Feldon
Here is the 6-part Question & Answer panel for EQ2 from Saturday at Fan Faire 2010. [EQ2Wire] Fan Faire 2010 – EQ2 Q&A Saturday Panel (playlist)
Grouping
I have just posted all 6 parts of the EQ2 Mechanics / Class Balance panel from Fan Faire 2010. [EQ2Wire] Fan Faire 2010 – EQ2 Mechanics Panel (playlist)
Apologies for any typos. They jacked up the AC in here!! Remember folks, lots of EQ2 t shirts, hoodies, and polos.
EQ2 Mechanics and Class Balance panel. Rich Waters, Greg “Rothgar” Spence, Paul “Frizznik” Carrico, Mike “Xelgad” Ganz. Update: As of 2:00AM CDT I have made some cleanup and additional information added to these notes based on memory. There are 3-4 missing questions which will get filled in after the video is reviewed.
Live blog from Fan Faire with q&a on EverQuest II.
No doubt the best part of Fan Faire is talking to the developers. So far I’ve gotten to ask Rothgar both serious and geeky questions about the new UI, server upgrades, guild halls, and of course free-to-play. I’ve made no secret of my concerns about the logistics of free to play seemingly cutting off the flow of new players to the live subscription side of EQ2.
From EQ2Players: If you’re attending Fan Faire and interested in participating in the EQII Platinum-Pass Battlegrounds tournament or the Zraxth’s Unseen Arcanum tournament, you might want to compete with your own character.
I still talk about the 1-50 (or 1-89) game in EQ2. I would be naive not to realize that once most folks reach 90, does it really matter how they got there? To a growing population — not really. However people quit EQ2 all the time. Whether over an unpopular policy, or the draws of real life, a slow trickle of players are always leaving MMOs and they must be replenished. You need new players. All the great players of eq2 had the luxury of leveling up at a pleasant pace, playing fun content from at *least* 35-70 with...
Game Update 57 is now up on the Test and Test Copy Servers and we’ve got the Update Notes. We’ve already taken some new screen shots of the new default interface including the new pictorial tutorials for new players. User Interface – One of the touted features of Game Update 57 is the revamped User Interface. The Persona and Inventory windows have been merged into a Character window. The XP bar has become a sort of “dock” at the bottom of your screen. All buttons and window corners have been rounded off. And for the most part, everything that...
Xelgad has been paying close attention to feedback on his Guardians: Requesting Feedback thread on the EQ2 Forums. His response to this feedback includes some additional tweaks we might see as a result of ideas submitted by players. These changes are expected after Game Update 57. You can read his comments after the jump…
Zraxth’s Unseen Arcanum is a new challenging one group dungeon which will make its first appearance at Fan Faire this August.
Xelgad has taken another measured step towards collecting player feedback. Last month, it was a shoutout for Top End Guilds to post some of their highest parses. Today’s request appears to be some light finally being shone on guardians after nearly 2 years at the lower middle of the “fighter” pack in tanking ability. Greetings Guardians! First off, allow me say that we understand that the class is being outshined at the moment, and we’re working on it. It’s going to take more than just one change to get Guardians back to working as a strong class again. I’m...
We’ve got Today’s Hotfix Notes straight from the Patcher for you. They include the aforementioned changes to various instances in Desert of Flames and Kingdom of Sky, some itemization fixes, and tweaks to raid mobs in Underfoot Depths and Icy Keep.
So we just had a Double XP weekend over the July 4th holiday. It was heavily promoted, and featured in an e-mail and on the forums. EQ2 Senior Producer SmokeJumper posted about spending almost the entire weekend playing and how quickly he earned levels, AAs, and how many groups he got. Now, apparently, it’s time for the pendulum to swing the other way. Yesterday’s Test Server Update Notes include the following details which will eventually make it to Live servers: GENERAL Many instances from Deserts of Flame and Kingdom of Sky are now persistent. This includes Ancient’s Table, Cazel’s...
Here are your June 22, 2010 Update Notes: DRUID RING EVENT The druid rings in Feerrott and Loping Plains are now safe destinations for newbies to zone in. Kurista, Elwe, Dalarim and Tolla Clorto no longer change appearances every time they zone. The Defender of Growth guards are now much more powerful, to better protect the druid rings. A couple harvest nodes near the Stonebrunt Highlands druid ring were left floating when the terrain was adjusted. This has been fixed. PVP WARFIELDS Antonica will once again broadcast the call to arms. PVP ITEMS Fallen Foe Charms can now be...
Xelgad has created a thread on the EQ2 Forums laying bare some of the mechanics that go into stats, resistances, and gear.
Dethdlr
Here are your hotfix notes for Thursday, 10 June 2010:
Here are your hotfix notes for June 3, 2010: GENERAL Effects can once again proc on an AE autoattack. DRUID RING EVENT Tunarian supply officers will now buy items for coin, like many other merchants. The druid portal to Nektulos Forest now lands adventurers closer to the druid ring. An issue preventing players from harvesting magiliths after they died has been fixed. The bug that prevented looting A Floret of Growth with certain group loot settings has been fixed. SPELLS Ancestral Sentry can once again be cast on raid and group friends. It can no longer be cast on...
Today’s Hotfix (Patch) fixes a bug in the Druid Ring Live Event, and includes tweaks to itemization, the new PvP Warfields, and numerous bugs in the Icy Keep raid zone. We also include the hotfix notes from May 27, 2010 which somehow got left out. May 27th’s hotfix notes make mention of a change to Procs which were not working on spells. However, this change resulted in certain procs, specifically Pestilential Rain and Torrent, no longer working properly for melee. You can read more about this issue on the EQ2 Forums. Xelgad has responded: Thanks for all of the...
After the jump, we’ve got the complete Game Update 56 Notes for May 25, 2010:
Today, we reflect on a dungeon that I had high hopes for when it was first announced, but which underwent dramatic changes within 72 hours of its launch. 3 months later, there are no clear answers on the current intended audience of this zone, whether we’ll see any rollback of those changes, and going into the next expansion — EverQuest II: Destiny of Velious — will these lessons in design and balance be learned from?
Here are your hotfix notes for May 12, 2010: ITEMS Summoning Brace of the Wyrmkind now properly adds Molten Carnage IV to the caster’s pet. THE HOLE The following mobs will no longer attack you if you have faction points equal to or above -39,999 points with them. The faction point requirement should now be consistent with other standard mobs under the same faction. “an animated watcher” “a disheveled refugee” The “Caetaxian dominator” located on the fallen pillar bridge in the Old Paineel section of the zone. Killing “disheveled refugee” should now have an effect on your faction status...
Lessing (known on EQ2Flames as mafoe) has taken screen snapshots of the FABLED loot offered by the new Vendor being added in Game Update 56. Here are links to these screen snapshots: http://lh3.ggpht.com/_XvWh6xG4qE0/S9LAenf-rcI/AAAAAAAAAKQ/2KuKWlshkgY/EQ2_000868.jpg http://lh6.ggpht.com/_XvWh6xG4qE0/S9LAe1IsMHI/AAAAAAAAAKU/Ttdtjvu6500/EQ2_000869.jpg http://lh3.ggpht.com/_XvWh6xG4qE0/S9LAfTEriRI/AAAAAAAAAKY/MaEJl-oV8RM/EQ2_000870.jpg http://lh3.ggpht.com/_XvWh6xG4qE0/S9LAfsymb7I/AAAAAAAAAKc/HmsbcyoJvm0/EQ2_000871.jpg http://lh4.ggpht.com/_XvWh6xG4qE0/S9LAgXpQbpI/AAAAAAAAAKg/0g0DOHH5GSk/EQ2_000872.jpg
Game Update 56 is looking to be a huge update, with many tweaks and adjustments throughout Norrath. In brief… a substantial Travel Revamp more quests in Stonebrunt Highlands to hopefully fill that level 87-90 solo questing gap a new Storyline feature a new Icy Keep x4 Raid Shaders 3.0 Graphical Revamp Research Assistants can help all your characters Blue PvP Adornments Yellow Adornments on T9 Mastercrafted gear Level 90 Character Traits PvP Warfields new Training Dummy options in your guild hall (solo, group, raid, and AE group) and of course New Halas Also of note, is that a vendor...
With the powerful buffs and bonuses of our Mythical/Fabled Epic Weapons safely squirreled away to a separate permanent spell (thanks to the Epic Repercussions quest), we’ve been able to divert our attention towards finding other, better weapons. While the choices are not plentiful (even with their buffs stripped, our Mythical weapons still have some formidable stats), the Sentinel’s Fate expansion is nonetheless supposed to offer us a variety of replacements for our now Enervated Weapons. Thus far, there have been a scant few upgrade choices for healers. Fortunately Kander has responded to these concerns: There will be some new...