I could write 50,000 words about the disappointing Game Update 61, with referenced links to the nearly 100 forum discussions about its flaws, plus countless player and developer quotes. But what difference would it make?

Despite a 2-day delay, and despite pushback from both Developers and Testers warning that the update still needed weeks, possibly a month of work to meet any reasonable measurement of build quality, Game Update 61 was released Thursday, August 25th.

It was clear on Monday the 22nd that there was no way the Reitemization of EQ2 would be completed in time for Game Update 61’s launch. Not only were thousands of items still in a bugged or unusable state on the Test server, but the scope of the project seemingly kept growing. Despite the incredible time pressure of trying to re-do 50,000 items in a span of 2 months, the project grew as the release deadline loomed. We were more alarmed than impressed by news that Sentinel’s Fate had been added to the already overwhelming slate.

Due to the widespread changes to Itemization in Game Update 61 for level 20-90 items (including Sentinel’s Fate and Velious gear which were rushed for inclusion), a complementary Global Unattune was provided.

This was supposed to include every item including Equipment, Appearance, Inventory (bags), and your Bank. However this did not quite work out that way, at least not permanently. Players have discovered that when they login for the first time, most or all of their items are Unattuned, but if they log out that character and log back in, all Bank items get Reattuned. Why?

Rothgar explains:

The issue is that there’s an in-memory representation of an item and a database representation of the item. The bug lies somewhere between the in-memory item getting unattuned but the database update is failing. Unless you do something to force the item to be saved, which doesn’t happen unless you modify an item (damage/repair, use a charge, etc) then the item [won’t stay unattuned]

So when you login, the script is telling your computer that the items are unattuned in your Bank. But nobody’s telling the database server. So the next time you fetch your character, everything’s all attuned again. Clear as mud?

After weeks of testers reporting getting stuck in their Guild Halls, or being unable to zone into their Guild Halls, especially Tier 2 halls in South Qeynos, this bug went live with Game Update 61, and was not corrected with today’s update.

Your only recourse is to file a Petition with Customer Service with a status of “Stuck” and see if they will Reset your Guild Hall instance. Good luck!

Here are your Update Notes for today, August 26, 2011. The US update will be at 7:00am PDT and last approximately 1 hour. That’s 10:00am EDT, 15:00 BST, 16:00 CET. The EU update will be at 5:00am PDT (13:00 BST or 14:00 CET) and last 2 hours.

From the EQ2 Patcher Notes:

GENERAL

• Due to an issue with GU61, all characters will have their items unattuned and adornments on equipped gear refunded once again.  In addition, all AA trees should reset upon login.

• The LoN prestige house Residence of the Blades no longer gets confused if you own an Everfrost Summer Home also.

The complete notes after the jump…

Apparently, two additional days wasn’t adequate to fully test everything coming in with GU61.  Who could have guessed?  There are reports that gear is randomly re-attuning itself when you zone or log off.  There is also some strangeness going on with AAs.  Rothgar has posted this on the official forums:

We will be hotifixing this bug tomorrow.  The downside is that all of your items will become unattuned again and we will refund adornments applied to any equipped gear.

After this runs tomorrow, the items should remain unattuned until you decide to attune them again.

Tomorrow’s hotfix will also include a fix for the AA trees not resetting properly or resetting at incorrect times.

Smokejumper has also chimed in on the issue:

Tomorrow’s hotfix will reset *all* AAs as originally planned. If you reassign AA points today, they will be reset again tomorrow, so feel free to experiment with settings today. You’ll get to reassign them again tomorrow.

Tomorrow’s hotfix will also properly unattune *all* items, even the ones in your bank. So you’ll need to reattune and empty out your overflow again tomorrow.

So I wouldn’t bother going through all your toons and making sure everything is set just right since tomorrow you’ll be thinking it’s GROUNDHOG DAY!

Note that the trailer mentions the Dungeon Finder which is not currently available. When the Dungeon Finder goes live, it will be specific to each server/realm at first, and won’t be cross-server, which may take months/years to implement.

If you’ve ever wondered why EU patches and Game Updates always seem to take twice as long as US ones, you’re not alone. We’ve never been able to understand why the files aren’t sent earlier, or some steps taken ahead of time to make the update more quickly. Apparently there is some work being done.

From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums:

The international team has developed a way to parallel process some of the update in the future, so we should hopefully see an update speed increase for non-US servers.

Taylen of Splitpaw asked:

Does that mean we would go live at the same time, or just our down time would be shorter?

which elicited this response from SmokeJumper:

Down time shorter with the eventual objective of simultaneous.

When one creates a character in EQ2, even for the sole purpose of tradeskilling, they must first select an Adventure class. There are a surprising number of characters out there which are max level Tradeskillers who have explored and completed every Tradeskill aspect EQ2 has to offer. Later on, they realize that they may have chosen their Adventure class hastily. These are not players who wish to respec their Adventure class and keep their AAs or quest discoveries (except Tradeskill-specific ones). Even though such a feature is intended for crafters, it would of course also be available to adventurers, but they must understand they would likely be reset to level 1 or 10, their completed and in-progress quests would be reset, and they would lose all AAs.

The request for Adventure Class Reset came up on the forums over a year ago, and the functionality actually briefly appeared on the Test server, with an NPC who could be hailed to instantly become an Inquisitor. This NPC was removed and since then, we haven’t heard much on the subject. Until today…

From Domino on the EQ2 Forums:

This hasn’t fallen off our radar, however we have a lot of big features for the upcoming expansion that do need to take priority. So as much as we’d like to, we can’t give you an exact date because this will depend on what other more urgent issues arise needing the attention of the team. We do still intend to make this happen, but it would be safest to say it won’t happen before the expansion. When we do have a better date estimate, we’ll make it known.

After some issues with extended downtime (6 hours, but it took 3 hours for any explanation) on the EU servers, Game Update 61 has officially launched. From EverQuest2.com:

The time is near for the great Fortress of Drunder to reveal its true purpose to all. The very bedrock of the Eastern Wastes shudders as a massive portal rips itself open within the fortress walls. The sounds of battle echo through its halls as the God of War himself prepares his innumerable armies to march across the frozen face of Velious and seize control of the lands of Norrath for all eternity.

PC Gamer has landed a time-lapse video of SOE production artist Nate Temple conceptualizing the Raptor mount recently added to EQ2. He takes the raptor from a blank page to full color concept art which was then passed off to the 3D modeling and texturing team.

ZAM’s Cyliena, who has taken a larger role handling in-depth coverage of EQ2 and specifically Game Update 61, took a moment to appear on the Jethal Silverwing Show this week. She joined Jethal and Elquinjena to talk about EverQuest II’s Game Update 61 and more.

Download Jethal Silverwing Show for August 23, 2011 featuring Cyliena

Game Update 61: “The War of Zek”
UPDATE NOTES

A GENERAL SUMMARY OF WHAT’S IN GAME UPDATE 61:

• All dungeon and overland loot items have been re-itemized. What does this mean? It means loot everywhere should be legitimate for the level it drops for, no matter where you go now. Go explore some nooks and crannies you haven’t seen for a long time and get off the Golden Path! The loot’s good again.
• The Velious saga continues as you journey past the Citadel of Drunder to the Plane of War itself in a new dungeon and raid, and a continuation of the Signature quest line.
• New dynamically-scaling dungeons have been added. These scale to your group between levels 60-90 and are designed as new single group heroic content that’s more re-playable. We’ll be watching your reactions to these initial two dungeon experiments and improving on these in the future!
• The new House Rating System lets you publish your house so other players can rate it, as well as adding house leaderboards, easy access to housing, and more! (And we increased House Ownership limits to 20, instead of 10!)
• If you ever wanted to show EQII to your friends, it’s now very easy. Push a button, record, and post your footage to YouTube with our new Video Capture system.
• The Eastern Wastes area in Velious now has a lot more overland content added to it (the new quests start at the Ry’Gorr keep).
• A big revamp of the class AA tree so that it’s easier to select the AAs you want, and adding more utility to the AAs that were weak previously.
• Many stats have been un-capped so that they have meaning as your characters progress. This doesn’t result in massive power increases, but it does let all stats continue to have meaning as you earn new items and power. Additional mechanics changes were made to increase power for many classes. (See below for things like spell auto-attack, flurry improvements, etc.)
• Tradeskillers now have their own AA tree to chase!
• And yes, Fae and Arasai now have a level 85 quest that can unlock their ability to FLY!

After the jump, the full detailed Game Update 61 “War of Zek” Notes…

The War of Zek, or Game Update 61, will go live on Thursday, August 25, 2011. The US servers will be offline at the usual update time of 7:00 am PDT and are expected to be back online around 10:00 am PDT. UK worlds will be updated at 3:00 PM London Time. The estimated downtime will be 3 hours.

• Pacific Daylight Time (PDT): 7:00am-10:00am
• Eastern Daylight Time (EDT): 10:00am-01:00pm
• British Summer Time (BST): 03:00pm-06:00pm
• Central Europe Time (CET): 04:00pm-07:00pm

We will post the Game Update 61: Update Notes as soon as we have them.

One year ago, the EverQuest II Extended “Free-to-Play” service launched. In its wake, the EverQuest II Free Trial was unceremoniously discontinued. At Fan Faire, we learned that the Trial was coming back, and today it has.

Past trials have been very limited:

• Play the Fae — A 7 day trial of one starting zone (Faydwer) and limited to level 20.
• Trial of the Isle — A trial limited to level 6 on the Qeynos and Freeport starting islands.
• Both had limited access to chat channels, private messaging, and joining groups and/or guilds.

Unlike those past trials, this one is a full 14 days and allows starting in any of the four current starting cities, as well as providing players access to every expansion except Destiny of Velious.

The Age’s End Prophecy

So perhaps you’ve skipped a few quests, or clicked through the dialogue of yet another quest NPC standing between you and phat loots. Or you just haven’t gotten into the necessary groups or raids to experience the continuing storyline. Point is, there is an overarching storyline about the Swords of Destiny (the Qeynos Claymore and Lucan D’Lere’s Soulfire) that carries from Echoes of Faydwer. And leading up to Game Update 61, the EQ2 Lore designers have shared a comprehensive overview of what’s going on in case you missed it.

Check out the writeup at EverQuest2.com.

Summoners, Enchanters, and Shamans have been curious at exactly how Shared Pet Stats work. Fortunately some details have been provided by Maevianiu on the EQ2 Forums:

NOTE: Any buffs that affect a group/raid do not transfer from the owner to the pet (that would be doubling up) but single target ones that grant the stats below should go to both the owner and the pet when cast on the owner.

The following stats are copied from the owner to the pet:

Attributes, potency, ability mod, crit bonus (pvp and pve), crit chance, toughness, doublecast chance (pve and pvp), ability casting speed, Ability Recovery Speed, Ability Reuse Speed, Spell Reuse Speed.

From Amnerys on the EQ2 Forums:

Hail, friends!

In order to make sure that Game Update 61: The War of Zek gets ample testing time, we will be launching this update on Thursday, August 25th.

We look forward to sharing the new features and content with you, and will have more specific information on the downtimes for the update later in the week.

Ready or Not, Game Update 61 is going live tomorrow, August 23rd, 2011 Thursday, August 25th, 2011.

From Domino on the EQ2 Forums:

Just wanted to post a quick update since I know folks are looking forward to hearing whose houses we picked, and how.

Due to the large number of submissions we couldn’t visit each house in-game, so we looked over all the linked screenshots that Amnerys compiled from the submissions in various places and made a short list of what we thought were the most outstanding houses, which we could then visit in game. There were some really fantastic submissions and it was a great to look through them all!

The EQ2 design and mechanics teams have been working nose-to-the-grindstone for at least 2 1/2 months Reitemizing EverQuest 2. That’s every weapon, cloak, charm, piece of jewelry, armor, etc. We’re talking 50,000 items — the sum total of 7 years of overland zones, dungeons, and raid zones. To do so and make no mistakes would be a statistical improbability.

On June 24th, the first pass on reitemizing Mastercrafted gear appeared on Test. Silius (who has since moved up from “itemization guy” to Mechanics Lead) expressed appreciation for the bug reports that came in, but then 8 weeks of silence set in. To date, few of the bugs reported had been corrected, and there was little to no developer guidance on the testing process, such as when another pass of changes would be pushed to test. At press time, Mastercrafted gear remains an unfinished work, with frustrating inconsistencies and unavoidable gaps.

During this time, drops from Group instances and Raids, as well as Quest gear from levels 20-80 started have also gone under the knife. We’ve seen the expected stats changes, yet some of the tweaks have been more unpredictable, with items flip-flopping class or even archetype.

The question on everyone’s minds is, will the itemization be ready by tomorrow?

In response to a thread about the lack of Battlegrounds activity, SmokeJumper had this surprising comment:

We hope to roll out solutions for the [Battlegrounds] matchmaking at the same time as the Dungeon Finder roll out next week (which also uses the matchmaker). If the fixes don’t go in then, they will roll out (very) shortly thereafter!

If you just can’t get enough of Achievements in EQ2, check out Xalmat’s EQ2Achieve.com:

EQ2Achieve, your guide to all EverQuest II Achievements, has just returned from a trip to the Test Server with news of all sorts of brand new GU61 related Achievements, including new achievements related to the new House Rating system!

For more information, please visit and read my GU61 Achievements Preview.

Niami Denmother has turned in an in-depth preview of Game Update 61, including new House Signs, Tiles, Dividers, Paintings, the new House Rating system, and Furniture. Don’t miss it!

Cyliena of EQ2 ZAM has put in some serious hours documenting tomorrow Thursday’s Game Update 61. If you want the full details of what you can expect in Game Update 61, including walkthroughs, screenshots, and more, we suggest you not miss any of these articles:

GU61 Preview: Beastlords Prelude Event

GU61 Preview: AA Revamp & New Tradeskill Tree

GU61 Preview: Dynamic Dungeons

GU61 Preview: Fae and Arasai Take Flight

GU61 Preview: Carpenters Get Crafty

GU61 Preview: Velious Adventurer Quests

Cronyn, who designed and implemented the Beastlord Prelude Quest, has produced some hilarious MS Paint comic strips in the past, but this is the funniest yet. This was in response to a player request…

Cronyn, can those of us who don’t want to go through the whole quest, get one of your legendary MS paint summaries of it?