From EverQuest II Lead Designer Kyle “Kander” Vallée on the EQ2 Forums:

Greetings Fellow Norrathians!

Just stopping in to give everyone the low down on the new Fabled Echoes of Faydwer zones we will be releasing today.

People are asking what zones will become Fabled and what play styles will be covered. The answer is we tried to cover as many as possible with this release. We have 3 Fabled Echoes of Faydwer heroic zones: The Acadechism, The Court of Innovation and the Crypt of Valdoon. We also decided to make an advanced solo version of each of these zones for our solo players and are releasing the Fabled Freethinker Hideout raid zone in two flavors, Normal and Challenge.

• The Fabled Acadechism [Heroic]
• The Fabled Acadechism [Advanced Solo]

• The Fabled Court of Innovation [Heroic]
• The Fabled Court of Innovation [Advanced Solo]

• The Fabled Crypt of Valdoon [Heroic]
• The Fabled Crypt of Valdoon [Advanced Solo]

• The Fabled Freethinker Hideout [Raid]
• The Fabled Freethinker Hideout [Challenge Raid]

Downtime Notice

US EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, June 23, 2015 at 7:00AM PDT* for an update. Estimated downtime is approximately two hours.

EU EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, June 23, 2015 at 7:00AM PDT* for an update. (Approx. 3:00PM London Time on June 23, 2015). Estimated downtime is two hours.

Echoes of Faydwer Fabled (Level 100)

That was fast! After a week on the Beta and Test servers, the Echoes of Faydwer Fabled solo and group dungeons plus a raid zone are patching live tomorrow, providing new content for level 100 players. These new zones also drop this summer’s Ethereal weapons which are on a 30-day rotation as previously mentioned.

Un-Deleting Characters and Items

For the first 15 years of its history, SOE has been known for its exemplary customer service which included the extraordinary safety net of recovering deleted and transmuted items as well as deleted characters (sometimes due to hacked accounts). In the aftermath of recent changes within the company in its transition to Daybreak Games, we’ve seen petition times jump to 3-6 days, and cutbacks on what support events are covered, particularly on deleted characters. It’s our understanding that restoring a hacked account can take several hours of painstaking reconstruction and digging through log files.

With tomorrow’s update, players who mistakenly Delete an Item or Character will now be able to restore them for Daybreak Cash. Player opinion has been rancorous and divided on this issue. On one side, players are castigated for their carelessness with the delete button or use of weak passwords, while others are quick to remind us EverQuest II is not a free game and most pay a monthly subscription, plus Campaigns and/or Expansions and surely there is enough room under that umbrella for this safety net.

To discuss the upcoming Time-Locked Expansion servers, Oakmiser, videographer of the Norrathian Chronicles, has recorded and posted an interview with EverQuest II Lead Designer Kyle “Kander” Vallée.

From the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Precipice of Power [Raid]

• Tribunal adds should despawn even if you do not kill the original copy of the Tribunal boss.

Ossuary: Cathedral of Bones [Raid]

• Villadre’s adds should now despawn when she resets or is defeated.

ABILITIES

• Consistent Strike and Consistent Smite will now do damage at low levels.

PVP

• Kylong Warfields will now grant Marks of Bloodshed to players over level 95.

BATTLEGROUNDS

• Battleground of Theer tiles will no longer apply buffs or debuffs to players on the tiles, with the exception of the Order tile which will still damage those upon it.
• Battleground of Theer will now kick players who have hidden in the protected spawn points for an excessive amount of time.

ITEMS

• Several Altar of Malice weapons that had an erroneous extra white adornment slot have had them removed.
• Gemstone of Scornful Malevolence may now be used to upgrade new block armor.
• Ethereal Expertise will now message when it is applied, as well as when it is consumed.
• Ethereal Expertise will no longer break swarm pets.

TRADESKILLS

• Zander’s Choral Rebuff II (Grandmaster) may now be crafted.

QUESTS

• Zikana Sly’ssar will now offer his quests to Aerakyn.

From the EQ2 Forums:

US EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Thursday, June 4, 2015 at 7:00AM PDT* for an update. Estimated downtime is approximately one hour.

EU EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Thursday, June 4, 2015 at 7:00AM PDT* for an update. (Approx. 3:00PM London Time on June 4, 2015). Estimated downtime is one hour.

Alle deutschsprachigen Server werden um 16:00 CET am 04.06.2015 zwecks einer Serveraktualisierung heruntergefahren. Die vorgesehene Stillstandszeit wird etwa 1 Stunde(n) betragen.

Le serveur de langue française sera arrêté à 16:00 CET le 04-06-2015 pour une mise à jour du serveur. Le temps d’arrêt sera d’environ 1 heure.

and from the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Precipice of Power [Raid]

• Samhain adds in the Cazic-Thule encounter have been removed.
• The zombie effect should no longer spam from the spell “Heart Stutter”. It should only play once the spell is applied.
• Duration between adds has been increased in the Cazic-Thule Encounter.
• Duration between “fear” increments has been very slightly increased.
• Judicators and Bailiffs should now despawn when Tribunal has been defeated.

From the EQ2Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
General
Werner Thunderleg will now cast Total Domination correctly.

F.S. Distillery: Beggars and Blighters [Raid]
Kildiun the Drunkard has had his health increased.

MERCENARIES
Katastra Vilehex now has a more tank focused buff package.

ITEMS
Corrected an issue with Offensive Focus effects that prevented them from working for some classes.
Sigil of Defiance will now grant melee skills and defense instead of casting skills.

From the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Phantom Sea

• T’Kaela should no longer have an incorrect Rum Cellar requirement.

F.S. Distillery: The Rum Cellar [Solo]

• At no time will death result in being stuck in the storeroom.
• The damage inflicted by Aerial Attack has been slightly increased.

F.S. Distillery: Distill or Be Killed [Heroic]

• The cannon used against The Red Corsair will no longer be stuck in operation by another member of your party when it shouldn’t be.
• Charanda will no longer be stuck immune in either the normal or challenge mode encounters.
• Brokenskull Rum Party – No more than 20 Brokenskull pirate zipliners should spawn when the mission starts, and they should all remain on the Rum Run should they not be added to anyone’s hate list when they land.
• Pets or mercs can no longer be targeted by Portia Rumuffin.

Update: “Unlocking US live servers now.” – Bunji

Update: Downtime is now expected to extend until Noon Pacific time.  However, the link to purchase the Rum Cellar Campaign is now active, so we can pretend that’s the pre-order time window.  🙂

Today marks the launch of the Rum Cellar Campaign which can be purchased here.

For those that haven’t been following along, the Rum Cellar Campaign is the first attempt at delivering Downloadable Content (DLC) for a price, rather than through traditional expansions (not counting the old Adventure Packs that were meant to be in addition to expansions, not a replacement for expansions).  It contains the “Far Seas Distillery” with 1 Solo, 1 Event Advanced Solo, 1 Heroic, 2 Event Heroics and a large Raid version for $15 ($13.50 for All Access).  Altar of Malice is required and should be available as a bundle for those that have yet to purchase AoM.  There will be another large Campaign this fall around the usual expansion release time.  The content released throughout the year in these Campaigns should add up to what we might have traditionally seen in a yearly expansion.

Roshen posted this on the EQ2Forums:

US EverQuest II Live Servers and website will be brought offline on Tuesday, April 28, 2015 at 7:00AM PDT* for the Rum Cellar Campaign Patch. Estimated downtime is approximately three hours.

Players will NOT be able to play this campaign until after this patch has completed, even if they purchase the campaign prior to this maintenance.

EU EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, April 28, 2015 at 7:00AM PDT* for this update. (Approx. 3:00PM London Time on April 28, 2015). Estimated downtime is three hours.

Alle deutschsprachigen Server werden um 16:00 CET am 28.04.2015 zwecks einer Serveraktualisierung heruntergefahren. Die vorgesehene Stillstandszeit wird etwa 3 Stunde(n) betragen

Le serveur de langue française sera arrêté à 16:00 CET le 28-04-2015 pour une mise à jour du serveur. Le temps d’arrêt sera d’environ 3 heures.

*Time Zone Converter

Update notes for this downtime can be found in the Game Update Notes forum once they’re available.

Keep an eye on the EverQuest II forums for news if additional downtime is needed.

EDIT: Approx downtime is now three hours.

EDIT 2: This downtime will affect the website as well.

Update: As part of the launch festivities, Daybreak Games will be livestreaming as well:

Don’t miss today’s EverQuest 2 stream! To celebrate the launch of the Rum Cellar Campaign, we’ll be streaming today, Tuesday, April 28, 2015 starting at 11AM PDT* on twitch.tv/EverQuest 2

MJ Guthrie over at Massively Overpowered has put together a pretty impressive guide to the dungeons available in Everquest II. It shows the different original story lines as well as the “golden path” and includes level ranges and type of dungeon. Certainly worth checking out.

From Roshen on the EQ2 Forums:

Earlier this month, the EverQuest II team unveiled plans for campaigns! The first new campaign, Rum Cellar, will be available on Tuesday, April 28, 2015. Rum Cellar comes with six new instances (solo, heroic, and raid content) with lots of loot, collections, and achievements.

Here’s a list of the features that are included in the Rum Cellar campaign:

• 2 Solo Zones (1 Solo and 1 Advanced Solo)
• 3 Heroic Zones (1 Heroic, 1 Event Heroic, 1 Event Heroic-Challenge)
• Raid Zone with 10 Bosses
• Lots of Loot, including drops of a Rare Elite Mercenary and a Zeppelin Mount
• New Achievements and Titles
• New Gems for Armor
• New Collections
• Merchant who accepts Far Sea Ferrin (who also sells a Zeppelin Mount!)

UPDATE: What was supposed to be a one hour downtime this morning has turned into an all day event of stumbling servers, uppity login servers, and unexpected downtime:

• Server Downtime April 21st
• Unable to Connect to Login Servers (created by Caith to let players know there’s a problem)
• General Discussion forum (numerous EQ2 servers have come down and back up)

From the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Brokenskull Bay: Fury of the Cursed [Raid]

• Corrected an issue in the Captain Krasnok encounter that allowed the Spirit of Gluttony to be killed when it shouldn’t be.

Ssraeshza Temple: Echoes of Time [Raid]

• Each of the Grimling bosses should no longer cast curses on players if they have been killed.

ITEMS

• The Ssraeshza Sword Sentinel house item can now once again be scaled up to its previous maximum size. The default scale remains small enough to fit inside a room.

EQ2 Lead Designer Kyle “Kander” Vallee has posted more details on the upcoming Rum Cellar DLC, as well as a peek at the large fall update which the EQ2 team has been careful not to describe as an expansion, yet will have an overland zone, quest lines, and numerous dungeons.

I’m relieved to read some of the details and this paints a better picture overall of what we can expect this year. If I had to ask for “one thing more” in the statement, I’d have liked to see the Echoes of Faydwer Fabled dungeons mentioned by name. They’re a nice summer holdover for players who can run the Altar of Malice instances in their sleep, and it helps us stretch out the content until the fall update. The announcement doesn’t touch on pricing, but I think it nudges in the right direction that we’re not going to be nickel-and-dimed for single dungeon updates. Players just want to know that the overall cost and rate of content release isn’t going to unexpectedly jump. Without that assurance, it’s understandable that some players are hesitating about the Rum Cellar DLC.

For many of them, it’s not the pricing of Rum Cellar so much as the total pricing for all the content coming in 2015 that players are curious about. If the overall number excluding extras such as prestige houses, mounts, and mercs is reasonable, then I think people will get on board. I plan to buy Rum Cellar on my main account, and will evaluate the Octoberish update when it’s around the corner. So without further ado, let’s read up!

From the EQ2 Forums:

Greetings Fellow Norrathians!

I was asked by Windstalker and a few other prominent Norrath citizens to come and expand on the information about the Rum Cellar Campaign as well as give some hints about what we have in store for the future.

This week’s Rum Cellar preview livecast on Twitch with EQ/EQ2 Executive Producer Holly “Windstalker” Longdale, EQ2 designer Chris “Chrol” Garlick, and EQ2 Community Manager Roshen has now been posted on YouTube. Note that it cuts off at the 59 minute mark as they ran up against the 1 hour scheduled timeslot and never came back from it. We are hoping to get a brief summary of the key points from the webcast here on EQ2Wire sometime today.

From the EQ2 Forums:

US  EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, April 7, 2015 at 7:00AM PDT* for an update. Estimated downtime is approximately one hour.

EU EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, April 7, 2015 at 9:00PM PDT* for an update. (Approx. 5:00AM London Time on April 8, 2015). Estimated downtime is one hour.

Alle deutschsprachigen Server werden um 6:00 CET am 08.04.2015 zwecks einer Serveraktualisierung heruntergefahren. Die vorgesehene Stillstandszeit wird etwa 1 Stunde(n) betragen.

Le serveur de langue française sera arrêté à 6:00 CET le 08-04-2015 pour une mise à jour du serveur. Le temps d’arrêt sera d’environ 1 heure.

and from the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Precipice of Power [Raid]

• Cazic Thule will be protected by his minions if he falls low on health and they are able to help him!

ITEMS

• All damage types of the Terror Inducing Mace have been made 6 second delay.

If you told me last November that nearly one third of Altar of Malice expansion purchasers would opt for the never discounted $89.99 Collector’s Edition, I’d have suggested therapy or possibly drug treatment. If you read the comments here on EQ2Wire and on the official EQ2 forums when the pricing was announced, the universal response was howls of protest.  Yet to this day, the expansion not only continues to show good sales numbers, but fully one third spring for the Collector’s Edition. Perhaps we ARE the vocal minority.

So with that background comes today’s Marketing-driven blitz (yes on April Fool’s Day for some reason) of how EverQuest II’s content will be released going forward. First up, here are the Press sites that participated in Round Tables with the EQ2 team this week:

• EQ2 ZAM: Campaigns, Pirates & the Rumpocolyse
• MMORPG: The Rum Cellar Campaign
• MassivelyOP: EVERQUEST II CUTS EXPANSIONS, DEBUTS DLCS WITH RUM CELLAR

TL;DR Summary

• Coming on April 28th, we will see a purchasable “Campaign” or what most people would call DLC/Adventure Pack for $15 ($13.50 for All Access)
• The new DLC introduces a new instance called the “Far Seas Distillery“, with 1 Solo, 1 Event Advanced Solo, 1 Heroic, 2 Event Heroics, and large Raid versions. The new zones have rare loot, collections, achievements, a new drunken monk mercenary, and a dropped Zeppelin flying mount.
• We’ll see another large Campaign this fall around the usual expansion release time. The content released throughout the year in these Campaigns will add up to what we might have traditionally seen in a yearly expansion.
• Cross-Server Dungeon Finder is coming “later this summer”.
• New Deity Revamp this fall with purchasable AA abilities.
• Level cap will remain 100 for the time being.

From the EQ2 Forums:

US EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, March 31, 2015 at 7:00AM PDT* for an update. Estimated downtime is approximately one hour.

EU EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, March 31, 2015 at 9:00PM PDT* for an update. (Approx. 5:00AM London Time on April 1, 2015). Estimated downtime is one hour.

Alle deutschsprachigen Server werden um 6:00 CET am 01.04.2015 zwecks einer Serveraktualisierung heruntergefahren. Die vorgesehene Stillstandszeit wird etwa 1 Stunde(n) betragen.

Le serveur de langue française sera arrêté à 6:00 CET le 01-04-2015 pour une mise à jour du serveur. Le temps d’arrêt sera d’environ 1 heure.

and here are your update notes from the EQ2 Forums…

From the EQ2 Forums:

US EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, March 10, 2015 at 4:00AM PDT* for an update. Estimated downtime is four hours.

EU EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, March 10, 2015 at approximately 4:00AM PDT* for an update. (Approx. 11:00AM London Time on March 10, 2015). Estimated downtime is four hours.

Alle deutschsprachigen Server werden um 12:00 CET am 10.03.2015 zwecks einer Serveraktualisierung heruntergefahren. Die vorgesehene Stillstandszeit wird etwa 4 Stunde(n) betragen.

Le serveur de langue française sera arrêté à 12:00 CET le 10-03-2015 pour une mise à jour du serveur. Le temps d’arrêt sera d’environ 4 heures.

and from the EQ2 Forums, in addition to the usual types of fixes, it looks like a new type of scaling White Adornment is coming out which will be crafted with materials from super-rare nodes or a satchel purchased from the Marketplace. We’re not going to jump to any conclusions until we see the mechanic of how this all works. Not surprisingly, Dethdlr, who just spent weeks redoing his Adornment Calculator, is now having a conniption fit.

Full update notes after the jump…

From Roshen on the EQ2 Forums:

US EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, March 3, 2015 at 7:00AM PST for an update. Estimated downtime is one hour.

There will be extended maintenance for European servers.

EU EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, March 3, 2015 at approximately 9:00PM PST for an update. (Approx. 5:00AM London Time on February 27, 2015). Estimated downtime is 4 hours.

Alle deutschsprachigen Server werden um 6:00 CET am 04.03.2015 zwecks einer Serveraktualisierung heruntergefahren. Die vorgesehene Stillstandszeit wird etwa 4 Stunde(n) betragen.

Le serveur de langue française sera arrêté à 6:00 CET le 04-03-2015 pour une mise à jour du serveur. Le temps d’arrêt sera d’environ 4 heures.

and from buildmaster Bunji on the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Brokenskull Bay: Bildgewater Falls [Heroic]

• The “Barnacle Burst” spell has been made to hit slightly less often and should no longer grow over time.
• The “Whirling Daggers” spell has been made to hit slightly less often and should no longer grow over time.
• The “Dangerous Flirtation” spell has been made to hit slightly less often and should no longer grow over time.
• The “Pirate Spin” spell has been made to hit slightly less often and should no longer grow over time.
• The “Boatman’s Grasp” spell has been made to hit slightly less often.

We are anxiously awaiting a fix and a return of the Altar of Malice mission givers. Until that time, it is not possible to pickup Solo, Adv Solo, Heroic, Event Heroic, Contested, or Raid missions on either a Daily or Weekly basis, not to mention timed overland Solo Missions. A fix seems unlikely today, but we’ll keep hanging on until the solution is found and applied.

Here’s Gninja with a couple of updates to say the team are working on it:

It is getting fixed and it is getting fixed right. We would rather get it right the first time and take an extra day to put in the needed testing than to rush it out and potentially make things worse. Sorry for the inconvenience.

and:

It is a new bug and we are getting it fixed asap. It is top priority. We know it sucks that they are missing and we want them to not be missing as well! We will get it resolved as quickly as we can with putting in the testing time to make sure its fixed right so we don’t have to bring them right back down.

Update from Windstalker on Twitter:

Still looking at some funk with the missions givers for #eq2. We’re planning a Double Ferrin weekend assuming we fix it (and we should).

Out of an abundance of caution, all Altar of Malice mission quest givers have been despawned on all EQ2 servers. This started earlier this evening with Skrit, the Tradeskill daily mission giver but is now affecting all mission givers of all gameplay styles.

Update: The in-game MOTD has been updated with this message:

A bug has caused an issue with mission givers in Altar of Malice. All mission givers have been removed from the game. We will have them back as soon as possible.

More as we have it…

From the EQ2 Forums:

Attention players: we will perform a general maintenance beginning at 7:00AM Pacific* on Tuesday, February 24th. The current estimated downtime for this maintenance is up to three hours.

This maintenance may impact the following Daybreak services across all games:

• Commerce functions, including purchases, for all games
• Game logins
• Web and forum logins for all Daybreak sites, including account creation

Time Zone Conversions

• PST: 7:00am ~ 10:00am
• EST: 10:00am ~ 1:00pm
• GMT: 15:00 ~ 18:00
• CET: 16:00 ~ 19:00

and from the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
General

• Altar of Malice [Heroic] Dungeons now have a chance to spawn an extra encounter once the zone boss has been defeated.
• Hit points for all Altar of Malice Solo, Heroic, and Contested zones have been slightly reduced.

EQ2 Player TrulyVexed has been working on a fantastic EQ2 fansite with information for players of all skill levels wanting to succeed in the Altar of Malice expansion. The new EQ2Stuff.com site includes a variety of guides, from Altar of Malice Heroic Zone strategies, to Altar of Malice gear and adornment selections, to lists of which shinies drop in which AoM instances, to useful (but not required!) ACT triggers, there is a lot of valuable information all in this one website. TrulyVexed announced the site on the EQ2 Forums a few weeks ago and we’ve been meaning to feature the site but some other news got in the way!

Originally launched at www.mad-as-toast.co.uk, the site is now available at EQ2Stuff.com!

Members of the EverQuest II team took to Twitch today to reassure players about the direction and future of the game given last week’s stunning takeover and layoffs. While it was great to hear some of the team’s overall plans for the near future, it would have been great to start out with an acknowledgement of what happened, some high level broad strokes about how the team has pulled together to continue to give us content. I’d have also mentioned the expansion (Even if a date is unknown) as there is a doubt as to whether there will be one. For a monthly “here’s what we’re working on” this was perfectly fine, but with expectations as high as they were, we really needed a Home Run and this was more of a base hit.

The livestream included EQ/EQ2 Executive Producer Holly “Windstalker” Longdale, Lead Designer Kyle “Kander” Vallee, EQ2 Designer Chris “Chrol” Garlick, EQ2 Senior Designer Nathan “Kaitheel” McCall, and EQ2 Animator Tom Tobey.

First up, Holly talked about how the EnterpriseDB migration is still under way. This is a lot of back end work to upgrade EQ2’s game servers which will have huge benefits once it’s complete, including Cross-Server Dungeons. The servers have been getting updates this week (thus the 4 hour maintenance windows) with an OS upgrade which is part of this process.

From the EQ2 Forums:

GENERAL

• Map Fog has been removed.

ABILITIES / ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT
General

• Expert Spells of a higher tier will now do more damage than the same spell Master previous tier. For example: Level 91 Faith Strike (Expert) will now do more damage than level 81 Faith Strike (Master).

ITEMS

• Bound transmutation stones purchased from the loyalty merchant may now be transmuted correctly.
• Corrected an issue where some pvp adornment added red gem armor lost its ability mod.

QUESTS

• Altar of Malice and Tears of Veeshan Weekly Missions are now classified as Weekly Missions in the Quest Journal.
• Altar of Malice Weekly Solo Dungeon, Weekly Heroic Dungeon and Weekly Raid missions will now award Malice Gemstones.

Kander elaborated on that last note with these comments:

Armor Gems will be on the weekly quests starting tomorrow. You will be able to earn any heroic gems and red raid gems once a week.

He also indicated that the ability to convert Green gems to Red gems was coming, and that those few Red gem armor pieces that aren’t upgrading correctly will be fixed soon.