Tomorrow morning (Tuesday, February 23rd) brings a Hotfix:

We’re going to be bringing down the servers in the morning for brief hotfix.

Also there are 2 Server Downtimes to report from the EQ2 Forums.

Beginning at 6:00 AM PST on Tuesday, February 23, 2010, the Antonia Bayle, Bazaar and Sebilis servers will be offline for maintenance. We expect the downtime to last around 2 hours. (from the forum post)

Beginning at 6:00 AM PST on Thursday, February 25, 2010, the Butcherblock, Lucan D’Lere and Nagafen servers will be offline for maintenance. We expect the downtime to last around 2 hours. (according to the thread title)

Battlegrounds have slipped again to February 25th. From the EQ2 Forums.

Since we’ve stated in this thread that the Battlegrounds feature is launching on the 23rd with the digital launch, I’m updating here to say that we’re actually going to be pushing it back a few days to put a few extra anti-cheating measures in place.

The plan is for Thursday the 25th If there are any other updates, we’ll let you know!

Many folks (including myself) have been trying to figure out the purpose of the Gruegnach illusion available from the NPC when you first zone into The Hole, and what, if any benefit it creates.

There’s a thread on the EQ2 Forums which works out exactly how it works. It’s rather tricky to say the least, but at least we now know what EQ2 Devs were aiming for.

UPDATE: timetravelling indicates in the same thread I linked above that he is aware of the complexity of how this illusion works and will be working to clean things up.

Leveling Slowdowns

Also, in an effort to slow down leveling in The Hole, the quests to turn in horseshoes, paws, tails, etc. have been modified to only be repeatable once daily. I’m actually kind of sad to see this but considering I was able to gain half a level just standing in 1 spot repeatedly hailing the NPC, I can see why the change was made. There are clearly some issues with the leveling speed in EQ2 from 80-90 right now.

I know I will get some hate mail saying “What does it harm letting us level as fast as we want?” but I think it negatively affects the health of the game if the de facto level that all players are expected to be is level 90.

It has been an interesting week, to say the least. Expansion launch weeks always are. It’s also been a rather bumpy ride for the servers and developers resolving issues that made it through Beta.

We’re trying to get back into the habit at EQ2Wire of skimming the forums and finding the gems of info which may be of interest to our readers. Here’s the standouts for this week:

• What is the Golden Path?
• Adornment and Tinkering Recipes Not Dropping
• Guard Level bump to 95
• TSO Tradeskill Instance recipe books
• Will of aTyrant questlines remain
• nVidia 3D Vision
• Shaders 3.0

What I have noticed in the last 3 days is that folks have a LOT of questions — more so than we saw with the release of The Shadow Odyssey. Between itemization changes, stat consolidation, AA revamps, tranmuting/adornments changes, the number of factions, etc. it seems what’s really needed is a central Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) which points to the resources out there on the web to help you get quick answers to all these questions. So here we go…

Here are your Hotfix notes for today, February 19th, after the jump…

Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. 🙂

There are some fantastic writeups and coverage all over the web regarding Sentinel’s Fate and Game Update 55. However I do see an opportunity to answer some of the questions I have been receiving in-game over the last 2 days in a sort of Mega FAQ.

Let me tell you, I have been having a LOT of fun in The Hole. Although at first glance the quests and faction earning are a bit confusing. It will undoubtedly become old hat for people, but I’ll see about providing some more information on this subject soon.

We have received word that Battlegrounds have been delayed until February 23rd.

EU Servers have actually been up for some time now, BUT nobody can get patched because the software on the EU Patch servers (3 different servers in 3 different languages) is not up-to-date. It is unclear why this download didn’t start earlier.

The current estimate is that folks in the EU will be able to play roundabout 12:30AM GMT.

More as we have it.

We were thrilled to notice that Kanga‘s awesome EQ2 Adornments site is being updated for Sentinel’s Fate. Check it out!

These will likely be the #1 and #2 questions today.

How do I get to Odus?

By far the fastest way to get to the expansion zones is to take a Druid Ring to Antonica, and then run uphill to the Ulteran Spires and take the Spires to Sundered Frontier. Any Wizard Spires in the world will take you to the Sundered Frontier. You can also purchase the new Wizard Spires guild hall amenity. 🙂

What’s up with my AAs?

When you login, your AAs will be completely reset.

Helpful Hint: If you forgot to take a screen snapshot of your AAs before the update, you can view your AAs on your EQ2Players Profile.

Kingdom of Sky AAs (Main Class – Enchanter, Cleric, Druid, etc.)

The Kingdom of Sky trees have changed substantially since TSO.

INT, STR, AGI, WIS, and STA are now folded into the top line. And you only need to spend 1 point in that top line to start spending points on abilities. You must spend 22 points to get the original KoS end-of-line ability. However instead of being limited to 8 points per, you can now spend 10 points per ability.

Once you have spent 70 points, you can start spending points in the new Sentinel’s Fate AA abilities. Although the Sentinel’s Fate AAs fall directly under the original lines, you do not need to spend points above those abilities to get them. After spending 16 points in the Sentinel’s Fate abilities, you can get the SF end-of-line ability.

lines added for effect

Echoes of Faydwer AAs (Subclass – Illusionist, Inquisitor, Fury, etc.)

Spend 70 points in the original Echoes of Faydwer AAs and then you may start spending points in the Sentinel’s Fate line at the bottom. Once you have spent enough points, you can get the end-of-line ability.

Notes from the UStream Chat

In a future update, Ratongas and others will see a breast size decrease. 😉 It was not intended for gigantic breasts.

Battlegrounds will be usable level 50-90 in May. Usable at level 10-90 in a later update.

We would like to do Flying Mounts, but we don’t want to do it unless we can make zones that don’t have restrictions on where you can fly.

We want to fix Antonia Bayle. One option is offering free server transfers off Antonia Bayle, but we would rather fix the issues.

Battlegrounds is running on its own server. Specifically the old Venekor server.

Sentinel’s Fate is now ONLINE on U.S. Servers. EU servers won’t be up for a bit longer.

Steam will be selling Sentinel’s Fate in approximately 20 minutes. Good news since DLGamer didn’t ask for  enough keys. O.o

From Kiara:

US servers are Good to Go and should be coming up very shortly.

EQ2 ZAM has coverage of Game Update 55 including the Golden Path questline, revamp to Butcherblock, etc.

And here are your massive Game Update 55 Notes from EQ2 Forums. After the jump…

Alan “Brenlo” Crosby, Senior Producer of EverQuest II has posted this Producer’s Letter:

Happy Valentine’s Day All!

Here we are, perched on the precipice of another big launch for our beloved game, EQII. Next week is a big week for us and for you, the players of this grand game. You will finally be able to log into the new areas of Odus and explore, level and play in the new area that the team has spent nearly a year putting together. Characters can now advance to level 90 as adventurers and tradeskillers. More items, more spells, more AA’s and we hope lots more fun.

As many have noticed, Halas is not going out with the expansion, many have asked why and the reasoning is twofold. We have three pretty decent starting areas already. Darklight, Greater Faydark and Timorous Deep. We know they are not perfect and so the team has done considerable work in reworking those areas, streamlining the progress path to make for a better experience. We believe that you will find the experience in those zones to be far better than it had been. So, we went to work on higher level content for this launch, which we have with the expansion content and the new Battlegrounds.

Additionally we really want new Halas to be something special. We want more time to polish the area and make sure the progression path is fun and smooth. We also hope to get kilts in there. Currently we are looking to have Halas out with the Halas Reborn update later in the year.

With this release, we are proud to open up the Pre-Season of EQII Battlegrounds. Three zones will be available, each with a different playstyle. They will have progression and items and we hope add a whole new element of fun to the game. Unfortunately we didn’t quite get as many players as we had hoped on the server to give it a proper test, so we are going to use this pre-season phase to iron out any kinks and tweak the balance a bit more beyond the testing phase. When we are ready, we will begin Season 1 and the mayhem will begin in earnest. You will be able to work towards the new Chaos Armor during the pre-season, which might be the best looking armor we have added to the game.

With a game like EQII, it is evergrowing and everchanging, on occasion we find the need to adjust items, spells etc. . . and some mythicals had their power reduced with the release of the expansion. With each launch, we have to look at the items released previously and decide if they are perhaps too high to encourage players to look for upgrades. EQII is, at its core, a game driven by itemization. The constant desire to get the next biggest, baddest piece of gear. So on occasion we have to make some difficult decisions. This was one of them. For those who feel their mythical was devalued, I offer my apologies.

Next Tuesday is the retail head start, so to get you all ready, we are turning on Bonus XP from now until the servers come down for the update Tuesday morning. I hope you all login and enjoy. We look forward to seeing you on the Battlegrounds and running around Odus. Mostly, we thank you for playing EQII.

Alan “Brenlo” Crosby

Senior Producer EQII

Bonus XP Weekend!

Kiara brings us news that this will be a Bonus XP Weekend!!

All forms of experience (Achievement, Adventure, and Tradeskill) will receive a 30% bonus from Friday Feb 12th @ 3pm PST (6pm EST) until Monday Feb 15th @ 11:59pm PST (Feb 16 @ 2:59am EST) when the servers will be brought down to patch the Sentinel’s Fate expansion as well as Game Update 55.

Retail Boxes

Some players have reported seeing Sentinel’s Fate regular and Collector’s Edition boxes in retail stores. We’re glad to see this as it will make it easier for some players to buy the game early if they are not able to get to a retail store on the 16thl. Frankly, the release date doesn’t really matter on an MMORPG. Until the servers themselves are patched, you cannot play the new content.

Kiara has encouraged players to NOT enter Sentinel’s Fate product keys into the system (Station.com) until February 16th. The system may get confused by a prematurely entered key. O.o

We have discovered some ancient writings which may yet hold the answer to a puzzle.

We’ve seen some screen shots on the web of the Battlegrounds armor, but it’s been pretty low quality images. We took some images with the maximum graphic settings. This is the most detailed armor EQ2 has seen yet!

One surprising aspect of the Battlegrounds is that each of the 3 Battlegrounds zones give different tokens. The Battlegrounds merchants (now parked in Qeynos Harbor and North Freeport) require 30-40 tokens from at least TWO different zones to buy each item.

More after the jump…

So far, we’ve spotted a dozen individuals who seem particularly interested in player’s triumphs and exploits in the Battlegrounds.

• The Tinmizer’s Tinkerers want you to straighten things out in the Gears of Klak’anon
• The Pirates of Gunthak want to hear of your conquests in  Smuggler’s Den
• The Iksar want to know when you will next face the challenges of the Battlefield of Ganak

Each camp offers 2 different quests for their Battlegrounds zone — defeat other players, or complete the scenario.

Qeynos Harbor seems to be the quest hub for good characters wishing to participate in Battlegrounds. Those of the evil persuasion can find these tasks in North Freeport.

Calthine of EQ2 ZAM is reporting that Battlegrounds are now on the Test Copy server.

Here’s the Battlegrounds window:

(flip through images)

Note: There is currently an issue preventing people from being pulled into the Battlegrounds interface when clicking the “Queue” button. Devs are on the case.

Once everyone logs back into EverQuest II with the launch of Sentinel’s Fate and Game Update 55, you will face many choices.

Do you reset your AAs and spend them differently to take advantage of the new endline abilities of my Class and Subclass Trees? We already know that your Kingdom of Sky Class page will be reset on your first login, because points are spent differently on it.

Do you start solo questing from level 80-90? Don’t forget to move your AA slider back from 100%! You cannot spend more than 200 AAs until you reach level 81.

Do you jump into a 2-4 person group in the contested The Hole?

Whether you have the Fabled or Mythical versions of your Epic Weapon, you’ll probably be itching to start working on the heroic quest to updated your Epic Weapon. Then you can start looking at the weapons Sentinel’s Fate has to offer.

If you don’t mind reading spoilers, Kain at EQ2 ZAM has reported in with the complete walkthrough on the two quests you can do to transform your Fabled or Mythical Epic Weapon to a spell, appearance weapon, and house item. It’s two quests:

• Fiery Jewel of the Underfoot (85)
• Epic Repercussions (90)

As mentioned in the Ustream event last night with Brenlo, and also in an earlier EQ2Wire post, the EQ2 Dev Team have been working hard to make sure there is a logical, smooth quest progression from level 1-90. 1-20 and 70-80 were already pretty trouble free.

There have been some longstanding leveling gaps in the low 30’s, high 30’s, and the entire 50-68 range.

Calthine has been documenting all the new quests as well as overarching Signature quest “The Legend of Roger Goldie” that runs from level 20 to 70.

The Butcherblock dock area has gotten a bit of a facelift as far as where the NPCs are, organizing the quest givers into better quest hubs. The griffon and Gorowyn folks have been moved right to the beach, and the griffon has learned a new flight path to Darklight Wood. In short, new players of good or evil alignments can now easily reach Timorous Deep or Darklight Wood as starting areas, funneling players into this content. Of course some folks are still nostalgic for the old starting islands and those are still available.

The meat and potatoes though are a series of ~50 Kingdom of Sky quests which have been added from level 57-67. Also you may have heard of the Sinking Sands questlines which were prematurely pushed to Live. They were published before they were polished up. Anyway, 57-67 has been a tough level range for some to solo and so these changes should go a long way to help things out.

Check out the Golden Path coverage at EQ2 ZAM.

I’m sure a lot of you are wondering. Where’s the good stuff?

Where’s the shard gear? Where’s the raid gear? Where’s the Battlegrounds gear? Where’s the detailed analysis of class changes, the new AAs, racial traits, etc.? The meat and potatoes of groupers and raiders that my readers have come to expect from EQ2Wire? Frankly, I’d like to know too. 🙂

However even at this late date, all of these items are in such a state of flux on Beta, that it seems to document ANYTHING at this point would be foolhardy. Beta veterans assure me that there’s plenty of time left, but I admit this makes me nervous. Remember folks, raid gear didn’t even appear on Beta until 72 hours before TSO went live.

Two weeks ago I thought I’d be working my fingers to the nubs so I could present you with the coverage you’ve come to expect. Folks can go to EQTraders, EQ2 Zam, and other sites to get the grand tours of the overland and group zones, artwork, tradeskill info, etc. I know that’s where I look. 😉

I will be providing some documentation of the Red Adornments system very soon, but the raid gear, battlegrounds gear, and shard gear will have to wait until it’s finalized.