Feldon
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.
PvP/BG/Proving Grounds
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)
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...
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.
As of 12:40pm PST From Kiara: EU servers are now up. The BG’s have not been enabled for any of the international servers, due to the database issue. We’ll let you know when they will be available. Thank you for your patience today, we appreciate it.
To deal with the AA/Level loss from players who jumped into Battlegrounds, we’ve heard from Rothgar on the EQ2 Forums: There will be no server-wide rollback. This problem affected about 200 users and rolling each back individually will be much less intrusive than taking down every world and rolling back all of their databases. Please be sure to petition if you lost AA or XP due to battlegrounds.
From Rothgar, who is now officially having a bad day: The issue with AA’s being reset seems to be a server configuration error. We have locked the battlegrounds world to keep new matches from starting up while we fix the configuration. We will have more information very soon about how to proceed if you’re missing some AA after coming back.
Minutes after Battlegrounds went live on U.S. servers we are already hearing reports from players of numerous problems when their characters reach the Battlegrounds servers and further problems upon returning to their home servers. Reports include: Alternate Advancement (AA) points are being reset to 200 points. Any percentage gain over your level (for example level 88 with 90% to level 89) is lost. AA trees are completely reset. Macros that use AA-derived spells do not work on Battlegrounds. At this point, we are advising players to NOT touch Battlegrounds until they are fixed.
US Servers are unlocked and Battlegrounds are now live. EU Servers still have approximately 1 hour of downtime remaining. For more info on Battlegrounds: EQ2Wire Battlegrounds Strategy Guide and Battlegrounds @ EQ2Players
Here are your Hotfix Notes for February 25th, after the jump..
According to Brenlo on his Twitter, work continues on getting Battlegrounds up today. This is resulting in a longer than expected downtime. Maintenance is running a little long. We are working on some network settings for the Battlegrounds. UPDATE: We are restarting the servers and expect to have everything up and running about 10am PST.
The good news: Battlegrounds are now enabled on Test and Test Copy. The bad news: Test is closed until Battlegrounds have passed their sanity checks and considered “ready to go live”. This may be Wednesday or Thursday. OUCH It doesn’t make a lick of sense to me. Folks on Test are used to things being broken, unstable, etc. They can always just NOT go to Battlegrounds if they are buggy. Posted on EQ2 Forums
Battlegrounds have slipped again to February 25th. From the EQ2 Forums. Since we’ve stated in this thread that the Battlegrounds feature is launching on the 23rd with the digital launch, I’m updating here to say that we’re actually going to be pushing it back a few days to put a few extra anti-cheating measures in place. The plan is for Thursday the 25th If there are any other updates, we’ll let you know!
The EQ2 Developers are looking for players to help load test the Battlegrounds over on Test Copy before putting them on live servers on the 23rd. Join developers in playtesting Battlegrounds at 2pm PST today, Friday Feb 19th.
We have received word that Battlegrounds have been delayed until February 23rd.
Alan “Brenlo” Crosby, Senior Producer of EverQuest II has posted this Producer’s Letter: Happy Valentine’s Day All! Here we are, perched on the precipice of another big launch for our beloved game, EQII. Next week is a big week for us and for you, the players of this grand game. You will finally be able to log into the new areas of Odus and explore, level and play in the new area that the team has spent nearly a year putting together. Characters can now advance to level 90 as adventurers and tradeskillers. More items, more spells, more AA’s...
Didn’t I promise the Battlegrounds news would slow down? Oh well… In response to concerns that 6 vs. 6 is too few players to set up an adequate defense in the Battlefield of Ganak: Capture the Flag Battlegrounds scenario, the number of players is being changed to 12 vs. 12. This should also hopefully address the issues of spawn camping (AoE root/nuke players as soon as they revive). as a defense perimeter can be setup to protect your allies.
Download the EQ2 Battlegrounds Promo Video Download Battlegrounds Video Justin did a fantastic job on this Battlegrounds video and it’s one of the better EQ2 promos I’ve seen. You may remember he also did the stunning GU54: Will of a Tyrant video (Download in HD) which got a lot of positive comments on different forums. It’s nice to see promotional materials that do a great job selling the game. Hopefully we’ll see more like this! EQ2BattlegroundsWire? Ok I promise we are not renaming this site to EQ2BattlegroundsWire. 
We’ve had a lot of news about them lately, but we...
We’ve had a lot of news about them lately, but we...
There has been some talk on the EQ2 Forums both in PvP circles and elsewhere, in the Beta forums, not to mention EQ2 Flames, with a lot of concerns about how fairness is going to play out in the Battlegrounds. There have been suggestions that people will exploit and game the system as a stepping stone to progress further in raiding. I am not taking sides in this, but so far I am reasonably happy that these issues are being watched like a hawk. Parts 1 and 2 of what should probably be a 2 part post.
What are Battlegrounds? Battlegrounds is a new feature launched on February 25, 2010. Battlegrounds are a Player vs. Player (PvP) environment which take place on a completely separate server from the regular PvE and PvP servers. It roughly coincided with the release of Sentinel’s Fate (Feb 16) and Game Update 55. Tokens Each of the 3 Battlegrounds have their own unique Token. These tokens can be spent at the Battlegrounds Merchant in Qeynos Harbor or North Freeport. Multiple tokens from different zones are required to buy items. Just by participating in a Battleground, you will earn at least 1...
We’ve seen some screen shots on the web of the Battlegrounds armor, but it’s been pretty low quality images. We took some images with the maximum graphic settings. This is the most detailed armor EQ2 has seen yet! One surprising aspect of the Battlegrounds is that each of the 3 Battlegrounds zones give different tokens. The Battlegrounds merchants (now parked in Qeynos Harbor and North Freeport) require 30-40 tokens from at least TWO different zones to buy each item. More after the jump…
As of 3:15pm PST (6:15pm EST), the Test Copy server is being rebooted for testing Battlegrounds. From the EQ2 Forums: Battlegrounds are up on Test and Test-Copy!! Teams who win their matches between 5 and 8pm PST every day that the BG’s are up for testing will get an awesome battlegrounds cloak for their characters! As a special Battlegrounds event, several members of the SOE staff will be available for match-ups on Thursday, February 11th from 4 until 6pm PST. Our SOE teams will play anyone who wants to challenge us and (if you beat us!) the winners will...
So far, we’ve spotted a dozen individuals who seem particularly interested in player’s triumphs and exploits in the Battlegrounds. The Tinmizer’s Tinkerers want you to straighten things out in the Gears of Klak’anon The Pirates of Gunthak want to hear of your conquests in Smuggler’s Den The Iksar want to know when you will next face the challenges of the Battlefield of Ganak Each camp offers 2 different quests for their Battlegrounds zone — defeat other players, or complete the scenario. Qeynos Harbor seems to be the quest hub for good characters wishing to participate in Battlegrounds. Those of...
Calthine of EQ2 ZAM is reporting that Battlegrounds are now on the Test Copy server. Here’s the Battlegrounds window: (flip through images) Note: There is currently an issue preventing people from being pulled into the Battlegrounds interface when clicking the “Queue” button. Devs are on the case.