Feldon
From the EQ2 Forums: PERFORMANCE UPDATES We don’t want to get into too much detail, but overall we updated some very old libraries to bring EQII up to date. We also updated memory management, fixed some memory leaks as a result, and made some other code changes that look to be improving server performance. Here’re a few notes to give you a bit more detail: Improved client performance on maximum settings. Additionally, altered the “Extreme Quality” defaults to look and run better on higher end machines. This means that non-raiders who do quests, decorate houses, heroic dungeons (without oceans...
Game Updates & Maintenance
From Racheal “Afista” on the EQ2 Forums: We are excited to announce that the game update on September 23rd will include code updates to improve performance on servers as well as player clients! What does this round of updates hold in store for you? These changes will help game performance, whether you enjoy adventuring, tradeskilling, or decorating. Improved Graphical Performance Improved client performance on maximum settings, including “Extreme Quality” Utilized SSE and SSE2 instruction sets Improved how the Welcome window is sent to clients Improved Functionality Improved how the server calculates stats during combat (more to come!) Several improvements...
Dethdlr
Holly “Windstalker” Longdale announced today on twitter: We’re going to have a Double XP weekend for members this Friday at noon to Sunday midnight PDT! Wee! Update: Windstalker confirmed that this is for Adventure and Tradeskill, but not Guild XP. Time Zone Conversions PDT: Friday, Sep 19 @ Noon ~ Sun, Sep 21 @ 11:59pm (+ 1 minute) EDT: Friday, Sep 19 @3:00pm ~ Monday, Sep 22 @ 2:59am BST: Friday, Sep 19 @20:00 ~ Monday, Sep 22 @ 7:59 CET: Friday, Sep 19 @21:00 ~ Monday, Sep 22 @ 8:59 AEST: Saturday, Sep 20 @ 5:00am ~ Monday, Sep 22 @ 4:59pm
From the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL [WEEKLY FEATURE – Ed.] All Access Members can now access the Broker almost anywhere. In the EQII menu, select the “Broker” option, or use the /start_broker_anywhere command. POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION High Keep: The Bloodless Incursion [Contested] Grulk’s Toxic Submission no longer drains noxious resistance, but instead causes Poisoned Marrow to inflict greater damage. ABILITIES / ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT Summoner Minions Translocation can no longer be cast while under the effects of Carnage Shield. ITEMS Totem of the Succulent may now only trigger once a second and has increased damage and healing. BATTLEGROUNDS Balance of Theer...
EQ2Wire will be liveblogging EQ2 Insider Episode #4, which as it turns out will be Maggie “Luperza” Krohn‘s last episode as she has taken a position at Curse.com. You can watch EverQuest II Insider #4 at Twitch right now. This was a live blog of today’s EQ2 Insider Episode #4. Talking about SOE Live and how positive and fun it was. Talking about updates later this year. Kander encouraging people to play Altar of Malice beta as players will earn very nice rewards on Live for their efforts on Beta. Nathan (Kaitheel) will be talking today about Altar of Malice...
As long last we’ve resumed posting videos recorded from SOE Live 2014. After this, we’ve still got the EQ2 Art & Animation panel, as well as three player panels and the Player Studio panel. Oy vey! This was the last panel at SOE Live 2014 for EverQuest II — Questions & Answers #2. Due to room acoustics, this recording took an inordinate amount of time to edit and normalize. Fortunately, Audio quality improves around the 3 minute mark when questions begin.
From the EQ2 Forums: PvP / BATTLEGROUNDS All pvp rewards have been doubled. Balance of Theer will no longer grant victory points while dead. Because the EQ2 devs don’t want us doing this…
From the EQ2 Forums: WEEKLY FEATURE Balance of Theer [PvP] battleground! A 6v6 deathmatch zone that is set on Roehn Theer’s platform. GENERAL Options to invite a guild member to a party, a raid, or gossip with them via tells about that healer that keeps forgetting to cure detrimentals are now available via the context menu in the Members list of the Guild window. Resolved an issue where certain wards did not properly display the amount of damage warded in the effects list of their description tooltips and examine windows. POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION The Fabled Deathtoll Several minor...
From Holly “Windstalker” Longdale on the EQ2 Forums: Greetings Norrathians, We’re all charged up and busy after a great time at SOE Live! The team is hunkered down and focused on the expansion, fixes, and updates on the schedule. Here are some details! When is the EverQuest II: Altar of Malice Beta? On Oct. 7 we will launch Limited Beta for All Access members. Most of the content will be focused on the Overlands and level increase content. We need your support! Oct. 14 will be Open Beta for everyone. We’d love you to come check out the content and help...
I think these days, most players don’t consider their characters complete, competitive, or at least capable until they have upgraded a significant number of their combat arts or spells to Master level. It was not always so… Are We Entitled to Masters? It may be hard to remember, but there was a time before the Research tab and before Research Assistants when the only way to get Master spells was to defeat enemies. At launch, Masters were unbelievably rare and only dropped from Epic names. Over the years, they have trickled down to Epic trash, then to Heroic bosses. At...
It seems like every year, I sit down to write a post-mortem on SOE Live, and every year I get about halfway through it, realize I’ve probably said too much, or what I say will be interpreted as an attack on SOE, and so I give up. I’ve rewritten and almost deleted this a dozen times in the last two weeks, but at this point, I feel like I should post SOMETHING. Leaving Las Vegas So the panels are long since done, the computers have been neatly packed away, the last goodbyes have been said, and I’m once again...
Time for our Tuesday Wednesday update notes from the EQ2 Forums. If you were following EQ2Wire, you already filled every slot of your bank with 2 copper shinies to sell for status. For everyone else — this is why you can’t find cheap shinies on the broker… WEEKLY FEATURE Collection items and adornments now sell for status to specific status merchants! POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION Temple of Veeshan: Guardian’s Edifice Members of the Aerakyn Commanders ring event have had their health lowered.
From Holly “Windstalker” Longdale’s twitter: We will go over our planned Beta dates and more on #EQ2 Insider tomorrow! Also, you can sell shinies for status after the Wednesday update! — Holly Longdale (@WindstalkerEQ2) September 2, 2014 UPDATE: EQ2Insider #4 has been bumped to September 10th.
From the EQ2 Forums: ITEMS [eq2u]Cozen Ethereal Hood[/eq2u] and [eq2u]Cozen Ethereal Shroud[/eq2u] are now lore. Corrected an issue that was preventing some players from consuming their [eq2u]Cozen Hood[/eq2u] patterns. Subversive Acts will now persist through death. Weapons obtained within The Fabled Deathtoll henceforth will be more amazing than weapons obtained previously within The Fabled Deathtoll. and an important update about the Cozen hoods from Gninja: This effect is intended to not stack with the steward’s cloak. It is a replacement for the cloak so you do not have to equip it any longer. We have no plans to make...
EQ2 Programmer Maevianiu has been working over the last few months on some significant performance tweaks to the EQ2 client and server, including at least one change that touched 10 year old code. As a part-time semi-amateur coder, that scares me deeply. So I’m gonna say it’s uberimportant that players login to Beta and test everything out to make sure these changes don’t impact any existing systems. It won’t just be a testing session though as it looks like there’s going to be quite a turnout of EQ2 devs on the Beta server today! From Maevianiu: We have our first...
Because sleep is overrated, EQ2 fan Afista spent the weekend meticulously transcribing the two EverQuest II Q&A panels and has posted them on EQ2 ZAM. Also don’t miss the notes from the all-important Mechanics panel posted by Cyliena as linked below. I got a kick out of hanging out with both of them at SOE Live and seeing what they’re doing for the EQ2 community. I’m starting to feel like a bit of a slacker now… 😉 At SOE Live 2014, the community had questions and the devs had answers! ZAM was there to keep track of what everyone wanted to know. Afista has written a...
From the EQ2 Forums: WEEKLY FEATURE Vesspyr Isles: Pinch Aggregate, the Rare Item Procurer, now offers wares in a secluded location. QUESTS Fixed a bug where the Shinies Beneath the Moonlight automatically awarded even if someone didn’t complete the proper collections. Blaisy Bookmaker and Unlucky in High Keep Contested, and Dawper in the Fabled Sanctum of the Scaleborn will no longer temporarily disappear after you’ve completed Dawper’s mission, “Blasted Droags!” ITEMS One player cannot trigger both Practiced Tactics and Practiced Tactics II. The effects will stack when applied from multiple casters. [Fixed on 5/16/2014] Players may now obtain over...
In the EverQuest II: Systems panel, the EverQuest II team talks about the upcoming expansion, specifically class balance, mechanics, some new features, and takes player questions. On the panel: Akil “Lyndro” Hooper, Kyle “Kander” Vallee, Michael “Xelgad” Ganz, Robert “Caith” Fouts, Dave “Maevianiu” Kish, Douglas “Endymion” VanDerveer, and Justin “Jamiss” Michael. We recorded this at SOE Live 2014 in Las Vegas and are happy to be able to share it. On YouTube:
File this under “WTF?” The script kiddies who have been DDoSing Blizzard, League of Legends, PlayStation Network, and Sony Online Entertainment since early this morning decided to double down on their slew of felonies by tweeting a bomb threat for the American Airlines flight carrying SOE President John Smedley to San Diego. The flight was subsequently rerouted to Phoenix, AZ. The details of this “If I didn’t read it, I wouldn’t believe it” nonsense comes to us via Polygon:
So because there are people in this world with nothing better to do than engage in DDoS attacks on Blizzard, League of Legends, PlayStation Network, and Sony Online Entertainment, players are having difficulty connecting to or playing these games this morning. UPDATE — Bonus XP Extended til Tuesday: Based on this mornings issues, the Members Double Experience weekend will be extended until Tuesday. Enjoy! [RadarX] — EverQuest II (@everquestii) August 24, 2014
We recorded the EverQuest II: Altar of Malice keynote, which included about seven minutes of Q&A at the end. We also recorded the EverQuest II Q&A #1 panel and we’ve assembled it into a single video. NOTE: Audio quality improves at 8:45 as we started using an external mic at this point.
There were some technical difficulties during the first 10 minutes of the EverQuest II: Altar of Malice keynote which was livestreamed from SOE Live last week. Instead of clearly hearing the producer and designers of our game hyping their hard work, audiences at home mostly heard frustrated AV techs trying to get things working. Fortunately, we recorded the keynote in person and are now able to provide the complete event for those who missed it!
From the EQ2 Forums: WEEKLY FEATURE The Moonlight Enchantment merchants have new items available! All sorts of trees and shrubbery based on Ethernere foliage can now be purchased. Moonlight Enchantments begin on 8/20! With Kerafyrm’s defeat, Freeport and Qeynos have finally broken the Awakened siege, and Luclin – now whole – shines brightly in the skies. GENERAL YouTube integration has been removed due to incompatibilities with Google’s API updates. Options are being explored to return video functionality.
Here are the slides presented by the EverQuest II team specifically the mechanics/systems guys. Akil “Lyndro” Hooper, Kyle “Kander” Vallee, Michael “Xelgad” Ganz, Robert “Caith” Fouts, Dave “Maevianiu” Kish, and Douglas “Endymion” VanDerveer were presenting.
Now it’s time for the EverQuest II Systems panel. Akil “Lyndro” Hooper, Kyle “Kander” Vallee, Michael “Xelgad” Ganz, Robert “Caith” Fouts, Dave “Maevianiu” Kish, and Douglas “Endymion” VanDerveer are presenting. We’re liveblogging this panel as well as recording a video of this panel in 720p HD. Liveblog begins at 1:00pm PDT and ends at 2:00pm PDT on Saturday August 16th. Fix for Stealth and AE Abilities New Spell Qualities All spells go to Grandmaster Certain spells go to Ancient Battleground 6v6 Balance of Theer Deathmatch Penalty for dying Tiles to stand on and get buffs/debuffs