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
• CET: March 7 @ 13:00 ~ 17:00

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 working as it should. This is one of those thankless jobs where, if everything goes perfectly well, nobody will notice anything!

I know we’ve had a spate of frustrating news in the last few weeks, but please do login and spend some time testing things out on Beta. In the process you’ll get a flying mount!

From the EQ2 Forums:

We’re working hard on database changes for EQ2, and we need your help to make sure they’re awesome!

Starting today and running until Monday, March 9 at 11:59AM PST, we could really use your help on the beta server. You can use our Beta Copy feature by typing /beta on a character you want to copy.

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

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 arrêté à 6:00 CET le 04-03-2015 pour une mise à jour du serveur. Le temps d’arrêt sera d’environ 4 heures.

and from buildmaster Bunji on the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Brokenskull Bay: Bildgewater Falls [Heroic]

• The “Barnacle Burst” spell has been made to hit slightly less often and should no longer grow over time.
• The “Whirling Daggers” spell has been made to hit slightly less often and should no longer grow over time.
• The “Dangerous Flirtation” spell has been made to hit slightly less often and should no longer grow over time.
• The “Pirate Spin” spell has been made to hit slightly less often and should no longer grow over time.
• The “Boatman’s Grasp” spell has been made to hit slightly less often.

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 we’ve gotten to the bottom of what’s causing it.

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 Far Seas Ferrin or Far Seas Supply Division Tokens should reward quadruple tokens this weekend!

If past events are any indication, then this event will likely run until Sunday at midnight, but when we have an official announcement, we’ll post it!

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 Ferrin weekend assuming we fix it (and we should).

— Holly Longdale (@WindstalkerEQ2) February 25, 2015

We’re still dead in the water as far as Altar of Malice daily and weekly missions for Overland, Solo, Adv Solo, Heroic, Event Heroic, and Raid content, however there are some other updates happening tomorrow which will be great when we get our NPCs back.

Update from Gninja last night:

This update does include the fix to the missions but they will not immediately be turned on after the servers come back up. The mission givers should return shortly after all the servers are back up and we have double checked them on live servers.

From the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Zavith’loa: The Hidden Caldera [Advanced Solo]

• Pterotrainer Yu’Lua’s adds will no longer stifle.

Brokenskull Bay: Fury of the Cursed [Raid]

• Increased the leash range of the Barin and Morin encounter.

Ossuary: Resonance of Malice [Advanced Solo]

• Elder Senistus’ “Persecute” spell has had its damage lowered.

Ossuary of Malevolence [Contested]

• Ostiophobe will no longer cast Toxic Ruin constantly. Toxic Ruin may now be interrupted.

From the EQ2 Forums:

US EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Thursday, February 26, 2015 at approximately 4:00AM PST for an update. Estimated downtime is one hour.

Both the Antonia Bayle and Oasis servers will be unavailable for approximately four hours for additional maintenance. 

EU EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Thursday, February 26, 2015 at approximately 9:00PM PST for an update. (Approx. 5:00AM London Time on February 27, 2015). Estimated downtime is 1 hour.

Alle deutschsprachigen Server werden um 6:00 CET am 27.02.2015 zwecks einer Serveraktualisierung heruntergefahren. Die vorgesehene Stillstandszeit wird etwa 1 Stunde(n) betragen.

Le serveur de langue française sera arrêté à 6:00 CET le 27-02-2015 pour une mise à jour du serveur. Le temps d’arrêt sera d’environ 1 heure.

We are anxiously awaiting a fix and a return of the Altar of Malice mission givers. Until that time, it is not possible to pickup Solo, Adv Solo, Heroic, Event Heroic, Contested, or Raid missions on either a Daily or Weekly basis, not to mention timed overland Solo Missions. A fix seems unlikely today, but we’ll keep hanging on until the solution is found and applied.

Here’s Gninja with a couple of updates to say the team are working on it:

It is getting fixed and it is getting fixed right. We would rather get it right the first time and take an extra day to put in the needed testing than to rush it out and potentially make things worse. Sorry for the inconvenience.

and:

It is a new bug and we are getting it fixed asap. It is top priority. We know it sucks that they are missing and we want them to not be missing as well! We will get it resolved as quickly as we can with putting in the testing time to make sure its fixed right so we don’t have to bring them right back down.

Update from Windstalker on Twitter:

Still looking at some funk with the missions givers for #eq2. We’re planning a Double Ferrin weekend assuming we fix it (and we should).

Out of an abundance of caution, all Altar of Malice mission quest givers have been despawned on all EQ2 servers. This started earlier this evening with Skrit, the Tradeskill daily mission giver but is now affecting all mission givers of all gameplay styles.

Update: The in-game MOTD has been updated with this message:

A bug has caused an issue with mission givers in Altar of Malice. All mission givers have been removed from the game. We will have them back as soon as possible.

More as we have it…

Remember last July when SOE didn’t pay a domain registration bill? It was funny for a few minutes, but then we put together an article helping people Manually Map their DNS to access SOE Games, Websites, and Forums. When we posted this article, we asked everyone to PLEASE REVERT THE CHANGES AFTER 3-4 DAYS. Alas, people didn’t do that and have been experiencing trouble connecting to Daybreak servers lately.

If you made changes to your Hosts file last July, please follow these instructions:

• Open your c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\ folder.
• Drag the “hosts” file to your desktop.
• Open the “hosts” file with Notepad, and REMOVE any entries like you see below:

64.37.171.24 lp.soe.com
64.37.170.20 lvs-recap-01.station.sony.com
64.37.169.11 manifest.patch.station.sony.com
69.174.202.136 account.station.sony.com
69.174.204.11 forums.station.sony.com
64.37.171.32 assets.soe.com
63.140.62.141 smetrics.soe.com
64.37.171.29 auth.station.sony.com
64.37.171.22 planetside2.com
64.37.171.22 www.planetside2.com
64.37.171.45 everquest2.com
64.37.171.45 www.everquest2.com
93.184.215.248 eq2.patch.station.sony.com
64.37.171.39 census.soe.com
64.37.171.15 data.soe.com

• Save your changes to the hosts file and then move it back to where you found it in the first step!

You should now reboot your computer and have no further issue connecting to Daybreak websites, forums, or ecommerce sites.

First up, this morning’s login server maintenance just passed hour four of its scheduled three hour window. The latest tweet indicates that there is no new ETA predicted…

The general maintenance impacting logins is still in process. We do not have a new ETA for completion. Thanks for your patience.

— EverQuest II (@everquestii) February 24, 2015

Also, those fancy new weapons we got with today’s update seem to have a few surprises. First, at least two of the spell autoattack Wand items lost their green stats somewhere along the way. Second, the new weapons have two white adornment slots which is not in line with current itemization plans. Kander has responded:

Its a bug, they should not have two slots. The second slot sneaked back on there. We will fix it and the wands ASAP.

If you’ve done the Shattered Seas signature quest line on a character or two and just don’t see yourself repeating it again, but yet you really want the ability to pop off adornments on your alt characters with the [eq2u]Adornment Reclamation[/eq2u] spell, you’re in luck.

Three months after the launch of the Altar of Malice expansion, it’s now possible for a character who has completed the Shattered Seas signature questline (you must have earned the related achievement) to buy an HEIRLOOM version of this spell for their alts from the Ferrin Merchant in the tower near the Phantom Seas docks. If you still want the [eq2u]Indomitable Pteranodon[/eq2u], [eq2u]Anchor of Wanderer’s Dock[/eq2u], and the ability to travel to the Phantom Sea from any world bell, you’ll still want to do the Signature line. Plus, all but the best -geared ToV characters can benefit from the increased mitigation and resists on the Signature line gear. And if the stats are unappealing, you can buy gear with different stats as you complete each quest.

Today’s EQ2 Update Notes were posted yesterday afternoon, however a specific downtime notice for EQ2 was never provided. Meanwhile, a Daybreak-wide three hour maintenance notice was posted for 7-10am PST. Apparently we were assuming when we figured that US-based EQ2 servers would go down during the same time window as the Daybreak-wide maintenance.

It’s possible that if you remain logged into EQ2 before 7:00am PST, you can stay logged in during the maintenance.

PST:

• US-based EQ2 servers downtime — 4:00 ~ 5:25am
• Daybreak-wide login/account maintenance — 7:00 ~ 10:00am 10:30am ?

EST:

• US-based EQ2 servers downtime — 7:00 ~ 8:25am
• Daybreak-wide login/account maintenance — 10:00am ~ ?

GMT:

• US-based EQ2 servers downtime — 12:00 ~ 13:25
• Daybreak-wide login/account maintenance — 15:00 ~ ?

From the EQ2 Forums:

Attention players: we will perform a general maintenance beginning at 7:00AM Pacific* on Tuesday, February 24th. The current estimated downtime for this maintenance is up to three hours.

This maintenance may impact the following Daybreak services across all games:

• Commerce functions, including purchases, for all games
• Game logins
• Web and forum logins for all Daybreak sites, including account creation

Time Zone Conversions

• PST: 7:00am ~ 10:00am
• EST: 10:00am ~ 1:00pm
• GMT: 15:00 ~ 18:00
• CET: 16:00 ~ 19:00

and from the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
General

• Altar of Malice [Heroic] Dungeons now have a chance to spawn an extra encounter once the zone boss has been defeated.
• Hit points for all Altar of Malice Solo, Heroic, and Contested zones have been slightly reduced.

These issues have been resolved..

Members of the EverQuest II team took to Twitch today to reassure players about the direction and future of the game given last week’s stunning takeover and layoffs. While it was great to hear some of the team’s overall plans for the near future, it would have been great to start out with an acknowledgement of what happened, some high level broad strokes about how the team has pulled together to continue to give us content. I’d have also mentioned the expansion (Even if a date is unknown) as there is a doubt as to whether there will be one. For a monthly “here’s what we’re working on” this was perfectly fine, but with expectations as high as they were, we really needed a Home Run and this was more of a base hit.

The livestream included EQ/EQ2 Executive Producer Holly “Windstalker” Longdale, Lead Designer Kyle “Kander” Vallee, EQ2 Designer Chris “Chrol” Garlick, EQ2 Senior Designer Nathan “Kaitheel” McCall, and EQ2 Animator Tom Tobey.

First up, Holly talked about how the EnterpriseDB migration is still under way. This is a lot of back end work to upgrade EQ2’s game servers which will have huge benefits once it’s complete, including Cross-Server Dungeons. The servers have been getting updates this week (thus the 4 hour maintenance windows) with an OS upgrade which is part of this process.

EQ2 Senior Designer Kaitheel has posted the news that the popular Brewday Festival is now on Test and the developers are seeking testing and feedback:

Brewday Festival is now active on Test!

Make this Brewday Festival a memorable one! Follow the shouts of rowdy patrons located near every player city to the festival’s official brew house, The Bar of Brell. Once inside, grab a stein and celebrate Brewday with the holiday themed rewards, crafts, and adventures, both new and familiar. But don’t let the celebration stop there, the ale keeps flowing throughout the bars and drinking holes of Norrath this Brewday! Otengard Brauer’s Beer Garden in the Butcherblock Mountains seems to have attracted some unwanted patrons, and there’s news of goblins stirring trouble in the Enchanted Lands, too!

New Features for ’15!

• 7 New Merchant Items sold by Balin Copperfoot in Bar of Brell
• New Quest – Bog Mountain’s Eruption
• New Tradeskill recipe book, “Brewday Accoutrements to Craft VI” sold by Balin Copperfoot in the Bar of Brell.

This event content is currently set to run 03/05/2015 at 12:01am PST through 03/16/2015 at 11:59pm PST on the live servers.

Read the whole announcement on the EQ2 Forums!

From EQ2/EQ2 Community Manager Ry “Roshen” Schueller on the EQ2 Forums:

Both the Everfrost and Butcherblock servers will be brought offline on Thursday, February 19, 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.

From EQ/EQ2 Executive Producer Holly “Windstalker” Longdale‘s twitter:

@Cyliena @everquestii nope, next week. Rare bosses added to AoM.

— Holly Longdale (@WindstalkerEQ2) February 18, 2015

From EQ2/EQ2 Community Manager Ry “Roshen” Schueller on the EQ2 Forums:

The Unrest server will be brought offline on Wednesday, February 18, 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.

Conjurors and Necromancers have yearned for a rewrite to their Pet AI for several years, and it looks like we’re about to get our wish. On Test, we’re now able to see what Xelgad had been working on with his complete rewrite of the Fighter, Scout, Mage, and Priest summoner pets. Once the changes have been thoroughly tested by players, they’ll be promoted to the live servers.

From the EQ2 Test Notes:

ABILITIES / ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT
Summoners

• Summoners can now right-click their pet and use the “Change Appearance” functionality. The summoner and their pet must be out of combat. The appearance list is generated based upon the caster’s knowledge book.
• Possession is now Flash Cast. For a short duration, the summoner’s next primary pet spell will have no cast time, reuse time or recovery time. The second pet summoned will have a reduced cast time. Flash Cast itself has no cast time or recovery time and has a 120 second reuse. It terminates after two pets are summoned.
• Summoner Pets now use a new AI system and cast their spells more reliably.
• All Summoner Pets now gain the effects of Doublecast.
• Summoner Scout pets now are immune to AE Auto Attack.
• Summoner Fighter pets now hold aggro more reliably off of the summoner. They are also focused exclusively on encounter damage and effects.
• Summoner Mage pets now focus exclusively on encounter damage.
• Summoner Alternate Advancement priest pets are now single target pets that function similarly to scout pets. They have longer range, reduced damage and heal the group.
• Necromancer Undead Knights no longer can ride horses due to systematic changes to how pet appearances work.

There are also a number of helpful changes to Quests, Tradeskills, and one to an Altar of Malice raid zone. Continue reading…

A handful of bored teenagers decided their celebrity status on Twitter is more important than us being able to play on DBG servers or participate in the forums this morning. I guess the job title of selling car insurance was already filled, so these reptiles are just wasting everyone’s time instead.

UPDATE — Noonish PST

DBG servers, games, and forums seem to be accepting connections reliably again, so we’re going to mark this one resolved!