because gnomes got into the works!).

Thank you again for your patience while we migrate the databases for these servers and we apologize for the inconvenience.

Note that other servers besides those affected by this upgrade are spitting out various announcements indicating that their server will be shutting down. These can be ignored. Glip the Gnome posted:

Hey all! Between now and 12:30pm PDT today (October 20th) folks across most servers may notice broadcasts saying that the server will be shutting down or restarting — you can ignore these. The only servers that will be affected and be down are Nagafen, Butcherblock and Lucan D’lere and they are still scheduled to be up again at roughly 12:00pm PDT.

So once again, players can ignore the server restart broadcasts and we apologize for any confusion it may cause.

Thanks!

In other news, Moonlight Enchantments got a late start today, so my understanding is it will be active for another full day on all servers.

After reprinting the excellent Letter to SoE written by Shianne (Spritelady), we here at EQ2Wire weren’t expecting much of a response. So today’s detailed feedback from timetravelling was a real eye-opener. As he says, there is a fine line between challenging and frustrating. Some fights in TSO are just plain annoying with the unbelievable amount of curing they require. Nobody is asking for easier fights, just ones that are not hair-pulling annoying, fights that healers are quitting over.

Here’s the refreshing quote from EQ2 Forums:

A good thread with some excellent feedback!

From the population side, we are definitely always trying to improve the ‘fun’ of fights going forward. It’s a very thin line between challenging and frustrating, but we are always looking for ways to improve y’all’s experience. As a couple of people mentioned, Miragul’s Planar Shard was a step in this direction, and one we plan to continue with Sentinel’s Fate. We would like for many guilds to be able to have the satisfaction of clearing an entire zone while preserving the very difficult fights for players to really test their limits!

You have been heard on the curing side of things. We’ve begun to move away from it already, but we’ll make sure and look at each fight to hopefully ensure that the curing required is part of the fight, or plays an important role but does not devolve into ‘spam’ curing an excessive number of debuffs.

I spoke with our lead raid designer today and we’re going to look into perhaps removing as many ‘non-essential’ debuffs from the TSO raids as we can. A number of the fights had varying amounts of spells and effects that were not necessarily an integral part of the difficulty or flow of the encounter and we’re going to re-evaluate whether or not they need to be there. The goal of this proposed change (for the devil’s advocates out there) is to reduce the # of cures required while not affecting the difficulty of the fight in any significant way.

Thanks again for all the feedback, and good luck!

If you are just about fed up with the out-of-memory crashing in EQ2 since Game Update 53 — I know I am! — you’ll be interested to know that the major causes of the issue have been identified and fixes are in the works. As soon as an updated client is available, we’ll let you know. When I start to see texture corruption, I minimize and then maximize the window every few minutes. It’s really a sad workaround.

Rothgar posted on the EQ2 Forums:

We’ve been taking a lot of snapshots of memory allocations and comparing this data to the code from different times.  We’ve gone back as far as June, rebuilt the code and compared these allocations to today’s code.  We have an understanding of what is happening and when.  Unfortunately it’s not as simple as rolling the code back to June because it would take a lot of other code with it.  So we’re working on a way to fix the problem correctly.

There are actually two issues coming into play.  There appears to be an issue with data not being cleared from the cache as aggressively as it should.  This isn’t really a memory leak, its just the client holdng on to things that it can probably get rid of, especially after zoning.  Then there is also the issue of memory becoming fragmented which eventually causes the allocation error.  Both should really be fixed if possible, but as soon as we have a fix for one or the other, we will get it out asap.  Fixing either issue should keep the client from crashing as much as it is.

I’ll let you know when I have more info.

Spoilers ahead…

Maze

If you have been struggling to complete the Nightmarish Hedge Maze as part of Nights of the Dead, especially as a mage or pet class, you may be interested in this thread on the EQ2 Forums. Of course if you’d rather be challenged to figure it out for yourself, then don’t. 🙂

Fog

Another item as part of Nights of the Dead you may not want to miss may make your head a little more Foggy than usual. Again, if you’d rather figure it out yourself, then don’t visit this forum thread on the EQ2 Forums.

Headless

If you are an aspiring raid of 12 players, or a heavily-armored confident group of 4-6 players wishing to tackle the contested Headless Horseman, there are two things to know:

• The Headless Horseman is on a 1-2 hour spawn timer.
• At least one player must have the necklace from the Hedge Maze. Note that every player who has a necklace within range when the Headless Horseman spawns will see that necklace disappear from their inventory. More Info

Have fun out there! We may see some changes to the Headless Horseman on Monday.

One of the exciting aspects of the 2009 Nights of the Dead live event is the contested x2 Headless Horseman Knight. No less exciting (and surprising) than the loot that drops from said encounter:

Hallows Gallows Bloodthirsty Choker 2.0? \aITEM 430679940 306448646:Hallow’s Gallows\/a	Soulleach \aITEM -1026839664 -1911359172:[Soulleach]\/a
Secret Sash \aITEM 71107619 -1772367845:[Secret Sash]\/a	Brainless Belt \aITEM 1534172351 1374785267:[Brainless Belt]\/a

and of course these humorous items:

an oddly empty crate \aITEM -1414756000 -2003420917:[an oddly empty crate]\/a

Frictionless Piece of Eight \aITEM -1495753407 -624402372:[Frictionless Piece of Eight]\/a

Note that some players are reporting issues with the new Hedgemaze zone (an instance of Cauldron Hollow). Not all players have been able to progress beyond the “Trick” step.

Nights of the Dead is now live! The event runs through November 9th. The zones were not available first thing this morning, but this issue has been addressed.

Lucan D’Lere is now back up on the previous hardware.

Rothgar fills us in:

Lucan up!

Sorry again for the issues this morning and those of you that lost some progress during the maintenance.  We learned a lot from the migration.  You can’t imagine how big of a step this is behind the scenes.  Well, those of you in IT probably can. 

We’ll let you know our plan for round 2 as soon as we have the migration process fixed.

Commentary

Believe me Rothgar, I do. 🙂 Having migrated FeldonCentral from shared hosting, to VPS, to a previous dedicated server, to its current hardware, yes, hardware migrations are painful and just when you think it’s going to kick over, another surprise stabs you in the heart…

Butcherblock and Nagafen are currently unlocked. They are rolled back to their state at 5am. Any quests, progress, loot, etc. you acquired after this time has unfortunately been lost.

Lucan D’Lere should be up shortly.

Another attempt will be made to upgrade EQ2 servers to 64-bit platform in the next few days.

It turns out that those Database Upgrades announced for today for Butcherblock, Nagafen, and Lucan D’Lere were in fact complete replacements of the server hardware with 64-bit servers. This is very exciting news, as this has the potential to solve a lot of lag and performance problems. However all has not gone according to plan.

Rothgar posted yesterday:

All three (Butcherblock, Nagafen, Lucan D’Lere) are getting new hardware, latest DB version and upgrade from 32 to 64 bit.

Rothgar reported early today that Nagafen was back in operation:

The server is back up and you have new database hardware.  This should help a lot with database heavy tasks such as zoning, broker transactions, etc.

Keep in mind that all we upgraded at this time was the database.  This is a big improvement but its not going to be a fix across the board for all types of lag.  We’ll continue to look at other lag improvements for these issues though.

Gunthore, a player on Butcherblock, pointed out that Butcherblock server is still down.

The server (Butcherblock) did come up on schedule, but people were having problems logging into some characters, so they locked the server, but people were still able to play who were logged in. I logged out around 11 or so.

Rothgar is currently using this thread to provide updates on the situation:

We’re getting these reports from the other servers as well, so it looks like there is an issue with some characters.  We’re looking into it now to determine if it was a data-transfer problem or a code problem related to the new DB version.

As soon as we know more we’ll let you know the course of action.  Best case, we make some tweaks on our side and those characters will be accessible.  Worst case, we’ll have to take the servers down and re-copy data from the old database.

Continued:

We’re going to go ahead and lock all 3 servers, Nagafen, Butcherblock and Lucan D’lere until we have the issue resolved.  This is just a precautionary measure should we have to roll-back to the data from about an hour ago.  We don’t want you to lose more time.

I’ll keep this thread updated when I have more info.

Unfortunately, today’s attempt to upgrade Nagafen, Butcherblock, and Lucan D’Lere was unsuccessful and SoE are now in the process of getting us switched back to the old 32-bit hardware in use before the upgrade. Unfortunately, some folks were able to play on the upgraded servers for as much as 4 hours. Any progress/loot acquired during this time will be lost. Here’s Rothgar‘s announcement:

Hi everyone.  We’ve found the problem and have a plan of action in place.

What was the problem?

The process of copying the data from the old database to the new database had issues with specific characters.  Mainly these were older characters with large amounts of data associated with them. All of their data didn’t copy correctly which caused them to not be able to load.  The same behavior occured with other database record types, such as housing records, where their associated data was very large.  This caused some house zones to fail to load as well.  This is why some players received different error messages.  You might have been attempting to log in a character that was fine, but he was camped in a house with a problem.

What is the solution?

Our database engineers will need a little more time to find out why the migration process had issues with these specific records.  Once that issue is solved, we will perform another migration and test these characters specifically to ensure that problem is fixed.  We don’t have an ETA at the moment, but need to be prepared for this to take a couple of days.

What do we do in the meantime?

In order to get everyone back online again, we are going to revert back to using the old database which is still 100% intact.  The data in the old database was frozen at the time we went down for maintenance.  So this means anything you did early this morning will be rolled back.  We’re very sorry that this had to happen.  Unfortunately we can’t risk the time or data by copying backwards from the new server to the old server.

How do we keep this from happening in the future?

We are documenting our testing processes to be sure to include characters and houses that meet the critiera that caused this problem in the first place.  In the future we will have specific test cases that will keep this problem from occuring again.

How does this affect the Venekor -> Nagafen Merge?

If we can repair the migration process quickly, we hope to not impact that timeline.  However we must also plan for the possibility that the delayed database migration might cause us to delay the merge for a few days.  Hopefully it will not come to that.   We’re all very excited about getting you on the new hardware and completing the merge as soon as possible, so we are doing everything we can to make that happen.

So again, I apologize for the rollback and the downtime associated with this maintenance.  We’re starting the process of reactivating the old database servers and hope to have you back up in an hour or two.  As soon as we’ve got the issue with the migration process fixed we will post a revised timeline for the new maintenance.

Commentary

There have been some complaints that here are these great 64-bit servers in the pipeline, and that it would be rolled out very slowly. First server to be upgraded was Nagafen, then if it proved successful, Venekor would be merged into Nagafan and then we’d start to see this technology roll out to other servers, eventually reaching the server that most desparately needs this upgrade — Antonia Bayle.

So it’s very unfortunate that today’s attempt to get 3 servers rolled onto 64-bit was a bust. I remain patient and optimistic that in the next few days we’ll see a successful upgrade to 64-bit.

From EQ2 Forums:

Starting at 5am PDT, tomorrow Thursday October 15th, Nagafen, Butcherblock, and Lucan D’Lere will be brought offline for upgrades to the database.

We estimate the downtime to be about 5 hours and servers should come back online about 10am PDT.

Thank you for your patience and we apologize for the inconvenience.

If you have been following the increasingly train-wrecky Legends of Norrath Affects Gameplay topic on EQ2 Forums, you know that the Legends of Norrath card game is on the cusp of making powerful items available within the EverQuest 2 universe.

Already, by purchasing booster packs of cards (at $2.99/ea) and/or playing the LoN card game, one can acquire cloaks, mounts, appearance items, potions, and other items within the EQ2 world. So far these items have drawn the line at being comparable to dungeon/raid drops.

Many have argued that EQ2’s $15/month subscription + $50/year expansion cost should be more than adequate for Sony Online Entertainment to cover their costs. The latest subscriber estimate is 250,000 players. Considering 6 months a year and 25% expansion buyin, that’s $26 million revenue per year.

Yet increasingly, in-game items have been made available through StationCash (funded with a credit card, items have a fixed price) and Legends of Norrath (player must purchase an unknown number of card packs until they find the loot card they desire, trade with others, or buy such cards at an extreme markup on such sites as LoNLoot.com).

Today marks the launch of the 8th expansion: Legends of Norrath:Travelers. It was announced 2 weeks ago including this controversial passage:

Incredible loot cards, including exclusive new quests in EverQuest^® and EverQuest^® II that open all new chambers and rewards of loot and XP!

Starting today, players can acquire a Legends of Norrath loot card “Legends of Norrath: A Mysterious Key” ( \aITEM -691738313 583949373:Legends of Norrath: A Mysterious Key\/a )

• This key will unlock a unique level 80 combat instance for the holder and his/her group. One use only.

Examining the key offers the quest Repulsing Repuuli.

• After receiving a location of an up and coming threat to all of Norrath, you are sent to destroy Repuuli the Destroyer within the Moors of Ykesha.
• Find and enter the Destruction Chamber near the Obelisk of Ahkzul in the Moors of Ykesha.

EQ2Wire went on safari to The Moors of Ykesha to get the facts. Upon entering the portal (which is a short distance from the Obelisk entrance), the surroundings immediately seemed familiar.

Indeed, I was greeted with the sight of the last room of Obelisk of Ahkzul.

After defeating four roaming 80^^ void beasts, Repuuli the Destroyer (82^^^) became interested in my presence. Defeated as easily as Executor Vark in the Obelisk, it is then that the true nature of this Legends of Norrath tryst was revealed. Although housed in an unassuming Ornate chest, the rewards found within were anything but ordinary.

Inside the Ornate chest is an item container called A Void Cube. One player per zone visit gets to loot this container.

The recipient must then choose between 7 items. Make no mistake folks, these items are comparable to Ward of Elements x2 raid drops:

• Portal Bracer of the Void Warrior ( \aITEM 1363089210 -1153524204:[Portal Bracer of the Void Warrior]\/a )
• Portal Clasp of the Void Invoker ( \aITEM -29585155 -1544401326:[Portal Clasp of the Void Invoker]\/a )
• Portal Wrap of the Void Assassin ( \aITEM -932311402 966076848:[Portal Wrap of the Void Assassin]\/a )

• Portal Bangle of the Void Knight( \aITEM -1348074215 2070418077:[Portal Bangle of the Void Knight]\/a )
• Portal Binding of the Voidcaller ( \aITEM 935669575 190604106:[Portal Binding of the Voidcaller]\/a )
• Portal Brace of the Void Warder ( \aITEM 552342734 -2044085964:[Portal Brace of the Void Warder]\/a )

• Portal Bracelet of the Void Priest ( \aITEM -1900203042 2008289082:[Portal Bracelet of the Void Priest]\/a )

How Does Legends of Norrath Affect Me?

Legends of Norrath is a game I was never interested in, that I’m forced periodically to wait for it to download updates. It has never appealed to me. So far I’ve been able to ignore it other than checking to see if I get any loot cards. I’ve gotten a few cloaks. I got the heal potion.

And I bought some StationCash when it was half price. I’d probably use it for appearance gear or name changes. Maybe even a vitality potion to level a 5th tradeskiller to 80.

So I’m not like “Mr Furious” about RMT/SC/LoN. But I know others are, so LoN affects my gameplay if others want to quit EQ2 because of LON getting further and further entrenched in the game.

How does one level from 1-80 in EQ2 these days?
How does one get geared up in EQ2 these days?

Right now, I think a lot of folks solo quest from 1-80, missing the entire content of this game. Then they transfer plat and HEIRLOOM gear from their main to twink out their alt. They might even run a few Mentored (grey) Shard Runs to gear up their alt.

Without having ever stepped in a 1-80 dungeon, people feel they need to gear up alts just to have a chance — just to get a group. Imagine if you are a level 80 character these days and go LFG (Looking for Group) and show up in mastercrafted/quest gear and adept 1 spells? You will be laughed out of the building (and dropped from the group). When I started playing EQ2, grouping from 1-70 was prevalent. I feel sorry for the players now who will never know this content.

I am lucky that I was level 80 when The Shadow Odyssey was released. I already had the best Kunark group gear available to me, and started the first night earning as many void shards as possible. It’s just expected now to get a group you have full T1, possibly T2 gear, fabled weapon, etc.

Hand Me Downs

It’s easy to earn plat in this game. So easy that the plat farmers aren’t doing as well as they used to. With a few hundred plat, you can gear up with some significant jewelry and even T4 bracer/boot pattern to a toon that’s never fought in a dungeon let alone a raid zone. If you are raiding 4 nights a week and getting all kinds of patterns that everyone already has, then your alts are going to be built to the hilt.

When my Dirge dings 80, he will have full Tier 2 Void Shard Armor, with Tier 3 (Ward of Elements) boots, and pretty substantial jewelry. Who knows, he might even have Tier 4 FABLED bracers by then.

If some idiot really wanted to pay a few hundred bucks to acquire a few thousand platinum pieces and spend it on T4 raid patterns (The T4 chestpieces go for 1200-2000p on BB right now), they could. They could even pay for group updates on their Fabled epic, and then pay more for VP updates for their Mythical. In short, with a few waves of the credit card, I can build a toon in full Tier 4 FABLED gear, jewelry, and Mythical having hardly ever DONE the content.

People gear up alts with plat (earned or bought) and shards (earned or greyed out). Enough people view this as shady that there is still some sense of dignity maintained. Some folks still take pride that they built their characters without the aid of a powerful main character supplying them shards, gear, and plat.

I am NOT advocating stopping loot rights. It’s just a somewhat dysfunctional reality that I too have benefited from (I got the Ethernauts Roundshield of Ranger Pwnage for 120p). I think grey shards screwed them up and should have been stopped it.

So I think by putting FABLED-like gear into Legends of Norrath, SoE are legitimizing this process. It is a signal to a lot of players that SoE does not care how you build your toon. In combination with all gear getting the HEIRLOOM tag, it sends a message that rules can be bent and/or broken. You can build up your toon however you want, either by playing the game or swiping your credit card.

So I stand on principle and say that I will not use my credit card to get Legendary or Fabled gear and build out my character. I will not buy Legends of Norrath cards to get access to some significant loot. Already, so many barriers have been broken down in how characters are geared up in such a short time, I wonder how it will affect the future of the game. I think it will inevitably kill it. The thrill of the chase, the actual PLAYING of the game is diminished. Why learn the encounters and play the game when you can just put in a few bucks and get to the same destination?

When Legends of Norrath was launched, several promises were made by John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment. It seems the expression “Time changes everything” is never more true here.

How Good Is the Loot?

The following diagram compares the LoN rewards with equivalent or similar items elsewhere in Norrath. It is disturbing to me that some of the rewards are similar to Ward of Elements x2 raid drops:

LoN Item Comparison

The truth, as they say,  is out there.

Most of my gametime these days is either raiding with my Ranger, or leveling my Dirge alt. I do live events (looking forward to Nights of the Dead), but otherwise, I’m fairly bored with the runaround quest lines. Groups in the 20’s-60’s are few and far between, but that is an issue for another blog post…

Our guild is currently running Ward of Elements (I have all but shoulders and the cloak from Aiden) and we do as much x4 raiding as we can with 2 1/2 groups. That’s the first 3 named of Tomb of the Mad Crusader (including Thet) and the twins in Palace of the Ancient One. We’re probably going to start doing Kurn’s X2 because we’re pretty much blocked from doing anything else by lack of players/needed classes.

This is a chronic problem on Butcherblock, and I think other servers. At last count there were over 15 semi-casual raid guilds each about 4-8 players away from having a full raid force. Nobody wants to merge or switch guilds. And there’s never been a successful Raid Alliance on Butcherblock.

---

I read the EQ2 forums every day looking for news and info for EQ2Wire readers. So today I found a couple of posts that really jive with how I’ve been feeling lately…

First up from Shianne <Tainted> @ Kithicor:

Dear SOE,

I have been a loyal subscriber since July of 2005.  I have been a co-leader of a raiding guild since Dec of 2006, and an officer prior to that.  In the time I have played I have seen many people come and go.  I have seen good expansions and bad.  I have seen nerfs and character balance issues; server mergers and many other developments and setbacks.

One thing I can say is that I have always enjoyed the game, no matter how badly my class was messed up or how many of my friends or guild mates left for greener pastures in other MMOs or guilds or just to experience the real world. However, my enjoyment is waning along with so many others.

My server, Kithicor, has suffered many guilds disbanding of late due to a lack of available players to fill out their rosters.  i have lost 8-9 people of my raid force myself.  The commen thread to all of the people leaving?  They are bored.  Most of them (including myself) have multiple characters that are level 80 and at 200 AA or close to.  They have no need of shard gear.  They have no need of instance loot.  They don’t want to level yet another character.  The only thing to log in for is raids and when you can’t get classes you need, those are getting old to since you can’t progress.

The release of GU53 did little to entice people to remain.  The Achivement System gives no tangible and USEFUL rewards.  Those that missed out on getting AA for various things aren’t likely to go get the achievements done as they will hold out till there is an AA cap increase.  So, there is still no reason to log in.  The Shard of Love offers nothing but fluff items and 1 time AA experience.  A fair amount of people will do it once, then never again.  Miragul’s Planar Shard – while it is nice to have another raid zone, many of us can’t clear what is already out there due to lack of population to flesh out our ranks.  Then, you add items into the heroic instances to make the raids easier, so in essence creating the necessity for many people to run zones for no other reason than to collect those items.  It is becoming a JOB and not fun.

If the achievement system had offered useful rewards, such as dual stat adornments, or the ability to add 2 points to an AA tree when completing an achievement, or rocking charm items, etc. This MIGHT have been a draw for those of us who want something to work towards that IMPROVES our characters.

If you had done server mergers, then at least the population wouldn’t be spread so thin.  I realize that server mergers would cut into the Cash Cow transfer potions that are available thru the Marketplace, but please, understand that the economy sucks at the moment.  For many people this is their entertainment.  This is their hobby.  This is their escape from reality.  Many people are struggling just to pay the subscription fees.  Throw us a bone and think about merging some servers so that we have a base of people to work with so perhaps we may find some enjoyment in the game again.

This latest expansion with its cure heavy scripting has burned out the healers.  I have been looking for ONE templar for going on 3 months. I have had 2 applicants in that time and neither were able to handle the whack-a-mole curing as well as keeping their reactives up. When you spend THREE months trying to find a single class and have no success, this tells you things are not well in the land of Norrath.

In the last three months, we have lost at least two major guilds to collapse.  Unfortunately, those people didn’t remain on the server.  Most went to other servers or quit entirely.  We have had one guild transfer here to “rule the school” and another leave to go to another server to do the same.  We have at least 2 other non-avatar raid guilds on the verge of collapse and at least 2-3 others with severe recruitment issues.  Much of this is being caused by people QUITTING EQ2.

Please SOE, I implore you to do something to breathe some life into the game before more people take of for Aion or other MMOs. Delaying the expansion is killing the game, fluffy GUs with no real substance aren’t keeping the interest of a vast amount of us,  continued nerfs and re-defining classes isn’t the best way to hold on to people.

I see hundred of posts from people on ways to improve the game, ways to work towards class balance, ways to deal with itemization, ways to implement avatars into instanced encounters, and a majestic array of other ideas, suggestions, wants, desires,etc.  People WANT to play EQ2, but they also want to know their voices are heard, that the devlopers realize the we, the players, have a borader understanding of the game than you may think.  We the players are a font of knowldge, we are talented and skilled and we know what gamers want, do you?

Pervis has a nice followup which makes some great points about Itemization:

There is nothing more disapointing in raiding when you spend weeks working on an encounter to finally get the kill, only to have the one item in the chest be totally worthless. What this game needs, and what one of my primary complaints has been with TSO (paired with Research Assistants, which only add to the issue) is the total lack of any raid-based quests.

The original game was great. As soon as your guild killed Darathar, you basically took a giant step forward. Every mage and healer in the guild got a huge upgrade, and scouts and tanks got an item that was invaluable on many encounters.

Desert of Flames had the same with killing the Godking, and getting the weapons from the peacock quest series.

Kingdom of Sky had similar with the Claymore, though once you had killed Taranax you had no progression left until Fallen Dynasty was added.

Echoes of Faydwer was wasted, due to the Soulfire quest taking so long to implement. While it was great for lore reasons, it was horrible for content/mechanics reasons.

Rise of Kunark of course had epic [weapons], and as soon as you were able to kill Nexona and Druushk, you had an almost clear run to getting every mythical weapon. There is no need to even mention the difference between a raid with identicle equipment, but one with mythicals the other without.

The Shadow Odyssey has… umm… the earring from Munzok’s Material Bastion (MMB)?

There is no carrot dangling. When we kill a mob, we have no guarentee that the item it drops will be wanted. Why bother working on mobs in MMB if you know you are going to get a summoner-only item (we had the cloak and charm both drop 3 times in a row, prior to GU#53, we have no summoners).

While raiders are less interested in quests for the story aspect (in general, many raiders are as into the lore of this game as any non-raider), what they like is the guarantee that the time and effort they put in to killing encounters is going to be rewarded. Again until GU#53, I was looking at Ykesha thinking… why even bother? As a mage, he had no items that were worth me even looking at, and since he is not required for any quest update, I have no personal reason to care.

How is that good for the expansion’s end mob?

I have seen more raiders quit in TSO than any other time. Most of the players I know that have quit have done so for itemization reasons. While there are more item options and effect in game than ever before, it is how those effects have been distributed that has simply caused people to not want to bother. Its not enough to just create 100 items and throw them on loot tables at random, the placement of each item should have more attention paid to it than the creation of the item itself.

I have zero faith that the next expansion will be any better, simply because the same issues have been bought up with every previous expansion. Players have asked during beta to look over items to check for progression, and have either been not heard or ignored. Just look at how long it took to get items in to Miragul’s. If us players are being asked to test content out to make sure it is working as intended, and is set to the appropriate difficulty, we should also have someone asking us to test itemization progression.

Revisiting the same content over and over is just part of any MMO. Keeping players hooked as long as you can to keep subscription rates up is just part of the game business model. However the reliance on the Random Number Generator in gearing players up is really getting out of hand. Folks identify the best item for a slot (sometimes the best item in the game for a certain class and for a certain slot drops in an easy group zone, sometimes off the hardest raid mob in the game, it’s completely random) and then run that zone until they get the item. Then they never go back. Then there’s Healer Burnout, where healers are sticking around even though they currently hate some of the encounters just to not let their friends down.

This week’s hotfix will be hitting today, October 13th (not the date on the Update Notes announcement).

EMPEROR ATREBE’S LABORATORY

• The zone boss, Ka’El Ka’Vrish, should now reset properly in Kor’Sha.

ITEMS

• Fists of Judgment will no longer indicate that they have a duration.

MIRAGUL’S PLANAR SHARD

• Tuskers will now stagger his memwipe effects.
• Enraged Haladan no longer gets an AE auto attack buff when he goes berserk, but will instead proc Haladan’s Fury (frontal only, slash damage AE spell).

PVP

• You may now speak to the Priest of Discord on all PVP servers.
• PVP weapons have been adjusted to bring them more in line with the intended damage for their tier.

USER INTERFACE

• There is a new option to always display the threat window. It can be found under User Interface -> Game Features -> Always show threat window.
• Fixed a bug where the threat window would flash or disappear when it shouldn’t.

We’re keeping our eyes out for any further LoN news, by the way.

Kiara and Amnerys from SOE’s Community Relations team will be hosting a rat race through Norrath! Just roll a level 1 Ratonga toon starting in Neriak and meet at Hate’s Envy. You’ll be given a list of items to gather along the way, and the fastest finishers will be rewarded. But if you don’t win, don’t fret! Everyone who attends will get a prize just for coming.

The dates and times by server can be found in the writeup at EQ2Players. The event happens on one server a day, running from October 13th through November 6th.

From EQ2Players:

The leaves are turning and the air has become crisp in the land of Norrath. Ghoulish activity has started to increase. It can mean only one thing; the return of the Nights of the Dead. Norrath’s annual Halloween celebration will be returning from 12:01am PDT on October 16th and will run through 11:59pm PST on November 9th.

New this year:

• New Haunted Hedgemaze in Nektulos Forest!
• New holiday collection.
• New Headless Horseman in Nektulos Forest.
• New rewards for some of the old Nights of the Dead Events!
• New illusions from the goblins.
• New costume illusions available from holiday merchants.
• New holiday recipe book.

Returning favorites:

• Trick-or-treating in Qeynos and Freeport.
• Haunted house in Qeynos and Freeport.
• Ponchy’s quest line in Antonica.
• Decorations in the cities.
• Goblins who cast costume illusions.
• Haunted Mansion in Loping Plains.
• Candy drops for tradeskilling.
• Holiday tradeskills are back.
• Purchaseable costume illusions.
• Neriak’s clandestine (and smashable) decorations!

Some Nights of the Dead Wallpapers

And that concludes the EQ2 ZAM Chat.

Guests were:

• Alan <Brenlo> – EQ2 Producer
• Brett <timetravelling> – Dungeons/Content
• Nathan <Kaitheel> – Live Events/Quests
• <Gninja> – Quests, Zone Design, Live Events
• Greg <Rothgar> – Lead Programmer
• Paul C. <Frizznik> – Mechanics
• Paul M. <Cronyn> – Lore, Content, Quests
• Emily <Domino> – Tradeskills

Rough Chat Logs of this event are now available at EQ2 ZAM.

Some of the topics that stuck out to me:

• Brenlo: At the moment we have no plans to (have) LON cards (drop from mobs). That is why we went to giving each active player 5 packs a month.  We like the current delivery method as it gives every player the cards regularly.
• In response to the idea of changing Adventure class (for example, a high level tradeskiller not satisfied with the adventure class they chose), Rothgar replied with: This is something we’ve talked about and understand that it would be a desired feature. However, we don’t have a timeframe on it and haven’t worked out the details.  We’ll have some more discussion on it and see if we can work it in soon ™.
• In response to a question about more PvP options on PVE servers and giving casual PvP battlegrounds, Brenlo replied with: I would look for a big announcement in the very near future.
• With regards to Shaders, Rothgar advised us: We are still working hard on the Shader 3.0 system.  This is a huge amount of work to convert all of our thousands of existing shaders into the new model.  We still have some challenges to overcome and we’re still tweaking performance.  We don’t have a date yet as to when we will push it to Test, but as soon as we feel comfortable with the final product, we will let you know.
• Winwin chimed in with this question which I’m sure many of you would like to know the answer: Do you guys have a tentative date for the race change service on station cash? The answer? Tentatively scheduled for October 20th.
• And for those of you who might have heard about the EverQuest II Complete Collection box coming out on the 19th, note that it does not have an in-game item. It is meant to get boxes on the retail shelf and attract more new players. New players would get 60 days of free gameplay.

Regarding Class Balance, Aeralik chimed in with these answers:

• Summoners will see some signifcant changes to reduce the number of pet lines.  Summoners will have one fighter pet line and one dps pet line in the summoner tree. The dps pet line will work on scout/mage pets. The int line will then transform into something like the summoner version of the rogue strength line.
• Rogues will see the wisdom line changed to be more inline with current itemization.
• The (priests) cure lines are all seeing a number of changes.  We are also looking at individual abilities make sure they are desirable.

and one of my questions:

• What role (if any) will Armor and Weaponsmiths have in the expansion? Mastercrafted items would have to be incredible to be desirable at their classic level of 82.  Will we see level 90 mastercrafted gear become important, as other games are doing?

got the reply from Domino:

• We’re not planning a *completely* different direction for mastercrafted gear at this point, however we’re definitely aware that it’s going to have to  be balanced assuming that many people will be wearing at least some shard gear.  It’s something I’ve been working with Fyreflyte to balance, and we’ll probably need to continue the balancing based on feedback during beta.
• Both armor and weapons will definitely be seeing a lot more nice blue stats, for one thing.  And I know I can count on you and others in here for honest and helpful feedback!

and in relation to Item Degradation:

• Fendy:  Can we have any more details on how item degradation is going to work?  When can we expect to hear more?
• Frizznik: We are looking at the system now. It is a work in progress so we can’t give exact details of what it is right now because we are still working them out.  We are trying really hard to make sure that you don’t lose overall power from one level to the next, and will want to get items that provide better power gains for you.  We will definitely be providing information in advance so will have notice of what it is. When we know, you will know.  🙂

Here’s another cool question that got answered only in #EQ2FFA:

• Artemiz: Should we expect more raid style scripted encounters in the heroic zones for Sentinels Fate like the ones in the Shard zones for TSO or something more casual players will find fun as well?
• timetravelling:  Yes and Yes? The scripted encounters have actually been quite popular. One of the big pieces of feedback we received though was the desire for more ‘casual’ content, and we’ve created quite a bit of that as well!

and about Antonia Bayle:

• Rothgar: As soon as we get the Venekor merge behind us we will be looking at upgrading the DB hardware for AB.

Again, this is just questions I picked out that I thought would appeal to EQ2Wire readers. I will be doing a Survey soon to find out just who my audience is.

Where do the Questions Come From?

The questions asked in the EQ2 Dev Chats come from user submissions. Developers who participate in the chat see the COMPLETE LIST of UNFILTERED questions that ZAM submits. They see the best and the worst. The fluff and the hard, controversial questions. They go through and decide what questions they can answer. Generally these are not “When are you going to fix Brawlers?” or “When are raids not going to suck so much?” or questions that will get a “we are still looking into that”.

I know there were a lot of complaints in the #EQ2FFA (free for all) chatroom saying that controversial questions weren’t asked or answered.  They receive a ton of questions in advance, and they usually get through all of these, and then start trying to get through the questions asked during the chat. You have a much better chance of getting your question in if you submit it a few days in advance. They may also be able to get you a better answer. If you want your question to get asked, submit your question in advance. I do.

I do not work for EQ2 ZAM. I do not work for SoE either. It’s helpful to be independent sometimes. 🙂 I do hang out sometimes in ZAM’s EQ2 chat channel just to shoot the breeze. I do submit questions to Calthine as they come to my mind. I also try to think of questions that the developers can answer. ANYONE can submit questions to Calthine @ ZAM.

If folks think I’m getting favoritism or think that my questions have a better chance, then by all means post your question to me as a Comment, or send it to me using the new Contact Us form. I’ll save em up, clean them up so they might get answered, and submit them. If I already know the answer, I’ll send you a reply. 🙂

Calthine has posted on the EQ2 Forums that it’s time for us to start thinking of and suggesting questions for the next EQ2 ZAM Developer’s Chat today:

Y’all are cordially invited to the next exciting EQII ZAM Developers Chat!  Members of the EverQuest II Developer and Community Teams will be there, so bring your questions!  If you’d like to submit questions in advance, send e-mail to calthine (at) allakhazam.com (subject Dev Chat).

• Thursday, October 8, 3:00pm PDT <– NOTE this is one hour earlier than usual
• In the #EQ2 channel on ZAM IRC
• General chat during the actual event will be in #EQ2FFA

	For instructions on how to connect to the chat using mIRC, Trillian, or other chat client, check out the fantastic instructions at EQ2 ZAM.
	If you are not able to run chat software at work, or you just want to jump into the chat through your web browser, you can use our Java Chat connector.

Domino brings us some tradeskill news from Game Update 54, expected in November:

I wanted to take a minute to let you know that with the next game update (54) which we should see before Christmas, there will be an additional set of daily missions in each of the 3 Kunark factions that tradeskillers can assist (Bathezid’s Watch, Riliss, and Danak).

They aren’t anything fancy, they’re very similar to the daily missions in Grobb, Tupta, and Firmroot moot – same type of tasks, and about the same amount of time.  There are 4 per faction and they’ll rotate on a daily basis; you can therefore do 1 quest per faction per day if you wish (they do not detract from your standing with other factions, unlike Grobb/Tupta).  Like the existing writs, you won’t be able to exceed 30,000 faction by doing these, but as long as you’re below that faction, you’ll be able to do the new missions.

The exact amount of faction awarded may be tweaked once the quests are on Test server and I get feedback, but the current plan is likely to be between 1000-2000 per mission.  The existing quests for these factions will not change at all; when the update arrives on your server, you’ll just notice a new questgiver near the existing writgiver, who offers the new stuff (assuming you meet the prerequisites and don’t have too high a faction – just like the writs).

Hope that answers any questions, and I’m sure there will be more details available once the quests are available on Test server.  I don’t have a date for this, it will probably be a while still, but keep an eye on the Test Update forum for details!

Zehl Ice-Fire of Unrest logged in and noticed that those handy Frostfell Shopping Bags had swelled to 45 slots. Domino provided further news on the subject of bag space issues, specifically:

Rothgar & team have indeed worked their magic, and bigger strong boxes will now be possible with the coming expansion.

You may already be aware that both handcrafted and mastercrafted strongboxes at level 80 have a maximum 36 slots of storage. So perhaps we’ll see handcrafted and mastercrafted strong boxes have a size progression in the expansion. 🙂

The EQ2 development team is looking to repeat the successful Bug-squashing campaign of 2008. Rothgar has started a new thread to help get this project started. If there is a specific bug, interface inconsistency, or complaint you have about the game interface, please check out the new What Bugs You the Most? thread.

Note that the thread is not for complaints about zones, itemization, or class balance.

Here are your EQ2 Update Notes for October 7:

GENERAL

• Legends of Norrath (LoN) cards and booster packs that drop in game are once again tradeable.

ACHIEVEMENTS

• The Maj’Dul Monitor Achievement now accepts quests completed in the Courts.

MIRAGUL’S PLANAR SHARD

• The dire and alpha snowbeasts associated with Enraged Haladan now have somewhat less health.
• Hard Mode: Brilliant Adepts have less health.  Boreas and Argos should no longer cast Trio of Teeth on players while they are leashed.  Curse of Confusion now lasts 18 seconds rather than 30 seconds.

PALACE OF THE ANCIENT ONE

• Anashti Sul will no longer reset her ring event (the Manta Ray) when raids wipe to her (after the ring event was completed).

Player vs Player

• Novice of Discord ward will no longer place you into combat when hit.
• You may now purchase the Crystal of Discord from the general merchant.

QUESTS

• Quests now sort properly by name.
• The section of the heritage quest for the dark mail gauntlets, Tie up Some Loose Ends, should now update properly upon entering Miragul’s Phylactery: The Crucible.

SPELLS

• Spell Trainers will now provide you with the latest information about spells.

SPIRES EVENT

• The Magic Mouth now can be placed in guild halls, as originally intended.
• Boss encounters will once again spawn for full groups in The Ethereal Rift.
• The quest “Connecting Threads” should now be a little less confusing.
• The Ethereal Rift would sometimes be empty if the player entering it was very lagged. This should no longer happen.

VEESHAN’S PEAK

• Magics in Veeshan’s Peak are no longer able to restrict players from entering certain wings of the stronghold!

Imago-Quem has posted more screen snapshots of Shaders 3.0, the graphical upgrade coming to EQ2 in Game Update 54. I believe these are all images of North Freeport.

“Day” Before | After	“Rainy” Before | After	“Night to Morning” Before | After
“Indoors” Before | After

Previous screenshots shown of Nektulos Forest:

“Nek Castle” Before | After	“Nmarr’s Ascent” Before | After	“Nek Forest 1” Before | After
“Nek Forest 2” Before | After	“Underwater” Before | After