If you’ve been hoping for any hint of class tweaks we’ll see in Velious, Xelgad has posted an early preview. Naturally this does not include any mention of new AA lines or other abilities we may gain.

We’re still three months from the Destiny of Velious launch, and more sweeping changes than the ones listed below were made in less time, so take this as an early teaser, subject to change. In short, there is great news for Illusonists and Summoners, and some news for other classes as well.

A thread was created on the EQ2 Forums a couple of weeks ago entitled “Why is there no hype about Velious?” which elicited responses from Amnerys and Rothgar indicating that we’re still 3 months away and not everything is nailed down. This thread raged on.

However the real discussion about the EverQuest II expansion Destiny of Velious and future of Norrath beyond its release has been happening in the elephantine Server Merges Announced by Email thread, which has become sort of an omnibus discussion between SmokeJumper, Rothgar, and the players.

EQ2Players received an incomplete revamp last December, leaving the site graphically refreshed, but with significant issues including problematic content updates, buggy Javascript, and various statistical oversights. The site was also re-branded as EverQuest2.com and became a free service, instead a paid feature.

The SOE Platform Team were initially responsive to the issues brought up and some of them were fixed, but it seems there was some personnel shuffling and as a result, little else has been done to the revamped EverQuest2.com since the release of Sentinel’s Fate. Players have been trying to nail down some kind of response from the EQ2 team about when the site will get some attention. SmokeJumper finally went on the record with:

We haven’t given up on it. It wounds our souls that it’s in that state.

But December is always the busiest month in a game company and this one is no exception. We hope to give the site love early next year sometime.

EQ2Wire would personally prefer some type of public API to this data, but we’ll take what we can get.

So you might have heard that Vampires, specifically the Freebloods will be a playable race for those who have an active subscription for December and January, and then purchase the Destiny of Velious expansion. We’ve naturally been wondering how a former villain of EQ2 will become a playable race and if there will be any attempt to tie this into existing lore. Meanwhile, we’ve been stocking up on garlic, stakes, and copies of Twilight.

It looks like some unexpected changes to Research Assistants have hit the Test server. Spell and Combat Art upgrades are now possible without any involvement by a Sage, Jeweler, or Alchemist. And instead of hailing an NPC, Research is being folded into the interface.

From the Test Copy notes:

RESEARCH

• The Research window has been moved in to the Knowledge window.
• Journeyman through Master spell tiers can be researched.
• You are no longer required to speak with a Research Assistant to start/change/claim research.

From the EQ2 Forums:

We’ve found a problem with the Gifting option for the EQII Marketplace, so the service will be temporarily disabled until early next week when we can patch a fix for this issue. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Commentary

It is unknown how many players exploited the StationCash Gifting feature, what punishment they can expect, or when exactly this feature will be restored.

In response to a conversation about the division of development time between EQ2, StationCash items, and Legends of Norrath, Calthine of EQ2 ZAM made a statement that elicited a response from SmokeJumper. That response confirmed on Thursday what many of us have believed but been unable to prove.

Since the introduction of StationCash Marketplace, StationCash Items have been designed and tested by the main EQ2 team and not, as has been posited, by a separate team of artists and programmers. SmokeJumper indicates that this is changing, and with the revenue from SC/LoN, SOE have been able to justify hiring an artist to create said items.

Editor’s Note: Post has been updated with 2 additional quotes.

If you’ve been following the EQ2 Dev Tracker, you know that EQ2 Senior Producer SmokeJumper has been tearing things up the past few days with much dodging, parrying, and responses to player concerns.

In response to the argument that “EQ2 is dead”, EQ2 Senior Producer SmokeJumper had some words for competing MMOs out there. While he didn’t mention Rift: Planes of Telara by name — which just opened with what some people are calling the smoothest, most successful Beta Test of any MMO in history, and which will be launching head-to-head with Destiny of Velious next spring — well, check out the quote after the jump…

Last night we received an e-mail with some surprising new information about events leading up the the EverQuest II: Destiny of Velious expansion. They include up to six gifts for players with active subscriptions (accounts in good standing) through December, January, and February, as well as rewards for players who purchase the Destiny of Velious expansion.

To get the two unique December gifts, you must have:

• EQ2 or EQ2X account with Gold or Platinum active on December 14th.

To get the two unique January gifts, you must have:

• EQ2 or EQ2X account with Gold or Platinum active on January 17th.

To get the two unique February gifts (Ice Wolf Mount and Freeblood race), you must have:

• EQ2 or EQ2X account with Gold or Platinum active on December 14th.
• EQ2 or EQ2X account with Gold or Platinum active on January 17th.
• EQ2 or EQ2X account with Gold or Platinum active on February 8th.
• Purchase the Destiny of Velious expansion by December 31, 2011.

Update: Lambda has read the fine print and it suggests that Destiny of Velious could be activated anytime by December 31, 2011 to receive the February rewards, if you fulfill the other requirements.

Here’s a look at that Ice Wolf Mount:

And if you caught the Photoshop Disaster above where the wolf appears to only have 3 legs (debateable depending on the angle, although this really points more to the fact that the original wolf models in EQ2 desparately need a revamp), you’re not alone.

SOE have brought back their StationCash Discount program ‘Super Fan’ again, this time offering 25% off and 35% large denominations, as well as special items each day for SOE’s major games. Remember, StationCash can be used for character slots (normally $10 to buy a lifetime character slot), character transfers, and other items. And in time for Frostfell, StationCash items can now be gifted to other players.

From the EQ2 Forums:

Amnerys posted this today on the Everquest2.com forums:

As of yesterday afternoon, the decision has been made to hold the merge until next week. We want to be sure we have full staff on hand to make everything goes smoothly.

Commentary: Some of you are probably wondering what the heck is going on with the merges and thinking that if they’re pushing it this many times, this probably isn’t going to end well.  From what I understand, they needed to give people 30 days notice of the upcoming server merges (not sure exactly why but sounds like a good idea regardless).   So I’m guessing that they asked their devs/engineers when they thought would be the earliest that they could be ready for the merges and they said Nov 16th if all goes well and we don’t run into any hiccups.  So they announced the merges would take place starting on Nov 16th.  When Nov 16th rolled around, they were down to the final rounds of testing the process and hit a few hiccups.  They are now in the process of working through the final hiccups in their testing environment before inflicting running the merge scripts on the live servers.

I’m personally glad that they are taking the cautious approach to make sure as few hiccups as possible make it to the live servers.  In the software industry it’s all too often that management forces devs to push something out the door whether it’s ready or not just so they meet the deadline that was announced.  I’d much rather have quality pushed a little late than bugs pushed on time.  These delays are a good thing.  It shows they are taking their time to get it right rather than rushing it out the door.  Even with the delays, I’m sure some things will still go wrong, but hopefully it won’t be very many.

Here are your hotfix notes for November 23, 2010:

MARKETPLACE
You can now use the Marketplace at Login / Character Create to purchase account related items such as character slots!

You can now send gifts to your friends from the Marketplace!
 
ABILITIES
If the caster cancels a maintained spell that he cast, it will cancel the spell for everyone in the group.
 
PVP GENERAL
Fixed a crash bug from Battlegrounds and PvP combat.
 
QUESTS
Sinking Sands: The Beetle Herding quest line should be working correctly now.

The Heroes’ Festival is SOE’s celebration of the anniversary of EverQuest II. This will mark the 6th year since EverQuest II premiered. There are a series of repeatable and nonrepeatable quests which reward various house items as well as a collection. Absent this year are the player-made paintings introduced during last year’s brief event.

EQ2 ZAM has updated information on the quests and events going on in this year’s Heroes Festival.

From the EQ2 Forums, the Blackburrow -> Everfrost server merger has now slipped to sometime next week.

Update: No new updates at this point. We’ll be aiming for sometime next week. Enjoy your weekend in Norrath!

From Rothgar on the EQ2 Forums:

We’re doing another QA pass on the merge process tonight, after making some additional changes to the procedure. If all goes well, we would most likely start the first merge early Thursday morning.

We’re going to go out on a limb and estimate the downtime could be 8-14 hours, but we may be surprised in either direction. As soon as we know which servers are being merged next, we’ll let you know!

Some maintenance notes from the EQ2 Forums and SOE Operations Team…

US Servers:

The US servers will come down on November 16, 2010, at 6:30 am PDT (3:30pm GMT) for a hotfix.  The expected downtime is 1 1/2 hours.

There are no update notes for this hotfix.

Europe Servers:

This is a notification that UK worlds will be updated at 5:00 AM London Time on 11/17/2010. The estimated downtime will be 2 hours.

Crushbone, Befallen, Permafrost:

On Tuesday, November 16, 2010, the following servers will be coming down at 5:00 AM PST for network maintenance: Befallen, Permafrost, Crushbone.

The servers are expected to be down for about 3 hours. We apologize for any inconvenience and will have the servers back online as quickly as possible.

and we’re keeping our eyes peeled for news of Server Mergers.

Amnerys posted several messages on the Everquest2.com forums today about the upcoming server merges. The first one happening is Blackburrow into Everfrost which may happen as soon as tomorrow (Nov 16th, 2010). As for the rest of them:

I can definitely tell you that we’re not going to be announcing a full schedule ahead of time.

From this post it looks as though the plan is to do the first server merge tomorrow if they get everything in place in time:

At this time, we are still getting all the I’s dotted and the T’s crossed, and we cannot confirm just yet if the merge will happen on 11/16 or if there will be a delay, but Blackburrow to Everfrost will be the first merge to take place.

As soon as we have official confirmation, I will update this thread and its subject line with a date and time.

It has been asked if at least the order of the merges can be released even if there are no firm dates. We’ll let you know what we find out.

Update:  It doesn’t look like a schedule is forthcoming.  Amnerys posted this on the Everquest2.com forums in response to the the questions about the order of the merges:

We don’t have a schedule that can be shared right now, because we’re still working on things on the back-end, and the details that go into deciding the order could still change. Because this is a very fluid transition, I don’t know that we’ll be posting a master list of order at all. We will definitely announce each one before it occurs, but I’m not sure if we can post an overall sequence.

Also from Amnerys on Everquest2.com:

 The first merger will not be taking place on Tuesday. Possibly Wednesday. We’ll let you know as soon as we know.

File this under “It was only a matter of time”.

New this week on the StationCash Marketplace is a 5 charge item for 250 SC ($2.50 normally, $1.25 if you stocked up during the sale) which opens a portal which you and nearby friends can use for up to 30 seconds to all World Travel Bell locations.

If you’ve been thinking you might want to stock up on StationCash to buy Character Slots, Name or Race change potions, Server Transfers, Vitality potions, etc. or the latest set of appearance armor, or even a set of furniture for your house, today is the last day to buy StationCash at a 50% price discount. Unlike past Double StationCash Weekends, this promotion works with credit cards and Paypal-funded StationCash and thus can be funded in Europe and other parts of the world.

As part of SOE Super Fan days, every day has also brought an additional 50% discount to one item. Today’s 50% off item (a total of 75% off if you buy StationCash at the discount as well) is the Smoked Leatherhide Armor Crate:

From the EQ2 Forums:

The US servers will come down on November 9, 2010, at 5am PDT for a hotfix.  The expected downtime for most servers is 1 hour, with the exception of Befallen, Permafrost, and Crushbone. These three servers will have a 2 hour downtime for maintenance.

and…

This is a notification that UK worlds (Runnyeye & Splitpaw) will be updated at 5:00 AM London Time on 11/10/2010. The estimated downtime will be 2 hours.

and here are the Update Notes:

GENERAL

• Fixed a client crash condition.

ITEMS

• Most single target effects that proc off of beneficial spells should no longer clutter up the maintained spells window.

POPULATION

• All of the guards at the Academy of Arcane Science in North Freeport are now level 45.

QUESTS

• Cleansing This Temple Needs…: The void-stalker should now be able to attack the necessary targets to update the quest.
• Certain tarantulas in the Sinking Sands will once again attack certain skittish scarabs. This fixes the Beetle Herding quest line.

The folks over at EQ2 ZAM were able to seed some questions to the EQ2 team about the upcoming Server Merges. Their  answers to those questions have now been posted. Questions covered topics such as purging of old character and guild names (not happening), character rename potions (they’ll need to /petition if there is a conflict), EQ2Players stats and discoveries (good luck!), and Server Titles for the target/destination server (nope).

The largest pool of questions cover  items placed in bank slots, shared banks, houses, and guild halls. Some characters and guilds have thousands of items so this is a substantial concern. It sounds like there may have been some improvements in the Server Merge automation scripts because unlike past server merges, it sounds like items placed in houses and guild halls will in fact NOT be reassigned to the house or guild hall owner, and items will NOT need to be re-placed in houses after the merger. This conflicts with the initial announcement, so there must have been some programming breakthroughs.

Server Merges start on or about November 16th. It’s not been announced which server is first or what the ultimate schedule will be. More as we have it…

From the EQ2 Forums:

On Monday, November 8, 2010, the following servers will be coming down at 6:00 AM PST for network maintenance: Befallen, Permafrost, Crushbone, Runnyeye, Mistmoore, Oasis and Innovation. The downtime will also affect Battlegrounds servers. The servers are expected to be down for about 1 and 1/2 hours. We apologize for any inconvenience and will have the servers back online as quickly as possible.

Now that both Europe and the US are on off Daylight Savings, that puts the downtime from 14:00-15:30 GMT or 15:00-16:30 for mainland Europe.

EQ2 dev Bunji has posted on the EQ2 Forums regarding the Daily Solo Void Shard Mission:

We’re working on a fix for this one which is planned for the next Hotfix.

A Bow to Pull With

Any good plate tank needs a good pulling bow.  You know, one that can hit mobs from way across the room.  You may not use it all the time, but you at least have it on your hot bar.  They come in handy for all sorts of things.  Once you’ve used one with an extra long range, it’s hard to go back to using anything else.  They even make questing easier since you can hit the mobs from so far away (less running around).

Remember that patch that went in yesterday?  The one that caused raid zones to crash over and over again?  Today we get the patch for the patch.  “Fixed a crash issue related to pet immunity” apparently means, “we fixed the raid zone crashing bug that we introduced yesterday“.  This bug was apparently reported on the website late last week but the info didn’t make it to the developers.  Remember, always /bug when you find a bug.  That doesn’t mean they will always see it, but at least that gets it into their system. Notes after the break…