Return to Unrest
by Loral on May 14, 2005
It's been a big week. We've seen one of the more exciting patches since the release of Dragons of Norrath and a few interesting bits of news and even a nice juicy rumor crossed my great oak desk this week so lets dig right in.
SOE released four new missions this week taking us back to some favorite old zones including Befallen, Unrest, Qeynos, and the newer but underused Hate's Fury.
I only had time to try the Unrest mission but I enjoyed it enough to do it twice last night. The mission is excellent. I'm not a fan of time travel stories; they're a bit overused in fantasy and science fiction, but to see Unrest just as evil overtakes it is quite a treat. The mission's story is quite deep and interesting. The mission mechanics take you through some of your favorite haunted spots in Unrest. The mission can be finished in about an hour if you know what you're doing.
The mission only rewards a single random item upon completion including 100 hitpoint and mana items and a 65 hitpoint and mana augment for the uberfolk. It does not reward any shards or LDON points. There are some who would like to see all of these missions and adventures share a common currency but I think its fine to offer random rewards for some, crystals for another, and LDON points for a third. It gives us reason to do them all instead of farming the easiest one.
These missions show a great way to improve old-world zones and give us a way to recapture fond days of hunting in these old-world dungeons. They also focus a party on a single goal within these old zones. We get a nice bit of story and a nice reward along the way as well. I think this is the best way I've seen to revamp a zone. I like these a lot more than the recent Mistmoore or Paw revamps.
Missions in general are my favorite feature of Everquest. It is the one feature that keeps me continually returning to Everquest after playing games like Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft. They help focus a single group of players on a single goal; they help reward players for their effort; and they break up hunting sessions into nice manageable time periods. I hope to see a lot more of these in the future.
The in-game email system got a lot of added features this week. A new address book, an ability to send email guild-wide, new sound effects and text messages upon new mail arrival, and most importantly, an ability to forward in-game email to an out-of-game email address. These changes make Everquest's email system the most robust email system of any MMOG. All it lacks is an ability to send items along with an email.
This week we finally saw the release of the Veteran rewards. Now Bristlebane Puppets turn all those people hanging around the front of the big bank in Knowledge into all sorts of stramge things. Last night alone I used five of my seven veteran rewards and found every one of them useful. The Bristlebane pet especially is quite a wacky experience.
Veteran rewards are a great way to bring people back in the game and reward those of us who have played since the beginning. Some folks had problems receiving their rewards with a mixture of strange account time calculations including time unsubscribed and transferring characters from one account to another. Some of these problems were fixed later that day.
Unfortunately, these great new features didn't come without cost. This week John Smedley announced that in June the Everquest subscription cost will go up to $14.99 a month. It's hard to understand a subscription cost increase like this for a game that's been out for six years now but the other changes this week give us a good idea of what we pay for. For the next month we have the option to buy year-long subscriptions for $100, just over eight bucks a month and nearly half of what we would have to pay monthly. This is the plan I chose myself.
Even with the increased cost, Everquest continues to be a value compared to other forms of entertainment. I just paid $15 to see "Kingdom of Heaven" and I wish I had my three hours back. Even great games like God of War end up costing about $50 for eight to ten hours of entertainment. Only the cost per hour of a paperback book runs lower than my Everquest subscription costs.
Time for a Mobhunter exclusive. On June 9th at the Las Vegas Fan Faire, SOE will announce the new and latest Everquest expansion. We already heard a few clues and rumors out of the last developer chat including words like "Werewolves" and "Drachinds", both words I like but not as much as "Vampires" and "Demons". With their typical six-month schedule, I would prepare for an expansion release sometime in August.
This week, my home world of Quellious and the fine friends of Rodcet Nife merged together into a new world. The merger went quite well, I didn't notice the change until I went into Knowledge and saw an extra one hundred people milling about. The LFG list was thick with players to pick up for groups and my guild got in four or five new recruits within the first couple of days. While I don't think server mergers are the perfect solution to problems like waning guild numbers or difficulty finding groups, I think they can help keep Everquest healthy and alive. I'm enjoying the experience with my new friends of the Nife.
It's been an exciting week. With the larger player-base on my server, the new veteran rewards, and the new excellent missions in old-world zones, we get to see a new side to Everquest. Price increases might put a frown on our faces, but these new features help dullen the pain. It's an exciting time to play.
Loral Ciriclight
14 May 2005
loral@loralciriclight.com
Comment Posted by: on May 16, 2005 05:02 AM
Currently under evaluation ..... still!
Comment Posted by: on May 16, 2005 06:23 AM
Has anyone tried the Hate's Fury mission? I gave it a try and couldn't find the named to kill.
Comment Posted by: Loral on May 16, 2005 07:59 AM
Spoiler on Hate's Fury:
We did this mission yesterday. You have to go down to the second level and fight your way east. You will clear out past the treasure room and keep heading east looting as you go. You need two notes looted off of regular mobs. The first tells you who the new pirate navigator is and the second tells you where he is.
Fight your way east through the basement. The mission starts you close to the ladder to the basement so just clear that top deck and head down. As you fight your way east keep looting until you get the first note. Then fight east to the second latter in the north east room on the basement. Head upstairs and begin clearing west on the top deck. We cleared about two rooms before we got the second note. The second note told us he was in the treasure room. Head back downstairs using the ladder in the west and run back to the treasure room. He should be there with one guard. He wasn't particularly difficult to defeat. He dropped a melee / hybrid regen 2, mana regen 2, 85 hp and mana, 20 attack cloak for us.
The boss will not be on track until after you've gotten the second note.
This isn't a bad mission but I enjoyed the Unrest mission a lot more.
Comment Posted by: on May 16, 2005 01:30 PM
So unrest, unrest, etc now instanced zones when you start the mission?
Comment Posted by: Loral on May 16, 2005 01:47 PM
They didn't instance the old world version of the zone. You can still zone into unrest and hunt as you normally would.
In addition to the normal unrest you can now hail an NPC who sends you to another NPC who will send you to an instanced version with mobs appropriate to your level.
This is a much better design than a formal zone revamp and I hope to see a lot more of these.
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on May 16, 2005 08:37 PM
I tried the Qeynos mission twice. While I wasn't able to finish either time, I really enjoyed what I saw. To someone new to EQ it may not appear to be very different from DoN missions, other than the level range. However, it was a lot more fun running around North Qeynos trying to retake it from the gnolls than it was beating up dervishes in Lavaspinner's Lair. I really hope we see more of these missions in the future.
Comment Posted by: FormerGuide on May 16, 2005 08:45 PM
One thing I haven't seen much of is commentary on how former guides got screwed by Veteran Rewards. I was a guide for nearly 4 years. Yes, my account was free during this time. But I worked 6 hours per week (minimum, usually it was more like 20) helping players, providing tech support, and role-playing.
Despite playing Everquest since June, 1999, and paying for a year in advance, I only received three Veteran Rewards. Two different GMs have told me that I am not eligible for all of them because my account was free for those four years.
However, guides who are still in the program have apparently received their full benefits, even though their accounts are still free.
Comment Posted by: Mouse on May 16, 2005 11:03 PM
Hey you paid for the account with your service rather than cash. You should point that out to SOE, since you really should recieve the full reward. Actually, I'm not suprised at this sort of sloppy work by SOE. It still a fun game, but SOE appears to get it right about 1 in 5. Well, back to killing cute fuzzy virtual animals...
Comment Posted by: FormerGuide on May 17, 2005 01:55 PM
Posted today on the EQLive boards:
Kytherea
Community Halfling
There is absolutely no intention of leaving those who volunteered their time to guide out of the Veteran'sRewards they should get. I have posted several times stating that there is a problem due to the time that former guide's accounts were flagged free registering in the DB as eligible for rewards. This problem is being worked on.
Comment Posted by: on May 18, 2005 12:07 PM
I hate to be a negative Nancy, but do we need another expansion so soon? I haven't even begun DoN but I hope to in a week once I reach level 60 and can group up. At least I hoped to unless people bail to the next expansion making me reget buying this one.
How long are DoN legs, are people finished with it already?
Comment Posted by: Perc the Shadow Bard on May 18, 2005 02:14 PM
To Negative Nancy:
Hey, bud, you and the Sensitive Sallies need not worry about DoN being left behind. There's a lot of fun content in there as well as the DoN benefits you get with progression. I really haven't gotten to it much myself. Eh, I'll get around to it.
Comment Posted by: Horzek on May 18, 2005 03:30 PM
Regarding a new expansion I have to side with Negative Nancy and Sensitive Sally. I actually have been in the DoN's a bit but have no where near done as much as I would like.
I am already having trouble getting groups together mostly because I bought DoN a month late after getting over my pained feelings from GoD. Currently I have a heck of a time just wrapping up the Tier 1 DoN stuff. I got the factions I need and I now need to hit the 3 small quests but when I go out LFG for DoN I seem to be running against a wall. I can get a Riftseekers invite more often.
Frankly I dont think we are ready for nor do we need another expansion and I know Im not ready to put out another $30 so quickly. I am also very sure that I dont need them adding more zones I can not get into.
Comment Posted by: Loral on May 18, 2005 06:50 PM
It isn't out yet. They are announcing it in a month with a delivery probably in August or September. They release expansions every six months and they have since POP. That's just the way it is.
Omens is still very active even with DON out.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on May 19, 2005 08:29 AM
Because Omens is a full fledged xp / raid expansion.
DoN has a lot of xp zones but very few raid targets.
DoN merchant has no loot for raiders worth mentionning apart from 3 augs on average.
DoN has no xp zones with drops worth doing like RS.
In short DoN is a better LDON, but it's still a LDON: almost no value to raiders if not 3 targets. Vish not being very doable atm. Since each takes 30 min tops to do, you can clear DoN content in one day tops. Including progression fights. And frankly clearing Tacvi and Anguish every week and doing every possible main / alt epic 2 goes so far to fill a week. We really need something new.
Pity they didn't put something close to RS stuff in the new missions.
Comment Posted by: bob on May 19, 2005 10:41 AM
MEhtinks you are too accepting of the EQ rate hike. Everytime the rates go up, some poor soul at the bottom of the income food chain can no longer afford to play on their shoestring budgets.
If you havent noticed there are a LOT more people maiking a LOT less money these days and rising prices simply serves to exclude more people (whan ya have no choice but to pay 50% of your income just on rent, a $2 a month increase on EQ can mean the difference on a desicison to cancel the subscription.
Comment Posted by: Pants on May 19, 2005 04:50 PM
While the cost increase doesn't bother me since I don't play EQ anymore, and it is in line with other MMO rates I will point out that the reasoning given in the announcement seems dubious to me. Smedley said:
"While this announcement may be unpleasant, the cost of operating a top tier MMO has increased significantly over the past three years and this change will help us achieve our goal of seeing that every player has a consistently enjoyable experience in the world of EverQuest."
What I would like to know is how is it the cost has "increased significantly" when they just recently merged all the servers (thus cutting their number in half)and have constantly made cutbacks/outsourcing in Customer Service? Anyone who isn't constantly making excuses for SOE or who has a few dozen brain cells knows the real reason for the price increase but instead they make a BS excuse like this. It's one more reason for me to think Smedley is full of it most of the time.
Comment Posted by: Pants on May 19, 2005 04:52 PM
Also if you look at the history of their price increases you will notice that they directly coorespond to the release of other games that become popular at a higher monthly rate. Usually about half a year or so after that point EQ rates go up to match that rate.
Comment Posted by: Loral on May 20, 2005 10:54 AM
When I contacted SOE about the cost increase and brought up the subject of the merger they stated that the merger didn't save them any money. The merger isn't a case of clearing off half of the machines they used before - the "servers" we know and the servers they actually run are not the same thing.
Anyway, I can't comment on the rest of the reasons for the cost increase (I could speculate but what good is that) but servers merging, according to SOE, didn't save them any money. It was done to keep a critical mass of players on each server.
Comment Posted by: Loral on May 20, 2005 10:55 AM
"MEhtinks you are too accepting of the EQ rate hike. Everytime the rates go up, some poor soul at the bottom of the income food chain can no longer afford to play on their shoestring budgets."
I agree. Increasing the monthly fee won't help bring people back to the game or bring new players in. Increasing the costs, unless it leads to some other new feature, will lower the population.
Comment Posted by: Loral on May 20, 2005 11:00 AM
"DoN has a lot of xp zones but very few raid targets."
I think you mean that it doesn't have many raid targets for Anguish / MPG level raiders. It has a fair amount of raid content from Elemental to Anguish total but not so much at each raid level.
SOE targets expansions around the bulk of the playerbase. Not that many people or guilds are at the MPG / Anguish level. I would expect the next expansion to have more content at this level.
The problem with DON's raid content was that it was too easy for the top three dragons. They should have all been MPG / Anguish level and far more difficult than they were when released.
I also would have liked to see some gear applicable to raiders on the vendors. I want more raiders doing missions.
Comment Posted by: seeker on May 21, 2005 07:12 AM
Hello long time reader, first time writer here. I've have been completely entertained with these threads for about three weeks now...ty.
Totally off topic though what web sites are there about melee and combat numbers? Keep up the good work!
Comment Posted by: Armarant on May 21, 2005 09:26 PM
Smedley Wrote: "this change will help us achieve our goal of seeing that every player has a consistently enjoyable experience in the world of EverQuest."
I remember a little while ago they said that the cost of new models for EQ was too cost prohibitive, same with replaceing old world zones with newer ones that take advantage of the new engine.. perhaps raising the subscription rates will allow them to finally bring EQ into a new era? ..
New models.. completely new old world (Over time)..
dont think they are doing it just for the rate hikes.. because if they cant deliver something to justify this rate hike people will goto EQ2 and WoW instead.
Comment Posted by: Teremar on May 22, 2005 02:54 AM
No, they won't. SOE waited this long because they know most people have now made up their minds. Heck, all too many have already decided that the games they are not playing are evil incarnate. A couple extra bucks a month will change very few minds at this point, and SOE knows it.
This is a simple profix-maximizing decision, based on low elasticity of demand. The few subscribers they may lose will be easily made up for by the extra money they get from everyone else. Nor would I expect any new features as a result--if they were going to provide any they'd have talked about them, not increased costs.
I don't see this as something to get upset over. SOE is not a charity. But it's never pleasant to be reminded that what's good for SOE's bottom line isn't always what's good for the game.
Comment Posted by: on May 22, 2005 04:24 PM
The Hates Fury mission is really ticking me off. I've cleared the entire lower level and got no notes. I also cleared at least 75% of the top and nothing. Is it a random drop or the item is randomly placed on a mob? I've tried twice now and spent at least 7 hours killing mobs.
Comment Posted by: Cladari on May 22, 2005 07:59 PM
Was there any talk of lvl cap increase ? I pray to any Norrathian god that will hear me that there will not be.
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on May 23, 2005 01:25 AM
Yeah, what's up with that? How DARE they let people level up.
Anywho, I think one way to get raiders interested in DoN merchant rewards would a new type of aug that fits in a slot only found on DoN raid gear or something like that.
Comment Posted by: Pants on May 23, 2005 08:35 AM
While that was a rather weak attempt at sarcasm Maitreya I would point out that simply raising the level cap over and over is not necessarily good for the game all the time. In fact in the past it has caused problems, especially for melee classes. This was apparent when the level cap was raised from 60 to 65 without corresponding increases in skill caps. This meant it became harder and harder to hit mobs and people got hit harder and harder by them (also hurting avoidence classes even worse), even counting in gear. So they added in AAs and special gear modifiers to try to compensate but that required a lot of time or heavy raiding to obtain enough to make a difference and thus get back to a relative position of power versus mobs that they had. Meanwhile casters got shiney new spells that were not that hard to obtain so they increased in power without much effort at all, thus increasing the gap between casters and melees especially at the casual end of the game.
I would also point out that just slapping on more levels and AAs is a rather lazy way to design new and refreshing content. The game can get bigger and better without always raising the top end, with new types of content. Besides making the top even harder to reach for the new players that do try out EQ isn't exactly going to encourage them to stay around. There is always another approach to expansions than just the simplest "raise the bar and make it 10 times harder" stuff and luckily it seems SOE has figured that out at least somewhat in recent expansions.
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on May 23, 2005 05:26 PM
Raising the level cap doesn't really make it harder to reach the top, as lower levels get easier and easier. How hard would someone have to work to get to level 3 or 4 6 years ago? Those levels are a joke now, but they weren't then. I was trying the new tutorial on test, and I went from level 1 to level 3 doing a single turn in. The item was a ground spawn, no less.(It's not repeatable, at least.) Another similar quest took me to 4. After the tutorial, you can hop into PoK for a temp, then kill some skellies or spiders, sell the silks or chips to other players and head to the bazaar for upgrades. Or just do your newbie armor quests for items with stats that a level 10 or 15 6 years ago only dreamed of.
But now I'm getting off topic. Anyway, the problems you described aren't problems with just raising the level cap, but they're a side effect of not letting melee skills go up and letting them scale the same as the mobs. (Which some casters deal with as well. At lower levels, my mage pet could tank 3 dark blues fine. Now I can barely keep up on the heals on one mob a few levels below me.)
Though, I agree with you. There are other things I'd rather see than level cap increases. (Go, go revamped newbie zones!) I just don't think they're a problem, as Cladari's post seemed to suggest, as long as they're done right.
Comment Posted by: Tarzel on May 23, 2005 06:00 PM
Talking about something I wish was in the new expansion, and better make it into Loral's Evil Agenda: A loot all button on my corpse. Why do I need to right click every item to get my gear back on?
No need to complain about past releases. What would you like to see changed or added to the next expansion? Time is getting short for the developers to be able to act on our feedback.
Tarzel
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on May 23, 2005 06:10 PM
I would love to see a loot all button.
I think it would be neat to have rentable bank space too. More slots, but you have to pay X plat every [appropriate period of time] to use them.
I'd also like to see additions to the guild hall. Maybe progressive quests that add more merchants to the hall as you complete. For example, a dwarf shows up and tells you he'll seel ore, but goblins have been attacking the caravans carrying it, so he can't get any ore until the goblins are wiped out. Go wipeout the goblins and you have an ore merchant, who will then offer you a second quest that will add more items.
I'd also like to see quests allowing players to set up permanent portals. For North Karana for example, the guild portal gnome tells the guild that the pebbles he uses are just tiny fragments of a large, ancient stone. If the whole stone could be found, a permanent portal could be found. The stone could be in the possesion of a powerful hill giant or something. The quests would be of varying difficulties of course. The aforementioned hill giant would probably only be as tough as a mob like Vox or Naggy, but the encounter to open up a permanent WoS portal would be much, much tougher.
I could go on for hours like this though, so I'll stop myself now.
Comment Posted by: Tuppet on May 24, 2005 11:19 AM
Agree with more bank slots. There are more quests (with more turn-ins), more drops, more forages, more recipes for tradeskills. You run out of bank slots extremely fast.
Should passing items to a bazmule or alt be the only answer to "more bank slots"? I've done this but grew tired of managing the inventory of multiple toons. also, passing items between toons with only two shared bank slots is a PITA.
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on May 24, 2005 04:01 PM
2 shared bank slots can be turned into 20 pretty easily. Just buy 2 deluxe tool boxes from the tinkering merchant in PoK.
Comment Posted by: Tuppet on May 24, 2005 11:12 PM
should have been more specific - yes, put 10-slot containers in there and you have 20.
forages, tradeskill tools, NO DROPs that I want to lookup the quest for, quest items that I'm holding onto until I collect them all (i.e. VT key, 8/10 shards), etc.
guess I'm a packrat as my inventory partially includes the shared slots. WTB more bank slots.
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on May 25, 2005 01:27 AM
I know the feeling. There were some items I held onto for 30 or 40 levels before I finally got around to deleting them. More bank space would be nice, but again, I don't think it should be free. A regular fee should be put in place for it. The problem there is scaling. They'd have to find a good middle ground where it's not completely trivial for rich high end players but not totally unaffordable for younger characters with less money.
I'd also like to see some epic tasks. Quests of epic length and difficulty (like 80-100ish steps, with 3 or 4 of them taking down raid mobs) that use the task interface.
I would also very much like to see more missions in old world zones like the 4 we got last patch.
Comment Posted by: Glamdrigg on May 26, 2005 12:05 AM
LOL
Charging us for bank slots that's good. Just as long as they give us an interest rate on the platinum we have in the bank. Heck then we could get into money lending too and charge interest on loans due out. Could be a whole new trade skill there.
Your banking skill has increased : 200
LOL
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on May 26, 2005 01:04 AM
I'd also like to see offline trading. Hire an NPC in the bazaar to sell your stuff for you. They could just subtract some percentage of the money. This would be good for people who can't just stick their trader mule in the bazaar and leave their computer on for hours and hours all the time.
Comment Posted by: Pants on May 26, 2005 02:22 AM
Purchasable extra bank space and offline bazaar trader? You've just described World of Warcraft LOL. Actually almost everything you do in WoW costs you gold including even putting stuff up for auction in WoW. Luckily gold is easy to come by. In fact everything is easy on WoW, too easy.
Still though the offline auction house/trader idea should come to EQ. It's really needed. Leaving your computer on 24 hours a day to sell stuff is stupid.
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