GU 57 goes live in a few short hours, and here are some highlights that may interest you:

• Regions of Interest: Many quests will now highlight areas on the map to show where updates can be obtained
• Total revamp to the UI appearance
• Inventory and Persona combined into new Character window
• Newer version of spells will overwrite older versions in hotbars instead of being inserted into a blank hotbar space
• Lots of classes have been redesignated as “neutral”
• Major spell effects revamp
• Inner zone travel locations now support path linking
• Appearance slots no longer restricted to level 20+
• Kunark writ agent in the guild hall now offers writs to New Halas citizens
• Harvesting NPCs won’t spam individual harvests anymore (yay!)
• LOTS of class progression/ability changes
• New tradeskill quests for level 10+ crafters
• New tradeskill quest lines in Butcherblock and Steamfont
• “Pristine” designation removed from all crafted items
• Gorowyn has been overhauled to ease travel within the city

Click through for the patch notes in full!

The long-awaited GU56 is hitting the live servers today, bringing new zones, changes to the travel system, and lots of other improvements and bug-fixes. You can read the patch notes here!

Some highlights:

• New starting zone: New Halas (in the Frostfang Sea)
• New “storyline” addition to the quest journal — make sure you’re using an updated mod!
• Travel system revamp:
  • Bells & carpets consolidated into one travel category
  • No need to harvest Blessed Shrubbery to travel to a druid ring
  • Internal zone travel access quests/location taggings are now optional
  • Several additional zones now have internal travel systems
  • Static Ulteran spire portals added to the few spire destinations that didn’t have them before
  • Call spells’ cast time reduced to 10 seconds
• Shader 3.0 is now available!
• Queen’s Colony and Outpost of the Overlord are no longer available as starting areas for new characters
• New “Render Mounts” option (Options > Display > Animation):
  • Render all mounts all the time
  • Hide mounts during combat
  • Hide mounts all the time
• Guild hall Hunter Hireling now returns tier 8 and tier 9 meats
• Carpets, discs, and cloud mounts all have Glide
• Harvesting Depots now also store world event raw harvests
• More red shiny collections for mastercrafters
• Mastercrafted items have been improved
• Research times of lower-level quests have been reduced

The servers are still down, but keep your eyes peeled; they should be coming up within the next hour or two!

GU56 will bring New Halas to the live servers, but it also has lots of other changes in store. The way we travel across Norrath will be changing, and as a result some guild hall amenities will be updated with new locations and appearances! You can read more about the upcoming modifications here.

Long story short, the Magic Carpet to the Sinking Sands and the Mariner’s Bell: Shattered Lands that we already have in the guild hall will be redundant — they will both take us to all the same locations. This means that we can remove one of those amenities in order to free up a slot for something new!

This is the perfect opportunity for us to try to raise enough status to purchase the Guild Strategist that we’ve been eyeballing for the last year. We’ll have the amenity slot opened up soon, and we have more than enough coin to buy it. Our only obstacle at this point is to raise the amount of status needed: 20 million. (ouch!)

As of this post, our status drive is GO! We need at least 20 million status in the guild hall escrow by the time that GU56 goes live. Keep in mind that we still have to pay our weekly upkeep between now and then, and any deposited status beyond what we need to purchase the Strategist will be applied to future upkeep and amenity costs.

Not sure how to participate? It’s easy! Just complete adventure or tradeskill writs (aka “City Tasks”) or Heritage quests or sell status loot to our Commodities Exporter inside the guild hall in order to gain personal status points. To donate status to the guild, right-click on the guild hall door or type /house while inside the hall to bring up the housing window. Click the “Deposit” tab, then donate as much or as little status as you want. Remember that status deposited into the guild hall escrow account is non-refundable, but escrow coin and status is never lost, even if we move to another guild hall.

Good luck to everyone, and let’s get those points rolling in!!

The big day is here!! EQ2′s sixth expansion Sentinel’s Fate launches tomorrow. Players who have purchased the retail box are allowed access tomorrow, while digital download buyers will gain access next week.

The EQ2 Players site and various EQ2 fansites will be covering the launch minute-by minute. Here are some resources to help get you through the server downtime and take your first steps into the new content:

Sentinel’s Fate Ustream Launch Event

What to Expect on Launch Day

How to Get Started in Sentinel’s Fate

My fellow crafters will find the EQ2 Traders’ SF Clearinghouse quite useful. It will help you make sense of all the new recipes and factions that will be available.

If you use UI mods, be sure to keep an eye on EQ2 Interface so that you can download SF-compatible mods as they are released. There are changes coming to several commonly-used windows, so you may find the list of interface changes useful when it comes to disabling older mods.

The EQ2 team has finally revealed the contents of the 6-year Veteran Reward pack!! Head on over to EQ2Players.com to check out these shiny goodies!

I know I, for one, will be using the heck out of the tradeskill vitality trinket on all my leveling crafters. I’ve been waiting for that little beauty since they implemented the combat vitality trinket with the last Veteran Reward pack! There’s also a zap-to-a-groupmate trinket and a couple appearance armor items — a cloak and hood.