Feldon
EQ/EQ2 Executive Producer Holly “Windstalker” Longdale tweeted late last night that we can expect a Producer’s Letter this morning at 10am PDT. Producer letters for #everquest and #eq2 coming tomorrow aboot (cdn) 10 am Pacific! — Holly Longdale (@TheWindstalker) September 15, 2015 We can’t say with any certainty what the letter will contain, but we are rather overdue for the announcement of EverQuest II’s twelfth expansion. Typically, these are announced in July or August at the annual SOE Live event which is of course on hiatus this year. And yes, this fall’s update is going to be an expansion as EQ2 Lead...
Game Updates & Maintenance
A handful of players have been reporting an intermittent glitch with the Phantom Seas signature quest line, specifically at the Allu’thua Abduction subquest. The quest reaches a point where hailing the needed NPC no longer updates the quest. We’re unsure of how many people have experienced this issue. We did not find a Bug Report for it on the DGC Issue Tracker website. EQ2 designer extraordinaire Kaitheel has responded to the thread a couple of times and reports that the code side are looking into where the quest might be going awry.
From the EQ2 Forums: POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION Phantom Seas The Rare Drop Merchant for Altar of Malice can now be found in the Phantom Seas! Precipice of Power [Raid] The stone adds in the Brell Serilis encounter should no longer kill pets unless directly attacking them. ITEMS Sturdy armor molds will no longer refuse to grant the quest for players that did not have enough city faction. The passive effect for Finsher III now grants potency, instead of offensive only potency. Commentary A merchant selling rare heroic drops from the previous expansion’s dungeons has been a late-summer mainstay...
The time has come for EQ2 players on the US servers being consolidated to pick their new server names. An in-game poll is being conducted to let players make this important decision. Crushbone/Oasis/Butcherblock denizens can choose from: Maj’Dul Poet’s Palace Shimmering Citadel Cleft of Rujark Scornfeather’s Roost Everfrost/Guk/Unrest denizens didn’t get a single one-word choice (what about Bonemire?): Halls of Fate Vault of El’Arad Sanctum of the Scaleborn Tenebrous Tangle Palace of the Awakened Freeport/Permafrost/Nagafen denizens got the most kickass choices by far: Veeshan’s Peak Chardok Kor-Sha Skyfire Protector’s Realm NOTE: Presumably, each account gets one vote per server....
Why are we reporting on a login server outage yesterday afternoon that’s already been resolved? Because communication on the forums was especially good this time around and we report good news too. Don’t worry though, the comments will make up for it. EQ/EQ2 Executive Producer Holly “Windstalker” Longdale and Community Manager Mepps (who normally tends the DCUO community) pitched in to keep players informed in a “Can’t Log in” forum thread, as well as on Facebook and Twitter. As a bonus, it was pointed out that the product specifications and marketing information for EverQuest II on the Steam Marketplace...
No notice of the downtime, but here’s today’s update notes: GENERAL Added guild leader voting commands for leaderless guilds: If you are a guild Officer, you may now use the command /initiate_guild_leader_vote to initiate the guild leader voting process if your guild does not currently have an active guild leader (no leader has not logged in within 60 days). Anytime during the voting process, if a leader logs in they can cancel the voting process using the command /cancel_guild_leader_vote. POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION SilentCity: Delving Dead The door should once again allow entrance on non-TLE servers. Precipice of Power [Raid]...
From the EQ2 Forums: Greetings, intrepid Norrathians! After our hotfix next Tuesday morning, Sept. 8, the servers being consolidated will find a poll delivered through in-game mail with the top 5 appropriate name suggestions for their new servers. The vote will last 1 week until we hotfix again the following Tuesday, Sept. 15. The servers being consolidated will get their own naming polls based on themes assigned to them. We had a lot of great name suggestions that will be revealed Tuesday with the poll! Butcherblock, Crushbone, and Oasis servers will get their own Desert of Flames-themed naming poll....
Cyliena
From the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL TLE Servers The ‘Restore Items’ tab on the character window is now available. POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION Altar of Malice [Raid] Tserrina should once again cast her Malicious Shadows and Malicious Strife spells. Ritual Keeper V’derin should more reliably cast his Rain of Malice ability. Precipice of Power [Raid] Once spawned, avatars should now respawn if they sense they have not been defeated and reset for any reason. Teleporters to avatar islands no longer deactivate when an avatar is engaged. ABILITIES / ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT Summoner Flash Cast no longer references Empower Servant, as summoner...
If you only take away three pieces of information from today’s announcement spelling out the exact procedure and policies that will be followed in the forthcoming merger of ten EQ2 US servers into four, it’s these: The 2015 EQ2 server merger will follow rules regarding name reservation similar to those used in prior merges. You won’t have to “race” or fight other players to reserve character names. You won’t have to call in sick or take off a vacation day. In other words, cooler heads have prevailed! Every EQ2 character will be given a transfer token to move to another server...
From the EQ2 Forums: Thanks to all on the TLE servers who participated! DEATHTOLL: Voted “NO” on the expansion. The 2/3rds requirement was not met by a long shot. STORMHOLD: Voted “NO” on the expansion. The 2/3rds requirement was not met by an even longer shot. We will re-run the Desert of Flames Expansion vote again on Sept. 20 – 27 for one week!
From the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL (Full Install only) For those having trouble validating an existing assetslib.vpl file on startup, you can now add ‘cl_force_paklib_create 1’ to your eq2.ini file to force re-creation of this file. POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION PvP General Fixed a bug where some guards would get confused when pets start attacking Exiles. Precipice of Power [Raid] Heart Stutter should no longer hit players outside the raid engaged with Cazic-Thule. ABILITIES / ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT Fixed a crash issue related to Charm abilities [on Deathtoll PvP TLE server] Focus Aim should no longer spam requires time locked server....
The announcement that EverQuest II will experiment with banishing players for cheating or other egregious bannable offenses to a “prison server” has been met with mixed reactions. Some have described the idea as bold and a potential money maker as well as providing a petri dish for game bugs and exploits to be discovered and fixed. Others have derided the plans as a waste of development resources. Some went so far as to describe it as the “dumbest idea ever”. UPDATE! CNN Money has now picked up the story. We’re up to 21 media sites covering this news: CNN...
From the EQ2 Forums (posted today at 12:30pm PDT): GENERAL Players may now claim [eq2u]a D’Morte insignia band[/eq2u] from the entrance to The D’Morte Burial Chambers if they do not currently possess one. Players may now claim [eq2u]a darkened azure shard[/eq2u] from a gnollish terraporter if they do not currently possess one. Stormhold Players may once again visit published houses from anywhere. ITEMS Darkruned Blood Iron armor now has both str andwis.
Yesterday, the EverQuest II launchpad was updated. This caused numerous issues but most were resolved and most players are now able to connect. If you’re still having issues, here are some further solutions: Q: You get a black screen when you open the Launchpad. Now what? A: From Caith on the EQ2 Forums: Open Start -> Settings -> Control Panel > Internet Options Click on the Advanced tab on the far right. Scroll down the Settings pane to Security. Enable the “Do not save encrypted pages to disk” setting. Make sure “Use TLS 1.0” is checked. Again you should only...
HMS Jersey Prison Ship circa 1782 From Windstalker on the EQ2 Forums: Good day Norrathians! We are very busy here on the EQII team and we have something coming up we wanted to make you aware of — a little experiment. Later this week we plan to release a server we are calling “Drunder,” which is a “prison server.” What does that mean, exactly? Ultimately, players who are caught breaking our rules and disrupting EQ2 live server gameplay will be flagged for this server, and no others — ever. Characters on these accounts will be copied to Drunder (the...
We have more details now about the upcoming Server Consolidation for EQ2 live servers, specifically which servers are merging where. To avoid confusion or “TL;DR”, we’ve prepared this handy guide to exactly what the server landscape will look like after this change: (updated on October 6th with the new server names) There’s no word on how character names will be reserved, as that is probably still being hammered out, but the most notable news today will likely be that Nagafen is merging into Freeport and Permafrost. This is not really surprising given how few players were logged in even...
We’ve got another UPDATE from EQ2 Technical Director Jenn Chan: Update: The fix is currently being pushed out for this issue. Also some more information from the LaunchPad team. LaunchPad will automatically update itself and when doing that there are a few things to call out: – Launchpad will lose the saved information for “Remember Me” username and password. It will also lose the saved locale (this data was cookied in the old LP4). Once the old launchpad has been updated to the new version, you can re-set these options. – We are not moving any of the file...
From the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL Fixed an issue where renaming a guild would revert after a server restart. TLE General Fixed an issue where players could visit published houses from anywhere. ABILITIES / ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT Assassin Villainy – Corrected a bug that granted more mitigation than intended below level 80. Ranger Hunter’s Instinct – Corrected a bug that granted more mitigation than intended below level 80.
Popular tech blog VentureBeat has dropped a lengthy interview with members of the EverQuest II team to retrace how the Isle of Refuge newbie zone and Far Journey boat tutorial were resurrected, and then the ensuing shenanigans as the team tried to maintain the secret even as players stumbled upon more clues that what had once been deemed “impossible” was in fact going to launch just hours later. While it was a team effort, ultimately we have EQ2 designer Carlos “Gninja” Mora to thank for performing archaeology on parts of EQ2 that hadn’t been seen in eight years, and...
Early this morning, the “Malicious Threat” prelude event was activated on all EQ2 live (non-TLE) servers. This event will undoubtedly tie current events into this fall’s upcoming expansion, while giving some hints of what we can expect later this year. The prelude event was tested on the Test server and is now live until September 16, 2015. Good players can start the “Malice in the Glade” quest in Greater Faydark while Evil players should start the “Malice in the Woods” version in Darklight Wood. Both quests start in Greater Faydark. These quest writeups are by Sigrdrifa. When the quest...
From the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL Fixed a client issue with animations taking too much memory after running the game for a long time and zoning around a lot. You no longer get an experience penalty if you are unable to get a hit in on an NPC that your group kills. CENSUS Fixed a bug where PvP KvD stat [a new leaderboards stat] was not exporting with decimal places to census. PVP SERVERS Harvesting time has been reduced by 50% for players who are adventure level 10 or above. ITEMS [eq2u]Dire Balm IV (Adept)[/eq2u] and [eq2u]Dire Balm IV (Master)[/eq2u] will...
From the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL Addressed an issue causing some client performance issues. [as discussed here] Fixed an issue where consumables could give incorrect bonuses after zoning. CENSUS API Added total kills and KvD to census data for characters. [additional PvP Leaderboards] POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION PvP General The payments made by the exiles to buy off non-city guards have expired. Non-city guards will no longer assist exiles in PvP combat. Ravens’ Roost has hired a few high level guards. Ssrez’Ras: Chamber of Stasis [Heroic] Deviator Yothsra can once again be slain. ABILITIES / ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT PvP Summoner pets...
Attention players: we will perform a general maintenance beginning at 7:00AM PDT* on Tuesday, August 11. The current estimated downtime for this maintenance is two to four hours, depending on the service. This maintenance may impact the following Daybreak services across all games: Game logins for all Daybreak games Forum & Web logins for all Daybreak games Commerce and account management for all Daybreak games PLEASE NOTE: This is not a game-specific maintenance. There will be no update or patch notes. Thank you for your patience as we complete this maintenance. ~The Team at Daybreak Time Zone Conversions (assuming...
From the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL Fixed a display issue where starting equipment was not showing correctly during character create. Fixed an issue where some nameplates would show incorrect names. Time-Locked Servers Fixed an issue where the house item edit mode wheel was not responding. Time-Locked PvP PvP kills will now reduce faction with city guards. Guards in city zones will now assist citizens in PvP if that citizen is attacked while in proximity of the guard. POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION PvP General Guards in City Zones will now come to players’ aid in PvP combat more often. If a...
Everything in yesterday’s EverQuest II Producer’s Letter by Holly “Windstalker” Longdale was a home run, with one exception: Note that I wrote, “server consolidation” [rather than server mergers]. That’s not evasive language, but our approach. We think our best path is to consolidate some lower population servers into a new server and build a brand new server community from those players. When asked what this means for existing character and guild names, Ry “Roshen” Schueller doubled down with this comment: This won’t be an issue, because low population servers are being merged into a NEW server. No names will...