Feldon
ZAM’s Cyliena, who has taken a larger role handling in-depth coverage of EQ2 and specifically Game Update 61, took a moment to appear on the Jethal Silverwing Show this week. She joined Jethal and Elquinjena to talk about EverQuest II’s Game Update 61 and more. Download Jethal Silverwing Show for August 23, 2011 featuring Cyliena
Game Update 61: “The War of Zek” UPDATE NOTES A GENERAL SUMMARY OF WHAT’S IN GAME UPDATE 61: All dungeon and overland loot items have been re-itemized. What does this mean? It means loot everywhere should be legitimate for the level it drops for, no matter where you go now. Go explore some nooks and crannies you haven’t seen for a long time and get off the Golden Path! The loot’s good again. The Velious saga continues as you journey past the Citadel of Drunder to the Plane of War itself in a new dungeon and raid, and a...
The War of Zek, or Game Update 61, will go live on Thursday, August 25, 2011. The US servers will be offline at the usual update time of 7:00 am PDT and are expected to be back online around 10:00 am PDT. UK worlds will be updated at 3:00 PM London Time. The estimated downtime will be 3 hours. Pacific Daylight Time (PDT): 7:00am-10:00am Eastern Daylight Time (EDT): 10:00am-01:00pm British Summer Time (BST): 03:00pm-06:00pm Central Europe Time (CET): 04:00pm-07:00pm We will post the Game Update 61: Update Notes as soon as we have them.
One year ago, the EverQuest II Extended “Free-to-Play” service launched. In its wake, the EverQuest II Free Trial was unceremoniously discontinued. At Fan Faire, we learned that the Trial was coming back, and today it has. Past trials have been very limited: Play the Fae — A 7 day trial of one starting zone (Faydwer) and limited to level 20. Trial of the Isle — A trial limited to level 6 on the Qeynos and Freeport starting islands. Both had limited access to chat channels, private messaging, and joining groups and/or guilds. Unlike those past trials, this one is...
The Age’s End Prophecy So perhaps you’ve skipped a few quests, or clicked through the dialogue of yet another quest NPC standing between you and phat loots. Or you just haven’t gotten into the necessary groups or raids to experience the continuing storyline. Point is, there is an overarching storyline about the Swords of Destiny (the Qeynos Claymore and Lucan D’Lere’s Soulfire) that carries from Echoes of Faydwer. And leading up to Game Update 61, the EQ2 Lore designers have shared a comprehensive overview of what’s going on in case you missed it. Check out the writeup at EverQuest2.com.
Summoners, Enchanters, and Shamans have been curious at exactly how Shared Pet Stats work. Fortunately some details have been provided by Maevianiu on the EQ2 Forums: NOTE: Any buffs that affect a group/raid do not transfer from the owner to the pet (that would be doubling up) but single target ones that grant the stats below should go to both the owner and the pet when cast on the owner. The following stats are copied from the owner to the pet: Attributes, potency, ability mod, crit bonus (pvp and pve), crit chance, toughness, doublecast chance (pve and pvp), ability...
From Amnerys on the EQ2 Forums: Hail, friends! In order to make sure that Game Update 61: The War of Zek gets ample testing time, we will be launching this update on Thursday, August 25th. We look forward to sharing the new features and content with you, and will have more specific information on the downtimes for the update later in the week.
Ready or Not, Game Update 61 is going live tomorrow, August 23rd, 2011 Thursday, August 25th, 2011.
From Domino on the EQ2 Forums: Just wanted to post a quick update since I know folks are looking forward to hearing whose houses we picked, and how. Due to the large number of submissions we couldn’t visit each house in-game, so we looked over all the linked screenshots that Amnerys compiled from the submissions in various places and made a short list of what we thought were the most outstanding houses, which we could then visit in game. There were some really fantastic submissions and it was a great to look through them all!
The EQ2 design and mechanics teams have been working nose-to-the-grindstone for at least 2 1/2 months Reitemizing EverQuest 2. That’s every weapon, cloak, charm, piece of jewelry, armor, etc. We’re talking 50,000 items — the sum total of 7 years of overland zones, dungeons, and raid zones. To do so and make no mistakes would be a statistical improbability. On June 24th, the first pass on reitemizing Mastercrafted gear appeared on Test. Silius (who has since moved up from “itemization guy” to Mechanics Lead) expressed appreciation for the bug reports that came in, but then 8 weeks of silence...
In response to a thread about the lack of Battlegrounds activity, SmokeJumper had this surprising comment: We hope to roll out solutions for the [Battlegrounds] matchmaking at the same time as the Dungeon Finder roll out next week (which also uses the matchmaker). If the fixes don’t go in then, they will roll out (very) shortly thereafter!
If you just can’t get enough of Achievements in EQ2, check out Xalmat’s EQ2Achieve.com: EQ2Achieve, your guide to all EverQuest II Achievements, has just returned from a trip to the Test Server with news of all sorts of brand new GU61 related Achievements, including new achievements related to the new House Rating system! For more information, please visit and read my GU61 Achievements Preview.
Niami Denmother has turned in an in-depth preview of Game Update 61, including new House Signs, Tiles, Dividers, Paintings, the new House Rating system, and Furniture. Don’t miss it!
Cyliena of EQ2 ZAM has put in some serious hours documenting tomorrow Thursday’s Game Update 61. If you want the full details of what you can expect in Game Update 61, including walkthroughs, screenshots, and more, we suggest you not miss any of these articles: GU61 Preview: Beastlords Prelude Event GU61 Preview: AA Revamp & New Tradeskill Tree GU61 Preview: Dynamic Dungeons GU61 Preview: Fae and Arasai Take Flight GU61 Preview: Carpenters Get Crafty GU61 Preview: Velious Adventurer Quests
From EverQuest2.com: With the new Legends of Norrath set, Priestess of the Anarachs, scheduled for release Tuesday, August 23, 2011, we knew folks were going to be awfully curious about its contents. In his Producer’s Letter last week, Mark Tuttle previewed the Drachnid Bloodknight and Prestidigitation cards from the upcoming set, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Not only do we have two more of the cards to show off, but we also have a preview of the in-game EverQuest and EverQuest II loot available with this set!
Cronyn, who designed and implemented the Beastlord Prelude Quest, has produced some hilarious MS Paint comic strips in the past, but this is the funniest yet. This was in response to a player request… Cronyn, can those of us who don’t want to go through the whole quest, get one of your legendary MS paint summaries of it?
Dethdlr
With GU61 right around the corner (Tuesday, 23 Aug 2011), SmokeJumper has posted a note on the official forums warning players of some of the changes that will have an immediate impact on players. Read on to see what Smokejumper had to say and our commentary on ways to prepare.
Having used my adornment calculator for a while now, there have been a few times where having the short descriptions in the drop down lists instead of the name of the adornment has been frustrating. Usually, this is when I’m trying to put in what I currently have adorned, rather than starting from scratch. The descriptions work well when you’ve never adorned a particular slot, but there are times when you don’t need them and would rather see the adornment names. For example, if I wanted to send a link to someone that shows my current adornments, I would...
After a growing silence about key parts of Game Update 61, specifically unexpected mechanics and itemization changes in high level gear, Salim “Silius” Grant, EQ2 Mechanics Lead, has stepped up and provided a detailed response to the issues as laid out so well by a determined player, Nevao in a thread entitled May we have a “State of the GU” post? Responses from Silius are in red: Itemization Changes Tier 3 to T8 revamp? Last time I checked there were still reports of items with insanely out of whack stats given the tier (mid-tier items with 40+ weapon skills...
Moments ago, we spoke with Gninja on Test, who has been working hard on spot-checking and fixing any gaps in the Reitemization of level 20-80 items. He’s also been talking to players, examining linked items, and checking bug reports. He also linked some of the loot from Dynamic Dungeons and some higher level items which have gotten new effects. From the EQ2 Forums: If you have specific examples [of itemization issues] please PM them to us. We can take alook at them on a case by case basis. I should also be available on the test server looking for...
It was easy to interpret SmokeJumper‘s suggestion that StationCash purchases could count as “time” towards Veteran Rewards and, taken to its logical conclusion, allow players on EQ2X or even Live to “buy” Veteran time. However this is not what he meant! Here’s a clarification: Veteran subscribers that have been here forever have already received their rewards. That would be a “no” for [taking previous time into account]. We’d only give them “backlog” credits from the last vet reward time to now. But for EQ2X’ers, you’ve never received credit, so you’d get credits as far back as August last year...
For those of you who don’t have 77 minutes to listen to this week’s SOE Podcast, we’ve listened for you and provide details of the “War of Zek-cast”. First, a few bullet points… Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is still expecting 2 entirely new content updates this year, in addition to a number of Bug Bash updates to fix long-standing bugs with the game. Tiffany “Amnerys” Spence, EQ2 Community Manager, is expecting twins and so will be taking some time off from managing the EQ2 forums. Others will step in to tackle this job. The Beastlords Prelude Event launches with...
SmokeJumper mentioned changes to the Veteran Rewards system at Fan Faire and touched on them further today on the EQ2 Forums: I can’t get you a solid ETA yet, but yes, we’ll have a revamp coming. The design is outlined and we’re committed to the concept. Basically, we’ll make a system by which you get a token or credit (or something) every day that you play (for subscribers, including Gold & Plat) and other metrics (for Silver & Bronze folks). Then we’ll create a category of things which are “veteran rewards” that all have costs associated with them. You...
From EverQuest2.com: Join us for the Official SOE Podcast #115 – the “War of Zek-Cast!” Your host, Aimee “Ashlanne” Rekoske is joined by your co-host Tiffany “Amnerys” Spence. Listen in as they chat about the War of Zek update coming to EQII and reveal the latest Fan Spot Challenge Winner. We’ll also have two interviews for you this Podcast. Linda “Brasse” Carlson chats with Akil “Lyndro” Hooper (returning EQ2 Lead Designer) and Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson (Executive Producer of the EverQuest franchise) first, and then with Kyle “Kander” Vallée and Paul “Cronyn” Molina. Both interviews will cover EverQuest II’s War...
From the EQ2 Forums: Your host Eric “Piestro” Cleaver will be joined by EQII Producer Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson and Lead Programmer Greg “Rothgar” Spence on Thursday, August 18, 2011, at 4:00 PM Pacific, for this week’s webcast on Stickam. They will be talking about EQII’s Game Update 61, The War of Zek, and the new feature that allows players to capture video in-game and upload it to YouTube! Join us on Thursday, August 18, 2011, at 4:00 p.m. US Pacific Time*, as we live stream this webcast on the SOE channel on Stickam! You can also tune in through...