Xelgad has created a thread on the EQ2 Forums laying bare some of the mechanics that go into stats, resistances, and gear.

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.

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 to go most of the time when they click the teleporter!

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 to the update notes, this should be fixed with the hotfix going in tomorrow morning.

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 covered areas of the game and its development that I think will prove interesting to listeners.

If you’ve not heard of A View From the Top, it is a podcast covering MMOs and hosted by raid guild leaders Adam and Karen. They really know their stuff regarding running successful guilds and navigating guild drama. I could have used their advice in a past guild or two. 😉

• Adam also runs a blog which is EpicSlant.com. He posts commentary about EQ2 and other games from the perspective of a guild leader.

• Karen also runs a blog which is Journeys with Jaye and has a lot of insight into raiding and raiding guilds.

Random Thoughts

As I listen to this interview for the first time since giving it, some things occur to me:

• Crutch Words (“uhh…” “ahh…” “and…”) suck
• I want what Adam’s eating (munch, munch!)

Feedback

I’m anxious to hear your feedback on this interview. Anxious enough that I’ve ordered medication. Seriously, I’d like to hear what you have to say!

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 to add to that, we discovered the issue with the frost-rimmed chairs on Friday thanks to a player who helped us narrow it down to this item and we’ve already got a fixed checked in for it.

As SmokeJumper mentioned, we’re hoping to push out an update to address several Shader 3.0 issues in the next week or two.

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 servers that are out-of-sync.

What will happen after the NA servers are updated, you’ll no longer be able to connect to battlegrounds until the UK servers are on the same version.  Typically your update window is later in the day so hopefully this won’t be too impactful.  Ideally you’ll have a better play experience 90% of the time due to the larger BG server but there will be times that battlegrounds will be down for you.

Although originally planned for GU56, and then a week after GU56, this change is planned to go live with tomorrow’s (June 8th) hotfix.

June 8th (Tuesday) is when we are shooting for turning this on, assuming everything is working correctly.

UPDATE: This hotfix has slipped to Thursday, June 10th.

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 changes with Game Update 56. From Domino (clearly branching out from tradeskills):

As of the launch of Game Update 56: Halas Reborn, any character that completes “To Speak As A Dragon” will receive an heirloom Tablet of Draconic Runes in addition to learning the dragon language.

While this is an important quest and was a very exciting and community-building event in its time, it is not longer necessary for every alt to do the quest individually. At least one character on your account does need to do the quest the “full” way, but all subsequent alts can simply acquire the quest in the normal manner, then study the tablet when they are on the step to learn the runes. In essence: your first character made excellent notes on the runes s/he studied, it allows him/her to teach your alts the runes directly.

Of course, if your alts prefer to finish the quest the long way by collecting all the runes, they can still do so.

Any character who had already completed “To Speak As A Dragon” before this change can obtain a copy of the Tablet of Draconic Runes from Shady Swashbuckler in Nektulos Forest if they wish.

Apologies that this somehow didn’t get into the full update notes, but hopefully this calls it out so everyone will be aware of it now.

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 it was an interesting conversation. Again, this podcast should be online this week.

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 entertainment.

How we do that changes on a regular basis as we push forward based on lots of things like: Public expectations; the industry changing around us; what constitutes entertainment (yes, that changes slowly, but steadily); and many other elements.

So for now, we’re doing three things:

1. We’re developing the next big expansion (and a big update before that expansion comes out) so that we can keep new stuff rolling into the world of Norrath because new stuff is good entertainment. This includes new areas, new ways to play, new loot, balance changes and modifications to the current systems to make them more fun. NOTE: This is our primary focus at the moment and constitutes the bulk of our development resources and time.
2. We’re working to make the game more easily entered by new folks so that we can keep the playerbase growing. Why? Because it’s really obvious to us that new folks bounce pretty hard because of the learning curve of our game, and without new folks coming in, the game will eventually stagnate…which would suck for all us, devs and players alike.
3. We’re analyzing the “empty world” situation in the mid-level zones and thinking about possible solutions to revitalize all the fantastic content in this game and fill it with players so everyone’s not crowded into the end parts of the game.

Now…these directions are not permanent. We will always be staying flexible with our goals. And that’s why I will never issue a “mission statement”. But that’s what we’re focused on right now.

Fair enough?

Commentary

The suggestion that there is “a big update” before “the expansion comes out” further points to Velious (or part of Velious) arriving in November or December.

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 notified by e-mail. If I do not hear back from them for 72 hours, an alternate will be awarded.

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 pets or NPCs.

ROYAL PALACE OF ROEHN THEER

• Plane Cracker should no longer occasionally cast if Approaching Equilibrium is slain before reaching Roehn Theer.
• Approaching Equilibrium should now despawn almost immediately upon being slain.
• Void-charged Soul and Star-charged Soul should now correctly be dispelled from both players when they successfully reach each other.
• Void-charged Soul and Star-charged Soul now have a 3s delay after being applied before they begin reacting to other nearby charged souls.

BATTLEGROUNDS

• Hook arrow will no longer cause the victim to drop the flag.

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 to you what L.O.S.T. stands for.

Bilgeron will give you the quest Cogs on the Droags. This is the first in a series of 20 solo level 57-70 quests that take you through all three Kingdom of Sky zones. Through the course of the questline you are rewarded with seven class specific armor pieces. The look of these items is similar to the T7 relic armor from Kingdom of Sky, and is unique to each of the 24 classes in the game.

When you have completed the entire questline, your final reward is your very own Self Contained Cloud mount.

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 information. We’ll take a look and see if we can’t get this working.

Players noticed that the cap on Arcane, Noxious, and Elemental Resists was seemingly lowered from 80% to 75%.  Xelgad has clarified this change:

The cap was always 75%. The 80% you all were seeing when your resists were high enough in the persona window was a display error. The display error has been fixed, so it is now showing 75%.

Do note that that 75% is against a target that is your level. A higher level target will require higher resists to reach the 75%. Also, some spells are harder to resist than normal (you should see this effect in the spell’s description) and will need even more resists to get to 75%.

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 wrong.

Imago-Quem needs your help now to finish the last mile of the race so he can move onto upgrading other things in EQ2. Don’t give up or just accept that items and armor you worked hard to get won’t look right with Shaders 3 enabled, bug it, or post screenshots on the EQ2 Forums.