There are always in-game events going on, including some run by Guides, some [...]
Jan 202012
End-of-the-Weekenditus
EverQuest II - News, The EQ2 Wire
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Apr 172011
Let’s see…
ReItemization
It seems we’ve finally made our voices heard on the problems introduced by the extreme stat consolidation with the introduction of Velious, namely that not only all dungeon-dropped (Legendary, Fabled) gear from level 1-89 has completely ineffective stats, but that even the Mastercrafted gear from 22, 32, 42, 52, 62, 72, 77, and 82 are almost nonsensical in their setups given the changes.
Multihousing
Multihousing has been on Test and Test Copy for a couple of days now and feedback has been flooding in from players who are testing it out. Zoltaroth has been slaying the housing code demons and responding quickly to the bug reports.
Prestige Houses
Those prestige houses we’ve been hearing about have been unveiled, leaving no surprises. The Qeynos Dojo from Elddar Grove makes an appearance. It’s cozy, which is real-estate lingo for TINY. Hopefully in a later update, some kind of outdoor area can be added. The Neriak Opera House is much bigger, although again there’s no outdoor area, as these prestige houses were actually produced in 2007 before houses were opened up to ‘outside’ areas. Rounding out the new Prestige houses are the Maj’dul Library which will be awfully familiar for those who have completed their Tradeskill Epic (no sign of weighty tomes or menacing djinn librarians though). We haven’t seen the Maj’dul Bottle house just yet, although we’re guessing that it’s not unlike the bottle found on the shores of the Sinking Sands.
The Everfrost Summer Home, already available to purchasers of the Destiny of Velious Collector’s Edition is a somewhat gloomy 4 room house not unlike Miragul’s infamous Menagerie. Incidentally, after initially being told otherwise, we’ve received confirmation that the 7 year veteran house Mistmoore Crag Estate is in fact a Prestige house. As to why this is an important distinction, prestige houses will have additional linking options including the placement of portals to the houses of friends and guildmates.
Low Level Itemization
Early posts on the EQ2 forums from devs indicated that previous tiers would not be reitemized, given the difficulty and time involved. We made no secret of our feelings on the EQ2 forums that “maybe this should have been considered before changing how all of the game’s stats work”.
However more recently, it has been indicated by SmokeJumper that at least some degree of fixes may be done to the old itemization. Whether this will be restricted to, say, Mastercrafted gear and a select few items, or whether a script will be applied to all old items as was done a couple of years ago is unclear.
Mar 232011
As revealed last night, the 12th anniversary celebration of EverQuest brings an event to EverQuest II which allows players to step into the past and remember encounters from before the Shattering.
- What are Chronoportals?
- They are instances ranging from level 20-90. Each one is a nostalgic area or enemy from EQ1. Some can be be done solo, others require a small group, and still others require a full 6 person group. You and your group will be automatically mentored down when zoning in.
- What are the rewards?
- Outside of the Antonica portal is a vendor selling various books, house items, and replicas of the bosses of each instance for 1 Platinum Coin each.
- Inside of each zone, the bosses also drop rather exceptional items (for their level). Some of these items are similar in nature to Heritage Quest items.
- Where are these portals?
- Cyliena over at EQ2 ZAM buckled down and has posted the information about the portals in Antonica, the Enchanted Lands, the Feerrott, Lavastorm, Guk (in the Moors of Ykesha), Sinking Sands, Steamfont, and Thundering Steppes, including hints on how to do them.
A list of rewards on the merchant are shown below:
Mar 232011
From EverQuest2.com:
From Wednesday, March 23rd @ 10:00am PDT [17:00 GMT] through Wednesday, March 30th @ 10:00am PDT [18:00 GMT]*, log in to EQII and take part in a week-long look back at Norrathian days of yore.
The EQII Team has created this fun event as an homage to EverQuest in honor of the momentous occasion, and although the lore doesn’t exactly fit the current story of EQII, they decided to make it extra enjoyable for those who were around for the first iteration of Norrath. Adventurers who take part in this journey through time will find some silly nods to EQ and moments of nostalgia as we reminisce about our heritage.
The Chronomages of Norrath need your help. They’ve felt surges in the fabric of time, and used their magic to investigate those surges. The results of their probes caused portals to open, connecting the present with the ancient days before The Shattering. You’ve been asked to go through the portals, face any challenges you may find, and return to help the Chronomages understand what’s happening.
Portals have opened in Sinking Sands, the Moors of Ykesha, Feerott, Thundering Steppes, Antonica, Steamfont, the Enchanted Lands, and Lavastorm. The mages ask that you investigate them all!
Journey through the portals to find the ancient heroes and villains of an age gone by. Reminisce about them. Then kill them and loot them for the really cool items they possess.
If you would like to read some interesting speculation about the locations of the Chronoportals, look no further than EQ2 ZAM.
* Europe goes on Daylight Savings on March 27th.
Feb 222011
Q: How do I get to the new Velious zones?
A: Head to Sinking Sands and speak to an Othmir Ambassador.
Q: Where do I find the Destiny of Velious Update Notes?
A: Destiny of Velious/Game Update 59 Notes
Q: How do I get my Othmir illusion with 50 charges?
A: Go to the Marketplace, choose Expansion, then Nipik’s Gift.
Q: How do I get started on Flying Mounts for adventure, tradeskill, or Freeblood?
A: EQ2 ZAM’s Flying Mounts Guide
More questions and answers after the jump…
Q: How do I get started Questing in Destiny of Velious?
A: EQ2 ZAM have posted their Destiny of Velious Guides. So far, very little information about Velious has appeared at EQ2 Wikia.
Q: How do I get started Tradeskilling in Destiny of Velious?
A: Niami Denmother’s fantastic site EQ2Players is loaded to the gills with info about everything from new Carpenter quests to the Coldain Prayer Shawl. Scroll to the bottom of the Destiny of Velious: Mock Turtle Soup article to find these links:
- DoV carpenter furniture gallery
- DoV General Crafting Information
- DoV Recipe Book Rundown
- DoV vendor-sold and adventure-quested furniture
- DoV Crafting Quest Overview
- The Return of a Gathering Obsession
Q: Is there somewhere I can look at my new Alternate Advancement (AA) for my class?
A: EQ2Wire AA Browser for Destiny of Velious
Q: Where can I find out about Itemization and Gear Stats Changes?
A: EQ2Wire Mechanics / Itemization Changes
Q: How do I get started with Public Quests?
A: Destiny of Velious Preview: Public Quests
Q: I’m using the ProfitUI custom interface. Do I have to update it to play Velious?
A: Yes. This update is available here.
Q: Is there a guide to Adornments in Destiny of Velious?
A: We have posted 4 such guides so far:
- Destiny of Velious Basic Red Adornments by Slot
- Destiny of Velious Basic Red Adornments by Faction
- Destiny of Velious Yellow Adornments by Slot
- Destiny of Velious Yellow Adornments by Faction
Q: What about War Runes in Destiny of Velious?
A: Check out our War Runes Preview. One new item in the Webcast today is that War Runes are not shared across the loot table of all mobs in raid zones.
Q: Does today’s update fix any of the server crashes which took place over the weekend?
A: From Rothgar: “We hope that several bug fixes and performance enhancements coming with the expansion will take care of some of the zoning issues across all servers. Any remaining problems after tomorrow’s patch will be our top priority.”
Q: Did the new Housing features of switching from Main to Prestige Housing go in today?
A: This is not part of today’s update.
Dec 142010
Rothgar has been providing updates on the EQ2 Forums:
Aaaaaand, we’re off!
Gaige couldn’t resist a post:
What am I going to do with no EQ2 for 24 hours :’(
Rothgar:
Roll a character on another server and see how far you can get in 24 hours.
We feel very good going into this merge having tracked down and fixed all known issues from the last merge. So unless something new rears it’s ugly head, this should be smooth sailing. (Now I’m looking around for some wood to knock on)
and:
Two hours down, everything is on schedule and no issues.
and:
We will have a goodbye/welcome party [for Najena] in Sinking Sands when the server comes up.
Nov 232010
Here are your hotfix notes for November 23, 2010:
MARKETPLACE
You can now use the Marketplace at Login / Character Create to purchase account related items such as character slots!You can now send gifts to your friends from the Marketplace!
ABILITIES
If the caster cancels a maintained spell that he cast, it will cancel the spell for everyone in the group.
PVP GENERAL
Fixed a crash bug from Battlegrounds and PvP combat.
QUESTS
Sinking Sands: The Beetle Herding quest line should be working correctly now.
November 9 Hotfix Times and Notes
EverQuest II - News, The EQ2 Wire
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Nov 092010
From the EQ2 Forums:
The US servers will come down on November 9, 2010, at 5am PDT for a hotfix. The expected downtime for most servers is 1 hour, with the exception of Befallen, Permafrost, and Crushbone. These three servers will have a 2 hour downtime for maintenance.
and…
This is a notification that UK worlds (Runnyeye & Splitpaw) will be updated at 5:00 AM London Time on 11/10/2010. The estimated downtime will be 2 hours.
and here are the Update Notes:
GENERAL
- Fixed a client crash condition.
ITEMS
- Most single target effects that proc off of beneficial spells should no longer clutter up the maintained spells window.
POPULATION
- All of the guards at the Academy of Arcane Science in North Freeport are now level 45.
QUESTS
- Cleansing This Temple Needs…: The void-stalker should now be able to attack the necessary targets to update the quest.
- Certain tarantulas in the Sinking Sands will once again attack certain skittish scarabs. This fixes the Beetle Herding quest line.
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Chronoportals — A Stitch in Time
Many of EverQuest 2’s most dedicated players owe their gameplay roots to the original EverQuest and still carry strong memories of the patience and community the original game required. Soloing was almost unheard of. Camping mobs for hours (or days), the difficulties and perils of travel, and contested spawns of much-needed named mobs were all experiences players would not soon forget. It sure was a different game before WoW forced all MMOs to become approachable and remove any aspect that might be considered as a “waste” of the player’s time.
When we heard about Chronoportals, a live event running on EQ2 servers that celebrates EverQuest’s 12 year anniversary by bringing players back to an earlier time to experience memorable encounters from before the Shattering, we hoped that the event might go that extra mile and include a real impression of how the world looked in EverQuest, and revisit some of the original zones.
However SmokeJumper has explained to us that such was not in the cards. Dedicating a bunch of time for the art team to create or “devolve” existing zone art to harken back to the old Norrath just wasn’t a possibility with the current schedule. I guess I’d hoped that at least they’d get the sky sorted out, rather than a post-Shattering Luclin.
Still there are some humorous elements, including a Beastlord Vha Shir and EQ1-style Ranger in the Sinking Sands , and a surprise waiting for those who interfere with a ritual in the Feerrott. The difficulty is definitely up there with what you’d expect of an event nostalgic about a game that required grouping. In fact this has been a source of derision towards the developers — with players demanding that these zones be soloable and scalable to any level. I’ve personally been able to duo every zone but Lavastorm with my 90 Ranger and a 90 Coercer, but groups of players at the appropriate level would certainly be a lot more fun.
From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums:
We hope that we’ll continue to see more events like this (and the Aether Flying Races) in the future. A little bit of art time would have really made a huge difference here. As it is, the rewards in these 8 portals have been tremendous, so players are hitting them up every day.
Chronoportals — a fun event that would have been even more engagingwith a bit more nostalgia factor.