by Moorgard on 2001-06-17
If you didn't read Part 1 of our FanFaire coverage, do so now.With me? Good. Hang on, gentle reader, and learn the real poop on some upcoming changes to the game that the Mobhunter crew managed to scrounge up at this event.
Saturday began with all the attendees gathering in a huge room to be introduced to the Verant staff.
/wave Verant staff
Next we gathered into server tribes and began the real-life quest, which ran about two hours. Teams from each server searched through the hotel for "quest NPCs"--real live people in costume who would talk to you and give you quests. These mostly involved either solving a word puzzle, a riddle, or bringing an item back to the NPC to receive a reward. Whichever team gathered the most rewards won. Don't ask me who that was, because it wasn't my team and so I don't really care, but grats who whichever team it was, I suppose.
Next began the interesting portion of the day. In various conference rooms in the hotel, Verant employees conducted different panels to discuss various in-game issues. These included: Producers/Designers with Brad McQuaid (Aradune), Jeff Butler, Bill Coyle, and Gordon Wrinn (Abashi); GMs & Guides with Michelle Bulter and Tracy Schuhwerk; Player vs. Player with Gary Grobson; EQ Community with Alan VanCourvering (Absor) and Brian Demarco; Armor & Weapons with Dan Enright; Magic System with Lawrence Poe; and Trade Skills with Dan Enright. A pretty impressive group, you have to admit.
Simultaneous with this was a demo of Shadows of Luclin, which took place in two different rooms that were, as you'd expect, standing room only. In yet another room, live in-game quests were being demonstrated for us by various GMs.
Now, bear in mind that all the above was happening from 3:30 to 5pm. That's 90 minutes to see and hear as much as possible. Um... that's a lot of places to go and people to see in a short period of time.
Since we were already in the in-game quest room at 3:30, we figured we'd watch it to see what happened. Big mistake. I should have known what it would be like, having been to several quests as they happened in game. Basically, it was a cute little idea, but almost no one participated and it was boring as all get out. At least no droods came to nuke the GM.
We tried to make up for lost time by charging up to the 8th floor to catch the Luclin demo. After wasting a lot of time waiting for an elevator (a frustration that would surface repeatedly), we made it to the room.
Luclin was being played on a P3-933 with a GeForce 3 card. The GM demonstrating the expansion took his character through several different zones, switching his character between the four available models: human, troll, gnome, and Vah Shir (Kerran). All were male.
The zones were amazing, especially the outdoor ones. The cities showed some improvements, but they were not as startling. The best part about the outdoors is that the ground nearest you has much higher detail than the ground farther away. There will essentially be two clipping planes; one that works as it does now, and another that will let you set how far out you want the super-detailed ground to appear. This will depend on the horsepower of your machine, of course.
Remember when I said in Part 1 of this article that you would be buying a GeForce 3 soon? Well, here's why. Even on this system, framerates would drop visibly when the character turned in a new direction. Framerates were fine with normal forward movement, but slowdowns when looking sideways were very noticable. Granted, the expansion isn't even in the beta stage, but I'd expect you'll want a GeForce 3 and a 1gHz processor as a minimum for running Luclin.
As for the character models, I didn't see much different from the screenshots released at E3 recently. Facial animations weren't ready to show, so the characters looked pretty stiff. The troll's butt-scratching is gone, replaced by a ground-pounding animation. It's obvious that a lot of work remains to make four player races move more accurately. Also, the human body is way too bulky--but more on this later.
All in all, Luclin looks fantastic. The GM showing the game in our room said he couldn't go into combat mode because those animations weren't ready, but my server GM reported to me later that he had been in the other room and combat was being demonstrated, so I guess I picked the wrong room.
Here's some pictures of the screen showing a few new NPC monsters. I debated even posting them, since they're blurry and I had no idea how to spell the names they gave for the monsters, but I figured if I didn't post some pics you'd think I made the above paragraphs up. So here you go.
| A big bug thing. Note the human in the back for scale. When asked if this was going to fly (it has wings), the GM's response was "Not yet." |
| A big round bug thing. |
| Skinny little freaky dude. |
After gawking at the wonder of Luclin, our time remaining was very short, so we had to decide what panels to hit before 5pm. Some might think it best to run and listen to Brad and Gordon, or to go bug Absor for info. But those three guys, big cheeses though they are, are actually the most vocal and visible of the Verant hierarchy. Would they really be revealing anything that we hadn't heard before, or that wouldn't be showing up on the news boards on Monday?
We gambled not, and instead opted to hit the Armor & Weapons room followed by a visit to the Magic System room. I think it was a good choice.
Dan Enright did a very nice job in the Armor & Weapons room. He gave a brief talk about upcoming plans for Luclin, then gave schlubs like me the opportunity to ask questions. Some of the highlights from this conversation were:
- Luclin will introduce "bane-type" weapons. That is, weapons that will give you a benefit only in certain encounters. For instance, there might be a dragonbane sword that is 20/40 against normal mobs but changes to 30/40 against dragons, or that has a special mob-specific proc like Ghoulbane.
- Armor will be introduced that affects not only your stats, but your faction. Presumably there will be both good and bad faction hits. I always wondered why the gnomes in Iceclad never seemed to mind me running past them in gnomeskin armor.
- Armor quests like the Coldain ring and shawl will be much more numerous. They don't intend to introduce class armor sets that exceed the capabilities of the current Velious PoG/quest armor, as they don't want characters getting a substantial power upgrade. So look for quests to give specific pieces, but not whole sets of uber armor.
- Changes to the epic quests or their results are unlikely, though bottlenecks will continue to be investigated and evaluated. But the Ragefire portion of the cleric epic will not be changed, unless the early parts were to be made significantly higher. There is a small possibility that the dragon books for the paladin epic may be looked into, but don't go betting the farm on it.
- Drops on plate pieces for the Velious quest armors will be increased in the next patch. Verant realizes that there are more classes that need the plate pieces than leather, chain, or silk, so we should see some better drops soon.
We made it to the spell room just after 5pm, where Lawrence Poe was hanging out, chewing tobacco and taking informal questions from players. Mr. Poe is one well-spoken and classy guy, and it's obvious how much he cares about this game.
 | The guy who designs your spells, Lawrence Poe. |
I play a monk, and Csenicier plays a paladin, so we didn't have a ton of questions for him, but we bugged him a bit and garnered a few scraps of news:
- Besides the ranger's Call of Earth spell, the monk epic weapon's effect, Celestial Tranquility, will now properly work with enchanter haste spells. That is, the higher haste effect of the enchanter spell will stack with the ATK/AC boost of the epic gloves. WOOO-HOOO!!!
- The new spell that allows wizards to stop mobs from gating works like this: it uses 225 mana and has a .5 second casting time. The spell lasts 18 seconds, with a 36 second recast time. Thus, one wizard in a single group situation will be able to prevent a frog in Sebilis from getting away. Against uber mobs, more wizards will be needed to keep the anti-gate effect constantly up. There will be three versions of this spell: level 51, which saves against cold; level 55, which saves against fire; and level 60, which has no save.
A big part of the reason for the introduction of these spells is that Lawrence doesn't like it that only one member of a certain class is seen as being needed on some raids. Thus, look for more spells of this type that makes a raid benefit from having multiple members of a given class.
And that's about it. We ran out of time. I hope the event planners will read this and realize that they should spread out the panel discussions and other events so people can go and see more of them. I felt a bit cheated that I didn't get to see any of the "big three" Verant guys.
A break followed, then at 7pm we had a catered meal of grilled chicken with barbeque sauce. It was okay, but not $85 okay. A prize drawing followed, in which a video card and four Weapons of the Gathering were given away. I didn't win anything, but grats to those who did.
And then it ended. Well, not really, as the partying began in earnest. Being, through a kind twist of fate, connected to some higher-ups at The Safehouse, we got invited to their 31st-floor bash. It was great fun, and they even had a very tough trivia contest WHICH OUR TEAM WOULD HAVE WON HAD IT NOT BEEN FOR THE FACT THAT THE TEAM WHO SUPPOSEDLY WON CHEATED. But I'm not bitter... no.
Drinking ensued, and Verant employees filtered in throughout the evening and into the morning. I won't mention names because they were there as people, not as Sony reps. But just let me say that they were very cool--every one of them.
No, they didn't tell me what the Sleeper is all about. But they did tell me a couple things, and I believe them:
- The fact that the GMs killed the warders isn't what made the Sleeper spawn. It was an accidental trigger, and it happened a while after the warders were dead.
- You don't know everything that Conquest did to merit the punishment they got... there was more to the story that they are not telling you. Believe who you want, but I believe the Verant people I talked to face to face.
- The Sleeper script is in game and working as intended. Verant employees stopped the script from running as quickly as they could, though they couldn't prevent the dragons from emoting as they did (Vox had an emote too, but the newbies who were there didn't know enough to screenshot her text).
- The Sleeper does a lot more than just make some NPCs say new emotes. The Verant people wouldn't say a word about what happens, though, except this: if the Sleeper is awakened, you will know it.
- The animations are not completed for the Luclin models, which is why the characters appear so stiff right now--especially the humans. For instance, a human wizard will hunch over on his staff, and other classes will have specific animations. Also, the human model will be made less bulky.
- The level limit will never be raised. Level 60 characters will be able to buy stats with experience points, but will not be allowed to buy hit points or mana (at least not directly--STA and WIS/INT could be purchased). There will be additional disciplines for melees as well, but nothing that will dramatically alter the power of a class.
- When Kunark was being planned, developers were told that it would be the last expansion, so they could go all out. As a result, new items were introduced and class changes were made that threw the game far out of balance, and they have been trying to fix that ever since. Yes, folks, they know Kunark screwed things up, which is why Luclin will not see a linear progression in character power, but rather will encourage growth of situational strengths--that is, items and abilities that will work against certain mobs, but not others.
We didn't want to talk business all night, so we stopped bugging Verant people and just had a good time. Oh, one other special guest arrived...
Yes, the lovely Denise Harris, a.k.a. Firiona Vie, made an appearance at the Safehouse party. And despite her protests that she was wearing sweats, she agreed to pose with some of us in the room, including me and Csenicier. Eat your hearts out, boys!
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That's me on the top, Csenicier on the bottom. Wait a minute, that didn't come out right...
FanFaire was a great time. If you can attend one, by all means do so. You're bound to find some really cool people and have a lot of fun. The real joy wasn't in the planned events--which were too hard to attend in the time alotted--but in the sense of community you develop by hanging out with people from your server.
Finally, let me give a shout-out to all our friends from Xev that we hung out with: Grumpee, Tome, Kruul, Kyleth, Fazan, Simmie, Ayie, Krimlor, and Xelbaaz, as well as Fortis and the folks from YKZ. And Imia, well, you rock.