Feldon Let’s see…
ReItemization
It seems we’ve finally made our voices heard on the problems introduced by the extreme stat consolidation with the introduction of Velious, namely that not only all dungeon-dropped (Legendary, Fabled) gear from level 1-89 has completely ineffective stats, but that even the Mastercrafted gear from 22, 32, 42, 52, 62, 72, 77, and 82 are almost nonsensical in their setups given the changes.
Multihousing
Multihousing has been on Test and Test Copy for a couple of days now and feedback has been flooding in from players who are testing it out. Zoltaroth has been slaying the housing code demons and responding quickly to the bug reports.
Prestige Houses
Those prestige houses we’ve been hearing about have been unveiled, leaving no surprises. The Qeynos Dojo from Elddar Grove makes an appearance. It’s cozy, which is real-estate lingo for TINY. Hopefully in a later update, some kind of outdoor area can be added. The Neriak Opera House is much bigger, although again there’s no outdoor area, as these prestige houses were actually produced in 2007 before houses were opened up to ‘outside’ areas. Rounding out the new Prestige houses are the Maj’dul Library which will be awfully familiar for those who have completed their Tradeskill Epic (no sign of weighty tomes or menacing djinn librarians though). We haven’t seen the Maj’dul Bottle house just yet, although we’re guessing that it’s not unlike the bottle found on the shores of the Sinking Sands.
The Everfrost Summer Home, already available to purchasers of the Destiny of Velious Collector’s Edition is a somewhat gloomy 4 room house not unlike Miragul’s infamous Menagerie. Incidentally, after initially being told otherwise, we’ve received confirmation that the 7 year veteran house Mistmoore Crag Estate is in fact a Prestige house. As to why this is an important distinction, prestige houses will have additional linking options including the placement of portals to the houses of friends and guildmates.
Low Level Itemization
Early posts on the EQ2 forums from devs indicated that previous tiers would not be reitemized, given the difficulty and time involved. We made no secret of our feelings on the EQ2 forums that “maybe this should have been considered before changing how all of the game’s stats work”.
However more recently, it has been indicated by SmokeJumper that at least some degree of fixes may be done to the old itemization. Whether this will be restricted to, say, Mastercrafted gear and a select few items, or whether a script will be applied to all old items as was done a couple of years ago is unclear.
On the gear I think its overstated as a problem, firstly no one is struggling to progress 1-90 due to gear problems, if anything the slight drop in power is actually something healthy for the game with all the years of increases via AA etc.
While I’d like to see INT shields and other garbage gear removed, and also to see legendary/fabled low level raid gear > mastercrafted thus giving me reasons to be excited about hunting gear upgrades while levelling, this has been broken for many years though, although these changes didn’t help.
I do not want though what others appear to be asking for. That is say for something with three stats that used to give a benefit to a class e.g. 16 STR 16 AGI 16 INT to be turned into 48 STR, I’d rather have a few reasons to group up given to me at the lower levels instead of it being mind numbing easy and tediously safe.
The problem with the “extreme stat consolidation” goes a lot deeper than low level itemization. The whole consolidation process is about 40% complete. Debuffs that no longer make sense, buffs that no longer really buff, food and drink with dual stats (not x and STA but two “primary” stats), does STR still effect how much you can carry without being burdened? etc etc.
As far as I know, weight has been completely removed from the game.
My old UI, which I’ve been too lazy to update, shows weight 400/400 for all my toons.
If you havn’t already done so, you might as well scrap all your bags and put in strong boxes in all slot.
Anyways, stat consolidation + class restrictions on ALL gear etc etc is still a very sad change if you ask me. No matter which class you play, there is 1 way and 1 way ONLY to gear your toon now. No customizing. A SK is a SK, a Templar is a Templar, an Assasin is an Assasin … We’re all the same. Sad.
reitemization good and terribly bad news.
Good because that was need.
terribly bad cause they ll not revert those terrible stats simplification, EQ2 lost a lot making it a marketing consol game
That is of course the agenda. Break us in as a community to the idea of playing Everquest Next on Playstation. As well as making the game playable and enjoyable on Playstation without giving any advantage to PC players.
Murfalad,
Already, mastercrafted is better than just about any Legendary or Fabled from 1-70. I don’t think it’s healthy for the game, but that seems to be their ‘plan’.