EQ2 Forums - News and Announcements

This is a notification that UK worlds will be updated at 5:00 AM London Time on 01/11/2012. The estimated downtime will be 2 hours.

Forum Maintenance Notice: Monday January 9, 2012: At 5:30 p.m. US Pacific Time all SOE Forums will be unavailable for maintenance. We expect this maintenance to take approximately 30 minutes. Thank you for your patience.

The US Servers will come down on January 05, 2012, at 7:00 am PST for a hotfix. The expected downtime is one hour.

Update Notes will be posted in the Game Update Notes forum when available.

Click here for a Time Zone Calculator

Freeport server is down. We are investigating this issue and will get back with you as soon as we have more info. We apologize for the inconvenience and we thank you for your patience!

  Child?s Play Charity Drive - SOE Thanks You

SOE would like to offer a big THANK YOU to all of our players who purchased the Child's Play charity items in their favorite games. Thanks to you, we have reached our goal and will be making a $50,000 donation to Child's Play Charity. Child?s Play seeks to improve the lives of children in hospitals around the world through the kindness and generosity of the video game industry and the power of play. You can continue to support Child's Play by visiting their website, where you can donate directly to a Children's Hospital in your area.

Happy Holidays and Limited Customer Support

Everyone here at Sony Online Entertainment wishes you a very magical holiday no matter what you celebrate at this time of year.

To help get you in the festive mood, Community Relations has a holiday podcast and wallpaper to share! Listen to the Ho-Ho-Cast 2011, and then decorate your desktop with this festive Holiday Wallpaper.

Wallpaper Sizes: 800 x 600 | 1025 x 768 | 1280 x 1024 | 1680 x 1050

In honor of the coming holidays, we will be offering limited support hours for all games. Tech Support will be closed on Monday, December 26th, in observance of Christmas, and we will have limited Phone Support coverage from Tuesday, December 27th through Friday, December 30th. Our limited support hours will be from 10am to 4pm Pacific Time.

Here?s to a happy 2012. We hope all your wishes come true!

This is a notification that UK worlds will be updated at 5:00 AM London Time on December 23, 2011. The estimated downtime will be 2 hours. Update Notes can be found here: Game Update Notes.

The US Servers will come down on December 22, 2011, at 7:00 am PST for a hotfix. The expected downtime is one hour.

Update Notes will be posted in the Game Update Notes forum when available.

Click here for a Time Zone Calculator

We have an update for players on Vox, Nagafen, The Bazaar and Freeport servers! Originally, we had planned to start server merges on Friday, December 16, 2011. In order to minimize complications as much as possible, we have decided to delay the merges. Below is a schedule of the planned server merges:

• Vox will be going down on Sunday, December 18, 2011 at 11:59 PM PST.
• Nagafen will go down on Monday, December 19, 2011 at 5:00 AM PST.
• The Bazaar will go down on Wednesday, December 21, 2011 at 12:00 AM PST.
• Freeport will go down on Wendesday, December 21, 2011 at 2:00 AM PST.

• Nagafen & Antonia Bayle -  December 21, 2011 from 2:00 AM - 4:00 AM PST
• Permafrost, Crushbone, Oasis & Freeport - December 21, 2011 from 2:00 AM - 1:00 PM

The Bazaar to Freeport server merge is complete! Freeport is back online. We've greatly appreciate your patience during this merge.

This is a notification that UK worlds will be updated at 5:00 AM London Time on December 22, 2011. The estimated downtime will be 2 hours. Update Notes can be found here: Game Update Notes.

Since the holidays are upon us, we wanted to drop you a note so you could plan.

We'll be running Double XP days from Dec 30th through Jan 2nd!

This is way more advance notice than we usually give, but well...we'll be celebrating the holidays too, so we wanted to tell you now.

The US Servers will come down on December 21, 2011, at 7:00 am PST for a hotfix. The expected downtime is one hour.

Update Notes will be posted in the Game Update Notes forum when available.

Click here for a Time Zone Calculator

Merry Frostfell, Norrath!
 
The team is about to fly off to their families, great food, and probably a hangover after the new year.
 
But before we go, we wanted to leave you all with a couple more updates (today and tomorrow) with some really good stuff in it.
 
Here?s the goodies, broken down by feature.
 
Dungeon Finder

• We are adding Contested Dungeons to the Dungeon Finder feature from levels 20 to 89. (Level 90 contested dungeons are *not* being added to DF because of itemization concerns.) You should see a lot more dungeons available to you now at the various levels of play.
• (The following update is occurring on Wednesday, 12/21) We?re increasing the rewards for using the Dungeon Finder system. We?re adding a daily quest you can get that pays out after you play with a Dungeon Finder group for 30 minutes or more. The mystery crates are the same type of crates offered as rewards in the Dungeon Maker marketplace category, so the rewards found there are great stuff!

 
Dungeon MAKER

• We are buffing the Adventurers in Dungeon Maker so they have more power. (They currently run out too quickly currently.) We have other new updates beyond this coming in the new year, but this immediate change helps make Dungeon Maker instances a lot more fun over the holidays.
• We?re adding more Effect Objects into the Dungeon Maker category in the marketplace. (Very useful things for builders that want their spawners to be more unique.)
• Many pure builders have asked for spawners, decorations, and maps to also be available for Station Cash, and not only for Dungeon Marks. So we?re adding ?either or? prices to the Dungeon Maker category of items. You can purchase those types of items (spawners, decorations, and maps) for SC or for Dungeon Marks. NOTE: Power items, like the mystery crates and glass swords are *not* purchaseable with SC. You have to earn those items by collecting Dungeon Marks.
• You are now able to build and publish three dungeons instead of only one.
• And, of course, even though it?s currently only on the Test server, you will be able to play your own characters in Dungeon Maker instances soon. (You?ll no longer be constrained to Adventurers only!) (For more details on this, see http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=512106)
  

 
General Improvements

• In response to popular demand, we?re replacing the five-star rating system (for housing and dungeons) with a ?Like? system instead. The ratings for each house will be converted from a star-rating to a percentage score based on how many players played your dungeon and ?Liked? it. (Example: A 90% rating would indicated that 90% of the players that played your dungeon liked it.) You can choose to Like (or not) in each of the ratings categories for each dungeon/house.
• Additionally, to help players understand rankings categories a bit better, the categories in Dungeon Maker are being renamed ?Action? and ?Style?.
• The default leaderboard shown for dungeons is now ?Highest Ranked (Style)?. We?re changing  this from ?Recently Published? so that players that casually try the first dungeon on the list don?t get such a random result on their first experience into the feature.

 
And one final note: We have heard from several players that they don?t realize that the ?Dungeon Maker? category in the marketplace can be used to purchase rewards for ANY of your current characters. It?s unfortunate, but true, that some players thought the DM rewards were only to buff up their Adventurers instead of their actual characters. This is not the case. Those items are for your real characters. So?enjoy!
 
We here on the EQII dev team hope you all enjoy your holidays, have a very happy New Year, and we?re looking forward to returning so we can keep working on the best MMO on the planet.
 
See ya then!
 
-- Dave "Smokejumper" Georgeson.

We are investigating an issue with Nagafen being locked. We apologize for the inconvenience and will let you know when it is back up. Thank you!

The US Servers will come down on December 20, 2011 , at 7:00 am PST for a hotfix.  The expected downtime is one hour.

Update Notes will be posted in the Game Update Notes forum when available.

Click here for a Time Zone Calculator

The Vox to Nagafen server transfer is complete! We've greatly appreciated your patience during this downtime. If you run into any issues, please contact our Customer Support team here: http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=457291.

Beginning at 4 PM PST on Monday, December 19, 2011, Legends of Norrath will be unavailable while we apply a Game Update. We expect this Game Update will take up to 2 hours.

We apologize for this interruption and will resume all affected services as soon as the update is completed.

Click here for a Time Zone Calculator.

Starting in the next day or two (on Test server only) you'll be able to play any of your characters in a player-created Dungeon Maker instance.

This doesn't invalidate playing as an Adventurer, but you can also play as your regular characters, regardless of level. (Well, okay, you still have to be at least level 20 to play a DM instance, but you can play any characters from 20-90.)

We have still code to create, but we're excited enough about getting this to work that we're putting it on Test over the holidays so that we can get your feedback on this cool new addition to Dungeon Maker.

Please play a bit on Test over the holidays, if you're so inclined. We're eager to get your feedback when we come back for 2012 so we can tear into it and make it great for you! This is going to be awesome. The creativity of this community is unparalleled, and if you can play your own characters in those dungeons, then the sky's the limit!

Here?s a few bits of info about the feature as it is on Test:

• You still have to be level 20 to play in a Dungeon Maker dungeon, but any character that?s level 20+ can be used.
• You can *also* still play as an Adventurer if desired. 
• For this test, player parties have to be composed entirely of either all Adventurers, or all regular player characters. Mixing of Adventurers and real characters is not currently allowed in this version.
• Dungeon Mark rewards are turned off while on Test. (Until we balance the feature further, we can?t reward Dungeon Marks.)
• This feature is not finalized. It?s on Test because we want your feedback on it so that we can then tune it to a finalized state after the New Year.

Enjoy! This will be coming to Live servers as soon as we can finish it up after the New Year!

During the Vox -> Nagafen merger, The Bazaar and Antonia Bayle will be affected by a temporary chat/mail system outage until the merge is complete.

During this time, cross-server chat, global chat channels and the in-game mail system will not be available.  We apologize for this inconvenience and will work as quickly as possible to minimize the down time.

Thank you for your patience!