It seems that the Antonia Bayle EQ2 server is experiencing some kind of database corruption and is undergoing an emergency downtime at the moment. Details remain elusive at the time of this writing, but we’ll be watching this thread on the EQ2 Forums:
Brewday returns to Norrath from March 11th through the 22nd! Come on out and celebrate Brell Serilis! It may be a holiday started by dwarves, but everyone is welcome!
Today’s Hotfix addresses those players who have been Queueing up for Battlegrounds and then intentionally going AFK. Players who join a Battleground but lose still earn 1 token. But by neither fighting, or contributing to their teams, these AFK players have largely been dead weight. The hotfix introduces an AFK Voting system:
BATTLEGROUNDS
We’ve implemented an AFK voting system into battlegrounds in order to report teammates that have gone AFK in a match. A player can only be voted AFK if they haven’t had any recent activity. If they receive 3 unique votes for AFK’ing during a match they will be removed from the match and will not receive a reward. Players removed this way will also receive the Truancy debuff. To vote a player AFK, right-click their avatar and choose “vote afk”.
The complete Patch Notes for March 3, 2010 are after the jump…
continue reading March 3 2010 Hotfix Notes (Battlegrounds AFK Voting System)…
The EQ2 Developer Chat is coming up on March 4th. The day after every chat, the EQ2 forums are flooded with people complaining that no “good” questions were asked. If you would like to make sure that the ‘hard-hitting’ questions get asked, you should submit them immediately to calthine{at}allakhazam{dot}com. The more questions Calthine has in advance, the better chance of good questions being asked during the chat.
You are far more likely to get your questions asked during the session if they are phrased in the form of something that can actually be answered. “When are you going to fix Bruisers” is not nearly as useful as “the Bruiser AA ability X just doesn’t stack up against similar abilities from the other tanks. Any chance of this getting looked into?”
Of course which questions can be answered will depend largely upon which developers are present.
In previous developer chats, there has been an open ‘free-for-all’ channel alongside the ‘official’ EQ2 channel so sometimes you can get questions answered there, or insight into why certain decisions are made. No word on SOE President John Smedley being scheduled as a chatroom guest, so questions about how Battlegrounds got bumped to the front of the development line, and/or questions about the international expansion launch, will likely be unanswerable.
Also, no word on if we’ll ever see a return to the monthly Developer Q&A on the EQ2 Forums. I hope that’s not the last we’ll see of them.
As we reach 5 hours of downtime, Brenlo has tweeted that servers are “Minutes…” away from being back up.
If you’ve been playing for a a few years, you have probably accumulated several channel numbers which no longer work, yet you cannot leave. For example Good_Ranger, Good_Crafters, Level 80, etc.
One solution is to use /setchannelnumber old# new# to move the channel up to say 99 where it won’t bother you. This is what I did for a while.
It seems the fixes made to Butcherblock didn’t last as the server is down again. More as we have it.
Update: Server came up in about 30 minutes.
From Kiara:
Butcherblock experienced a hardware failure. They’re fixing it now. We’re going to keep the server locked until it’s fixed. ETA 10:30am PST.
UPDATE: Butcherblock is now up.
The EQ2 Servers will be coming down shortly for the Sentinel’s Fate expansion and Game Update 55 patches. Servers are expected to come back up at 9am PDT.
Also some of the people who purchased Sentinel’s Fate digitally from international websites will be getting their keys by e-mail at this time. Some people have reported that DLGamer.co.uk is now accepting orders from Australia.
While the servers are down, you can chat with us online! We will be in the EQ2 ZAM chatroom. Kiara will be joining us as well and giving status updates.
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For instructions on how to connect to the chat using mIRC, Trillian, or other chat client, check out the fantastic instructions at EQ2 ZAM. |
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If you are not able to run chat software at work, or you just want to jump into the chat through your web browser, you can chat here. |
See you in the chatroom!
Alan “Brenlo” Crosby, Senior Producer of EverQuest II has posted this Producer’s Letter:
Happy Valentine’s Day All!
Here we are, perched on the precipice of another big launch for our beloved game, EQII. Next week is a big week for us and for you, the players of this grand game. You will finally be able to log into the new areas of Odus and explore, level and play in the new area that the team has spent nearly a year putting together. Characters can now advance to level 90 as adventurers and tradeskillers. More items, more spells, more AA’s and we hope lots more fun.
As many have noticed, Halas is not going out with the expansion, many have asked why and the reasoning is twofold. We have three pretty decent starting areas already. Darklight, Greater Faydark and Timorous Deep. We know they are not perfect and so the team has done considerable work in reworking those areas, streamlining the progress path to make for a better experience. We believe that you will find the experience in those zones to be far better than it had been. So, we went to work on higher level content for this launch, which we have with the expansion content and the new Battlegrounds.
Additionally we really want new Halas to be something special. We want more time to polish the area and make sure the progression path is fun and smooth. We also hope to get kilts in there. Currently we are looking to have Halas out with the Halas Reborn update later in the year.
With this release, we are proud to open up the Pre-Season of EQII Battlegrounds. Three zones will be available, each with a different playstyle. They will have progression and items and we hope add a whole new element of fun to the game. Unfortunately we didn’t quite get as many players as we had hoped on the server to give it a proper test, so we are going to use this pre-season phase to iron out any kinks and tweak the balance a bit more beyond the testing phase. When we are ready, we will begin Season 1 and the mayhem will begin in earnest. You will be able to work towards the new Chaos Armor during the pre-season, which might be the best looking armor we have added to the game.
With a game like EQII, it is evergrowing and everchanging, on occasion we find the need to adjust items, spells etc. . . and some mythicals had their power reduced with the release of the expansion. With each launch, we have to look at the items released previously and decide if they are perhaps too high to encourage players to look for upgrades. EQII is, at its core, a game driven by itemization. The constant desire to get the next biggest, baddest piece of gear. So on occasion we have to make some difficult decisions. This was one of them. For those who feel their mythical was devalued, I offer my apologies.
Next Tuesday is the retail head start, so to get you all ready, we are turning on Bonus XP from now until the servers come down for the update Tuesday morning. I hope you all login and enjoy. We look forward to seeing you on the Battlegrounds and running around Odus. Mostly, we thank you for playing EQII.
Alan “Brenlo” Crosby
Senior Producer EQII
There has certainly been a lot of gnashing of teeth on EQ2Flames and the EQ2 Forums that Battlegrounds, Battlegrounds Armor, and the PvP ruleset is going to “ruin” raiding in EQ2.
And there have been plenty of naysayers saying PvP wasn’t strong enough to sustain multiple PvP servers, or that Arenas never really caught on, as proof that there is no need for Battlegrounds.
As for me, the prospect of being robbed on the way to the bank, or being unable to turn in a quest due to roaming murder squads, just isn’t why I play this game. I know it is a play style that many people love, and I respect that.
I’m no stranger to PvP in other games. I had a blast playing Rainbow Six, and Quake. Not to mention some early networked PvP games like MazeWars and NetTrek. The PvP was a controlled environment, and something I could switch on and off. It was a lot of fun!
I’ve been optimistic about Battlegrounds because I see the potential. People have downtime when forming groups or raids. Some people like the idea of PvP in EQ2, but not the implementation. Sometimes there just aren’t a lot of players online. And no doubt, some guilds will want to test their mettle against other guilds on other servers!
Tonight, I tried out the group Battlegrounds zones, and so far, I had a lot of fun!
From EQ2 Forums:
Greetings Norrathians.
Starting at 4:45am PST Antonia Bayle, The Bazaar, and Sebilis will come down for an estimated 5 hour downtime. During this time, the database software will be upgraded to address lag issues.
We will update this thread as needed should any issues arise.
Thank you for your patience!
From EQ2Players:
Greetings Norrathians! There will be a 40% bonus applied to adventure and tradeskill experience this weekend, starting at 3:00 p.m. PST on Friday, January 15th and ending at 10:00 a.m. PST on Tuesday, January 19th.
If you frequently use EQ2Players especially to lookup Stats, Guilds, Characters, etc. you’d have to be blind to have missed the Site Revamp 2 weeks ago. Significant functionality was broken, the site displayed slowly on many browsers, and a lot of features were missing.
Fast forward to today and EQ2Players has a review clearly written by someone not on Platform staff because it honestly and openly identifies problems in the site, and has dates when we can expect those issues to be resolved.
Check out the EQ2Players Review… by EQ2Players
This is not been well-known until now. I’m thrilled to announce that the large contested zone part of Sentinel’s Fate — The Hole — will be playable as both a large Contested with 3 wings and 3 entrances, and 3 individual Instances for those players who prefer an instanced gameplay style and pace.
Check out the preview of both the Contested and Instance versions of The Hole at EQ2Players, including interviews with Developers and some great screen shots and wallpapers from this epic sized (but group-targeted) zone. 
The difficulty and level range of the Instances by the way is:
Calthine over at ZAM posed a challenge on the forums. Can you level a character from 1-80 in a day? The surprising response was a demonstration that a character could be leveled from 1-80 in 5-7 hours.
Game Update 54 included a change to the appearance of cure potions. Instead of Arcane, Elemental, Noxious, and Trauma cure potions all having a green appearance, Gninja changed them to use different colors. These aren’t new graphics, as this would require an art build, but the change was much appreciated. However, the four types of cure potions now share the graphics of several other potions in the game.
EQ2Wire tinkered around in Photoshop for an hour and came up with some totally new cure potion icons and posted them on the EQ2 Forums to gauge player reaction. There was an overwhelming response requesting our icons!
Because there is no way for us to replace the existing cure icons with these new graphics without the ripple effect of a lot of potions in-game suddenly looking like cure potions, we were stumped. Fortunately Xalmat came through and, with some research on EQ2Interface, EQ2Wire is thrilled to present a technique to replace your cure potion graphics with ours.
We are getting reports that inactive EQ2 accounts have been reactivated to coincide with the launch of the Will of a Tyrant game update. Folks are reporting that their cancelled accounts are now showing as active for the next 3 weeks.
It’s unknown why this has been kept a secret or not communicated, but we thought it would be worth posting.
If you are feeling poetic, you might be able to get bumped to the top of the Sentinel’s Fate Beta list. Head over to EQ2 Forums and check out the contest to write a Haiku and maybe get into beta sooner rather than later!
If you’d like to see a complete chart of all the Chronomage Missions in the order they are given as well as the rewards (house-placeable plushies), check out Elquinjena’s writeup at Kithicor.org.
EQ2Players.com has always had some features locked away behind an optional $2.99/month subscription. The most notable of these features for me have been looking up Alts and Item Discovery information. The rest of EQ2Players.com has always felt rather unfinished to me, especially the oddly formatted Alternate Advancements display.
While EQ2Players.com has recently seen renewed developer attention in the last few months (check out the EQ2Players Forum), it’s premium features have always been a bit skimpy to justify the $2.99/month subscription in EQ2Wire’s opinion.
So we were impressed by today’s news that, starting December 17th, the extra fee for EQ2Players premium features will be dropped. Now all players with an active EQ2 subscription (either the regular EQ2 subscription, or the premium Station Players account) will now have access to EQ2Players.com features for no additional charge.
Welcome to the first Reader Survey for EQ2Wire. Depending upon participation and feedback, we’ll hopefully have one per month. This survey will be of particular importance to frequent Twitter users. 
Survey after the jump:
If you attended Fan Faire 2009, you may have watched the Jace Hall production “EverCracked”. It is a humorous documentary about the history of EverQuest, and the slightest hints about EverQuest Next, the 3rd EverQuest game currently in development.
Today marks the debut of the epic documentary EverCracked! The Phenomenon of EverQuest, available exclusively on IGN.com. The five-part weekly series, hosted and produced by Jace Hall, chronicles the trials and tribulations leading to the development, launch and success of the genre-defining massively multiplayer online game which celebrated its tenth anniversary in March 2009.
EverCracked! celebrates EverQuest’s legacy by taking a look at the past, present and future of the franchise. The film includes never-before-seen footage and interviews with industry moguls and longtime players. EverCracked! details the events, products, personalities and art that graced the world of Norrath over the years, with many tongue-in-cheek moments that befit EverQuest’s own sense of fun and humor.
EverCracked! The Phenomenon of EverQuest Debuting at IGN.com
Note: No EQ2 content!
I was posting some BBQ recipes for baby back ribs and grilled chicken breast on another forum and thought some folks here might like to read ‘em. If you’d like more, post a Comment. Baby Back Ribs & Grilled Chicken Breast recipes after the jump.
Abbreviated quote from Rothgar (EQ2 Forums thread):
At 7:00am this morning our export script experienced a crash.
We’ve restarted the export process as of 7:00am PST on different hardware and are monitoring it closely. The current impact is an extended downtime for Venekor players of roughly 12 more hours. For Nagafen players, this would mean a delayed maintenance schedule, but hopefully not an extended downtime.