Feldon
Xelgad has created a thread on the EQ2 Forums laying bare some of the mechanics that go into stats, resistances, and gear.
EQ2
From EQ2Players: Aaron “Gnobrin” Bisnett is the Community Team’s gnomish graphics guru by day and the EQII team’s art apprentice by night! When he isn’t dropping in and taking a few thousand screenshots that we absolutely must have tomorrow!! he’s turning his hand to drawing some really beautiful things that are being added to the stunning items already found in Norrath. Hammers and Cleavers Stained Glass (left) and Tinkerfest (right) Cloaks You can read the full interview and look at more images of Gnobrin‘s artwork at EQ2Players.
Dethdlr
Ever walk up to the teleporter in Paineel and accidentally click it instead of right click it? Did you enjoy your trip to the Airship docks when you did? Neither did I. Tagwen of Mistmoore decided to post about it on the EQ2Forums: PLEASE PLEASE.. I’m so tired of right clicking it or accidentally going to the airship.. the launchpad is used 1000% time more often than people go to the airship… After a couple posts of support for this change, Gninja wrote this: I will look into changing this. Woot! Looks like soon the default will be where people want...
We’ve got a rollup post of news from the weekend on a few different topics. UK-US Battlegrounds might be finally getting the necessary kick in the butt to start working tomorrow. There might be a solution in the pipeline for players on distant servers unable to acquire Smuggler’s Den Tokens. Tinkerfest is coming to Test with new quests and rewards. And finally, a new Class Mechanics forum has mysteriously appeared on the EQ2 Forums.
EQ2 Servers will be coming down tomorrow morning at their usual time for the Tuesday hotfix. After the jump, check out the Hotfix notes for June 15, 2010:
Several people have reported on the EQ2Forums that the progress bushes aren’t spawning in the Jarsath Wastes and Sinking Sands druid rings. Windslasher chimed in with this update: Drat! I goofed with the spawns in Jarsath and Sinking Sands, so the progress signs aren’t appearing in those two zones. Unfortunately it’s not a server-specific thing or a setting that I can just change on the fly, so even though I have the fix in the pipeline I can’t tell you how soon it will be on the live servers, yet. It’ll be fixed as soon as possible. Update: According...
Rothgar has posted on the EQ2 Forums: It looks like we’re going to have to bounce the US Battlegrounds world in order to get all of this [thje US-UK Battlegrounds bridging] working. and We are locking US Battlegrounds in order to bounce them in 30 minutes for a configuration change. Estimated downtime after the 30 minute lock is about 15 minutes.
At 11pm PDT on June 9th, 2010 (7am GMT on June 10th, 2010), several EQ2 servers were brought down for maintenance: Befallen, Permafrost, Crushbone, Mistmoore, Oasis, Runnyeye, Splitpaw, Innovation, Valor, Storms, Battlegrounds UK, Battlegrounds DE, and Battlegrounds FR The original announcement indicated that maintenance would take 7 hours. All servers were up after ~13 hours, with a total downtime of ~15 hours for Runnyeye, Innovation, and some of the Battlegrounds servers. So what was this maintenance all about? And did it include the US-UK Battlegrounds bridging we’ve been hearing about?
Here are your hotfix notes for Thursday, 10 June 2010:
Oh hey, we did an interview! A View From the Top – Episode 12 – Morgan Feldon I sat down with Karen (aka “Jaye”) and Adam (aka “Ferrell”) to record an interview for their A View From the Top program this Saturday. I was a bit nervous at first, but they made me feel very welcome and had some great questions. All in all I had a lot of fun talking about EQ2, the future of the game, and the future of this site. We really jumped all over the place on topics (there was a script?) but we...
We arrive at a topic which has garnered nary a comment from the EQ2 development team since February. I’m talking of course about class balance. While we realize it’s foolish to think that one day all the classes will be truly “balanced”, there’s no better terminology for the valid concept of making sure that all 24 classes have the tools necessary to do their jobs, and that classes that do the same basic job are able to put out similar numbers.
Shaders 3 Hotfix on the Horizon Imago-Quem has been collecting feedback, bug reports, crash reports, and screen shots people have been posting regarding Shaders 3.0. We’re now expecting a hotfix in a couple of weeks. EQ2 Senior Producer SmokeJumper had this update: Some good news for you folks: 1) The darkness issues are fixed in-house already. We’ll be pushing those fixes out to you soon. 2) We’re looking into the crash that occurs in guild houses with tons of items in them. We hope to have a solution soon. 3) Frame rate has been improved. followed by Imago-Quem: Just...
UK and US Battlegrounds Playing Nice Together (or not!) At the end of April, Rothgar posted news that a future update will allow players on UK servers (Splitpaw and Runnyeye) to join U.S.-based Battlegrounds (provided client-server versions are in sync). Here’s his post back then: I just wanted to let you guys know that we’ve been making some changes on the backend that will allow UK players from Runnyeye and Splitpaw to play on the same Battlegrounds servers as the North American servers. Since there is no language issue to overcome, this only leaves the problem of hotfixes and...
It appears the Game Update 56 notes left out an interesting and (for players with many alts) fortuitous quest tweak. The quest To Speak as a Dragon needs almost no introduction. It’s a crucial language quest which is key to completing many other quests in EQ2, including Epic Repercussions. This quest requires crawling the depths of 26 different dungeons to find the necessary runes to learn the language of Draconic. Despite dramatic improvements in travel since EQ2’s launch, it’s still a tedious quest, especially if you have done it with 2 or more characters. So this quest received some...
EQ2Wire’s Morgan Feldon is recording an interview with Vagary TV’s A View From the Top podcast this weekend. It should appear on their website later this week. We’ll post a link as soon as we have it. A View From the Top has had a series of interviews including Kiara (EverQuest II Community Manager). They also take reader questions, such as one from Green Armadillo (writer of the Player vs Developer blog). You can catch past recordings of their podcast on their website. UPDATE: Whew! Just finished the interview. What a rush! Jaye and Adam are great folks and...
Seccia Ravenloft, writing for The Tattered Notebook at Massively.com, posted the results of an interview with EQ2 Senior Producer Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson on the EQ2 Forums. In response, players expressed their opinion that the interviewers didn’t ask any hard questions. The EQ2 Senior Producer had this to say: I’ll be honest. I’m not one of those guys that creates a “mission statement”. Online games are amorphous. We have two real purposes in life: a) To entertain as many people as we possibly can, and b) make some money along the way so that we can continue to create more...
When are we going to quit slacking and announce the winners of the EQ2Wire Prowler Contest? HOW ABOUT NOW? The Contest A trainer of mounted cats recently lost his head about the prospects of limitless wealth and ice (for iced tea naturally) in New Halas and so packed up overnight, leaving behind a manor full of trained battle cats — and no forwarding address. We have managed to procure five of these highly prized felines and now need to find homes for them. The Winners “Slippery Slope” “Socks” “Shadow Hunter” “Yoguart” “Twisted Mentat” for Schrödinger! The winners have been...
We are notifying the EQ2Wire Prowler Contest winners by e-mail now.
Any issues yesterday regarding Forum Permissions, inability to Login, or inability to Register for Fan Faire are attributable to Account Services and Commerce undergoing a 12 hour maintenance. This maintenance has been completed, so if you had a problem with one of those issues, it should work now. Sorry we didn’t get an announcement up sooner.
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...
Sentinel’s Fate brought us The Sundered Frontier and Stonebrunt Highlands but also brought some new quests to the Kingtom of Sky zones. Many of the islands have received new quests near the cloud stations. There was also a questline added called The Lost Drednever Team. With GU56, this questline is now listed in the Storylines tab of the quest journal. EQ2 Wiki has writeups for the whole questline and we’ve got links to get you started. In Tenebrous Tangle on the Temple Grounds there is a gnome named Bilgeron Cogsworth IV. Bilgeron is a L.O.S.T Explorer. He will explain...
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...
Olihin has checked in with some fixes and improvements for PvP and especially Warfields which will become available next week. From the EQ2 Forums:
It was hinted after Fan Faire that new Spell Effects and Animations were on the way, and at one point we were listing it for Sentinel’s Fate/Game Update 55. Timetravelling has chipped in with some more info, and actually one of these new animations is available in-game.
Believe it or not, the hard work of bolting Shaders 3 onto the antiquated EQ2 engine is done. What remains is polish and cleanup. With all the combinations of armor, weapons, and with as many zones as there are in EQ2, this final bug sweep must take place with the help of the player. Players have been diligently posting screen shots and even videos demonstrating the numerous areas of the game including guild halls, armor sets, etc. where Shaders 3 stumbles — it’s too dark, it’s washed out, there are halos on objects, or the colors are just plain...