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 3 servers] to the new DB structure.

As you all know from last week, the migration process did a little wonkiness with some of the longer character files.  In order to prevent this from happening again, Nagafen [the 3 servers] will be migrated by hand.

During this downtime, bonus exp will be enabled on Venekor and our Nagafen players are encouraged to make alts over there to take advantage of the exp boost.  We’ll also look into having the mushroom rings extended on the affected servers so that no one misses out.

The plan is then for the server merge between Nagafen and Venekor to take place on Thursday (more details on that will be forthcoming).

We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your patience!

and the followup:

Good news all!  We look to be on schedule for noon and from what I understand everything is going as planned.  Butcherblock and Lucan are being migrated as well, now, as things are going so smoothly.  So that means shiny new databases for all three servers

As previously mentioned, the Moonlight Enchantment event will be extended for these servers (and others as well because gnomes got into the works!).

Thank you again for your patience while we migrate the databases for these servers and we apologize for the inconvenience.

Note that other servers besides those affected by this upgrade are spitting out various announcements indicating that their server will be shutting down. These can be ignored. Glip the Gnome posted:

Hey all! Between now and 12:30pm PDT today (October 20th) folks across most servers may notice broadcasts saying that the server will be shutting down or restarting — you can ignore these. The only servers that will be affected and be down are Nagafen, Butcherblock and Lucan D’lere and they are still scheduled to be up again at roughly 12:00pm PDT.

So once again, players can ignore the server restart broadcasts and we apologize for any confusion it may cause.

Thanks!

In other news, Moonlight Enchantments got a late start today, so my understanding is it will be active for another full day on all servers.

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 the code from different times.  We’ve gone back as far as June, rebuilt the code and compared these allocations to today’s code.  We have an understanding of what is happening and when.  Unfortunately it’s not as simple as rolling the code back to June because it would take a lot of other code with it.  So we’re working on a way to fix the problem correctly.

There are actually two issues coming into play.  There appears to be an issue with data not being cleared from the cache as aggressively as it should.  This isn’t really a memory leak, its just the client holdng on to things that it can probably get rid of, especially after zoning.  Then there is also the issue of memory becoming fragmented which eventually causes the allocation error.  Both should really be fixed if possible, but as soon as we have a fix for one or the other, we will get it out asap.  Fixing either issue should keep the client from crashing as much as it is.

I’ll let you know when I have more info.

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 to bring them more in line with the intended damage for their tier.

USER INTERFACE

• There is a new option to always display the threat window. It can be found under User Interface -> Game Features -> Always show threat window.
• Fixed a bug where the threat window would flash or disappear when it shouldn’t.

We’re keeping our eyes out for any further LoN news, by the way.

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 a daily basis; you can therefore do 1 quest per faction per day if you wish (they do not detract from your standing with other factions, unlike Grobb/Tupta).  Like the existing writs, you won’t be able to exceed 30,000 faction by doing these, but as long as you’re below that faction, you’ll be able to do the new missions.

The exact amount of faction awarded may be tweaked once the quests are on Test server and I get feedback, but the current plan is likely to be between 1000-2000 per mission.  The existing quests for these factions will not change at all; when the update arrives on your server, you’ll just notice a new questgiver near the existing writgiver, who offers the new stuff (assuming you meet the prerequisites and don’t have too high a faction – just like the writs).

Hope that answers any questions, and I’m sure there will be more details available once the quests are available on Test server.  I don’t have a date for this, it will probably be a while still, but keep an eye on the Test Update forum for details!

Zehl Ice-Fire of Unrest logged in and noticed that those handy Frostfell Shopping Bags had swelled to 45 slots. Domino provided further news on the subject of bag space issues, specifically:

Rothgar & team have indeed worked their magic, and bigger strong boxes will now be possible with the coming expansion.

You may already be aware that both handcrafted and mastercrafted strongboxes at level 80 have a maximum 36 slots of storage. So perhaps we’ll see handcrafted and mastercrafted strong boxes have a size progression in the expansion. 🙂

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 reset her ring event (the Manta Ray) when raids wipe to her (after the ring event was completed).

Player vs Player

• Novice of Discord ward will no longer place you into combat when hit.
• You may now purchase the Crystal of Discord from the general merchant.

QUESTS

• Quests now sort properly by name.
• The section of the heritage quest for the dark mail gauntlets, Tie up Some Loose Ends, should now update properly upon entering Miragul’s Phylactery: The Crucible.

SPELLS

• Spell Trainers will now provide you with the latest information about spells.

SPIRES EVENT

• The Magic Mouth now can be placed in guild halls, as originally intended.
• Boss encounters will once again spawn for full groups in The Ethereal Rift.
• The quest “Connecting Threads” should now be a little less confusing.
• The Ethereal Rift would sometimes be empty if the player entering it was very lagged. This should no longer happen.

VEESHAN’S PEAK

• Magics in Veeshan’s Peak are no longer able to restrict players from entering certain wings of the stronghold!

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 the Inn patio) and Qeynos Harbor (across from the docks) to encourage playing level 15-70 content and provide additional rewards.

• The first of these Quellthulians NPC will mentor you down (without another player present) in 5 level increments from level 10 to 75 for a small fee (5 g and 100 status).
• A second NPC offers one of 37 Chronomage Mission quests to go back and explore a dungeon ranging from level 15 to 75.
• The third NPC offers Rewards including some appearance armor (requires 10,000 faction with the Quellthulians) but more importantly, a house item related to the aforementioned zone. There are presumably 37 different house items you can claim by completing these missions.

When Game Update 53 went live, once you completed one of these missions, you were locked out from picking up any others, no matter how many days you waited. Today’s Hotfix corrects this, and each quest is deleted at midnight, allowing you to do a new quest each day.

Just remember that now that the quests are being deleted each night, you should return to the Quellthulians immediately after completing each mission and pick up your decorative house item (if you want it), because it will not be available after the quest disappears from your quest journal.

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 be expected in the near future:

Just an update for you folks.

The difficulty of this zone is getting toned down slgihtly. More specifically the level of the mobs and the crit chance of the mobs as well as some small tweaks to the AE effects that some of the bosses cast to make it a bit less painful. As you guys noticed with some of the changes above the items were also closely looked at and adjusted to fit the intended difficulty of the zone and taking into consideration the quality of items from similar zone with same difficulty.

You should see these changes do live as soon as we can get them in.

EQ2Wire has logged into Test and done side-by-side comparisons of the loot as it exists on live and what we can expect in Thursday’s Hotfix:

Fighter/Scout
Offensive Instinct Earring \aITEM -388580771 -638695899:[Offensive Instinct Earring]\/a	Crystalline Blade of the Tracker \aITEM -316628234 -923770519:Crystalline Blade of the Tracker\/a	Drape of Ice Knives \aITEM -1560491499 1713236965:[Drape of Ice Knives]\/a
Temporal Bludgeon \aITEM 1014861936 -1849987806:Temporal Bludgeon\/a	Thought Frosted Rhombus \aITEM 1420730539 582560697:[Thought Frosted Rhombus]\/a	Swift Frostlink Boots \aITEM 948554117 804576793:[Swift Frostlink Boots]\/a
Swift Frostlink Coif \aITEM 1280635002 -2030227484:[Swift Frostlink Coif]\/a	Rohop, the Ice Cleaver \aITEM 643973595 1990042517:Rohop, the Icecleaver\/a	Band of Jagged Ice \aITEM 1605011023 1764687837:Band of Jagged Ice\/a

Crusader/Cleric
Superego Sabatons \aITEM 525125006 -1215697349:[Superego Sabatons]\/a	Ego-imbued Coif \aITEM 180032609 1595324054:[Ego-imbued Coif]\/a	Ego-imbued Treads \aITEM 1738261032 79569467:Ego-imbued Treads\/a
Id-infused Cap \aITEM 428078571 -1324929700:Id-infused Cap\/a	–	–

Mage
Sash of Creeping Cognition \aITEM -241257653 460997427:Sash of Creeping Cognition\/a	Dodecahedron of Mispronunciation \aITEM -1690781327 -1801892191:[Dodecahedron of Mispronunciation]\/a	Glaceus, the Ice Comet \aITEM 1124854224 -263555851:Glaceus, the Ice Comet\/a
Glacial Sleet Cherub’s Drape \aITEM -1950366370 -344374835:Glacial Sleet Cherub’s Drape\/a	Black Mindweave Hood \aITEM 1861451831 -1537581143:[Black Mindweave Hood]\/a	Black Mindweave Slippers \aITEM -1150004573 1682610743:[Black Mindweave Slippers]\/a
Mobius Band of the Mind \aITEM -1347628754 1584699148:[Mobius Band of the Mind]\/a	Dangle of Twisted Thoughts \aITEM -1308454009 1556516884:[Dangle of Twisted Thoughts]\/a	–

Priest
Nebulous Loop \aITEM 1222148207 2119916759:[Nebulous Loop]\/a	Hypothermia \aITEM 455426760 -1457104545 -1862364414:Hypothermia\/a	Octagonal Ice Sculpture \aITEM -2059655992 446295863:[Octagonal Ice Sculpture]\/a
Hoop of Hope \aITEM 273246243 890145727:Hoop of Hope\/a	Frozen Font of Life \aITEM 864297868 1608526987:Frozen Font of Life\/a	–

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 worn.
• The Charm of Rallos Zek now has 2 additional melee crit bonus.
• The Charm of Anashti Sul now has 3 additional ranged doubleattack.
• Scourge Knight Spaulders have been restored to their previous salmon color.
• Chainlinks of Hatred now have ranged crit chance and bonus, as well as ranged skill.
• Barbute of Curling Horns off the Tangrin now has only 3 shield effectiveness.
• Rohop, the Icecleaver has been redesigned.
• Perfect Cube of Ice now has 2 deflection chance to match its shield effectiveness.
• The 5-piece Riftcloth bonus Empowered Minion V now works correctly.
• Armor pieces from Miragul’s Planar Shard now have the intended critical mitigation.
• The Loops of the Undying and Girdle of Ykesha’s Warlock have been slightly upgraded.
• The hate reduction modifier on armor will once again display properly.

MIRAGUL’S PLANAR SHARD

• The chest for Glaciactus now spawns in the center of his room, in front of the throne.
• Some of the adds associated with Haladan Moonrunner, Kervis Pendlair and Qxectus Qxectus can now be stunned/mezzed.
• Haladan Moonrunner (non-enraged), Glaciactus and Kervis Pendlair have had their chance to critically hit players reduced.  The Tusker’s trumpet buff and berserkers fury buffs associated with the enraged Haladan encounter will no longer result in as massive a damage increase for the NPCs.
• Many NPCs in this zone have had their damage, health and levels reduced.  AOE spells should now be spaced more evenly in encounters.
• Certain bosses in Miragul’s Planar Shard now drop The Shadow Odyssey Armor Patterns.
• Certain items in Miragul’s Planar Shard have had their power increased.

QUESTS

• Back in Fashion should no longer be granted by Collector Rattelis.  The quest will be available when the cloaks are obtainable.

SPELLS

• Poolburn type effects like Manaburn or Anashti’s Presence of the Void will once again function properly.
• Combat arts which combine a melee attack and a DoT will no longer display really low values on the initial hit.
• Barroom Negotiation will once again work with Double Up.

Assassin

• Fatal Followup will increase values appropriately for AOE based attacks.

VEESHAN’S PEAK

• Nexona has had the DPS cap removed for the fight.

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 Sleep cannot be completed as the penultimate named (the Guardian where you have to read books) is on holiday. [Link]
• Also, all items with -Hate Gain lost that ability. [Link]

UPDATE: These issues are all addressed in the September 30th Hotfix.

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 the credit, and the tradeskillers, the ones who had done the work of building the Spires, got nothing but a bitter taste in their mouths.

This time around, I do believe the event developer wanted to make sure there was not a repeat of these hard feelings. Certainly, there were many precautions taken. First, participation in the Spire Rebuilding came in the form of solo quests, small group quests, harvesting, and tradeskilling. Second, there are a huge variety of awards available on the merchant, more than have ever been offered for a live event. Third, the quests varied depending on whether you were rebuilding a spire or attuning a spire.

With all of these precautions, I thought for certain that we could now safely and fairly have this Grand Finale when each spire neared completion. What with the event now encompassing 9 spires instead of 3, I thought more guilds would have a chance to participate in the event. And every player who had the smallest part to play in the event still got something.

I’ve taken a small part in these events myself. Not only the repeatable quests, but  when the spire in Zek reached 30%, a cry of frustration rang out from other players who gave up and moved on to other spires. Four of us grouped up and defeated the 84^^^, allowing the Zek Spire Rebuild to continue. So I had been looking forward to dealing with the forthcoming x2 mob, and eventually (presumably) a x4 raid mob.

.
So I was disappointed to read this account from Hellswrath of the Alliance Guilds of Blackburrow and how their completion of the Everfrost Spire turned out:

First, I would like to say a big congratulations to everyone in the Blackburrow Guild Alliance for their hard work over two days in first building the Everfrost spire to 100%, and then starting all over and aligning it to 100% too!  An awesome job and a lot of hard work for two days straight!  Also, thank you to everyone else who helped on the spire, even for a little while!

Next, I’ll give a quick breakdown of the spire event to all those who are wondering what goodies these spires hold for those willing to put in the effort to complete them!

As most know, the spires in Zek, Everfrost, Lavastorm, and Loping Plains need to be built while the ones in CL, ANT, EL, Feerrott, Nek, and TS are already built and need to be aligned.

While being built, the spire in EF spawned a lvl 84 ^^^ heroic mob at 30%.  The mob killed all npcs and most low level alts doing the spire quests until he was taken down.  The reward for killing the spawned heroic was a small chest that gave 20 spire tokens to each group member.

The spire progressed as normal until it hit 90%, when it spawned a x2 epic.  It was a mob that looked very similar to the heroic, and gave 50 spire tokens to each raid member for killing him.

At 100%…….the spire reset back to 0%.  lol, yes, after all that work we needed to start all over again.  So we picked up again the next day and ground it out again.  While we expected another spawned mob or two, nothing happened by 70%, so we figured the next one would be a logical progression to an epic x4.  By the time we approached 100%, we had a full raid of people who had all been spending time building this spire.  The lowest contributor was a couple hours, the highest was somewhere well over 20 active hours.

It was the way it should be, with most of the people who had spent all their time to build the spire being the ones to get the epic pull and the credit.  Even the people from other guilds who came to look at getting in on the kill were gracious about being politely turned away.

We hit 100%, the spire completed, and . . . . . nothing happened.

Not a thing.  We stood around looking for a mob, checked track, checked the quest npcs and the spire itself to see if we were missing something.

Nope.  There was simply no point to completing this live event.  I must say that a full raid of great people (and many who were cheering on from the sidelines who had helped as well) went away feeling dispirited about the complete lack of reward for all this work.

That being said, thanks again to all those from Alpha Legion that entertained this crazy notion and stayed with us for a ridiculous amount of time to finish this event!  And a huge thanks to everyone who joined us from Casual Alliance, Wayward Waifs, Vainglory, Solace, and everyone else in the Blackburrow Alliance (and outside, too) who took their time to come hang out and grind out this spire to completion!  Awesome job!

I believe if, during Testing, or even the planning of the event, a dialogue had been opened with players asking what they felt was Good or Bad about the past Spires event and how these concerns could have been mitigated, watering this event down would not have been necessary.

It seems there is a dichotomy within the EQ2 team of what is easy, what is just plain tedious, and what is difficult, and decision after decision proves that these definitions are unclear. There is only one reliable way they’re going to find out how players feel about difficulty and fairness– ask the players. Yet this tool is ignored far too often.

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 applied to all forms of experience this weekend, starting at 1:00 p.m. PDT on Friday, September 25th and ending at 10:00 a.m. PDT on Monday, September 28th.

Spire Rebuilding — Do we get Hazard Pay? 🙂

Apparently all this rebuilding and re-linking of the Ulteran Spires throughout Norrath is getting the attention of the creatures who do not want these links re-established! They’ve started to make their presence known around spires which are already at a certain percentage completion. Keep an eye out for Heroic and possibly Epic mobs which seek to stop your progress!

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 was adjusted to compensate. Specifically the better patterns from Ward of Elements made an appearance here, and items were moved around to better match progression. All told it’s a reasonably popular zone.

And now we have Miragul’s Planar Shard. Despite the most organized beta testing process I’ve seen yet, the itemization came very late (just a few days before the update went live) and so these items have not gotten the scrutiny they should have.

I’ve already reported about zone issues with the 2nd and 3rd named crashing the zone and resetting all trash mobs on the 1st floor. This is not to mention that the chest from the 3rd named seems to prefer spawning under the floor.

But the bigger issue is the itemization and challenge for this zone.

The gear seems to be designed for casual raiders on the theory that these players will not have any T4 armor or Mythical weapons. However zone difficulty has been consistently reported as requiring players who have successfully killed Kultak and Switchmaster. By progression, this would mean players who have 3 pieces of T4 armor and Mythical weapons.

Patherpanchali has provided the details about how this zone can be scaled up and down in difficulty:

With regard to Miragul’s Planar Shard, the only MOBS in the zone that have a more difficult mode are Haladan and Miragul himself. During the Haladan fight there is a point at which he asks you to make a decision, which allows you to complete the encounter in standard mode or continue on to fight enraged versions of Haladan and Tuskers (hard mode). Hard mode encounters have their own loot table, and do not share items with their standard mode counterparts. When you get to the final floor, near the spiral staircase, you have a conversation with Miragul himself during which you can either insult him and he will fight you himself (hard mode), or let him make his speech without insulting him to get standard mode (his menagerie).

In addition there are items available from some of the Everfrost group instances that can affect aspects of the first floor encounters, giving players an additional advantage on the first floor. These are not needed to complete the zone, and have no effect on the treasure dropped by encounters they affect.

So what loot is actually dropping?

It is unclear at what difficulty this zone is being attempted, but the links I have seen so far for items that drop here are surprisingly average. While I’ve seen a decent Ranger off-hand and ring, some of the items defy belief. Some of the weapons cannot be used if you already have a Mythical weapon equipped. This is true of Fighters who already have their Mythical and a Shield, and Mages who cannot dual wield. So far, armor drops have not had any Critical Mitigation, making them a poor upgrade over even T1 armor.

Here’s a quote from Hecula which I think sums it up:

I think it’s time to seriously re-examine the way loot is heading and change it. Miragul’s took some time to design – the encounter scripts are inventive and unique. Yet the zone and all that work is ruined because people won’t want to play it. The rewards are too bad. It’s the same reason why almost noone is killing Munzok.

I would like to point out two of the most popular zones in EQ2 history. Runnyeye: The Gathering and Shard of Hate. These zones have probably been run more times than any other zones in the game. They were both zones that were considered very difficult when released (SoH slightly less so except for Maestro and Byzola) and both zones featured extremely good gear. The cloaks and set pieces dropped by the x2 in RE gave people a good reason to keep running the zone. Same thing for SoH – much of that gear is still highly desired by players and it is still a regularly-run zone. I would like to see more zones patterned after these zones.

If this game is to keep going until February, players need challenge and reward. Fluff and beauty aren’t enough. Just as a small segment of the population is kept alive by contested camping, only a small segment thrives solely on appearance and house decorations.

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 four bosses in Shard of Love, the doors to the chapel should always open.

RACIAL TRAITS

• Arasai and Fae Glide are now toggled spells found in your Ability book.

SPIRE EVENT

• Sorcerers may now translocate to any Ulteran spire even if they’re already in that zone.

USER INTERFACE

• Vertical hotbars will no longer have the large amount of empty space on the right side.

Other bugs introduced in Game Update 53 persist or are still being discovered. Here are the bugs and issues we’re tracking related to GU53:

1. Anashti Sul‘s Presence of the Void causes double damage and drains twice as much power as it used to. The issue has been identified and a hotfix is forthcoming.
2. When the third named in the new Miragul’s Planar Shard zone (Glaciatus) dies, the chest spawns in the floor and is unreachable.
3. Many players are reporting zonewide crashes on the 2nd and 3rd names in Miragul’s Planar Shard, which reset all of the trash mobs on the first floor.
   
4. Completing Quests seems to make the Quest Helper window randomly disappear.
5. The gloves in the Ro Achievement, Overrealm Achievement, and Faydwer Achievenment armor crates make Sarnak hands invisible.
6. Certain users are reporting that GPU Shadows cause either flickering, or random dark spots on their screens.
7. The Brigand spell “Double Up” is not working properly.
8. Once you complete one of the 37 missions from the Chronomages, the mission cannot be reset, preventing you from picking up another one.
9. Self and Group Buffs Persist on death. Not only are they there when you are revived, but they are functional while you are dead.
10. The Threat/Agro Meter (Ctrl-T) disappears when out of combat and sometimes when in-combat.

Players are continuing to express their frustration at the changes to the Racial Traits. Specifically, that a large quantity of players will need to pay an extra fee just to get racial traits back that they have been using for the last 3 years. Presumably this token (which is not yet in the game) will made available for $10-15 on StationCash.

This is the best quote I’ve seen yet covering Game Update 53. Thanks Fendaria:

Recently the statements were made there was going to be more communication from the developers with the player base.  I believe this was given as one of the reasons for the GU updates to occur less often, to allow for more feedback.  This goal appears to have been largely unachieved for GU 53.  There was minimal, if any response to the feedback provided for the racial revamp.  There was minimal, if any notification or response to the feedback provided about the black shard merchant.

Besides the Achievements system and Spires event, I can’t point to another area of GU 53 which did have good developer communication.  (And please note, the Achievement system is largely considered a positive change by most players, in part due to better developer communication).

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 logged in and updated.

Once again, we really appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvenience caused.

And regarding when European servers will get Game Update 53, Kiara again…

We’ve figured out what the issue is with the database and we will be pushing the update to the international servers today.

To Runnyeye and Splitpaw the update will push at 9pm PDT (5am Sept 25th for our friends in London).

Again, we apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate all your patience while we sorted things out.

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 issues seem to be happening on Antonia Bayle, Nagafen and Crushbone.

The locking will only be done to spread the load over time and not something we expect to do for very long.

I remember being stripped naked when I first logged in after Game Update 53, so I’m not surprised the servers are in a state of shock. 🙂

All servers are currently unlocked but some are experiencing database bottlenecks.  We are working on determining the cause.  GU53 has been live since early this morning and these isses only just began within the last 2 hours.  So our first assumption is that its just related to the increased load of prime time.

As a further precaution, some other news, which will probably come as no surprise to European players, is that Game Update 53 has been delayed for European servers. Kiara has been tasked with bringing us this news:

Due to the database issues that are occuring on several servers and interrupting performance, we will be delaying the push to the EU servers, this evening.

We want to make sure that the problems are sorted out before we update the EU servers, should it be a problem with the code so that we don’t push a problem to these servers.

I will update this post with the new times as soon as I have the information.

I deeply apologize for the delay and the inconvenience.

In the meantime, please leave your comments in this thread:

Server Issues & Locks – 9/23/09

Thank you for your patience while we fix the problems and again, my apologies for the inconvenience.

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) heads would prevail. However it seems that didn’t happen, so now I have to write this article…

Game Update 53 implements a massive reduction in the desirability and effectiveness to a large percentage of gear that drops from the Avatars of Norrath. The overwhelming majority of these items are now less effective than items that drop in instance raid zones and in some cases single group zones. In short, there was absolutely no point in anyone killing any of these mobs for the last 9 months.

Contested vs. Instanced

When EverQuest II came out, almost all of the content was contested. In dungeons, in outdoor zones, almost every enemy was free-roaming, able to be killed by anyone. As a result, players would camp these mobs, and contact each other when one appeared so they could quickly group up and kill it before anyone else could take it. It was contested content. However there has been a gradual shift to instanced zones in the last 4 years and this trend is no more obvious than with The Shadow Odyssey which contained not a single new contested zone or encounter.

Every time I zone into Deep Forge, or Ward of Elements, or Palace of the Ancient One, I am guaranteed the opportunity to kill every single named. I know they will be up, and I won’t have to compete with any other players to get to them. I can visit Ward of Elements twice a week and kill 7 named each time. The only competition here is against the Random Number Generator % chance that the item I want will drop.

The Shadow Odyssey started out with 3 instance raid zones. Certain mobs have certain patterns they drop. If you kill these mobs, you are guaranteed to get certain patterns to T4 armor set pieces.

What is an Avatar?

An Avatar is a Planar Manifestation. It is a Norrath-bound representation of a deity or God. And furthermore, Avatars are the only substantial Contested content left in EQ2 right now.

Three avatars spawn every 3~5 days. Every 3~5 days, if your guild has enough members logged in and with the right gear, and if you are quick enough, you can try to kill these 3 avatars. Avatars typically have 15 million hitpoints and you must kill them in 7 minutes or they put a debuff on your entire raid called Battle Weary which makes it almost impossible to kill them. This is not to mention the competition from other guilds, and the inevitable zone lag caused by ~50 spectators watching your guild try to defeat an avatar.

A few of the Avatars are slightly easier to kill than the hardest mobs in the hardest instance raid zones in the game, however they are not Contested. I think this point gets lost in the shuffle in many discussions.

On some servers, 1 guild has these Avatars on lockdown. On other servers, there is competition between 2 or 3 guilds to kill them. There are entire guilds that had their entire membership pay $20 to move their characters over to another server just to have a shot at killing avatars. In other words, they are contested. Each avatar that is killed drops 2 items from one of three shared loot tables (good, neutral, and evil) and a master spell. (details from Lithin.com)

The Problem

The big problem is, Contested Avatar gear was designed around crunch time in the development of The Shadow Odyssey. Some of it had effects on it which were not fully understood until after the expansion was released. Simultaneously, the Tier 4 armor, which is the set piece armor obtained by completing Instance Raid zones, is very powerful, to the point where there are concerns that this armor will be effective even when the Sentinel’s Fate expansion increases the level cap to 90 next February.

So there was discussion by the EQ2 Developers as early as February that some of this Avatar Gear would be nerfed. When the changes appeared on test, which rendered most of the items useless in comparison with Instance gear, there was unanimous negative reaction. The changes were shelved. For the next 6 months, players went about their business, playing the game as it was apparently designed — with contested mobs dropping the most powerful items in the game.

Players invested thousands of man-hours into playing the game as it has been presented since the Echoes of Faydwer expansion, namely that Avatars drop the best items in the game, and if you want this gear, you will need to invest the time and effort to get it.

Then in August, the changes appeared again on the Test server, with even more dramatic changes than the ones mentioned in February. For the next month, a 75 page thread developed trying to get some answers from the developers as to why such drastic changes were necessary. It was subsequently closed and a new thread created asking if we would be getting any developer explanation for these heavy-handed changes. That thread was also closed.

I have never been prouder of the EQ2 community for the detailed analysis of each item, screen shots, comparisons between Avatar Gear and other in-game items which are similar or better, in-game statistics, etc. they did in these two threads. Most importantly were many impassioned pleas from the players of these guilds that tackle these encounters week-after-week that they would no longer have any desire or need to participate in this content once the changes went live.

I was very frustrated to see these threads closed, and the result of that was I think some undeserved attacks have been made towards Kiara, who I think has done an excellent job turning the EQ2 forums from the Gestapo, uncomfortable place they were 2 years go, into the receptive place they are now that accepts feedback, even if it’s a viewpoint the devs might not like.

The blame for this Avatar Loot situation does not fall on Kiara’s shoulders. It belongs on the shoulders of the developers who let this go for so long.

On September 23rd, we saw the launch of the Shards of Destiny (Game Update 53). With few exceptions, every Avatar Gear item in the game has been reduced in effectiveness (nerfed) exactly how they appeared on Test in mid-August. Customer Feedback was completely ignored, and the suggestion that these changes wait until the expansion received no attention.

Regardless of whether some of these items may have been slightly overpowered, the point now is that I have never seen the players of EQ2 do such a good job explaining in intricate detail, with examples, screen shots, comparisons, Excel spreadsheets, ACT reports, exactly why the changes were flawed, and how they would break the game.

Why You Should Care

So far, all of the Raid content that has been added to EQ2 in Kunark and The Shadow Odyssey has gone live broken, with substantial bugs that make it impossible to kill mobs. Avatar-killing Guilds have been instrumental in providing detailed bug reports to get this content fixed.

I predict that a lot of raid content will be going live in the next expansion with a serious lack of testing and bugs as a result. I am really not looking forward to seeing some of the most experienced players, who have given me a lot of advice about how to be a better player, outright quit the game.

People try to classify members of raid guilds as players with “no life” who get woken up at 3am to kill these mobs. It is a fact that raid guilds successfully take down avatars without waking up at odd hours or playing “24/7”. Some do so playing as little as 20 hours a week.

Quotes

There is so much worth reading in the Avatar Nerf #1 and Avatar Nerf #2 threads, but I wanted to include some of it here without making this post too long. Yes, there is a lot of whining and nonsense in those threads, but there are also very detailed, constructive arguments.

I think you already have your feedback. Within hours you have seen that this massive nerf to an entire playstyle is completely unacceptable to most.

This goes beyond what is actually being done to avatar gear right now. This is showing a sense of disdain towards the high end content and the players that give the most back to the game in terms of feedback about mechanics and encounters. To me it shows that not only is a contested playstyle being destroyed right now, but that soe has no intention of having a contested level of loot/play/gear in the next expansion. Progression is a very important thing. Making encounters more difficult to progress through, and also having those encounters drop loot that also progresses.

This nerf will do massive damage to raiding guilds on every server, and will take away one of the aspirations of every raider. ~~ Korrupt @ Najena ~~

Many of the changes to avatar loot appears to be done arbitrarily without consideration for how the end result compares to existing items.

Further, some items that were -already- worse than instanced items have received additional nerfs. Since items that were regarded as ‘trash’ already were reduced, this does tend to reinforce the idea that these changes were largely arbitrary and done without a great deal of thought. Examples include the Pantaloons of the Visionary, which were already an inferior choice to set pants for people trying to get their set bonuses and use their free slot for something better. Other examples include the avatar belts, which were already inferior to mobs from instanced zones – which no one complained about. ~~ Chath of Bloodthorn on Antonia Bayle ~~

The problem is with the DESIGNERS not with the MECHANICS.  The designers continue to make items that are irreplaceable. They continue to make items that everyone knows are too good, and they continue to show they have no idea how their game actually works.

Take the base damage and the Bloodthirsty Choker for example.  They didn’t even realize why it was so good.  They had no idea that base damage affected poisons and procs.  They even went so far as to start adding base damage to LEGENDARY gear.

After two expansions of everyone wearing the choker and numerous posts about it, what do they do?  They add MORE base damage items to the game.  Even though Fyreflyte says himself “previously the highest you could hope to attain is 10% ~ 15%”.  He acts like the items made themselves.  HE MADE THEM.  The TEAM made them.

Stuff like this isn’t the player’s fault.  Its the team’s fault.  Continual design ignorance and a lack of the future of the game results in the mechanics changing every expansion and months of player’s time wasted. ~~ Gage ~~

Conclusions

EQ2 needs to be itemized from the top down. Really, if you look at it, almost all of the gear in The Shadow Odyssey is overpowered. Even the Tier 1 and Tier 2 armor. Even some of the quest gear. Going forward, if gear issues are identified early on, they need to be applied early in the expansion. Waiting until September is just really bad form. And needlessly reducing the effectiveness of gear to below the effectiveness of other items in the game, especially ones that drop in Heroic dungeons, is just plain wrong.

There is no doubt that due to the choice to apply these changes now, rather than February as they were strongly advised to do, will result in many people quitting the game, perhaps indefinitely. If SoE is serious about EQ2 having Contested content in the future, they need to understand the time investment that is made to playtest and participate in this content. There are only so many times players will come back from this kind of sea change.

Leaving the Game

Normally, when someone posts on the EQ2 forums or EQ2Flames that they intend to quit the game, they are met with ridicule, disbelief, and disingenuous requests “can I have your stuff?” However, you will find none of that here.

If you are considering leaving EQ2, please post a comment with your character name(s), guild, and server, and I will post them here.

Dracos Argent – Butcherblock
Grump, Emericant, Karmalina, Kindalar, Lucii, Merovius, Leisure

Validus – Splitpaw
Lithin, Cexi, Lineshta

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 other zones. Some of the mobs, you actually heal them instead of killing them. Think of it more like the Haunted Mansion from last year’s Nights of the Dead event, which was just a fun zone for 3 players.

EQ2 Wiki has drawn a blank, but fortunately EQ2 Zam is on the ball here and has a writeup on Shard of Love and a list of names and quests.

The Shard of Love Access Quest

As for how to access the zone, thanks to Kreanne (Butcherblock) for posting this information:

1. This quest is picked up at the North Qeynos or Commonlands gates.
2. Speak with Priestess Annalisa Swornlove in Antonica’s Coastal Grove {-2233, 24, -699} near the druid ring. Harvest a virtuous component.
3. Travel to the Commonlands where the Avatar of Valor spawns (near the Mourned location).
4. Return to the Priestess and give here the valorian bloom. Speak to her again and she will tell you that the arrow has been blessed.
5. Travel to Greater Faydark and find a place that had meaning for Lady Shea. This is around the base of Tunare’s Sapling {-92,0,0}. Find an ethereal arrow the size of a spear and click on it. A Disciple of Hate will spawn and attack you.
6. Find the weakest point between the Shard of Love and Norrath. As Everfrost is the world of the E’ci, this is where you should go. 🙂 Head to the north end of the dock {-57,-9,56} and click on a scatter of rubble.
7. Return to the Priestess and give here the valorious bloom.
8. Return to Everfrost and meet the Priestess there. Once she completes the ritual and opens the portal, you will be able to return here any time to visit the Shard of Love.
9. Don’t forget to speak to the three Disciples of Love.

Rebuilding the Spires

Also some have been asking where the Rebuilding the Spires events are. You can pick up a quest in the Moors of Ykesha, but this is optional. Just head to the ruined spires in Everfrost, Lavastorm, Zek, or Loping Plains and get started.

You’ll be happy to know that the vendors here have a large selection of items, including those Bracers/Epaulets/Leggings/etc of Imperceptible Beauty, which allows you to hide armor and go “au naturel”.

There are adventure and tradeskill quests alike for aspiring Spire Rebuilders.

Exact Locations of the Spires (EQ2 Zam delivers again)

Chronomagic

If you are wanting to relive the glory days and run lower-level group zones for AA or special appearance armor, you’ll want to check out the Chronomages. There is one that mentors you down to level 10, 15, 20, 25…70, 75 for a small gold and status cost. Another one offers one of 37 quests which reward clearing these underplayed old zones. And a third offers some rather… interesting looking plate armor you might be interested in.

The Qeynos Harbor clan are not hard to find, they’re just across from the docks.

However, the East Freeport group has bumfuzzled a few. They’re living it up on the patio of the bar/inn. If you are a recovering alcoholic, you’ll just have to gather your strength and run through the building, or I suppose you could swim…

Exact Locations for the Chronomages (thanks EQ2 Zam)

Streaming Client (the Tiniest Little Dragon)
Some folks have noticed a new Dragon window on their screen. This is part of the Streaming Client we’ll be getting in Game Update 54. You can read more about it on EQ2 Forums.

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 download is from April. And if I go to the ProfitUI forums, it’s very chaotic without structured announcements of the future, what to download, when updates are available, etc.

I posted a suggestion on EQ2Interface asking them to clean up the site and make all references point to ProfitUI Catalyst which is the new name for ProfitUI Reborn.

Anyway, use the ProfitUI Auto-Updater and you’ll be able to use the updated Quest/Achievements window as well as the AA/Racial Traits window.

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 your patience and happy gaming!

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 to read and some folks might want just the key points. I can’t guarantee it’s much shorter, but maybe it’s more pleasant to read. So we present them here…

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 those have subsided some in recent days, we are not satisfied with the performance levels.  We feel that moving more players onto the server in its current state would exacerbate the existing issues.

So we are going to take that month to upgrade the backend DB hardware and software on Nagafen.  When we are done it will have the best array in the stack, significantly better as a matter of fact.  We hope that this news softens the blow of having to wait a bit longer.  During the month we will have a couple of extra downtimes as we migrate, first the hardware, and then the software.  As we have dates for you, we will have Kiara post them.

Again I apologize for making you wait.

Alan “Brenlo” Crosby
Senior Producer – EQII –

This is not a decision that was taken lightly. Nagafen will be the first EQ2 server that is upgraded in hardware and software to 64-bit and the additional database memory that allows. This should substantially help with zone lag. Rothgar has shed some light in the same thread:

Just an FYI, we’ve been evaluating the DB upgrade for almost a year.  This is not something to take lightly.  We’ve had the new database version running in our QA environment for quite awhile.  Deciding to push this new version to a live server in under one month’s time has risks of its own, but we feel this choice is by far better than going forward with the merge on existing hardware and risking performance problems that make the game unplayable.

This is not only a move to new hardware and a new database version, but also a move from 32bit to 64bit.  This will allow us to allocate a significantly larger amount of memory towards the database cache which translates to much better performance for you.

We know you want the merge to happen asap and postponing it was not something we did lightly.  We looked at every other option for insuring a smooth transition and felt that the other options could pose bigger issues.  It’s difficult to gauge what impact the merge will have on the database hardware but we know that Nagafen is already under a bit of strain.

When the merge is behind us and we’ve had a chance to see the new DB hardware in action, we’ll make a plan for migrating the rest of the servers.

Note that Game Update 53 (Shards of Destiny) which has some very nice tweaks and upgrades or PvP gameplay is still on schedule for the end of the month, regardless of server upgrades/merges. Kiara posted this on the same thread:

Shards of Destiny is a separate thing and won’t be affected by the postponement of the merge. We feel that the hardware upgrade is important… so you guys can actually PLAY when we get you merged…

I can certainly understand the frustration here from Venekor players who are on a server with a dwindling population, and perhaps something can be worked out to make this a little less painful. But the result should be a rock solid server that can handle any traffic that players want to throw at it.