Test Update 02/12/14

What level were you and how many AAs did you have before the grant?

Strangeness update: Clicked aa back to *off* and had a power outage for a few mins right after. Logged back in and all aa pts are back. Not sure what the deal is/was.

82 rogue, 400+ aa's. Looks like everything is ok atm.

so with the free leadership AA do you still need 3 people in the group to see debuffs on mobs? i hope not.

Bit of feedback/info:

This patch seems to have started periodic lagspikes on Test. Varies in how often they occur and will only last like 3 seconds at a time. But it's causing delays and if you happen to be moving at the time you'll warp around.

This patch also seems to have partially activated anniversary on Test. The decor in PoK is up, there's also a few quest npcs up, but most are not spawned at all (like steamfont mission is up, conv is not, Sam Napth is not, the scavenger people in PoK aren't but they are in the home cities etc.) Plane of War is also not opened, nor anything else new that would have been added with THIS year's anniversary.

This patch activated the ability to use Wood Elf beastlords and Froglok monks. Wood Elf beastlords can NOT summon any pets (see: trees) atm. Beyond that they seem to be working fine.

Also, Sony wouldn't care about this because it's not a real part of EQ, but just as a warning to those that use the program. This patch seems to have broken the ability to use WinEQ. Attempting to log into a server with WinEQ up results in Error 1017. Attempting to do so without any programs up and just a clean EQ client has no problems at all.

I remember reading in the previous post announcing these changes that glyph of indeterminable reward was having expansion restrictions removed and the level requirement was being lowered to 51. Oddly enough it doesn't seem to have been changed. I was really looking forward to this change as I like to limit some of my alts to Kunark/Velious.

However when i logged onto test earlier today, it was still showing level 90 requirement. Is there any information on when this will be changed?

If any SOE read this, you might want to consider AA unlock problem:

If I want to make my Silver accounts temporarily Gold to auto grant my AAs, then going back to Silver and buying AA unlocks, I'd have to buy like 30+ AA unlocks to be eligible. If we're gifted 4k AA or so, and we go back to Silver, buying an AA unlock should allow us to achieve 4100 AAs total, not 1100. AA unlocks basically became useless as it stands.

From the time I spent on Test looking at the AA changes, it looks that ~5-6k AAs are granted to each class, and cover AAs BELOW level 86. No tradeskill AAs were granted.

Server stability, however, has gone down the drain. Besides the warping issues talked about by another poster, there is also an issue specific to Test where when you /resetaa, /auto-grant, and then zone, it takes several minutes for the game to load up the zone. Zoning times are also just longer on average.

For those wondering: there is an explicit difference between earned AA and granted AA. When you use the former, it's listed under Spent AA. The latter, however, is not, but IS included in Assigned AA. Thus, Granted AA = Assigned AA - Spent AA. However, this won't matter to you at all lest you play on Test, because only on Test are you allowed to reset your AAs, which allows you to recover all your Spent AAs for spending on future AA skills. Grinding AAs is effectively obsolete on Test.

Thirding the strange ghosting as of last night's patch.

As an aside, switching WinEQ2 from "Test" to "Normal" solved the 1017 thing for me. Not sure about other WinEQ versions, but worth a try.

I'd be curious to see if the overall # of logins and "population" has spiked severely since the patch with just people curious about the major overhaul. If this was the case, could be a big factor to the performance issues.

I for one logged in 2 characters myself and I have not used Test server for a very, very long time. I imagine that I'm not the only one that did this.

Also coming, but not yet listed in the patch notes:
• Ceremonial Elixir of Scholarship is no longer tradable on the Firiona Vie server.

Fair warning that if you have any of these leftover from previous anniversary events, you'll want to move them to a character that will find them useful before our next patch.

Silver rangers/rogues/berserkers are going to lose all the refunded AAs for headshot/assassinate/decap and not be able to repurchase them. Please do not refund these AA.

On a completely unrelated note, you can remove No Trade items from a Guild or Shared Bank with any character.

Unless you have a bug I can't duplicate you can't put no-trade items in shared bank. If you have an item that is no-trade, but is flagged as heirloom, you can use on any character on account from shared bank. No-trade heirloom shouldn't be allowed in guild bank at all.

does this mean only rogue & ranger get thier proc rate nerfed an zerker gets a bonus? ~

- Berserker - Decapitation - Changed all levels of this ability to function on enemies at the purchase level minus 1.
- Berserker - Decapitation - Created 3 new ranks of this ability to bring its maximum effective level up to 99.
- Ranger - Headshot - Changed all levels of this ability to function on enemies at the purchase level minus 1. Reduced the proc rate to approximately 2 per minute for a raid geared player.
- Ranger - Headshot - Created 3 new ranks of this ability to bring its maximum effective level up to 99.
- Rogue - Anatomy (Assassinate) - Changed all levels of this ability to function on enemies at the purchase level minus 1. Reduced the proc rate to approximately 2 per minute for a raid geared player.
- Rogue - Anatomy - Created 3 new ranks of this ability to bring its maximum effective level up to 99.

Would be nice if they didnt since decap hits for less and its basicly the only thing that makes playing a berserker worthwhile lol. parses suck no utility...id like to see them become flavor of the month club just once.

zerker can decap on any mob, ranger & rogue are very limited

There is another Tradeskill Mastery AA for Research skill, Arcane Tongue for pure casters.

I don't know about other classes and have not checked if it is granted on Test or not.

I was soloing in fire tonight no merc and I was able to see buffs debuffs and dots on the mobs I was kiting.

This is a terrible idea & obviously an attempt to get people to quit selling them on FV. One of the most sold items there & now you want everyone to buy your xp potions from the Marketplace. Obvious attempt at slowing down or removing power leveling as well. Not everyone is going to buy the heroic characters & even less people are going to buy the limited selection of xp potions from the Marketplace when they cost too much to be bought in bulk.

BOOOOOOO!
Hissss!

I understand why you are doing it, but the marketplace elixirs are terrible. Make them cheaper and better and we might buy them.