Preston Welcome to another great Stratics house of commons chat with the developers or Everquest!
Preston Please direct all of your directly to me by typing /msg Preston My question here. Any questions sent to the developers will not be answered.
Preston Please direct all of your questions directly to me Preston
Preston The full logs will be available after the chat at http://eq.stratics.com shortly afterward.
Rashere Good evening everyone and thank you for coming. I'm Travis McGeathy, Lead Designer for EverQuest.
Maddoc Hey everyone, I'm Jason Mash, an Assistant Lead Designer for EverQuest.
Ngreth Hello. This is Adam "Ngreth" Bell, designer with a specialty in tradeskills.
Kytherea Hello everyone! I am Christina Delzer, the EverQuest Community Relations Manager.
Prathun-EQ Greetings all! I'm Jonathan Caraker, the spells designer for EverQuest (and sometimes raid and content, too!)
Merloc Hello, I'm Keith Turkowski, Item Designer.
Nodyin Hello everyone. My name is David Ford and I will be taking over responsibility for creating and maintaing AAs for Everquest in addition to creating content. I also periodically update the "Hot Zones"
Preston *Nolrog* What is the status on new PC models? Are there plans on giving all races upgraded racial abilities, similar to the drakkin breath weapon, so that they are more on par with each other (drakkin have a bit of an advantage now with the breath weapon, over other races.)
Rashere New player models are a long term development goal and we don't have a concrete timeframe for them yet. More than likely, they'll trickle in as we are able to complete them.
Rashere As to abilities, the drakkin breath attack is just a racial innate like others available to other races, but done in a slightly different way to add some more flavor to it. We're not likely to alter the innates that other classes currently have.
Preston *Cinexa* Hi guys! When will wizards get kick?
Prathun-EQ Hey Cinexa!
Prathun-EQ If you scour the Rathe Mountains and find the elusive Snake monk, he can teach even the frailest of wizards how to kick.
Prathun-EQ (not really)
Preston *drunkmime* Hey EQ devs, I was looking on the EQ website a while back and noticed the progresion servers. Could you enlighten me on that?
Maddoc The Progression Servers are a new server type that we created to give both new players and veteran players a means of experiencing the game in a progressive manner by requiring them to complete various criteria (kill target, quest completion, item discovery, etc) before unlocking the next expansion in the progression.
Maddoc There is a lot of information about the Progression Servers available to you on the EverQuest Live forums, which are located at http://eqforums.station.sony.com, it's definitely worth looking into, as they are very fun to play on.
Preston *Etrius* On the Progression Servers. Are the "unlinked" sections such as LDoN & LoY needed for progression to get to GoD
Maddoc Those two expansions are not required for unlocking the next expansion (Gates of Discord) in the server's progression paths, though they still do have events that can be completed for recognition.
Preston *Nolrog* Is there any possibility of making the bazaar searches available outside the bazaar? For example, so someone in PoK could quickly check to see if there were any buyers for tradeskill_item_001 instead of it being sold to a full merchant and getting destroyed.
Rashere The way the bazaar currently works is very zone centric. Of course, anything is possible given enough time and its an interesting idea, but its definitely not an easy change to make.
Preston *Cinexa* When will the class only items be seeing an upgrade and a focus ?
Merloc I'm reviewing feedback of the class specific TSS items, I should have time over the next few weeks to retune them... the issues effects for the Chest armor have been corrected and they will be going back in with the patch next week.
Preston *oiingo* Now that a guild has completed both sides of the Serpents Spine expansion (just a few minutes ago), is it too early to ask for details on what awaits in the 13th expansion?
Rashere Yeah, its a bit too early currently. I'm expecting there will be information available after the new year.
Preston *Nolrog* Would it be possible for druid KR/TR to be allowed to crit, like the cleric CH can? This doens't seem like it would be terribly unbalancing to the healing, especially since druids are envisioned to be able to be the main healer (even if it's a special AA that druids have to buy that would give them this ability or as part of the fabled druid stances.)
Prathun-EQ The spell effect on Percent Heal spells like Karana's Renewal isn't the same as a standard heal and it won't / can't crit.
Prathun-EQ I can always look into whether or not it would be appropriate to allow them to crit, but such a change would require code support and is pretty low priority.
Preston *tiveria* What kind of new content will be added to Everquest in the upcoming months?
Rashere We have several zone revamps in the pipeline right now, the first of which will be coming out with the patch next week. In addition, there are a bevy of holiday events heading your way and the new year will bring some surprising changes to the world of Norrath, but you'll have to wait and see for those.
Preston *Nolrog* Will the TSS tradeskill charms either have the pottery subcombine trivial significantly reduced or else have the pottered item changed to tradeable (currently, it's a 210 pottery trivial combine to make the unfired xxxx charm, and a 250 pottery trivial to fire the charm)?
Ngreth At this time I do not have any plans to change the trivials, nor the tradability of the TSS Charms.
Ngreth At a 200 skill a player has approximately a 94% chance to succeed, and since the cap is 95% this is close, and there is a success cap on the Firing that makes a 200 skill ALSO just 1% shy of the limit.
Ngreth So players that do not wish to take the Alternate Ability are not at a disadvantage.
Preston *Nolrog* Are the progression servers progressing faster than you had envisioned? Do you have any plans on adding in some bumps in the road to provide more of a challange (such as updating some of the scripts so that the encounters don't work exactly as the guide people are using states?)
Maddoc The Progression Servers are progressing about as I had initially expected, perhaps slightly faster, but that just goes to show you how excited people are about these servers. I don't have any plans to adjust any of the existing functionality for old encounters to slow down the progression, since we do want to keep the data the same between these servers and normal servers.
Maddoc At least as far as most encounters are concerned. We did have some zone dataset differences (Fear, Hate, Cazic, for instance), but they reverted at the appropriate times.
Preston *Nolrog* Is the population on each progression server still healthy? Are there plans for a merge of the two servers in the near future?
Maddoc The population of those servers is still healthy. They're actually doing better than we expected, really. The interest in these servers has really been pretty amazing, which makes it a fun project to be a part of.
Preston *Cinexa* Please tell us you are REALLY working on getting this hackers / macroquesters out of the game? i realize it's a large problem but can you update us with some headway somewhere? It feels like you don't care =((
Rashere We're constantly working on solutions to the problems with hackers and exploiters. Many of these changes are done behind the scenes so as to not tip off the people abusing the game.
Rashere That allows us to catch them and get rid of them permanently whereas announced changes tend to make them scurry away like cockroaches running from a bright light. For that reason, you won't see many of these changes publically announced, but its always an ongoing effort.
Preston *Nolrog* Will the new hotzones go in with next weeks patch? Can you give us a hint as to the theme?
Nodyin The Hot Zones will be changing with the next patch early next month. Included in the zones will be new itemization, new “named” NPCs and a new surprise that you’ll encounter as you hunt in each of these zones that will be similar but different than the Call for Help we did last time.
Nodyin The zones are listed here if you are interested: http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/boa ... .id=331019
Preston *Jetfire* Will TSS spells be updated to replace spells (like the cleric spell Rectitude which is useless) with useful ones (like an AC buff for CLR's)?
Prathun-EQ A handful of the TSS spells will be swapped or reintroduced, as I promised they would be.
Prathun-EQ However, as I mentioned on the EQLive boards already, it's not feasible or reasonable to give players upgrades to every spell they've ever wanted all in one shot. Some things will show up later.
Preston *oiingo* Could the idea of player-designed content every have any place in EQ? Quests, zone design, lore?
Rashere I'm going to assume that you're referring to true player-created areas of the game. Many player ideas eventually find their way into the game, but actually having something created directly by a player has a large number of obstacles that would have to be overcome before it was really viable. It's not something we have any plans on at this time.
Preston *oiingo* With the way instanced servers are designed, it is clear that moving characters between physical machines is doable. Could EQ some day have cross-server groups or events?
Rashere We've actually looked into this relatively recently, but the systems aren't set up to support it and the time involved to get it working wasn't really justifiable for the results. The idea is pretty intriguing, though, and I'm sure we'll revisit it at some point.
Preston *Etrius* Progression-wise, is there a lockout for one month if the expansion is defeated sooner than expected?
Maddoc There is a minimum amount of time that must pass before an expansion can be unlocked, which is *roughly* (note the emphasis) one month.
Preston *Ronda* Any way to increase the supply of Large Powersources (for TSS Raid armor)? Possibly a rare drop from trash mobs in Ashengate/Frostcrypt dungeons or from instances?
Nodyin We have discussed a few options regarding those power sources but we are not yet ready to make any changes at this time. Placing the power sources in the static zones was intended to encourage grouping outside of raid instances.
Preston *IS|kushinagi* Is there any plans to increase character customization in the same vein as DAOC did with Catacombs?
Rashere Our eventual goal is to redo all of the new player models using the system built for the Drakkin, which allows significantly more customization than is currently available with the older models.
Preston Please send your questions to Preston by using /msg Preston <My question here.> Questions sent to the developers will NOT be answered so please do not send them. You only need to send your question one time. Sending it multiple times will not increase the likelihood of it being answered.
Preston *oiingo* Only a small handful of intelligent items have been introduced to date, any chance we could see some more in the near future?
Merloc Intelligent items take significantly more time to create than normal items... but, I am planning to do several in the next expansion, and they should all be highly sought after by players.
Preston *Tasar|At_Work* Good afternoon, I don't play everquest i'm a 6 year vet on ultima online what would you say the major advantage of playing everquest is compaired to UO
Rashere I'm not too familiar with the state of UO these days, but EverQuest has a lot to offer any MMO player. The sheer amount of content in the game, the challenge, and the history can't be beat.
Rashere Modern EQ is easily comparable graphically to more recent games but with EverQuest you have the maturity and depth of a product that's been growing for nearly 8 years now and a long-standing community that simply can't be beat.
Kytherea You can also check out the game in Escape to Norrath at http://escapetonorrath.station.sony.com/
Kytherea there is no charge on that server until you reach level 10 and decide to subscribe
Preston *oiingo* It was noted that a new modeling system is in place for PCs. Could this have any affect on mounts? Could we take to the sky some day on the backs of griffons and the like?
Rashere The ability to create flying mounts and such really isn't tied to getting new models, but any sort of flying mount really needs to have the content around it built with it in mind. It's definitely not something we could really put in to use in older zones, but the possibility to introduce it into specific areas built with it in mind is there.
Preston *Ronda* Looking back at Demiplane, the only highly demanded item from raiding guilds that are progressing through TSS is the 2.5 Epic pages which means farming Mayong. Any possible future system to be implemented to obtain this other than clearing Demiplane?
Prathun-EQ There have always been "hot-spots" in itemization - reasons to continue visiting a zone long after you've saturated the guild with gear and armor with what you can handle.
Prathun-EQ Talisman of Vah Kerrath, clickies from Plane of Time, Epic 2.5 pages.
Prathun-EQ I'd rather keep Demi-Plane around as an option for raiding for those items than farm out the pages to a different zone.
Prathun-EQ And the combinations of answers for Mayong have *basically* been solved at this point, allowing guilds to select exactly which 2.5 page they want. A guaranteed page every Demi-Plane clear.
Preston That's it for this one folks! Thanks for joining us here on Stratics IRC, the logs will be up on http://.eq.stratics.com shortly. Be sure to come by next time!
Rashere Thanks for coming folks and have a great evening.
Kytherea Thank you for coming! See you next year in January.
Nodyin Goodbye!
Ngreth Thank you for coming! Have a great evening.
Kytherea er...no scratch that see you in December
Merloc Good bunch of questions, see you all next time.
Prathun-EQ Glad to see you all for the chat.
Happy holidays!
