EVERQUEST II EXTENDED
Fixed a bug causing Platinum subscribers to not be able to use the shared bank.

USER INTERFACE
Fixed a bug that would cause your AA slider to reset to 50% upon zoning.
Sort by current zone for the quest journal now properly puts the current zone quests at the top of the list.
We have disabled the spells from replacing old ones in the hotbar until we can track down a bug regarding it.

SHADER 3.0
Fixed an issue causing parts of some structures in Halas to show as wireframe.

ITEMS
Torque of the War Blade and Ring of the Vice Vigoth now have resists added to their stats.
Runic Deflection on Band of Mreeptahp’s Fury now correctly wards your target.

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.

UNDERFOOT DEPTHS
Zaalax, Xaalax, Saalax and Yaalax : Seismic shock should strike the correct targets named by Zaalax.

A selection of paintings from Notable Norrathians and the Heroes Festival.

A key addition to the City Festival were the Notable Norrathians player-submitted in-game paintings. If you have not yet looked at or bought any of these paintings, take your City Tokens to Darklight Wood (druid ring or run from Nektulos Forest). These paintings can be placed in your house or guild hall, and do not have the status cost and guild level requirements of the 5th anniversary Heroes Festival paintings.

Double XP weekend concludes at 10:00am PDT (1:00pm EDT, 19:00 GMT+1).

City Festival concludes on 2010.09.07 at Midnight PDT (2010.09.08 3:00am EDT, 2010.09.08 9:00 GMT+1).

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 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.

EVERQUEST II EXTENDED

• Classes can now be purchased individually off the Marketplace and through character creation.
• Armor crates have been added to the Marketplace selling sets of armor for all levels.
• You can now purchase Broker Credits from the marketplace!
• Broker Credits can be used for a one-time purchase or sell action on the broker for Bronze and Silver members.
• Selling and purchasing stacks of items count as a single broker credit so use them wisely!

USER INTERFACE

• The XP bar will now stay put through relogging.
• The bonus xp from max level characters now displays properly at character select.
• Your UI settings should now be restored after using the /loadui command.
• The mini-map zone name will now display correctly after using /loadui.
• Fixed a bug where using /loadui while banking would keep you from using the banker until you zoned or logged out.
• Fixed a highlight bug on the city selection page of character create.
• Parts of the achievement interface and all of the paperdoll windows that were red will now be blue when loading the “Default Blue” skin.
• The background color of the paperdoll is now exposed to the UI files via the PaperdollBackgroundColor property.
• Fixed a bug causing coin to not be draggable to the coin section of the Character window.
• The Character window has undergone a few changes:
• The Auto-Inventory area has returned.
• The stats dropdownbox has been replaced with buttons
• The main tabs were moved back to the top of the window, sub-tabs were moved to the bottom.
• Your character’s name was moved to the titlebar.

WELCOME WINDOW

• The item of the week will display the item of the week description rather than a copy of the message of the day.
• The Sentinel’s Fate Daily Mission now appears on the Welcome screen.

QUESTS

• Adventurers looking to worship Anashti Sul and on the quest “Gathering Feathers” should now be able to locate the necessary scroll within Gorowyn’s Grand Atheneum.
• Darklight Wood: You can now defeat ghoulish Nerian to update your quest.
• Feral Citizenry: Ghoulish Nerians should no longer remain in an “unattackable” state after being exposed to the Strobe of Innoruuk.
• The statue of Razorwing Steeldown within “Ascent of the Awakened” will now grant a replacement “Totem of Aaryonar” to anyone who has lost it and completed the quest “The Riddle of Razorwing.”
• The “Totem of Aaryonar” is no longer removed upon completion of the quest “Feeding the Flames.”  It is now removed upon completion of the quest “A Final Froglok Word.”

ITEMS

• Troubadors who have completed the quest “An Ayonic Journey” can now read all of the pages within the book, “The Case of the Lost Lute.”
• The wicked wand of malice has been altered. The effect attached to the wand is now an on equip effect. The 10% cast speed on hostile spells has been changed to a generic 10% cast speed mod attached to the item.
• Roehn Theer: Godslayer Breastplate rewards have been made more in line with the challenge.
• Shroud of the Faithful is now claimable one per character.
• Fixed a rendering issue with Dendroxa the Envenomed.
• Stigmatic Frenzy now correctly triggers on the caster’s group.

ABILITIES

• Damage Reflection abilities can no longer do more than 300% of the max health of the caster before Crit Bonus and Potency.

Inquisitor

• Chilling Invigoration is now correctly modified by the Inquisitor’s stances.

POPULATION

• Stonebrunt Highlands: NPC Combatants found outside of Quel’ule should no longer fly up into the sky.

ASCENT OF THE AWAKENED

• Drop rate of the “Ornate Winged Eye” has been increased and should now drop even if mobs are grey.

THE VIGILANT: INFILTRATION

• There should now be a new respawn area in the beginning section once the first two groups of Zeklings have been defeated, thus keeping the circle of death from occurring.

ICY KEEP: RETRIBUTION

• Kastus & Odaufe should no longer one shot players with their respective frostbite damage shields. It is still recommended players not hit them with the wrong damage type however as they can still easily kill players with them.
• Kastus & Odaufe should no longer regain their damage shields if not killed quickly enough after being hit with the ice axe.

UNDERFOOT DEPTHS

• Mosaasus now has a smaller hitbox area.

PERAH’CELSIS’ ABOMINABLE LABORATORY

• Players now have more time to get to the platforms to prevent his adds from coming to life.

PALACE OF ROEHN THEER

Zone-in issue has been fixed.

This coming weekend, from 10:00 am PDT on Friday, September 3rd, until 10:00 am PDT on Tuesday, September 7th, we will be running a true Double XP promotion (+100% XP).

The bonus applies to AA, tradeskill and adventure experience gained this weekend. Our French, German, Japanese, Test and EQ2 Extended servers will also be enjoying the increase in XP gain.

Happy adventuring!

There was a thread soliciting feedback on how the EQ2 team could solve this problem.

Already, there is a Truancy system in place, where if enough players vote that a player has gone AFK simply to collect Battlegrounds tokens.

So how could this new problem of out-of-reach flag holders be resolved? Many solutions were proposed. As of last week, we have our answer:

If a player holds the flag beyond a designated amount of time without entering melee combat, they will see a message flash in red characters at the top of their screen “Get into Combat or be Banished!!“.

If you’d like to read player feedback on this issue and solution, check out the thread on the EQ2 Forums.