Feldon
From the EverQuest2.com: A Letter from Smokejumper Hi there, Norrathians! As many of you know, I’m the Executive Producer in charge of the entire EverQuest franchise, including EQ, EQII, and the upcoming (and very different) “EverQuest Next.” For the last two years, I’ve also been the Producer for your EverQuest II world, and it’s been absolutely a blast working with the team, the game, its features, and most of all, its players. However, our company’s visions for the EQ Franchise are bigger in scope than what I can coordinate alone on EQII while also overseeing the rest of the...
From Silius on the EQ2 Forums: Just to clarify some confusion. Crit mit as a mechanic is being removed. NPC crit bonus was countered by crit mit and we are reducing crit bonus to 0 across the board. Critical avoidance is staying around. Critical avoidance is an NPCs way of contesting your chance to critically hit them. Replacing the adornments with HP is not to compensate for anything. Since the critical mitgiation stat is no longer useful we are converting to a stat that benefits all players. The goal is for this change to not change the difficulty of...
Dethdlr
Editor’s Note: A week ago, Dethdlr sent me a draft of an article that he had the intention of posting to EQ2Wire at some point in the future. It hasn’t been polished or edited. But in light of today’s announcement, it’s timely and provides an interesting contrast to my article. For many years in EQ2, I was a casual raider. What I mean by that is, I would primarily run group zones with guild mates but from time to time I would join a pickup raid or tag along when another guild needed to fill some raid slots. Several...
A funny thing happened when I was chatting with some folks about today’s news of Critical Mitigation being completely removed from EQ2. A few of them were surprised when I reminded them that Crit Mit has been part of EQ2 for over 3 years. Critical Mitigation was introduced in November 2008 with The Shadow Odyssey expansion. At first, it played no part in solo quests or group zones, thus many people weren’t even aware of it at the time. But anyone who was into raiding x4 (24 person) zones, and later, Ward of Elements x2 raids, has been collecting...
In what may go down as the best decision in EQ2 history, or a total overreaction to a problem that could have been solved with a 15-20% reduction across the board, Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson has announced that in the very near future, the Critical Mitigation stat will be COMPLETELY GOING AWAY. First introduced in The Shadow Odyssey, greatly expanded in Sentinel’s Fate, and then becoming the most important stat within Destiny of Velious as an alternative form of progression to raising the level cap (which is technologically challenging), here’s the announcement of this revelation from the EQ2 Forums: We’ve...
A selection of Velious raid mobs have been doubling up on Area-of-Effect attacks since the expansion’s launch nearly one year ago. Atan (of Unrest) summed up the issues: Condition 1: Modifieable timers line up such that a mob casts 2 different abilities simultaneously. Condition 2: Ability that normally comes ever 40 seconds comes twice in a row with no delay. Seems they are both bugs to me, but condition 1 is probably just a result of your design. Maevianiu is getting serious about addressing the AoE double-casting by raid mobs in Velious raid zones and had these responses: I...
Here are your Update Notes for January 31, 2012: GENERAL Fixed a bug where some characters wouldn’t show on character select. ZONE PROGRESSION / POPULATION Tower of Frozen Shadow (Raid) Tserrina’s spell “Wing Buffet” should no longer cause priests to become knocked back. Adds spawned from shadow doors should no longer spawn quite as quickly. The number of adds that spawn from shadow doors has been slightly reduced. Tower of Frozen Shadow: Umbral Halls Demanti Sheda should no longer have issues resetting his encounter. Demanti Sheda’s spell “Paralyzing Fear” should now stun instead of fearing and has been reduced...
We reported last week on the double-casting of AoEs by Destiny of Velious HM (hard mode) raid targets, making many fights either nearly impossible, or requiring exceptional luck. According to Kander, this is now being looked at: It is definitely a bug and we definitely intend to fix it. We have code looking at it right now. Meanwhile, Gninja remains our point man on all things Mercenaries. At the prodding of players, he has nailed down some issues, first with Defiler mercs not taking advantage of wards: Took a look at this. It seems they are still warding but...
From EverQuest2.com: Crushbone and Permafrost will be undergoing maintenance beginning at 4:00 AM Pacific* on January 31, 2012. We expect this downtime to last for approximately 8 hours.Chat will also be down for the Freeport and Oasis servers during this time. We apologize for this interruption and will bring the servers back online as soon as the maintenance is completed. Time Zone Conversions PST: 4:00am-noon EST: 7:00am-3:00pm GMT: 12:00-20:00 CET: 13:00-21:00
Last week, MMORPG posted an interview with Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson. The article is a bit light on revelations and threw a few softballs like “The Dungeon Maker is a brilliant addition to the game. Can we expect more functionality now that it seems like the community loves the feature so much?” , it could still be an interesting read, especially players looking for any scrap of information about the upcoming fourth game in the EverQuest franchise (you didn’t think we forgot about EQOA, did you?). Great ideas only really shine if you’re first to market with them. So we’re...
It is now two weeks since the announcement that ProSiebenSat, a TV and radio broadcast firm based in Germany, will become SOE’s ‘Exclusive Partner’ in Europe. ProSiebenSat’s gaming division, Alaplaya, is mostly known for poorly supported region-locked free-to-play browser games. The announcement immediately raised fears which, to date, have received no official (or unofficial) response from SOE beyond two posts from SmokeJumper asking for more patience: I can’t give you the official answer yet. I’ve been specifically asked to wait until the full FAQ and everything is created for this. However, this should be really big for EQII in...
Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson has posted a bit of a Twitter followup after his rather abrupt pronouncement that we should only expect three Game Updates this year, with the next one not arriving until sometime in April: Funny how when you come back from relaxing, you always run real hard to catch up. Does this make sense? Really? Humanz iz odd. DoV, Book 2, Chapter 1! (GU 63) : Withered Lands and Skyshrine. A big new overland, group instances, a contested dungeon, raids, and more! Sometimes things go right. And then because of that, they keep going right because that...
If you like posting on the EQ2 forums, you’ve probably been seeing a lot of the above screen. Over 2 weeks ago, the SOE forums lost the ability to store login information using cookies. In other words, anyone who was not actively browsing an SOE forum or website was logged out after 15 minutes of activity. At the time, this was explained as a temporary glitch. However last week, EQ2 Community Manager Amnerys (who returned to work at SOE in early January) had this unbelievable update on the issue: The forum auto logout has been changed to 3-hours now....
During Fan Faire 2011’s “Freeport and Beyond” panel led by EQ2 Exec Producer Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson, a slate of exciting plans was laid out. The announcements outlined Game Update 61 (War of Zek), GU62 (Freeport Reborn), GU63 and GU64 which would each contain new Destiny of Velious content, and Game Update 65 slated for August 2012 which would bring about the revamp of the City of Qeynos. Here’s a transcript of SmokeJumper‘s Fan Faire 2011 presentation (watch video here) from 13:58 to 14:36: What we’re concentrating on is making sure that we have not just new content to chew...
Optimization of the Broker is something that’s been on EQ2 Lead Programmer Rothgar‘s long term To Do list for quite a while. So it was a surprise when a change we first heard about in September 2011 partly arrived in yesterday’s Update Notes. All of those ‘vendor trash’ items with a description like “You might be able to find a merchant who would give you a few coins for this item.” are now NO BROKER. This change should help clear tens of thousands of items off the broker whose sole purpose has been to provide some flavor to players...
Here are today’s update notes from the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL Fixed a placement issue with certain moveable objects (for instance, the portals will now place properly during the Zynos fight in Anchor of Bazzul). ACHIEVEMENTS Characters who have completed “Your Eternal Reward” should now receive the “Agent of Freeport” achievement. MERCENARIES Shaman mercenaries should no longer continue to think they are in combat when it comes to casting wards on their group. They will still cast their out of combat preward spells.
From EverQuest2.com: Come take another look at Dungeon Maker, one of the awesome new features in EverQuest II’s Age of Discovery Expansion. Host Linda “Brasse” Carlson (Director of Global Community Relations), a huge fan of Dungeon Maker, will interview Akil “Lyndro” Hooper (Lead Designer). They will chat about Extra Dungeon Mark Days, tips on how to spend your rewards, and information on our Test Server initiative that allows you to play your characters in Dungeon Maker. We may even give you a sneak peek at a new dungeon that is in the works. Join us on Thursday, January 19th,...
Raiders continue to wait for a fix to the double-casting of AoEs first reported shortly after the release of Game Update 61 in August 2011. This issue has been discussed here here and recently here. We got a We’ll look into it from Kander on October 27, 2011 but have received no further communication on the issue. Meanwhile, there are a few tweaks coming to the difficulty of Drunder Raid Zones. These changes are currently on Test will likely go live next Tuesday. ZONE PROGRESSION / POPULATION Vallon’s Tower x4 (Tower of Tactics) [Challenge] Ambassador Grindstone will no longer...
Here are your update notes for today, January 19th: GENERAL Fixed a bug with house item tooltips that would sometimes show incorrect housing restrictions. Group Friend spells should once again work on warders and pets. MERCENARIES Blurt Grasplung should now cure detrimental spells on groupmates.
A video preview hosted by Emily “Domino” Taylor of the new “Storm Tower” Prestige Home was posted last week, and now this home is available for purchase for 1350SC. The preview: The announcement from EverQuest2.com: For those looking to create something evil and forboding, the new Storm Tower Isle Prestige Home has plenty of space for sinister decorating. Dark and stormy, the island comes complete with crashing waves, gloomy clouds, and a watchtower based on the Tower of Bone in Darklight Woods.
Here are your update notes for today, January 17, 2012: ANNOUNCEMENTS Extra Dungeon Mark Days are here from 17 January until 30 January! Dungeon Maker dungeon players and creators will receive 25% MORE tokens during this time period. To create and see listings of available dungeons, select Dungeon Maker from your EQ2 Menu button in game. Visit the Dungeon Maker category in the Marketplace to spend your tokens on items to equip your play character, as well as items to enjoy and build more dungeons. Prepare to get your dungeoneering on! GENERAL Fixed a UI bug on the mini-map...
From TSR-JoshuaM on the EQ2 Forums: We’ve reduced the amount of time needed in order to purchase a Character Transfer token to 7 days of active, recurring, Gold Membership time. This should alleviate a great deal of the gating issues preventing many of you from purchasing this token. Station Cash purchases of Non-recurring Gold Membership does not make you eligible for Character Transfer services. This service is only extended to active, recurring, Gold Membership holders or Station Access subscribers. In the event of an account to account transfer, a process which must be done manually, both accounts must be...
Posted by Ttobey on the EQ2 Forums: Most of the bugs ingame didn’t have very fulls sets of animations, so they wouldn’t work all that well as a warder, but we are working on it.
In a stream of responses to two threads discussing Mercenaries, Gninja answered several questions and provided useful information about the current and next waves of mercenaries. With a recent update, the number of mercenaries has increased to twenty (20) and mercenaries are now avilable in all 6 cities. Although they lack some of the innovative features and options of EverQuest Mercenaries, they are still one of the more popular features of the recently released Age of Discovery features expansion. Mercenaries New & Old Let’s take a look at the list of Mercenaries by class. This was posted by Slayacissa...
Think of the cookies! Ever since Monday’s ~30 minute SOE Forum Maintenance, players have been unable to stay logged into any SOE forum. This is causing headaches for players and SOE staff alike. If you remember your login information, you may participate in the discussion here. and an update from Amnerys who, if you have been following her twitter, know that she is back working after maternity leave: We are borked. We are working on it. It’s frustrating for all of us and we’ll have it fixed asap. Sorry for the inconvenience!