EQ2 Designer Windslasher is working on the lag issues in the Storm Gorge public quests, but apparently it’s not an easy problem to solve:
I am working on changes to reduce lag. I’m very aware of how bad it is, and I consider that the #1 problem to fix. It also happens to be the hardest, which is why the going is slow. That is all.
Just when you thought there wouldn’t be any SC discounts for a while, we see this announcement on EverQuest2.com:
Between March 17th and March 20th, get 1000 bonus Station Cash when you redeem an SOE Universal Game Card. That’s a $10 value!
You’ll also be eligible to an entry in the upcoming Luck o’ the Irish Sweeps*! Check back next week for details on the sweeps.SOE Universal Game Cards are available at GameStop locations nationwide. Be sure to stock up this weekend so you’re ready for the promotion next week!
The player base has started a very interesting discussion thread on how long the Public Quests will remain popular. Currently, everyone is scrambling to get gear — raiders, non-raiders, casual players. The PQs are packed, players are complaining no one wants to group or do anything else, and for most people who are participating, they are getting most of their gear slots filled with the best upgrades. Being nearby a successful raid seems all that is necessary. But how long will the gearfest last? Once everyone gets what they need, why would they continue to join the PQs? The AA gain for choosing the AA reward is only 6-10%, and currently, the lag is bothering a lot of people, with the end result being an attitude of “get my gear and get out,” not a great formula for longevity.
Not getting any Public Quest loot? It may be your personal loot settings if you’ve got Auto-Loot or Auto-Decline enabled. urgthock responded to a player who was unable to access the loot in a Public Quest chest.
Make sure you don’t have auto greed or auto decline turned on. Since you keep saying “access to”, I am guessing you are probably getting the red message saying you are not entitled to any of the treasure, but just in case you are simply not getting anything instead… make sure auto greed or auto decline are not turned on.
From Windslasher:
I’ve been reading a lot of /bug reports describing exactly this issue. If you were in there the whole fight and nothing happens upon clicking the public chest (Nothing at all, no red popup or anything), then open up your options -> group options and check your Default Auto Loot Mode at the bottom of that section.
I’m going to get a UI error message put in to tell you when your auto loot setting prevents you from clicking a chest, but it might be a while before that kind of change can be pushed onto the live servers. Thanks for pointing that out here.
Brewday starts on Friday, March 11th and will run through March 22nd. Here’s an opportunity to complete past and new quests alike for this celebration of Brell and all manner of mayhem involving indulgence in spirits. You too might see a pink elephant if you overdo it!
Raise Your Steins to Brewday @ EQ2 ZAM
EQ2Traders has been recently updated, including a Brewday Preview for 2011.
Here are your Update Notes for today, March 9th. Of note, Frost Gryphons acquired by crafters are now usable without being a Guide, and a mysterious note that Critical Mitigation values are being reduced on some items.
The March 8th Game Update Notes contain an interesting item:
The anti-slacker threshold has been raised on all PQ’s [Public Quests].
The Developers are serious about this! Windslasher said:
Freeloading was not part of the public quest design and will not be allowed. I’m approaching the problem slowly and carefully, to avoid denying loot to players who deserve it, but measures are being taken to tighten up the participation requirements.
The next hotfix [March 8] will make a slight change to address the problem, and depending on the response, I may take progressively stronger measures.
We reported earlier this week that some players were already complaining about missing out on chest drops due to healing and buffing, or even lag problems, as opposed to doing straight damage during an encounter. Surprisingly, it seems that a significant number of players are actually getting unfairly rewarded, since Windslasher found it necessary to raise the threshhold on the participation calculations.
It will be interesting to see what this change will do to support classes, as well as traditional damage dealers. It is still unclear what the parameters are for “participation scoring,” so it’s anyone’s guess what the new threshholds will be.
When Velious was announced, lots of folks asked for Faction to matter. Wish granted! 🙂
Faction must be acquired with the Othmir, Snowfang Gnolls, Thurgadin, and Ry’Gorr to buy their adornments (unique to each faction) and gear, and it can be rather slow-going!
The Othmir, Snowfang Gnolls, and Ry’Gorr all have daily (18 hour repeatable) quests to kill overland mobs and gain faction. Crabs for the Othmir quests occasionally drop an item which provides an additional faction boost. Alas, Thurgadin faction must be gained by running dungeons.
A variety of rewards become available once faction milestones of 10,000, 20,000, and 40,000 are reached. After completing all of the solo quests in Velious, most folks will end up with at or above 7,000 faction with each so the first items should be available in just a few days, with the better rewards taking a couple of weeks to earn.
Public Quests drop Cloudy Velium Jewels which can be sold to any of the 4 factions for +500 faction. Also, mobs inside the contested Kael Drakkel can be killed for a small amount of faction gain as well. If you’ve only done the Othmir quests at the arrival point in Velious (Great Divide), you’ve only gotten half the story (and are missing a good chunk of faction). Head to the Eastern Wastes once you’re done.
Thurgadin also has their own crafting faction, the Forgemasters of Thurgadin and you’ll want to befriend them if you are interested in acquiring the Coldain Prayer Shawl. And there are plenty of opportunities to work on Far Seas Supply Division faction, as well as Order of Rime faction if you are one of those people. 😉
UPDATE: This article has received a substantial rewrite since its original publication and is now part of a series of articles about Faction in Velious.
After the jump, we talk more about what else you can get for your hard-earned faction in Velious…
Two weeks after the release of Destiny of Velious we see a rather hefty patch that tackles many of the issues we’ve seen on the EQ2 Forums with dungeon and quest progression.
After the jump, your March 8, 2011 Update Notes…
Players have been surprised by a change in Thursday’s Game Update affecting the Critical Mitigation of Fighter armor received from Public Quests.
As we know, both Public Quests award armor upgrades for hands (gloves) and legs. Storm Gorge PQ’s also award armor for head and feet (boots), while Ring War PQs award armor for shoulders and wrists. There are also rare drops from these events, including Fabled chest pieces and Weapons.
During Beta, Othmir solo quest givers offered a full set of armor which was essentially Sentinel’s Fate Tier 1 raid armor minus adornment slots. After Beta concluded, this was changed to be more of a progression from Sentinel’s Fate heroic gear. You’ll recall that we were cautioned that Critical Mitigation would be necessary to participate in Velious, even when killing solo mobs.
In an amusing use of a Station Cash illusion item, clever player Meha turned himself into a treasure chest and planted himself where the normal chest would drop in a public quest raid. Apparently, the actual chest hadn’t dropped, so they took matters into their own hands to lighten the mood. Needless to say, player Rabbie from Butcherblock and his guild The Black Knights were laughing at the ensuing chaos:
Everyone ran to him, clicked on him, there was shouting, snickering, and cursing indeed. Then about 5 minutes later, someone else did it, off to the side. And half the zone thought “Look, it’s over there!” and swarmed to the new chest. And there was more shouting, snickering, and cursing…
Not everyone found it amusing, of course. But it was all in good fun, according to the Black Knights, anyway.
As other players recalled in the forum thread, this follows the tradition of pranks in the original EverQuest, where illusionists would turn themselves into money on the floor of the bank, or even more wickedly, a trickster who turned himself into a post high in the tree city, mimicking a bridge entrance high above the forest floor, sending players plummeting to their deaths!
Although there are many things we can do on our end to reduce poor performance when playing EQ2, Public Quests have really pushed things to the limit both on the client and AND the server end. Especially in Storm Gorge which has some 60 combatants in the highest difficulty setting. In the past, there have been some tit-for-tat arguments about people’s slow computers vs. issues on the EQ2 servers themselves. While there is a lot players can do to reduce graphics performance aka “client lag”, it is up to the EQ2 devs to tackle any issues on the SOE servers.
Fortunately, Rothgar has stepped up and posted this about Public Quests performance (ironically the thread started on the topic of Gazebo placement griefing):
We are lowering the hard population cap on Great Divide to keep people from working around the soft limit. We may also change the group teleport mechanic to use the soft cap limits in the near future to keep people from circumventing these limits.
As far as the lag goes in Great Divide, its definitely server lag and isn’t caused by mounts, pets or gazebos. These things might contribute to your client FPS, but changing your visual settings to a lower option should more than make up it.
We are working on several angles to improve the lag situation in these zones but for this weekend the only thing we’re able to do is reduce the population cap. We’ve also tweaked the load-balancing settings on this zone so it should get a larger percentage of server resources.
From Kaitheel on the EQ2 Forums:
Brewday 2011 has been activated on both Test and Test Copy.
Grab a stein and celebrate Brewday! The shouts of rowdy patrons located near every player city will lead you to The Bar of Brell where adventures and crafts await those thirsty and foolhardy enough to enter. Meanwhile, the Avatar of Below has returned to Antonica. Help him find the best sampling of drinks from all around. And as you’re crawling through the bars and drinking holes throughout Norrath, be sure to keep your eyes peeled for special items of interest to collect!
New features for ’11:
- “Thurgadin Ice Brew” a new quest is being offered by Oldar Foambeard within the Bar of Brell
- New Halas is celebrating Brewday Festival!
- Thurgadin Harbor in Great Divide is also involved in some of the Brewday activities.
- Balin Copperfoot in the Bar of Brell has some new items for players to buy, including new tradeskill recipes!
Great news if you have been running Public Quests and been rather puzzled at Legendary (or Fabled) gear with Yellow adornment slots, yet receiving Red adornments (which only go on Raid gear). Now, you will get a select window/choice for Yellow or Red, and it’s based on archetype.
After the jump, your update notes for March 4, 2011:
Intro
With the release of Destiny of Velious, the starting instances seem to be a bit tougher and the encounters require a bit of strategy to take them down. This can make it a bit rough on the casual players/guilds. I previously wrote an article on how to figure out an encounter that includes lots of tips on figuring out a strategy for a given MOB. However, the best strategy in the world isn’t going to work if your group setup is awful. There are 24 classes in EQ2 but only 6 slots in a group. How do you go about putting together a group from the 24 available classes in order to take down an encounter?
This article will attempt to answer that question…
Today’s Update Notes fix a variety of quest and zone issues, as well as some issues with Public Quests, not to mention a fix for the quest Ominous Hints and the Twins in Thurgadin. The detailed Update Notes for March 3, 2011 after the jump…
We heard about this in Beta, but Windslasher intends to add more Public Quests in future updates, possibly even to older zones. From the EQ2 Forums:
The Eastern Wastes public quests were pulled from the expansion for use in game updates. I can’t reveal what I’ve created for Pit of the Awakened yet. Sorry!
Also, Gninja has heard our pleas and will be adding zone portals near the Public Quests allowing players to join each other in the same zone for PQs, as well as our personal preference: spreading out into different instances of the Great Divide.
I will be adding a portal in the Othmir area and the Thurgadin docks area in Great Divide and the spires area in Eastern Wastes. Keep an eye on the patch notes for this to be coming to the live servers.
There’s nothing sadder than being part of 60 people unable to complete a Public Quest at Difficulty #5 (x4 raid) because of 8 second casting lag. Folks, FAN OUT into other zones please. As long as you have 24 players smoothly and quickly killing mobs, you’ll get the good loot!
This is not the picture of success:
It was strongly suggested that if feedback were positive, the Aether Races which allow ANYONE level 1-90 (with or without the Velious expansion) to participate in a live event, and receive a temporary flying mount to get a taste of flight. Now we know that Windslasher‘s event will be coming back!
Well, now it’s over and I’m back to my regularly scheduled tasks. Thank you all for the great feedback! It’s absolutely heartwarming to hear how much you all loved the racing, and I’ve taken notes on all your suggestions.
Rest assured, after such a glowing response this event is definitely going to return!
No word just yet on intriguing rumors that this event will expand beyond its initial zones of Butcherblock Mts, Lavastorm, and Tenebrous Tangle.
For the last day of the Destiny of Velious launch celebrations, every EQ2 and EQ2X player from level 1-90 is able to travel to Lavastorm, Butcherblock Mountains, or Tenebrous Tangle and fly around using a Tinkered flying machine. The quest and event has been placed near the entrance of the zone, thus the level of enemies should not prevent celebrations by all players of all levels.
Once you compete in a race through airborne rings in the allotted time, you receive a temporary flying contraption which is NO ZONE but which you can use to fully explore the entire zone and see just how much fun Flying Mounts are. After completing the race five times, you will receive a permanent C.R.A.S.H. Pad reward which is an appearance flying mount which requires having completed any flying mount quest to use, but can also be used as a 25% ground speed mount. If you love flying, but were hoping for an alternative to the various Gryphon mounts, here’s your chance.
Rewards:
And according to Wilhelmina, there are special titles for finishing the course within a certain time:
From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums:
So…it turns out that the gnomes are horribly, terribly jealous of the “meat solution” to flying mounts found in Velious and they’re working furiously to come up with a tinkering substitution instead.
Thus, the debut of “Aether Racing” tomorrow, Tuesday, March 1st!
The tinkerers have cobbled together a rattling, wheezing deathtrap of a flying machine, and they want YOU to test it for them! (They’re not stupid enough to test it themselves.)
It’s one week since the launch of Destiny of Velious and there are always bugs and issues that make it through from the Beta. Today’s update tackles many of them. With today’s update, many of these issues are fixed.
Tradeskillers can now equip their Boreal or Frost Gryphon as a flying mount at level 85 tradeskill. Freebloods who have completed their Cloud of Bats quests can now use it. And the Collector’s Edition (still available as a $25 upgrade today until 10am PST [18:00 GMT] ) Stormfeather Brood Guardian is now usable by 85 tradeskill and 85 adventurer.
The Coldain Ring War and Storm Gorge Public Quests were a lot of fun this weekend, however several issues plagued both, making it difficult or impossible, even with a full raid of 24 players, to reach difficulty #4 or #5 to get the better rewards (including Legendary armor with yellow adornment slots). The Ring War PQ kept scaling down to solo difficulty, and the Storm Gorge PQ seemed to start at maximum difficulty, steamrolling everyone present, rather than ramping up.
We also see bug fixes in various quests, including both the group and raid versions of the Tower of Frozen Shadow.
Tomorrow marks a week that Destiny of Velious has been live. I’ve had time to run through the Icy Fingers quest series on three characters, get my flying mount, check out Thurgadin, and even run through the first quest area in the Eastern Wastes. I’ve also poked my head into the Tower of Frozen Shadows: Shadowed Corridors. I’ve learned a few things during this time that I’d like to pass on. This is mainly meant for the non-raiding portion of our audience since the raiders most likely know all of this information already or have the level of gear so that this doesn’t really apply.
A syndrome that I think many people who write about MMOs experience is that find ourselves actually PLAYING the game less and less. I’m certainly guilty of this myself. We get interested in a game, start writing about it based on our experience, and next thing you know we aren’t catching groups or raids anymore. So with Velious I made a commitment to get back in the game.
So one of my first experiences has been getting into Public Quests, which spawned the article yesterday. The concept certainly makes for an interesting type of content, one that was popular in Warhammer and is a huge draw for the new Rift. So far, I have heard feedback from quite a few players who have checked out Public Quests and have gotten mixed results.
Public Quests provide different kinds of rewards than we’ve seen in the past. Right now there are 2 Public Quests: Storm Gorge which is Southeast of Thurgadin and the Ring War which is Northeast of Thurgadin. There are plans to add several more Public Quests as we heard about in Beta (possibly the Sleeper!).
When do the Public Quests (live events that any player, from solo to a full raid of 24, can participate in) run?
From Windslasher:
Storm Gorge runs at even hours — noon, 2, 4, 6 etc. while Ring War starts on odd hours. So one of them starts every hour on the hour.
