Feldon
EQ2Wire is boots on the ground in Las Vegas and we’ve been covering all things EQ2. Yesterday we reported all the Altar of Malice news. Today, we continue to record panels in HD, including this morning’s Art and Animation panel. We’ll be Liveblogging the EQ2 Mechanics this afternoon. We’re slso recording Q&A panels and will post them this coming week.
Game Updates & Maintenance
Looks like Press gets a healthy headstart on posting expansion news for EverQuest and EverQuest II this year. After their private meetings with Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson and EQ2 Producer Holly “Windstalker” Longdale on Tuesday, they’ve had time to draft their articles and now, they’re available for all to read. My issue is, people at home have more information than those at SOE Live who may not yet have read these articles. Some Press sites (notably excluding Massively and ZAM) get a full boat ride from SOE, paying for hotel and sometimes even airfare, dinners, etc.). EQ2Wire covers EverQuest II all...
Holly “Windstalker” Longdale has just confirmed the new expansion for EverQuest II — Altar of Malice which comes out November 11, 2014. EverQuest II: Altar of Malice expansion #11 comes out November 11th. #soelive @everquestii pic.twitter.com/XZNcssLZfL — EQ2Wire (@EQ2Wire) August 15, 2014
We did not promote this news at the time, but there are a number of cool fixes on the Test server which should hopefully go live after SOE Live. Chief among these are significant optimization of the EQ2 client so players should get smoother framerates. Also, players had assembled a list of quest starters that, through revamps and NPC shuffling were no longer attainable. These plus many more bug fixes and a few nice convenience features are now sitting on Test. It’s almost like one of the big bug stomps we used to see. Here are just some of...
From the EQ2 Forums: WEEKLY FEATURE The Nexus Core [Challenge Duo] Having faced near-destruction at the hands of careless adventurers, The Nexus Core has assembled the ultimate automaton to defend its delicate systems. Great rewards await those strong and cunning enough to defeat him. Certain death awaits all others. Can you outwit the mechanical mind of Mechanoct? This encounter is balanced for two extremely well-geared players containing at least one tank or one healer. QUESTS Age’s End Questline Doomscale crystalweavers will no longer spin when attacked while healing their designated crystal. The crystals will no longer reset to full...
The Age’s End x2 raid zone, added this Tuesday, is intended to wrap up the long-running Age’s End storyline which dates back to the very first content in the game. However it seems that Kerafyrm will not go down quite so easily! Several threads have been posted by players reporting issues with continuing the quest from before this morning’s update: Skyshrine Tower Crystals Age’s End: Shattered Fate Age’s End x2 Even More Broke Now Players have expressed concern that their Worldwide and Server Discoveries of the quest rewards have been impacted by the quest bugging out for them (but not others)....
This Tuesday’s update included a wonderful, if vague, note about how certain adornment dislodgers had been change to PRESERVE rather than destroy the item. There was some question of which of these were changed, so Bunji has clarified: I checked with the designer, and the change is referring to these crafted items: [eq2u]Basic Prismatic Adornment Dislodger[/eq2u] [eq2u]Advanced Prismatic Adornment Dislodger[/eq2u] Keep in mind that every time you add a Yellow, Blue, Green, Red, Purple, or other gemstone to an item, or if you add a Cyan adornment slot to an item, the item gets unattuned and then you get...
From EQ2 Buildmaster Bunji on the EQ2 Forums comes our possibly last update until after SOE Live: QUESTS Age’s End Questline The zone should no longer revert players if anyone lags during an update. Hailing Jorlak will no longer revert quest stages unless it is a new zone. Firiona Vie should now update the entire raid when giving her staff back. Roehn Theer should now update the entire raid when giving his swords back. Players hailing any of the quest NPCs should no longer cause the scripts to trigger more than once. POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION Temple of Veeshan: Dreadscale’s...
As reported in a number of places on the EQ2 Forums, the Age’s End x2 quest added yesterday has some glitches which are allowing the quest to reset or “roll back” to an earlier state. EQ2 Designer Carlos “Gninja” Mora took to Twitter with a quick update: Taking a look into the update/lag issues with the Age’s End event today. Hope to get a resolution asap! #eq2 — Carlos Mora (@thegninjagnome) August 6, 2014 which he elaborated on here: The issues are being caused by the zone trying to keep everyone updated together and checking if anyone fell behind or...
Wish there was something new to do in the lower levels rather than needing to race to max level? From EQ2 Lead Designer Kander on the EQ2 Forums, we have a tease of something interesting… We actually have some content updates coming for players level 20 to 90. Soon. Yup updates. Plural.
From the EQ2 Forums here and here and here: Attention players: we will perform maintenance beginning at 4:00 AM PDT* on Tuesday, August 5, 2014. We expect this maintenance to take at least four hours. This will impact the following SOE services: Game servers will be down for the following games: DC Universe Online EverQuest II Landmark PlanetSide 2 Commerce functions, including purchases for all games Game, web and forum logins for all games Thank you for your patience as we complete this maintenance. Time Zone Conversions PDT: August 5 @ 4:00am ~ 8:00am EDT: August 5 @ 7:00am ~ 11:00am...
From the EQ2 Forums: This new battleground set on Roehn Theer’s platform is a brand new match type, with an age old premise: slaughter your enemies. Team size: 6v6 Minimum Team: 3 Time Limit: 10 Minutes Scoring System: There are two ways to gain points, the first being to kill your opponents. The second is to stand on the deadly order tile, which sounds simple. You may find this more difficult than it sounds. Dying or cowering for an extended period on your protected spawn area will reduce your team’s score.
We’re not sure how widespread this is, but it looks like some kind of maintenance is causing login issues as well as accessing the marketplace, /claim, logins, and now the return of the NBE-1013 error. Latest Update: It looks like things are starting to even out on the login situation. Give it a try. Not all are getting in, but many are. — David Georgeson (@DaveGeorgeson) August 1, 2014 Original post after the jump…
From the EQ2 Forums: Starting Friday, we will be updating our billing processes and the Direct Debit option will be temporarily unavailable. This will affect some players in Germany, Austria, Spain and the Netherlands who have chosen this as their method of billing. To prevent the loss of All Access Membership status during this time, we will be granting one free week of time to all affected accounts who are signed up for Direct Debit billing for an All Access Membership plan and whose next billing date falls during this period. During this time, the ability to add funds...
From the EQ2 Forums: Attention players: we will perform maintenance beginning at 3:00 AM PDT* on Tuesday, July 29, 2014. We expect this maintenance to take approximately two hours. This will impact the following SOE services: • Commerce functions, including purchases • Game, web and forum logins Thank you for your patience as we complete this maintenance. and: ALL EverQuest 2 Servers will come down on July 29th, 2014 at 7:00 AM Pacific Time* for an update. The expected downtime is approximately two hours. Time Zone Conversions PDT: July 29 @ 3:00-5:00am & 7:00-9:00am EDT: July 29 @ 6:00-8:00am &...
So a couple weeks ago, SOE had some DNS issues with one of their servers. As an apology for the up-to-3-days outage for players who couldn’t work around the DNS snafu, SOE granted 2 days extra All Access membership. This sounds great, but when this was announced, a few players were curious exactly how the 2 days time were being granted — either by moving the billing date back by 2 days, or by adding time at the end whenever people cancel. I don’t know that we ever got a concrete answer — until now. It looks like everyone’s...
Tinkerfest goes live tomorrow and EQ2ZAM and EQ2Traders have been updated with the new crafted goodies, house items, new quest, and a totally new prestige house which have been added this year! From EQ2 ZAM: Tinkerfest, the Norrathian celebration of all things Gnomish, starts Friday! Your EQII ZAM staff has the scoop on the awesome new additions to this player favorite. 2014 brings back all the old activities and adds more rewards, house items, and recipes! There’s a new quest and new achievement. If you didn’t do so last year, be sure to unlock your tinkered mercenaries! Tinkerfest 2014...
From Holly “Windstalker” Longdale on Twitter: We think we have resolved the issue with the Daily Objectives that weren’t updating. Please let me know if you’re having problems! #eq2 — Holly Longdale (@WindstalkerEQ2) July 24, 2014
Looks like all servers are coming down today, even though Tinkerfest will not be activated until Friday. From the EQ2 Forums. ALL EverQuest 2 Servers will come down on July 22nd, 2014 at 7:00 AM Pacific Time for an update. The expected downtime is approximately two hours. WEEKLY FEATURE Tinkerfest begins 7/25! POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION General Corrected an issue that prevented Aerakyn body drop treasure from dropping if the victim was below level 100. Zordakalicus Ragefire – The target lock cast by Ragefire’s adds, Shock, has been changed. It should cast much less often, is no longer a curse or...
While getting the NBE-1013 error on an SOE account is certainly not a new occurrence, it seems that quite a few players have been experiencing it in the last hour or so in EQ2 as well as in Planetside 2. Here’s the error: Error NBE-1013: We have detected there is a problem with access to this game. Please “click here” for possible solutions. According to SeanF of SOE Tech Support, this is an individual account issue which must be fixed by Customer Service on a case-by-case basis: This error code typically means there is a problem with your account that...
If you made changes to your Hosts file last Tuesday to work around the DNS issues which impacted SOE games, websites, and forums, then it’s now time to undo those changes! At this point, your computer should have no difficulty finding SOE’s games and websites automatically without any manual entries. Further, by leaving manual entries, if SOE ever shuffles their IP addresses around, you will find yourself unable to play SOE games or visit their websites and not know why! 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...
Looks like Age’s End x2 raid, currently on Test and Beta, is being pushed back a bit. From Holly “Windstalker” Longdale‘s twitter: Switching schedule a bit for more testing. Moving up Vigilant House Items for Loyalty pts to July 29. Ages End event release Aug 5. #eq2 — Holly Longdale (@WindstalkerEQ2) July 17, 2014
On Monday, EQ2 Mechanics Guru Xelgad teased a new priest ability called “Gather Remains”: Oh god, why did that mob aggro?! All I did was resurrect after a wipe! Solution coming to #EQ2 priests soon! pic.twitter.com/T5LTnD307P — Xelgad (@Xelgad) July 14, 2014 At first, we assumed this would be a Prestige ability reserved for this fall’s upcoming Altar of Malice expansion, however during today’s EQ2 Insider webcast, Xelgad clarified that this ability was going to become available to priests “as soon as possible”, after it clears QA, so likely in the next few weeks. According to a followup tweet, the...
Today’s EQ2 Insider Episode #3 is now available for watching on YouTube. You can read our summary of the webcast here.
When nobody is happy, that means you’ve reached a successful compromise, right? Some players are upset at the announcement that the Age’s End prophecy, which has dominated EverQuest II’s storyline for almost a decade, will not be directly experienced by solo players. Others are incredulous that it will not be a difficult 24-person raid. EQ2 Lead Designer Kyle “Kander” Vallee took to the forums to give the thinking behind why Age’s End: The Final Chapter is a x2 (12 person) raid and to encourage players to playtest the content: So a few things. We opted to make this an...