http://eq2.zam.com/story.html?story=29974

Patch notes for Tuesday, June 26, 2012:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Halas and Darklight Wood
Newbie experiences in New Halas and Neriak have been updated to make them more rewarding and fun. Neriak’s Darklight Wood got a much-needed art overhaul which adds to the ambience of eeeeevil. New and better armor sets are available to level 20 and we will be recommending players opt for New Halas or Neriak upon entering the game their first time.

I feel the need to start a new character in New Halas.

I haven't been there in a while.

Oh heck who am I trying to kid, I'm going to Darklightwoods.

massively writeup

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/07/14/the-tattered-notebook-changes-in-the-dark-light/

How about instead of tons of random nonsense they just overhaul the bloody engine?

That alone would've done more for sub numbers.

Originally posted by Cinatrot

How about instead of tons of random nonsense they just overhaul the bloody engine?

not what you want to hear but related info

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=520333&post_id=5775980#5775980

We are always concerned about performance and will be looking at optimizations and improvements on an ongoing basis.  I'm not sure who said we were updating the "game engine," because we're not doing that specifically.

What we are doing is working on terrain and art tools that will help us build environments that look and perform a lot better than they do now.  It's not a trivial task and we've been working on it for some time, but artists are already doing testing and working with it.  It's pretty amazing to see how quickly they can create things like mountain vistas compared to the tools they have now.