From the EQ2 Forums:

ABILITES
Shadowknight

• Reduced the lag stat from Death’s Advance.

ITEMS

• Ji’Lum’s Shawl of Greater Wisdom should now give the proper amount of ability modifier.
• Corrected an issue that prevented Evasive Moves from triggering.

From the EQ2 Forums:

All EverQuest II Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, August 29th, 2017 at 7:00 AM PT (14:00 UTC) for an update. Estimated downtime is less than 2 hours.

At the 3 1/2 hour mark, the forums were updated with this notification indicating a possible total 4 1/2 hour downtime:

This morning’s downtime downtime is running longer than expected – EQ2 servers should be unlocked by approximately 11:30AM PT.

From the EQ2 Forums:

GENERAL
Isle of Refuge (Free Trade)

• Random events in the Obulus Frontier are now more common on a Free-Trade server.
• All waves of Kunark Ascending Ethereal Events are now active indefinitely.
• Players will earn double Ascension Experience on a Free Trade server.
• Weekend Treasure Rush has been enabled on Free Trade servers, where Kunark Ascending encounters will drop double loot. This event activates every Saturday and Sunday on a Free-Trade server. Treasure Rush bonuses do not stack with other double loot drop events.

From the EQ2 Forums:

GENERAL

• Fixed an issue with spacing in the group window.

PROVING GROUNDS

• The revive point within Tower of Frozen Shadow will now revive you within the zone.
• Corrected an issue that prevented the 101st orc from granting the final reward in Scourge Keep Duo Arena.

FAMILIARS

• Mission crates and public quests now have a chance to drop either Season 1 or Season 2 familiars.
• Corrected the damage multiplier that was granting some season 2 familiars higher damage hits than intended.

From Kander on the EQ2 Forums:

Greetings Fellow Norrathians!

It’s time to start talking about what we have in store with GU 104 on August 22nd , as well as where we are going with some much anticipated changes coming this year!

Large Class Balance Pass

With GU 104, there will be a rather large balance pass which adjusts the outgoing damage across most classes, focusing primarily on Assassin, Wizard, and the Warlock class but most classes will experience some increase. Further updates have also been made to abilities for some of the support classes. This is by no means the final balance pass, and there will be lots of changes and improvements coming with the expansion. Expect, as we mentioned, to see a full new tier of class profession abilities as well as new Ascension abilities. [As a note, all of the current Ascension abilities will remain relevant, and we have no plans to introduce upgrades to current Ascension abilities.] With the expansion, class profession spells will drop as they have historically, so look forward to those master and ancient spell scrolls!

From EverQuest2.com:

All of your favorite features from GU103:  The Menagerie are getting bigger and better than ever! GU104: Sol’s Summer brings new additions to Familiars, Proving Grounds, and Expert Raids as well as a host of balance changes and more!

Familiars: Season 2

New Familiars have found their way to Norrath and Season 2 includes 30 more Familiars to collect! Familiars are unique pets that grant their masters powerful buffs. Some of these new Familiars will be dropped in-game and others will be available to purchase in the Marketplace. Not to mention, all Rare and Ultra Rare Familiars will now be worth status, including those that are dropped in-game!

From the EQ2 Forums:

PROVING GROUNDS

• Scourge Keep Duo Arena is now on the Unranked Matches accessor and may be run solo or with a partner.
• Tower of Frozen Shadow has been added to the Proving Grounds match rotation.
  • Game Type: Race to Completion
  • Players: 6 v Environment
  • Confront the threats within the Tower of Frozen Shadow, defeating each of the mystical threat in any order, though choose carefully as they are known to appropriate the abilities of the fallen.
• The Battle for Felwithe and Battle upon the High Seas have been removed from the Proving Grounds rotation until they can be converted into single group heroic matches.
• The Underdepths lockout has been increased to 3 hours.
• New rewards have been added to the Proving Grounds Proven Merchant.
• All Proving Grounds merchants have been moved out of the Proving Grounds and onto the home servers.
• Proving Grounds champions will now receive a Mark of the Champion: Season 1 currency upon zoning into the Proving Grounds.
• Corrected a bug that would prevent players that had a number appended to the end of their name from receiving their Proving Grounds champion flagging. This fix is not retroactive for previous rounds.

From the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Vaedenmoor Raids

• Code has been put in place to prevent players from entering any version of the zone while still locked to a previous zone and/or not passed the minimum lockout time. Players will be banished from the zone if they fail this check regardless of any lockouts displayed on their lockout window.
• This applies to Vaedenmoor: Heart of Nightmares [Raid] and Vaedenmoor: Realm of Despair [Raid].
• Any previously saved zone instances have been reset.

Chamber of Rejuvenation [Raid]

• Noxious Attuned can no longer be resisted.
• Trakanon should now call out his target when he snaps his jaws.

Lost City of Torsis: The Shrouded Temple [Expert & Event Heroic]

• The Meld of Haze is now immune to the ROOT effect from Terrestrial Coffin.

Nektulos

• Jawharah Izzah, Shady Erudite at the Nektulos Docks, is now willing to sell Spiritbreaker to those channelers who have completed their epic quests.
• Jawharah Izzah, Shady Erudite at the Nektulos Docks, is now willing to sell The Wards of Kelkarn to those troubadors who have completed their epic quests.

Sundered Splitpaw: Gladiator’s Triumph

• The Pit Champion will now correctly spawn at the end of the arena event.

ITEMS

• Woven Vulcanized armor pieces from Lord Nagalik now possess additional defensive stats.
• Stats on the Ring of Removal from King Drayek have been increased to match his other drops.
• The Prismatic Greatsword of the Scale now has additional weapon skill bonuses.

QUESTS

• The Truespirits’ Lament – The shadowy creatures that start this quest have been disciplined. They will no longer attack or be visible until Destiny of Velious is available on TLE.

Later addition:

From EverQuest2.com:

Yun Zi is back again this week with another quest! The merchant has a fresh list of locations that he’s interested in having you visit for him. For your assistance, Yun Zi will grant you new rewards including ranged weapons and ranged slot adornments, a Fellowship of Stone focus rune, a ring, and an earring. Plus, if you’re looking to decorate your home to match the summer season, he also has a Siren Enchantress Plushie and some Aqua Hanging Seaweed!

In order to complete Yun Zi’s new quest, you must have all of his previous quests finished! If you haven’t completed them yet, you’ll have to do some catching up before you can unlock the next set of summer rewards.

Yun Zi will have another quest available for you on Tuesday, August 22nd at 12:01AM PT. Quests will continue to unlock every Tuesday until summer comes to an end on Monday, October 2nd at 11:59PM PT.

Our new EQ2 Community Manager Roxxlyy posted an update yesterday afternoon indicating that the issue preventing many players from downloading or updating EverQuest II with the patcher should now be resolved. From the EQ2 Forums:

Login and patching issues are believed to be resolved at this time! Please let us know if you are continuing to see any persistent issues.

From our new community person Roxxlyy on the EQ2 Forums:

Hey folks,

Just wanted to let you all know that the team is very aware of the various issues impacting logins, downloads, and the whole slew of connection problems that many of you are facing. At least one major issue causing these problems has already been detected, and the team is working on a fix for it at this exact moment.

I’ll be continuing to update this thread with new information as it becomes available.

And

We’re continuing to work on the problem, and have made positive progress. Please let us know if these issues continue into tomorrow!

Since Friday, a number of players have reported Socket Errors and a failure to patch two files. This is preventing players from accessing the game according to several threads on the forums.

All Servers: 7-9:00am PDT | 10:00am-Noon EDT | 15-17:00 BST | 16-18:00 CET

From the EQ2 Forums:

GENERAL

• Added “Camera Shake” option under Display (advanced)  “Camera” to enable / disable camera shakes.

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Chamber of Rejuvenation [Raid]

• The reaction time for Prescient Gaze has been slightly increased.
• The range for applying Noxious Attuned has been removed.
• The duration of Noxious Attuned has been increased.

From the EQ2 Forums:

The Fallen Gate and Stormhold Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, August 8th, 2017 at 4:00 PM PT (23:00 UTC) for an update. Estimated downtime is less than 1 hour.

From the EQ2 Forums:

EverQuest II attracts a diverse playerbase with different desires and physical abilities. Some players have limited eyesight, the use of only one hand, or other physical differences which require adaptation, special controllers, disabling certain game features such as particle effects, etc. For years, EQ2 has “shaken the camera” to convey the force and effect of certain attacks, the earth moving, etc. However certain players have very negative reactions to this visual such as vertigo, headaches, and nausea. After years of requests, now it looks like those who wish to suppress this jarring cosmetic effect will soon have an in-game checkbox.

From Bunji on the EQ2 Forums:

This option will be on Test server today after it updates ( under “Camera” in advanced options ).

Now if we can just get a solution for Colorblind players. Perhaps a Tint setting in-game, or a config file “eq2_colorshift.xml” that players can add a list of zones identified as having a lot of red or green tints which are basically invisible to strongly red-green colorblind players. This way, zones like Thalumbra, Veeshan’s Peak, etc. would be automatically shifted in hue. As it is, some of these highly saturated zones are practically unnavigable for certain players. There are some third party DirectX filters, but an in-game feature would be preferable.

From EverQuest2.com:

It’s time for some summer fun! And what better way to countdown the end of summer than helping out the ambling tradesbear, Yun Zi, to earn yourself some weekly rewards from his trove of inherited treasures.

Maybe you’ve been away for a while and need a quick way to catch up to play with your friends or you need a bit of a boost so you can run those expert heroic zones, or perhaps your house is feeling a little stale and needs some redecorating? No matter what you need, Yun Zi has plenty of rewards to help you out!

Our new Community intern Roxxlyy posted this:

All EverQuest II Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, August 1st, 2017 at 7:00 AM PT (14:00 UTC) for an update. Estimated downtime is less than 2 hours.

and here are our update notes:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Vaedenmoor: Heart of Nightmares [Raid]

• Terris-Thule will no longer speed up her casting of her AE spells with the removal of the “Daydream” spell.
• Corrected an issue that would occasionally cause Saryrn and Terris-Thule to become immune to all damage.

This was an emergency patch yesterday. From the EQ2 Forums:

TIME-LOCKED SERVER POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION

The Isle of Refuge: Darathar’s Flight

• Reduced the amount of bonus hit points Darathar gains on Time-Locked servers.

The Crypt of Vox

• Reduced the amount of bonus hit points The Element of Vox gains on Time-Locked servers.
• Reduced the amount of bonus hit points The Spirits of Vox gains on Time-Locked servers.
• Reduced the amount of bonus hit points The Fragments of Vox gains on Time-Locked servers.

Spirits of the Lost

• Reduced the amount of bonus hit points Venekor gains on Time-Locked servers.

All Servers: 7-9:00am PDT | 10:00am-Noon EDT | 15-17:00 BST | 16-18:00 CET

From the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Arcanna’se Spire: Order and Chaos [Raid]

• Shanaira the Prestigious should now give slightly more time to react to the combo elements of her encounter.

Vaedenmoor: Heart of Nightmares [Raid]

• Terris-Thule will no longer stoneskin while rampaging.
• Corrected an issue that would cause the Gatekeepers to think pets were not allowed to damage them if their owner challenged them.
• Terris-Thule no longer casts the “Daydreamer” spell.
• The spells “Touched by Nightmares” and “Touched by Torment” now persist through death.
• The adds in the Saryrn encounter should now despawn if Saryrn leaves the encounter or is slain.
• Some health adjustments to Saryrn and Terris-Thule.
• The buff spells that are assigned to groups should now put “Outsider’s Recognition” on the group the boss has targeted instead of a random group.

Until we get a new Community Manager for EQ2, it looks like Caith is posting the downtime notices:

All EverQuest II Servers will be brought offline on Thursday, July 18th, 2017 at 7:00 AM PT (14:00 UTC) for an update. Estimated downtime is less than 2 hours.

From the EQ2 Forums:

SUMMER ETHEREALS

• Increased the maximum Ethereal reward chances from 3 to 4.
• Added a forced description to the Ethereal cloak merchant lists to correct an issue where it did not always display the purchase requirements on the upgraded cloaks.
• Two new [Heroic] daily missions that each reward a Sathirian Ethereal crate are now available from Okzil <Daily Mission> in Obulus Frontier within Crusaders’ Cave at 526.8, 252.5, 1295.1.
• Both missions can be completed each day, but only one can be active at a time.
• Both missions can only be updated and completed within a Kunark Ascending dungeon labeled [Heroic].
• Neither mission will be granted if you already received 4 Sathirian Ethereal reward crates for the day. Because of this restriction, neither mission can be shared.

This year’s Summer Ethereal event had a twist — only by completing Expert Zones could the Ethereal Tokens be acquired. After much forum outrage, it seems good has prevailed. From Discord chat:

Now if we can just get a patch for the matchmaker in Dungeon Finder!

EverQuest II’s in-game mail has been put to good use by the company to alert players to significant in-game revamps, refund Items and Tokens, announce the return of Seasonal Events, conduct In-Game Polls and Surveys, Gauge player interest in Crafting, Heroic, and Raid content, and so forth. Now however, it seems that the in-game mail service is being put to a new and somewhat questionable use.

All Servers: 7-9:00am PDT | 10:00am-Noon EDT | 15-17:00 BST | 16-18:00 CET

From the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
General

• Fracture, the Inheritance Merchant has returned to Freeport and Qeynos.

Vaedenmoor: Heart of Nightmares [Raid]

• Terris-Thule’s “Drain Life” ability should no longer hit the entire raid. It should work the same way as it does in Vaedenmoor: Realm of Despair[Raid].
• The allowable deaths in the Summoned Foes encounter has been increased.
• The platforms in the Summoned Foes encounter no longer randomize colors beyond the first time.

All Servers: 7-9:00am PDT | 10:00am-Noon EDT | 15-17:00 BST | 16-18:00 CET

From the EQ2 Forums:

PUBLIC QUESTS

• It should be much harder for mercenaries to hold aggro against The Omen Feeder.

PROVING GROUNDS

• The reward for completing a checkpoint in a heroic proving ground has been increased from 1 to 2 Marks of Glory.
• The reward for completing a the final checkpoint in a heroic proving ground has been increased from 5 to 10 Marks of Glory.

From the EQ2 Forums:

The Thurgadin server will be restarted at 4:00 UTC with an approximate one hour downtime. There are no notes associated with this maintenance.

All Servers: 7-9:00am PDT | 10:00am-Noon EDT | 15-17:00 BST | 16-18:00 CET

From the EQ2 Forums:

GENERAL

• Added a confirmation to removing a chat tab. This can be disabled at Options > User Interface > Chat Window > Confirm Remove Tab.

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Chamber of Rejuvenation [Raid]

• Summoned Detonators no longer gain immunity from mez and stun once they have been mezzed or stunned.
• Corrected an issue which sometimes caused Trakanon to not use his Bursting Spores ability.
• Drag type abilities will no longer work on Trakanon.