"I can't wait until you get into the Theater of Blood either..."

As the Prophecy Unfolds

by Loral on February 20, 2006

Tomorrow, 21 February 2006, SOE will release the Prophecy of Ro expansion for Everquest. Last week SOE released the Non-disclosure Agreement, allowing those who betatested the expansion to spread wild rumors at their hearts' content.

There's a lot of content in this expansion but two things have me anticipating a good long run through Prophecy of Ro: the Theater of Blood access quest and the new class armor sets.

I had heard many whispers and rumors about the Theater of Blood access quest but late last week I had a chance to speak to Keridon, the designer in charge of putting the quest together. What I learned follows.

The Theater of Blood access quest takes players through all of the six new zones in Prophecy of Ro: Elddar Forest, Takish Hiz, Arcstone, Relic, Devastation, and the Stronghold of Rage. The quest consists of both instanced and non-instanced content throughout these zones. The quest introduces players to all of the main plot points of the Prophecy of Ro storyline, explaining what is happening and who is responsible. While the end-game raids will follow more of the consequential storyline of the expansion, the single-group Theater of Blood access quest introduces the actors playing the roles throughout the new areas.

While the length of the quest is not yet known, it is expected to be quite a bit longer than the Dreadspire access quest in Depths of Darkhollow. The overall quest difficulty scales up to Dreadspire difficulty, requiring that single-group hunters must be well equipped in order to finish the quest. This quest is designed to be accomplished by players with no raid equipment at all but they must be well equipped to defeat the quest. The quest is designed to give access to the Theater of Blood to those who enjoy single group hunts.

The Theater of Blood itself is a zone built on the philosophies of the original Plane of Fear and Plane of Hate. It is intended to be a very dangerous zone filled with the powerful and unrelenting minions of the new demi-god, Mayong Mistmoore. Groups of twelve to eighteen players should be able to hunt the lower minions of the Theater while larger groups may battle the larger wandering creatures of the zone. Six high-end beasts control access to the final raid zone of the expansion, Deathknell.

With this much content in one zone, the Theater of Blood may soon be a very popular place. Non-raiders might group up in two or three groups to hunt the outer beasts of the zone while larger groups of high-end non-raiders or mid-tier raiding guilds will battle the named beasts of the outer areas. High-end raiding guilds of 54 members will battle the six keyholders to Deathknell. Since the Theater of Blood is not instanced, all of this will happen in one zone on each server.

This design is not without risk. Already representatives from high-end raiding guilds question the logic of non-instanced keyholders. They bring up painful memories of Planes of Power where one guild might kill a mob critical to the progression of another guild. One difference, however, is that the final zone IS instanced. While one guild might attempt to block the progression of another, they would not be doing it to preserve their own hunting ground. However many guilds gain access to Deathknell, each will have their own copy in which to hunt.

How will competition for non-instanced content work for single group hunters or the loose bands of groups hunting in Theater of Blood? That is yet to be seen. The progression quest to Theater of Blood will require killing specific un-instanced mobs in the six open zones. It is possible that these static beasts will become a bottleneck for those seeking access to the Theater of Blood. Much depends on the spawn rate of these mobs and whether any alternative paths exist.

What if no one cares? Why worry about access to the Theater of Blood when we have excellent instances in Depths of Darkhollow that offer excellent experience and fine loot? What will drive players through a long single-group quest and push them to face the horrors unseen since the days of Fear and Hate?

Class armor.

Rewards drive players to new content. Risk versus reward sits over Norrath like a map of mountains and valleys. Players gravitate to the valleys where the rewards are highest for their effort. Mountains, which might have some excellent content and high adventure, stand mostly abandoned. Players seek tangible rewards and it is these tangible rewards, new class armor, that will drive players to the content in Prophecy of Ro.

There will likely be two sets of class-specific armor in Prophecy of Ro: one for single-groupers and one for the hunters of Theater of Blood. The lower power class specific armor will drop from three or four of the six static zones including Devastation, Relic, and likely Elddar and Arcstone. Named mobs in these zones will drop molds similar to the ornate armor molds in Planes of Power. These molds can be combined with other more easily accessible items to form a new piece of class armor.

The power of this armor is not fully known, but I expect it to be about 150 hitpoints and mana including focus effects, combat effects, defensive effects, or regeneration effects. This would place the armor above the armor available in Planes of Power, the tier 1 Omens armor, and the Dragons of Norrath vendor armor.

This armor would mix well with the off-slot armor abundantly rewarded in Depths of Darkhollow. The Depths single-group missions offered seven items per group on every successful mission but most of these items were for non-primary-armor slots such as neck, face, back, shoulder, waist, and some rings and earrings. Primary slot items for chests, legs, hands, wrists, heads, and feet were more rare and not tuned for specific classes. This new set of class armor in Prophecy will fill those slots.

These are not the only class armor pieces available in Prophecy, however. True to the original model of Hate and Fear, the Theater of Blood will drop high-end class armor of a much higher power. Again, this exact power is unknown, but 200 hitpoint and mana armor with focus, combat, regeneration, and defensive effects are likely. Armor of this power would match the highest power off-slot items in Depths of Darkhollow and give players a very good reason to fight their way to the Theater of Blood.

Many questions still exist with these new pieces of content. Will the quest to reach the Theater be too difficult? Will too many players try to do it at the same time and create a huge bottleneck? Will the power of the rewards be too low? Will the mix of high-end raiders, mid-level guilds, and three-group hunting parties be too much for one static zone to handle? There are a lot of risks with this most recent design, but if well tuned and done correctly, it could bring a lot of new excitement back into Everquest.

Loral Ciriclight
20 February 2006
loral@loralciriclight.com

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Comment Posted by: Quesci on February 20, 2006 12:12 AM

Um, clarification please:

"As Theater of Blood is instanced, all of this will happen in one place."

"This design is not without risk. Already representatives from high-end raiding guilds question the logic of non-instanced keyholders."

Was that first sentence supposed to have a "NOT" in it?

Comment Posted by: Aethn on February 20, 2006 01:08 AM

Hmmm ... Tier 1 armor = 150 hps and Tier 2 = 200 hps? Correct me if I am wrong here but isnt this a massive jump backwards? I mean, Qvic armor is 200-220 base hps and its 3 boxable now. I would think Blood armor would be 250 tier 1 and 350 tier 2 minimum in terms of progression.

Comment Posted by: A R Andum on February 20, 2006 03:17 AM

Nobody actually knows the gear dropped in Theatre of Blood yet, so until we see, this really is speculation.
From the difficulty of the zone though, it should be a step up from Qvic by a fair bit. 3 groups that would sleep through M'sha kills will get torn to shreds here. Unless they're ALL totally on the ball, we're going to see alot of people popping back at bind point when exploring this place. And this is before the mini-raids in the area are even reached.
A feeling of the Plane of Fear when it first came out was aimed for, I think they've done it.
From difficult pulls, though to swarm pet using mobs, through to incredibly tough mobs/aoes/dps/zonesweepers, the risk in this zone is very, very high, the rewards should match the risk.
Mapfiend already has the maps and some hints on encounters it appears, t'would be wise to study.

Comment Posted by: Loral on February 20, 2006 07:54 AM

I fixed the typo. Theater of Blood is NOT instanced. Given the high rewards on unnamed mobs, the high rewards on the powerful named mobs, and the high-end raid mobs required for progression to Deathknell, this should end up being a popular place.

You're probably right about the power of the Theater of Blood armor. It will probably be higher than Qvic level and should be given that it takes two to three groups to get it. One difference, though, the gear in Theater will drop off of any mob of a type similar to Fear and Hate. Qvic armor only dropped from three raid mobs. Also, getting to qvic required a fair bit of raiding.

The tier 1 armor is very likely to be in the 150 range with class-specific focus effects. It should be a nice bonus over DON armor.

It would be nice to see expansion progression take place all the way through Prophecy so that a new player could level up to 70, earn some AAs, get equipment from DODH missions, bazaar, and these new class armors in tier 1 PoR and then actually complete the quest to get to Theater where they can upgrade again. It would make for a smooth equipment progression path.

Likely, however, the quest to get into Theater will be pretty hard and require a LOT of single-group gearing up to get through, especially for a tank. The high-end DODH missions still require tanks with lots and lots of hitpoints, but I have done some of the hard ones with a 10k single-group tank.

Anyway, in one day we will see!

Comment Posted by: Dendory on February 20, 2006 08:55 AM

To be realist, non raiders will not get into Theatre, at least the vast majority won't. Dreadspire had an access quest of 4 missions, yet it's a deserted place except when raiders meet up to raid DP. Theatre will be a much longer and harder quest since there are much nicer things dropping in that zone, so even less non raiders will get in. Also you say non-raiders will get into 2-3 groups, or non-raiders will get into larger groups. Except that these people don't get into more than 6 people groups, at least the vast majority don't, so even if they get the key for Theatre they won't be hunting there.

I like the fact that they are adding a new class armor set especially for casuals, and if the power level is appropriate, it could bring a lot of people into the new zones. For raiders, it's obvious that they will all shoot for the high end raid zone. They could make a stop in Theatre, like guilds did in EPs to farm the raid class armor, but that will only happen if the items are worth it. 200hp is sub-qvic level, and Qvic is farmed by 1 group all the time. High end raiders have 345hp items, Anguish raiders have 300hp items, GoD raiders have 230hp items. So depending on the target it has to be better than one of those.

Overall from what I've seen of PoR it has potential, but the final verdict will depend on itemization and the fun factor of both the access quest and the final zones.

Comment Posted by: Skuz on February 20, 2006 10:28 AM

As a high-end raider myself I am concerned about "bottle-necks" hopefully any "cockblocking" will be seen as very bad sportsmanship & once over the initial rush for deathknell keys the highest & fastest progressing guilds won't deliberately hold up each other or the guilds right beind them but rather concentrate their competition within progress inside an instanced deathknell itself, though i rather suspect to deliberately cockblock will be a waste of a guilds time & energy best spent inside the end zone.

I think whilst some feel no non-raiders will be hitting the theatre of blood they are only thinking short-term, for sure raiders will group here if its a kick ass zone thats challenging with good rewards, also there are a lot of very determined non-raiders that will love hitting this place so they will likely not be all that far behind, also come september expect to see a large player-power boost with new aa & possibly a level increase, which will then make this zone a great place to farm gear to tackle that expansions content with.

Comment Posted by: Armarant on February 20, 2006 03:45 PM

Loral Wrote:Theater of Blood is NOT instanced. Given the high rewards on unnamed mobs, the high rewards on the powerful named mobs, and the high-end raid mobs required for progression to Deathknell, this should end up being a popular place.

Not to be rude, but didnt you say the same thing about Dreadspire? :) I dont know about your server. but I dont see too many single groups forming in dreadspire on mine.

Comment Posted by: Heartless on February 20, 2006 06:56 PM

Damn if you're still playing EQ after all these years and are not into raiding... wtf are you playing for?

Comment Posted by: Phrank on February 20, 2006 09:47 PM

"Damn if you're still playing EQ after all these years and are not into raiding... wtf are you playing for?"

Well in response to your asshat question, I am a fairly new player. I guess we aren't welcome in your great almighty shrinking EQ. Gee wonder where all the new blood will come from to keep this dinosaur afloat with attitudes like yours?

Comment Posted by: Keisa on February 21, 2006 08:24 AM

"Damn if you're still playing EQ after all these years and are not into raiding... wtf are you playing for?"

The game isn't only about raiding. Until about a week ago, I wasn't in a raiding guild, and I was still having a blast. Our guild was doing DODh, MPG trials, and all of the single group content. I loved it.

Just because you play the game a certain way does not mean it is the only way to play.

Keisa

Comment Posted by: Glormane on February 21, 2006 08:32 AM

Loral said Already representatives from high-end raiding guilds question the logic of non-instanced keyholders. They bring up painful memories of Planes of Power where one guild might kill a mob critical to the progression of another guild. One difference, however, is that the final zone IS instanced. While one guild might attempt to block the progression of another, they would not be doing it to preserve their own hunting ground. However many guilds gain access to Deathknell, each will have their own copy in which to hunt.

Question to you, why does a dog lick its own privates? Answer because it can.

Rather crude but I'm sure you get the message.

Also I imagine these key holders will drop loot.

On the subject of Dreadspire. Probably the reason no one hunts here is R v R. The mobs are tough, there are many adds so a good puller, cc is required. But the rewards do not reflect this and as better can be obtained elsewhere....

Doesnt take a rocket scientist :)

Comment Posted by: Loral on February 21, 2006 01:33 PM

Represenatives at SOE basically said the same thing about Dreadspire: the loot isn't good enough to warrant the difficulty in hunting there. That is aparently not the same in Theater of Blood which, although harder to reach and harder to hunt in, will drop significantly better rewards: high-end class specific armor.

As far as EQ being a raid-only game now, I'd say that was looking like the case back in POP and GOD days but with LDON, Omens, DON, and DODH, that is less and less the case these days. It doesn't appear to be the case in PoR either with the single-group access to Theater of Blood (half the topic of this article, in case you decided to skip over reading it), the single-group class specific armor in the six primary azones, the new monster missions, and the apparently pickup-friendly hunts in Theater of Blood itself.

Will it turn out this way? We'll have to see, but it appears to be the intent.

Comment Posted by: lsdfjsld on February 21, 2006 02:40 PM

If this expansion sucks any where near as much as DODH, it will be the last one they get out of me.

Comment Posted by: Heartless on February 21, 2006 03:38 PM

"Well in response to your asshat question, I am a fairly new player. I guess we aren't welcome in your great almighty shrinking EQ. Gee wonder where all the new blood will come from to keep this dinosaur afloat with attitudes like yours?" - Phrank

Actually I don't play EQ... never have and doubt I ever would :P So to be less asshat why would a non-raider play EQ? EQ is about the raid.

Now the obvious "you never played the game so how would you know" applies, but seriously they are consulting "top raiding guilds" for feedback... please. Its like when EA lets the top 20 Battlefield 2 players test patches... we get a half-ass patch meant to help the top 20 players instead of the majority of gamers.

So if the devs are going to the top raiding guilds then obviously thats what the game is designed for? Yes/no?

You tell me.

Comment Posted by: Keisa on February 21, 2006 04:03 PM

"Actually I don't play EQ...never have and doubt I ever would"

I think that says it all.

Keisa

Comment Posted by: Edazner on February 21, 2006 04:22 PM

If you don't like raiding switch to EQ2. I have and its definetly set up more for solo artist types.

Comment Posted by: Redhenna on February 22, 2006 03:39 AM

"So if the devs are going to the top raiding guilds then obviously thats what the game is designed for? Yes/no?"

If they went to only top raiding guilds for feedback, you might have a point. What they actually did is go to top raiding guilds for feedback about the raiding elements, and went to people who beta'd the single group stuff for feedback about single group stuff.

EQ has a much larger nonraiding population than raiding population.
(Note: that last line had the personal attacks edited out but the fact was kept in. Please talk about the subject and not the poster. - Loral)

Comment Posted by: wormy on February 22, 2006 02:03 PM

PooR is as bad as expected, half assed, premature release - and lots of older content not working.

It's getting worse with every expansion - they should start hiring qualified persons, especially in management!

Comment Posted by: Crumpkin on February 22, 2006 05:14 PM

Yes, Sony does go to the top guilds to recruit testers. However, Sony still does recruit a lot of random people that apply for the beta. Many of these people are not raiders.

The real question should be if these other people that are selected for the beta do as much testing as the raiders do?

We know that the raiders that were selected put in the time to test the raiding content, so that should be relatively bug free. But if the non raiding testers didn't put in the time to really test the non raiding content then are are bound to be bugs with it.

Comment Posted by: Blakyce on February 22, 2006 06:39 PM

One day after a new expansion and some have decided that it is poorly done. It is incredible to me how in one day it is possible to work through all of the solo, single group, raid and traeskill content. Personally I still regularly enjoy OOW solo content, POP raid content, DOD and DON group content, and tradeskilling. I was only able to do some exploring in my three hours of play on day one, and really liked the look of the zones I visited. It looks like a wealth of enjoyment for two hours of employment to me. But then I did not finish POR yet.

Comment Posted by: Hemdell on February 22, 2006 08:23 PM

Where exactly is the solo content in OOW to the present?? Maybe if u are raid geared YOU can solo, the the rest of cant. I love hearing from the overly geared that there is solo content. PLEASE !!!!!

Comment Posted by: RosesAreRed on February 22, 2006 11:19 PM

Monster Missions.

My question is, why put so much work into designing these missions if they are now so nerfed that no one wants to do them? I'm not questioning if they are a good idea or not .. there are pros and cons .. but they were fun and a quick filler while waiting for a group or for friends to log on .. and even the adjusted exp and aa were nice since there were no good drops.

Now it's impossible to find a group at any of them. So what's the point?

Comment Posted by: RosesAreRed on February 23, 2006 01:03 AM

I've spent the evening exploring FPort and the Ro Deserts. NICE redo, but again, what is the point if no one uses them? Everyone there was 60+ and just checkin them out ... pally friend went LD and woke up dead ... guess he is still kos .. lol

Comment Posted by: Blakyce on February 23, 2006 01:18 AM

"Where exactly is the solo content in OOW to the present?? Maybe if u are raid geared YOU can solo, the the rest of cant. I love hearing from the overly geared that there is solo content. PLEASE !!!!!"

If you are a soloing capable class then Noble's Causeway is a great spot for soloers. I started there at 65, bazaar geared, and have earned 5 levels and 300 aa's mainly soloing. It is dead easy. Our guild just got our time flag last week so I am uber for 3 plus years ago.

Comment Posted by: Heartless on February 23, 2006 03:09 AM

[Comment deleted - no spam please]

Comment Posted by: Bubbamac on February 23, 2006 05:58 AM

I patiently waited for the new Mobhunter article to read the write-up on the Legends Server closing, because Loral said, for a second time, he would deliver such article.

/sigh......

Comment Posted by: flyonthewall on February 23, 2006 12:03 PM

Geez guys, give it a rest. I am sure Loral will write something about Legends after he�s done covering release of PoR. New zones, revamped zones, hot zones, new missions, HHK nerf and what replaces it as the next most popular way to rack up AAs, new tasks to do, tasks that don�t work, new armor that anyone can get, phat lewt that only raiders will see, items disappearing, encounters not itemized yet, warhorse, new models, mobs that people love, mobs that people hate, NPCs that make no sense, fun places to hunt, vast empty wastelands, performance issues, alchemy changes, tradeskill trophies, auras, traps, breakable items, bank slots that aren�t there yet, alt label for guild manager, guild hall being down, etc. � there is so much to discuss.

What exactly do you expect him to say anyway? People were paying for services that they didn�t always get, population on server dropped to the point where Sony decided that it wasn�t worth supporting, closure wasn�t handled as well as it could have been and some folks got screwed.

You have my sympathies but I don�t think article will get you a restoration or refund. If it means so much to you, post something yourself. Tell us what happened. Tell us what you want done. After all, you know better than Loral does. He never played on Stormhammer.

Comment Posted by: Teremar on February 23, 2006 12:19 PM

Sometime after GoD, SOE seems to have seen the light and PoR once again shows that they're committed to providing content and a viable progression path for non-raiders. Maybe it hasn't always been great content, but they're trying. Much as I like WoW's gameplay better than EQ's, I wish I could say Blizzard had done the same.

Comment Posted by: Loral on February 24, 2006 09:10 AM

For the past two years I have deleted machine-generated spam messages that hit Mobhunter's comment generator. I've locked older posts to ensure they don't get flooded with spam.

Today, however, is the first time I have had to delete hand-generated spam.

If you have something worthy to bring to the discussion, please do. If you have a link to an article related to the discussion, please link it.

Please don't use Mobhunter's comments to bump another website up in the Google rankings. Future posts will be deleted.

Heartless, I read your site and it isn't bad at all. Please don't troll just to get hits, though. Good sites take time before people grab on, especially in these days of the blogosphere.

Thanks.

Comment Posted by: Loral on February 24, 2006 09:17 AM

I am pretty confident that when I do write about Stormhammer (yes, I'm way overdue) that the people asking me to do so aren't going to like what I say.

Asking gamers to pay over $30 a month for a six year old game is asking a lot. Stormhammer had far fewer players than any other server and nothing SOE could reasonably have done to bring the numbers back up again. The features and support for Stormhammer sounded great but they never really got that much exclusive content and the direct support of the GMs, while a great touch, didn't turn out to be enough to keep players there.

There were some players who were upset that SOE locked Stormhammer early and prevented them using Stormhammer to switch characters from one server to another without paying the fee but I don't really think Stormhammer was ever intended as a character farm to let players move to any server they wanted.

I talked to a few Stormhammer players at the last EQ community summit and talked to a few more in-game. They all wanted the server to stay alive and for SOE to find a way to draw more players to the server. Nothing that I heard, however, seemed like something that would really work. In our post EQ2/WoW world, when other games like Guild Wars have no payment at all, over $30 a month is just too much to ask.

No one who loves their server wants to see it fall but the biggest mistake I saw with Stormhammer was SOE waiting so long to do something about it.

Comment Posted by: Glormane on February 24, 2006 10:39 AM

Its my opinion that SOE have never intended there to be any solo content. They have always tried to promote the group idea.
There are a few exceptions to this rule. Certain classes seem to solo exceptionally well and have still to be hit with the balancing bat of SoE.
Any class can solo depending on gear and content. There arent many who can solo current content (Kiting classes could kite some DoD missions when it was the most recent expansion, but this was not the intended design, SOE made a restriction that 3 had to be in a group to get a mission and keep it open).
It's strange that SOE steadfastly resist in providing solo content, when there is quite obviously a market for it, as WoW has shown, though many other MMORG's are not providing solo content to my knowledge, D&D and Vanguard to name two.

Comment Posted by: Armarant on February 24, 2006 11:47 AM

Glormane: though many other MMORG's are not providing solo content to my knowledge, D&D and Vanguard to name two.

Actually from what I understand from people who play D&D there is alot of content for people who dont group.

and I cant speak for Vanguard, but I think brad said there will be content for every play style. and that would indeed include solo players, though I wouldnt know how much they intend to include in the final game.

Comment Posted by: sdfsdf on February 24, 2006 01:00 PM

This article should be re-titled:

"As the Prophecy (re)Patches"

Comment Posted by: xsi on February 26, 2006 02:15 AM

For what it's worth D&D Online has virtually no solo content whatsoever beyond the initial solo dungeons.

However, because the geography is relatively small and EVERYONE has to group, finding a group is incredibly easy. Not true with EQ.

Comment Posted by: Pomaikai Po'okela on February 26, 2006 03:24 AM

One patch to break them all. One patch to find them. One patch to fix them all, and in the darkness nerf them...

Comment Posted by: Loral on February 28, 2006 01:44 PM

Looks like there is a big meeting on the test server to find out how they can make the server more useful for actual testing:

Greetings Test Server,

EverQuest Development, and Quality Assurance would like to invite the Test Server community to a discussion about the Test Server to try and find mutually beneficial solutions to Test Servers low population issues.

When: Thursday 3/2/06 3:00PM PST
Where: Plane of Knowledge, Test Server.

Xeib

Interesing stuff. Thanks to Theo for the info.

Comment Posted by: Armarant on February 28, 2006 02:13 PM

Loral Wrote:Looks like there is a big meeting on the test server to find out how they can make the server more useful for actual testing

the first solution obviously is that they need to stop treating test like a production server. no one goes to test right now unless they can test the content as a level 20, because not many people want to level up a character to 70 just to test one spell. or one zone. so the effect is that test in its current state will always have a low population, but a fanatical population. (Even if they never actually test anything)

Comment Posted by: Simkine on February 28, 2006 02:42 PM

Didn't SOE post a few months ago about having people able to copy (not transfer) their characters to Test so they could boost the server?

Back in early '99 I moved from a prod server to Test due to the huge populations. Back then there were around 250-450 people on prime time compared to 2200+ on a normal server. It really was a nice play to play.

However, after having people post /bug reports and not have them addressed and any issues raised during expansions ignored, people gave up.

Comment Posted by: Loral on March 1, 2006 02:44 AM

Update, the town meeting was moved:

Greetings Test Server,

When: Wednesday 3/8/06 5:00PM PST
Where: Plane of Knowledge, Test Server.

Xeib

Edited to change the time and date so more people can attend.

Also, for those of you who don't mind spoilers, Caster's Realm posted the Theater of Blood access quest:

http://eq.crgaming.com/viewarticle.asp?Article=10354

Comment Posted by: Simkine on March 3, 2006 03:17 PM

Hey Loral, you made the Character of the Day on eqplayers.com (Mar 3rd). What are the odds of that.

Comment Posted by: Vucrualt on March 15, 2006 06:34 PM

Okay... We raided Theatre of Blood twice now... i have a piece of the druid class armor.. it sucks. It has like uh maybe 20-30 more hp than qvic... pointless...

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