Feldon
Thanks to Coniaric for these snapshots of the Shard of Love from Fan Faire. This zone will be going into Gu53.
Month: June 2009
EQ2 is getting an Achievements system! Much like the systems on XBox where you get points for completing certain tasks in certain games, EQ2 will recognize certain in-game achievements. To avoid any confusion, the Alternate Achievement system in EQ2 is officially being renamed “AA”. If you’d like to read more about the upcoming Achievements system and give feedback or suggestions, check out Rothgar‘s thread on the subject.
Thanks to Ke’la who has posted a video captured from the Shaders 3.0 presentation at Fan Faire 2009. The snapshots are from Nek Forest and show a dramatic improvement in lighting. This should appear in Game Update 53. Once you see the screen snapshots, you realize just how flat, grey, and unrealistic the lighting in Nek Forest has been. Check it out: EverQuest II Shaders 3.0 Video As soon as I get screen snapshots, you’ll see them here on EQ2Wire. 🙂
Here are some less concrete things that were discussed at Fan Faire. Race change is something a LOT of people are asking for. EQ2 devs asked for a show of hands of how many people would like this feature and half the room raised their hands. It IS being looked at. Yes, there was some resistance for lore reasons, and betrayal/alignment/quest issues are substantial, but it’s certainly possible with enough development time. The amount of money they’d make off this would more than make up for it. You can scratch “never” out of your vocabulary for this one. Heck,...
I’ve edited the “EQ2 Fan Faire Rollup” post so many times, trying to get it factually accurate and inclusive, I’m surprised I haven’t worn a spot on the hard drive. We’ve had the facts and figures. Let’s play the game! Soloing to 80? I’ve always considered soloing to 80 a recipe for disaster as you will be at a huge disadvantage. Playing the game solo to 80 ill prepares most classes for grouping. You don’t know how to play your class in a group. You don’t know how other classes complement your class. Soloing to 80 can be bad...
I present the EverQuest II Expansion & Game Update News from Fan Faire in a rollup post. This is partly based on the Fan Faire 2009 Consolidated News by Kalyyn. I started with Kalyyn’s great writeup and have built upon it, adding dozens of new details and minor corrections based on everything I observed at the 2009 Fan Faire EQ2 event in Las Vegas. I’ve archived the individual news posts I submitted over the weekend. If you still want to read them, they’re [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] And now, without further ado,...
Little is known of this new project. It’s existence was revealed in the Jase Hall production ‘EverCracked’. Mentioned by Smedley. Platform: PC, PS3, or both EQ1 and EQ2 subscriber numbers are both up so would presumably be a third concurrent game in the series. Project has no official title. Stay tuned!
Scaling mobs in raid zones Scripting completely changes for certain mobs like on ‘normal’ will send underlings instead of killing the actual boss Might use new Achievement system to say you cleared the zone on hard Miraguls planar shard in gu53 will have scaling Final boss plays completely different depending on the choice made on pull. Smart loot Lock boxes in mistmyr already have mini smartloot for each person that loots
Auto mentoring system Hail an NPC in the cities to mentor in 5 level increments No aaxp bonus Aaxp slider Upgraded quest window Let enchanters do crowd control on raids May make T9 version of some TSO dungeons
Stonebrunt mountains ——- End of the void storyline What happened to the Erudites and Odus Ratonga lore ——– Contested dungeon The Hole 82+ 3 different wings. Spawn in the middle. Brenlo directly addressed Gage about rumors. 🙂 Raid mobs in new zones will have a choice of difficulty so no zone will be completely unbeatable Some mobs will have multiple loot tables ——– No new deities with expac ——– Guild level 90 More amenities and more slots ——— 2 overland zones 1 contested zone similar to sanctum of scaleborn by twice the size 12 group instances Level by grouping...
Deity quests will not get updated. Deity miracles might get looked at. Halas starting race — Barbarians? Not 100% confirmed Friznik is back on dev team. Gu53 shaders 3.0 graphic upgrades to eq2 engine. *moved to GPU for any shaders 3.0 card *3,000 shaders upgraded so far *Same performance at high res *Higher framerate at lower res Flora displacement on GPU performance getting further tweaks *textures are not changing, So it won’t be a large download. just the old 1.0 shaders (bump mapping, reflections, item/gear glows, etc. are being batch replaced. Nek Forest looks awesome now. The whole idea...
Mythical will not be #1 weapon. It will be usuable in another way. Ore nodes will respawn as ore nodes Gem nodes will respawn as gem nodes Summoner dumbfire pets will just be a spell with a debuff, won’t be something that has survive. Heal over time is third place behind wards and reactive heals, so Druids are getting another component to heal over time.
Re evaluating emergency heals and stun-and-heal Plan to keep mythicals relevant in T9 without 1.5 Questions —— Rangers — would like to re evaluate stream of arrows. Originally intended as a fillin between auto attacks, but auto attacks are so big now. No immediate plans to adjust auto attack damage. Drag, thought snap are so overpowered we have to disable them or mobs are trivialized Raids that take advantage of enchanters Conjuror mythical pet will reach cap in mid-80s so limited effectiveness in exp6 as currently designed. Will evaluate further. Summoner pet survivability will be addressed Will look at...
Extend eof and kos trees 50 more AA points 250 cap End abilities at bottom of eof and kos trees will be combinations instead of additional buttons Aa xp slider Spell ranged melée heal taunt crit merged to just crit Double attack and RDA merge to just DA Each class has crit coefficients Same gear adds diff crit % for diff classes Reduce mitigation types to Physical. Elemental. Nox. Arcane Consolidate common self buff lines Gear scaling system — old gear scales down Druid heal over time with expiration heal for groupmate Druid should be viable healer No need...
Level cap 90 2,000 recipes to raise cap Ore nodes and gem nodes Demand is unbalanced for loams Gem nodes Mage, fighter, jewelry Can be both Tinkerer and transmuter. Would like to completely overhaul adornment system. Most new adornments recipes will be made by muter only rather than 9 main tradeskills.
Customer service Eliminated outsourced India support Focus on strengths of CS employees in San Diego Folks who actually play the game Better answers than ‘working as intended’ replies NUGIT team established to fight plat sellers 275,000 plat sellers banned, not just trial accounts
Community address starting now. Brenlo getting the crowd riled up for Smedley. SoE game montage.
Parsing Gravitas, Cures, CoB, etc. Will consider it. Determining where guild rally flag is located? Some coming has already been done for this. Auto mentoring – hail an npc and mentor to a level in 5 level increments. Old quest completion missions. Probably not on PvP. Daily double shard zone in Welcome window or MOTD? Possible. Achievements (like CoH or Xbox Live) like 500 kills, 20 heritage quests, etc. In a new tab in the quest window. Current tier upgrades are coming for bone clasped gridle. Not so much for the bloodthirsty choker. 🙂 Streamling buffing for classes. Buffing...
Some seriously funny, cool, and creative new mob designs and revamped appearances to some existing mobs. More interesting animations. * fighting pandas * displacer beasts * two headed giants * stalagmites * scarecrows Random illusion appearances driving you crazy? Looking at a possibly a Magic Mirror house item to save illusion setups. Npcs only have about 50 animations. Players have about 1,000 animations. Kelethin houses will get a transparent window. Both Kelethin and Neriak houses will have more rooms. Male ratongas with whiskers but without glasses? We’ll look into it. Illusion picker UI to switch illusions in development. Devs...
The comprehensive writeups on Fan Faire and the events and photos are always worth a read if you couldn’t make it. I admit I’m all about the details and the expansion news. I don’t try to cover the whole event as others do that better than I can… One writeup I want to mention is CompleteHeal. Calthine (great to meet her of course!) has a writeup at Zam as well. I took some pics of the event last night, some general Fan Faire pics, and of course lots of pics from the EQ2Flames gathering last night. Hope to get them up...
An interesting day indeed, talking about the game. As much as people may doubt it, most of the Devs really do listen and want folks to play the game. It would pretty dumb if they didn’t. They know the mistakes of Kunark, and the issues (to a lesser extent) in TSO. Oh and talking to Pantz, Crabbok, Atan, and more isn’t too shabby either. Record turnout for the eq2flames mashup. WTF are you Gage? 😛