Depths of Darkhollow Preview
by Loral on June 11, 2005
I just returned from the preview of Depths of Darkhollow, the tenth Everquest expansion. It is with cramped hand and full bladder that I bring you latest details on this exciting expansion. The expansion has three major aspects; play as a monster, intelligent items, and the traditional expansion zones and missions. SOE will release Depths of Darkhollow on 13 September 2005. Let's dig right in.
Play as a Monster
The most exciting feature of Depths of Darkhollow lets players select monsters as play characters. Anyone who remembers Project M remembers how much fun it was to jump into the body of a moss snake and pwn newbs. The Play as a Monster features improves on this idea in many directions.
There are two ways to play as a monster: within missions and using a system called the Spirit Shroud.
Using the Spirit Shroud, players can select lower level beasts to hunt with lower level friends in old-world zones. This meets a long-standing problem where friends of mixed levels could not hunt together. Though high level players may pick lower level monsters, the experience gained will improve both their primary play character and their selected beast. The creatures a player can polymorph into are limited by the infamous global memory file; a large file containing all of the player models, armor, weapons, pets, and other common world-wide models.
The second method of playing as a monster lets players jump into missions as any monster within the dark minds of the SOE designers and artists. Players can jump into a variety of missions with a variety of different monster PC models. We heard whispers of a lower guk mission with the PC playing the Froglok assassin or Froglok Shin Lord fighting the hoards of beasts from Cazic Thule’s armies.
These missions offer unlimited potential for historical EQ battles fought from the other side. Players might play as Nagafen and eat raids full of NPCs who wish to slay the great red beast. Using spirit shrouds, players of high-end guilds can switch to a pack of level 50 beasts and hunt Lord Nagafen once again.
This feature alone fixes many outstanding difficulties in massive online games. It lets players play with lower-level friends. It helps players hunt even if they are missing a required class archetype. It helps revitalize old-world content by making any zone lower than a player huntable once again.
Since missions, this is the most exciting feature I have ever seen added to EQ.
Zones and Graphics
The expansion itself will include seven large static zones and fifteen instanced missions. This number doesn't include a large raid-level instance of the final zones, Darkspire, intended to offer a large amount of content for current high-end raiders who quickly run out of existing raid content. This high-end zone will offer uninstanced single-group hunting as well as single-group and raid missions.
From the screenshots we see large dark forests inhabited by ghost-white werewolves (perhaps that's your friend Bob! Hey Bob!). We see huge bottomless caverns full of criss-crossing walkways between giant stalactites. We see the giant cathedral of the Darkspire. We see the twisted cities of the Illithid-Liches (Nanyea says they're called "Alhoon"). The first shot of the large forest is called "Nektulos". Could a zone revamp of our favorite dark forest be in our future? Further rumors say "yes" and you heard it here first - we will see a revamp of Nektulos Forest!
The zones look beautiful and it sounds like they'll have a lot of content for a lot of players.
The monsters themselves, both PCs and NPCs look excellent including werewolves, the liches mentioned above, eels, big mushrooms, minotaurs, gnomish lockwork rogues, orcs, and drachnids.
Intelligent Items
The final feature discussed during our preview of Depths of Darkhollow were Intelligent items, also referred to as "Evolving Items" and "Smart Items". Did you ever read the R.A Salvatore Legacy of the Drow books? Remember Dantag Banere’s intelligent demonic sword, Khazid'hea? Imagine that in EQ. Swords will insult their slain masters and desire the expert hand of another. These weapons earn experience as though they were characters, growing in power as their master (or servant?) wields them. The possibilities are endless.
During the last three days, Craig Knapp, Everquest producer describes his visions of Everquest growing in depth instead of breadth. His philosophy seems to be both metaphor and literal at the same time. Depths of Darkhollow looks to take Everquest into whole new directions. Most importantly, the features of Depths of Darkhollow clearly define Everquest as a continued force in a fiercely competitive world.
Now go check out the Depths of Darkhollow screenshots.
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on June 11, 2005 08:02 PM
These sound like some awesome features. Any mention of an intended release date?
Comment Posted by: Ryan R on June 11, 2005 08:04 PM
Just curious, where abouts in the world of Norrath will "darkhollow" be. I am assuming since Nektulous seems like it will be revamped, that access to Darkhollow will be through this part of norrath, but is darkhollow actually the "underfoot" of norrath? I guess what I am really hunting for here is some lore. ARE WE GOING TO GET TO MEET BRELL? :D
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 11, 2005 08:21 PM
The release date will be September 13th, 2005.
I don't know about Brell but I will ask. It seems underdarky but I don't know for sure if it's THE underfoot.
I will have a few more hours with the developers if you have any other questions. Please post here and I will keep watching the messages.
Comment Posted by: Aethn on June 11, 2005 08:39 PM
Level Cap? AA's?
Comment Posted by: Iza on June 11, 2005 08:49 PM
Playing mobs = awesome! More details how this will work please =)
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 11, 2005 08:58 PM
No level cap increase but Rashere said there would probably be a couple of dozen new AAs.
Comment Posted by: Aethn on June 11, 2005 09:18 PM
/cry -- no more levels
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on June 11, 2005 10:06 PM
Great piccies too. My sister and I love those little fungus men.
Comment Posted by: Lulu on June 11, 2005 10:31 PM
More lvls is very bad for the game. More aas is needed.
Final questions. What part of norrath this is based on, lore?
Comment Posted by: Armarant on June 11, 2005 10:57 PM
Could you corner a developer and see if this new monster abilitie will require a free character slot or not?.. am hopeing it doesnt.. and if it does I am hopeing they make a Monster only Character slot.. since alot of us have filled our character slots out on our home servers.
Comment Posted by: Jyve on June 12, 2005 01:45 AM
A monster slot sound good, alot of interesting idea, and hats off to the designers for implementing this, talk about something different.
If Nek is being traversed a bit to go between PoK and LS, makes sense that a high traffic area gets a makeover. Can barely wait
Comment Posted by: Glamdrigg on June 12, 2005 02:29 AM
Woot!!!
Didn't hear any mention of more rats and bats....
I'll bite!!
Comment Posted by: Glamdrigg on June 12, 2005 02:46 AM
Quick question:
Exp goes from the monster you are playing to your designated main? So does that include death penalites etc too for your main? If you are playing lower level monsters how does exp compute to higher lvl main?
This sounds great! I don't care about models at this point. I wouldn't turn them down mind you, but I care the most about content. Give me things to do! This expansion sounds like it does.
Comment Posted by: Kentaro on June 12, 2005 07:15 AM
would be nice if they would implement a completely new graphics engine from like...2002 perhaps so I am not forced to buy a GForce 6800 for those kinds of graphics...
Comment Posted by: valbarr on June 12, 2005 08:52 AM
RE new character models and 8.5 man years to make them.
okays lets look at this 8.5 man years in depth.
that means to redo all models would take 1 man, 8.5 years, or 3102 days.
if you have a team of 10 men, it would take them 310 days. if you have a team of 100 men, it would take them 31 days or about 2 months work.
now, lets say each of these people is paid 1000 dollars a week, 8000 dollars per person for the projext, this would make a total of 800,000 for the whole project in monetary costs. i believe even if you double or triple this figure just for the sake of it, that EQ makes more money for sony in 1 at definetly 2 months, to pay for this project..... thank you.
Comment Posted by: on June 12, 2005 08:56 AM
please also note, you do not as they seem to suggest make each individual animation step, studios use things like motion capture, so you basically get all the movements by paying an actor to do them, which is then copied by the computer, its not like old cartoons where every single frame would have to be drawn,
you make a model, then animate it, according to the specs of the omens graphics engine, it has stuff like inverse kinematics, this means that models work automatically, ie you move a hand and the arm moves with it, etc.
you do not have to animate everything indivudually, and also, the animations for a dark elf for example, would be the same for a human or wood elf, just with different textures on the model, very similar if not exact maybe with a bit of tweeking.
with inverse kinematics, you do not have to animate eveyr single sword or item, they would animate as you move the hand automatically. but anyways, there lyin makin this sound more difficult, dark age of camelot now has new character models, which are better than eq1, and possibly eq2, and that game has a lot smaller budget to work with than eq, and yet they have still managed it.
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on June 12, 2005 12:26 PM
"if you have a team of 10 men, it would take them 310 days. if you have a team of 100 men, it would take them 31 days or about 2 months work."
You think they're going to work on it for 12 hours a day, every single day for two months?
I'd much rather see more missions in old world zones than new PC models.
Comment Posted by: xsi on June 12, 2005 02:53 PM
"I'd much rather see more missions in old world zones than new PC models."
I'd rather have both. And since one is the domain of the designers, and the other the domain of the artists... there's no reason not to get both.
As we mentioned in the other thread, time is not even an issue since they could outsource the work to a dedicated modelling/animation firm. (Which I think they should do anyway, personally, for quality reasons)
It comes down to money and the bean counters at SOE not being sure the result would justify the cost. Which is sad, because, as has already pointed out, many potential new subscribers (you know, the one they are redoing the whole newbie experience in order to attract) are turned off by the fugly models.
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 12, 2005 03:54 PM
Please keep the player model discussion on the other post. Those conversations are getting pretty circular and there isn't need to take up two forums for them. Any future comments about player models on this article will be removed.
So does anyone have more questions about Depths of Darkhollow? I had the opportunity to sit and chat with more dev folken at the party last night but there wasn't anything earth shattering. It all sounds very cool.
Comment Posted by: xsi on June 12, 2005 05:20 PM
Re: DoD questions
Did they give any concrete details on how the intelligent items will work? Will it simply be items gaining slots and/or effects based off of how many (or of what type) mobs you have killed? If so, we'd basically end up with items just like what we already have... with 'whatever action' basically replacing the aug process we already do.
I would hope the different items might have actual personalities and abilities and/or uses that go above and beyond what we already have now... but did they know if/how that would work?
Re: Project M, v2.0
In regards to the mob mentors and the mob missions, I assume you actually log in with the character you are using and then go to a special place to get transformed into a mob of selected level and/or transported into your mission instance? (Otherwise, the game wouldn't know who to give xp to) I'll probably never use the mob mentoring, as I'm not sure there's much gain to grouping up w/ lower lvl characters as a monster, as opposed to PLing them with a 65+ shaman or druid... but it sounds cool anyway.
Re: Models
Sorry! :) I was simply responding to the posts already in this thread. :)
Comment Posted by: Ogulbuk on June 12, 2005 06:16 PM
Looks darn good. I see the werewolf model is amazing. I am here hoping slowly new expansions revamp old monsters this way and they make their way into the global file as I was told the new goblins are going into it on test now.
The monster thing is fun, but I don’t think it is a real solution to the "high level player playing with their low level friends".
I'd like to see an EQ2 master system implemented instead, with the same benefits/penalties.
It may be trickier in EQ1 due to equipment, but you just have to make a chart with caps on equipment values (damage of weapons and so on) and lower these to meet the level range so they can be effective but not overpowered at any level range.
As for zones, they look amazing, and true that every new expansion MUST have new zones, but I’d love to see that at least future expansions took half of their instanced dungeons (as it seems this is the now standard format) to be instead revamps of old dungeons. If that is the new Nektulus, it looks amazing, and darn it, I want to see similar remakes of old day dungeons!
Finally, I hope this expansion has content for characters level 10+, because as noted on another article, there may be loads of content out there, but it is 6 year old content that just does not catches anyone.
Comment Posted by: Pomaikai Po'okela on June 12, 2005 06:37 PM
Quote Loral:
"The final feature discussed during our preview of Depths of Darkhollow were Intelligent items, also referred to as "Evolving Items" and "Smart Items". Did you ever read the R.A Salvatore Legacy of the Drow books? Remember Dantag Banere’s intelligent demonic sword, Khazid'hea? Imagine that in EQ. Swords will insult their slain masters and desire the expert hand of another. These weapons earn experience as though they were characters, growing in power as their master (or servant?) wields them. The possibilities are endless."
Yes, we all know that R.A. Salvatore ripped off Michael Moorcock in the intelligent weapons department. Borrowing from other author's is one of his trademarks. I'd have probably used Elric of Melnibone's sword as an example of an intelligent weapon, but more of the teenager's and twenty something's, which is Salvatore's audience, are more likely to understand your reference.
That said... This does sound like a cool new feature. I am waiting to see how they impliment it. They could be a lot of fun. Will faction unlock new powers in your sword? Will completing certain quests, or killing certain bossmobs do the same? Very interesting things they could do with these...
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 12, 2005 08:54 PM
"Yes, we all know that R.A. Salvatore ripped off Michael Moorcock in the intelligent weapons department."
It was my reference, not SOEs. I just work with the references I know and Cattie Brae's blade was the first one that came to mind. I think the possibilities for this feature are limitless.
"The monster thing is fun, but I don’t think it is a real solution to the "high level player playing with their low level friends"."
Time will tell for sure and a lot of the details are still being worked out. If it is half as fun as it sounds, I think I'd be willing to shift down to a level 30 minotaur to hunt with my level 30 friends on an LDON or something.
"Finally, I hope this expansion has content for characters level 10+, because as noted on another article, there may be loads of content out there, but it is 6 year old content that just does not catches anyone."
Well, remember that before this expansion is released, SOE will release a whole new level 1 to 10 game and all new quests from 10 to 20. There probably won't be any zones for players below 50 or so (there really are a lot of lower level zones) but the monster feature should be available to anyone. I don't know about the monster shifting missions - perhaps some of those let lower level players try them out. Again, the details are still in the works and its still three months away.
"I assume you actually log in with the character you are using and then go to a special place to get transformed into a mob of selected level and/or transported into your mission instance?"
Yes. To use the Spirit Shroud, players will hail an NPC in Knowledge to shift to a beast. I assume you will have your normal name but your skills, items, spells, and stats are now that of the creature and the level you chose. I don't know about the missions.
I found out some interesting things about Death. With this new expansion, the SOE team can handle death in a variety of ways. Some might be arcade-like numbers of lives, some might be returning to bind in monster form, some might just dump you back with gear but with a ressible body outside the instance. Its not worked out yet but there are a few different ways death might be handled for different situations.
"I would hope the different items might have actual personalities and abilities and/or uses that go above and beyond what we already have now"
They said that intelligent items would be more like characters than gear. They will earn experience and grow in power as you hunt with them. The range of this power will probably be narrow enough that you will eventually want to upgrade. This won't be a daikatana sword that keeps growing throughout your entire career. It sounds like they will have some of the typical abilities we normally see but with some dialog wired in and growing statistics based on use.
"Exp goes from the monster you are playing to your designated main? So does that include death penalites etc too for your main? If you are playing lower level monsters how does exp compute to higher lvl main?"
The details are still getting worked out but you will get experience as a lower level mob even with a high level toon. It's too early to say how much.
Comment Posted by: on June 12, 2005 09:13 PM
Gee shape shifting into a monster, sounds just like Fire in the Desert, nice to see that EQ2 is still bleeding over into EQ1...NOT
So very creative those 2 teams of devs that according to Moorgard never compare notes, yeah right.
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 12, 2005 09:23 PM
Besides looking like monsters, they are nothing alike. One is clearly PVP, one is clearly PVE.
Comment Posted by: Rusty Dagger on June 12, 2005 10:21 PM
a rusty dagger says, Hey, Psst! Over here...I'm rotting over here....loot me! I will bring certain DOOM to your enemies, and tetanus. What is thy bidding, Master?
Comment Posted by: Bixxy Stinger on June 12, 2005 10:22 PM
a bixxy stinger says, Bzzzt bzzzzzzt bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt, bzzzzt!
Comment Posted by: Non-stick frying pan on June 12, 2005 10:24 PM
a non-stick frying pan says, Damn you for leaving me in the bank! You're a LOUSY baker. That skill is week! I DARE YOU TO DESTROY ME
Comment Posted by: Mesave on June 12, 2005 11:08 PM
Okies, My questions are this.
With these new weps/gear comming out and the stuff being able to grow as characters with the exp gained from slaying X amount of models or X type of model and such HOW will this effect EPICS???
I mean I am working my butt off to gain my epic now. WHY? because they kick butt. Because of the questing involved. And because the epics are to set you up from your average player.
Not meaning that I want to be holier than though complex just meaning Having your epic actually means something. Although I like the way these new features sound and all I fear that no matter how great the expansion seems to be once again epics are going to get Tossed into the banks because they will have no use, nor mean anything significant. I truly hope this doesn't happen as I like the idea of the EPICS being just that. EPIC!
Comment Posted by: Pomaikai Po'okela on June 12, 2005 11:12 PM
Loral, you need to get out more...
Pick up some of the Eternal Champion mythos books by Michael Moorcock. The Elric of Melnibone books will probably be the most aprapo to this situation, but all are fantastic. While he may be popular and sell lots of books, R.A. Salvatore is a fantasy hack, whereas Moorcock is a master. A large body of truly fabulous fantasy works await you. Just step away from the dark side of game merchandising, I mean game based fiction.
/hack Sorry, hairball.
The phrase "game based fiction" does that to me everytime...
/hack See!
Comment Posted by: Dewrem on June 12, 2005 11:35 PM
I want a sword that likes to eat gnomes and halflings, and for each 10 it eats it gets better. to a total 1000 of each type making it 76/28 300h/300m/300e 25 all stats/resists.
but that is just the sadistic side of me =)
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 13, 2005 12:14 AM
I'm just finishing up some of the original Conan stories by Robert Howard. When I'm done, I'll go check out the Moorcock stuff.
Comment Posted by: Kerithan on June 13, 2005 06:45 AM
If you're enjoying Conan-style classic Sword & Sorcery, don't miss out on the brilliant Fafhrd & Greycat books by Fritz Leiber.
Comment Posted by: on June 13, 2005 07:30 AM
since when have posted be threatened to be deleted on mobhunter before ?? loral you just proved to me , you want nothing more than a job at soe, just like most of the others moorguard, absor etc. this site is not supposed to be a place for you to do an extended resume to sony, its supposed to be here to talk about what the players who play eq want to talk about, and even if you dont like it, a lot of us want to talk about player models.
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 13, 2005 08:30 AM
Read what I wrote again. If you want to talk about models, post on the other thread. I'm deleting threads about models here because people started cross-posting the exact same threads on two different articles.
If you want to talk about player models, do it over here:
http://mobhunter.com/000064.html
Comment Posted by: on June 13, 2005 09:18 AM
>Yes, we all know that R.A. Salvatore ripped off Michael Moorcock in the intelligent weapons department.
The idea of intelligent weapons far predates Moorcock.
Comment Posted by: Kernos on June 13, 2005 10:05 AM
Gee, I hope they limit the animals you can shift into... I can see the possibilities already... PETA protests helpless bunnies are getting murdered by corporate goons, furries and their enemies arguing in POK... ;-P
PETA - People Eating Tasty Animals
Comment Posted by: Kanas on June 13, 2005 10:14 AM
Loral, I am just curious if you have any screen shots for us to drool over?
Comment Posted by: on June 13, 2005 10:31 AM
What made project m fun was you played against onther players as monsters. This does not excite me as much.
Comment Posted by: on June 13, 2005 11:00 AM
I could care less about models, most people turn them all off anyway, cept for the female chars (DE, WE).
New models = another feature to disable to prevent more visual lagg.
As for the emotes from weapons or a stupid frying pan saying "Dare you to delete me?" I think this is just more added spam -- Again another feature I hope that is alowed to disable.
Seriously guys if you want to make the game more fun ---- GIVE us more high end raiding content and DO NOT cock block progression of those that kill faster/move faster thru content!
Btw ... still waiting for new (bst)warder graphic models. I'd mention the shrink issue - You say its working as intended.But the topic I guess is like beating your head against a brick wall.
And are you going to ever make up your minds and just leave Vishitmar alone? Your jacking up peoples game and frustrating us by the unknown ninja patches!
Comment Posted by: Kanas on June 13, 2005 11:12 AM
N/M the pics, I found some on your flickr account. They look really nice, http://flickr.com/photos/mikeshea/sets/442275/
Comment Posted by: Havek on June 13, 2005 11:43 AM
Any word on toon grahic updates?
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 13, 2005 12:52 PM
"PETA protests helpless bunnies are getting murdered by corporate goons"
Not if the bunnies are level 73 and quad hitting for 1800.
"Any word on toon grahic updates?"
Read the other article:
http://mobhunter.com/000064.html
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 13, 2005 12:56 PM
"Seriously guys if you want to make the game more fun ---- GIVE us more high end raiding content"
Depths of Darkhollow will have an Anguish+ level raiding zone with something like forteen raid targets not including raid targets in other zones. SOE understands how fast people went through the Dragons raid content and they plan to fix that.
Comment Posted by: Cleese on June 13, 2005 02:02 PM
"Not if the bunnies are level 73 and quad hitting for 1800"
With big sharp teeth! And a mean streak a MILE WIDE!
Comment Posted by: Sharrien on June 13, 2005 02:12 PM
The intelligent items sound very cool. I do hope that some items will retroactively take advantage of this feature, especially epics. As a Beastlord, I can choose from a variety of other weapons to weild along with my epic, but many classes have a 2-hander for an epic weapon. If our epics don't get better as we weild them like the drops from the new expansion, how can they remain THE best weapon for the next few expansions as was promised?
Comment Posted by: Mesave on June 13, 2005 02:45 PM
Sharrien I asked exactly the same thing only haven't recieved any info. Seems got more worried bout models and the argument on this thread about models than to get an answer one way or another how this will effect the EPICs that are currently out their. Once again I truly hope that they remain just that EPIC! but we soon see i guess!
Comment Posted by: mac173 on June 13, 2005 03:06 PM
"Not if the bunnies are level 73 and quad hitting for 1800"
All right, who has the Holy Hand Grenade?
Back on subject.......
I like the idea of expanding depth instead of breadth. That concept will be better in the long run, and I think will address more player issues than the previous method of add a zone and a monster per month. Depth is good.
I am interested in the mechanics of the Spirit Shroud. I am getting that you are just transfering yourself into the body of a mob so you can play with your friends. My question is, does your equipment go with you? If not, what equipment can the mob wear? Does it survive death, or logging off? (the equipment I mean). Can you actually level up in Spirit Shroud form, and does this open up a PL path that is unwanted?
It looks good, and I am looking forward to seeing more details. Thanks Loral
"The idea of intelligent weapons far predates Moorcock."
Amen. Almost every idea in Fantacy has sprung from mythology, and your definition of "ripping off" applys to Moorcock as well. All writers build on the ideas and precepts of past writers. If you don't like Salvatore, Ok, don't like him. No need for the bashing.
Comment Posted by: Supremus of Fennin on June 13, 2005 03:51 PM
The "play as monsters" thing opens up so many interesting features, that i'm not sure SOE is capable of delivering(based on past disappointments). They could open up a whole new facit to MMORPG and to online games in general.
As far as the models/cost issues, I have had friends of mine, that I tried to get into this game, politely state that the graphics in EQ are hideous and that it looks like a mid 90's game. Does SOE care enough about pushing a product so heavily to new players, with that kind of issue
that they refuse to look at?
It's very hard to say to my friends, that i've played this game for 6 years and it still looks like crap, and that now I have to pay more per month. Granted the content now is substantial. The graphics are however, still substandard. It's alot like marketing a 1985 Dodge Caravan(which was groundbreaking for it's day)with an MP3 player and a satellite radio. Nice new features, same old stuff.
The kids aren't going to line up to buy, unless it's got mag-wheels and flames on the side...dude...
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 13, 2005 04:12 PM
"I am interested in the mechanics of the Spirit Shroud. I am getting that you are just transfering yourself into the body of a mob so you can play with your friends. My question is, does your equipment go with you? If not, what equipment can the mob wear? Does it survive death, or logging off? (the equipment I mean). Can you actually level up in Spirit Shroud form, and does this open up a PL path that is unwanted?"
First off, much of the specifics are still being worked out. From what I understand, mobs will NOT have your equipment but they might have a starting set. I heard mention of monster-specific weapons and I saw a picture of a werewolf with a spear. If you Spirit Shroud (different than the monster missions) into a bear you can zone or log off and remain in form. None of your previous character attributes will follow into the mob, however. You earn experience in spirit shroud but no one knows how much yet. It won't be as good as your best hunting but its a nice alternative.
"As far as the models/cost issues,"
Please, for the love of Tunare, keep the model issues on the article that talked about model issues:
http://mobhunter.com/000064.html
There are so many interesting topics about this expansion that I want to dig into (like the one mentioned above) that I would hate for this to get bogged down in an already badly beaten dead horse.
Comment Posted by: Ebany on June 13, 2005 05:23 PM
What about leadership AA? A few new leader AA's would be nice.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on June 13, 2005 06:12 PM
- is the type of one group content defined yet? DoN style? MPG trial style? Both/None?
- how many locked zones?
- target audience for xp zones?
- any clue of lore?
- new armor sets? quested?
- quested spells like omens?
Comment Posted by: Lrbearclaw on June 13, 2005 06:38 PM
Looks AWESOME. Cannot what for more info.
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 14, 2005 07:01 AM
Redcloud, I'm not sure those details are worked out yet but I will ask and see what I can find out. I know a little about the lore but I don't want to give it away =)
Comment Posted by: Kernos on June 14, 2005 02:07 PM
Some very good stuff here overall, all kidding asside. Probably my most looked forward to expansion since LDON.
Comment Posted by: mac173 on June 14, 2005 03:01 PM
"If you Spirit Shroud (different than the monster missions) into a bear you can zone or log off and remain in form. "
Ok, so does it take up a character slot, or is it your char, just morphed into the mob? Thats what it sounds like, just wanted to clarify for those of us who use all our slots.
And I somehow did not get how the monster missions are different. I must be dense. Can you explain that again.
Thanks, Loral
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 14, 2005 03:56 PM
They will take the same name and slot. It isn't a new character, just a new form for your current one (with all the abilities, skills, spells, and stats of that beast).
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 14, 2005 04:27 PM
Some answers:
The expansion is 45+ and they aren't sure of the specific zone breakout.
The Monster Missions can be done by anyone of any level assuming they can reach the NPC to take the mission.
Spirit Shrouding and the Monster Missions are very separate things even though they both turn you into monsters.
Monster missions, like all missions, will be built for groups.
Intelligent items will have a limited power range. They won't go from 1 to 70 but they might have three power levels that unlock as you use them. They plan to have items in at all levels but it isn't likely they will replace epics.
By the way, I messed up on the name of the final zone. It's called Dreadspire Keep, not Darkspire.
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 14, 2005 08:14 PM
By the way, this might not be clear: The whole Play as a Monster thing is strictly Player Vs. Environment, not player vs. player.
Comment Posted by: Kindertan on June 14, 2005 09:13 PM
Yes! I've wanted a system that would allow me to group with my lower lvl pals so we all get exp. Ever since I played City of Heros I've been feed-backing on it. (city of heros has a sidekick/mentor thing going for it, it's nice) This is great! When can I pre order =P!
And I would LOVE new PC models...I'm a half-elf druid...I don't the thong!!!
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on June 15, 2005 02:44 AM
Just wanted to mention something neat I just saw on Test. There are now channels for each region that you auto-join if you enter that region. I zoned into Nektulos from PoK, and entered a channel called "Antonica." I assume there are similiar channels for each continent, Luclin, the planes and Kuua. Pretty neat, I think.
Comment Posted by: Pip on June 15, 2005 07:22 AM
Will there be any solo missions? Like the one mentioned about being naggy and killing an entire raid, I assume that you will be killing NPC's, or was that just an example? Also will you be able to do the same mission over again and what types of rewards will there be for completeing them?
Also, if say a group in WoS needed a tank and couldn't find one, could a player spirit shroud into a tank type of reletivly close to his lvl, say a 70 being a lvl 65 or higher? How will it be decided how high a level of monster you can be? will you have to work at it, like level up your spirit shroud?
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 15, 2005 07:29 AM
The missions will still be 3 to 6 players. On the Naggy mission someone will be naggy and others will be fire giants against a hoard of NPCs.
"Also, if say a group in WoS needed a tank and couldn't find one, could a player spirit shroud into a tank type of reletivly close to his lvl, say a 70 being a lvl 65 or higher? How will it be decided how high a level of monster you can be? will you have to work at it, like level up your spirit shroud?"
You can transform your main character into a monster of equal or lesser level. Yes, you can switch out to a tank monster if you don't have a tank. The monsters will never be as powerful as the true class, however, but they should be useful in places like Wall of Slaughter or below.
Comment Posted by: Pip on June 15, 2005 07:38 AM
How would the xp be for some one who changed into a monster of the same level as his character, I'm sure it would be less but how much less, still decent or not worth it?
When you do the monster missions does it matter the level of the players? like a lvl 70 and 5 level 1's doing the mission? How would the xp be, and how would the reward be, is it going to be like LDoN points, based off level?
Comment Posted by: Nemss on June 15, 2005 07:40 AM
Noones asked about new spells are we going to get any new spells out of this expantion?
Comment Posted by: on June 15, 2005 08:23 AM
Quik question that popped in my mind, will ther be new languages? I have all my lang. skills maxed but i think it would be fun to learn warewolf, or rat, or....the possibilities are huge here hehe.
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 15, 2005 10:47 AM
"How would the xp be for some one who changed into a monster of the same level as his character, I'm sure it would be less but how much less, still decent or not worth it?"
I don't think the specifics are worked out and it will probably be tuned in Beta. Obviously the intent, I am sure, is for it to be worth it but not as good. It would depend, but 80% wouldn't be too bad. The problem is that the creature itself isn't as powerful as your main so you get less right there. Maybe its equal. The same question effects mentoring. If I play a level 20 gnome clockwork, what sorts of experience does my level 70 receive?
"When you do the monster missions does it matter the level of the players? like a lvl 70 and 5 level 1's doing the mission? How would the xp be, and how would the reward be, is it going to be like LDoN points, based off level?"
I'd bet that it still hits the same 10 level limit of DON Missions but I really don't know. I do know that players of any level can do the monster missions regardless of the monster's location.
"Noones asked about new spells are we going to get any new spells out of this expantion?"
I am sure there will be new spells but I dont know how many. I heard about a couple of dozen new AAs though.
"Quik question that popped in my mind, will ther be new languages? I have all my lang. skills maxed but i think it would be fun to learn warewolf, or rat, or....the possibilities are huge here hehe."
That would be cool but I don't think they're adding new languages.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on June 15, 2005 10:55 AM
Loral, do you imagine what it will do to ebayed chars if you just need to use the monster system to fill in groups (not saying that's a bad thing, mind you, just pointing out)?
Or lfg?
Or multi-box players?
Big can of worms INC
Comment Posted by: Naladini on June 15, 2005 02:37 PM
From what I heard initially, xp won't be too bad if you drop into your 50's. If you drop down to level 20, you won't be getting a lot of XP though.
Honestly, this makes decent sense, otherwise you'd be seeing a lot of "reverse-powerlevelling", where it would be possible to heavily twink a newbie, throw a mob form on your high level character, and rake in the easy xp.
I don't think they were "final" on any of their formulae at this point though. The one thing I worry about is the traditional min-max mentality, where if people don't see decent xp gain on their main at level 25, they won't bother with a spirit shroud and will simply PL their newbie friend up to a point where they will get decent xp in monster form.
I've got a feeling a lot of this still has to be balanced out, but it should be a lot of fun no matter which way they decide to go with it. ;)
Comment Posted by: Horzek on June 15, 2005 03:41 PM
Regarding the new and up coming expansion.
When I saw the graphic shots I said to myself, those are from WoW. The werewolf sure did remind me of a WoW creature as did the environments and buildings.
It is very neat to have new and better graphics come to our EQ but I have to say that the game has survived on the 6 year old graphics because it has tons of content and because it has been fun and even addicting.
I saw someone mention in this forum how his friends took a look at the game graphics and never gave the game a second look. I would like to remind you of the type of folks that I see when I step into the WoW world for a while. There are some zones that are unplayable because of all the immature spam going on. In partucular is the Auction House. Come to think of it, and to be fair, there was a time when East Commonlands was equally unplayable.
Im still no fan of constant upgrades and this one is not likely to change my thinking. We are up to 10 upgrades now I believe with the new one and that works out to about $300 in upgrade fees I have shelled out over time. Not to mention the $13 or so per month for the past many years and the initial game cost. It is still a great entertainment value for the $15 we are seeing so I cant complain about the monthly but I am definately feeling a sting in my wallet over the updates.
If you really want some fun, crash and restore your computer in such a way that you have to reinstall EQ. You are in for a real good bout of downloads and finding old game CD's.
Comment Posted by: Kernos on June 15, 2005 04:01 PM
You dont actually need to find any game cd's, you can actually download an exe from Sony and install the entire game that way. Takes awhile, but...
Also this game does give a fair amount of free content in the patches. Yes, if you wanted the latest Kewl Stuffzors you need to fork over the $30 or so per expansion but you dont HAVE to. Depends on how you and your friends play really. I tend to get expansions for specific features (Don = Guild Hall for me), as opposed new zones that I with my casual playstyle will likely never see. Ive been playing on and off for 6 years any my highest character is 63 with 4 aa's.
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 15, 2005 04:16 PM
Loral, do you imagine what it will do to ebayed chars if you just need to use the monster system to fill in groups (not saying that's a bad thing, mind you, just pointing out)?"
Hurt it, hopefully.
"Or lfg?"
Suddenly all the "no one wants [your class here]" arguments go away. Players are now just players. If you want to get in a group, you now have much more flexible options available.
"Or multi-box players?"
*shrug* I guess I dont see how this hurts or helps either way. MB players already had ideal groups built. Now they'll just all be mushrooms and gnomish clockworks.
"Big can of worms INC"
Surely, but progress is made with big cans of worms. No doubt there will be problems. No doubt there will be misconceptions both ways. No doubt it will begin a whole new series of complaints. It sure looks like fun, though, and the problems it seems to fix on paper are huge.
"The one thing I worry about is the traditional min-max mentality, where if people don't see decent xp gain on their main at level 25, they won't bother with a spirit shroud and will simply PL their newbie friend up to a point where they will get decent xp in monster form."
Quite possibly but there comes a point where SOE just has to ignore min-maxers and focus on fun. Min-maxers (and I count myself among them sometimes) might just skip the whole feature but for a lot of people who don't have the ability or the desire to power level, this is a great option.
"Im still no fan of constant upgrades and this one is not likely to change my thinking. We are up to 10 upgrades now I believe with the new one and that works out to about $300 in upgrade fees I have shelled out over time. Not to mention the $13 or so per month for the past many years and the initial game cost. It is still a great entertainment value for the $15 we are seeing so I cant complain about the monthly but I am definately feeling a sting in my wallet over the updates."
I think even with the extra $60 a year for new expansions, the game is still a deal given the amount of time I spend in it. Consider how much movies cost for the same amount of time.
"If you really want some fun, crash and restore your computer in such a way that you have to reinstall EQ. You are in for a real good bout of downloads and finding old game CD's."
I bought one of the Comp USA USB Hard Drive enclosures for $30 that turns a regular IDE drive you have sitting around into a backup drive. I regularly copy my entire EQ, EQ2, WoW, and music to this drive (one of three actually). I can't ever think about trying to install from scratch.
"You dont actually need to find any game cd's, you can actually download an exe from Sony and install the entire game that way. Takes awhile, but..."
If I didn't have the hard drive, this is probably what I'd do.
"Also this game does give a fair amount of free content in the patches. Yes, if you wanted the latest Kewl Stuffzors you need to fork over the $30 or so per expansion but you dont HAVE to."
Craig mentioned how he doesn't like to sell expansions on features and prefers to sell it on content. People brought up things like the map system, the LFG tool, the raid tool, leadership abilities, and the corpse summoner as examples of features everyone should have. Hopefully SOE will release some of these - if not all of them - to everyone regardless of which expansions they have. It's one thing to not be able to go to Dragons zones or try out the missions there but pretty horrible when you're the one guy who can't get a corpse summon out of a bad Fear raid.
Comment Posted by: Ziss on June 15, 2005 04:40 PM
"I'd bet that it still hits the same 10 level limit of DON Missions but I really don't know. I do know that players of any level can do the monster missions regardless of the monster's location."
Not to derail this thread, but TY Loral!
I have been asking this simple question and looking for answers everywhere!!
I took a break from eq (soon after oow release) and am back now, playing a lvl 50 shammy grp'd with my gf's 48 sk. I also have a 68 cleric we now can grp with and get xp. I was wondering if we would be able to do DoN (or any) missions in this configuration. I guess the answer is no. That makes me sad :(
I also would LOVE to see mission for 2 players!! Damn SoE for always screwing the 2 player grp!! I can easily play the cleric on a second puter, but not if it's a 10 lvl range for missions.
Comment Posted by: Pip on June 15, 2005 07:05 PM
"I also would LOVE to see mission for 2 players!! Damn SoE for always screwing the 2 player grp!! I can easily play the cleric on a second puter, but not if it's a 10 lvl range for missions."
I agree with Ziss on this, I dont think SOE will put them in because of all the 2boxers in the game but sometimes its hard to find a group and my friend and I might want to group just the 2 of us, we can kite(I'm a bard and he is a rogue) but kitting gets old really fast and its not that great xp. Duo missions would be awsome.
Also, any idea of the rewards for completing the monster missions?
Comment Posted by: on June 15, 2005 09:22 PM
So the way I read all these comments is more forced grouping and higher level content. Great way to bring in new blood....NOT.
Glad to see that they are sticking with the same old broken formula that has been bleeding the game dry over the last couple of years. Hoorah Sony keep it up, it is fun watching you self destruct.
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 15, 2005 09:28 PM
Did you even read the article or any of the comments?
Non-high end features in DoD:
- Mentoring: low level mobs so you can hunt with your friends.
- Monster missions: any level group can do them.
- Spirit Shroud: any level character can switch archtypes.
- Intelligent weapons: available to many non-high-end players.
This doesn't mention the new tutorial, the new Neriak, and the new 10 to 20 missions at all.
It is fine to have problems with things, but at least read what we're talking about and judge from that.
Apart from intelligent weapons, monster missions, spirit shrouding to monsters, the new tutorial, the new neriak, the new 10 to 20 missions in knowledge, the new befallen mission, and the new qeynos mission, what will SOE ever offer new or lower level players?
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 15, 2005 09:37 PM
"I agree with Ziss on this, I dont think SOE will put them in because of all the 2boxers in the game but sometimes its hard to find a group and my friend and I might want to group just the 2 of us, we can kite(I'm a bard and he is a rogue) but kitting gets old really fast and its not that great xp. Duo missions would be awsome."
Why not invite anyone else and make it a three person? You can also duo in much of the non-instanced content.
Comment Posted by: Sunshadow on June 15, 2005 11:07 PM
Forced grouping should not exist. Why can't people solo/Duo missions if they want. If people want to play a particular way, why not let them. By resticting the content to groups you lesson the appeal of it. Just scale the rewards so grouping has a higher appeal but is not a restriction. At the moment I am Soloing LDON's but it's a pain finding 2 toons 10 levels below me to group with for 10 min while I get a misson. Why do I do it, cause it's a challange and I find it fun (the whole idea of the game).
As long as there are different types of monsters we can morph into it will be great but if the choice is restricted to Tank type monsters it will be less appealing. It would be nice to see Cleric/Wizard/Shaman/Rogue type monsters so you can select based on group requirements and will add utility to the game.
Comment Posted by: Iza on June 16, 2005 12:42 AM
Why are monsters missions for groups only?
I am getting rather tired of forced grouping.
Sony, throw us, soloers, a bone =)
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on June 16, 2005 01:32 AM
Yeah, and on a similiar not, why is Anguish for high end raiders only? Throw us casual groupers a bone.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on June 16, 2005 07:43 AM
Because it's called progression if you haven't played in a cave for the past 6 years P)
I'm very glad SoE take the fun approach and look forward to original new content.
But the pics I've seen so far look soul-less and that pretty much worries me. Don't they have or hire a designer that can really immerse people into a new zone, with LIFE, geometry that feel built for a purpose, filled with NPCs with a purpose (hanging there doesn't qualify), anything that doesn't look just fake?
I know I'm asking a lot but Omens looked better than what I've seen from DoD pics so far.
Comment Posted by: Naladini on June 16, 2005 10:43 AM
Actually, the artwork they showed in their DoD video was quite impressive, better than any I've seen to date.
Some more FF Pictures, including a few shots of Loral.
PS. Loral, I agree 100% about the min-max thing, and I also feel the same way about multi-boxing. The game has to develop on its own, in a manner that provides fun for a "baseline" player. If they worry too much about min-max, dual boxing, powerlevelling, etc, it will take a lot of fun out of the game for everyone else. I think they've got a very solid team assembled to move the game forward.
Comment Posted by: Naladini on June 16, 2005 10:44 AM
Sorry, my link didn't show up: http://www.stormhammer.org/fanfaire05
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 16, 2005 12:11 PM
Naladini, thank you very much for coming by and for the pics!
"Forced grouping should not exist. Why can't people solo/Duo missions if they want. If people want to play a particular way, why not let them. By resticting the content to groups you lesson the appeal of it. Just scale the rewards so grouping has a higher appeal but is not a restriction. At the moment I am Soloing LDON's but it's a pain finding 2 toons 10 levels below me to group with for 10 min while I get a misson. Why do I do it, cause it's a challange and I find it fun (the whole idea of the game)."
Force is a pretty strong word for a game. We can do lots of different things and there are many different ways to play, I can't think of any playstyle that I would consider to be "forced".
However, when it comes to instanced content, adventures, and missions; these features are specifically designed around groups. Offering solo dungeons just further drives people away from the strengths of a Massive Online Game. Why not just grab a couple more folks and do the adventure or mission that way? You're already making the time commitment.
There's a lot of solo options in EQ2 and I find it counterproductive to grouping. I am now spending most of my EQ2 time right at the dungeons because its the only area where EQ2 requires groups - thus they are easier to find.
Missions, adventures, and other content like that should focus on groups. There are many many areas where solo / duo teams can hunt and earn experience and with the new potions on test and the new mob archetypes in DoD, the options will improve.
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 16, 2005 12:14 PM
By the way, I got caster's-realmed and had to take down the four mp3s of the summit recordings. My bandwidth usage went from 700 megs a day to 14 gigs each day over the last two days. I might be paying a fortune already for bandwidth overages.
If you are interested in the recordings or interested in re-hosting them, please let me know and I will send them to you.
Comment Posted by: on June 16, 2005 02:09 PM
from the official page @ http://everquest.station.sony.com/dod/features.jsp
On the surface, as the battle between Firionia Vie and Lanys T’Vyl continues to rage throughout the lands of Nektulos, an expedition of Qeynosian miners breached the barrier of Darkhollow. Only then was the first werewolf seen and the first human bitten. Now a new evil begins to emerge from the underground; far beneath the surface of Norrath. Join EverQuest: Depths of Darkhollow and journey into a world of immorality and devastation, a world that has existed purely as a vast wilderness filled with intelligent predators, destruction and disease. Go forth with courage as the terror that lies deep within these grounds must not be allowed to spread to the surface – to Norrath.
EverQuest: Depths of Darkhollow will have you adventuring in raw, bleak caverns and facing the most formidable monsters yet! Featuring 5 new feral predators, spectacular new underground environments and countless new missions, raids and events!
Monster Missions: Play EverQuest as you never have before and see Norrath through the eyes of some of its fearsome and powerful creatures as you step into their form to do battle against their ancient foes! Change into a creature with different abilities from your own to experience. Experience EverQuest lore first hand through the eyes of another character in Monster Missions and unlock the ability to use more powerful monsters!
Spirit Shrouds: Adventure with your friends of any levels. Spirit Shrouds will allow you to play as a creature at any level below your own. So don the form of a lower level creature and join your friends in battle while earning experience for your normal character!
Evolving Items: Earn new items that advance as you use them, becoming more powerful over time and unlocking hidden abilities and wield intelligent items with a personality of their own!
New Missions: Battle your way through over 60 new missions.
New Creatures, New Environments and New Encounters: Over 30 unique creatures and 7 Zones, 15 Small Instances, with a re-envisioned Nektulos Forest.
New Crafting, Spells, Items and More: New items and tradeskill recipes! Also new spells and alternate advancement abilities!
Comment Posted by: Ziss on June 16, 2005 02:41 PM
"Why not invite anyone else and make it a three person? You can also duo in much of the non-instanced content."
How about the situation of you and a co-worker, you and your wife/husband, you and a family member, you and your best friend? Any of these reasons sure seem like valid grouping situations that may end up not wanting to invite a stranger to your grp. Another situation I can think of is communication. If you are a Teamspeak user, you know it’s almost impossible to revert back to typed conversation (at least for me, a typing impaired person) :) The “fun factor” of EQ has increased 1000% not having to type out what I want to say. I have grouped with some old guildies on my old main since I’ve been back to EQ, and I can tell you, it did lack the spontaneity of being able to talk and hear the other people in the group.
As for the “multi boxer’s” - If I were a business and I have customers, some with one of my products and other customers that have 2,3,4 or 5 of my products and all of them were paying me a monthly fee for each of their products, I would make damn sure I take care of the customer with several of my products as good as the customer with 1. Seeing that missions are instanced, other players wouldn’t have the normal concern of the guy who is 6 boxing camping the spot my group wants to. As far as economics, there is always going to be multi boxers. 2 boxers being able to do missions aren’t going to stop that full group from doing them as well.
*NOTE* Sorry for the huge derail and I also want to say; Loral, you ROCK! Thanks for a great place to get the latest scoop on stuff :)
Comment Posted by: Ziss on June 16, 2005 02:49 PM
*edit* Somehow "multi boxers" got turned into unreadable gibberish :P
Comment Posted by: Nolrog on June 16, 2005 03:56 PM
"Gee shape shifting into a monster, sounds just like Fire in the Desert, nice to see that EQ2 is still bleeding over into EQ1...NOT
So very creative those 2 teams of devs that according to Moorgard never compare notes, yeah right."
Desert of Flames.
If you're going to come here and bash someone, at least get the fricken name right.
Comment Posted by: Hemdell on June 16, 2005 04:05 PM
I believe they are forcing us to group together. I play with my Guildmates and 3 to 4 RL friends and we are not on at the same time often ( we work ). We are forced to group with strangers in order to see the new missions. I really dont see the big deal in allowing people to solo and duo missions and LDoNs. I mean have you tried to get a LDoN together recently? Very few doing them! My main is pretty powered up in them but still lacking some of the spells I need. And what about my alts? They are pretty much SoL! By the time I get to the DoN missions no one will be doing those either. Let us solo/Duo them.
I was very sad to hear that being a monster will be just against NPCs. Project M was fun cause you were a Orc in CB and fighting a PC. It was fun from both player sides. It would FUN to do that again form time to time.
Comment Posted by: Ogulbuk on June 16, 2005 04:55 PM
"Well, remember that before this expansion is released, SOE will release a whole new level 1 to 10 game and all new quests from 10 to 20. There probably won't be any zones for players below 50 or so"
Yes, I know of the new 1-10 (reason why I mentioned 10+), had not heard much of fhe 10-20 missions though. I dont really want new zones as content, though. What I'd like to see is very old zone revamps (on the way Neriak is being remade) acompanied with enough missions to take the players happily on their 1-50 treck without bumping into trees and mobs that make legos look round.
These missions should in some cases or key points award the player with armor sets apropiate to their levels yet not uber, so that a truly casual player does not feels forced to go farming to get usable armor. Note it should still be very subpar altough the 1-50 game does relly heavily on twinkage, so i dont think there is much of a market on these levels on these days that would complain too much of these sets existance.
Comment Posted by: Sunshadow on June 16, 2005 10:14 PM
You kinda missed my point. Sure there is lots of solo content in the game but do I get LDON points for it, do I get DON crystals for it? No I don't. So forced grouping is restricting those people who don't want to group from getting those rewards. I don't really care if it takes me 5 times as long to get the same reward but I would like to have the option open to me. As for time commitments yeah I can usually work in the hour and a half for a LDON when I'm on but not the half an hour to an hour at the start getting a group in the first place and then the half an hour at the back end getting the loot sorted out. Also at the time I play there is usually only 20 peeps in POK and I am the only one in LFG so organising a group takes a lot of time.
P.S If I wanted to group I wouldn't be playing a Necro.
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on June 17, 2005 02:49 AM
". . . do I get DON crystals for it?"
Yes, you do. You can solo things that give you cash, or items you can sell for cash, and buy crystals. There ya go, soloable DoN crystals.
If I want to see raid zones, I'm going to have to raid. If you want to see group zones, you're going to have to group. That's the way these things works.
Comment Posted by: GLamdrigg on June 17, 2005 03:16 AM
Spoken like a true raider! Only a Sith deals in absolutes!!!
Things may be that way now, but they don't have to be that way forvever, hence posting NEW ideas on sites like this. Besides, the same purists who scream about ebayers now saying go buy your don crystals seem hypocritical to say the least. I dont want to buy crystals I want earn them. And, one cant buy LDON points and one certainly cant earn them lately. LDON specifically should be revamped to allow solo dou or whatever to enter and play since nobody uses it in its presnt state anyway. This does not seem a stretch since we all have been praising the revamps to old world zones like unrest.
What does a raider care if I take my lower lvl casual puke of a main or an alt and go solo a LDON? I certainly wont be in Your way.
And another thing... isn't duoing still grouping? As in more then one? What's the problem here?
I can't comprehend the angst against more player and play stlye options. More options equals more content equals more time playing equals more emmersion into said game world ... and thats good for the game.
This all goes the same in the other direction as well. Why is there the artifical cap of 6 player groups. Why isn't it 7 or 8 or 10 ... wouldn't that open up more content to players as well.
So in the middle of the wilderness our intreped adventurers are fighting their way through swarms of monsters when they meet a hero or two who offer to aid them: and they say " Nope, sorry.. we already have six heros here, you'll have to wait for the next quest to come along."
I have never read a book where this happens!?!
To sum up: More play styles GOOD... less plays styles BAD....
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on June 17, 2005 05:19 AM
More healthy playstyles for the game: good.
Less long term damaging decisions: good.
If you don't see why extended levels of solo are bad, maybe a dev does.
They're actually paid to think those things through and have a minimum of experience to avoid catastrophic blunders some of the ideas thrown around entail.
But what do we know? They are paid for it and we play maybe twice as often and longer than the average joe. So of course both must be wrong and some random casual has to have all the answers and save the world...
Sorry, couldn't resist.
More seriously, of course, bringing new ideas can only be good but not showing a little trust on people that might have a longer deeper wider experience on the subject or even people paid for this, might not be the wisest course of action either.
Just maybe throwing anything and everything into the game is ... dangerous?
Never mind P)
Comment Posted by: Glamdrigg on June 17, 2005 06:59 AM
Check out the big brain on Braaadddd!!!
Well, Allow me to RETORT.
No, actually no random casual I know pretends that playing an On-line fantasy game will save the world. I am more likely just trying to squeeze what time I can into something I enjoy like the bulk of the EQ population, who are holding down full time jobs, families, lives, and in general actually kissing girls once in a while.
Once again we have the age old split of raider verses "casual." And still the only ones who get upset when we hash these things out is a raider. Why is this such a sore spot? Those casual gamers who want to duo and solo this other content are not operating in your circles of play to begin with. They are not going to affect the game you play by being able to go solo when they want to. In fact they may even get the chance to catch up a bit , gear up a bit and then join your uber butts in the mythic realm of the raid.
Perhaps this is what really scares you. Perhaps the unspoken fraternity of raiders is sickened by the idea of a casual puke like me being able to advance in this game on my own time, at my own pace, without going down to the cross roads and selling my soul to a zerg force guild!
Sorry to offend anyone's fragile egos here, but we casual gamers don't need the titles, the heavy petting, the epic adoration.. we just want to play this game.
It suprises me to hear the devs being envoked here. This is not at all the usual witty banter of a raider, but more of a FANBOI statement.
/RANT OFF
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on June 17, 2005 08:19 AM
More like a prank to make someone climb up a tree. Glad to see you sit on the last branch P))
We get fun where we can: Knowing it's an overused cliche that raiders are afraid of anything helping casuals or soloers and all that...
What I really am saying by this is that whatever playstyle SoE fosters and promotes should not damage too much the social interraction in the game, the attachement to the chars and the longevity of each player within the game. That's what I selfishly wish for the game to avoid revolving doors style of game where you need to rely on turn-out, not lasting participants.
/em goes out in the horizon mending is broken ego till the next casual sun rises p)
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on June 17, 2005 08:24 AM
PS: Yes, you can call me fanboy. Top end content lately absolutely kick ass. I'm very much happy of the change and creativity they've shown.
It's a LOT better game now to me than it was. In that I'm appreciative of Prathun's work for us while I bug every few days on SOE's forums Zajeer about my class itemization. I'm sure the later must find me a real pain in the butt.
I hope that confort you in using fanboism as a reason to dismiss any opinion I may have P)
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 17, 2005 08:58 AM
"What I'd like to see is very old zone revamps (on the way Neriak is being remade)"
Nektulos is getting rebuilt, not Neriak.
"Sure there is lots of solo content in the game but do I get LDON points for it, do I get DON crystals for it?"
Like my good friend Redcloud said, there are many areas where you are limited in what you can receive by how you play. I won't ever see Anguish because I don't want to join a raiding guild. I've accepted this. I won't ever get a 10th Ring or an 8th shawl because tradeskilling bugs me. I've accepted this too. There is a lot of excellent gear available in the bazaar now.
"Also at the time I play there is usually only 20 peeps in POK and I am the only one in LFG so organising a group takes a lot of time."
This situation will not improve if more solo options are added in. The more people solo, the less they will group.
"Spoken like a true raider! Only a Sith deals in absolutes!!!"
Actually, I'm pretty sure Maitreya isn't a raider. He's also tested out the 10 to 20 armor missions so you might want to ask him more about those.
"This all goes the same in the other direction as well. Why is there the artifical cap of 6 player groups. Why isn't it 7 or 8 or 10 ... wouldn't that open up more content to players as well."
All of the same problems we have with a six person group we'd have with an 8 person group. If you really want to just have fun with more people, build it into a small raid and go have fun. If the groups were built from 8 players we'd hear "how come you don't allow 9 or 10?". There would always still be that odd man out.
"Once again we have the age old split of raider verses "casual." And still the only ones who get upset when we hash these things out is a raider."
Don't drag this into a raid vs. casual discussion. Adding more solo content means that non-raiders who want to build pickup groups will have a harder time doing so. It means their options to get gear in places like DON go down because they can't earn the crystals to do so.
I know lots of high-end raiders who strictly solo if they're not raiding. Raiders are also the only folks equipped well enough to be able to solo in places like LDON or DON without SOE having to rebuild these missions.
"Perhaps this is what really scares you. Perhaps the unspoken fraternity of raiders is sickened by the idea of a casual puke like me being able to advance in this game on my own time, at my own pace, without going down to the cross roads and selling my soul to a zerg force guild!"
Again, this isn't a raiding thing. Raiders really don't care if there are more solo options or not. More solo options hurts pickup groupers, people who want to find people they may or may not already know to go off on smaller adventures.
The focus on grouping is one of the main defining points that separates EQ from EQ2 or WoW. It is important that these games keep these definitive lines apart so it is clear to customers why they would pick one game over the other. DoD further separates these lines by offering group content to anyone at any level whether it is spirit shrouding down to lower level content or gathering folks for a monster mission.
Remember, this game isn't about levels or experience or AAs or gear; it's about meeting people, joining friends, and having fun.
Comment Posted by: Handragath on June 17, 2005 10:03 AM
I own all the expansions so far and I cant see a single reason to get this one so far. Playing a mob? Nah thats ok. Intelligent items? Nah thats ok too. You would likely have to have a raid just to get an item that is no better than a rusty sword. How about this for an expansion. Lets make something to reduce the time it takes to actualy get a group for this new junk. Make something worthwhile soloable. Sorry, but after buying all the expansions so far, they can keep this one.
Comment Posted by: Hemdell on June 17, 2005 10:26 AM
Its funny that I could solo very well into my 60's and then WHAM! I hit a wall. If I could solo at lower levels then why can't I solo at higher levels. I mean a Dark Blue is a Dark Blue right ?? Yes, this is a grouping game for the most part and I have grouped on the way up but I soloed alot because I'm on late night. Not alot to be had in POK or anywhere at those hours. I know people will say play at different hours or it's my problem, but I don't tell you when to play so don't tell me. People will group even if there is solo content. I know I will still group, but when there isnt one to be had I would like to be able to advance alittle. I agree with Handragath that there seems to be little in this newest cash cow that I will use. Heck I don't have any DoN crystals yet do to there being no groups available at the time I play.
What are they going to do about LDoN's for people who still want to do them but cant?? Oh thats right its old, we will just move on and forget about that expansion!
Comment Posted by: Vamcill on June 17, 2005 11:35 AM
Now on the Test server, something Loral has wanted to see FOREVER!
* Group management has been substantially reworked. You can now invite players to your group from other zones and from any distance in the same zone.
I extend a big GRATS to Loral on all your hard work for the EQ community.
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on June 17, 2005 01:41 PM
"Spoken like a true raider! Only a Sith deals in absolutes!!!"
I'm not a raider, just so ya know.
"Once again we have the age old split of raider verses "casual.""
I thought we were talking about solo vs group content. What does raider vs. casual have to do with anything?
"And still the only ones who get upset when we hash these things out is a raider."
Redcloud didn't seem that upset to me.
"What does a raider care if I take my lower lvl casual puke of a main or an alt and go solo a LDON? I certainly wont be in Your way"
Noone's worried about you specifically. It's when lots and lots and lots of people choose to solo over grouping that we start to have problems.
"Besides, the same purists who scream about ebayers now saying go buy your don crystals seem hypocritical to say the least. I dont want to buy crystals I want earn them."
What does buying crystals have to do with e-bay? If you earned the platinum you used to get the crystals, you're still earning the crystals, are you not? It's just a currency conversion.
Not all content is going to be available to everyone. I don't raid, so I'm probably never going to see Anguish or Tacvi. I'm fine with that, it's my own choice. By choosing to solo instead of group, you're choosing to restrict yourself to non-mission and non-adventure zones. That's just how things work.
Loral is right. The emphasis on grouping is what distinguishes EQ from other MMOs. If you want to solo your way to the top, there's this nice game called World of Warcraft you might want to look at.
Comment Posted by: Naladini on June 17, 2005 02:07 PM
Emphasis on grouping is the right thing to do, but there are many ways of accomplishing this. ;)
I think what a lot of the more casual players are looking for are more options when they play. "Options" means that if you don't know how long you can play, you can still work on some objectives that might improve your gameplay in the group/raid environment for when you have more time to play.
Tying the task system to LDoN or DoN progression is one way of trying to accomplish this. The challenge is, it seems to be very difficult to balance a rewarding system for casual/time limited players so that it won't be completely abused by people with higher playtimes, incenting the majority of players away from grouping.
Honestly though, I haven't seen people ask for a huge reward, just something that allows them to work on this progression in shorter bursts of time.
Comment Posted by: on June 17, 2005 02:26 PM
Anyone with more play time will be able to 'abuse' any given system, simply by nature of having more access to use the system.
It's the same in life, if you really have a problem with that, take it up with god or whoever you believe is actually in charge.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on June 17, 2005 03:14 PM
There are things to do outside group, like tradeskills. Now if one could make them fun...
But in a perfect world without hacks, loop holes and bugs, one could imagine to implement other activities that would contribute to the community while being rewarding.
It's not a perfect world but taking one step at a time and exploring othe venues than just killing mobs solos, that may be an option.
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 17, 2005 03:39 PM
"You would likely have to have a raid just to get an item that is no better than a rusty sword. How about this for an expansion. Lets make something to reduce the time it takes to actualy get a group for this new junk."
Depths of Darkhollow helps grouping in three very clear ways:
Players can now hunt at their level and lower by spirit shrouding to a beast of their level and lower. This helps players find groups because any player of their level and lower now becomes a potential group mate. Likewise, any player higher than you can switch to a lower level beast and hunt with you. The spirit shroud system eliminates level dependencies for groups. Anyone can group with anyone else.
Depths of Darkhollow lets players switch class archetypes. If you find yourself with too many casters and too few tanks, a caster can switch to a tank monster and get the group underway. This means players of any class mix can switch to monsters and hunt regardless of their original class. This removes class dependencies for groups.
Depths of Darkhollow lets players of any level begin monster-based missions assuming they can reach the mission NPC.
So there are three clear ways that Depths of Darkhollow improves grouping. Now any six players can hunt together regardless of their level or their class. That is a huge huge improvement and a clear difference between other MMOGs. Aparently it's so huge that people have yet to fully comprehend it and still come up with the same complaints.
"Yes, this is a grouping game for the most part and I have grouped on the way up but I soloed alot because I'm on late night. Not alot to be had in POK or anywhere at those hours. I know people will say play at different hours or it's my problem, but I don't tell you when to play so don't tell me."
You are correct. Even with server consolidations, player numbers - especially at odd times - are a big problem. I always look at this problem from the aspect of "how can SOE make it easier to get into groups?" rather than "why not add more solo content". Too much solo content removes the motivations to group. I would much rather see SOE come up with options to make it easier for people of any timezone on any server at any level with any class find a group and have fun. I can't think of a better way to address this than Depths of Darkhollow.
"I agree with Handragath that there seems to be little in this newest cash cow that I will use."
I know I am just an SOE faunboey but DoD clearly addressses (or hopes to address, it's still a couple of months away) the problems players have finding groups. If you solo because you cannot find other players with which to group, this clearly helps that problem. We'll have to see how it turns out, but I think DoD is a much better solution to the grouping problem than simply adding solo instances.
"What are they going to do about LDoN's for people who still want to do them but cant?? Oh thats right its old, we will just move on and forget about that expansion!"
I spoke to both Zajeer and Craig Knapp on the LDON issue. I wrote an email a few weeks ago requesting that LDON points be doubled for existing missions so that the armor and augment costs better approached the rewards of Dragons (it currently takes 15 missions for a piece of armor in LDON to DON's 7). They understand the problem and hope to address it when they find the time.
"Now on the Test server, something Loral has wanted to see FOREVER! * Group management has been substantially reworked. You can now invite players to your group from other zones and from any distance in the same zone. I extend a big GRATS to Loral on all your hard work for the EQ community."
Thank you, friend Vamcill. This idea was certainly not an original one; I tend to point out the obvious rather than coming up with original thoughts but I couldn't be happier to see SOE implement this change.
I've already been very long winded but here is another point to consider with this most recent discussion of soloing (a very valuable conversation, by the way). Instead of tying it to words like "uber" and "casual" and getting metaphorical about it, lets talk about exactly the reasons soloing is desired. Why do people want to hunt alone in a multiplayer game? Often, such as the timezone problem mentioned above, are very valid and must be addressed. Other reasons include very short play periods with long breaks in between and more reliable experience rewards when soloing instead of grouping.
The question to ponder is this: For the soloers out there who solo, what would it take to get you grouping instead? Why do you solo? Why do prefer to solo? I don't ask these questions to crush the reasons but to better offer recommendations to SOE to help fix the problems and enjoy the benefits of a massive online game.
Comment Posted by: Glamdrigg on June 18, 2005 12:25 AM
"Honestly though, I haven't seen people ask for a huge reward, just something that allows them to work on this progression in shorter bursts of time."
Thank Naladini, this is my very point!
Why do people solo? Want to solo? and ask for more solo content? You may as well ask everyone to tell you their own reasons for playing the game. The truth is there are as many playstyles as there are players, and if community is what we want to build... the game that can absorb all these play styles will be the greatest community of gamers ever. /end mission statement.
I don't expect to access raid content as a solo player, and group content is for groups, and yes air is for breathing and water is wet. The point is old content like LDON is not used anymore, and doubling LDON point payout is not going to make much difference here. The hardcore players ate through this content when it when it was new. The rest of us haven't fully tapped LDON to max out the stats on our adventure stone, attained the spells we need, or won the items on these lists when the next expansion came out and drew bodies away. Now you'll say why don't all you "casual" players band together and go play the old content? Well, even though I contend that the numbers of part time players are vast.. It is an absolute truth that we all don't play at the same times, same servers, or for extended blocks of time. You all cheered when the devs had the imagination to revamp missions in unrest etc. so why can't you see the possibilities for this old and under utilized content? And, if you don't think that by the time us laggers get up to DON that the rest wont have moved on to the next big thing, then you are ignoring the game's evolutionary history.
As for grouping... I play with whomever I can, trust me.. the bulk of my game time is spent with pickup groups. And I agree with the importance of grouping... it is fun and helps you advance and all that... but why impose a FOOTLOOSE elders law of no rock and roll music and no dancing in this town on the lower level players. What are you anyway ... facists?
DO you honestly suggest I waste what limited time I have sewing hides into cloaks and brewing pruno in the guild hall? This is your answer to those who can't find a group?
The game isn't about flying through lvls alone. We all can agree on that. But, it is a HUGE part of the game. It is the key to unlocking content. And if you want to encourage new people to enter into this game you are going to have to make that wide stretch of lvls from newb to uber more easily tailored to the vaired play styles in our game. This should not threaten anyone other then those who will sit on high and say we had it harder when we were that lvl. This may be true, but "Let them eat cake" is not an answer either.
Comment Posted by: Iza on June 18, 2005 12:47 AM
Maitreya wrote: If you want to solo your way to the top, there's this nice game called World of Warcraft you might want to look at.
Thank you for showing me the way =)
I really got tired of sitting in PoK, LFG for 12 hours straight last weekend. That's not why I consider fun. I soloed plenty already and since there are no groups and SCARCE solo content, I am not resubscribing anymore.
Comment Posted by: Hemdell on June 18, 2005 02:25 AM
This is what the anti-solo content people want?? People to leave the game? Oh no the number of people playing are going down, lets tell them to go play another game. Riiiiggghhtt! That will show em!!!
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on June 18, 2005 02:28 AM
Correct. I'm killing EQ by giving people suggestions for what games might (from what I've heard) better suit their playstyle. I'm such a jerk.
"I really got tired of sitting in PoK, LFG for 12 hours straight last weekend. That's not why I consider fun. I soloed plenty already and since there are no groups and SCARCE solo content, I am not resubscribing anymore."
You might want to drop back in in September. The Spirit Shroud's odd variant of the mentor system sounds like it will solve a lot of grouping problems.
Comment Posted by: Hemdell on June 18, 2005 02:44 AM
What I'm saying is that you cannot have it both ways. You can't complain about EQ numbers dropping and then turn around and tell people to go play another game because THEIR play style dosen't conform to YOURS.
Oh the shroud thing...that should be fun. The group needs a Tank, so I shroud into a Tank. I dont want to Tank, I want to do DD or heal. Now the game is not only making me group but also dictating what class I should be. Please!
Comment Posted by: Archimedus Ragnarok on June 18, 2005 03:43 AM
Seems to me, part of the grouping problem is the level spread...in a game with 70 levels, and generally a 10 level spread for grouping, it means that only 1/7 of the adventuring lvls can group with you...Lets assume that, for the sake of arguement, 1/2 of the players are in the top 2/7s of the lvls. that STILL means only 1/4 players is even ELIGIBLE to group with you (currently, the spirit shroud looks to change this)
As for being forced into changing archetype to play, I'm not tremendously thrilled about that. But let me say something too on that. Perhaps, what needs to be done, is that through class reinvisioning, to make it so groups can operate in the "non-typical" setup of Healer, Slower, Buffer, Mezzer, Tank, DPS...I know as a Magician on Tribunal, I have a TOUGH time finding groupage pretty often. I almost ALWAYS have to start my own groups to get into one, as people seem to think that Magicians don't fit into groups...which isn't the case (and usually, once people I group with see what a Magician can do, they are more than happy to have me back next time they have a spot in a group to fill) This said, some of the BEST groups I have been in were TOTALLY unconventional. The best 3 groups I have been in are from best to ...
3 Magicians, 2 Necros, and 1 BST.
6 Magicians
2 Magicinans, Paladin, Cleric, Shaman
My point is this...if "unconvential" grouping can be shown for its appeal, maybe groups would be easier to come by.
On another note, I too agree that something should be done about the way "old" content gets left behind, although I am at a loss to suggest what. It seems on Tribunal, DoN mission groups are RARE...I haven't even started DoN progression, because I usually end up running away from the tasks with a train in pursuit. When I put my LFG up and note that I would like to do DoN missions, I have NEVER recieved an invite...I sit at the camps, I sit in Lava, I sit in PoK, I SCREAM for DoN...dosen't seem anyone is interested...same goes for LDoN.
I know for me, one of the BIGGEST problems in starting this sort of content is lack of finding good information on how to do it. What I really miss that wasn't done for GoD, OoW, or DoN was a Prima guilde. I use my LDoN/Ykesha LDoN guilde pretty often, especially for the tradeskill/research spell recipies in it. Something like this, showing how to get going in GoD Trials, OoW missions and DoN missions would be great.
PS:::If anyone has some good links to this material, in a condensed type of format, I would love to see it!
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on June 18, 2005 03:54 AM
"What I'm saying is that you cannot have it both ways. You can't complain about EQ numbers dropping and then turn around and tell people to go play another game because THEIR play style dosen't conform to YOURS."
I guess it's a good thing noone here does this.
"Oh the shroud thing...that should be fun. The group needs a Tank, so I shroud into a Tank. I dont want to Tank, I want to do DD or heal. Now the game is not only making me group but also dictating what class I should be. Please!"
Yes, it should be fun. If you don't want to be a tank, don't be a tank. DD or heal instead. The game isn't "dictating" anything.
"My point is this...if "unconvential" grouping can be shown for its appeal, maybe groups would be easier to come by."
I completely agree. The best LDoN group I ever had was Mage (me), warrior, 2 pallies, a ranger and a shadowknight. With all that DPS, mobs were beat down before they could hurt the tank. They were dead before I could nuke unless there were adds. If we more adds than the main tank could handle, no worries. There were 5 off tanks to choose from. When one MT got too low to continue, another tank took over until the other had healed some. We had next to no downtime the entire adventure. Take THAT "Holy Trinity" and all those groups who refuse to move without a healer.
Comment Posted by: Hemdell on June 18, 2005 05:00 AM
Just about every board you look at ( including this one ) Talks about the end of EQ due to players leaving. Everyone I talk to in RL who plays this game all agree, that allowing people to solo better will not hurt the group concept. It is more fun to group. But in these times it can't be Group or DON'T PLAY. You will lose even more people.
As for "dictating" your role in a group... If a group sends you a tell saying we need a tank and you come as a wizard why would I invite you? I said tank, sorry,"NO GROUP FOR YOU." So yes I can do DD or Heal only if a groups needs that. Thats what I mean by dictating.
Comment Posted by: Glamdrigg on June 18, 2005 06:37 AM
"Besides, the same purists who scream about ebayers now saying go buy your don crystals seem hypocritical to say the least. I dont want to buy crystals I want earn them."
"What does buying crystals have to do with e-bay? If you earned the platinum you used to get the crystals, you're still earning the crystals, are you not? It's just a currency conversion."
LOL. So is dollars to Platinum, but it is not a desirable method for the health of the game.
Comment Posted by: on June 18, 2005 04:11 PM
Regarding Spirit Shroud.
I played necro, mage, and beastlord, all up to 68-70, because I enjoyed playing those classes.
I am not going to buy a new expansion for my 3 accounts, so I can 'spirit shroud ' myself into a warrior.
No offense to you, warriors, you guys are important, and I love you - especially when you are standing between me and a mob - but tanking is just not my thing =)
I haven't asked for raiding content to be available for solo players.
I haven't asked for uber gear to be available for solo players.
I merely asked for OPTIONS, different ways to play and have fun when I can't find groups. Options to earn exp, options to earn crystals, be it 10 crystals for a really long quest or something, options to do thigs.
Ok, I am limited in my play because I don't have a strong guild. That's fine - won't see Anguish, ok with me. But why should I be limited when it comes to COMMON activities such as missions or earning exp?
Chosing and joining guilds is a personal choice, but grouping is not. I CANNOT MAKE people to group with me.
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on June 19, 2005 03:12 AM
I find the whole "spirit shroud is evil because I'll be forced to be something I don't want to be" attitude rather odd. If you don't want to tank, don't tank, it's pretty simple. Does this mean you won't get a group? Possibly. Are you any worse off than you'd be if you didn't have the Spirit Shroud? Not at all.
The Spirit Shroud doesn't force anything on you. Rather, it gives those who do want to play a different archetype the option to do so.
Comment Posted by: on June 19, 2005 05:34 AM
i know this will sound like im talking about player models but im not, they have said that, doing just one player model is the same work as doing what 200 npc models or something, if this is the case, why are there only about 6 new npc models in the darkhollow expansion ? talk about lazy, i mean come on, think about the old style expansions, tons of zones massive variety, and tons of different models take kunark... scaled wolf, iksar, scorpicos, all the different dragons, rhino, sabertooth, tiger, spiders, dracnids, all the different giants, wasps in burning woods, gorillas, sarnak, cacti and those are just thing things that come to mind, never mind all the different types of boss mob.
how come the expansions keep getting smaller and the amount of effort put into them gets less and less. i bet the new zones use the same textures over and over making it feel more like a maze where you cant really tell where you are unless you use a map because it all looks the same. sigh
Comment Posted by: on June 19, 2005 05:43 AM
this is a PVE game right, but also multiplayer, i want to see more of that.. they have already made it so that you can take dmg from moving items, ie the blades in sola now damn you if they hit you, expand on that, i want zones were your dodging all sorts of traps and things..
i want doors in dungeons, where like 10 people have to step on different buttons to open a door at the end of a hall, so that others can get thru, if anyone steps off the button the door shuts, then the people who got thru, would have to do something else, to open the door, for the 10 that were stuck on the other side.. stuff like that, where people have to work together to solve a puzzle
in game reasons instead of just imposing set raid sizes etc, make things like the door mentioned above, that would mean you couldnt get thru that door with less than 10 people, but its an in game reason for example.
boats over acid or lava, that start to sink if to many people are on them, stuff that makes you feel more part of the enviroment, i can remember when eq first game out, people were amazed at the button you could press in splitpaw, you pressed it and it could open a door, to a cupboard you could lock ya friends in it, and they couldnt get out, hehe it was fun, stupid things like that, make you feel more part of the world.
on a side note, in stonebrunt along the east wall, is a cave with rocks, if you touch the rocks they start to rotate, its possible to squeeze past these rocks by rotating them in different orders, you get to a tunnel that dead ends, its like they were gona make some new zone, and the rocks are a sort of puzzle to get in, please expand on that hehe.
Comment Posted by: Pomaikai Po'okela on June 19, 2005 12:12 PM
12 Hours LFG? Good Lord man, are you just waiting for people to come to you with a group on a silver platter? Get off your duff and use some initiative. Make your own group! Start sending tells out there and put something together. Hit some less desirable zones with people a little lower than you. Hey, any EXP is better than zero EXP. I hear specific classes tossing out the "no one wants my class in a group" lament all the time. This is even in a high end game situation. So put together your own damned groups! I've sat LFG for hours too, but I've learned along the way to be proactive about my grouping. As Yoda said, "There is no try, only do." So DO, already...
Comment Posted by: Sunshadow on June 19, 2005 07:25 PM
Why are people so adamant that everyone groups? I play a necro cause I like to solo. If I want to group I'll play my cleric alt. So why can't I kill stuff that I can solo to get rewards? There is nothing in LDON I can't solo, so why can't I do it? Hey if the Mobs were to tuff then sure thats a different issue but they are not. Same with DON if I can't solo it now in another expansion or 2 I will be able to so the option should be there to allow it. Same for the 4 new missions in they added recently in old zones.
All I am asking is to remove the restriction, that way if people can solo/Duo it they can, if they can't they won't so where is the problem. Oh yeah all the clerics/warriors/rogues/rangers and enchanters are suddenly going to become soloing classes. Pfffftt.
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 19, 2005 10:23 PM
I don't think people are saying "no solo content" but Missions, a clear defining role for EQ over the other games, are currently group-based and I, for one, would like to see them continue this way.
We will see how the new potions work out but its clear they are trying to offer solo opportunities to all classes. That was the intent of the Omens Task system as well.
I agree, there should be lots of different ways to play this game. However, I want SOE to focus on the parts of the game that clearly define it against existing single-player games and other MMOGs.
"i want doors in dungeons, where like 10 people have to step on different buttons to open a door at the end of a hall"
You had some excellent suggestions that I will send along to the SOE folks when next I send them a note.
Comment Posted by: Sunshadow on June 19, 2005 10:54 PM
Loral, that has created the problem where now 2 or 3 expansions later, it is obsolete as no-one wants to do the missions any more. The majority of people would rather be in a nice XP spot than doing a mission. So getting a group to do a LDON now is hard, and in a years time the same will happen to DON. I mean you just need to check how hard it is to pull together a pickup group to do a POJ trial, impossible! So either SOE need to start updating the rewards for these missions every 6 months to keep them current or they should perhaps remove the restictions. Start looking at how players will be using the expansion in 2 years time, as well as now otherwise casual player will stop buying them. Because by the time the casual player gets halfway into it, all the hardcore players are finished with it and the casual player is stuck. Like me I have a couple of hundred LDON points which I gathered in the 6 months after it came out but it is not enough for what I want and now I have no way of getting the rest because if you do get a group together it would rather XP than LDON. Increasing the points per mission won't help because double or triple zero is still zero if you can't get a group to go there in the first place.
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 19, 2005 11:44 PM
I think the intent with doubling points on missions is to make the loot there more of a value. There's sort of a catch 22 with this argument. If the rewards there aren't good for other people they're probably not good for you either. If they're good for you, they're good for other people too.
I'd like an LDON revamp as much as anyone but we don't generally see old world zones revamped very often. I think a point boost is the only easy and reasonable way to make LDON more appropriate.
Comment Posted by: Cognac on June 20, 2005 12:35 AM
Myself being a stalewart player, (also playing all new games when they are released for a couple months, but always comming back to EQ). I find myself in a small guild mostly alone each night. Not that I'm complaining, but I've become a solo player by default. I group when I can, but at 59 with zero AA's and I don't have the last 6 expansions, I don't have a lot of opportunity to group either.
I bought a second account about 2 years ago which included all expansions up to PoP. It cost me $160 then. I bought LoY for the bank space, but havn't touched an expansion since. Now if I was to convince a RL friend or work colleague to try out the game, do you think it's very tempting for them to pay a huge sum like that and get 6 year old graphics with triangle shaped ground.
If you buy each expansion as it comes out, it's worth upgrading to the next. But to jump in at this late time, it's simply not worth the outlay and catch up on new expansions. Moreso if you won't use the expansion zones untill about 1 year of play. AND to see it, you have to find a guild that'll help you get flaged equiped.
There is an enourmous volume of understanding to absorb to be effective and equiped. It's well beyond the new player to even try quite honestly.
(my thoughts, they may not be yours)...
Comment Posted by: Hemdell on June 20, 2005 02:22 AM
I don't see how a point boost is going to do anything. If most people have what they need from LDoN, why would they do one for 4x the points? It is pointless! Duo/solo is the only answer I see. I'll stop now because talking to the wall is draining me.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on June 20, 2005 07:52 AM
Loral, unless they multiply by 3 the xp in LDON, people won't set foot in there even by mistake...
Comment Posted by: Loral on June 20, 2005 08:20 AM
"I bought a second account about 2 years ago which included all expansions up to PoP. It cost me $160 then. I bought LoY for the bank space, but havn't touched an expansion since. Now if I was to convince a RL friend or work colleague to try out the game, do you think it's very tempting for them to pay a huge sum like that and get 6 year old graphics with triangle shaped ground."
SOE's pretty good about bringing out packages including the latest expansions. I think you can get Everquest Platinum for about $20 without Omens or Dragons. Omens is another $19 and Dragons is another $30. It's still a bit pricy at nearly $70 for the full game and a monthly fee to boot, but I think most players who play regularly get their money's worth.
Comment Posted by: Thunderkick on June 20, 2005 01:02 PM
yet a way to give more money to soe and just a walk in the the park for assent who will beat the final named in a matter of weeks /yawn at soe and there game
Comment Posted by: Talaen on June 20, 2005 02:31 PM
"This situation will not improve if more solo options are added in. The more people solo, the less they will group."
This is true, and I know it from firsthand experience.
As much as we all have hated it at some point, one of the things that made EQ such a fertile breeding ground for awesome friendships, groups, and guilds, and kept us all playing for 4, 5, 6 years, was the simple fact that nearly everything required a group.
In EQ2, soloing is easy and profitable. But there's still content that can only be done at the appropriate level grouped - and that of course is the coolest stuff. When you go into that dungeon, what do you see? A bunch of people 10 levels higher than the content soloing things because they wanted to finish quests that had been sitting in their journals.
If you don't require grouping in some form, people won't do it. They won't meet new friends, they won't form groups, they won't form lasting guilds, and the game won't develop a true community. Instead you get a game full of transients, people who don't really interact with many other players and just take up space.
Here's how you can tell. Go around an EQ1 server and ask guilds why they formed. Most of them will say "We wanted to do this content". Do the same on an EQ2 server and you'll here "We all knew each other from before" or "We all live in the same city" or "We all speak spanish or german". Not that these are bad reasons to form a guild, but when guilds are forming primarily for out of game reasons, then the game itself isn't building community very well.
Required grouping isn't bad. Requiring a full group or a strict group is what frustrates players. Let me grab 2 or 3 friends and go somewhere and have a fighting chance - don't make me have a full 6 people with a primary and a backup healer just to have a shot at what I want to do.
To some extent EQ2 and WoW have a good small-group game - in EQ2 a lot of the "solo" instances are just tough enough that a small group will still enjoy them and do well, and in WoW "elite" mobs are usually still doable with a small group. But so much of a focus on soloing really hurts the group game, and people get frustrated when they want to do something that requires a group, and everyone else is too busy soloing to help or care.
So anyway, what I think all games need to get to is a 66-75%% rule. If your maximum group size is 6, then a group with 4 people should be "just about right" for almost all of your content. Challenged maybe, but still able to do it. Same for raids.
Comment Posted by: Armarant on June 20, 2005 04:50 PM
Talaen Wrote:If you don't require grouping in some form, people won't do it. They won't meet new friends, they won't form groups, they won't form lasting guilds, and the game won't develop a true community. Instead you get a game full of transients, people who don't really interact with many other players and just take up space.
All I have to say is..
If you require grouping it will hurt the end game more then having a well defined solo game. because
A. People wont stick around long enough to want to group.
B. Players who play weird hours wont stick around when they cant get a group every day.
and as a result you will get a game that doesnt form a community. guilds. friends.
Just because soloers solo doesnt mean they dont have a community of their own.. Guild wars has a thriving forum community at the moment. and the PVP side encourages friendships and learning ones skills, the Solo side encourages Storyline progression and questing on your own time. not someone elses.
Talaen Wrote:in WoW "elite" mobs are usually still doable with a small group. But so much of a focus on soloing really hurts the group game, and people get frustrated when they want to do something that requires a group, and everyone else is too busy soloing to help or care.
whos fault is it that these people cant get groups? the games. or theirs?.. in EQ when people cant get groups and want to solo you blame them for their lack of initiative. yet in WoW.. oh. its the games fault for providing every playstyle with a way to play.
there is no right or wrong way to play a fantasy game. and the more you try and push someone toward specific content the more they will rebel and go the other way.
Loral Wrote:I'd like an LDON revamp as much as anyone but we don't generally see old world zones revamped very often. I think a point boost is the only easy and reasonable way to make LDON more appropriate.
I can think of 3 ways that might Re-Ignite LDoN..
1. Make the points tradeable.
2. let more chests spawn in the dungeons. and make them spawn in a way that you are garunteed that you can open the chest if you have the right item from a Vendor and the right spells. (finding a chest just to find out no one in group can open it every LDoN is disappointing)
3. put in named mobs that are only made to give experience.. they could give 10X the experience of a normal mob. and on average could spawn 1 or 2 per dungeon in a far off corner (To encourage clearing a entire dungeon)
Comment Posted by: Cognac on June 20, 2005 06:21 PM
I'm talking Australian dollars, and yes it was $160 for the platinum box. I went to the game stores two weeks ago to finaly buy DoN and was told that they havn't stocked an Everquest expansion for years. Upon reflexion, I'd guess there are only 100 Australian players per server at most, which wouldn't make it worth putting on the shelves.
It's still my favorite game, meaning; I enjoy the difficulty and the variety available. But it's not without some problems.
Comment Posted by: Talaen on June 20, 2005 07:25 PM
Armarant,
It seems to me that you thought I was attacking WoW. I was not.
There is nothing wrong with solo play in and of itself, and games will always need some amount of solo content.
However, that solo content should not be emphasized over group content, or it stunts the growth of in-game communities. Notice I said "in-game" communities. Message boards don't count, as something like 80% of players never log into a message board unless they have a tech support issue.
You had a good point about Guild Wars, which is a primarily solo game except for the PvP. So why do guilds form? The PvP.
The same can be said for SWG, and to a lesser extent WoW, or any game where PvP is an optional but integral part of the game.
In EQ and EQ2 it is not.
My point is that the game itself must push players to form communities in whatever ways it can or they won't form communities based on the game. Some of them may form friendships and guilds based on out of game reasons, but the average player will just get bored after a few months of nothing but soloing and move on to some other game.
How did you meet your best friends in EQ? I'd wager in most cases it wasn't because you and they were soloing in the same zone and struck up a conversation in between stealing each other's kills or training the people at the zoneline. No, more likely it was because you grouped up with them to do something that you couldn't do alone. You know, like the Orc Trainer, or the Hand room in Lower Guk, or something.
Yeah, it's frustrating when you spend 3 hours sitting in PoK LFG and no one picks you up because you're not a required class or there's a more efficient choice for your role and their group has only one slot open. It's a pain in the butt when you have some quest you want to finish or a mob you want to kill and you can't get it done because you can't find a cleric and an shaman and an enchanter and a tank at the same time.
It's equally frustrating when you decide you'd like to finish a cool quest, and so you try to get a random group - which sucks because it's full of (excuse my language here) idiots and noobs who don't have a clue how to work together as a group, they screw up constantly, get two rooms into the instance, do something stupid, cause the group to wipe,and half the group quits and there goes your evening. Then you decide to work with people you know and trust to get it done, like existing friends and guildmates, only to have to wait 3 weeks to get them all online at the same time with enough force to go - and then you have to stop soloing in the meantime so you don't outlevel the quest that was sending you to that dungeon in the first place.
Pick your poison. Maybe it's not so black and white, but that's the difference between average gameplay experiences in EQ1 and EQ2/WoW right now.
The solution is to encourage and require groups, but leave the requirements loose enough so that you don't hurt the casual or off-peak players or the folks who happened to pick the class that does 0.10% less DPS in a fight.
I like soloing as much as anyone. I can be an antisocial bastard when I want to be, especially if I come home from work stressed and tired and frustrated. But I'm objective enough to realize that if I had been able to solo even half of EQ1 - I would have dropped my subscription within 6 months for lack of challenge.
Comment Posted by: Sunshadow on June 20, 2005 09:28 PM
How about a bit of a compromise. While I would like to see solo options from the expansion release dates, it might be prudent to build in forced grouping for the first 6-12 months while people are interested and keen to group there. But after that be able to take it out so people can solo/duo to get the items they want if they were unable to amass enough points/crystals/whatever when the missions were popular.
For me I would like to be able to anounce in POK that I am starting a LDON, if anyone is interested. And be able to continue on and do it if I get 0,1,2 or 5 responses.
I also wonder how many people box 3 accounts just so they can solo missions? I have encountered quite a few over the last few months.
Comment Posted by: Sunshadow on June 20, 2005 09:37 PM
Another option is if an expansion has say 10 missions make 1 of them solo'able. That way it is better to group as you get a lot more varity and maybe higher rewards but if your preference / time you play force you to solo/duo then you have an option.
Comment Posted by: Talaen on June 20, 2005 11:22 PM
I rather like the approach SOE's taken with EQ2 adventure packs, both in terms of solo/group mix and in terms of area design.
The storyline of each so far has started off with a solo/small group instance that leads you into a larger quest. This is cool because it lets you get the feel of the place without having to gather a big group - they're doable solo, but they work best with 2-3 people. (In fact, many of EQ2's "solo" instances work that way).
Then, the first main instance of the adventure pack is free and is a group instance - but you can do it with a group of 4 people or so if you're careful. Like EQ1 LDONs, mobs don't respawn, so you can take your time and crawl all the way down.
As the storyline progresses, the instances get harder and harder, even to the point of being raid instances, but by then you're so involved that you're usually planning in advance when you're going to go back, or at least that's how it's worked for us.
I'm a big fan of instanced dungeons, especially dungeons without respawns where you can truly crawl them. When they have attached quests and true storylines (rather than endless, repetitive missions) it's even better. So far both EQ2 and WoW (with it's minibosses and linear, story-based encounter progression in instances) have done things that I'd love to see incorporated into EQ1's content design.
I also really like where EQ2 is headed in terms of interaction with the environment. Breakable walls and items in the Chronicles, and now in Splitpaw you have to move items around to solve puzzles or to use as stepping stones to jump up to a ledge, etc. And with the addition of a climbing skill in the expansion EQ2 is rapidly headed to somewhere MMOs have never gone - and that's emulating the environmental interaction of a single-player console RPG.
There's no reason EQ1 can't do that too. Or any other game.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on June 21, 2005 04:51 AM
There is one reason: variety and immersion are good.
Turning EQ into a childish poorer dumber twitching arcade game is not.
Or maybe they want to catter to the pre-20s public and I'm too old for that kind of trash, like many people remaining on EQ1 I wager.
Comment Posted by: Talaen on June 21, 2005 06:27 AM
How is breaking down a locked door twitchy?
Or having to slide a bookcase to trigger the pressure switch that opens the secret passage?
Or climbing up on a series of ledges so you can circle around the bottomless pit in the cave?
Or jumping from stone to stone to get across a lava flow on the side of a volcano?
Or swimming through a water-filled 3d maze infested with monsters that used to be the home of one of the now-extinct races of Norrath?
Oh wait, that last one is already in the game.
Seriously, "twitch" is hand-eye coordination and ability to respond instantly to moving targets. When I climb into my starfighter in SWG and go off to blast rebel scum out of the sky, and have to constantly move to keep my target in my hitbox, that's twitch. When I am in WoW and I have to put the powder in the cannon and use the cannon to blast open the locked door - that's puzzle-solving and environmental interaction. Which, by the way, tends to help immersion in the game world, not hurt it. At least that's my opinion.
So please Red, tell me how adding more environmental interaction makes the game more childish or twitchy?
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on June 21, 2005 10:12 AM
Specifically I was thinking of a part of Vishimtar fight where you need to chase a cloud to get cured.
I had fun doing that and then in retrospect I thought it was like living PAC MAN.
The comparison and the arcade style of it detracts to the immersion when really I'm just living a platform arcade game in terms of immersion instead of prep'ing to slay a dragon.
I don't know if the difference is all to clear but I mean by that: environment iteractions is great AS LONG AS it doesn't fall into platform style of conditionned stimuli (jump at the right moment, etc)
Comment Posted by: Teremar on June 21, 2005 11:11 AM
I don't get it--EQ is already full of "twitchy" stuff. Ever since PoP escalated mob DPS (and it has gotten much worse since) the need for fast reactions has been the primary tactical "challenge" in the game. The most obvious example is an enchanter managing a Pooka in Vxed/Tipt (when charm breaks you've got a fraction of a second to get the right spell underway or you're likely to be dead), but plain old healing qualifies in hard content, as does taunt, etc.
In fact that was my primary complaint before I quit: WHAT to do was usually obvious, and the only challenge was doing it really fast in response to a broken charm, a falling health bar, etc. Sounds like Redcloud's "conditionned stimuli" to me.
When I was mezzing 4-5 frogloks in Old Seb I had a lot to think about, but a half second pause to figure out how to handle the situation wasn't going to make much of a difference. When I was wrangling a Pooka every charm break required the exact same response and the difference between success and failure was simply how fast I could do it.
People sometimes complain that WoW is too easy because it doesn't demand those fast reactions. Granted. On the other hand I feel like it engages my higher brain functions much more than EQ has for a long time.
(Disclaimer: my experience is stricly limited to pre-DoN content, and mostly to single-group content.)
Comment Posted by: Ziss on June 21, 2005 11:43 AM
Wow, I didn't think that the "must have a grp of 3-6, vs. potential of solo/duo" debate would generate this much discussion. I am glad it does, as I have been feeling this way for along time.
I too left Eq1 to play EQ2, becuase I felt eq2 would lend itself to have more content I didn't need to rely on always having a full grp. After getting my cleric to lvl 43 with in less than 4 months (also had a 27 swash, 27 fury and several other lower lvl classes in that same 4 months) I found eq2 to be just to repetitve and non consequencial. Aka- No real penalty for death nor "get your heart pumping" kind of game play, so I came back to eq1.
Now that I'm back, I really am enjoying it again (been playing for 4 1/2 years). I love what they've done with DoN, and before I quit, what they did with OoW. What really turned me off of eq1 was the requirment of having to have full grps and full (40+) raids to see the majority of the prior 2 expansions. I was a guild leader, officer and co-raid leader for various guild durring my eq life. I understand how teamwork provides a pay off that excedes the result of the accomplishment.
I don't feel that adding *some* and I really stress *SOME* solo/duo mission content to these new type of game enhancments will destroy the comunity EQ has built.
The social interation that makes eq what it is compared to say eq2 and wow, has developed of eq's lifespan. It in no way revolves solely around the fact that people group together. It seems a little closed minded to think it does .. or at least short sighted.
Some folks are comparing the social aspect of eq to eq2 and wow and pointing their fingers and saying "look, there's an example of what will happen!!". You fail to point out that both eq2 and wow are mear infants comared to eq1 and thus haven't had the time to develope a massive social interaction with in their player base.
Allowing folks who allready know, enjoy and partisipate in eq's social interation to have the choice to do content in solo/duo format most likely isn't going to change their behavior so drasticly they stop talking to one another and become some form of gaming herrmit.
And for new players, I can only see offering varring content could only help retain new players.
There is still tons of content that require team work, weather it be in the format of a full group, or raid of 30-70 people. If SOE makes content that can be accomplished (meaning the ability to even get a mission) solo/duo, but rewards that same content done by grps more, I would be happy.
Comment Posted by: Glamdrigg on June 23, 2005 12:25 AM
"Allowing folks who allready know, enjoy and partisipate in eq's social interation to have the choice to do content in solo/duo format most likely isn't going to change their behavior so drasticly they stop talking to one another and become some form of gaming herrmit."
Thank you for those comments, Ziss.
I agree entirely. I've been playing for almost 5 years and have made a lot of friends over that time. Making the old content more accessible so I can bring up my characters at my own pace, or catch up to my friends who have out distanced me will only help me tap back into the community.
This has become a dead horse. But, get the paddles out and flip on the juice. This issue should not have caused such arguments. It constantly surprises me that people paint it as the END OF EQ everytime it is mentioned... then again anything new usually is met with that label from somebody.
Relax, breathe and continue on... if this game ends it wont be because of some limited solo options in old world zones that aren't used anymore. It will be because the old player base has trickled out and no new players have entered in. The fastest way to this END is to not offer options to your players, to remain stagnant, to remain fixed and inflexible.
Sound like anyone you know?
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