Source: EQ Live Official Game Updates.
It's been a fun month for the EverQuest team. With the recent completion of Veksar and the redesigns of Veeshan's Peak and the Plane of Hate receiving such a nice reaction from the folks that have visited those zones, it's a pleasure for us to be able to work on Droga and Nurga in the same way.
Seeing so many new faces on the Test server recently has been a great. There's no doubt that we need as many eyes on the complicated changes we make to the game as we can get. We wanted to thank those of you that have taken the time to help us out by logging into the Test server recently; you've been of great assistance to us.
And as players of EverQuest, one of the most enjoyable things about working on the game is the opportunity to add game features that we've always wanted to see. Many of them are listed below. We think you'll like them as much as we do.
1) Droga and Nurga revamp coming to Legends. The mines of Nurga have been inhabited by crafty Goblins and stolid Burynai for many long years, digging and slaving away under the earth. It's time to shake them up! The redesign for these zones will be on the Legends server, Stormhammer, with our next update. The mines of Nurga will be a fun zone for characters of levels about 40 to 50. The Temple of Droga will accommodate characters around 50th to 60th level. Both zones will have some new events and quests, while retaining the distinct feel of zones.
2) Veksar moving to all Live servers. Since the rediscovery of the lands of Kunark, there have been rumors springing from the ancient lore of the Iksar. Most of those rumors remain unfounded, as gaining access to the lore of the insular Iksar is no easy task. One of the most persistent legends is about a city that lies buried under the Lake of Ill Omen. That city was called Veksar, and it is up to you to discover the tale of its fate.
3) Group experience bonus increasing dramatically. We've been testing this on the Test server for a few weeks, and some final tuning may be needed before it is released. The goal is to dramatically improve the experience gained by groups. The old group experience bonus ranged from 2% to 20% for a 6 person group. The new bonus will range from 20% to 80%. In addition, the 6th person added to a group will not count when experience is divided. This means that in a group of 5 the total experience is divided by 5 then distributed to each member. A group of 6 will also only have the total experience divided by 5 before it is distributed to each member. Due to this large increase in group experience, we will be reducing the experience modifier given in Planes of Power zones. Those zones had a dramatic experience bonus. These zone-specific experience changes are more than offset by the increased group bonus.
4) Experience range increase for characters above 60th level. This is another change that we are testing and anticipate moving to the Live servers. It will open up many of the "old world" zones to players previously restricted to Planes of Power zones for experience gain. The range of NPCs that will be "blue" to a level 65 character has increased as far as level 50, with the "light blue" range extending to level 45. The best experience gains, however, are still going to be for fighting things around and above your level. This will open up areas for high level characters in groups and solo.
5) Shared bank vault will be added. There are times when a player wants to trade items from one character to another. In the past making such a trade may have included dropping items on the ground or asking a friend to hold them for you. To make such trades more convenient, we are adding two shared bank slots to the interface. Any character on the same account and server can access these extra bank slots. No-Drop items can't be placed in these bank slots, and only one of any specific Lore item can exist in the shared bank at any time.
6) Planes of Power access changes will be implemented. Planes of Power has provided us with valuable insight into the group and guild dynamics that are involved in large scale games. The way that we had expected guilds to advance through the story of Planes of Power has become a problem for some guilds as some members have fallen behind and found it difficult to catch up. Obviously this was not our intention. We want people to play with their friends and guild mates.
To correct this issue, we will be allowing characters to enter the following Planes of Power zones by meeting a simple level requirement:
Level 55 and over
Plane of Storms
Plane of Torment
Plane of Valor
Crypt of Decay
Level 62 and over
Bastion of Thunder
Halls of Honor
Characters that don't meet the level requirement may still enter these zones using the existing flags, and raids may still bring additional unflagged or lower level characters with them. All other planes with flag or story requirements for entry will still require those flags, and those flags can still be obtained as they always have.
This will make the majority of Planes of Power zones available to characters over the minimum level, and will allow their guilds to travel and adventure together in the planes. We understand that those that have already earned the entry flags for these zones have put some effort into that accomplishment. We will be giving a reward to those that have done so, though you'll have to wait to see what that reward is.
7) Enhanced Spell Descriptions added. Spell casters spend hours studying their trade. It takes great mental effort to understand and master the complicated arcana needed to cast even the simplest of spells. We have added new information to the spell descriptions displayed in game. An additional line of text explains what the spell does in general and includes information such as damage and duration when appropriate.
A new method for memorizing spells. There was a day when casters only needed 32 pages in their spell books, with only 5 spells per page. These days spell books have 50 pages and 8 spells per page. Frankly, that's a lot of spells. We've come up with a new method for finding and memorizing spells that will make things easier for the overburdened spell caster. Right-clicking an empty spell gem will open a list of spell categories. Pointing your mouse at a category will display a list of spells. Selecting a spell from that list will make your character sit down, memorize the spell and stand back up.
We know that many people are happy with the existing spellbook system. Rest assured that the spellbook isn't going anywhere. This new memorization system is an optional convenience for those who wish to try out a new method of managing their spells. The spellbook remains the only way to scribe new spells.
9) Spell Favorites. Spell favorites are an easy way to memorize a full set of eight spells without the tedious book searching. Right-clicking on the spellbook icon in your spell window will open up the spell favorites menu. You will be able to save your current spell lineup as a favorite, delete a favorite or memorize all the spells in one of your already saved spell sets. As with the new spell context menus mentioned above, this will not replace the spellbook, it is meant to make memorizing large numbers of spells more convenient.
10) Damage Over Time spell messages. Damage over Time (DoT) spells cause a certain amount of damage to the target at intervals. Currently, the caster of the spell is only told about the damage done the first time the spell does damage. All the other intervals were a mystery. What certainly sounds like an easy feature to add required a bit of work, but after the next update DoT spells will report their damage to the caster each time damage is done.
If the new messages get to be too much for you, you can disable them in the Options window, much like any other type of damage reporting.
11) Improvements to the game for new players. New players can be overwhelmed by all of the items they find in the game (heck, so do those of us who have been playing for a few years). To help reduce that confusion, we are adding a Tradeskill tag to items that are used as components in trade skill recipes. To help guide new characters, Guildmasters will take a more active role in helping out new recruits by directing them to some starting points for quests. There will be even more quests in the newbie zones, most of them revolving around the pests that seem to inhabit even the grandest cities. In addition, NPC merchants as well as other notable folks will have a title that will explain what their jobs are. For example, a baking supply merchant can be recognized as such by the description beneath his name.
Also, as a heads up to players that have created their own user interfaces for EverQuest, these are the interface files that we expect to change next week.
