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Game Update 62: Age of Discovery

Game Update 61: The War of Zek

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From Silius on the EQ2 Forums:

Hello again,

I just wanted to update everyone on the situation. We will be unable to get this fix live until Tuesday. Once again I am sorry for the inconvenience but I offer some assistance. If you are unable to get into the same instance please do the following:

1. Have your raid leader petition so their is only one petition generated for the raid.

2. Place the petition in the stuck character category.

The CS team is aware of this issue and they will do their best to promptly assist by pulling everyone into the same instance. There is no guarantee that they will be able to get to you quickly so I ask that you please be patient. While not an ideal solution, I hope that this is a satisfactory compromise and that you will extinguish your torches and lay down your pitchforks.

 

The hits keep coming for GU57, and we don’t mean critical heals. Some quick updates on GU57 from the overnight dev responses all in one handy post…

From Rothgar on the EQ2 Forums:

Just to comment on a few things I’ve read since my last post.

Several of you are saying we completely ignored the feedback on Test server and that couldn’t be further from the truth. If you read through this thread, you’ll see several things that were modified directly based on your feedback. When it comes to the other complaints, like the XP bar, I gave an explanation that it was not within our control to make those changes.

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/…topic_id=483438

You have the option to modify your UI or load any of the existing mods out there to custom tailor your experience if there are things about the default that you don’t like.

As far as the spell effects go, we aren’t going to maintain two different sets of spell effects from here until the end of time. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t willing to make changes to the new system. So I’d recommend posting in a new thread about your specific issues with spell effects. Be sure you mention the class and spell that you have an issue with, and why. Will we change something that only 1 person is upset about? Probably not. But if we see that an issue is affecting many people, we will certainly look closely at a solution.

Regarding the issues with the Palace of Roehn Theer zone, creating multiple instances, Silius is on the case:

Hey all,

Really sorry about the delay in a response. I am testing the fix for this right now. My apologies for the inconvenience.

Players hoping to see Vitality work at level 90 sooner than GU58 got this response from Rich Waters:

This is a change we’d like to get done soon, so yes it’s on the high priority list. We hope to get it into the next game update or sooner, but don’t have a planned date to give for it.

Further, a player, Kraqen, posted his theory on how XP bonuses stack with GU57’s changes:

Vitality alone = Triple XP (+ 200%) each kill is worth 3 kills — Faster gain than before

100% potion = Double XP (+100%) Each kill = 2 kills — Faster than old system

Vitality and 100% potion = Quad XP (200% + 100% = 300% bonus) = Same as old system

Rich Waters confirmed the formulas above as well as answering another question. Kraqen asked: “If I have a potion that gives combat and aa xp, do I ‘double dip’ the bonus when (the slider is) at %100 AA?”

Both adventure experience and AA experience bonuses stack for an increased benefit.

Since GU57, when sorting the Quest Journal by Zone, that zone’s quests no longer jump to the top of the list. Rothgar had this response:

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, we are looking into the problem and should have it fixed soon.

Regarding the Roehn Theer breastplates not being much of an upgrade over Tier 3 breastplates, Kander posted this:

The breastplates from Theer are going to get upgraded to more of a T4 quality. Much better effects as well. Soon.

This should have been done a lot earlier, but it did not.

My apologies.

drakkenshield reported that with GPU shadows, we’re now seeing wavy lines in certain configurations:

When using GPU shadows, I get wavy lines on my screen, somewhat around and ahead of my character. CPU shadows doesn’t cause this, but GPU shadows look far better so I use them.

It looks like interference patterns basically.

Imago-Quem’s response:

Sorry about that. I’m working on it right now. It’s actually due to an offset value that separates shadows from the casting surface. The offset has to be balanced just right to work correctly. If you still have the slider option for “quality vs distance”, try moving the slider a little up or down for now to make the lines go away.

That’s our update for the morning. More news as we have it…

 

Players on a variety of servers (in two different threads) have reported that yesterday’s change to how players reach the Palace of Roehn Theer, requiring each player to individually click on the zone-in, instead of a raidwide zone-in, is resulting in multiple separate instances.

Currently there seems to be no fix, as even players who zone in one-at-a-time are still ending up in separate instances and must wait 30 minutes before their timers reset.

 

Players on standard EQ2 accounts with more than 7 characters in a region, or players on Station Access accounts with more than 12 characters in a region were locked out of accessing these “hidden” characters with a change in Game Update 57. Although intended to close an exploit, the primary motivation for this change has been to protect the monetization of character slots, which are for sale on EQ2 Extended servers.

Note: This change has been rolled back as of Tuesday, August 24th, to allow players to “get their house in order”. On Tuesday, August 31st, players who have more characters than are allowed by their account type will only have the option of deleting characters to access “hidden” characters. The /camp command will not load any character not visible on the character select screen, and changes to the character list INI file will be ignored.

If you have no more than 7 EQ2 characters on your EQ2 account, or no more than 12 EQ2 characters on your Station Account, you do not need to do anything.


This notice appeared on Friday, but I held it til today to coincide with the official start of the 1 week grace period.

From SmokeJumper:

We’ve been getting a lot of calls about the character slot change, so to try to let everyone know what we’re doing all at once, here’s an announcement about the subject.

First of all, there were lots of accounts out there that had extra character slots beyond the limits of their current subscription.

We made a recent change that fixed that issue and brought the limits back to where they were supposed to be.

However, we did that change without prewarning you folks…which was an error on our part.

So we’re going to do a one-week rollback on that change to allow you to shuffle stuff around on your characters and ensure that the characters you want are left in your remaining slots before we reimplement the change.

On Tuesday, August 24th, we’ll roll back the change. At that time, you’ll be able to access all your characters, regardless of our account slot limitations.

For one week (7 days) you can freely exchange stuff back and forth between your characters.

Then on Tuesday, August 31st, we’ll reimplement the fix and accounts will be restricted to their proper number of character slots.

BEFORE AUGUST 31st, just make sure that the last characters you log into the game are the ones that you want to keep. Then, when we reimplement the fix, you’ll be left with your most recently-logged characters, and you’ll be good to go.

We apologize for the inconvience we created by not pre-announcing this change. But this should let you do all the shuffling you need to do before the fix goes back in.

From Bunji, member of the crack EQ2 QA department:

This should be working now. You may need to restart your client.

From Shareana:

If you are still not able to see all 12 characters slots and pay for Station Access, please be sure that you have sent in a ticket via /petition or the Knowledge Base.

 

If you haven’t read the Game Update 57 Feedback thread, it’s a real eye-opener, let me tell you.

I have always seen players who manage find a silver lining in every cloud, and always find something good in each Game Update, even the relatively content-light Game Update 54 “bug stomp” from last fall. However I have never seen such universal negativity as that directed towards Game Update 57. Players have overwhelmingly expressed their distaste for many policy initiatives included, and content excluded in GU57.

Rothgar, EQ2 Lead Programmer, who has been largely taking the brunt of negative feedback, had this to say:

We definitely hear your concerns on GU57 and we would have loved to give you more features and content. We are working hard to make sure that the next update prior to the expansion launch has more for you. In fact we’ve recently decided to release an interim update in a couple months (GU57b if you will) so we can get some content out to you slightly before GU58 is due.

We’re also going over all of the Fan Faire feedback and trying to incorporate as many of your suggestions as possible. Unfortunately Fan Faire just feel too closely to GU57 and we weren’t able to react to some of the feedback that fast.

We’ll also try to trickle some things out via hotfixes in the next few weeks as well.

 

Game Update 57 added an interesting new UI feature. As you gain adventure levels, newer spells are now supposed to replace the previous tier’s spell on your hotbar. For instance, if you have Roped Shot III and you gain the requisite level, Roped Shot IV would replace it on your hotbar.

However two things are happening.

  • First, the new spells acquired from leveling are replacing random existing spells on your hotbars.
  • Second, Master spells are being replaced by Apprentice spells of the next tier. This is ok in the 30’s and possibly 40’s, but beyond this level range, Apprentice spells will almost always be a downgrade over the previous tier’s Master.

Here is Gninja’s response on this issue:

There is actually a bug currently where spells and/or abilities are replacing the wrong versions. We are looking into it. The way it should work is it should only replace it if it actually a higher quality spell of the same type.

I file this change under completely unnecessary and possibly more confusing than the old method. I’ve always sequestered new Apprentice spells into their own hotbar until such point that I can login my sage, alchemist, or jeweler to craft Expert (Adept III) versions of those spells.

 

Ah… the Shadow Odyssey. The land of milk and honey… The lost dungeons of… ok I’ll stop now.

Ask players of EQ2 during the Shadow Odyssey what they thought of the expansion, and you’ll get many different responses.

Ask a developer of the Shadow Odyssey for their frank opinion, and I bet you’d get something like “Ah yes, every level 80 player fully decked out in T2 heroic gear, fabled jewelry, and all carrying bagfuls of platinum coins.”

Not to pick on any particular class (rangers!) but certain classes have had, let’s say, unique traits which have allowed them to retrieve chests stuffed with platinum and heroic armor shards in Shadow Odyssey dungeons all by themselves since almost the day the expansion launched.

Since then, we’ve seen two hotfixed changes to try to curtail the free flow of platinum:

  • Key mobs were upgraded to full heroic (^^^).
  • Key mobs cast a detrimental on their first target called “Mandate” (details available here) which makes it impossible for the target to fight, as they are stunned and constantly interrupted on every attack.

However almost immediately, players discovered that this Mandate effect (added in May 2009) could be cured with a potion.

In what is coming to be known as Game Update 57: The Empire Strikes Back, another undocumented “fix” has been included:

  • The Mandate detrimental cannot be cured with a potion.

Why Now?

You might have noticed on your server lately that prices of *everything* on the Broker have nearly tripled in the last 12 months. I suppose in the end, platinum inflation forced this change. It’s odd to see fixes to 21 month old content, so it must have been a significant problem.

Only Brawlers & Crusaders?

Just a little update to this article. You might think only solo players are affected by this change. Not true. If you are in a group and the healer gets agro first on the key mob, you can pretty much guarantee a wipe as that healer will be unable to self-cure.

 

On April 14, 2009, a new Welcome Screen was added to EQ2. It was pitched to the players as an informational window with a small amount of StationCash Marketplace content. There was a lot of negative player reaction, but feedback was balanced against trying to keep the window useful.

And for those players who wanted to avoid the Welcome Screen window, a method was found to disable it. A configuration line (cl_show_welcome_screen_on_startup 0) could be added to your eq2.ini settings file. Eventually the EQ2 team relented and added a “Show this window at startup” checkbox so players could opt out of seeing this window.

Fast forward to today and as you can see with this screen shot from Game Update 57, SOE aren’t even pretending anymore. First, a StationCash button was added to the main dock, which can only be removed by replacing it with a modified UI.

And as you can clearly see, StationCash has received a more prominent location on the Welcome Screen:

But the most shocking change is that the option of “Display at startup” for the Welcome Screen is missing, and the configuration line “cl_show_welcome_screen_on_startup 0” no longer works either.

Fortunately a player Ahlana has figured out what brute force steps are needed to banish this window:

If you are using a custom UI, move the “eq2ui_mainhud_welcom.xml” file to your custom UI folder (i.e. EQ2Maps, ProfitUI, etc.).

Open up the xml file you just moved (not the original) in an editor of some sort (notepad or wordpad are fine).

Then find this, it should be at the very top:

<Page Activated=”true” eq2opensound=”ui_window_inventory_open” eq2usescomwndcontrols=”false” IgnoreTab=”false” Location=”112,72″ MaximumSize=”1024,1024″ Name=”Welcome” PackLocation=”center,center” ScrollExtent=”820,600″ Size=”820,600″ UserMovable=”true” UserScrollable=”false” version=”2.0″>

And change the bolded part to:

MaximumSize=”0,0″

and it should look like:

<Page Activated=”true” eq2opensound=”ui_window_inventory_open” eq2usescomwndcontrols=”false” IgnoreTab=”false” Location=”112,72″ MaximumSize=”0,0″ Name=”Welcome” PackLocation=”center,center” ScrollExtent=”820,600″ Size=”820,600″ UserMovable=”true” UserScrollable=”false” version=”2.0″>

Save your file and no more welcome screen.

It’s pretty sad that we must post such instructions to remove advertisements from a game we pay $15 a month to play. No word on how to remove StationCash items from in-game merchants.

Aug 192010
 

From the EQ2 Forums:

The US servers will come down on August 19, 2010, at 7am PDT for a hotfix.  The expected downtime is 2 hours.

Update Notes will be posted in the Game Update Notes forum when available.

The exact details of this update are not known, but may include a fix for the XP issues discussed previously.

 

Today we repost some player advice on how to switch from the new default Red UI to the optional Blue UI, without blowing away all your hotbars. This advice comes from the EQ2 Forums.

How to get the Blue Style (No Mods)

If you are using the default EQ2 User Interface (UI), with no modifications like EQ2Maps, etc. installed, and you are wanting to switch from the default red to the optional blue, type /loadui and choose the Blue style.

When you do this, your hotbars and locations of your UI will be reset. To fix this, type /load_uisettings and choose your character. This should restore your hotbars back, while keeping the new blue style.

Unfortunately, it seems that this will reset each time you start EQ2 again. The solution comes from Ahlana:

Open “eq2.ini” in your EQ2 folder

Add the line

cl_ui_skinname Default_Blue

An alternative comes from sompet_eq2:

You can also copy “<Everquest II>\UI\Default_Blue\images” folder to “<Everquest II>\UI\Default\images” overwriting all files. This will work also if you use custom UI pieces too.

How to get the Blue Style (with a mod like EQ2Maps)

This advice comes from Yaevin:

Go to your EQ2 directory. Once there, go into the UI/Default_Blue folder.

If you’re using EQ2Maps, copy the Images folder to UI/EQ2Maps. Windows will tell you that you already have a folder there, just click ok. Also confirm any overwrites, if asked. This should never break, in theory.

How to Disable the Welcome Screen

This advice comes from Atan:

Open your eq2.ini file and add this line on its own line:

cl_show_welcome_screen_on_startup 0

Update: This fix will not work.

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