Feldon
SOE have put out a pretty cool trailer for GU54: Will of a Tyrant update going live December 9th. Check it out: Will of a Tyrant will contain the second prelude event leading up to the Sentinel’s Fate expansion arriving mid-February. The first event involved Thumore D’armer and was active during Thanksgiving week. Also, on December 10th we will see the launch of Frostfell!! Back soon with previews of the Sentinel’s Fate beta and hopefully that Sentinel’s Fate Collector’s Edition in-game mount. All rumors point to it being a lynx, and if they do it right, I might finally...
Game Updates & Maintenance
Kiara has brought us the great news about the Six Year Veteran Rewards. I have to say these are some great items!! Check out the preview at EQ2Players. Also, Frostfell is expected to appear in Norrath on December 10th.
Class Balance As many readers of EQ2 Forums and EQ2Flames have sussed out, Chris Kozak (known on the forums and in-game as Aeralik) stepped down in his position of Game Mechanics (class balance, mechanics, etc.) in early November. Today’s Producer’s Letter announces his replacement, the scrapping of the unpopular Gear Scaling system and Fighter Revamp, and the rescheduling of Shaders 3.0 to Game Update #55: Alan “Brenlo” Crosby, Senior Producer of EQ2, has posted a Producer’s Letter for December 2009: Hello Norrathians! Lots going on in the EQII world! We are just about to release our next update, Will...
A new Achievement has been added for Raiders who are able to clear the original Shadow Odyssey raid mobs without dying (earning a Flawless Victory at least once on each mob). These are some pretty amazing awards, commensurate with the effort required to get them. \aITEM 92894355 -1176837326:[Flawless Charm of Combat]\/a \aITEM -625928716 1415794346:[Flawless Symbol of Stealth]\/a \aITEM 1132459187 -1244409981:[Flawless Gem of Healing]\/a \aITEM 1381090014 420207800:[Flawless Stone of Destruction]\/a
Game Update 54 — December 8th We are now expecting Game Update #54 — Will of a Tyrant to go live on Wednesday, December 9th. EQ2 Forums Announcement Game Update 54 contains: Over 300 bugfixes 40 slot crafted bags and strongboxes choice of Melee or Ranged default AutoAttack added tiles and house items to the Moonlight Enchantments event (20th of every month) Game Update 54 also see the second prelude event leading up to the Sentinel’s Fate expansion. You can read the EQ2Players writeup on this Attack on the Crowns event, and when the event goes live, head over...
Xalmat brings us this news from the Test server: On Test, they opened up starting cities to all races that can be of that alignment. That means: If you pick a good race, you can start in Qeynos or Kelethin. If you pick an evil race, you can start in Neriak, Freeport, or Gorowyn. If you pick a neutral race, you can start in any city. In summary, the new starting locations for races: Fae can now start in Qeynos (Willow Wood) Frogloks and Halflings in Kelethin Gnomes and Half Elves in Neriak Barbarians, Erudites, Humans, and Kerrans in...
Today’s hotfix notes are brief: ITEMS The Legends of Norrath “Mysterious Key” is now flagged No Trade as intended. The Legends of Norrath “Draught of Ingenuity” potion is now flagged Heirloom instead of No Trade. MUNZOK’S MATERIAL BASTION Munzok’s Edict no longer persists through death.
Niami DenMother and Kaisha of EQTraders.com can always be counted upon to provide excellent coverage of Crafting and Live Events. There are 3 articles worth checking out, and they are still being updated as more items are discovered, so be sure to check them out again at the end of the month to see anything news! From Niami: Check out the EQ2TC GU54 Crafting Overview for more details – it already has the furniture shots for the first City Festival event (clothing shots will be incoming as time permits), as well as a page showing both the returning and...
We’ve been closely monitoring the progress on the development of Shaders 3.0. This is the graphical revamp which will improve the lighting, reflections, and other effects on 99% of the textures in the game. So far, we know that Shaders 3.0 is running very well on certain systems, but has significant performance problems on other systems. As a result, it’s not yet on Test, and may not be released until after Game Update 54. In response some pithy comments that Shaders 3.0 has slipped to the February expansion and will now be used as a selling point of said...
Understandably, some players are taking a look at Game Update 54 (aka the Great Bug Stomp) and not seeing a lot of new content. Part of the issue is, normally, we would be just 2 weeks away from an entirely new expansion at this point. However Sentinel’s Fate won’t hit until February. Also, it is now unclear just when we can expect Shaders 3.0, although I’m hopeful that we’ll get it as an early Christmas present. Of course, we have Frostfell 2009 to look forward to this December. If this year has proven anything, it is that live events...
We know what’s in Game Update 55, which will coincide with the launch of Sentinel’s Fate in February. It’s the new good starting city of New Halas. What is Game Update 54? Game Update 54 (slated for release the first week of December) addresses the most annoying of beasts in EQ2: the bug. That random inconsistency in a item description. That bizarre issue in a quest that makes it impossible to complete. The unexpected roadblock in a zone. The mob that just doesn’t work right. Game Update 54 contains a gob-smacking 304 BUG FIXES covering both recent and long-standing...
EQ2 Producer Brenlo has Twittered a couple of interesting sneak peaks into the future of EQ2. New Dance Moves First up, if you’ve been thinking that what Barbarians really need is some new dance moves, you might enjoy this new video. No word on when we can expect Guitar Hero: EverQuest edition. 🙂 New Barbarian dance on YouTube You can safely infer that since this dance is specific to male Barbarians, that EQ2 is getting a bunch of new dances unique to male and female members of each race. I wonder if they will all be pop culture references....
EQ2Wire is back in town and brings you some Hotfix notes. October 28 Hotfix ACHIEVEMENTS New Achievements have been added! Test your skill with three new types of Achievements: Flawless Victory, Sense of Urgency and Shorthanded Victory achievements have been added to Rise of Kunark and The Shadow Odyssey zones. ITEMS Equipment with pet buffs should no longer experience stacking issues which cause the cancellation of multiple pet buffs when removing a single piece of armor. Jewelry items purchased from Lavastorm and the Moors of Ykesha are now heirloom attuneable. Jewelry items acquired with Void Shards is now Heirloom....
“1:10PM SYSTEM MESSAGE: Greetings Norrath! The server will be coming down in 30 minutes for brief maintenance. Please plan accordingly to be logged out during this time. Thank you!” “1:25PM SYSTEM MESSAGE: Greetings Norrath! The server will be coming down in 10 minutes for a brief maintenance. Please get to a safe location and camp out as soon as possible. Thank you!” “1:26PM SYSTEM MESSAGE: Sorry Norrath! That’s 15 minutes, not 10. But, please get to a safe location and camp out as soon as possible. Thank you!” No idea yet the duration or cause of this downtime. No...
EQ2Wire is on the road this week, so updates will be a bit less frequent. Nagafen/Venekor Server Merge The Nagafen/Venekor Server Merge was completed Friday night. We’d certainly like to hear comments from folks on what the new 64-bit server experience is like (I know Butcherblock is a lot snappier with the new hardware), as well as having more folks to kill. 🙂 Issues with using the Broker, Banker, and World Chat channels were all related to the last stages of this merge, and should long have since been resolved. New Shaders 3.0 Snapshots Imago-Quem (Ryan) surprised us over...
It seems Butcherblock & Lucan D’Lere are back online. Must’ve been a minor fix if the servers were down for less than 15 minutes. Perhaps some final housekeeping from the Server Upgrade.
Here are your Hotfix Notes for October 21, 2009: GENERAL Nu’roga now has plunderable loot! Malicious Thoughts and Icicle Explosion now trigger on ranged and melee attacks. Frostburn and Mutagenic Burst now correctly modify each other’s damage. Purifying Persistence should properly modify the caster’s heals rather than the targets. LoN The Cloak of Crystal Shards, Assassin Master’s Cloak and Cloak of Runes returned from Collector Rattelis are now Heirloom. ITEMS Icy Prison now has 3 shield effectiveness to match its deflection chance. Charm of Solusek Ro once again triggers multiple times on AE casts, however its effect is now...
From Rothgar, Nagafen and Lucan D’Lere are now online.
From Rothgar: We are going to begin unlocking servers as QA completes their test. It looks like Butcherblock will be coming up in a few minutes.
Rothgar, who has been up for how many hours now? brings us this update… The upgrade is looking good and we should have the servers up soon. The QA department is just doing their final pass. We have a 30 minute downtime scheduled tomorrow morning to roll out a hotfix for all servers. Since we had to skip our normal hotfix window this morning due to the database migration, we are doing it tomorrow instead. We’re still planning on going forward with the PvP server merge Wednesday night at midnight PST. Initially only Venekor will be brought down to...
From Rothgar on the EQ2 Forums: All 3 servers are currently up and locked while our QA department goes through the normal testing process to confirm everything looks good after the upgrade. We are specifically testing characters and guild halls on each of the three servers that had problems copying over last time. So far those are loading fine so everything is looking great. I’m hoping that we will be ready to bring the servers up within the hour. and Glip the Gnome: Hey all! We are smoketesting the servers right now before we open them back up. Right...
The latest news… Update: The downtime for Nagafen, Butcherblock, and LDL has been extended to around 10pm PDT this evening. We apologize for the extended downtime. As a result of this, the team has already extended the Moonlight Enchantments event an extra day to make up for all the time that these servers will be missing. Thank you again for your continued patience. This makes 22 hours estimated downtime.
To compensate for the server wonkyness, server downtimes, and slow start on the event, Moonlight Enchantments is extended through 11:59pm PDT October 22nd.
Due to two mistakes in how the Server Downtime scripts were triggered last night, ALL servers must be rebooted. This will happen in a few minutes. The issue: All West Coast servers, not just Butcherblock, Lucan D’Lere, Nagafen, were set to stop allowing instances (dungeons) from being created starting at noon today. Announcement by Rothgar: I just wanted to take a moment to explain some of the broadcasts you may have seen and what is happening with the servers. Last night, prior to the maintenance for Butcherblock, Nagafen and Lucan D’lere, we scheduled the downtime which is responsible for...
The latest news on those 64-bit Upgrades: Things are still going well, however it is looking like it’s going to take a bit longer than we had originally anticipated. We’re now looking at an uptime of around 4pm PDT. If we need to adjust the time again, we will be sure to update this thread. Thank you again for your patience. Rothgar is posting updates regarding the downtime to a discussion thread on EQ2 Forums. I apologize that the server downtime was not made more clear. We discussed it a few times in other threads while the maintenance was...