May 26, 2010

Halas is Live, and Excitement Follows

stargrace May 26, 2010 3Comments

Yesterday the latest patch for EQ2 went live, and while there were some glitches, it was still a pretty nice patch. The biggest news was that Halas went live, a new starter zone for players. Sadly, I am restricted to 12 character slots and all of those are filled with level 80+ characters. While I can run through the zone and still do the quests ‘grey’ it’s not something I want to do quite yet. That being said, I DID head over to the new zone and move two of my characters to the amazing 5-room housing that went live. I’m even debating moving my Norrathian museum to the new housing, although that would mean moving over 700 items and placing them again. This is not an idea I’m taking lightly, and it’s still something I’m trying to come to a decision about. I just love everything about the new homes.

With this update also came shader 3.0 – and my iksar pictured above looks great with it. Sadly, a lot of my characters do not look so great with it, they look a little too ‘shiny’ and some of them just look horrible (my gnome is now as white as a ghost, and my kerra is now charcoal grey instead of white). The housing and architecture of the game look amazing – for the most part. I have encountered some items that simply are not ‘complete’ like the frames to LoN paintings, the Venril Sathir painting with moving mist, and a few trees have lost their textures.

The new travel system is something I’m really enjoying. Selecting a location from a map rather then having to ‘zone’ from bell to bell. I haven’t had time to check out the new druid ring live event yet, but that is next on my list. There were some of the usual expected glitches, but over all it was a nice update. What does everyone else think of it so far? Let me know in comments!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.