Feldon
EQ2 Developer Jamiss, who has been trudging the lonely path of migrating a 10 year old MMORPG (EverQuest II) to a new database language, has posted some reflections and updates to this last weekend’s Beta test of the upcoming database changes. If you were able to get into beta and you managed to get 250 updates from killing mobs in overland zones, you got an achievement which awarded a [eq2u]Blessed of Veeshan Reward Bundle[/eq2u] on your live character. Bugs are expected in any beta test, but many players were unable to even get into the beta due to graphical...
Feldon
From the EQ2 Forums: The Crushbone server will be brought offline on Wednesday, March 11, 2015 at 4:00AM Pacific* for server maintenance. This server is estimated to be unavailable for approximately two hours. Keep an eye on the EverQuest II forums and social media for status updates and for news if additional downtime is needed.
Today’s ever-so-briefly-tested Harvesting changes (the addition of new rares for Mastercrafted Food/Drink and new Primordial Adornments) needed a little more time in the oven. So in a few minutes, US-based EQ2 servers will be going down for an update. Later, EU servers will receive the same patch. Update: US Servers seem to be back online!
An addition to the StationCash Marketplace today has the Pay-to-Win spidey senses tingling, so rather than having a knee-jerk reaction, let’s break things down and see just where these new Primordial Adornments fall, talk about how desirable they are, and look at just how costly it is to acquire them through gameplay vs. the marketplace. With today’s update, new Primordial Adornments have been added at every tier, with their power scaling to the player’s level. They aren’t like Green adornments (ie Spirit or Soulstones) which gain experience from adventuring. What’s unique about these adornments is not that they exist, but...
We saw the introduction of some new harvestables today for the new Primordial level-scaling white adornments, and for new Mastercrafted food and drink recipes. Some of these components are also available from the Marketplace, but they are also harvests from out in the world. We’re working on a more detailed article, but first, players have been reporting zone crashes since today’s update. From Holly on Twitter: We are looking into the terrain zone crashes since our update. Seems related to new harvestables. We’ll update you as we learn more. #eq2 Update: For the time being, overland harvest nodes are...
We missed this one last week but the Chronoportals event, which marks the anniversary of the launch of the original EverQuest, is on Test with some new content! From the EQ2 Forums: The Chronoportal Phenomenon event is now active on Test! Portals to the Age of Turmoil have, once again, opened up in Antonica, Enchanted Lands, Thundering Steppes, Steamfont, Lavastorm, Sinking Sands, Feerrott, and Moors of Ykesha. We need you to investigate them. And keep watch for a suspicious character witnessed within the Commonlands near several chronomages there. We know not what he desires. New features for ’15! New...
From the EQ2 Forums: US EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, March 10, 2015 at 4:00AM PDT* for an update. Estimated downtime is four hours. EU EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, March 10, 2015 at approximately 4:00AM PDT* for an update. (Approx. 11:00AM London Time on March 10, 2015). Estimated downtime is four hours. Alle deutschsprachigen Server werden um 12:00 CET am 10.03.2015 zwecks einer Serveraktualisierung heruntergefahren. Die vorgesehene Stillstandszeit wird etwa 4 Stunde(n) betragen. Le serveur de langue française sera arrêté à 12:00 CET le 10-03-2015 pour une mise à jour...
If the idea of cow, bunny, and duck mounts shatters your idea of “canon” or high fantasy, you might want to look away. However if you’ve been looking for a hilarious break from the recent gloomy news, strap in because the feathers are about to fly! We don’t want to cause a flap, but a sneak preview of the 3 varieties of upcoming duck mount have been posted to Facebook.
About 20 minutes ago, Daybreak Games login servers started freaking out. Daybreak’s on it and they’ve already posted an update on Twitter for those who can’t reach the forums: Some players are currently unable to access Daybreak websites and games. We are investigating and will resolve as quickly as possible. — EverQuest II (@everquestii) March 8, 2015 We are looking into lag/server issues on all games at the moment. — Holly Longdale (@WindstalkerEQ2) March 8, 2015 Ddos hitting our games. We are working on it. — John Smedley (@j_smedley) March 8, 2015
As part of the EQ2 team’s OS upgrades to their servers in preparation for the database upgrades, the Antonia Bayle server will be undergoing maintenance tomorrow morning. From the EQ2 Forums: The Antonia Bayle server will be brought offline on Saturday, March 7, 2015 at 4:00AM Pacific* for server maintenance. This server is estimated to be unavailable for approximately four hours. Keep an eye on the EverQuest II forums and social media for status updates and for news if additional downtime is needed. Time Zone Conversions PST: March 7 @ 4:00-8:00am EST: March 7 @ 7:00~11:00am GMT: March 7 @ 12:00~16:00...
In 2011, Dethdlr launched his powerful Adornment Calculator for EQ2. Not only did this tool allow players to see all the adornments applicable to their equipment slots, but it also enabled them to pick their desired adornments in white, red, and yellow and then produce a shopping/crafting list of everything needed to craft, earn, and buy those adornments! The development of the Adornment Calculator also fostered a partnership between Feldon and Dethdlr that eventually led to the development of EQ2U. Dethdlr’s Adornment Calculator v2 Because Adornments in EQ2 can come from so many different zones and places, and because crafting...
The EQ2 programmers have been hard at work transitioning the databases responsible for running EverQuest II to EnterpriseDB. This is a huge undertaking but with significant benefits for the game’s developers and EQ2 players alike. The main thing we’ll see added as a result is Cross-Server Dungeon Finder sometime this year. Hopefully we’ll also see performance improvements on large characters with a lot of housing and other data. But in the meantime, the EQ2 team need our help Beta testing the ordinary stuff like grouping, housing, dungeon lockouts, the broker, and guild functionality to make sure that everything is...
We are thrilled to announce the introduction of Collections support to EQ2U! Players may now peruse over 850 shiny Collections by accessing the feature from our Search menu.
At the risk of dwelling on bad news, we now have some solid verifiable numbers on last month’s layoffs at Daybreak Games. This news is also up on MassivelyOP. Some excerpts from the San Diego Union-Tribune article: The new owners of the former Sony Online Entertainment video game studio have laid off 140 workers from its San Diego operation. New York investment firm Columbus Nova acquired Sony Online Entertainment – the maker of EverQuest, PlanetSide 2 and other multiplayer online computer games – in early February for an undisclosed price. The studio was renamed Daybreak Game Co. and now operates as...
From Holly “Windstalker” Longdale, here is an update about instability and lag spikes on the EQ2 game servers over the last few weeks: Howdy Norrathians, We are digging into the server performance issues that you are reporting which devs are also seeing during play times. We will be adding new logs in addition to ones we are reviewing now to track some specific server issues based on your feedback. (We’re kinda digging into everything, really.) This is a high priority. Holly “Windstalker” Longdale Executive Producer, EQ & EQ2
The EverQuest II forums have undergone streamlining today, with the archiving of the following forums: Fan Site News and Announcements History and Lore Guides & Player Events Roleplaying PVP & Battlegrounds Off-Topic The PvP & Battlegrounds forums going away is not a surprise, as EQ2 lost our last dedicated PvP developer with the August 2013 layoffs. Although I’ll receive much rage and hate for saying it, I believe that at this point, further PvP/Battlegrounds development is an unaffordable luxury. The EQ2 team is down from 60 staff in the Kunark days to a quarter of that now and it’s just...
NOTE: EU servers do not seem to have had the event turned on, possibly due to emergency maintenance on Valor and Splitpaw servers yesterday afternoon. From the EQ2 Forums: Celebrate Brewday with both new and familiar holiday themed rewards, crafts, and adventures. Brewday 2015 starts on Thursday, March 5 at 12:01AM Pacific and runs until Monday, March 16, 2015 at 11:59PM Pacific. New Features for Brewday 2015! Seven New Merchant Items sold by Balin Copperfoot in Bar of Brell
UPDATE: We’ve received notification from a few players in-game that this issue has been resolved.
In August 2013, SOE made some drastic layoffs to try to manage costs. The game teams undoubtedly took a hit, but by far the deepest cuts were felt in the Customer Service and Quality Assurance divisions. As I walked past the empty desks when I visited SOE last summer, it confirmed that these teams were hard hit. Still, the quality of Customer Service from SOE has remained almost universally high over the last 18 months, with staff going above-and-beyond to restore hacked characters, update broken quests and content, restore items which have been accidentally lost or destroyed, as well as...
NOTE: No news specific to EverQuest II in this article… After trying to launch their own RPG on Kickstarter, Storybricks evolved into a middleware/tools developer for game studios such as Sony Online Entertainment. Chief among those tools was a powerful user-generated content system that would allow players to build dungeons, populate enemies, and then give those enemies behaviors, desires, and drives that would make a completely dynamic simulation that would be different every time. For EverQuest Next, Dave Georgeson and John Smedley each talked about how expensive content design for MMORPGs is and how no company, no matter how...
From Roshen on the EQ2 Forums: US EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, March 3, 2015 at 7:00AM PST for an update. Estimated downtime is one hour. There will be extended maintenance for European servers. EU EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, March 3, 2015 at approximately 9:00PM PST for an update. (Approx. 5:00AM London Time on February 27, 2015). Estimated downtime is 4 hours. Alle deutschsprachigen Server werden um 6:00 CET am 04.03.2015 zwecks einer Serveraktualisierung heruntergefahren. Die vorgesehene Stillstandszeit wird etwa 4 Stunde(n) betragen. Le serveur de langue française sera...
If you spent this weekend wondering whether you were either A) losing your mind or B) going blind from grinding all those Far Seas Ferrin and FSSD Tokens, you’re not alone. I personally experienced a bizarre bug affecting font sizes, specifically an issue where almost all the in-game fonts began to shrink by about 40%. On a 1920×1080 display, EQ2’s fonts are already a little on the smallish side. With this bug, attempting to read quest journal text had me on the phone to my ophthalmologist. Fortunately, after discussion with other players in the Antonia_Bayle.Homeshow channel and through a little bit of testing, I think...
And here’s the official announcement as of 11:00am PST: Hey players! Do you like collecting various types of Norrathian… like Far Seas Ferrin? Well, then you’re in luck because until11:59PM PST on Sunday, March 1, 2015 you’ll earn DOUBLE alternative currency. Note: This is in addition to the bonuses to alternative currency that All Access members get every day when they play EverQuest 2. That means that All Access members will get double DOUBLE tokens during this promotion. This is a great opportunity to stock up on [eq2u]Far Seas Ferrin[/eq2u] or any other alternative currency you’ve been collecting in-game. We’re excited to...
We’re waiting for an official announcement, but we know from a forum post by EQ2 Lead Designer Kander that this weekend will be a Double Currency weekend to make up for the AoM Mission Givers going absent this week. We’ve confirmed in-game that the event is currently running a wee bit early! As of now, all players will receive double the normal amount of currency for completing quests or doing in-game content that returns a token or currency of some kind. And yes this stacks with the Double Currency that All Access subscribers already receive, so any quest that rewards...
From Gninja on the EQ2 Forums: Mission givers have returned in AoM zones. Enjoy! Further clarification from Kander: Mission givers are back up. We will be running a double Ferrin weekend this weekend for all. Sorry guys, the back end stuff we have been doing for the DB changes coming, messed with the OS time and caused a few problems. We are glad we caught it quickly too. Also from Holly “Windstalker” Longdale’s twitter yesterday, we might see a Double Ferrin event this weekend! Still looking at some funk with the missions givers for #eq2. We're planning a Double...