Of Wing and Fang
by Loral on February 02, 2005
SOE released quite a large patch this week. You can read the entire patch message here but I will highlight a few of the more interesting features.
Lost Dungeons received a much requested selection menu for one of the four mission types. While this decision will certainly be popular for those who still adventure, it basically removes the assassination and rescue missions from the list. The collection and murder spree missions are much easier than the assassination and rescue missions. Few would ever select a mission that offers a harder difficulty for no gain in reward.
One of my problems with LDON is the lack of a story arc. I actually prefer going on assassination missions because they are one of the only adventure types that has a building plot and a final confrontation. Boss mobs and anti-heroes are important not only in video games but also in traditional fantasy. Walking into a dungeon and killing 58 skeletons or collecting 28 bone chips doesn't have the same energy as going into a dungeon, killing 57 skeletons and then killing Ograth the Skeleton King.
A better solution to the selection choice would be to make rescue and assassination missions offer up a higher reward for their difficulty. Giving boss mobs nice loot or rescued NPCs offering up a reward for their return might have made the difference enough that people would once again select them. This change puts a band-aid on the problem of convenience.
SOE revamped two older zones this week including Mistmoore and Paw. Both zones now harbor beasts above level 60. Walking into Mistmoore at level 69, I was reminded of how I felt entering the dark castle at the young age of 30. Mistmoore was always a very difficult dungeon and well known to eat even the heartiest of adventures. It is nice to see it return to its former danger.
Part of that danger, however, came from some of the quirks of the dungeon. Mob pathing was never very good and it wasn't uncommon to see enormous trains pour out of the castle and tear across the courtyard killing anything that moved. That tradition remains today. It isn't uncommon to see a mob run in the opposite direction and return with a couple of friends when you pull it. From the item links floating through our network of channels, the loot supports the reward, but it would have been nice to have a zone whose danger didn't come from its unexpected bug-based behavior.
I have yet to step foot into the new paw but from the equipment I see, I imagine it is as difficult as Mistmoore was. Paw always had one of the most difficult dungeon layouts that only the oldest old-world dungeons had. Remember upper and lower guk? How about Kedge Keep? I am sure old timers wax nostalgia about the difficulty of old-world dungeons but few ever went deep into paw. Most groups found a cozy corner near the zone and pulled what they could see. Only adventures many levels above the zone population would dare to delve deep in and even then they had a gate potion at the ready.
One very small fix in this patch that had me cheering out loud was a fix to the font system. I always preferred Verdana over Arial as a font but using such a wide font ended up breaking the item counts on stackable items. This last patch fixed this problem. It was a small but useful fix.
This patch did not implement the task changes I had hoped to see. We will not see these new tasks and task improvements until the release of Dragons of Norrath. It would have been nice to see these new tasks before the release of the next expansion but improvements to the task system at any time will hopefully help those who prefer to hunt solo.
This week EQ Stratics hosted a developer chat with Travis Mcgearthy and Ryan Barker of the EQLive design team to talk more about Dragons of Norrath. This was the first time SOE discussed the details of the new Mission system with those outside of the Dragons of Norrath beta. While a future preview of Dragons of Norrath will go into more detail on this system and the other features of DoN, I can make a few general statements on what we see so far.
Of all of the features of Dragons, none excite me as much as the Mission system. The Mission system ties together the Omens of War task system, the Gates of Discord expedition system, and the Lost Dungeons adventure point system. Players pick a particular mission, one with much greater variety than the four LDON types, and complete that mission in an instanced part of a larger dungeon zone. Completing this mission awards a sort of currency that can be used to purchase new items.
There are a number of advantages to this system. They have well-defined timeframes for completion, in this case, about an hour. They reward every member of a group equally rather than favoring one lucky party member with random loot. They offer gameplay variants other than sitting and hunting at a particular camping spot.
For those of us who thought LDON was one of the great improvements in Everquest, the Mission system answers our roar of requests. Unlike LDON, however, Dragons features a lot of raid content (dragons!) and general overland and dungeon non-instanced zone exploration.
We had a busy week and I expect a few more in the future. In the next couple of weeks I will write a preview of Dragons of Norrath that will go into further detail into these systems and the other features of this expansion. In the mean time, lets hunt some vampires.
Loral Ciriclight
2 February 2005
loral@loralciriclight.com
Comment Posted by: Bearage on February 2, 2005 11:03 AM
This article needs steam. I felt it kind of just waffled on without any real point or goal.
I think it is better to wait for something substantial and then put your heart into it.
Comment Posted by: The Perculator on February 2, 2005 03:15 PM
I'll admitt that the article didn't have the usual flare, but there was quite a bit to say. I say, "Nice work." Not every article has to spawn comments of class balance and game death within 3 hours of posting. I wasn't aware of some the things mentioned (mainly about DoN) and found them quite interesting so I read other things elsewhere. I like when an article makes you do that. Well, I'm going to return to staring at my computer and pretending I'm doing something productive.... nachos sound good.
-Perc
Comment Posted by: on February 2, 2005 04:10 PM
The message was informative, but alot of it was stuff I had already read on other sites....I am happy though to have something to read here. I check the site everyday seeing if there is a new article. Keep up the good work.
Comment Posted by: Siriln on February 2, 2005 05:22 PM
Out of morbid (and frustrated) curiousity, are the task improvements only going to be available to those who purchase the next expansion as a feature? This isn't intended to be snide at all, it's just that tasks were a selling point to me with OoW, and having to get the next expansion to fix what is messed up would feel somewhat like paying for the same thing twice.
Comment Posted by: Loral on February 2, 2005 05:39 PM
I imagine that any true task-system tasks will require Omens but I expect the Mission system, being it is an important feature of the expansion, will be available to everyone.
Comment Posted by: on February 2, 2005 10:02 PM
Given their new trend of milking their customers for every penny I doubt you'll get anything without paying for it. Observe EQ2 nickel and diming you to death.
Comment Posted by: Wombat on February 2, 2005 11:57 PM
I will be very surprised that you will get any missions without the expansion.
They have split the player base by making good/evil missions mutually exclusive points wise. It make sound sense lore wise but on servers where getting a group, or at least a somewhat balanced one, is already difficult, it will make things harder.
Overall another LDON system should be a good thing, hopefully it will be a little more imaginative than the original LDON.
Btw on a bright note a friend of mine who reviews internet games and play tests some, says WoW has fallen to SOE EQ1 levels of CS along with poor patches and bugs. So Blizzard may not be bleeding off as many players as it used to. Apparently it lost a lot of its talented staff just before WoW's rushed release.
EQ2 is having some issues with its last big patch too....
Wombat
Comment Posted by: on February 2, 2005 11:59 PM
BTW you could get around the good/evil mission split points wise by making the gear vendor neutral faction and able to cash points from good or evil as a single currency?
Wombat
Comment Posted by: Loral on February 3, 2005 12:02 AM
They've considered that, Wombat. It won't hurt grouping.
Comment Posted by: Talaen on February 3, 2005 12:20 AM
Blizzard was NOT prepared for the response they got to WoW - dunno if it was a staffing issue, a rushed release issue, or just a chain of bad decisions, but unfortunately now, even if they fix their ongoing CS and stability issues, they will have to spend the next two years running the game mostly flawlessly before players forgive them.
That's the reality of MMO players I guess. We're hard to please, quick to anger, and we do NOT forget the sins of the past. Publishers beware.
I'm not really surprised though, I mean look how much people love to hate their game's publisher. I've known more players to complain loudly and vehemently about Sony's customer support, the bad patches, the poor planning, the horrible decisions, the spotty communication....but they also all keep playing. I've also seen this happen to almost every other MMO publisher whose game I've been a part of. I think what it says most is that the industry as a whole needs to really work on these areas. There's always going to probably be a small mob waving torches and pitchforks outside the castle gates, but I dunno that I would call what I've seen on any game's forums yet "small". Then again, I also don't think that any of the publishers really have a good way to get objective feedback from their players. There are ways for players to voice what they feel, yeah, but they'll only do so if they feel strongly enough. The only real thing that gets a good picture of how everyone feels about the game is a login poll of some sort.
EQ2 did have some problems with the last patch, which most of the players expected, because they crammed a billion things into it. The nice thing though is that the majority of the problems, or at least the majority of the visible ones, were corrected in the hotfix the next morning. Since most EQ2 players came from EQ1 or SWG, you almost never hear them complaining about patches anymore. Nerfs, ok, they complain. But us EQ2 players are for the most part used to game-breaking patches that knock people out of the game for weeks - and here we have a patch where about the worst thing it does is goof up armor colors and break a skill or two and it's fixed within 24 hours? We don't even have time to get upset, really. I hate to say it, but I really don't see many EQ2 people going back to EQ1 other than occasionally for nostalgia - I can't even fathom it, and I kept my EQ1 account active on purpose just in case. Maybe that'll change when folks hit the cieling in a month or two and there's not much to do until an expansion comes out, but that's pure conjecture on my part, because no one knows just how much top end content there really is in the game right now. So I wouldn't hold out much hope of EQ1 gaining back population from EQ2, not anytime soon.
As far as the technical issues, I suspect that in a year or so the EQ2 player base won't be quite so forgiving, but I've got to say that the EQ2 team is doing a hugely better job at running a stable game and not breaking things too badly overall than past SOE teams have done. I -hope- that's indicative of changes in the company as a whole, and not just this specific game or team.
I think that the new LDON-ish system is a good idea, but I agree with Wombat that a good/evil split is going to cause problems. Not just because of low player populations, but because most of the people that play EQ1 have friends and guilds that spread across the entire racial spectrum. Talaen is a high elf paladin on the nameless, yet 3 out of 6 of the regular clerics he grouped with were dark elves. A similar portion of the shamans were trolls or iksar. The lore of the game has been so repressed that it's just not possible to expect players to begin taking racial alignments seriously again - what will happen, if the system attempts to force that on them, is that the system won't get used by a lot of people, who would rather group with their friends regardless of the races in the limited time they have to play.
Comment Posted by: on February 3, 2005 12:37 AM
"They've considered that, Wombat. It won't hurt grouping" - Loral
How?
Wombat
Comment Posted by: Loral on February 3, 2005 01:03 AM
From the dev chat:
"Rashere - The two different factions each give a different type of currency for completing their missions and, in turn, only accept that currency at their vendors. But, the currency is tradeable. "
Comment Posted by: Wombat on February 3, 2005 01:41 AM
Tradeable between players? or with the NPC Vendor? If between players it will depend on the player numbers balance between factions as far as the exchange rate is concerned. If 5 times the players do one faction then you can see the market imbalance.
Will it be sold in the Bazzar?
If its tradeable 1:1 at an NPC "black market" vendor then I withdraw my objection.
If between players then a lot will depend on which faction is the most sought after or doable if there are racial limits.
If Faction is important and not just points then people wont want to swap between faction quests as you wont advance the faction you want if you are constantly taking negative hits from doing faction on the other side which gives you "X"tokens to trade for the "Y"tokens that you want.
Basically unless its a NPC "black market" vendor then it seems far simpler to just do one faction, which will give you no opposing faction tokens to trade. Problem solved except you have split the groupable player base unless they all do the same faction quests.
Wombat
Comment Posted by: Teremar on February 3, 2005 01:41 AM
Did I hear that right? The currency is tradeable?
Two alternatives here. Either:
1) The gear you can get with it will only be an incremental improvement over what's available in the Bazaar now.
or
2) Raiders are going to SCREAM. They complained enough about non-raiders being able to get LDoN high-end gear just by doing instances over and over again. If you can just buy yourself a bunch of DoN currency...
Yes, for the first three months the currency will be rare and very valuable. But you know what happens with anything rare and valuable.
Oh and I didn't realize we were to the point where another game having problems is a "bright note." Blizzard admits that based on their market research they had planned for about 300,000 subscribers after one year and weren't ready for 600,000 after two months. But my server (Silver Hand--one of the original RP servers) was one of the worst hit and it's been fine for a while now. Yes, there's more they need to do, and it's too bad they had to learn the hard way about communication when SOE's been demonstrating how not to do it for years. But they've been learning fast. I wouldn't plan on too many people coming back from WoW because of server issues--it wouldn't have been so frustrating when the servers were down if the game weren't so much fun. Maybe in six months if the high end doesn't materialize as expected, but I doubt it.
Comment Posted by: Tolian on February 3, 2005 08:38 AM
'Raiders' is a quite a generalisation, especially in Everquest. Being one myself, I never minded non-raiders getting decent upgrades - it was never as good as EP/PoTime gear anyway (except for Augmentations of course). Keeps the game healthy, and there needs to be some way to stop the gap between raiders and non-raiders getting TOO big, otherwise we'll never have suitable applicants for raiding guilds.
Comment Posted by: Wombat on February 3, 2005 09:24 AM
"Oh and I didn't realize we were to the point where another game having problems is a "bright note." "
Yes its gallows humour, but not too far from the truth. If EQ1 has selling points they arent just its good points but other games bad points.
Yes WoW is a victim of its own success (and some bad management decisions). It shows how successful EQ1 could have been in a larger market if they had worked on it more a couple of years ago.
We will see how it goes when it toughens up content for the long haul.
In the meantime EQ2 and WoW only need to be successful enough to drop a mob of servers below critical mass for it to be an even bigger problem for those remaining on EQ1. And of course theres Vanguard in 12 months time.
Anyway I await a response on what "tradeable" means?
Wombat
Comment Posted by: Teremar on February 3, 2005 12:08 PM
You're absolutely right Tolian, and I apologize for inadvertently feeding into what I agree is a really destructive overgeneralization. Some raiders, presumably the same ones who complained about LDoN gear, will scream. Because tradeable DoN currency will separate "having good gear" from "winning tough fights" far more than LDoN ever did if the gear really is good.
Personally I had no trouble playing the market in the Bazaar and making lots of money, so I'd presumably do well under such a system. But it was far more satisfying to get the gear myself. Enough so that I kept at OoW for a while because it was exciting to upgrade my gear even though the fights themselves were boring.
But it didn't last long. Which brings me to my main point: no loot or system for distributing loot will make up for boring content. The success or failure of DoN will depend on the missions themselves. I heartily agree with Loral that they need a plot of sorts. Unique rooms. Bosses. Varied tactics both on the part of the mobs and on the part of the players if they expect to win. In short, the sort of creativity and just plain time and effort SOE regularly puts into raid content.
There are plenty of examples to imitate. The old dungeons like SolB, LGuk, or Old Seb (though probably more linear). Most raids, just scaled to a single group. Best of all in my opinion, force every EQ dev to level a WoW char up to 20 and fight through the Deadmines. That is EXACTLY the kind of mission EQ needs and there's nothing to prevent SOE from making missions like it in EQ.
For the record: I hope DoN is a great expansion and a lot of fun to play even if I don't plan to play it. I certainly hope EQ players aren't reduced to hoping other games can't keep their servers running because that's the only way EQ can compete with them.
Comment Posted by: Loral on February 3, 2005 12:27 PM
The missions are very cool. They are far more varied than what we've seen in LDON or the task system.
Comment Posted by: Drubear on February 3, 2005 12:50 PM
Wombat - not sure if you're expressing gallows humor again, but "tradeable" means the item is >>not<< NODROP - you can buy/sell/trade the item(s) with other players. I suspect you will not be able to sell the currency items to NPCs just trade them in for stuff.
I imagine it/them being similar to the "bag of platinum" you get when you sell your horse/bridle back to the Stablehand NPC's (however these will not be NODROP which the bags are as I recall.)
So, if you happen to like doing missions for one faction, but like the phat lewt from the other, you'll have the ability to get the other faction currency if you can find someone to sell it to you or trade for it. I daresay the plat houses will be farming the stuff along with enterprising players with multiple toons. Should be possible to have it available in the Bazaar or Barter House (the latter being a very interesting upcoming feature that's on the Test Server right now) for your acquisition pleasure.
Comment Posted by: on February 3, 2005 05:22 PM
"SOE revamped two older zones this week including Mistmoore and Paw. Both zones now harbor beasts above level 60. Walking into Mistmoore at level 69, I was reminded of how I felt entering the dark castle at the young age of 30. Mistmoore was always a very difficult dungeon and well known to eat even the heartiest of adventures. It is nice to see it return to its former danger"
Typical SoE, revamp means make the MOBs harder so that the zone caters to ubers and screw the other people. Yep that will keep more people wanting to play the game. Whats next? A level 70 East Commanlands? Probably after the stupid skellie trick they pulled
Comment Posted by: Crimsonsplat on February 3, 2005 06:07 PM
Loral was kind of busy writing up all those guides for Sony, so we got the short shrift this week. As for EQ1, I was amused to note that the war in FV zone -- which I missed hearing about because I had to log to preserve my rez timer -- had a write up on UGO/CastersRealm, with a link to it and to the discussion thread from the EQ boards.
By three hours later, not one person had posted a comment. Gemdiver was forced to post his own followups for discussion...
Vanguard in 2006.
Comment Posted by: Loral on February 3, 2005 06:31 PM
I wrote those guides over the last few months for Caster's Realm.
Lavastorm got the best revamp of all and its for lower levels.
I wouldn't say paw is for ubers only but as we know, the term uber means so many different things to so many different people. Five years ago, Mistmoore at level 30 was for ubers only.
Comment Posted by: Solistic on February 3, 2005 06:56 PM
I do not care what anyone says. Last night I saw the system wide message and went to Dreadlands on my Level 63 Warrior and played in the war there. I joined up in a group of people I met that night at the start of the event. We were on the good side and we lost baddly. I died 10 times. But you know I had more fun playing there last night, and listenning to what was going on, and following the battle all the way through FV, than I have had in a couple years. The brand new people I met were great people and we killed and died together. I was exausted and ready for bed when it was done and I have thought about it all day long at work.
Now that is gaming. That is meeting new people and new friends. There was new Lore in the making and I was there. I loved it!
Comment Posted by: Wombat on February 3, 2005 08:40 PM
Tradeable doesnt mean just with players, you may be able to trade on type of token with another via a black market NPC.
Anyway we will see soon enough, since no one actually seems to know at this stage.
By the time I logged on after work the event was over, otherwise I would report on it. I did see a few players bodies in the FV tunnel and at its exit in DL.
My Guild killed some Dragoons and Golems in FV but they were stock standard from OT Docks.
Apparently on one server the players and FV guards made a stand on the bridge into FV and held off the rampaging hordes for an hour until they were overwhelmed.
Some good attuneable and no drop gear dropped apparently but being an off peak Guild we didnt see any of it. Its a pity they didnt stage it out over 24 hours....
People with dial up couldnt even zone into areas of conflict, the lag was too great.
Wombat
Comment Posted by: Wombat on February 3, 2005 09:53 PM
They could have events in other zones such as MM raiding GFay/BB as an opportunistic attack while defenders are tired/dead from FV at a later time in the day etc.
Iksars attacking Lanys later on because they werent invited to the earlier party or because "there goes the neighbourhood, Dark Elves!, Arrgh!" etc etc...
Wombat
Comment Posted by: Talaen on February 3, 2005 11:39 PM
"Apparently on one server the players and FV guards made a stand on the bridge into FV and held off the rampaging hordes for an hour until they were overwhelmed."
And that right there is why these events should continue :) That's the sort of thing that gets people excited about the lore again.
One of the things that Asheron's call did right was to always have some sort of a plot event at every major update. On a regular schedule even. The players got used to it, expected it, and in the end they looked past a lot of other problems with the game because they were having so much fun at the monthly updates. SOE, and other publishers, need to learn that lesson as much as possible.
I sincerely hope that DoN is the next Velious in terms of expansions. Lots of single-group content, lots of raid content, lore matters, factions matter, quests matter.....lots of great fun for everyone. If that happens, then I think the slow exodus of EQ1 players will stop for the most part.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on February 4, 2005 05:20 AM
I couldn't participate but from what I hear that's the kind of event I would like to see much more often. SoE is listening at least. Good thing.
Comment Posted by: Armarant on February 4, 2005 05:35 AM
from what I saw shards work just like Plat/Gold/Silver/Copper.. even has its own little boxes just like Plat on test server now.
Comment Posted by: wombat on February 4, 2005 10:21 AM
What "shards" are you talking about?
Wombat
Comment Posted by: crimsonsplat on February 4, 2005 01:43 PM
Heh. So what you're saying is, all that info is out of date, Loral? :-) Relax,just "picking fun." I didn't care about the article's brevity, I read it like all the rest.
The real point of my post was kind of buried in the middle, and too subtle--that happens when I get whimsical: "I missed hearing about [the war] because I had to log to preserve my rez timer."
There just weren't any clerics or necros available for a rez where I had died *the night before.* All were raiding or offline, both nights, and I was under an hour left. That's right, I had a choice between spending an unknown amount of time /ooc'ing in POK until a rezzer was free to gouge my lite bank account for a rez--hopefully in time-- or log and come back the next night, hoping to catch a friend online. (I did.)
Now that's great game design: punish the player for being online and enjoying content--make him get OFFLINE to preserve his progress. (And to be clear: that's a swipe at both game design and lack of action re: population drop on servers).
Based on what I heard of the event and how it went on my server, had I shown up, it would have gone poorly: a lvl 65 48AA Enchanter could have hoped to ninja-loot behind some uberguild, and maybe buff, if the lvl 70's were being lazy. If unlucky, I could have died 10 times like one warrior, and deleveled to 64 if I were unlucky enough to miss (another) rez.
And no, I'm not whining about being 65. Refusing to buy OOW and DON are *my* choice; I see no point in rewarding Sony for a bass-ackwards system that emphasizes short-term expansion revenue over long-term subscriber revenue, or thinking that the first necessarily leads to the second.
Comment Posted by: Solistic on February 4, 2005 02:38 PM
I am sorry to hear that your server was that way. I was the Warrior that died at least 10 times. The only time there was not any clerics to give rezzes, was during time they were running back with me to retrieve their bodies. At least on The Nameless, even though my group had a cleric in it, I was probably rezzed just as many times from passing clerics.
I think for the whole night I lost a quarter of a percent of xp. Yes I ran back to my body and dragged to a safe spot (well kinda safe) but my feeling was that even if I had not gotten a rez the xp lose did not come close to the experience.
Question? You guys are talking about things that are going to happen in next expansion. I have gone EQlive website and it never seems to have any more information than when they first listed the expansion. Where are you guys getting your information at?
Comment Posted by: Loral on February 4, 2005 03:42 PM
Here are some sources for Dragons of Norrath information:
http://everquest.station.sony.com/dragonsofnorrath/features.jsp
http://eq.stratics.com/content/hoclogs/donhoc.php
http://eqvault.ign.com/static.php?page=don
Some other sources came from various developer statements on the EQLive forums.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on February 7, 2005 05:01 AM
Talaen, it seems you haven't been far enough in EQ2 to see people come back from it. It seems it's stricly a matter of pace and freedom within the game.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on February 7, 2005 08:26 AM
Concerning the guild hall:
It would have been interesting to have people looking for guilds and guilds looking for people visible across servers. And a MUCH lower xfer rate. 75USD is just absurd.
Comment Posted by: Jophiel on February 7, 2005 01:43 PM
"Typical SoE, revamp means make the MOBs harder so that the zone caters to ubers and screw the other people. Yep that will keep more people wanting to play the game. Whats next? A level 70 East Commanlands? Probably after the stupid skellie trick they pulled"
Have you explored new Lavastorm? Take a group of 25-30's to the volcano crater and pull the entire southern edge from the river to SolB and you have (besides the nice xp), three named mobs who can spawn dropping items for all classes that is, on average, far and beyond anything that dropped in MM/Paw even from significantly tougher mobs. I've yet to see a lvl 25-30 group camping there though except once when I took some guildies on an alt-character group there. Once you outgrow it, move back to the magma drakes and insto the Lavaspinner tunnels.
I wasn't happy with the idea of MM/Paw being revamped but I do think Lavastorm 2.0 makes a fantastic place for people of MM/Paw level to xp and gain loot.
Comment Posted by: on February 7, 2005 07:01 PM
Would this be the same Lavastorm that Brenlo on the GU comics forum said hadn't gotten any harder MOBs?? Gee I don't remember any level 30 MOBs when I leveled there several years ago. Sure would be nice if Sony's own people knew what was in the game. Especially the Company mouthpiece.
Comment Posted by: Wombat on February 7, 2005 07:50 PM
"Comment by: Redcloud on Feb 7, 2005 08:26 AM
Concerning the guild hall:
It would have been interesting to have people looking for guilds and guilds looking for people visible across servers. And a MUCH lower xfer rate. 75USD is just absurd."
Good points, I am beginning to think their lack of action on slashing transfer fees between accounts and servers isnt due to massive inertia but a "control fetish" fear of letting the players rationalise servers themselves. Or at least doing so cheaply (less profit).
LDoN ranking figures from the various servers indicates that my server is far from the worst hit btw, so it must be my off peak timezone on Quellious thats been selectively demolished. Even so bazaar numbers are 60% of what they once were and some classes are in short supply.
Wombat
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on February 8, 2005 07:48 AM
Sorry for the highjack but Loral posted this on the SOE boards under the Mata Muram's thread:
"And so begins the OTHER way to defeat a mob: call upon the gods to strike him down."
When you are done sniping at raiders, Loral, I want you to have a hard cold look at yourself if you can and tell me that this isn't childish and mediocre trolling.
Last I checked high end raiding is no concern to you. You have shown no genuine interest in it to date if not to put that playstyle down. In short you have no business trolling those threads.
Nice show of ethics from a spokeperson of the community.
Comment Posted by: Bearage on February 8, 2005 10:12 AM
I'd like to address the modern day definition of an 'equipment wise uber'.
Grade 1: Totally high end (End GoD/OOW)
9k mana casters and 13k HP tanks (unbuffed)
Grade 2: Average Raider - Past EP, into Time and starting GoD
6.5k mana casters and 10k HP tanks
Grade 3: Moreso Casual/Lower end - just doing PoP Gods and grouping for odd loot in GOD
5k mana casters and 8k tanks.
Now - the reason I say this is that I really don't see any NEW players in the game. All the players below 65 are just alts/twinks - and they are destined to move up through those grades to 1 eventually. Given that is correct - it would put the casual/average player between grade 3 and 2.
This means that when Sony designs content they should forget grade 4..because it technically doesn't exist and focus I believe on grade 1 and 2. Grade 3 have plenty of content to move into anyway. Grade 1 is indeed of new content to keep them playing however grade 2 is where your vast majority of EQ players I believe reside.
Of course these are my opinions. I keep hearing people refer to UBER as massive stats aa etc and non uber as levels <70 etc - and the reality is that nearly all are 65+ and average grade 2.
WHO NEEDS A LEVEL 35 ZONE??
Sure enough being grade 2 - I don't want to get my ass handed to me like some OOW zones constantly in grouping - but I think we can find a happy PoP like medium.
Bearage
Comment Posted by: Jophiel on February 8, 2005 11:48 AM
"Would this be the same Lavastorm that Brenlo on the GU comics forum said hadn't gotten any harder MOBs"
Don't get me started on Brenlo.
I dunno what was or wasn't said but I do know that, to my lvl 25 ranger, the Neriak half of the zone was green, the volcano was dark blue (but lots of adds and stuff so difficult to casually solo) and the magma drakes, elite lavaspinners, etc were on track as yellow-red. Personally I thought it was a nice progression.
I know lots of "Type 4" players. Heck, I left my old server and guild to play in a new guild composed mostly of "Type 4" players. So far it's been a hoot. A lot have reached the low 50's now but it took them maybe eight months to get there.
Comment Posted by: Loral on February 8, 2005 01:50 PM
From Redcloud:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
"Sorry for the highjack but Loral posted this on the SOE boards under the Mata Muram's thread:
"And so begins the OTHER way to defeat a mob: call upon the gods to strike him down."
When you are done sniping at raiders, Loral, I want you to have a hard cold look at yourself if you can and tell me that this isn't childish and mediocre trolling.
Last I checked high end raiding is no concern to you. You have shown no genuine interest in it to date if not to put that playstyle down. In short you have no business trolling those threads.
Nice show of ethics from a spokeperson of the community.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
I sort of knew it was a snipe but it wasn't at raiders, it was at those who choose to complain about an encounter to reduce its difficutly rather than meet the challenge.
I was pretty excited to hear that Cestus Dei defeated Tunat Muram Cuu Vauax, the final beast in Gates of Discord, a couple of weeks ago. I will be just as interested when people defeat Overlord Mata Muram in Omens and the new dragons in Dragons of Norrath.
The snipe was also meant to touch on a topic that grows in me the more I read and write about the game. Sometimes I think a lot of players play a different sort of game, a game where they increase their power through complaints, drama, threats, and exaggerated metaphor rather than hunts, adventures, and raids.
Those who dig into "the community" have a much different view of the game than those who just play it and don't bother to read the forums. Sometimes I think people have more fun avoiding the community discussions and just playing than they do digging into the community forums, class, and content discussions.
As far as sniping raiders, I have a lot more respect for the other raiders who posted to that thread; raiders who remember what Fear was like when they were level 50, raiders who understand that Muram is supposed to be very very hard. They don't want it nerfed so they can walk over it. They want to slay the Overlord the way he is.
Comment Posted by: Solistic on February 9, 2005 12:45 PM
"Grade 1: Totally high end (End GoD/OOW)
9k mana casters and 13k HP tanks (unbuffed)"
***This does not compute, does not exist?, never heard of?*********
"Grade 2: Average Raider - Past EP, into Time and starting GoD
6.5k mana casters and 10k HP tanks"
******Always thought this was the top*****
"Grade 3: Moreso Casual/Lower end - just doing PoP Gods and grouping for odd loot in GOD
5k mana casters and 8k tanks."
*****slowly getting close to this, someday*****
Now in same post it was stated that grade 4 (level 65 and below) are all alts and twinks and That Sony should forget us. Us meaning Me (my main is 65 and on down), my guild, our allied guilds, the guild at the small bank, the guild that sits in Nexus, and etc etc.
We forgotten people love the game even when we have to put up with some of the BS that comes out. I truely hope Sony does not listen to post like this.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on February 9, 2005 03:44 PM
Loral, you contributed to that other game with your snipe all the more with people knowing where you stand about raiding...
13k tanks, 9k casters are anguish and tacvi raiders. They do exist and are probably a requirement by SoE own encounter design.
Comment Posted by: Waywreth on February 9, 2005 04:56 PM
DoN NDA has ended! Post info! What I've found so far is here:
http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/board/message?board.id=Veterans&message.id=59694
Comment Posted by: Loral on February 9, 2005 05:42 PM
I get to go on an official Dragons tour later tonight. I'll have a write-up about it soon.
Here's a short preview:
This expansion meets many of the problems I brought up in previous articles and evil agendas. It has a lot of unique events for single-group hunters. It has a new point-based loot system meant to augment the existing LDON point-based loot system. Gear runs about 125 hitpoints and mana base with focus effects for nearly every foci up to level 5. Gear will end up being a fair bit cheaper than LDON gear. It should take around 10 missions to get a good piece of 100+ hp or mana gear.
The story lines for the missions are all unique and individually written rather than a universal random plot generator that LDON had. This should make the adventures a lot more fun but possibly harder to balance. Some may be a lot easier than others.
The guild hall is excellent and finally contains the corpse summoning NPC I asked for a few months back. This makes Fear wipeouts a thing of the past. I don't know what the final cost for a corpse summon will cost but it was very reasonable (even perhaps too reasonable) in beta. The corpse summoner is available to everyone in a guild lobby, it does not require being in a guild.
The features are very nice. Potions, even ones that don't stack, now have a single key to activate. The bandolier is nice for melees who switch gear a lot. The new spells, in many cases, add a new element to each class. Clerics, for example, get a spell directly intended to help them solo. It worked pretty well a couple of nights ago.
If I have to pick on one problem, that problem would be a lack of content below level 50. I know there is a ton of content out there already below 50 but not all of that content is as exciting or rewarding as the content in DON. The new lavastorm helps, but I would have liked to see one or two missions below level 50, perhaps even a new group-based task system (Something that Dragons adds in).
Overall, and watch out, this sounds fanboish, I think this may be the strongest expansion I've seen. I know I said that about Omens too and I still believe that to be the case. Each expansion (save GoD) continues to get better than the previous.
I really like what I see and I can't wait to try it out.
OK, that wasn't so much of a preview but expect a more detailed review in a couple of days.
Oh yes. As much as I told them to remove raid content, SOE stuck in big dragons for people to complain about over on the Live boards. Such is life. (That's sarcasm for the more dense of readers, the new dragons look excellent and I expect raiders to have a lot of fun content for this expansion. Think of this one as LDON-2 with good raids.)
Comment Posted by: Wombat on February 9, 2005 07:08 PM
Access by everyone to guild halls altar is good, where are they situated? Can anyone just walk in?
What are the system requirements for reasonable playability without disabling all graphics?
How stable is the expansion crash etc wise?
BTW I have never thought Loral was anti uber-raider he merely put the case for the non large raiding Guilds. Most of us raid its just a matter of scale (3-6 groups vs 9-12)and the time and commitment available to do the really long raids like VT.
Wombat
Comment Posted by: Loral on February 9, 2005 07:28 PM
Access to the guild lobby, which leads to the instanced guild hall, takes place from within PoK. Every player can access the guild lobby which includes the corpse summoner and the looking-for-guild / looking-for-player bulletin board.
The system specifications are the same as they were with Omens.
Stability is hard to judge since it is very dependant on the servers it runs on. Beta in general isn't very stable and reboots often but I wouldn't say this shows how unstable it will be on live. Only time will tell.
I will always push for more pickup-friendly raiding simply because that makes it more accessible to a wider audience. There isn't a lot of pickup-friendly raid content now (although there is a lot more than most people think or use) but LDON-style raids for non-uber-equipped folks would be a welcome change. I will ask about this during my tour.
Comment Posted by: Wombat on February 10, 2005 01:06 AM
Goodo not having to have DoN to access the Altar is very sensible as not everyone on raids will have the expansion, especially pick up raids.
Pickups tended to die on Quellious when the population levels dived although OoW was a major influence also. Why raid for something a group can get...
Wombat
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on February 10, 2005 07:55 AM
/Loral's biased style on
More importantly, since it's dubious that new players will join EQ1, is there sufficient content not just for non-raiders and casual non-raiders?
If not the only place raiders will go will be WoW since Blizzard catter to them and only below par groupers will be left in 6 months by the time they ship the next raiding expansion. At which point the non-raiders will have a hard to find a group to xp with, since the raiders' alts will be gone.
/Loral's biased style off
The above piece doesn't reflect my views on non-raiders but does reflect my opinion of some professional walking disasters for the raiding community.
I'm eager to see if apart from a few gimmicks SoE will give me a run for my money. Which at the current doesn't seem to be the case. Since I only read 2 pieces of pure fanboism from anti-raiders so far, I prepare for the worse.
PS: your readers' base most probably knows little first hand of Fear wipeouts and CRs till 5am. Raiders do. You on the other hand use such example to pretend to have any moral edge over newer raiders while cattering to people that mostly never did such things nor would care to do... How's that about sticking to your public probable EQ background rather than some improbable raiding experience...
Comment Posted by: Loral on February 10, 2005 08:15 AM
Redcloud, please send me an email at loral@loralciriclight.com so I can get a better idea what your concerns are. I'm still not clear what it is you want.
Comment Posted by: on February 10, 2005 09:01 AM
Way to dismiss everyone who isn't uber Solistic. Has it ever occurred to you that there are still people who aren't elemental flagged? I'm level 69 and I am not at your stated numbers, short by quite a bit. I find myself increasingly marginalized with every expansion that comes out. With Omens for example I have no chance of getting a 69-70 spell. Guess what, druids don't get a nuke upgrade from 66 through 68 which means I'm still using my 65 nuke and will be for all eternity. Meanwhile every other caster (including for the love of baby jesus enchanters and clerics) got a nuke upgrade in their 66-68 spells allowing them to nuke just as well as me.
Raiding is a vicious cycle; raiders get better gear, get more AAs as a result, in turn get better gear etc. Meanwhile the rest of us are stuck at step 1 and fall further behind with every passing day.
SOE can focus on raiders all they want but in the end they're strangling their customer base and as the raiders leave they won't have people to fill in the missing slots and the game will die.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on February 10, 2005 09:32 AM
Have you checked WoS/RCoD/MPG/RS gear?
I have done WoS and MPG with a far from uber warrior on trash and named. MPG named drop also level 69/70 runes.
What you say is just not true. In fact it's quite the opposite. Omens has 3 main raiding zones, one of which being an instance. The rest is single group content or Epic fight sightseeing.
What can be argued though is that people need to "camp" close to 30 runes from 66 to 70. And that's just too much.
Comment Posted by: Solistic on February 10, 2005 11:33 AM
""""Way to dismiss everyone who isn't uber Solistic. Has it ever occurred to you that there are still people who aren't elemental flagged? """
????!!?? I think you better read my post again. My highest avatar is Solistic, she is level 65, and I am still trying to kill "Bert" on pick raids once ever couple months.
If you look I was quoting a previous post. That is what " means
Comment Posted by: Teremar on February 10, 2005 11:44 AM
" Each expansion (save GoD) continues to get better than the previous."
Wait a minute--did Loral just imply that Luclin was better than Kunark or Velious? I'm at work...must not laugh out loud...
In fairness, Luclin wasn't an awful expansion. It added a good bit of depth to the raiding game. But did it have a single zone to compare with Old Seb, HS, CC, or ToFS? And Luclin's where the lore went into the twilight zone too.
PoP damaged the game in more ways than I want to think about--and I don't mean just making the raider/non-raider divide into a yawning chasm. The few raids I was able to do were fun though, so I can see how others would think more highly of it.
LoY: hard to compare since it's so small, but I liked it.
LDoN: It almost managed to recapture the glory days of the dungeons mentioned above. Generic copy-and-paste content prevented that though.
GoD: Here we agree!
OoW: Yes, OoW did bring balance to raider content vs. non-raider content. But it's boring content. And I don't think all the zone designers got the email with the storyline.
My personal ranking?
Kunark > Velious > LDoN > OoW > LoY > Luclin > Pop > GoD
People will disagree with the order of course, but this is seriously the first time I've ever heard anyone suggest that expansions have been uniformly improving, even with the exception of GoD.
Comment Posted by: Solistic on February 10, 2005 01:16 PM
My plug for LoY the almost forgotten Expansion
LOY, I have always felt was actually a pretty good expansion. It took an area from the old map, that was not used, and made a zone out of it. I has content for aprox level 25 up to 65. You can take a group of high 20's and fight mobs at the beach near the Light House (and there is some really good loot to have for those levels right on the beach). Even a lot of the trade skill items from LOY are not bad. It gave new spells for the mid levels, and the quest content for them actually made sense.
I have always noticed that the zones are usually populated. After they worked out some bugs, the lag is a lot better (100% better than Jagged Pines that was opened about the same time). I always thought the Landscape and enviorment (ships and buildings) were done well. Yes it was a small expansion and if you look at the world map, it only covers a small area, but for it's size, I would rate it number 3 in my list.
Velious, Kunark, LOY, OoW, LDON, Luclin, PoP, GoD
Yes LDON is rated 5, and as someone else mentioned, it is because of the Cut and Paste adventures. Started out as being one of my favorits, but after 100's of adventures......Yawn....oh this map again.
I truely am hoping that DoN's missions have improved based on what they learned from LDON
ps. One other thing from LOY, it introduced Dyes. The one thing that realy individualized people.
Comment Posted by: Loral on February 10, 2005 01:28 PM
I guess what I really mean, rather than get bogged down in ranks which will mostly depend on our own adventures in those lands. I loved Luclin and since much of my experience in Velious was based on my choice not to fight dragon allies, I ended up spending a lot more time there.
My real point is that SOE learned much from previous work and Dragons has many of the best points of older expansions. Point-based loot, single-group focused missions, dragon raids, corpse summoners, a lot of instanced content as well as larger crawlable dungeons.
Ok, since we asked, what are Loral's favorite expansions:
1. Dragons of Norrath: Missions, Guild Halls, Corpse Summoners, nice UI features, Dragon raids. This is in theory, I still need to spend more time there.
2. Lost Dungeons: Point-based loot, nice dungeons, a story that tied back to older plotlines, good use of older overland zones, first instanced content.
3. Omens of War: Nice non-raider friendly content including beautiful overland zones, good loot from single-group mobs, nice yet bland instanced content, new levels and new useful AAs, the task system (which I still wish to see improve).
4. Luclin: New models, beautiful zones (I love the Gray), good hunting for single-groups into the 60s, my favorite main-bad guy, the Shissar, the Bazaar, horses.
5. Velious: Good hard overland zones, the giant war, Kael's arena, the testing halls of Veeshan, excellent city.
6. Ykesha: This is only last because I never really got to hunt there. It's a fine expansion with a lot of good content from 30 to 60. Great pirate models, great pirate ships, introduced the froggies and armor coloring, introduced the new bank system and maps.
7. Kunark: This is where I grew up. Great lore and fun zones. Not much in the way of features, however. I look back fondly, but if an expansion came out like this again, after all of the new stuff we've seen, we'd hate it.
8. Planes of Power: Introduced flagging and reinforced the idea that raiding was the end-goal for all players. Blocked non-raiders to the first four zones but forced level 61+ hunters to only hunt there. It got a lot better, but for about three months it caused a lot of pain. Knowledge is an improvement and once the experience bubble grew larger and many flags were removed it got a lot better.
Comment Posted by: Teremar on February 10, 2005 01:58 PM
Interesting...and I just thought I had caught Loral in a moment of reckless fanboi-ism (expansions keep getting better and better!).
I think PoP turned me off to adding new features in expansions. The PoK teleporters were so obviously there just to make sure the non-raiders bought the expansion despite having so little content available to them.
I'm always going to judge an expansion (or a game) by how much fun I have doing what I spend most of my time doing. And for me that's fighting in a single group. I'd trade in corpse summoning NPCs and such for more fun zones like Old Seb in a heartbeat. Not that I'd object to both--if DoN is all you're saying it is, then it may deserve that "best expansion ever" label.
Comment Posted by: Crimsonsplat on February 10, 2005 02:44 PM
Of all the expansions, I rank POP dead last, (barely) behind even GOD. That is where the game went completely off the rails, and it has never recovered, nor will it.
You know what gets me? Now that SWG is on station pass, I figured WTH, lets give it a whirl one last time.
And I was floored. They are COMPLETELY re-writing the game. Yeah they were talking about combat revamp, and other bs before I left, but come on, it's *SOE*. Sure they are. Well they not only did, but they're revamping the entire Galactic Civil War, actively searching (as in listening to the player-base) for ways to improve the experience... and what I found most impressive, they actually seem to have a sense of where they're going and what kind of game they want. Which is something I swore they were utterly clueless on when I left. Some truly impressive changes are coming along.
Well blow me down. I'm not entirely 100% positive about them yet, and whether I continue playing will depend on the crafting revamp (after the CU and GCW are done). But they've changed enough to make me think about it.
If only the EQ1 team had half their talent or balls to do a revamp. But I figure in the end, they'll just poke at the corpse a bit and change a few details.
Comment Posted by: Wombat on February 10, 2005 07:10 PM
Luclin and PoP were the beginning of the destruction of the storyline and Lore parts of the game (and of course POP was a major problem for non large Guilds doing more than entry level content).
Why do we play this fantasy game and not other ganes? Because of the elves, dwarves etc and the fantasy setting. The old factions and cities were the heart of the game they should have made movement, trades etc centered on them and not had a POK. Perhaps they should have made a factionless outcast city for those who felt the storyline a drag or were outlaws in their home city, but not made it the central place for people to gather.
I think POK will be a desert with Guild Halls btw. With buffs not running down in them anyone /lfg wont leave till they have a group.
Wombat
Comment Posted by: on February 10, 2005 07:38 PM
loral one feature you forgot to mention for kunark, is it upped the lvl cap, from 50 to 60.
as for POP not having anything for none raiders i think that is totally and utterly wrong, for me pop was amazing, for raids, all the raid channels that sprung up, people from all different guilds even unguilded people, working together to get flags.
POK brought people together, before this, people were scattered about, please notice in eq2 there is only 2 cities, qeynos and freeport, for a similar reason.
i personally have had more fun since POP than before it, and ive been in norrath since the beginning.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on February 10, 2005 07:46 PM
POK probably stems from players asking for it.
As LDON probably stems from people thinking that there was a shred of roleplay, fantasy in earning points for a merchant. Same goes for DoN. Points, shards. No difference. It's anti-climatic. It can't possibly be less immersive than LDON at least. But if that's what spins the wheel of the gerbil and lines SOE's pocket, there isn't much that will prevent it from happening. EQ has been a world. Immersive. Not just one game, among others. It had a flavor and some breadth and depth. The original dev team gave a soul to the game. LDON has less "soul" than pac-man. I hope DoN doesn't follow that same slop even if it feeds the masses.
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