forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m

GAMEPLAY

• Entrances to the Shard of Hate have been activated in Neriak and Nektulos Forest. 
• You can now choose to display your equipped bow instead of your melee weapons by going to Persona->Options and checking Display Ranged Weapon.
• Not to be outdone by their Qeynosian counterparts, the Coalition of Tradesfolke in West Freeport have refurbished their headquarters to provide more convenient facilities for crafters.
• The Village of Shin's monk challenges will now provide experience for players above level 70.
• Venril Sathir and the Overking now have a chance to drop first tier armor set breastplates in addition to their existing drops.
• The client will automatically enable a low-memory mode when you are running low on memory.  The low-memory mode will downsample far away textures and unload geometry that hasn't been drawn in a while.  The low-memory mode should generally be invisible.
• Performance settings were adjusted slightly for better rendering at lower qualities without significantly impacting performance.
  - Flora will now only be rendered on High Quality settings and above.
  - Objects will not disappear as quickly on lower settings
• The client is Large Address Aware, meaning that you are much less likely to run out of memory if you have 3GB or more of RAM and are running either the 64-bit versions of Windows or have modified your boot.ini to support 3GB user address space.

LOOTING

• Raid Leaders can now create designated raid looters by right-clicking their names in the raid window and choosing add/remove looter.
• Designated raid looters are able to assign loot as if they were a raid leader when the group loot method is set to "Leader Only".
• It's now easier for the group leader to loot an item with the Leader Only loot method.

MOUNTS

• There are two new armored wargs now available in Kunark.
• Mounts will automatically be suspended while climbing a wall.
• Shallow water will no longer scare away your horses, rhinos and wargs.

COMBAT

• Ranged ammo has been adjusted to have a minimum level that represents the start of the tier. Ranged weapons will then no longer scale down to that level unless the ammo is significantly lower than the weapon.  For example, all ferrite ammo is now level 70 to use.  Level 80 ranged weapons will use level 80 for calculations now instead of scaling down to level 70.  Overall damage of current level 80 items will stay the same.
• Normalized procs will now cap out at 5.33 second delay for calculations.
• Combat text will now display if you double attack, flurry, ranged double attack, etc.
• Melee hit rates should now be slightly better against orange con mobs.

ITEMS

• Strength Imbued rings will now proc from ranged attacks.
• Mitigation has been increased on all low fabled raid armor sets.  Boots, Gloves, Bracers, Shoulders and Helms have a higher chance of dropping.
• Di'Zok Ceremonial cloth armor is now more comparable to tranquil swiftcloth.  The poisons Rilissian Vital Stirke, Di'Zok Mental Strike, and Regimental Elixir of Combat are now more effective.
• Collection items that you don't need will now con grey.

QUESTS

• The number of initiates need to update "The Trial of Tynnonium" has been reduced to four.
• Increased the drop rate on pages 8 and 9 in "An Old Memoir".
• The Pirate Jones encounter for the Swashbuckler Epic quest should be a little easier.
• Those participating in the quest "Once a Marine, Always a Marine!" in Jarsath Wastes should no longer be mislead by quest icons to speak with Necromancer Corporiss at the beachfront.
• Deputy Hopple in the Enchanted Lands is no longer trying to take twice as many apple muffins as he had asked for.
• Exchange server players can now obtain three quests previously unavailable on those servers because they are given out by guides.  Seek out NPCs in the Commonlands, Antonica, and Everfrost. 

TRADESKILLS

• Harvesting tool buffs are now activated by using the tool, and can be cancelled.  The effects will now persist through death. 
• The Tradesman Service quest from each crafting society's Grandmaster now also awards a simple cloak (those who have already completed the quest can purchase it from the Grandmaster).
• Grandmasters in the five starting cities now offer some new quests for tradeskillers who have assisted them previously.
• All handcrafted and mastercrafted chest and leg armor from 50-59 can now be imbued
• A lost recipe for a tynnonium stool has been recovered by carpenters.
• Test server players will now find a small bookworm in the Tower of the Moon can assist them in finding hard to obtain crafting recipe scrolls.

SPELLS

• Priest
  Priests will receive a new level 80 spell automatically called Cure Curse.  Be on the lookout for certain encounters to have special effects that are only curable with this spell.
• Guardian
  Call to Arms line now includes ranged skill.
• Templar
  Redoubt line now includes ranged skill.
• Wizard
  The Burning Radiance line will now proc from ranged attacks.
• Ranger
  -The hawk will no longer break stealth.
  -The Focus Aim line now has a group component which buffs the groups melee weapon skills and weapon accuracy.
  -Improved the damage on the offensive stance proc, melee based combat arts and faster reuse ranged attacks.
• Troubador
  Harmonization should no longer increase the immunity of Jester's Cap.
• Dirge
  The Cacophany of Blades line will now proc from ranged attacks

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Summoner
  Minion's Warding should no longer break invisibility after zoning.
• Guardian
  The icon on Lay Wastes was altered so that it's more apparent that it shares a reuse timer with the Assault line.  The prose should mention this as well.

ZONES

• Antonica
  Evil players should now evacuate near Thundering Steppes all the time.
• Commonlands
  Good players should now evacuate near Nektulos all the time.
• Kaladim
  A number of Kaladim patrols have had their respawn time increased.
• Chardok
  Adjustments have been made to Chardok named NPCs  Those that were level 85+ were lowered to 84, but had their health increased significantly, and DPS slightly.  Additionally, certain nobles have had abilities added to their repertoire. 
• Veeshan's Peak
  -The personal treasure of many inhabitants of Veeshan's Peak has been increased in power.
  -All Veeshan's Peak item sets have been given additional focus effects and increased stats.

Nice set of updates there. EQ2 has really come along and its great to see so many improvements. I was expecially glad to see the Ranger updates.

"-The hawk will no longer break stealth."
Now if they can just get it to actually DO something

Originally posted by Nadia

forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m

It's about time. A big PITA for stuff that not any better than the stuff I got out of group instances. Even a couple of Trakanon's "treasures" are just hilarious.

GAMEPLAY

• Venril Sathir and the Overking now have a chance to drop first tier armor set breastplates in addition to their existing drops.

  It's good to see that we're finally, after 5 months able to finish our worthless first tier fabled sets. They're still worse than the legendary sets from group instances, but at least we can get the full set now.

• The client will automatically enable a low-memory mode when you are running low on memory.  The low-memory mode will downsample far away textures and unload geometry that hasn't been drawn in a while.  The low-memory mode should generally be invisible.
• Performance settings were adjusted slightly for better rendering at lower qualities without significantly impacting performance.
  - Flora will now only be rendered on High Quality settings and above.
  - Objects will not disappear as quickly on lower settings

• The client is Large Address Aware, meaning that you are much less likely to run out of memory if you have 3GB or more of RAM and are running either the 64-bit versions of Windows or have modified your boot.ini to support 3GB user address space.

  In other words, most of this is changing the settings for the preset Performance/Quality settings for a better look. Something player UI's have been doing now for 2 years. It is good to see they've finally added the one command line in the ini file to support memory.

MOUNTS

• There are two new armored wargs now available in Kunark.
• Mounts will automatically be suspended while climbing a wall.

• Shallow water will no longer scare away your horses, rhinos and wargs.

  Very cool.

COMBAT

• Ranged ammo has been adjusted to have a minimum level that represents the start of the tier. Ranged weapons will then no longer scale down to that level unless the ammo is significantly lower than the weapon.  For example, all ferrite ammo is now level 70 to use.  Level 80 ranged weapons will use level 80 for calculations now instead of scaling down to level 70.  Overall damage of current level 80 items will stay the same.
• Normalized procs will now cap out at 5.33 second delay for calculations.
• Combat text will now display if you double attack, flurry, ranged double attack, etc.
• Melee hit rates should now be slightly better against orange con mobs.

Yes, the ranged ammo has needed to be fixed for a very long time now, and I'm glad to see it. I don't think melee hit rates really needed much, if any, change though. Mages are going to cry to high heaven about this. I hope they didn't go overboard, not that that has ever happened, and get it too high.

ITEMS

• Mitigation has been increased on all low fabled raid armor sets.  Boots, Gloves, Bracers, Shoulders and Helms have a higher chance of dropping.
• Di'Zok Ceremonial cloth armor is now more comparable to tranquil swiftcloth.  The poisons Rilissian Vital Stirke, Di'Zok Mental Strike, and Regimental Elixir of Combat are now more effective.

What? You mean fabled items might actually be worth getting now? OMG, say it isn't so... Although, as a scout, mitigation is the LAST thing I look at. Remember the leather items for plate healers fiasco?

QUESTS

• The Pirate Jones encounter for the Swashbuckler Epic quest should be a little easier.

Whaaaaa. Even though almost every 80th swashy on the server has a Charm's Way, let's make it even easier to get.

ZONES

• Veeshan's Peak
  -The personal treasure of many inhabitants of Veeshan's Peak has been increased in power.
  -All Veeshan's Peak item sets have been given additional focus effects and increased stats.

All in all, looks like a great update. SoH will receive a resounding welcome. I hope it's clever and challenging. I can always dream. I know they can do it, they have before. Looking forward to it.

Yup it looks like a good update but still they leaves the many bugs ROK brought into the game alone..the mind boggles about that one.

As for rangers well in the years ive played ive never rolled one but i remember the great nerf back in 2005 which pretty much made them useless,so its a bit of welcome love for them at least.

Mounts arent an issue,for the love of  god it takes but a few seconds to call for one so why bother with these fiddling little changes? a waste of man power IMO that could have been put to better use.

Good to see the client at long last getting some love as well,its been a problem since launch and should have been sorted by now,no excuses either the meer fact they've done nothing about this wide spread problem till now is shabby to say the least.

screenshots

www.massively.com/2008/03/29/raid-soes-stock-of-eq2-update-44-screenshots/

Originally posted by fozzie22

Yup it looks like a good update but still they leaves the many bugs ROK brought into the game alone..the mind boggles about that one.

 

As for rangers well in the years ive played ive never rolled one but i remember the great nerf back in 2005 which pretty much made them useless,so its a bit of welcome love for them at least.

 What?  Rangers have always been top on the parses.  They got a nerf a little bit ago that really shot their dps, but it wasn't back in 05.

Mounts arent an issue,for the love of  god it takes but a few seconds to call for one so why bother with these fiddling little changes? a waste of man power IMO that could have been put to better use.

I agree that it isn't an issue, but you clearly haven't played in a long long time or you don't have a mount.  If you go through water and your mount goes away, it is just visual and you DON'T have to summon it again.  You kept your run speed and it appeared again as soon as you got out of the water.  I guarentee all they did was tie it to the swimming animation; if you start a swimming animation, the mount visual drops.  I bet it took 30 mins to do, so I wouldn't consider it a waste.

 

Good to see the client at long last getting some love as well,its been a problem since launch and should have been sorted by now,no excuses either the meer fact they've done nothing about this wide spread problem till now is shabby to say the least.

What?  They are addressing an issue that only impacted a very small portion of the players at launch.  In 05 when the game was launched, how many people do you think had 3GB+ of memory and using a 64bit system?  The problem only started becoming a problem as technology got better and these specs became more affordable.

I am glad to see all of these changes.  I have a ranger alt and I did a /feedback about 6 months ago about being able to set the ranged item to appear out of combat instead of melee.  There must have been a lot of people asking for that and I am glad to see the devs listening.

Originally posted by diknak

Originally posted by fozzie22

Yup it looks like a good update but still they leaves the many bugs ROK brought into the game alone..the mind boggles about that one.

 

As for rangers well in the years ive played ive never rolled one but i remember the great nerf back in 2005 which pretty much made them useless,so its a bit of welcome love for them at least.

 What?  Rangers have always been top on the parses.  They got a nerf a little bit ago that really shot their dps, but it wasn't back in 05.

Mounts arent an issue,for the love of  god it takes but a few seconds to call for one so why bother with these fiddling little changes? a waste of man power IMO that could have been put to better use.

I agree that it isn't an issue, but you clearly haven't played in a long long time or you don't have a mount.  If you go through water and your mount goes away, it is just visual and you DON'T have to summon it again.  You kept your run speed and it appeared again as soon as you got out of the water.  I guarentee all they did was tie it to the swimming animation; if you start a swimming animation, the mount visual drops.  I bet it took 30 mins to do, so I wouldn't consider it a waste.

 

Good to see the client at long last getting some love as well,its been a problem since launch and should have been sorted by now,no excuses either the meer fact they've done nothing about this wide spread problem till now is shabby to say the least.

What?  They are addressing an issue that only impacted a very small portion of the players at launch.  In 05 when the game was launched, how many people do you think had 3GB+ of memory and using a 64bit system?  The problem only started becoming a problem as technology got better and these specs became more affordable.

I am glad to see all of these changes.  I have a ranger alt and I did a /feedback about 6 months ago about being able to set the ranged item to appear out of combat instead of melee.  There must have been a lot of people asking for that and I am glad to see the devs listening.

I've at the moment got 5 wargs,2 rhinos (dont like them at all) and a plethra of carpets among my many alts and frankly i very rarely ever get off them tbh other than when i die or have to climb walls and even when i go into water (i.e the willow wood between NQ and QH for instance) is really the only time my mount ever disappears on me,maybe others have a problem with them but i dont.

Rangers IIRC most certainly DID get a nerf back in '05 around the time of LU13 (but then again who didnt get hit with the nerf bat back then) so its good to see them get some love as i said.

As for the client well you see this is an issue wether you choose to beleive it or not becuase more and more people do have lots of RAM and while i wouldnt touch a 64 bit OS with a stick to play games on some people do and theres little doubt that this and many others changes are needed to the client and ingame to make it all the more stable,becuase in my book one crash for anyone is one crash to many and this is the mantra ANY mmo dev company should sing each morning before work.

Originally posted by fozzie22 

in my book one crash for anyone is one crash to many and this is the mantra ANY mmo dev company should sing each morning before work.

I agree crashes suck

WOW's client has crashed on me a few times (and still does occasionally)

while the EQ2 client has *never* crashed for me, at least not in the last 8 months

I'm not saying EQ2 client is better  

we all have stories of EQ2 client flaws

for *me*, EQ2 is less crash prone than the WOW client

- I have active accounts and level capped characters with both games

I agree Nadia,crashes happen but everything should be done to try and stop them,its never going to stop ALL crashes but its something any dev should aim for in a perfect world :)