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 set in. To date, few of the bugs reported had been corrected, and there was little to no developer guidance on the testing process, such as when another pass of changes would be pushed to test. At press time, Mastercrafted gear remains an unfinished work, with frustrating inconsistencies and unavoidable gaps.
During this time, drops from Group instances and Raids, as well as Quest gear from levels 20-80 started have also gone under the knife. We’ve seen the expected stats changes, yet some of the tweaks have been more unpredictable, with items flip-flopping class or even archetype.
The question on everyone’s minds is, will the itemization be ready by tomorrow?