Feldon
Posted by Kiara: We’ll be having our usual Tuesday hotfix starting at 6am for the US servers and at 9pm (5am GMT Wednesday March 10) for Runnyeye and Splitpaw.The downtime will be the usual hour or so. and your March 9 Hotfix Notes after the jump…
EQ2
From Rothgar on the EQ2 Forums: Customer Service will be investigating reports of players making use of a duping exploit. If you’ve been found using this exploit, your character may be rolled back several days. You should always be aware that using an exploit can result in suspension or bannings regardless of what the exploit is. If you’ve stumbled across something on your own or heard of an exploit from a friend, your best bet is to petition CS about it right away and cease that behavior.
We have gone ahead and pulled an article we had posted about the possibility of transferring from a PvP to PvE server by way of using a Server Transfer Token while logged into Battlegrounds. We have not been able to substantiate reports that players had been able to perform such a transfer.
We have pulled this story until we can get further confirmation and corroboration. It seems that in the avalanche of myriad mysterious hotfixes with no hotfix notes on Thursday and Friday may have introduced some unintended consequences regarding Battlegrounds which were discovered over the weekend. It seems that Server Transfer Tokens may have been enabled on Battlegrounds servers. We already reported on the item duplication exploit, namely transmuting or consuming items on BG and then getting the items back when you are returned to your own server. But we have subsequently learned that players have successfully transferred from PvP...
Battlegrounds are currently closed due to a Transmuting exploit which has allowed players to duplicate items. In short, items which you transmuted or scribed on Battlegrounds were returned to you upon exiting Battlegrounds.
In our March 5th End-of-Week News, we neglected to post a link to the thread discussing Raid Mob Damage Output and some fine-tuning that will be happening to mobs as a result. From Rothgar: This sounds like it was maybe due to another bug fix. Sometimes when we find a bug with a profession spell and fix it, the fix also “fixes” bugs that were on NPC’s that we didn’t know existed. It may have been possible that those NPC’s were bugged too and during beta tuning they were made harder and harder because no one knew that a...
The elusive SOE Marketing Dept. took a moment today to pat itself on the back for its “successful launch” of EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate. They also made a point of thanking “our great fans have responded with overwhelming support“. It is unclear what aspect of the Sentinel’s Fate launch players give “overwhelming support” to, but no doubt this will be a key point on a Powerpoint presentation somewhere soon. EQ2Wire does not think it is too soon to start our campaign for NO retail launch of the next EverQuest II expansion. It costs too much money, diverts too many...
EQ2Players has checked in with another great Artist Highlight, this time for Stephanie Young. One of my favorite parts of Sentinel’s Fate has been the zone artwork. It has taken everything to another level. Here are some excerpts from the article: How did you get started in the industry? I started out as a graphic artist for a subcontractor to the Office of Naval Intelligence. Gradually the company started incorporating more 3D simulations into the products we developed and I became the primary developer for the 3D assets used by the engineers. Eventually though I found it difficult to...
Here are some end-of-week news items which I’ve noticed on the EQ2 forums that readers may find useful… Scale of Flame Players have been having trouble advancing/completing the quest Scale of Flame. In response, Gninja has responded: I found the issue causing the spirit to not spawn and have corrected it. You should see it come to live server early next week with our next build. Breaking Combat on PvP/Battlegrounds Rothgar has made some further adjustments in how combat is broken on PvP/Battlegrounds. It has been tweaked so that you must be at least 1000m from the other player...
With the server stability and Battlegrounds issues going on over the past 2 weeks, it was not surprising to read that the EQ2 Developer Chat has been postponed a couple of weeks. Fyreflye had already sent word that he would not be able to make it. We will look forward to the EQ2 Developer Chat on March 18th. In the meantime, continue to submit your questions to calthine{at}allakhazam{dot}com.
Players have been reporting an issue with being able to escape combat *very* quickly on both PvP servers and Battlegrounds, and then being able to join a Battlegrounds match while seemingly still in PvP combat (on Nagafen). After some discussion and diagnosis in this thread, Rothgar posted the backstory on the issue and presented a change that will be made to address the issue: Prior to battlegrounds the only way you got out of combat was for your hate to degrade over time. So the more hate you built with someone, the longer you’d stay in combat. When battleground...
Xelgad has posted that bugs with the AA abilities Luck of the Dirge, Cleansing of the Soul (Templar), Poison Mastery (Assassin), Killing Fury (Assassin), Shadow Step (Assassin), have been fixed internally and should be hotfixed on March 4th.
There were some additional issues with the EQ2 servers today. The servers were set to come down for a hotfix, then that hotfix was delayed, but the automated scripts in place to prepare for a Hotfix continued. This resulted in there being no way to create new instances (visit dungeons, guild halls, cities, etc.). From Rothgar: Due to an unrelated network issue this morning, the hotfix was not able to happen at the normal time. Since the servers were scheduled to come down but never did, this caused new instances to not be created. This is normal procedure for...
Players have noticed a de-targeting bug in Battlegrounds and PvP open world environments were players can become difficult to target. Thanks for all the info about the targeting issue. You guys provided enough clues to piece together reproduction steps for this sneaky little bug. While I won’t tell you how to reproduce it (since it’s obviously exploitable in pvp) I can give you a workaround. When you have a valid target but start getting all these targeting errors, hit escape really quick and clear your target, then click your enemy again. This will clear out the bugged UI state...
Timetravelling created a thread on the EQ2 Forums regarding the Sentinel’s Fate Mechanics Changes. With all the changes to primary stats, lifting of various caps on bonuses, etc. there have been a lot of questions and this thread has started to answer them. Here are some updates: Updated the Aggression question with info about other skills (yes, they work the same way) Updated the base stat uncap section with more detailed information (new curve starts @ 1200, after that a 30% stat increase = ~ a 10% gain in effectiveness) Added several more questions to the end of the...
Tad Ehrlich is a lead artist on the EQ2 Development team. He was a major part of the creation of the zone art for the beautiful Vasty Deep zones. Some excerpts: How did you get started in the industry? I began in comic books and worked as a colorist for Wildstorm, Jim Lee’s comic book company. I was very fortunate to land in an industry that I was extremely passionate about and had amazing people to learn from. My experience there led to me starting as a texture artist at Midway. The rest is history! What are some of...
From Kiara on the EQ2 Forums at 11:40am PST: The BG’s should be reopening again shortly. Please make sure to post in the exiting issue threads in the BG’s forum should you continue to encounter problems. We’ll be monitoring them on our end as well.
When you complete a Battlegrounds match, your character is whisked away back to your home server. Some players have been curious if a Battlegrounds Hub had been considered. This would be a lobby area where players can stay put on the Battlegrounds server and immediately jump into another battle if they wish. The issues here are that Battlegrounds servers have many many features turned off including global and guild chat. Adding a Battlegrounds lobby would require additional coding work. From Rothgar on the EQ2 Forums: We talked about this idea early on in battlegrounds development but our thoughts were...
Battlegrounds Issues Battlegrounds were taken offline last night due to zoning problems they seemed to be causing on other servers. I want to reiterate that in thousands of Battlegrounds transactions, only a handful of players experienced corruption of their characters, and those are being resolved quickly by Customer Service. Battlegrounds should be brought back online today with Rothgar and other devs closely watching their performance. EQ2Wire On the Road EQ2Wire will be on the road today and tomorrow so updates may be a bit slower than usual. Here are your March 2, 2010 Hotfix notes (after the jump)
The City Festival has rolled into its third destination since these Festivals began in January. The first event was in Kelethin, then Gorowyn. Today, the City Festival arrives just outside the gates of the city of all things dark and gloomy — Neriak. Once again, a selection of both local and traveling rewards, house items, and temporary costumes become available. The theme for Neriak seems to be all things blue. Here’s a sneak of what you can purchase with City Tokens for the next week, before the event rolls on to the next city:
Battlegrounds vs. Oasis Battlegrounds were locked this afternoon/evening due to significant lag and zone time issues. The servers were also rebooted. However the biggest issue is that Oasis is almost unplayable for some players. This quote from the EQ2 Forums: We’re aware of the problems facing the Oasis server right now and several people are working on it. It will be addressed more fully tomorrow when everyone is back in the office and I’m sure we’ll have more information then. There is an active thread on the Oasis server forum. Character Corruption A few players are reporting sporadic issues with losing...
Remember those awesome Player-made Paintings for the 5th anniversary of EverQuest II Timeless Heroes celebration? Brasse has put together a player contest on the EQ2 Forums to win a set of these house items! The Challenge: We want your best screenshot of (and a brief description of the event) you falling to your death in The Hole. This is inspired by Brasse happily going splat many times in both EQ and EQII! Deadline: Friday, March 12th 2010 at 10:00am PST Submissions for this challenge will be accepted until Friday, March 12th, 2010 at 10:00 am US PST. Winners will be...
Y’all are cordially invited to the next exciting EQII ZAM Developers Chat! Members of the EverQuest II Developer and Community Teams will be there, bring your questions! If you’d like to submit questions in advance, send e-mail to Calthine@allakhazam.com (subject Dev Chat). Thursday, March 4 @ 5:00pm PDT (8:00pm EDT; 01:00 GMT; 02:00 Copenhagen) In the #EQ2 channel on ZAM IRC General chat during the actual event will be in #EQ2FFA New to Allakhazam IRC? Instructions here! Or use EQ2Wire’s EQII ZAM Chat portal. Check out this Time Zone Converter to help you find what time to sign in....
It seems there were some instability issues with the Login servers this morning. Players currently logged into their various servers are able to stay logged in, but players wanting to login cannot. No servers are reported as down according to the Network Status page. We do not yet have today’s Hotfix notes, however players are reporting that Marks of Manaar (the new SF heroic gear shards) are dropping again from enemies in SF dungeons. We’ve now heard word (EQ2 Forums) about the the repeatable faction quests in The Hole not granting any XP. The XP these quests produce has...
From Rothgar on EQ2 Forums: Customer Service has made these petitions their highest priority and they are restoring players as fast as they can. In the meantime, Battlegrounds is working fine now. It only took a few minutes this morning to bring them down after the problem, fix the configs and bring them back up. CS is also manually restoring your XP and AA’s rather than doing a rollback of your character. So you should be safe to continue playing while you wait for them to answer your petition.