Bunji wrote over on the EQ2Players forums:

 Test needs another update before the token exchange will be working correctly.  This should be in the next Test update:

You may now exchange your Gears, Ganak and Smuggler’s tokens for Battleground tokens by speaking to the Sisters of War.

I’ll try and update Test again tonight.

Platinum Memberships are now available for EQ2X players!

With the Platinum Membership, players can enjoy a robust experience in the world of Norrath. Platinum members will get full access to all 19 standard character races, all 24 classes, all spell tiers and equipments grades. They can play up the the current maximum level (level 90) and get 10 character slots for making a variety of characters.

In addition, Platinum members will have six bag slots, an unlimited coin allowance, and can send and receive in-game mail. This level of membership allows unlimited use of the broker system, voice chat and in-game chat, joining and creating guilds, and the use of eight bank slots and 75 active journal quests.

Platinum members get full customer service support and won’t see any in-game pop-up advertising. As an added bonus, they’ll receive 500 SC per month.

For pricing and more details, visit the EverQuest II Extended Membership Plans FAQ and view the Membership Matrix.

Platinum Memberships are now available for EQ2X players!

With the Platinum Membership, players can enjoy a robust experience in the world of Norrath. Platinum members will get full access to all 19 standard character races, all 24 classes, all spell tiers and equipments grades. They can play up the the current maximum level (level 90) and get 10 character slots for making a variety of characters.

In addition, Platinum members will have six bag slots, an unlimited coin allowance, and can send and receive in-game mail. This level of membership allows unlimited use of the broker system, voice chat and in-game chat, joining and creating guilds, and the use of eight bank slots and 75 active journal quests.

Platinum members get full customer service support and won’t see any in-game pop-up advertising. As an added bonus, they’ll receive 500 SC per month.

For pricing and more details, visit the EverQuest II Extended Membership Plans FAQ and view the Membership Matrix.

Update: Or are they? This has been posted under This Months News on the EQ2Players.com website and is also on the login page for EQ2X but hasn’t made it to the main page and reports are that it isn’t quite live yet.  Will it launch today?  I guess we’ll know soon.

Update 2: It’s now linked on EQ2Players.com and has been announced by Kiara.  Pretty sure that means it’s a go.

This coming weekend will have a double experience bonus, kicking off on September 3rd at 10AM PDT and concluding on September 7th at 10AM PDT. Adventurer, Alternate Advancement and Tradeskill experience will all have a 100% bonus applied to them. This bonus weekend will affect all US, French, German, Japanese, Test and EQ2 Extended servers.

On the 20th of this month, the phases of the moon will once again be aligned, revealing the secretive grottos. Moonlight Enchantments will run from 12:01AM PDT on September 20th and will conclude at 11:59PM PDT on September 21st. No new items are expected to be on the grotto merchants.

Eight new druid rings in Norrath still feature the Druid Ring Reconstruction Event quests. Complete these repeatable quests to earn tokens that can be exchanged for special reward items, several of which are unique to this event. Players who have helped out with at least ten different tasks for the rings can assist Kurista in fulfilling the Path of the Prophet. This event is expected to remain until Game Update 58.

• Sort by current zone for the quest journal now properly puts the current zone quests at the top of the list.

SHADER 3.0

• Fixed an issue causing parts of some structures in Halas to show as wireframe.

COMBAT

• Ranged AE autoattacks and Ranged flurries now include ammo effects.
• Fixed a bug where your AE autoattack combat messaging would reference the incorrect NPCs.

ABILITIES

Guardian

• Shoulder the Burdon is now 15% hate transfer.
• Enhance: Armored is now 3% block chance per point.

ITEMS

• Runic Deflection on Band of Mreeptahp’s Fury now correctly wards your target.

BATTLEGROUNDS

• Fixed a bug where slacker prevention in battlegrounds was not giving some players ample warning before kicking them for slacking.
• You may now exchange your Gears, Ganak and Smuggler’s tokens for Battleground tokens by speaking to the Sisters of War.

STONEBRUNT HIGHLANDS

• The King Speleothem multi-stage event in Stonebrunt Highlands should now be fixed. Player should now be able to progress through the stages and fight the end boss.

I am a convention fiend to say the least. I always love to have an opportunity to meet some people face to face. What better place to do it than in a convention where I am surrounded by thousands of other geeks, nerds and dorks. This year I’m fair more prepared for Dragon*Con but not nearly enough. I don’t have any Epic Slant goodies to give away and my costume situation is dismal. Perhaps next year I’ll be able to use it.

On the plus side some friends from back home are going. I’m also going to get to see the lovely community folks from SOE! I’m meeting Brian Green, seeing folks I met at DC09 and the great people from Guild Launch! My dance card is quite full to say the least. At any rate, if you’re going to be in the area, why not come out!

This just in from Smokejumper on the EQ2X Forums:

If you are a Bronze or Silver member, there are two new features available to you!

Classes, a la Carte!

You can now purchase individual classes for 750 SC each. You can either purchase them in the marketplace or at the time of character creation. All classes outside of the original eight free ones are available for purchase.

(Gold and Platinum members, this doesn’t affect you since you have always had access to all the classes.)

Broker Credits!

If you wish to interact on the Broker system (either listing an item for sale or purchasing something for yourself), you can now do so. A pack of 10 Broker Credits is available for 150 SC. Each time you list an item or purchase something, you expend one credit.

(Again, Gold and Platinum members don’t need these since they have open access to the Broker at all times.)

A fix for this has crept its way onto the test server which is lowering the mitigation of most tanks.  So, on the test server, if you have any of this gear and yesterday you were barely able to survive during a given fight, chances are, today you’ll go splat.  Xelgad posted an explanation on the EQ2players.com forums.

Xelgad says that they aren’t in a rush to get this to live and that they will take the time to get it working right.  Hopefully this means tweaking other things if needed, like mob damage output.  Xelgad writes:

You may have noticed that currently on test mitigation numbers seem lower. There was no notes in the Test Update notes because it was pushed to Test a little sooner than we expected.
 
We’ve been evaluating all of the systems in the game to find out what is working and what is not working correctly. During this investigation, we found that there was a bug with the blue stat “Mitigation Increase” causing it to give noticably more than the listed amount of mitigation. This bug has been fixed and is currently on the test servers.
 
A mitigation increase of 10% was increasing plate mitigation by about 30% and leather mitigation by about 54%. This has been fixed so that the mitigation increase that says 10% will increase your mitigation by 10%. The addition of mitigation to the brawler self buffs was to be in tandem with this bug fix. This change is important because reaching the cap on mitigation causes some abilities, advancements and gear options to become irrelevent. That is obviously detrimental to gameplay and it can be detrimental to balance as well. If some classes have been balanced around having abilities to boost their mitigation and players end up capping out that stat then that element of balance is lost.
 
This bug has been in the game for a long time so the fix will reduce the mitigation of most tanks. For the sake of being able to balance the tanks in the future, we needed to correct the formula that was used to calculate the effectiveness of “Mitigation Increase.”

We’ll try to address questions and concerns regarding this fix and we aren’t in a rush to get this change to Live. If it looks like there may be problems with it, we’ll take the time to get it working right.

• Fixed an issue preventing research from starting.

COMBAT

• Ranged AE autoattack now hits targets in a radius around the primary target rather than a cone in front of the attacker.

USER INTERFACE

• Several /loadui fixes:
  • Your UI settings should now be restored after using the /loadui command.
  • Using the /loadui command will now persist your theme across sessions. 
  • The theme is saved in eq2_recent.ini so this value will be overridden if you’ve specified a theme in eq2.ini.
• Fixed a bug causing coin to not be draggable to the coin section of the Character window.
• The bonus xp from max level characters now displays properly at character select.

ITEMS

• Torque of the War Blade and Ring of the Vice Vigoth now have resists added to their stats.

BATTLEGROUNDS

• A NEW Battleground token is available. 
  • Purchase your new token using the older Battleground tokens at the Sisters of War in each city.
• Daily Quests will now be available to all BG participants. 
• Daily Quests are now limited to one scenario per day.  
• Daily Quests will now grant additional rewards upon completion.

Account services, including account maintenance, all commerce, and Station Store will be down for maintenance for 3 hours on Thursday, September 2, 2010, from 5:00 am PDT to 8:00 am PDT.

The Station Store and all commerce avenues will be unavailable for the duration of maintenance. This may also affect the performance of the forums and any or all accounts’ abilities to log in.

Here’s our handy Time Zone Conversion Tool to help you plan!