According to Kirstie, Game Update #51 will be coming to the Test Servers on or around January 7th. [link]

What should we expect in GU51? Here are some quotes from Aeralik:

The focus of part 2 is looking at the different ways players gain ( or lose ) hate and putting more emphasis on player responsibility. You will likely see the numbers scale up on taunts a lot and hopefully fighters will start to look more at their threat per second while tanking and less so on the raw dps output we see now.

With the changes offensive and defensive stances become more meaningful. You will want to use offensive stance if you are in a dps mode and switch to defensive stance when you expect to tank. We are also combining some of the fighter self buffs so that they are used in the correct combinations they were meant to be used rather than say a guardian running offensive stance while still having the bonuses of hold the line up.

The offensive stance is your dps oriented stance and improves damage but at the cost of hate gain and threat while defensive stances lower dps but increase your hate generation and threat. Also, with the changes everyone will have a new blue aoe taunt tied to one of the blue aoe lines.

The gu51 changes are going to make you choose a stance based on what you expect to be doing. If you want to be high on the hate list so you can pick up aggro quickly then using defensive stance and riding just below 100% on the threat meter is probably better than using offensive stance. Offensive stance is more for soloing or plowing through trash when you know you won’t be tanking.

The reductions in the new stances are pretty minor. It never made sense to keep reducing them linearly which in some cases made lower level stances better. Besides in a raid or group situation someone should be debuffing defense anyways which helps to make sure everyone hits better including the tank.

Thanks to CriticalOverload for catching all of those quotes and putting them in one place.

Game Update 52 Notes from Timetravelling:

As a New Year’s Resolution (a few days early, admittedly), we pledge to create within a few months (aka GU52):

• A brand new two-group instance with 9 bosses—over half of whom drop Void Shards—balanced for players in legendary gear
• A very challenging brand new four-group raid instance
• Brand new tradeskill instance in the Void
• A Lavastorm revamp
• Brand new areas added to Lavastorm with level 80 solo content
• A new faction with gear to gather from the new Lavastorm content
• 12 new armor sets
• All of them with brand new armor appearances
• Including a brand new robe model in which the Helm and Shoulders and Legs are all visible, separate pieces from the Chest
  • And it looks rad *cough* See also: Varsoon *cough*

The Shadow “of” Odyssey
Marketing department added the “of” in Shadow Odyssey. Many jokes made by SOE about it. Marketing dept was surprised that a EQ2 expansion didn’t have “of” in the middle. 🙂

The Shadow Odyssey

New lvl 77+ overland zone.
20 dungeons

• Najena — A very large dungeon. Very tall (4 story stairs and just really cool). Very organic, wood, ropes, not the current stone boxes. Najena’s forge is the new place to go to craft various master weapons, etc. taking the place of the existing Solusek Ro forge.
• Nuroga
• Guk — “upper” and “lower”
• Befallen
• Most dungeons scale 50-80 — depends on the adjoining overland zone.
• Lvl 50, 60, or 70 groups going into the new scaleable dungeons will get scaled down loot. All loot designed for 80.
• All dungeons are located “where you expect them to be”
• Dungeons are smarter. Puzzles in dungeons ala some of the raids and VoeS.

Raids

• 4 new x4 raids

Avatars

• (new) Rodcet Nife
• Avatar loot for Rodcet Nife is all new and loot tables for the existing 12 avatars will eventually be updated. basically, if you like a loot item on avatars now, don’t miss any opportunity since it might change. Might add loot to Tangrin.

Quests

• 1 new Signature quest — good and evil versions. Long but not repetitive.
• No new epics or heritage quests. Epics took 3 months to develop for Kunark.
• 5 new heritage quests! (thanks for the comments!)

Dieties

• 2 new dieties
• One of the two dieties being added will behave differently. Must be unlocked on each server. Featured on the Shadow Odyssey box art.

New Travel

• Airships — Live event to build airships and build docks.

Achievement Experience
New Achievement Experience page.
60 points of AA.
There will be limits preventing you from respeccing and moving over, say, 60 of your current 140 points and getting those rewards right away.

1- General
2- Archetype (Priest/Mage/Fighter/Scout)
3- Class (Cleric/Summoner/etc)
4- Subclass (Warden/Ranger/Assassin/etc.)

Instead of a “tree” that forces you to take AA items you don’t want, AA lines are straight across and you just pick what you want. End of line reward for each level.

“Boost taunt” is one of the possible fighter AA lines so crusaders (shadowknights) and bruisers can catch up and match the damage of current weapons. Came up in QA. Taunt has been a linear progression but dps from weapons has gone up faster due to crit, etc.

Tradeskill Harvesting AA increase # harvests per node.

Missions System

• 1 mission per dungeon, 1 per day
• Loot scales 50-80 and tokens are rewarded for completing missions which can be spent on legendary and “low” fabled items.
• Tradeskill Missions — 3 at launch. no combat.

Balance & Itemization

When asked about Itemization — “We have a plan.” Raiders should not need legendary items.

Combat xp in 70-80 will be improved. The pendulum “swung too far in favor of soloing and hurt groupers”.

Bard, Crusader, Cleric specific armor. Less archetype specific. No more templars running around with chain or leather.

PvP Bone
Big news! PvP will now allows all classes in all cities. Existing unhappy classes can complete betrayal to whatever class they want. This will reduce the requirement of Exile PvP guilds.

Miscellaneous
Asymetrical armor pieces if you want one big shoulder, one small shoulder. 🙂

More From Q&A
Basically if it got any kind of acknowledgement beside the standard “we can look into that” which is a big fat “NO!” I put it here.

Torch slot or maybe more items with light effect. No more 80s running around with lightstone. On the flipside perhaps an option to auto-hide light sources on stealth. Maybe too easy? 🙂

Some existing and new zones might auto mentor the group down so the content is not trivial, rather than either lockout or requiring a low level to mentor. They’d like to make mentoring more rewarding include AA.

Warden asked about having to cast 14 wards on every death. SoE might allow more than 2 non-combat buffs to trigger in a macro.

Critical errors in raids will name the culprit ala VS. Right now you can’t tell at a glance who messed up on Trakanon.

May reconsider caster resists because there aren’t enough spell critical items.

Would like to do bard instruments but not in current plans.

No x2 epic zones ready but maybe after expac.

When asked about Itemization — “We have a plan.” Raiders should not need legendary items.

Combat xp in 70-80 will be improved. The pendulum “swung too far in favor of soloing and hurt groupers”.

Bard, Crusader, Cleric specific armor. Less archetype specific. No more templars running around with chain or leather.