Reader and guildmate Egat pointed out that not only EverQuest 2 patched yesterday — so did its daddy, EverQuest. Here’s the patch notes, along with some commentary.
Seeds of Destruction Zone Sneak Preview: All active EverQuest subscribers with accounts in good standing will be able to experience all new EverQuest Seeds of Destruction zones two week before commercial release! During this special event players can participate in quest lines and group encounters as they assist Antonius Bayle and preserve the future of Qeynos! Zones include the eerie devastation of the Void, the lush wilderness of Oceangreen and the perilous Temple of Bertoxxulous. Beginning October 7, 2008 seek out the herald of Druzzil Ro in the Plane of Knowledge to be transported to a time rift that leads to the preview content! Preview content will be open to all players until October 13th, 2008.
An absolutely fantastic idea! Give people a sneak peak. And for those people who buy the expansion — they’ll already have downloaded everything and be pretty much ready to go. Good stuff.
Group Merge Ability: Looking to fill the last few spaces of your group? Groups now have the ability to merge with each other without disbanding from their own group! With this new feature, the group leader of one group can invite the group leader of another group to join his/her group. If the invitation is accepted, the two groups will merge together to form one group. This change merely allows groups to merge without having to make everyone drop out of their current group. All other group functionality should work as it did in the past. It does not increase the six person group maximum for groups.
Another ‘duh!’ thing. This is a great feature, wish we’d had it years ago.
Group Window Enhancements: The following changes have been made to improve the Group Window – We’ve added mana and endurance gauges for group members. We’ve added a Group Roles infrastructure. When right-clicking on a member of the group, a leader will now have the roles sub-menu for role administration. If currently the leader of a group, right-clicking the player’s health / mana / stamina window will also show the same role administration menu. We also added in the /grouproles command. A group role indicator was also added to the Player Info window.
Good. For the last nine years, all we had were the health bars of group members. This is something other games have had for a long time. Again, it’s good to see it in EverQuest. Not sure what the group role thing is — tank? Main assist? Main healer? Crowd control? Dunno.
– Target Window Enhancements: The following changes have been made to improve the Target Window – The target window will now display the buffs on target players, pets, and in the future mercenaries. The Inspect Buffs leadership ability is still needed to view NPC buffs. The target’s buff timers displays in hours, minutes, seconds. We’ve added the ability to remove buffs from yourself, your pet, and in the future mercenaries from the target window. The ability to block buffs on you and your pet has also been added to the target window. The Target Window is now resizable.
Another backport from EQ2. Long time coming.
– More Firiona Vie Character Slots: We’ve extended the amount of character slots available on the Firiona Vie server to 3 characters.
Firiona Vie, the role playing/alternate rules server, since launch has only allowed one character on the server. One of the reasons the FV economy could support a ruleset where nearly every item was tradeable (except epic quest bits and the epic themselves, I believe), was because there was no twinking. Now there will be. The FV economy is going to get ruined — even MORE ruined (prices on FV are several times those on other servers).
– Message to Custom UI Users: Due to the amount of changes being made to the user interface with this game update, custom UI users are advised to switch to the default , using the /loadskin command, before attempting to log in or if you experience difficulties when logging in.
*** Fan Faire Requests ***
These changes were made due to some of the feedback received at the 2008 Las Vegas Fan Faire.
-Added the ability for players to target nearest corpse and cycle through the nearest corpses via hotkeys. These will need to be set in the options menu to be used.
-Increased the range of emotes to match the range of say.
-Fixed an issue with damage shield mitigation on items.
-/target will now target the player instead of their familiar, as long as the player is within a reasonable distance of their familiar.
– We now display all bind points for a player when using /charinfo.
*** Spells ***
– A new resurrection spell has been added for Druids and Shaman. Wanderer Astobin and Mystic Abomin in the Plane of Knowledge library have the scroll for sale. The spell returns 90% of a player’s lost experience and can only be used while out of combat.
Previously, shaman and druids only had a “call to corpse” AA ability. Clerics were livid when THOSE were added that their already tenuous role in a group would be further eroded if everyone had one of their signature abilities. Druids and shaman will rejoice. Clerics will feel they just got kicked in the gut.
*** AA ***
– Removed the group leadership AA Designate Main Assist since this functionality is given to all groups through the new Group Role system. Leadership AAs spent on this ability have been refunded in the form of regular AAs.
Okay, so this IS what roles are.
– Certain AA’s that added extra riposte chances will no longer cause your non-rogue enemies to backstab you.
*** Quest & Events ***
– Monks should no longer get left behind after completing the Seventh Hammer portion of their Epic quest.
– Paladins should no longer get left behind after completing the Mujaki the Devourer event for their Epic quest.
*** Miscellaneous ***
– Items and coin are no longer left on a corpse upon death. The items will remain equipped and in their respective containers.
– Spells will now remain memorized on a character upon death.
Sejal had a point. This entirely changes EQ. Are corpse runs fun? No, they aren’t. Should they be removed? No. And here’s why. The possibility that any mistake could cost you a certain amount of time or money means you make a LOT fewer mistakes. You’re careful.
CRs have already been vastly eased through the AA that lets you, once a week, summon and rez all your corpses. The soulstone vendors will sell you a CR, and if you just wait a few days, your corpse will be brought to Shadowrest all on its own so nothing is ever lost. We had all those things before this patch.
Now… /shrug. This is something that works in EQ2 because EQ2 is not meant to be EQ. I think this may have gone a little too far.
– Players should now be able to equip items for which they don’t meet the required level. In the inventory window, the item will be highlighted in yellow if the required level is not met. No benefits will be granted from this item other than being able to equip it.
Not sure why they did this.
– Added the concept of revive effects. When you respawn, you will receive negative effects for a while to compensate for having all your equipment and spells still memorized.
Backport from EQ2. Not really needed, because your mana, health and endurance already came back reduced after a rez. Absolutely don’t know why they had to increase this penalty.
– /target will now choose PCs over NPCs when using a partial name.
– If you have a familiar buff but no familiar, it should no longer destroy any other pets you have when you remove the buff.
– All classes now keep their familiar buffs when the familiar is killed or dismissed, not just wizards.
– Fixed a problem with familiars for pet classes. If you have a pet, then summon a familiar, then zone, it will now keep your pet properly with only the familiar buff.
– Fixed some problems with the muted friends list for voice chat.
– Corrected a few issues with group and raid management functions.
– Groups are now somewhat persistent. If you log out and log back in you will still be in your group. Offline players should still be able to be kicked out of groups.
That’s cool. Not being able to kick LD people out of groups has been an issue for years. Being able to log back in and still be in your group is nice.
– Fixed a problem with /hidecorpse looted where the client and zone could get out of sync and keep you from looting for a while after that.
– Added /hidecorpse npc which works just like /hidecorpse all except it only hides NPC corpses.
– Drakkin rogues will now sneak at the correct speed when over level 50.
– Added in Group Roles infrastructure. When right-clicking on a member of the group, a leader will now have the roles sub-menu for role administration. If currently the leader of a group, right-clicking the player’s health / mana / stamina window will also show the same role administration menu. Also, added in the /grouproles command. A group role indicator was also added to the Player Info window.
Very cool.
– Group members in other zones will now be notified when their group member (that previously logged off) logs back in (grey when they’re offline, white when they’re online). Their name in the group window changes color as indicated for online/offline status.
*** Voice Chat ***
– Slash versions of the commands are effective on playername for the channel you are in and only if you are the moderator (raid/guild/group leader)
– Unban only works via slash command since there the banned player is no longer in the channel and therefore no longer available to click on.
– /voicechat unban playername
-Unban only works to unban playername in the channel you are currently in, and only if you are the moderator (raid/guild/group leader)
*** UI ***
Several changes have been made regarding the design of user interface windows. Some of the changes are noted below:
– The group leader will now be displayed in a different color in the group window and player window. This will work in addition to /groupleader to find out who the group leader is.
– Updated the pet window to display timers in hours, minutes, seconds like the buff window.
– “Caster:” in the buff info window will now display the user name. Also, if there is no caster information available, the “Caster:” line should not appear.
– Added the ability to click on a group member and target out of zone / link dead group members. Using the function keys by default should also bring up the players in the target window.
– Invite, follow and disband/decline buttons are no longer required in the group window.
– Modified the spell gem window to auto-resize based on the number of spell gems activated via Mnemonic Retention.
– Added the ability when using custom UI’s to target out-of-zone group members by clicking on their EQType’s gauge.
– Fixed a bug seen in custom UI’s where the spell name in the buff and short term buff windows would be “Unknown Spell” when there was no buff in that slot.
– In the group window, the gauge size can now be used by custom UI modifiers to set the size for gauges instead of having to change the background size.
– New –
EQUI_MercenaryManageWnd.xml
EQUI_MercenaryInfoWnd.xml
EQUI_MercenaryMerchantWnd.xml
EQUI_TopLevelScreens.xml
– Changed –
EQUI.xml
EQUI_Animations.xml
EQUI_FriendsWnd.xml
EQUI_GroupWindow.xml
EQUI_GuildManagementWnd.xml
EQUI_OptionsWindow.xml
EQUI_PlayerWindow.xml
EQUI_RaidWindow.xml
EQUI_TargetWindow.xml
EQUI_BreathWindow.xml
EQUI_CastingWindow.xml
EQUI_CombatAbilityWnd.xml
EQUI_EQMainWnd.xml
EQUI_CompassWnd.xml
EQUI_HotButtonWnd.xml
EQUI_LeadershipWnd.xml
EQUI_PetInfoWindow.xml
EQUI_TrainWindow.xml
EQUI_Inventory.xml
– The EverQuest Team
1 thought on “EQ: October 7 update patch notes”
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Ergh. It does feel like they are EQ2ifying EQ. I’m not actually playing EQ but I have friends who are – and they are playing it for what it is. If they wanted EQ2, they’d be there already.
Ergh.