"For the beatings I took, players outta be paying me shards! Poor Gimblax just wants to be loved."

The No-Patch Day News Roundup

by Loral on April 06, 2005

I had hoped to post an article shortly after the latest patch would stream across our servers but a delay until next week forces my fingers to the keyboard a little early. There's been quite a bit of large news most of which we have already discussed at length. So today, we will see where all of these big changes stand.

A week ago, SOE announced the official dates for server mergers across all servers. Both my girlfriend and my friend, editor, and grandmaster-diaper-changer believed I was pulling their leg when I told them about SOE's announcement that all servers will be merging into half the number.

I was surprised to see the sudden announcement for all servers, but it makes sense. I always felt that the rip-off-the-bandaid-fast-so-it-hurts-all-at-once approach is a good one for something like this.

I would be lying if I said I read the 1400 posts about server mergers after the announcement of this topic, but a brief glance brings up a few common thoughts. 1. Servers are merging so Everquest is dead. 2. Servers are merging and we're losing our identity. 3. Servers are merging so how will I get my ph4t T1me l3wt.

Merging servers don't show the death throes of Everquest. A lack of new content, new expansions, or a lack of attention by SOE would show those death throes. The merging of the servers itself shows SOE's continued support to keep Everquest healthy. As long as new expansions come out, as long as new patches fix bugs and add features, as long as every class argues that they are the slapped-in-face red-headed step child of Everquest, the game is alive and well.

Identity is an important point in these mergers, however. I, myself, could not exactly say how I would feel if my server name were lost. It would be a pain to change my signatures and web sites all over the web from Quellious to Rodcet Nife, that's for sure. Server identity is important, though the real spirit is held within each member of that server. That isn't going away. I am reminded of flag-burning debates when I read about this. Is the symbol of the server name more important than the community it represents?

SOE clearly stated a couple of times that server mergers were based on active population, though many wanted a variety of other solutions to decide including the age of the server, the power of one god over another (Veeshan could kick Luclin's a55!!), and even barbaric duels in the arena. It was bad enough that I depended on uberguilds to open up the Nest, much less decide the fate of my server. Total population makes the most sense.

So what about Ph4t T1me l3wt? One solution brought up at the Summit a year ago, is to instance Time. I don't support this solution. The rate of dropping equipment in Time is based on a non-instanced zone, not an instanced one. Instancing Time would make it a tighter knot in the center of equipment progression.

Offering Time level loot in other areas, areas huntable by non-Time equipped hunters, solves this problem. For example, a second tier of loot on the Dragons of Norrath mission vendors with increased hitpoints, mana, foci, skill increases, and higher damage weapons, helps remove Time as a single dependency for equipment progression.

Such a solution helps raiders who wish to gear up but don't want to go back five expansions to do so; it helps close the huge power gap between single-group hunters and raiders; and it helps offer multiple paths for raid progression for up-and-coming guilds. It will remove the single required dependency on Time for progression both for raiders and single group hunters wishing to reach places such as Riftseekers, the MPG trials, and The Nest.

Needless to say, the topic of server mergers brought up thousands of conversations but if anything, the huge amount of activity shows that players care a great deal for such a big move.

Next week, SOE will release the first wave of class re-envisioning changes. A quick glance over to Lucy shows the details of many changes to a lot of spells, mostly in direct damage spells. Many classes will see an increase in overall damage to mana ratios if not a direct increase in damage per second values. Clerics, for example, saw a nice boost in magic blasters and a bigger boost to undead blasters. Now if I could only find some undead to blast.

Shaman picked up their pitchforks and torches in another wave of angst against a change that added a 30 second recast time to their new DON proc buff spell. Supposedly, the change helped prevent a single shaman from adding significantly to the overall damage of a raiding force, but with a one minute duration and a high mana cost, I don't know how big a threat this really was. In the mean time, adding a 30 second recast hurts its use in a group. The latest postings from Rytan on this topic offer a few possible alternatives including a group version of the spell or a version with a lower damage proc rate. The group version makes the most sense to me.

There's a lot of other interesting changes in next week's patch mentioned in the Test server patch message. It looks like we'll see some new Dragons of Norrath missions. New hotspots were announced, although they look strangely like the existing hotspots if my fading memory serves. Dragons missions will have their crystal rewards fixed - I'm betting the Gimblax mission will be worth about 10 crystals now. That poor goblin needed a vacation. There's a bunch of other smaller changes as well; it should be a nice patch.

On Thursday evening, John Smedley posted a letter on the state of all of SOE's games. He mentions that Alan Crosby, our own Brenlo, was promoted to Director of Community Relations. Looks like Moorgard got a new boss!

SOE will host the next Everquest Fan Faire on June 9th to June 12th. Again, I will re-envision the Loral Evil Agenda, decide what areas I feel SOE needs to concentrate on, and bully for it among the other summit representatives doing the same. I expect we will hear about the next Everquest expansion before this Fan Faire so there will be a lot to see. Now where did I leave my spock ears?

Loral Ciriclight
6 April 2005
loral@loralciriclight.com

Post a new message.

Comment Posted by: on April 8, 2005 12:25 AM

Death THROES you mean?

Comment Posted by: Loral on April 8, 2005 07:46 AM

Indeed I did, thank you.

Comment Posted by: on April 8, 2005 08:33 AM

Two servers.
One wall of slaughter zone.
If you don't own Dragons of Norrath, welcome to pain.

Comment Posted by: on April 8, 2005 09:52 AM

WoS is mostly empty on our server.

Comment Posted by: Loral on April 8, 2005 11:22 AM

It would be a damned shame if people had to hunt in Ruined City of Dranik, Dranik's Sewers, Dranik's Catacombs, Dranik's Hollows, deep Bloodfields, or deep Harbingers.

Comment Posted by: on April 8, 2005 12:44 PM

The real problem is that they didn't bother to look at what was actually happening on the respective servers to see if the merges are a good match. As an example, on some merged servers you will end up with 10+ guilds fighting for the same content, which will result in all manners of badness. There really should have been some attention paid to the guild progression on the to-be-merged servers.

Comment Posted by: Loral on April 8, 2005 03:03 PM

It would be a damn shame if guilds had to go to Gates of Discord, Omens of War, Lost Dungeons, or Dragons of Norrath instead of farming time for the next two and a half years.

Comment Posted by: Tuco on April 8, 2005 03:20 PM

As long as I dont get a X slaped to my name I dont mind the merges at all but I did start this char when the server opened and they are merging us with one of the older servers. Now on the pop' of the server in question I laugh when I here power guilds on Maelin cry about how they cant "farm" such and such zone if there is going to be too many people on the server. F' them.If I wanted to farm crap so my SK could have a uber 2hs with a laser sight I would play Mortal Combat on my ole' sega.

Tuco Stinky`Feet,Shadowknight of Maelin

Comment Posted by: Maggie on April 8, 2005 04:05 PM

Quote: "It would be a damn shame if guilds had to go to Gates of Discord, Omens of War, Lost Dungeons, or Dragons of Norrath instead of farming time for the next two and a half years."

Are you even in a Plane of Time enabled guild? PoTime is the VT of PoP... candyland for the people that worked hard to get there and is a great way to gear up new recruits (which is desperately needed at this point). Shoehorning multiple time guilds onto one server is a pita when the existing ones already had rotations etc worked out, and the new guilds don't care to work it out. And even if they do.

Sure, there's lots of other content out there, but let's not penalize the current time guilds. Wait, too late.

Comment Posted by: Loral on April 8, 2005 04:29 PM

Here's some pretty big news that didn't quite make it into this update:

http://eqlive.station.sony.com/news_section/newsview.jsp?story=50003

As part of EverQuest's 6th Anniversary celebration, the game team is giving current EQ players (based on your total subscription length) one special Veteran Reward for every year that you've been an active EverQuest subscriber! This is very good news for six year vets! It means that you'll be getting six Veteran Rewards!

Awesome stuff.

Comment Posted by: Loral on April 8, 2005 04:30 PM

Let me quote myself because I'm just so damned brilliant:

"Offering Time level loot in other areas, areas huntable by non-Time equipped hunters, solves this problem. For example, a second tier of loot on the Dragons of Norrath mission vendors with increased hitpoints, mana, foci, skill increases, and higher damage weapons, helps remove Time as a single dependency for equipment progression."

Comment Posted by: Solistic on April 8, 2005 04:41 PM

Loral wrote:
It would be a damn shame if guilds had to go to Gates of Discord, Omens of War, Lost Dungeons, or Dragons of Norrath instead of farming time for the next two and a half years.

I love it, good job Loral!

Maggie wrote:
Are you even in a Plane of Time enabled guild? PoTime is the VT of PoP... candyland for the people that worked hard to get there and is a great way to gear up new recruits

I say, OH Well I guess you will have to do it the even harder way. The normal way.

I am not in a plane of time guild, nor do I have time for time. But I do not like it when guilds feel they own a whole zone to themselves for their own personal playground.
I am Sorry if you did not mean it that way but for an old Hippy, Maggie your post had an Elitist sound to it and that kind of attitude in game, makes the game no fun for me.

Comment Posted by: on April 8, 2005 04:42 PM

Loral's Quote that Loral Wrote:
Let me quote myself because I'm just so damned brilliant:

This would all be good and well as long as it doesnt require these people to be time enabled to get this time gear. and as long as they keep the same vain as time gear in general, and looking at alternate areas to add the specialized gear, like the Chanter Slow stick (Ie. Add some more DoN Missions for 24-48 people) (Ie. Add some LDoN Missions that use the Task Based system for 24-48 people)..

Comment Posted by: Xaas on April 8, 2005 05:38 PM

You make shaman sound like they have nothing to complain about. 24 hours before the patch they add the recast? After saying there just gonna fix the pet procing issue. I mean SOE knows how its 100dps per buff, if it runs the full min, they made the spell. They made it instant recast, I am sure beta testers for DON, did this on raids. I mean if your gonna buff your group your gonna buff your raid.

It is nerfing a overpowered spell, Shaman shouldn't out dps a wizard. Being a shaman swaping spells in and out is pretty common, the 30s recast means it has to be up, its not a oh..i have mana lets use that.

I almost reactivated my accounts and got DON, cause Shaman had a buff, that was really useful. Now I am even more wary, cause its seems SOE's true colors are showing through.

it really depends what they do, I am glad they pushed the patch back a week, shows there not as bad as they were, anyway.

Comment Posted by: on April 9, 2005 02:34 AM

it would seem they have removed the posts telling about these veteran rewards from the sony website reported by loral here is the link again below

http://eqlive.station.sony.com/news_section/newsview.jsp?story=50003

nice

Comment Posted by: whome on April 9, 2005 05:40 PM

What Veteran's Awards???

Comment Posted by: Loral on April 9, 2005 05:42 PM

The information was aparently leaked by a 10 second web page slip up. If you're really quick you see the same thing happen on Mobhunter. I have to let it go live to make sure everything is as it should be before making it "draft" again so my editor can take out all of my anti-uber propaganda.

Anyway, the rewards are still going in - probably sometime in May. The devs confirmed them many times thoughout this thread:

http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/board/message?board.id=Veterans&message.id=75247&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

It also has a full list of the effects but just to save time, here's the full post:

Good News for Veteran EQ players!

Note: you'll find the Veteran Rewards tab in the game's AA user interface.

Even better news: From April 11th to May 11th, any current EQ player can purchase a one-year EQ subscription for a special price ($99.99) and get next year�s Veteran Reward (based upon total subscription time) at no additional cost! And, for you six year veteran EQ players, this is a chance to get an exclusive 7th year Veteran Reward at no additional cost.

A special note: Veteran Rewards remain with each character for as long as that character exists. For every year that a player has been subscribed, they will be able to claim the Rewards on one character.

Veteran Rewards are as follows:

Year 1

Lesson of the Devoted: A character will gain double-XP for 30-minutes every 24 hours. When this reward is in effect, the character will be surrounded by a special blue-white glow.

Year 2

Infusion of the Faithful: This reward grants increased run speed for 15 minutes once every 24 hours.

Year 3

Chaotic Jester: Once every 24 hours, a character can summon a Bristlebane puppet for 15 minutes. During that time, the puppet randomly casts various spells that provide benefits or minor penalties.

Year 4

Expedient Recovery: Once a week, this "Back to New" reward summons all of a player's corpses back to him, and gives back all XP that was on the corpses.

Year 5

Steadfast Servant: Once every 24 hours, a creature is summoned that stays in the area for a half hour, buffing and healing player characters nearby.

Year 6

Staunch Recovery: Once every three days, a character is healed back to full health, mana, and endurance.

Year 7

Intensity of the Resolute: Once every 24 hours, a character's melee attacks, damage spells and heals are increased for five minutes. When this reward is in effect, the character will be surrounded by a glow of energy

Comment Posted by: Anonymous Coward on April 9, 2005 10:50 PM

Some nice rewards for long time players there, pretty inventive I must say. Subscription offers are always nice but I question if they really affect sales.

Lets see if they can do more to get some fresh blood in. Because without new players, server populations are always going to fall eventually.

Comment Posted by: on April 10, 2005 04:46 AM

Now when you see toons for sale on Ebay it will be manditory to tell what vetran status the toon is.

Rao

Comment Posted by: Loral on April 10, 2005 10:50 AM

"Lets see if they can do more to get some fresh blood in. Because without new players, server populations are always going to fall eventually."

The probable intent of the veteran awards is to get old players back now that EQ2 and WoW are a little more stale. They aren't designed to bring new players in. That's a much harder thing to do nowadays.

Comment Posted by: mehateyou on April 10, 2005 08:29 PM

Veteran's Rewards = Dumb down the game some more why don't you?

Comment Posted by: on April 10, 2005 09:14 PM

Dumb down?? Only a idiot would call these "rewards". Oh wow something good will happen for 15 minutes out of a 24 hour day. Hell you can't run across WK in 15 minutes. Talk about useless. This is the amount of time to kill a couple of Dark Blue MOB. Wow special improvements while you kill one or two of the 1000 MOBs you need for your next level. Sign me right the F up for this BS.

Comment Posted by: BoB on April 11, 2005 01:12 AM

Ok Loral I agree with you that EQ is not Dead

But it aint healthy

Cutting the servers down to half shows just how large the outboud Exodus really was and that it was NOT a temporary fluke.

It was a turning point, yes but not a necessarily happy one. ITs conformation that the EQ player base stopped growing and went into hard retrograde. Eq now is ONLY about the people who remaain.

Basically you now have a closed system, the MMO equivalent of the gene pool getting drained. In EQ's case, we have left the die hard, EQ will always be great types, the 'one person w/ 6 accounts folks, and the ebayers (and a ebay EQ toon aint worth anything near what it used to be worth, hell you can barely give most EQ accounts away now)

Yea EQ isnt dead, its undead. The pulse is gone but the body is still animated.

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on April 11, 2005 08:50 AM

I read more and more reports of hackers not being banned or banned for 2 weeks and coming back. That sure will drive people away MUCH faster than any other mistake SOE can do.

Comment Posted by: Ogulbuk on April 11, 2005 09:22 AM

EQ population has been going down slowly for a long time. Population and lfg problems I been hearing for quiet a while now, long before either EQ2 or WoW saw the light of day.

Blaming the merger entirely on permanent exodus is not accurate. True, it may have helped drop populations faster, but truth is this was going to be needed regardless.

If you see sources you look at numbers you will see that WoW population is 3 times bigger than EQ ever was. It is childish to say WoW just stole players over, what it truly did was bring NEW blood to the MMO market, something many thought not possible. In my limited WoW playtime I saw VERY few EQ players. Same can't be told about EQ2, though. About 1 on every 3 players I meet was an EQ1 player, but about 3 of each 5 of these didn't liked it and went back to old EQ.

Now, about these rewards, they will not bring back the old player. If anything I feel more pushed away to ever go back. Why? Well I have been in and out of EQ often, although I played for about 5 years truth is cumulatively I may have been subscribed for 3. I feel like a veteran, but they surely wont treat me as one with these.

The other thing that must be noted about these, is that although they may seem useless for the everyday xping, it WILL help trivialize high-end boss encounters. New to power uber guilds now suddenly will be way behind to 6 year old players even if they have equal gear. No matter what, unless they get very idiotic, the 6 year old character will clear new bosses weeks and months before anyone else finds a way to do it, due to added buffs and added damage. This is for sure not to make anyone come back, but to make sure they don�t leave.

Oh the 15-minute run speed is extremely silly reward, especially with the wide availability of sow potions.

Comment Posted by: Ogulbuk on April 11, 2005 09:41 AM

Oh also, both games, EQ2 and WoW have a nice feature that EQ would not have much trouble implementing.

What it does is that for every X time logged off OR on a city (bazaar would count) you get a bonus amount of XP. Now, this XP is not given to you right away, instead you earn it, for every point of xp you earn you are given a point of the free "rested" xp.

This effectively doubles the xp you earn for a time proportionate to the amount you where logged out. NOTE, this does not means that if you log out for an hour you get an hour worth of double xp, it may actually yield just 3 kills worth of double xp.

What this does, though, is help the VERY casual player to not fall behind too much, although he still will fall behind.

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on April 11, 2005 09:58 AM

The gimmicks given away means exactly nil to the game balance as far as I know. It's just that gimmicks. It's fun. For a change they introduce things that add fun to the game without really giving more power to the players.

Not a bad thing.

Comment Posted by: Ogulbuk on April 11, 2005 10:33 AM

Rewards for years 5-7 are NO gimmicks.

Year 5 may be the least useful, but having some one healing and buffing randomly do can add a little extra to your overall performance against a boss.

Year 6 is amazing, as soon as the main tank is about to die he can full his HP up, the casters are out of MP? Back all the way up. True, can only be done once, but it gives a second life to a tank or a big second mana bonus to a caster.

Year 7 is the most dangerous one, as increasing DPS beyond what was balanced against will equal giving exclusive gear to 7-year-old players. Make the full raid use their 7th year skill at once and you get a huge boost to damage done.

As I mentioned before, it may not be an everyday use thing, for that they all are but gimmicks, but once the time to kill a boss comes, 15 minutes of power are a lot.

Again, it is not something that will make or break, BUT it will give an unfair bonus. I know uber guilds like to compete to see who can take down the newest gods or bosses down as soon as an expansion comes out, with this, the oldest characters will have a small boost other players wont have.

Comment Posted by: Naladini on April 11, 2005 01:16 PM

If several high-end rogues and wizards can do a full refresh in the middle of an encounter, I'd say it will have an effect on balancing. The min/max focused guilds will have strict usage requirements on these features so they can be used for optimal effect. ;)

Comment Posted by: Horzek on April 11, 2005 03:37 PM

One day last spring I logged in to play only to find my account had expired. I could not understand what could be the trouble because I had taken advantage of the 1 year renewal offer for $99. When I went on the web site and checked it still showed me as having done that but still my account was expired. Petitions and phone calls finally helped me resolve the trouble. According to the customer service rep I spoke with there was no way set up for SOE to do the 1 year billing so all us folks that had signed up for this feature never got it. I double checked my credit card and sure enough I had never been billed. Unfortunately they didnt see fit to notify me that my account would be shut down till I renewed my subscription. I had to find out and spend a long distance phone call to SOE to find out what was wrong. I mention this now because I see the offer to allow us to add a year and get a better veteran bonus. I hope they fixed the billing problem.

I do like the looks of some of the veteran rewards although I remember seeing veteran bonus rewards before on another game. UO of all things did this a couple years ago and their solution was if I remember correctly a skill cap bonus for the veteran players.

Since my cleric account is now 5 years old and my druid account is over 6 years old I look forward to getting 15 minutes of run speed, specially for the druid. Kidding aside though, the mitigation of the death penalties is something I have long wanted to see. Even if its just once a week it is a step in the right direction in my opinion.

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on April 12, 2005 03:58 AM

Something that is up every 24hours or 3 days cannot entered a raid tactic as accountable for. It ends there.

Let's kill mob x, ho we wiped, lets use our rewards again, ho we cannot, they will refresh in 3 days.

Worthless in terms of game balance.

Comment Posted by: T on April 12, 2005 06:42 AM

Has anyone else noticed that the SOE Staff/GM presence seems to be a LOT more involved and willing to interact with the community now, than it has been?

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on April 12, 2005 08:58 AM

Kavhok gave information about how EQ combat works that we never had access to in 6 years. There's quite some dev posting.

Comment Posted by: Ogulbuk on April 12, 2005 09:43 AM

Redcloud, few guilds have the time to do an imediate second attempt at a raid. These usualy are very well planed ahead of time, and so are retries. Not everyone has the time to either attempt right away or the next day.

It would not be a big disadvantage to just wait at least 3 days to attempt again. These CAN and WILL be used to their maximun potential if they go live.

Comment Posted by: Tuppet on April 12, 2005 10:33 AM

Is this Kavhok's post? some nice, juicy info!

http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/board/message?board.id=monkbalance&message.id=7767&view=by_date_ascending&page=1&no_redir=true

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on April 12, 2005 11:50 AM

Maybe if you raid once every 3 days it matters but for guilds raiding multiple targets per day every day and doing multiple attempts to the same new targets in row, it doesn't. Maybe it matters in your playstyle (which I would need proof of) but there's very little chance it matters in mine. Let alone that at the rate people have quit EQ, the number of remaining toons with 5+ years behind them per guild isn't probably that high to begin with.

Comment Posted by: Solistic on April 12, 2005 01:01 PM

T wrote:
Has anyone else noticed that the SOE Staff/GM presence seems to be a LOT more involved and willing to interact with the community now, than it has been?

Actually it is the Guide program that is getting a lot more involved with the players. The Guides are players that are volunteering their time and are not SOE employees. They are players just like you and me, that want other players to enjoy the game more.

They take time out of their own playing to run Quests, Events, Weddings and general roleplay with the players on their server.
I know of one server that the Hill Giants in Rathe Mountains have made a stand and the level 55+ are still trying to take them down, this is a Guide run event.

I say kudos for this program. Most of the guides really care and take helping players very serious.

No I am not a guide, but I know of serveral and proud that I do.

Comment Posted by: Loral on April 12, 2005 02:46 PM

I guess for some people knowing exactly how AC works can be entertaining. I myself am interested in fun gameplay and a good social environment.

I run a D&D game on Sundays. As much fun as I have reading through feats and coming up with big statistics on big beasts for the party to fight, I know that the real reason we play is to get together and eat junkfood every couple of weeks.

Comment Posted by: Solistic on April 12, 2005 03:33 PM

Loral I am suprised. After reading Loral's exploits, it would seem that you would be at least a little interested about how AC vs HP works. Out of all the casters, Clerics can take more beating and can fight back the best. I am interested in the balance (I admit more for my warrior) and how best my Cleric will survive when the chips are down. Especially since the first time I found out that mobs can summon you through DA.
I am sure this is of more interest to the family guild players that have to shop carefully and buy only the stuff that benefit themselves the best.

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on April 13, 2005 05:05 AM

You see, Solistic, a number of people want EQ not to be a progression game based on gear accretion. Because it distracts them from the fun and enjoyment. Is that it, Loral?

But since EQ isn't a skill based game where you only need to master your class, they want EQ to be a different game altogether. And they don't like to be reminded that you can't just hop around and do anything and everything without progression because it hurts the casual gamer playtime mantra: no playtime 100% fun. Which leaves room ONLY for casual gamers and nobody else. But I digress.

It's fine people don't care how the game works, Loral, and like in the real world the less you know about your environment, the more you are prone to be a victim to it. I'd rather know where I put my feet into AND have fun. But to each his own I guess.

Comment Posted by: Loral on April 13, 2005 08:38 AM

"You see, Solistic, a number of people want EQ not to be a progression game based on gear accretion. Because it distracts them from the fun and enjoyment. Is that it, Loral?"

No, I just don't define fun by the number next to my AC. I have no problem with the game being about progression, it is one of the main things that keeps people playing next to changing environments, social connections, and inter-class dependency.

I hear too many wizards who say they hate their class because their DPS is 741 and a rogue's is 822. If your whole enjoyment of the game comes from numbers you need an external program to calculate - you're looking too deep.

I was glad to see the first round of spell change in this last patch but when I took a few of my friends and guild members to the Gray to blow away undead for an hour, I really didn't care that my spell cost 50 mana less and did 100 more damage. I just had fun blowing away skeletons.

Enjoy the battles, enjoy the adventures, enjoy your friends, and enjoy the treasures you find.

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on April 13, 2005 08:56 AM

The number next to your AC has nothing to do with the fun in figuring out what lays behind it. Observation and comprehension are two different things.

Comment Posted by: Solistic on April 13, 2005 11:28 AM

LOL, yes you guys are right in a lot of ways. I look at these spread sheets and ways to calculate AC or what ever and get a blank stare, because it is not what I want to do. But I look at my character and say well my level 65 cleric has 5.3k hp and 1300 AC so I should be able to reduce the hits some. So maybe I can take on 'that mob'.

I like soloing my cleric, I really do. I went a couple places for a short spell last night (lingerring sickness cuts into my EQ time). One of the places I went was HATE, at first to just rezz a couple guildies but stuck around and solo'd dark blue mobs for the heck of it. I would not hae done this, if I had not gotten my AC and HP up.

Correct, thinking about Stats like AC and HP on a cleric is not needed to have fun, but in order to have fun the way I like it, it helps.

I like going to The Grey also to solo, but I like hanging around the SSRa temple in the middle and cleaning out the undead Snakes there. I have gotten a lot of xp from that zone, and I cheered when I found out that it is a 'Hot Spot' now.

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on April 13, 2005 12:06 PM

That was exactly my point, Solistic. Thanks for illustrating it ))

Comment Posted by: Hoshisabi on April 14, 2005 03:56 PM

The reason that wizards complain about their numerical DPS compared to rogues isn't because the numbers are different, it is due to a phenomenon that they actually see in game. People realize that rogues are high DPS with no mana limitation, so they pick rogues over wizards. Wizards want to be able to say to those people, "We're higher DPS than rogues, pick me pick me."

They observe the problem of comparative DPS in a subjective fashion, look for the source, and they need an external program to be able to communicate their problem in an objective fashion.

On the other hand, I play a necromancer now. I found I had solo'd so often that I might as well play a character that solo'd even better. (Opening a can of worms there, but I just feel more comfortable soloing with my necro at level 65 than I did with my wizard at level 65, and now that it's 70 necro and 66 wizard, the difference is more pronounced.)

Comment Posted by: Solistic on April 14, 2005 05:12 PM

Ahhh but the true answer is:
They both can solo, throw out who does the better DPS.
Do you enjoy playing and roleplaying the Necro better or,
Do you enjoy playing and roleplaying the Wizard better,
In the long run the DPS difference means nothing if you do not enjoy playing that class or race of toon.

Comment Posted by: Sallidar on April 14, 2005 10:52 PM

New producer for EQLive and new producer's letter.
http://eqlive.station.sony.com/community/dev_view.jsp?id=64042

This quote instantly made me think of you Loral. "Merging servers was a tough decision, but it is necessary for the continued success of the game and these changes will make EverQuest healthier in the long run."

Summary:
Feedback on Re-envisioning is good. Keep it coming.
Going to have communities vote on server names.
Karana nd The Rathe now merging, Bert and TP merging as well.
Time will be instanced. *sighs*
Re-vamp of "newbie experience" whatever that means. And some additional content for others.
New art for some older zones.

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on April 15, 2005 04:04 AM

At last they aknowledge that PoTime needed instancing.

Now if they could find a way to do something similar to Qvic goats, I'm sure it would alleviate the second bottleneck.

Comment Posted by: on April 15, 2005 06:36 AM

I'm from Karana and this is good news. Also, I'm impressed they are finally instancing Time. I was so sick of hearing how impossible it was to do this.

The newbie experience boost is exaclty what is needed. It simply takes too long to level up from 1 to 50 without twinking and having an alt power level them.

Comment Posted by: on April 15, 2005 07:59 AM

A change to newbie experience? Im not entirely sure this is a good idea, previously it took time to gain all of your levels, thats what seperated the people when it came to levels, time, and hopefully the skill that came with playing for that amount of time. Now, as a good note, if they are attempting to retain older players, this could be very good, as an older player might be willing to reroll a new character, rather than quit outright when burnout sets in. Also if someone were to have a mentor in real life on how to play, I could see how this would cause them to skip over the hours and hours of tedium.
The bad side? If anyone were to simply enter into the game entirely new they would have even easier access to higher levels than they did before, and no experience, twinked out newbs.
Overall however? With Sony's apparent focus on retaining older players, and older players occasionally having their friends roll alts for themselves to "show off", this sits with me as a good idea, not something I'd go around grinning like a jackal because of, but something that is overall good for the game.
Just my two cents.

Comment Posted by: Loral on April 15, 2005 01:16 PM

"In the long run the DPS difference means nothing if you do not enjoy playing that class or race of toon."

Yes yes yes! This is exactly what we should be thinking about whenever we are looking at EQ.

We don't play EQ because of statistics or instancing or encounter or class balance. We play because its fun. Our focus should always be on what is fun and what is not.

This is why people leave for other games. They may hit a point where progressing is no longer fun at their point in the game but is more fun at their point in another game. Of course its impossible to accurately compare level 9 in Worlds of Warcraft to level 70 in EQ, but we should be comparing the fun part. Why should fun diminish as characters grow older?

I'm happy to hear about the coming changes to the newbie experience but if it isn't mixed with aggressive new marketing, it may not mean much. People need to hear what has changed and see why it is as fun as the newbie experienece in WoW or EQ2.

There are two other articles I plan to discuss in my next Mobhunter update, probably on Monday:

Thoughts from a resting EQ Player:
http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/board/message?board.id=Veterans&message.id=76563

and Gemdiver's State of the Game part 2:
http://eq.crgaming.com/viewarticle.asp?Article=8587

There is a lot of really interesting stuff going on =)

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on April 15, 2005 01:41 PM

I agree very much with gemdiver article. The dependency to clerics needs to go or at least be A LOT lessened.

I believe that the tradeskill venue for DON armor is the worst possible choice. Let's face it, tradeskills in EQ SUCK. Period. Making single group players dependent of something as flawed and unfun as EQ tradeskills is making a great disservice to them. 600 points or whatever SoE wishes players to pay is a small effort in comparison and will not depend of a very small fraction of the playerbase to achieve it.

Comment Posted by: Turik on April 15, 2005 02:55 PM

Quote: The newbie experience boost is exaclty what is needed. It simply takes too long to level up from 1 to 50 without twinking and having an alt power level them.

Not sure who's right on this but my reading of the "newbie experience" comment was that they will be revamping the zones that newbies start in NOT that they will be boosting the XP (although they maybe be doing that was well)

Comment Posted by: Solistic on April 15, 2005 07:32 PM

Coming from my Warrior, I would take my fiances druid over almost any cleric. If there is a Necro and Shaman there also well you just took care of all the healing a tank needs, and you have a person that can rez with 93%. Add a Palidum and you have another rezzer and healer.

Now my Cleric Solistic is going to kill me, because you hand out high percentage rezzing to everyone, and healing is already fairly easy to replace. The cleric will be out of a job in the group. Thankfully I know how to solo my cleric.

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on April 15, 2005 08:02 PM

Unless the tank has outgrown the xp zone, he won't. For high paced groups, you have the best heals, buffs and rez in one single class. There's no risk of that BUT it will alleviate the bottleneck and dependency in raid.

Comment Posted by: BigFoot on April 16, 2005 12:16 AM

OFF Subject
Look around for Fiona Apple VS Sony web site.

Comment Posted by: Armarant on April 16, 2005 01:13 AM

http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/board/message?board.id=Crier&message.id=107#M107

This article seems extremely interesting at the moment.. especially certain parts of it.

Comment Posted by: Sallidar on April 16, 2005 07:43 AM

Armarant that's the same one, but thanks for another link.

Loral, I found the resting eq players post to be an excellent read, even if I don't agree 100%

I'm also glad to see the dev's reading it as well. I hope they get some impetus from it to further the changes we'd all like to see. Just what those are depends on who you ask, I guess.

Comment Posted by: Loral on April 17, 2005 12:15 PM

Between the class re-envisioning stuff, the veteran rewards, and the juicy tidbits in the producer's letter, there's a lot of neat stuff on the horizon. I can't wait to see what we hear about at the Fan Faire.

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