Feldon
I could write 50,000 words about the disappointing Game Update 61, with referenced links to the nearly 100 forum discussions about its flaws, plus countless player and developer quotes. But what difference would it make? Despite a 2-day delay, and despite pushback from both Developers and Testers warning that the update still needed weeks, possibly a month of work to meet any reasonable measurement of build quality, Game Update 61 was released Thursday, August 25th. It was clear on Monday the 22nd that there was no way the Reitemization of EQ2 would be completed in time for Game Update...
Game Updates & Maintenance
Due to the widespread changes to Itemization in Game Update 61 for level 20-90 items (including Sentinel’s Fate and Velious gear which were rushed for inclusion), a complementary Global Unattune was provided. This was supposed to include every item including Equipment, Appearance, Inventory (bags), and your Bank. However this did not quite work out that way, at least not permanently. Players have discovered that when they login for the first time, most or all of their items are Unattuned, but if they log out that character and log back in, all Bank items get Reattuned. Why? Rothgar explains: The...
After weeks of testers reporting getting stuck in their Guild Halls, or being unable to zone into their Guild Halls, especially Tier 2 halls in South Qeynos, this bug went live with Game Update 61, and was not corrected with today’s update. Your only recourse is to file a Petition with Customer Service with a status of “Stuck” and see if they will Reset your Guild Hall instance. Good luck!
Here are your Update Notes for today, August 26, 2011. The US update will be at 7:00am PDT and last approximately 1 hour. That’s 10:00am EDT, 15:00 BST, 16:00 CET. The EU update will be at 5:00am PDT (13:00 BST or 14:00 CET) and last 2 hours. From the EQ2 Patcher Notes: GENERAL Due to an issue with GU61, all characters will have their items unattuned and adornments on equipped gear refunded once again. In addition, all AA trees should reset upon login. The LoN prestige house Residence of the Blades no longer gets confused if you own an...
Dethdlr
Apparently, two additional days wasn’t adequate to fully test everything coming in with GU61. Who could have guessed? There are reports that gear is randomly re-attuning itself when you zone or log off. There is also some strangeness going on with AAs. Rothgar has posted this on the official forums: We will be hotifixing this bug tomorrow. The downside is that all of your items will become unattuned again and we will refund adornments applied to any equipped gear. After this runs tomorrow, the items should remain unattuned until you decide to attune them again. Tomorrow’s hotfix will also...
Note that the trailer mentions the Dungeon Finder which is not currently available. When the Dungeon Finder goes live, it will be specific to each server/realm at first, and won’t be cross-server, which may take months/years to implement.
If you’ve ever wondered why EU patches and Game Updates always seem to take twice as long as US ones, you’re not alone. We’ve never been able to understand why the files aren’t sent earlier, or some steps taken ahead of time to make the update more quickly. Apparently there is some work being done. From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums: The international team has developed a way to parallel process some of the update in the future, so we should hopefully see an update speed increase for non-US servers. Taylen of Splitpaw asked: Does that mean we would...
After some issues with extended downtime (6 hours, but it took 3 hours for any explanation) on the EU servers, Game Update 61 has officially launched. From EverQuest2.com: The time is near for the great Fortress of Drunder to reveal its true purpose to all. The very bedrock of the Eastern Wastes shudders as a massive portal rips itself open within the fortress walls. The sounds of battle echo through its halls as the God of War himself prepares his innumerable armies to march across the frozen face of Velious and seize control of the lands of Norrath for...
ZAM’s Cyliena, who has taken a larger role handling in-depth coverage of EQ2 and specifically Game Update 61, took a moment to appear on the Jethal Silverwing Show this week. She joined Jethal and Elquinjena to talk about EverQuest II’s Game Update 61 and more. Download Jethal Silverwing Show for August 23, 2011 featuring Cyliena
Game Update 61: “The War of Zek” UPDATE NOTES A GENERAL SUMMARY OF WHAT’S IN GAME UPDATE 61: All dungeon and overland loot items have been re-itemized. What does this mean? It means loot everywhere should be legitimate for the level it drops for, no matter where you go now. Go explore some nooks and crannies you haven’t seen for a long time and get off the Golden Path! The loot’s good again. The Velious saga continues as you journey past the Citadel of Drunder to the Plane of War itself in a new dungeon and raid, and a...
The War of Zek, or Game Update 61, will go live on Thursday, August 25, 2011. The US servers will be offline at the usual update time of 7:00 am PDT and are expected to be back online around 10:00 am PDT. UK worlds will be updated at 3:00 PM London Time. The estimated downtime will be 3 hours. Pacific Daylight Time (PDT): 7:00am-10:00am Eastern Daylight Time (EDT): 10:00am-01:00pm British Summer Time (BST): 03:00pm-06:00pm Central Europe Time (CET): 04:00pm-07:00pm We will post the Game Update 61: Update Notes as soon as we have them.
The Age’s End Prophecy So perhaps you’ve skipped a few quests, or clicked through the dialogue of yet another quest NPC standing between you and phat loots. Or you just haven’t gotten into the necessary groups or raids to experience the continuing storyline. Point is, there is an overarching storyline about the Swords of Destiny (the Qeynos Claymore and Lucan D’Lere’s Soulfire) that carries from Echoes of Faydwer. And leading up to Game Update 61, the EQ2 Lore designers have shared a comprehensive overview of what’s going on in case you missed it. Check out the writeup at EverQuest2.com.
From Amnerys on the EQ2 Forums: Hail, friends! In order to make sure that Game Update 61: The War of Zek gets ample testing time, we will be launching this update on Thursday, August 25th. We look forward to sharing the new features and content with you, and will have more specific information on the downtimes for the update later in the week.
Ready or Not, Game Update 61 is going live tomorrow, August 23rd, 2011 Thursday, August 25th, 2011.
From Domino on the EQ2 Forums: Just wanted to post a quick update since I know folks are looking forward to hearing whose houses we picked, and how. Due to the large number of submissions we couldn’t visit each house in-game, so we looked over all the linked screenshots that Amnerys compiled from the submissions in various places and made a short list of what we thought were the most outstanding houses, which we could then visit in game. There were some really fantastic submissions and it was a great to look through them all!
The EQ2 design and mechanics teams have been working nose-to-the-grindstone for at least 2 1/2 months Reitemizing EverQuest 2. That’s every weapon, cloak, charm, piece of jewelry, armor, etc. We’re talking 50,000 items — the sum total of 7 years of overland zones, dungeons, and raid zones. To do so and make no mistakes would be a statistical improbability. On June 24th, the first pass on reitemizing Mastercrafted gear appeared on Test. Silius (who has since moved up from “itemization guy” to Mechanics Lead) expressed appreciation for the bug reports that came in, but then 8 weeks of silence...
In response to a thread about the lack of Battlegrounds activity, SmokeJumper had this surprising comment: We hope to roll out solutions for the [Battlegrounds] matchmaking at the same time as the Dungeon Finder roll out next week (which also uses the matchmaker). If the fixes don’t go in then, they will roll out (very) shortly thereafter!
If you just can’t get enough of Achievements in EQ2, check out Xalmat’s EQ2Achieve.com: EQ2Achieve, your guide to all EverQuest II Achievements, has just returned from a trip to the Test Server with news of all sorts of brand new GU61 related Achievements, including new achievements related to the new House Rating system! For more information, please visit and read my GU61 Achievements Preview.
Niami Denmother has turned in an in-depth preview of Game Update 61, including new House Signs, Tiles, Dividers, Paintings, the new House Rating system, and Furniture. Don’t miss it!
Cyliena of EQ2 ZAM has put in some serious hours documenting tomorrow Thursday’s Game Update 61. If you want the full details of what you can expect in Game Update 61, including walkthroughs, screenshots, and more, we suggest you not miss any of these articles: GU61 Preview: Beastlords Prelude Event GU61 Preview: AA Revamp & New Tradeskill Tree GU61 Preview: Dynamic Dungeons GU61 Preview: Fae and Arasai Take Flight GU61 Preview: Carpenters Get Crafty GU61 Preview: Velious Adventurer Quests
Cronyn, who designed and implemented the Beastlord Prelude Quest, has produced some hilarious MS Paint comic strips in the past, but this is the funniest yet. This was in response to a player request… Cronyn, can those of us who don’t want to go through the whole quest, get one of your legendary MS paint summaries of it?
With GU61 right around the corner (Tuesday, 23 Aug 2011), SmokeJumper has posted a note on the official forums warning players of some of the changes that will have an immediate impact on players. Read on to see what Smokejumper had to say and our commentary on ways to prepare.
After a growing silence about key parts of Game Update 61, specifically unexpected mechanics and itemization changes in high level gear, Salim “Silius” Grant, EQ2 Mechanics Lead, has stepped up and provided a detailed response to the issues as laid out so well by a determined player, Nevao in a thread entitled May we have a “State of the GU” post? Responses from Silius are in red: Itemization Changes Tier 3 to T8 revamp? Last time I checked there were still reports of items with insanely out of whack stats given the tier (mid-tier items with 40+ weapon skills...
Moments ago, we spoke with Gninja on Test, who has been working hard on spot-checking and fixing any gaps in the Reitemization of level 20-80 items. He’s also been talking to players, examining linked items, and checking bug reports. He also linked some of the loot from Dynamic Dungeons and some higher level items which have gotten new effects. From the EQ2 Forums: If you have specific examples [of itemization issues] please PM them to us. We can take alook at them on a case by case basis. I should also be available on the test server looking for...
It was easy to interpret SmokeJumper‘s suggestion that StationCash purchases could count as “time” towards Veteran Rewards and, taken to its logical conclusion, allow players on EQ2X or even Live to “buy” Veteran time. However this is not what he meant! Here’s a clarification: Veteran subscribers that have been here forever have already received their rewards. That would be a “no” for [taking previous time into account]. We’d only give them “backlog” credits from the last vet reward time to now. But for EQ2X’ers, you’ve never received credit, so you’d get credits as far back as August last year...