Feldon
Sorry for the late post on this but Butcherblock, Nagafen, and Lucan D’Lere servers are currently down to complete the maintenance which was attempted last week. Note that ALL 3 servers are being upgraded at this time. Hopefully at noonish Pacific time, we’ll be running 64-bit and see some significant improvements to zoning time, zone lag, etc. The announcements on the EQ2 Forums: Greetings all! This is to let you know that Nagafen, Butcherblock, and Lucan D’Lere will be down from Midnight PDT tonight (October 19th) until Noon PDT Tuesday October 20th, while the team migrates Nagafen (only!) [all...
Game Updates & Maintenance
If you are just about fed up with the out-of-memory crashing in EQ2 since Game Update 53 — I know I am! — you’ll be interested to know that the major causes of the issue have been identified and fixes are in the works. As soon as an updated client is available, we’ll let you know. When I start to see texture corruption, I minimize and then maximize the window every few minutes. It’s really a sad workaround. Rothgar posted on the EQ2 Forums: We’ve been taking a lot of snapshots of memory allocations and comparing this data to...
This week’s hotfix will be hitting today, October 13th (not the date on the Update Notes announcement). EMPEROR ATREBE’S LABORATORY The zone boss, Ka’El Ka’Vrish, should now reset properly in Kor’Sha. ITEMS Fists of Judgment will no longer indicate that they have a duration. MIRAGUL’S PLANAR SHARD Tuskers will now stagger his memwipe effects. Enraged Haladan no longer gets an AE auto attack buff when he goes berserk, but will instead proc Haladan’s Fury (frontal only, slash damage AE spell). PVP You may now speak to the Priest of Discord on all PVP servers. PVP weapons have been adjusted...
Domino brings us some tradeskill news from Game Update 54, expected in November: I wanted to take a minute to let you know that with the next game update (54) which we should see before Christmas, there will be an additional set of daily missions in each of the 3 Kunark factions that tradeskillers can assist (Bathezid’s Watch, Riliss, and Danak). They aren’t anything fancy, they’re very similar to the daily missions in Grobb, Tupta, and Firmroot moot – same type of tasks, and about the same amount of time. There are 4 per faction and they’ll rotate on...
Here are your EQ2 Update Notes for October 7: GENERAL Legends of Norrath (LoN) cards and booster packs that drop in game are once again tradeable. ACHIEVEMENTS The Maj’Dul Monitor Achievement now accepts quests completed in the Courts. MIRAGUL’S PLANAR SHARD The dire and alpha snowbeasts associated with Enraged Haladan now have somewhat less health. Hard Mode: Brilliant Adepts have less health. Boreas and Argos should no longer cast Trio of Teeth on players while they are leashed. Curse of Confusion now lasts 18 seconds rather than 30 seconds. PALACE OF THE ANCIENT ONE Anashti Sul will no longer...
Imago-Quem has posted more screen snapshots of Shaders 3.0, the graphical upgrade coming to EQ2 in Game Update 54. I believe these are all images of North Freeport. “Day” Before | After “Rainy” Before | After “Night to Morning” Before | After “Indoors” Before | After Previous screenshots shown of Nektulos Forest: “Nek Castle” Before | After “Nmarr’s Ascent” Before | After “Nek Forest 1” Before | After “Nek Forest 2” Before | After “Underwater” Before | After
Memory Issues Despite the updated EQ2 Client, some players are still reporting issues with running out of memory in EQ2. One workaround users are reporting, is to periodically minimize and then maximize the EQ2 application. This seems to reclaim some memory. The EQ2 dev team continue to search for the cause of these issues and intend to release another updated EQ2 client in the next few days. Chronomage Missions Thanks to Atan for testing out and reporting back on the Chronomage Missions. If you read EQ2Wire, you know that 3 new NPCs have been added in East Freeport (on...
Well, now we know the real reason that Avatar Loot was nerfed. It wasn’t because it was “overpowered” or because it would “break the next expansion”. It was so similar items could be put on the endboss of an instance. As posted by Jasuo on the EQ2 Forums, two of the charms dropped by Miragul in Miragul’s Planar Shard (x4 raid zone) are very similar to Avatar Charms: and yes, we will be back later today to talk about the new EQ2 zone which requires a LoN item to access.
Much has been made of the difficulty, and more importantly the limited desirability of the loot that drops in the new raid zone — Miragul’s Planar Shard — which arrived in Game Update 53. Players capable of killing these mobs already have access to far superior gear, and indeed some of these items were not as good as Ward of Elements or even group instance drops. Significant changes are expected to both the difficulty of the zone and the quality of the loot in tomorrow’s Hotfix. Gninja advises us that further changes to the difficulty of the zone should...
Resolving hopefully the last of the Game Update 53 issues, we’re expecting the next Hotfix on Thursday, October 1. Here are the Update Notes: GENERAL The destroy confirmation is now more clear in confirming that you are actually destroying an item. The Guardian of Eternity has returned to Charasis: Vault of Eternal Sleep Research Assistants are a little more helpful when asked about their jobs. ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENTS Monk Enhance: Mend will once again work properly. ITEMS Najena’s Ring of Readiness is no longer heirloom. Additionally, the Ring of Readiness effect will only function as long as the ring is...
Folks have been reporting in with mechanics problems (some related to multipliers) in EQ2 after Game Update 53: Anashti Sul’s “Presence of the Void” is hitting twice as hard and causing twice the power drains. [Link 1] [Link 2] [Link 3] This is not the only mob with mangled multipliers. Another example is Trakanon. [Link] Brigands cannot cast Double Up after casting Barroom Negotiation. [Link] Certain spells/CAs which have a Damage Over Time aspect to them such as the Monk CA “Rising Dragon” are randomly only doing 1 point of damage. [Link 1] [Link 2] Charasis: Vault of Eternal...
It’s too bad EQ2 developers don’t really talk to the players about Live Events and instead make assumptions. Over 2 years ago, the first Spires were being rebuilt. Tradeskillers did all the work, and then when the spire reached 100% completion, an Epic x4 dragon appeared, killing them all. Raid guilds swooped in and battled it out for the contested win. Some even swarmed the various zones by logging in dozens of alt characters to intentionally lag out other players to prevent them from successfully taking down the mob. In the end, the raid guilds got Titles and all...
Bonus XP Weekend To coincide with Game Update 53, we’ve got a 40% bonus to all forms of EQ2 experience weekend! This applies to Adventuring, Alternate Advancement (AA), and Tradeskilling. Kiara posted the announcement on the EQ2 Forums. Remember folks, if you are between level 10 and 79, you can now adjust the amount of combat and quest XP gets converted into AA XP. I’ve found this to be quite lucrative when doing quests which already award a high percentage of AA and quest XP. 🙂 It was quite nice to login and see: There will be a bonus...
This year has seen the introduction of three raid zones to EverQuest II. The Ward of Elements x2 — Once some initial bugs were corrected and a few mobs adjusted, this zone is a real success story. It’s very well-balanced for its target audience with sufficient difficulty and very good rewards. Players with T2 armor, Epic weapon, and the right group makeups are successfully clearing the first 3 named, working their way up to clearing 5 and then finally clearing the zone once they’ve geared up further. Kurn’s Tower x2 — This zone got some initial complaints, and gear...
Like any Game Update, inevitably a few bugs slip through. Game Update #53 (Shards of Destiny) had more than a few. Some received attention in Today’s Hotfix: GENERAL /hide will once again hide illusions. Discord (PvP) tokens are no longer fabled. Saving and Loading house layouts is temporarily disabled for further tuning. ACHIEVEMENTS The Octagorgon Assassin achievement is now located under Dungeons instead of Raids. ITEMS Certain items dropped by Munzok have been upgraded. Spirit Drain on the Spirit Draining Wristguard no longer heals the target of the attack. SHARD OF LOVE Regardless of which order you defeat the...
I just received a System Message that may be useful for some of you… Greetings Norrath. A new version of the client executable is available that should fix the memory crashes some of you are experiencing. If you experienced any crashes, we recommend repatching as soon as possible. For those of you on servers that have experienced performance problems, we sincerely apologize and are working diligently to fix the issue.
The most populated servers have been struggling under the strain of Game Update 53, and now we have an update on this from Kiara. Here’s an update on the performance problems we’ve been seeing. We believe that the issues the servers have been experiencing since Shards of Destiny was pushed live relate to the volume of items being converted to heirloom and the achievement information being accessed by the new system. This has stressed the database and is causing the performance issues. We expect it to abate in a couple of days after the bulk of our players get...
Looks like Game Update 53 has been very popular, as a few servers are struggling with keeping up. Rothgar reports on the EQ2 Forums: A couple of the highly populated servers are seeing some performance problems now that we are reaching primetime and many new players are logging in. This is probably due to the large number of things that happen to your character the first time you log in after GU53. Until the performance comes back down to normal levels, we will be locking some of the servers to keep the problem from getting any worse. Currently the...
So far, today my coverage of Game Update 53 has been entirely positive. I think Game Update 53 is actually an excellent update, with the live quest, HEIRLOOM LORE-EQUIP flag, etc. However in the long term, I think all the great things about this update may be overshadowed by some colossal mistakes. The bland Racial Trait revamp which I’ve already talked about. And an issue that a lot of people don’t take seriously, but I think needs to be discussed — the Avatar Loot Nerf. So far, I have refrained from covering these changes, hoping that cooler (and wiser)...
The Shard of Love A lot of folks have been asking me where the Shard of Love is and how to get there. First, it should be noted that the Shard of Love is not a group zone like any of the other group zones in The Shadow Odyssey or Rise of Kunark. The Shard of Love is a very casual group zone that can be completed with 3-4 players. It scales to level (50-80) and rewards appearance items, house items, and reusable cast items. It does not reward the typical armor, jewelry, weapons you are used to in...
What was expected to be a 4 hour upgrade got done in about 1 hour, 45 minutes. All EQ2 Servers are back up! ProfitUI There are a lot of folks who run ProfitUI add-on for EQ2. I use some of the plugins from ProfitUI, but not the whole package. As you may know, gm9 stepped down as ProfitUI developer in April. Others have stepped in to keep it going, although I have to say I wish it were more clear just what is going on with the project now. If I go to the ProfitUI project page, the last...
Kiara has given us the news we’ve been waiting for… As you know, Shards of Destiny is going live tomorrow (Sept 23). The US servers will be coming down at 6am PDT for the update. We estimate about four hours of downtime and anticipate having the servers up and running again about 10am PDT. We’ll keep you all updated should the times change for any reason. For Runnyeye and Splitpaw, the servers will come down at 9pm PDT (5am in London Sept 24th) and should be back up and running about 1am PDT (9am in London). Thank you for...
Shards of Destiny (Game Update 53) goes live tomorrow, Wednesday September 23rd. Most notably absent from the Game Update 53 notes are whether the Avatar Gear changes are going live, and whether the Racial Traits received any changes based on the significant feedback posted on the forums. If you want to read the full Gu53 Update Notes you can read them by clicking right there. I did some significant cleanup for readability and a few clarifications. It’s worth a read, even if you’ve read the official notes. HOWEVER… we do understand that the full Update Notes are a lot...
UPDATE: Servers will go down September 23rd from 6am to 10am PDT. And you can read the complete update notes from EQ2Players. However you might want to read my revised notes… NOTE: I have gone through these notes and slightly improved them for readability specific to issues I’m familiar with. If that bothers you, go and click on the EQ2Players link above.
Some very good news for Nagafen players who have been experiencing significant performance issues with the server for several months now. However this news is bittersweet for Venekor players who have been anticipating this server merge for several months now. Brenlo has posted this news on the EQ2 Forums: I know many of you are looking forward to the upcoming server merge. Sadly, you will have to wait just a bit longer. We are postponing the merge until October 20th. So an additional month. As many of you know, Nagafen has had continued issues with the Database and while...