Test server patch notes

Considering one of the devs (I think Absor, but I honestly can't recall 100%) was on Test answering a complaint of the Agents of Change for the planes not working with a response of "TLP specific things for unlocking stuff doesn't function here" (paraphrased) and it's literally under a header of Progression Servers mentioning "where Luclin is not released" I really don't see any ambiguity in it.

Seriously think to yourself what would the benefit of making that long phrase instead of "-Toned down pets under Level 61 some" that removes any ambiguity?

You've got a bizarre hangup on the realities of what their intentional choice of phrasing with it means. What those "power curve" changes mean is completely up for speculation - it's not impossible your right, but the testing is a waste of time for now.

Air pets are going to be the aggro pets. I bet you could even pull off a fire pet in a good group once the mage gets pet heals in Kunark and has a dedicated group healer. That DS is going to speed up killing significantly.

You'll still see mage pets in raids, mages are going to just have to adjust to the additional aggro they are unused too.

You could be correct, the wording used could be speculated either way. I think Absor was talking about unlocking spawns, or class locking and unlocking (such as Gnome SKs) which can be flagged on and off dependent of server.

I suppose it is moot at this point to argue about it as we just don't know enough to make an educated guess.

However, it's still fun to pet tank on TEST right now with my group!

Yea the aggro changes are beautiful once you adjust.

On group content you mean? Or can you still petwall raid stuff?

just group stuff, raid targets will walk right past a pet as of these changes.

Im not happy about not being able to step in and save my pet when soloing.

Yes that is sort of lame, the root changes in general I don't quite understand.

Try it some before condemning it - it's not automatic versus before, but it's not TOO hard to pull off still. Just takes a teeny bit of skill now. (And I do mean teeny, I've never played an ENC with animations previously and adapted to it really quickly)

Sounds like maybe my tendency to fear the worst may be premature. Thanks for that.

To the person testing air pet vs war.

The war testbuff weapons have no procs, so using an air pet is like testing a war with stun procs vs one with no stun procs. Gee I wonder who will win.

Try testing the water pet or go buy the stun augs from one of those augmentation vendors like any good war will be rolling with on these servers.

Don't you feel excited mage you gonna test all your pets straight on 1st day of phinny to see how this gonna affect aggro.For all those melee dps it's a great change now rogue can backstab in group with a pet without mobs turning on them.Didn't people said pet are a machine can kill anything on his own so why would u need to come to melee range to save him aren't they pretty unkillable except maybe for raid mobs.

If they really are trying to push all of this befiore the TLP launch it's silly, you have a few days of testing (with who knows how few people actually on the test server).

People were ready for this launch on Wed Dec 9. Roshen said he would try to give us a time this weekend, and its less than 3 days before launch, with still no time, which would indicate they do not know, or plan on postponing it.

Why would you feel the need to rush all of this new stuff into a patch days before your releasing a hyped server. The changes to core mechanics (roots, pets, etc) should all be tested for a while before they are implemented on live. That's why I'm hoping these are not implemented.

All people wanted was a true box server with a smooth launch, nobody requested a change in pet agro, root, etc. Most people are now fine with pets as well, as the true box itself is already solving lots of the pet army problems. If you are going to add in all these changes, then why not make some changes that have been heavily requested such as adding beastlords and berserkers (not my idea but it makes sense to me) in, balancing out the classes a bit, improving some augments to help melee in classic, adding in Quality of Life Changes such as breeze/mana song, etc.

Throwing in all these big changes with days to test doesn't make any sense. Fixing something that isn't broken, while leaving the broken things broken. Nobody has requested any of these changes for a TLP, yet all the requests that are supported by a majority of players have been shut down through reasoning that you have now made hypocritical many times over. IE: Leaving the experience as classic as possible, but then completely countering that with other actions. Saying certain things are out of era and left out (Halfling rangers, Breeze, Zersk/BLs, Warrens, etc, etc) but then leaving in auto loot, origin, and other major features that impact a classic feel significantly more than everything denied. I highly think that autoloot (which I don't even mind) affects the classic feel far more than a Halfling ranger. Nobody gives a hoot about a Halfling ranger- but people have given a hoot about things like adding in raid instancing for a long time, out of era spells that improve the quality of life of certain classes, better class balancing, etc, and have all been shot down.

For example, as Vaclav and others have stated, for years you couldn't adjust mage pets and monk fists on TLPs without affecting live servers, and now suddenly you can? Something that people have requested forever (since Fippy), and now its being done a few days before the server launch with little to no testing? After people have stopped complaining about it and accepted it....and after the true box solves most of the problem anyhow...... I never bought "unable to change pet dmg on TLP servers" in the first place, and you can go back and read my posts from over a year ago.

Warrens and other zones on startup, Bl/Zerks, out of era spells that help balance, Halfling rangers --> These are all ideas I can live without, but they do make sense and would make the game much more fun Yet the dev team goes to work on a bunch of stuff nobody ever requested or wanted with a few days to go before a major launch, and it's just not making any sense at all to me. I am hoping these remain on the test, and Phinny launches as expected and advertised (a true box progression server with raid instancing on Wed Dec 9).

If you are going to delay it, please make it be for something worthwhile and requested by the majority of the community. Not for changing core mechanics (pet agro, roots, etc) or changes that nobody ever wanted or needed and were never a player concern to begin with.

To stop the major box groups from shooting up with mages to mage wall bosses and RMT. These changes are a major blow to RMTers, or at least an attempt at a major blow. That's why.

Iyvy, I have not even played a mage on these TLP. I have always argued that monks/mages shold be toned back on TLP but they stated again and again it couldn't be done. I never bought that from a technical standpoint, but accepted it, as did everyone else.

So I am all for toning back the power of pets a bit, but I am against it right now on Phinny, as it's too late to implement. I'd rather have a smooth and successful of launch of what was advertised rather than a choppy and crappy launch of a bunch of new stuff, ESPECIALLY the changes to pet agro and root.

Would you mind explaining to me how all these major boxes are creating mage armies on this server? I thought the whole point was 1 instance of EQ per machine. If somebody can create a mage bot army with 6+ computers, then hell, power to them. The way I see it, you have rooted out almost all of the RMT and mage bots anyhow.

Remember Ragefire? People played for hours and had their work deleted a few times. The server was wiped and then delayed numerous times after people took time off work to play at the advertised time. There were a number of game breaking problems on Ragefire, and that was with weeks of beta testing. These new changes are a few days old. I'm not up for a botched release again.

And if they do botch the release or delay it, then I'd rather see it be about majority requested content such as adding in Zerks/BLs, zones such as warrens, stonebrunt, etc to the classic release. Not about changing the core mechanics of root, pet agro, etc.

I was not saying you were a boxer. Nor am I saying that this will work to disuade boxers. I two box, I will two box on the new server, now using my laptop instead of windowed mode. I went into RF hard and fast early and was fairly succesful at making money and duoing all the hard camps, I know most of the multiboxers and RMTs, from the 6 bot crews, to the 18 box crews. CAF, and the shadowy guilds behind the guilds, with members in all the major guild, they have names if you go find em, and I met them. They are variously nice or mean. Some play super fair some will try and steal everything they can get away with, some are RMTs some (like me) made a bunch of krono to fund their account for years to come. Anyway word on the street is they're all buying a bunch of old laptops for cheap then linking them with isoboxer. It will (in their presumption) run much the same as before, even as large as 10 box armies. They will form guilds to do instance raid content as well as try and get the open world targets.

Some guilds try to swarm the open world targets and dps race. Some recruit large numbers and supplement it with mage bot crews and then take all the loot and make money that way. Some just hit all the good guk/GEB camps early and try and get krono that way. Anyway I don't think the tap will be as sweet this time around. They seem to think it'll be the most krono ever and they're already buying bigger trucks or basements or whatever they do with all their money. But they'll try anyway.


Daybreak is doing these changes as an attempt to their plans right as they made them. Big box armies can still magewall bosses, it takes forever but you can still do it, as well as planar stuff and whatever. With instances they can do it safely no risk of losing it to a better organized guild.


The changes will stop magewalling of raid bosses, all these RMT and multimultiboxers had planned for doing all the raids each week as a major source of loot and krono. If their box armies don't work for instant raiding it heavily cuts their profits, might even make it unviable. That is why the raid changes to aggro.

The other thing these changes does is let melees group with pets. This is huge. I play an enchanter and tank with charm pet. I don't invite melee because I can't. I can't heal them. They would literally have to sit in the corner and watch. Now they can melee without needing a tank/cleric to heal them. They can join me. They can play. This is a good change. This is the single biggest quality of life change for the most people with the least work they could do. I've been saying for a while that some sort of fix for melee was the best use of resources, and this may have been the easiest most efficient bonus to melee. I hope so.


Whether these changes will have negative effects, will work as intended, or won't cause unforseen problems is no sure thing. Daybreak sucks at everything they do. However they have a reason and its a good reason. I agree with these changes.