What’s on Test this weekend? Here are just a few items:

• UI: The XP bar will now stay put between logins.
• UI: Designers of custom UIs can now set the XP bar to not “snap” to top/bottom.
• UI: The Character window has seen multiple improvements.
• UI: The Implied Target arrow now reflects the ‘con’ color of the enemy, and can have its opacity adjusted.
• Items: 2-handed Weapons and Ranged Weapons have had their damage ratings increased. Ranged weapons will also have a bit of a damage penalty in PvP to compensate.
• The Guardian class has had over 25 changes made.
• Resident’s of Omen’s Call (Fens of Nathsar) now have a World Travel Globe on their dock.
• Items: The Wicked Wand of Malice effect has been changed to on-equip.
• The Palace of Roehn-Theer zone-in bug has been fixed.

If you’re wondering about other announced changes which aren’t on Test yet, they will come later. For instance Ranged Flurry and Ranged AA Auto-Attack changes are still in the queue. Remember, Game Update 57b is still 4-7 weeks away.

If you haven’t tested out these changes yet on the Test server, check em out!

Complete update notes after the jump…

Zoltaroth has made some changes to the automated Test Copy scripts so that characters will copy within hours rather than being on a 24-48 hour cycle as they are now. To copy a character to Test Copy, type /testcopy add on any live server. You will then need to choose to login to the Test server when starting up EQ2 with your choice of launcher.

From SOE-Rothgar on EQ2Interface:

Rest up because you’re most likely going to have a lot of work to do when GU57 hits test server in just over a week!

I can’t go into a lot of detail right now, but we’ve made some pretty big UI changes for 57. The default UI is getting a re-skin and many windows have been modified.

We’ll post more when we can.

This was posted on July 16th, so that would put Game Update 57 onto Test as early as the end of this week.

Test Copy has always been a temporary server, subject to complete wipes of all characters and guilds. In fact, the Test Copy server started out as a PvP Test server, and while it has been a PvE server for over 2 years now, the PvP switch has been “flipped” a few times for testing of Battlegrounds and PvP content leading up to Sentinel’s Fate.

Despite all cautions to the contrary, some players have built up characters and guilds on Test Copy, so they may be interested to know that another wipe is happening. Test Copy is currently down (we’re a bit late on the news) and when it comes back, we are hearing that it will be in a fresh state for testing, with no characters or guilds.

From Bunji on the EQ2 Forums:

Just a heads up that Test Copy is being brought offline (as early as today) and its database is being wiped.

We’re going to try and get Test Copy back up sometime tomorrow (7/13).

So we just had a Double XP weekend over the July 4th holiday. It was heavily promoted, and featured in an e-mail and on the forums. EQ2 Senior Producer SmokeJumper posted about spending almost the entire weekend playing and how quickly he earned levels, AAs, and how many groups he got.

Now, apparently, it’s time for the pendulum to swing the other way.

Yesterday’s Test Server Update Notes include the following details which will eventually make it to Live servers:

GENERAL

Many instances from Deserts of Flame and Kingdom of Sky are now persistent.  This includes Ancient’s Table, Cazel’s Mesa, Scornfeather Roost, The Halls of Fate, The Blackscale Sepulcher, The Den of the Devourer, The Vaults of El’Arad, and The Nest of the Great Egg.

It will be impossible to repeatedly zone into and out of these zones, killing all the mobs inside multiple times.

The focus this week has been on new EQ2 Senior Producer Dave Georgeson, and EQ2 Server Performance, which has been a persistent black cloud over EQ2 for the last 2 months.

Test Copy

Test Copy is getting some major use as it is where PvP and Battlegrounds changes are tested.

Gninja advised us:

We will be working out a schedule as to when the test_copy server will be pvp vrs pve. We are working it out now and will get back to you guys shortly.

Stuck at Character Select

An issue with being stuck at Character Select on Thursday was caused by a Configuration issue which has been corrected. EQ2 Forums

Adventure/AA/Tradeskill XP Weekend

The e-mail and EQ2Players announcements for this weekend’s Bonus XP event neglected to mention that Tradeskills will also see a bonus. We have not yet been informed what % the bonus will be, but 30% is a good guess.

Game Update 56 Goes to Test Soon

We don’t have an exact date, but Game Update 56 will be moving to Test and Test Copy soon. When we know exactly what content will appear on Test and Test Copy, we’ll let you know. It would not be surprising if New Halas is not in the first build. EQ2 Forums

Thundering Steppes Revamp Mothballed

Gninja has confirmed the news we speculated about earlier this year.

Unfortunately we will not be making drastic changes to Thundering Steppes this time around. That doesn’t mean there will be no changes but we are not considering it being revamped. GU56 will be full of cool stuff though (Including but not limited to New Halas and some new raids) you should see it hitting test servers in the not too distant future.

A revamp of Thundering Steppes seems to be completely off the development radar at this point, with Butcherblock Mountains stepping in as the “place to be” for level 20-35 content.

Although subject to change, our understanding is that, just like Timorous Deep, level 20 players will be offered a quest guiding them from New Halas to the Butcherblock docks to begin level 20-35 content.

Level 82 Mastercrafted Armor

It seems the strength of level 80 Tier 1 and Tier 2 Shard armor from The Shadow Odyssey was always destined to overshadow Level 82 Mastercrafted armor. But that doesn’t mean the EQ2 team haven’t given up on it yet! Domino has managed to land some additional upgrades to the Level 82 set:

Look for some changes coming to level 82 mastercrafted armor with GU56 (for a start, it should all be level 82 now …) including the addition of yellow adornment slots and some resists. We are also in the process of discussing the possibilities of some stat tweaks.

It now seems even less likely that any of the Tier 1 Marks of Manaar gear will be an upgrade to any player. Note that Tier 2 Marks of Manaar gear (which has Critical Mitigation and better stats) must be sought out in Moonfield Hamlet in Stonebrunt Highlands.

The EQ2 Test Server has just been updated with most of Game Update 55. GU55 will be the free content available to all EQ2 players on February 16th, to coincide with the release of the expansion.

The biggest part of GU55 (with the loss of New Halas, Shaders 3, and the TS Revamp) are Battlegrounds.

Players are being asked to run dungeons, etc. to see what effect combat changes may have had.

Rothgar @ EQ2 Forums