March 2009

EverQuest Update Notes (March 12th)

stargrace March 12, 2009 0Comment

The servers are down for an 8 hour patch (ack!) and here’s what has been added!

3/12/2009
*** Highlights ***

– Guild Creation Tool: Players can now get their guilds created in-game by using the Guild Management window. When opening the Guild Management Window (Alt + G) when you are not in a guild, you will be asked if you would like to create one. All existing guild naming rules still apply. Only one guild is permitted per server per account. Guilds cannot be created while in a shroud.

– Pet Window Improvements: The functionality of the Pet Window has been improved by allowing players to customize each button individually. These changes also allow players to add commands that they pick up via AAs. We’ve also added some new commands including a pet hold command. (See UI: Pet Window Improvements below)

– Enhanced Raid Window: We’ve updated the raid management window to allow for sorting and expedition / shared task management improvements. Also added AFK, dead, and out of zone status. (See UI: Enhanced Raid Window below)
*** Items ***

– Nakk’s Enduring Bauble now looks just like the gem from a ring, instead of a ring.
– The Durus Faycite Shard: Gorenaire’s Chant of Frost, and Durus Faycite Shard: Talendor’s Chant of Flame now increase the duration of their respective songs by 1 tick instead of increasing the damage.

*** Spells ***

– Cantata of Rodcet now increases HP and Mana regen by 61/70/75 and 50/58/62 for Ranks 1/2/3, up from 51/60/65 and 42/50/54
– Fixed a problem with Performance resonance that was causing it to focus a number of effects that it shouldn’t have.
– Lowered the endurance cost on Wheel of Fists to 253/288/307 down from 316/360/384.
– Lowered the endurance cost on Whorl of Fists to 308/351/374 down from 385/439/468.
– Modified the stacking order of the Calanin’s Synergy discipline to better stack with other similar abilities including the effect from Deceivers Blight Strike and other spells that use the same effect.
– Talisman of the Stalwart scrolls can now be scribed by druids.
– The combat proc granted by Arcane Arietta will now cause additional damage for bards based on their wind instrument mods. This only effects the procs for the bard herself, and not the rest of the group.
– The endurance cost for Calanin’s Synergy has been increased to 385/439/468 up from 308/351/374. The duration in the effect has been increased by 6 seconds.
– The Twincast Self Buff spells are no longer focused by duration extension focuses.

*** Tradeskills ***

– Fixed a bug with the Pure sealed power-sources made via tradeskills. They were opening one tier behind where they should (so the Tier 1 took Tier 2 raid to open.) They should now open properly with the proper tier of content.
– Fixed an issue with Dull, Murky and Foggy Sealed Energeian Orbs that could prevent them from opening properly.
– The following spells created by spell research now create a duplicate scroll instead of the original scroll. The original scrolls are now no trade. This does mean that you may have a no trade version currently, unfortunately there is no reasonable solution for a refund that is not able to allow players to create infinite scrolls. This change is intended to prevent players from creating infinite scrolls for free. Skill: Champion’s Aura, Skill: Poison Spikes Trap, Skill: Master’s Aura, Skill: Bloodlust Aura, Spell: Blessed Aura, Spell: Decrepit Skin, Spell: Aura of the Muse, Spell: Elddar’s Grasp, Spell: Puratus, Spell: Moonshadow, Spell: Ghost of Renewal, Spell: Mind Shatter, Spell: Chaos Flame, Spell: Iceflame Guard, Spell: Mind Flay, and Spell: Spirit of Oroshar.
– The research spell Odium can now be researched by priests as intended.
*** NPCs ***

– Dragorn Muramites should be providing a normal amount of experience again.
– Fenden Helter has decided to mark down many of his items.
– Additional items have been added to Fenden Helter in Dragonscale and are available for purchase.
*** AA ***

– Modified how the AAs Animation Empathy and Advanced Pet Discipline function to support the new Pet changes to the User Interface and Pet controls.
– Replaced the Skill Cap adjustments on Third Spire of Ancestors and Third Spire of the Savage Lord with a bonus to minimum damage to avoid certain stacking conflicts.
– Adjusted the stacking order on Rogue’s Fury to better stack with various Rogue disciplines, including Deadeye and Deadly Precision.
*** Miscellaneous ***

– Made various zone stability improvements.
*** UI: General ***

– Enhanced the Raid Window. (See UI: Enhanced Raid Window)
– The Pet Window has received a revamp! (See UI: Pet Window Improvements)
– Added chat window text output for users being invited to raids even when the raid confirmation popup is turned on.
– Added a button in the options general tab that toggles display of pet owner names on pets.
– Fixed a bug that sometimes caused two players to appear to share ownership of the same mercenary when they zoned simultaneously with unsuspended mercenaries.
– You should no longer be spammed with focus effect messages when you have an active mercenary .
– For custom UI creators, ListboxColumns can now have their own tooltips instead of just the Listbox.
*** UI: Enhanced Raid Window ***

– Updated the raid management window to allow for sorting and expedition / shared task management improvements. Also added AFK, dead, and out of zone status.
– Created the /comparetaskraid (Shared Task – Raid) and /compareexpedraid (Expedition – Raid) commands to list the players that are not in both lists.
– Updated the expedition window to allow for simplified raid and shared task invitations.
– Updated the shared task window to allow for simplified raid and expedition invitations.
– The group numbers in the raid window are now color coded in order to better differentiate between groups when sorting by group.
– Column headers now each have their own tool tip.
*** UI: Pet Window Improvements ***

– You can now assign buttons to all pet commands in the pet window.
– Pet target will be displayed under your pets hp bar so you will always know who your pet is attacking.
– Added toggleable buttons throughout the pet UI for sit/stand, follow/guard, focus, hold, taunt, and spell hold.
– Added new pet text based commands. You will now be able to toggle all states off or on, or simply toggle the state with a pet text based command. For example, /pet focus on, /pet focus off, and /pet focus.
– Added a new pet attack command to switch your pet to attack the new target regardless of AA’s or level; great for new and low level players. The old command will still exist as qattack.
– Added a pet hold functionality.
– New pet focus + pet hold functionality (call this pet state “pet convergence” ). Now, when you turn on both the focus and hold states, your pet will attack SPECIFICALLY what you want it to and when finished won’t attack or aggro or do anything else.
– Improved /pet back off. Fully clears the hate list and stops your pet from doing whatever it was doing before.
– Pet follow is now on by default when entering zones.
– Added the pet owner’s name below the pet name text (i.e., “Soandso’s pet”).
– When right clicking a pet button, commands not available to you are filtered out.
– Added messages your pet will say when issued different commands to clarify the intended behavior.
– The state of all pet buttons are now persisted across zoning and logging (except sit and follow that default to their appropriate settings when zoning).
– The UI layout of the pet window is now stored across zoning and logging.
– Integrated pet help has now been implemented and put into the EverQuest pet info window. Click the question mark next to the pet close box to access the pet help dialog.
– When enchanter pets are summoned, they properly only have the Get Lost command, unless they have the special grant pet command SPA/AA.
– Pet spell hold is now available as a command in the pet window.

– New –

EQUI_GuildCreationWindow.xml

– Changed –

EQUI.xml
EQUI_DynamicZoneWnd.xml
EQUI_HotButtonWnd.xml
EQUI_OptionsWindow.xml
EQUI_RaidWindow.xml
EQUI_TaskWnd.xml
SIDL.xml

– The EverQuest Team

Gaming

Exclusive Interview with EQ2 Team

stargrace March 11, 2009 1Comment

Finally, it’s up!

A month ago I was granted an amazing opportunity to fly down to San Diego (all the way from Ottawa Ontaio) and interview various developer teams who work for SOE (EQ,EQ2,VG, and lets not forget the Community team!) – it was an incredible experience. Aside from celebrating the 10th anniversary of EverQuest in the latest issue of Beckett MOG (Massive Online Gamer), Beckett has posted the EQ2 team interview up for people to read. Keep your eyes open for future interviews (there’s still the VG one as well as an interview with Rich Waters, and the Community team) posted under their news section!

Read the exclusive interview here

Gaming

EQ2 Lavastorm Revamp (Shameless Plug)

stargrace March 11, 2009 0Comment

I recently got to partake on a guided tour of the new changes happening in Lavastorm for MMORPG.com – and you can read all about it on their web site in this post here. It was a lot of fun, and the changes are quite exciting even if they are getting postponed for the next little while.

When they finally do get released, I’m sure it will be a blast!

Gaming

Oceangreen Hills, and Ding 78

stargrace March 11, 2009 0Comment

After the fall of the Combine Empire, the majority of humankind spread out and occupied the center of what was then called Tunaria. These humans lived in small villages upon the fertile plains of Karana and in an area along the western coast called the Oceangreen Hills.

I’ve owned Seeds of Destruction since it released in late October, but I’d never set foot in it until yesterday. Sure, I took advantage of the mercenary and I saw everyone off leveling and having fun, but I stayed firmly planted in current-day Norrath while that happened. First thing I have to say, the music is incredible. I wish there were a CD compilation of the music for SoD, all of it is great. The second you step into Time and head through The Void the music just rocks. When you stare off into the sky and see Veeshan sprawled across, dead, it’s just very humbling.

There is (of course) a progression chart for SoD, which you can find on Zam here. There are missions (both solo and group) given out for various factions as you work through the zones and repair Norrath. Such a daunting task.

We picked up some solo quests that reward faction and another currency, Chronobines. I’m not sure what they’re used for yet, but I’m sure it’s spells and / or gear.

We worked on:

Tabron Caulria:

Each quest involves the infected and diseased creatures that are found all over Oceangreen Hills. The second quest was a huge pain because it required some dust off of skeletons that simply didn’t want to spawn. As we adventured through we also managed to kill two named who dropped some pretty nice gear – nice for us at least. Items in SoD have +700 hp on them these days, so when the lower end stuff has 400 or so, it’s still nice (even though not amazing).

We headed over to the Filed of Scale shortly afterwards to check out the zone and see how hard things hit for. It’s always exciting for me to head to a new expansion that I’ve never played in before (granted, almost everything that’s been released in EQ for the past four years is relatively new to me still). The mobs hurt, they hurt bad. The zone itself was awesome though, armies lined up and about 400 npc fighting each other. We found a little section of land to set up a camp on, and spent a little time there before heading off to a hot zone where my necromancer managed to land herself level 78! I’m so excited about finally hitting level 80, I’m sure the climb to 85 will be very slow, but I don’t mind. For the first time ever I may actually hit the level cap in EQ. Scary!

Gaming

My Welcome into Seeds of Destruction

stargrace March 11, 2009 0Comment

You say, ‘Hail, Zebuxoruk’

Zebuxoruk says ‘So you have finally come, to see again the ignominious end of beloved Norrath. Can you hear me, Druzzil? Are you there, Solusek? I am free of my cage. The language of the gods is my own, as are my many thoughts, culled and refined from a thousand million years of ongoing imprisonment. Yet there is no mana to empower my will, nor worshipers to sustain me. Norrath has been destroyed, sundered into [dust].’

You say, ‘Dust?’

Zebuxoruk says ‘I saw many things as I lingered in my cage. Armies of the unsavory pantheon, and their ignorant opponents, tearing the world apart, breaching the passage of days from What Was to What Is. See noble Veeshan, sprawled dead in the heavens. See the clockworks of Time sprung and broken. The Veil of Order ripped away again and again, delivering [Norrath] and yet also destroying it.’

You say, ‘Norrath?’

Zebuxoruk says ‘The world has gone, the planes are fading away, and all of you are but orphaned echoes of a dead time, doomed to endless rebirth in the stomach of a beast whose length is measured in aeons. Still you’ll try to save what can never be saved, to redeem for yourselves a tiny amount of illusion that the universe is not as it is. Gaze upon the grave of Veeshan, the lifegiver dragon, and know the [truth] of my words.’

You say, ‘What truth?’

Zebuxoruk says ‘You have done nothing, yet you are responsible! For all of this! You, the innocent, for despite your denials you are powerless to preclude yourselves from involvement in the greater tragedy, the hideous fate which sweeps away all memory, all context, until only the echoes of that mighty struggle remain. Know that the [corpse] of Norrath still bears the many marks of your intervention.’

You say, ‘A corpse?’

Zebuxoruk says ‘So predictable, you mortals. Set a problem before you and you must solve it; give you a chance and you will take it. Even when you confront the grandest context of your actions, still you leap to action with hardly a second thought. Have you ever given yourselves to the possibility that perhaps death is a better [alternative] to eternal fighting, and endless destruction?’

You say, ‘What alternative?’

Zebuxoruk says ‘If I had known what the ultimate outcome would be I would never have tried to give mortals the secrets I discovered. No, that was indeed a mistake. But perhaps I listen only to the voice of my own purposes, perhaps throughout the unknowable length of my imprisonment, I have lost forever the ability to empathize with those mortals I once sought to [aid] with the powers of the gods.’

You say, ‘What Aid?’

Zebuxoruk says ‘Know that it is futile to tamper with time. You gain nothing, for opening the timescape to your own intrusion opens it also for others. But you should know this, for you have already been through these portals hundreds of times, at least in my experience. What are You? What am I? The difference between us is meaningless. You are doomed to repeat the tragedies of time, and I am doomed to witness them. If you still choose to try and undo what has been wrought upon Norrath, I shall repeat these words yet again, yet again, yet again. ‘The Portals [beckon]. Do as you will’.’

You say, ‘They beckon?’

Zebuxoruk says ‘There, in times past, you may find ways to restore your [context], if ever it was truly that valuable.’

You say, ‘What context?’

Zebuxoruk says ‘The destiny of Norrath sits in peril as long as the enemy’s power is undiminished, in what was once called Oceangreen Hills. There must you re-establish the balance.’

So it was that I headed to Oceangreen Hills.

EverQuest Update Notes (March 12th)

Exclusive Interview with EQ2 Team

EQ2 Lavastorm Revamp (Shameless Plug)

Oceangreen Hills, and Ding 78

My Welcome into Seeds of Destruction

You Missed

The Search For Hrada-Oki Bivouac

Personal EVE Economic Update (October)

Expensive Month (preparing for fun)

Locked Out (again)