Character Advancement Templates, as introduced in Tuesday’s Game Update 67, put a lot of powerful functionality into the hands of players, but at a cost.  The overall user interface has led to a lot of confusion in the way that it was implemented. But perhaps most importantly, the ability to spend points as they are earned was lost. The system encourages plotting out your entire AA spec, while discouraging making small changes.

That said, the new functionality is quite amazing. We have gained the ability to have up to 3 Alternate Advancement trees which we can swap between anywhere, no mirror required. We can now Save/Load AA specs to our hard drives. Finally, spending points is nondestructive until you hit Commit, thus providing a rudimentary AA Calculator in-game.

Personally, I would have implemented an “AA Build Manager/Calculator” which lets you build, create, and destroy AA setups. Then I would have added Load/Save/Choose features to the existing Alternate Advancements window. The two separate windows would actually be clearer in purpose and let players have all the functionality they had before. But perhaps the team can come tweak the new system to be concise, yet retaining all the functionality.

Post SOE Live, we should expect some improvements. From Lyndro on the EQ2 Forums:

Thanks for the feedback folks. We’re going to work on getting “spend as you go back in”. We’ll have some more information in the next couple weeks, but we hear the concern and we’re going to try to get that flow back in as part of the new system.

Even as the EQ2 team puts the finishing touches on their presentations for the upcoming 10th expansion of EverQuest II, some are working late, continuing to chip away at the frustrating lag which is affecting certain raid zones such as Dreadcutter and Harrow’s End.

From Kander on the EQ2 Forums:

We’ve been looking at Freeport. We are making some config changes on the current raid zones to see if we can fix the issue. This does not require a patch. Keep us posted how the rest of the evening goes please.

From EverQuest2.com:

This summer, SOE ran the first SOE Player Studio item creation contest called Dawn of the Dark Elf. All items had to be dark elf themed and for EverQuest or EverQuest II.

Players had one month to prepare and submit their entries. There were no limits on the number of entries, and all regular Player Studio rules and guidelines were followed.

We received 34 entries in 5 categories from 17 different artists, but there could be only one winner: Neko Zero, who created this Organ of Enchanting Darkness for EverQuest II!

As described by Neko Zero, “this ancient organ is used to create haunting tunes during some of the most secret of ceremonies.”

Thanks to all who submitted entries for Dawn of the Dark Elf!

Are you interested in seeing your creations in EverQuest, EverQuest II, Free Realms, or PlanetSide 2? Learn more about submitting items to Player Studio here.

From the SOE Live website:

SOE Live 2013 is coming up on us fast, and we want to get you revved up for the cool info, prizes, and fun you’ll see on stage at Planet Hollywood or (if your spending priorities include eating and paying rent) online via our livestream! Here’s a quick rundown of the SOE celebs that’ll bring you all the action!

Mark Tuttle – Host
Executive Producer, Strategy Games

Mark spent 17 years doing morning radio programs (proving again that ANYONE can get into the gaming industry). Mark will bring a quirky, fun air to the Reception and Grand Banquet. If that doesn’t work, he’ll just buy your love with prizes.

From Kaitheel’s twitter:

Fans of all things gnomish, and ‘splodey rejoice! #Tinkerfest is now live! New quests, rewards, buyables, and craftables! #EQ2

— Nathan McCall (@kaitheel) July 26, 2013

View the Detailed Writeup and Guide @ EQ2 Traders

View EQ2 Zam’s updated Tinkerfest Guide

Sigrdrifa is also feverishly updating EQ2 Wikia’s Tinkerfest guide for 2013.

From the EQ2 Forums:

CHARACTER ACHIEVEMENT TEMPLATES

• Gold Rush should reapply correctly after committing an AA profile.

DAILY OBJECTIVE SYSTEM

• The Bag of Platinum has been added back to the merchant.

MERCENARIES

• During a readycheck, if a player is not ready their mercenary will not be included in the not ready list of a ready check.

TRADESKILLS

• Corrected an issue that would occasionally prevent a contested avatar from dropping a tradeskill component.

ITEMS

• Abyssal and Planar Cognizance temporary adornments now grant potency instead of crit bonus.
• Yellow adornments from Clefts of Rujark can now be traded.

As with all hotfixes (unless otherwise stated), this update will occur at 7:00am PDT / 10:00am EDT and last one hour.

From the EQ2 Forums:

GENERAL

• If the quest helper is toggled off, completing your Daily Objectives will no longer toggle it back on.

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Fabled Clefts of Rujark

• Corrected an issue that prevented the base population in The Fabled Clefts of Rujark from dropping loot.

ITEMS

• The Fabled Battleborn Bracers can no longer be equipped by scouts.
• Armbands of the Northlands once again go in the appearance shoulder slot and provide an alternative appearance to the Shoulderpads of the North.
• The Battle Bred Meatbeast can now be converted back into a mount from its plushie form.

For the last 15 minutes or so, there seems to be an issue affecting station.soe.com and other SOE services and websites. More as we have it…

UPDATE: This issue was affecting Station/SOE websites and has since been resolved.

This morning, I received an e-mail from one Thomas Freyer of Freyer Consulting in Frankfurt, Germany:

From: Thomas Freyer
Subject: Deleting of Profile
URL: http://u.eq2wire.com/soe/character_detail/446677832604

We demand by law the deleting of this profile as the owner of the trademark “Malshandir” we gave you no permission to use is.
If this profile is deleted within the next 6 hours we will not take further legal actions against you.

As I was still a little sleepy, and since I receive threatening e-mails about once a month demanding that I remove characters from EQ2U, I replied informing Mr. Freyer that Sony Online Entertainment retains ownership over characters and thus he has no grounds to sue, but if he would avail himself of the Help section on EQ2U, he could remove his character in approximately 5 minutes.

From the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Chelsith: The Ancient Vault [Group and Solo]

• Players with an existing lockout for these zones should be able to enter them again (this will reset the zone).

CHARACTER ACHIEVEMENT TEMPLATES

• AA Templates: If you are not on your currently committed profile when you gain experience you will revert to that profile. This will cancel the build process if one is in progress.
• You can no longer commit an AA template while flying.

QUESTS

• Darkness Ascending: Tear in the Drakelands – Exile faction characters will now receive a cloak reward upon completion of this quest.

From EverQuest2.com:

Game Update 67, Darkness Dawns, is now live!

The oracles still see chaos and uncertainty on the horizon even with victory for the New Combine army in Cobalt Scar. Join Field Marshal Vishra at Scarstone as he tirelessly guards the newly found Tear of Veeshan – an artifact that could turn the tides of war forever in this time of delicate peace. Is it the key to preventing the end of the world foretold in the Ages End prophecy? Those that have completed “Tear in the Grotto” are being summoned to find out!

Darkness Dawns includes:

• Fabled Dungeons
• New Contested Avatars
• Arena of the Gods
• Character Advancement Templates (CATs)
• New Daily Objective Sysytem
• And more!

Remember, if you’re a Gold member, activate your “Gold Rush” buff when you log in to experience boosts in experience, coin drops, and mount speed!

Game Update 67: Darkness Dawns greatly improves the process by which characters can store, retrieve, and share their Alternate Advancement profiles.

Store up to 3 AA Profiles

First up, characters can now store up to 3 AA profiles on their character and access them from anywhere in Norrath, without calling to their house where the correct Mirror of Reflected Achievements is stored. Now, you can switch between up to 3 AA profiles for each of your characters. You can also name them appropriately.

Load & Save your AA Profiles

Even cooler, you can now Load and Save your AA setup as an .aa file (a specially formatted XML file) to your computer, which you can share with friends and guildmates by e-mail or other means. Eventually, this feature will also allow you to search for characters on EQ2U and Dragon’s Armory with desirable AA profiles, download them, and try them out on your character!

These were posted just a few minutes ago on the EQ2 Forums:

DARKNESS DAWNS

The oracles still see chaos and uncertainty on the horizon even with victory for the New Combine army in Cobalt Scar. Join Field Marshal Vishra at Scarstone as he tirelessly guards the newly found Tear of Veeshan – an artifact that could turn the tides of war forever in this time of delicate peace. Is it the key to preventing the end of the world foretold in the Ages End prophecy? Those that have completed “Tear in the Grotto” are being summoned to find out!

FABLED DUNGEONS

• Fabled Clefts of Rujark (accessed from Sinking Sands and Pillars of Flame)
• Fabled Scornfeather’s Roost (accessed from Sinking Sands and Pillars of Flame)
• Fabled Djinn Masters Prism (accessed from the ‘Fabled Dungeon Portal’ in Pillars of Flame)
• Fabled Pedestal of Sky (accessed from the ‘Fabled Dungeon Portal’ in Pillars of Flame)

NEW CONTESTED AVATARS

• Three New Contested Avatar Raids: Pit yourself against three new contested avatars in the overlands – Prexus, Solusek Ro, and Drinal!

ARENA OF THE GODS

• The Arena of the Gods is a raid instance that allows 24 players to challenge any of the 9 avatars that are in game (includes the new contested avatars released in this GU). Once you kill an avatar and are rewarded, you can continue to practice the encounters as much as you want (there is a 3-day lockout timer for rewards). Entrances to the Arena of the Gods can be found in the cities of Freeport and Qeynos.

Tomorrow morning, we’ll see Game Update 67: Darkness Dawns roll out to the EQ2 servers, and you’ll probably have a few questions about where to reach the new content. Well, Zammit!

From Cyliena on the EQ2 Forums:

Your dedicated ZAM staff brings you our coverage of GU67: Darkness Dawns to help guide you through the new content and features!

• Daily Objectives
• Personal Depots (crafted by Tinkerers)
• Darkness Ascending (signature series)
• Waters of Norrath (heritage quest)
• All ZAM Coverage

Surprisingly, it’s 1:46am EDT and Game Update 67’s Update Notes have yet to appear on the EQ2 Forums. Here’s the downtime announcement…

All EQ2 Servers will come down on Tuesday, July 23, at 6:00 am Pacific Time* for Game Update 67, Darkness Dawns. The expected downtime is four hours.

Time Zone Conversions

• PDT: July 23 @ 6:00am-10:00am
• EDT: July 23 @ 9:00am-1:00pm
• BST: July 23 @ 14:00-18:00
• CET: July 23 @ 15:00-19:00
• AEST: July 23 @ 11:00pm-July 24 @ 3:00am

EQ2Wire has been providing extensive coverage of EverQuest Next for some 4 years now, ever since its development was hinted in the EverCracked documentary. But now the time has finally come for our coverage of the next EverQuest game to venture out on its own as a dedicated site — EQNWire.com.

There are a number of reasons for this division. While the EQ and EQ2 player communities have many things in common, they are still, at their core, quite different. I’ve seen this in the tenor of discussions on the EQ and EQ2 forums, in livecasts, and in chatrooms. There’s just something different that would not be served by a unified site. Also, with the distinct possibility that EQNext could be a dramatic departure from the standard MMOisms of the past EverQuest games, it makes total sense to make a clean break of things and let EQNWire be its own thing.

Of course we’re not alone in launching EverQuest Next sites this month. The past weeks have shown a flurry of activity as EQNext fan and press sites have come out of the woodwork with increasing regularity, all hoping to grab the attention of veteran EQ and EQ2 players, as well as those new to the MMO world who may have heard of EverQuest only in passing. It will be interesting to see how many sites hang in there over the long haul. Launching a site seems like the hard part, but it’s not. Keeping up the momentum to provide relevant news to your readers week in and week out despite foul moods, vacations, family issues, and so forth is far more challenging and it’s easy to run out of steam.

At one time, there was a community of sites covering EverQuest 2 but this is not true today. I’m genuinely hopeful that there continue to be a few dedidicated sites supporting the EverQuest Next community over the long term.

From Zoltaroth‘s twitter:

@zoltaroth: Working on the network / lag issues in #EQ2 as fast as we can Forum thread is here: http://t.co/GCkv4dykHc if you have any tracerts plz post

From the EQ2 Forums:

Get ready for our 67th game update, Darkness Dawns, with a Double Experience Weekend!

Adventure, Tradeskill, AA, and Guild XP will be doubled from 12:00pm (Noon) PDT on Friday, July 19 through 11:59pm (Midnight) PDT on Sunday, July 21, 2013. Take advantage of this limited time offer and watch those XP bars fill up!

From the EQ2 Forums:

As any MMO player knows, everything is more fun with friends. With that in mind, Sony Online Entertainment is rolling out their brand new Recruit Rewards program! Station Account holders can earn exclusive items just by inviting friends to join them in their favorite SOE games.* Here’s an overview of how the program works:

The Invite: Use the recruiter invite page to generate an email or a custom link that’s perfect for posting on social media (hint!). The message will include all the information your friend needs to get up and running in the game you’ve suggested. Currently, the Recruit Rewards Program includes EverQuest®, EverQuest 2®, and Planetside 2®, but DC Universe™ Online will be added soon.

In a thread which has been going since January, but which has really come to a head in the last few weeks, players are sounding off about EQ2 Server Lag, Routing issues, and overall unpleasantness when trying to play the game.

Despite endless trolling from players who have been quick to accuse players of having deficient computer hardware, as well as numerous red herrings about Traceroutes and ISP issues, the reality is, this issue has been affecting a cross-section of players in all forms of gameplay, in different parts of the country, and on top notch PCs which previously played EQ2 without difficulty. So that isolates the problem to SOE and the traffic providers who serve SOE.

Routing Roulette?

So a number of players have been raising Cain about various deficiencies and choices made in the “off the shelf” Character Advancement Templates which will be available to players after Game Update 67 goes live.

I’ve always believed that players who are interested in trying out different AA specs could avail themselves of Beetny’s AA Calculator to try out different patterns, as well as looking up known characters on either EQ2U or Dragon’s Armory. This leaves players who might not read EQ2Wire (the horror!), might not read the EQ2 forums, and may not be familiar with addon websites like ours. This would of course apply to new players who might be overwhelmed when greeted with six pages of over 100 AA choices.

From Caith on the EQ2 Forums:

The Server templates are…specifically set up for new characters, and more specifically for new players. I tried to design them to avoid adding complexity, while still performing their role. They are designed to add a respectable setup while leveling.

At one time, Mounts in EQ2 increased your run speed, oh and they looked nice. Over the years, faster mounts were introduced, then we began to see mounts with some very minor stat boosts to harvesting or weapon skills. Nowadays, it is just expected that ground, leaper, glider, and flying mounts all have some sort of buff which is beneficial in combat situations. Essentially, mounts have become a 25th item slot.

Search for Mounts on EQ2U

With Game Update 67: Darkness Dawns, we will see the ability for players to store up to three Alternate Advancement profiles on their character and swap between them immediately. The concern raised by certain players was, switching AA Profiles causes all buffs to drop, including mounts. While the buffs from mounts persist after zoning, most zones do not permit re-casting your mount once you’re inside the zone.

Players who wanted to switch their AA spec and retain the benefits of the mount would then need to zone out, re-cast their mount, and then zone back in, which is really not any more convenient than zoning to their home, using an AA mirror, and then recasting their mount. Over time, we’ve seen more flexibility on how mounts are cast, specifically hiding mounts (even flying ones) when grounded. My suggestion was to simply allow casting any mount anywhere, and just hide its appearance if you are inside a zone that does not permit mounts.

To address this concern, Lyndro has posted this update:

In an upcoming beta update (Next couple days), mounts will be castable in any zone. You just won’t get the mount/speed portion.

https://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/index.php?threads/gu67-cat-feedback-thread.537088/page-6#post-5943150

For those folks who read EQ2Wire in Russia (I hope there are a few 😉 ).

From Zoltaroth on the EQ2 Forums:

We had a hardware malfunction in our data center that required hands-on intervention. The hardware has been replaced and we should be good to go now.

and from Kander in a thread about the Siren’s Grotto raid:

It sounds like Barren Sky’s harddrive failed over the weekend. I am sure they are working feverishly on it’s repair.

From the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Sabaron’s Palace

• Harvesting the “?” shiny in Sabaron’s Palace should now give you an item if you are level 90 or above.

Poets Palace: Return

• The ring event on the 4th floor of the zone is now fixed. All NPC encounters on that floor should now spawn as intended.