Looks like Dungeon Finder is just about ready to go to Test and Test Copy.
From Zoltaroth‘s Twitter feed:
Just finished play testing Dungeon Finder for EQ2 again. It’s almost ready for test server, very exciting!
Friday September 16 UPDATE from SmokeJumper:
It should hit the Test server today. We have one last playtest to do this morning to be sure, and if it passes that, then to Test it goes!
EQ2 Associate Producer Domino has started a new thread in the public Test forum regarding some changes to Pathing in EQ2. It’s not clear if these changes are intended to address the Issues With Mob Warping which we have discussed in the past.
We have made a change to the way pathing works in a few zones on Test server, and would like your feedback.Have you noticed anything different? Better or worse?
From the EQ2 Forums:
Hello Troubadors!
We have finally completed the first draft of our Troubador revamp and would like to get your feedback on these ideas. Our primary goal is to give Troubadors more options during combat that can have a clear effect on the fight. Viewed individually, some of the changes may be considered minor, but we hope all these small and moderate changes will add up to a much more dynamic and interesting class.
From the EQ2 Forums:
POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Plane of War
- Players may now enter the plane of war, once someone on the server has defeated all 3 demigods of war (Sullon, Vallon and Tallon Zek) in challenge mode.
Drunder x4 raid zones
- Players can now enter the challenge mode Drunder x4 raid zones without having killed the previous demi-god in challenge mode.
Sullon’s Spire x4 raid [Challenge Mode]
- Aaranae Acrimae: Her adds have less health. The rage devourer no longer casts the aoe multistrike.
On Friday, September 16th, Jennifer “Isulith” Bridges, interim EQ2 Community Manager while Amnerys is on leave, will be hosting a Meet and Greet on the Test Copy and Freeport (EQ2X) servers at 4-5pm PDT and 5-6pm PDT respectively.
We’re anxious to see what mark she’ll leave on the EQ2 community during her tenure. The natives have been getting restless, and forum trolls seem to have gained a foothold. I’m personally hoping more for “Stand and Deliver” or “The Substitute” and less “Kindergarten Cop“!
The announcement from EverQuest2.com:
From Kaitheel on the EQ2 Forums:
Nights of the Dead 2011 has been activated on Test and Test Copy!
Nights of the Dead once again brings goblins and ghoulies out from the shadows. Those inclined to celebrate the holiday through crafting will find a new book of recipes full of new house items being sold by official event merchants. And those feeling more adventurous can trick-or-treat within Qeynos or Freeport or investigate the multiple haunted locations! But be wary as the mysterious Setri Lur’eth has been spotted at the beach in Nektulos Forest and the headless guardsman has been rumored to be wandering the paths of the forest, too!
From the EQ2 Forums:
POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Kunark
Stonebrunt Highlands
Gninja provided some great news on Friday for players carrying unadorned gear from Velious’ two x2 raid zones (Tower of Frozen Shadow and Tower of Vuul):
The X2 zones drop items with red adornment slots, so those are the shards that will start dropping once my change makes it to the current build.
Both X2 zones should be getting the pure primal velium shards dropping from all the named.
Providing the means to buy Red Adornments for items with red adornment slots is certainly a welcome change. And the more powerful War Runes retain their rarity as they still must be acquired via “flagging” (although as of a recent update they are now Heirloom).
Announced at Fan Faire and rolled out in late August, the long-awaited revamp of level 20-90 gear was staggering in its ambition. Some 7 years of items, numbering over 50,000, would go under the knife or be recreated entirely for the Revamp. Now just over two weeks since the launch of Game Update 61, it remains unclear just where we stand on the Great Reitemization of EverQuest II.
More than anything, players have wondered at the intent of the revamp, seeking out an overall vision of item progression that would flow from level 1 through to level 90 items. Thus far, there hasn’t been one. In fact, any kind of guidance whatsoever on this crucial Reitemization has been singularly lacking from both EQ2 Mechanics and Management.
While we applaud members of the EQ2 Design who have put in absurd hours trying to wrangle some sense of order to this monstrous undertaking, the chaos has been palpable. The lack of direction has led to conflicting announcements, and some items having undergone their fourth revision in just a few short weeks.
SOE Games, Websites, and Services are back up after yesterday’s San Diego Power Outage caused by a faulty main supply line and some maintenance being performed in Arizona.
The Freeport (EQ2X free-to-play) server seemed to come up first, followed by most of the EQ2 servers. Nagafen experienced some database issues due to the power outage and required some additional work.
The Marketplace, Character Transfers, and Server Status pages all experienced some outages and additional glitches may occur for the next 24-48 hours.
The increasingly permeable barrier between Test and Live seems to be fluctuating. Someone call Fringe Division! A bullet point in yesterday’s update notes elicited widespread commentary on the EQ2 Forums, leading some to theorize that it was a typo. It wasn’t:
Critical chance should no longer appear on items below level 80.
The result was many items lost some or all Crit Chance, Crit Bonus, Reuse, etc.
Further, items from the new Elements of War heroic zone also got hit with the Nerf[TM] bat, seeing reductions from 42 Crit Chance to just 12%.
While we were sleeping, a power outage in San Diego knocked out all SOE games and websites. Some service has been restored, but intermittent problems persist and likely will for the next few hours.
From SignonSanDiego.com:
An unprecedented power outage led to controlled chaos Thursday throughout San Diego County and surrounding areas as up to 5 million people coped with the sudden loss of electricity, and officials said power would be restored in waves through Saturday.
The outage began at 3:38 p.m. after a 500-kilovolt high-voltage transmission line from Arizona to California failed, triggering a cascade of events that then knocked the San Onofre nuclear power plant offline. Those are the two major power sources for the region.
Tank and Spank vs. Complex Scripting vs. Fun
In recent years, I’ve seen numerous posts from people complaining about how the different group/raid encounters work. A lot of the complaints say that they don’t want simple “Tank and Spank” encounters. But they also don’t want encounters with complex scripting, fail conditions, cure fests, etc. They want encounters that are fun and challenging without any of those things.
So it got me wondering, how do you do that? How do you make an encounter without complex scripting, fail conditions, cure fests, etc. without turning it into a tank and spank in the process?
Here are your update notes for today, September 8, 2011. Of note, War Runes (red, raid-only adornments) are going Heirloom!
We’re not really sure what the removal of Crit Chance from lower level items is about — maybe it’s a typo and they meant Critical Mitigation. Considering they just went through and added Crit Bonus to thousands of items (which does nothing without its sister stat Crit Chance), removing Crit Chance would make no sense.
From the EQ2 Forums:
POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Silent City: The Delving Dead
- If you have completed all the collection quests for the Delving Dead, you can now find an explorer within the zone that will reward you for your efforts!
ITEMS
- Critical chance should no longer appear on items below level 80.
- Treasured items between 40 and 69 have been rebalanced.
- War Runes are now heirloom.
- Legslot items that did not have a valid appearance should now be less revealing.
QUESTS
- The Essence of Fear and the mass of iksar spirits necessary for the quest “The Name of Fear” should now be visible within the Shard of Fear.
Here are your September 7, 2011 EQ2 Patch Notes:
POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Pedestal of Sky
- Fixed the missing geometry in this zone.
Foundations of Stone [Challenge]
- The blink portion of Icy Snap AOE that the Statue of Rallos Zek casts will now only blink players a max of 2m, and will only affect players a certain distance away from the statue, not players close to it.
Sullon’s Spire x4 raid [Challenge Mode]
- Aaranae Acrimae: Her debuff to max health and mana is greatly reduced. Leechweb does less mana damage on its initial hit.
EQ2 has always had a series of “flavor” items. These are loot drops which serve no purpose other than a bit of interest (a colorful description), and a fixed price at which they can be sold to a vendor. It has not always been easy to pick out these items, although in recent years most have been flagged with a statement such as “You might be able to find a merchant who would give you a few coins for this.” So it would seem the groundwork has partly been laid for a “Sell All Junk” button. Well, it looks like it may finally come. From Rothgar on the EQ2 Forums:
I’ve done the code work to allow flagging of trash items which will have 2 benefits. First, you won’t be allowed to put them on the broker. Second, a “Sell all Junk” button would sell it all at once. All that’s left to implement this feature is to actually flag all trash items in the game which may take some time.
Not everyone’s cheering though. A few players have “played the market” and sold these vendor-only items on the Broker for a profit to unsuspecting players. This change will end the practice.
Progression is a funny thing. Funnel players into too strict a progression path of gear, of levels, of dungeons, and you take away player choice and limit options. Provide too many options or no clear path, and you have player confusion about what they’re supposed to do next in the line of progression.
The Shadow Odyssey had a straightforward (if restricting for developers) progression, with 3 and later 4 tiers of armor from Heroic through to x4 Raiding. This is not to mention the open-to-all Shard of Hate raid zone which had internal progression from a named encounter that almost any pickup could kill, to arguably the hardest raid mob in the game (Byzola). Sentinel’s Fate broke from the set bonuses of The Shadow Odyssey and scattered itemization throughout the zones. It also gradually increased the reliance on the Critical Mitigation survivability stat, at least in raid zones.
If Sentinel’s Fate had an overabundance of options, Destiny of Velious went the opposite way. The Velious group zones and even the overland solo zones all went on Progression lockdown, each requiring copious amounts of the Critical Mitigation survivability stat. Everything was put on a straight path with few diversions. Access quests also made a return to group dungeons, something unheard of since EQ2’s third expansion. Every Destiny of Velious raid zone has been offered in a Normal or “easy” (EM) and Challenge or “hard” (HM) mode. The reduced buff packages and easier scripts in the normal zones have allowed many guilds to participate in these raid encounters that would not normally have the gear, coordination, or skill to do so.
Last week, SOE released their new server status page. I took a look at this to see if there was anything there that I might be able to use myself. There was. I’ve put together three different versions of an EQ2 server status page, two of which can be embedded into your own website.
From SmokeJumper on the EQ2X Forums:
We’re aiming to put it on the Test server this weekend and then take it to Live in a week or two.
We have received several reports that EQ2Flames.com was hacked late this afternoon and had been serving malware. The account currently displays as Suspended.
If the hackers were profiteering script kiddies, only able to inject malicious code but gaining no further access. then the damage may be minimal.
However if the hackers gained access to eq2flames’ MySQL database then they would be able to browse everything, including hidden forums and Private Messages.
vBulletin forum software does not store plaintext passwords so it is unlikely we will see identity theft.
UPDATE: EQ2Flames is now back online.
UPDATE #2: EQ2Flames seems to have once again been hacked.
UPDATE #3: EQ2Flames is back after a complete reinstall and audit of the software.
From the EQ2 Patcher:
POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Silent City: The Delving Dead
- Levels below 90 should actually have collections.
TRADESKILLS
- Appearances on some tranquil threadbare crafted armor have been updated.
- The Scroll of Fire Seeds is now heirloom rather than no trade.
From EverQuest2.com:
Hail and well met, fellow gamers! My name is Jennifer “Isulith” Bridges and I’m the newest addition to the SOE Community Team. I have to say, it’s truly an honor to be here.
After people started wondering where oh where has the Shady Swashbuckler gone, Gninja had this to say on the EQ2Forums:
Shady is currently permakilled for an exploit he will be returning tomorrow after the update. Sorry for not letting you guys know.
This just in from Smokejumper on the EQ2 Forums:
There are a number of things that we’re going to revisit on items:
a) The green stats matter. Progression of green stats will be attended to in the new pass.
b) There will be more variability between the value of stats on items. This was removed erroneously at the last minute. It will be returned. (Getting rid of the “all items have +29 STR on them in the same zone” effect.) There will be more “min/max-ability” on the items.
c) The dev team will be playing a lot over the weekend to assess item strength in the earlier zones. (Complaints we see are that low-leveled items are now overpowered.) Those zones had such outdated itemization previously that players are now seeing a huge increase in power in drops…we *think* at least partially because the items have been changed to be actually useful now. However, we’ll be assessing this over the weekend and then meeting first thing next week to discuss what will be done, if it’s out of adjustment.
NOTE: The items a, b, and c above will not affect the discussion of the balance of power between raids and the new heroic content. (Although “a” will have some affect on that.) That’s a separate discussion mostly.
ALSO PLEASE NOTE: These items will go to Test first. They are likely to be on Test before the end of the week (possibly even tomorrow). We *will* be listening to comments about them on the “In Testing” forum and responding to comments. Please *do* post if you test on that server.
From the EQ2 Forums:
GENERAL
- Fixed an issue with Guild Halls.
- Fixed an issue causing the streaming client to use old assets.
- Fixed an issue which could cause the streaming client to crash on startup.
- Fixed a disconnect bug where some characters would get dropped to character select upon login.
Players will now be prompted for a one-time, free item unattuning:
- If you answer yes, all items will be immediately unattuned. Any equipped items will be popped into overflow.
- If you answer no, items will not be unattuned and you will not be asked again.
