FYI about the upcoming patch.

[TheClaus]

Pulled this on IRC about 2mins ago.

[12:49] <ypstnarev> FYI, everyone might want to cpy their EQ folder to another one tonight before you patch for tomorrow
[12:49] <ypstnarev> We will NOT be handing out dll's and exe's to help you keep playing after the patch
[12:50] <TheClaus> are you saying that the patch will break the emu
[12:50] <ypstnarev> the client on test does atm
[12:50] <ypstnarev> wont even let you login
[12:52] <TheClaus> well you might want to make a post on the forums so everyone knows.
[12:53] <ypstnarev> we might have a new login up for it tomorrow
[12:53] <ypstnarev> but who knows

So just to be on the safe side you might want to copy your EQ directory and then patch if you are still plaing in live EQ.

[Gino]

Can we say ouch ?

[Baltar]

so If we play on our own server, do we still have to back up our
current client? I.E. will the new client patch make the emu 2.3 unusable?

[madborg]

I have always advocated that people work with a copy of their EQ directory and not their actual directory. My own experience with UO shows that the game providers love to break the client decoders -- for no apparent reason.

But another reason to have separate directories is that Verant has been sloppy about their patches at times and some patch releases will either kill you client completely or have a higher than expected failure rate in the client (zone crashes).

Verant is doing some mucking around and last night I saw some really bad client behavior including complete screen freezes, frequent zone crashes, a GPF -- every single time when I quit.
And yes, I did reboot and still got those GPFs.

[Trumpcard]

Theyve been mucking with the sound drivers alot lately.. I had to completely disable my sound card to keep from getting screen freeze last week on test. They worked alot of the issues out, but Im still noticing very buggy behavior over there, I sure hope theyre not taking that patch to prod.

[RadiationVibe]

I don't know what changes are required for the server to be compatible with a release, but it would be nice if the emulator had an option to be compatible with a non patched release of the client (ie. fresh install from Kunark, velious or SOL, etc). I don't like having to rely on patching the client to a certain level in order to use the emulator. In the future I could see verant not patching the client until the user has a non-expired account.