If any of you have played Diablo II Resurrected recently, you may already be familiar with a new feature they added called Terror Zones. If you aren’t here’s a link: https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-2/guide/terror-zones The gist in D2R is on an hourly basis a random zone gets “Terrorized,” and in the context of that game the mobs in the zone gain additional levels, which allows them to in some cases drop better items, and then due to the level increase the player earns additional exp. Unique monsters can also drop a specific unique charm only found in terror zones. Ok, now apply the CORE IDEA to EverQuest: “Terrorize” a random DUNGEON zone on a fixed interval. For EQ, 4 hour intervals might work well. Only dungeon style zones. (ex. Commonlands, and Western Wastes would not be eligible to be terrorized. The context of this probably changes in later expansions.) Terrorized zones will: Grant additional EXP Have increased monster difficulty (ex mobs have 20% increase to dmg and hp…or more!) Named monsters will drop mischief style loot Randomized loot from all items in the level band Drop more loot than normal Some ways to make this idea even better: Significantly reduce exp server wide to further incentivize playing in terror zones and the need to actively exp deeper into expansions. Scale a terror zone up to the max level of the expansion (ex. Blackburrow can get scaled to 50). Terrorize multiple zones at a time. 1 for each level band. (ex. 10-20, 20-30, 30-40, 40-50). Terrorize and scale zones from previous expansions too! (ex. Crystal Caverns gets terrorized to level 70 during Omens of War) Communicate the next terror zone in advance via global messages to prevent long travel times to dungeons that may end up being unfavorable for you (ex. Level 12 arrives in unrest only to find that 5 minutes later it will be terrorized to level 50). Rarely drop new items only found in terror zones. Could be items with stats, charms, cosmetics, currency for items, etc. I think this would be a cool way to simultaneously make more of the world relevant, and be a way to opt into increased difficulty in these terrorized zones. I also think that this is a great compromise to mischief style loot for those that are for and against the mischief loot concept. What do you think? Would this be an interesting feature to add to the next TLP? I think it could easily layer on top of almost any ruleset.
It's a miracle they have instanced zones working and thats just a virtualized container, they didnt have to change much code. This all sounds really cool but they just dont have the QA testing to implement it. On top of that, as soon as one of these zones went active the entire server would rush there stepping on each other. EQ is what it is, if you like it cool, if you don't there are other games!
sounds like a weird meaningless "feature" and rotating on 4 hours? meh... we have plenty other options and stuff to do, not like we need to invent the wheel for every server, we have tons of features that if put together right will make a brilliant server
It's a feature designed to incentivize playing the game in zones that you wouldn't normally play in. Not sure what game you are playing but, there isn't much for players to do in 2024. Most players raid log pretty early on after doing the big things like completing your epic and capping AAs in a single afternoon.
I would think you would want this to last a lot longer between swapping as people wouldn't want to spend a lot of time traveling every time it swaps especially in early era's when traveling is harder. Not to mention there are plenty of dungeons that would likely still get ignored with this change.
How could you possibly know that? It's a sketch of an idea that isn't implemented. So far we've heard this is a bad idea because too many people will go and a bad idea because no one will go. You guys are great, keep it up.
How exactly does saying that it would need to be longer then 4 hours suggesting that it is a bad idea? How exactly is pointing out that there are dungeons that people would avoid regardless of the bonus (especially if they are made harder) suggesting it is a bad idea?
This sounds very similar to the Halloween events we used to have back in 2001 in Rathe Mountains, Eask Karana, Comonlands and North Ro having higher level mobs for an hour and then switching back. It worked well as whenever you logged in you didn't have long to wait for the next spawn. 4 hours I think would be too long. Many players don't have a 4 hour window to play and could easily miss the higher spawns. I think I'd prefer open zones to dungeons. Most of EQs dungeons are where players already level, adding higher level mobs in other zones would encourage players to play in other zones. You could start in Commonlands for an hour on and hour off and then move to the following day to Kithicor Forest and do the same, the next day do East Karana, next day do North Karana, followed by South Karana, Lake Rathe, Rathe Mountains, Feerott, South Ro, North Ro, Butcherblock Mountains and then start the cycle again. If you don't want a daily change your could do a weekly, monthly or bi-hourly change. Every hour could work well if the next zone was connected.
The idea behind longer windows is actually for this reason, so that for any period within the 4 hours you have the ability to get to that zone and accomplish something meaningful. My suggestion would be for a zone in each level tier to always be active, so there's always a terror zone to engage with, and it will be active for long enough to make the travel and group formation process worth it. I think the system would be much less fun in open zones, however I would be ok with adding them to the pool of potential terror zones if that is what players wanted. I think there are a significant amount of dungeons that players essentially ignore these days (Nagena, Dalnir, Kaesora, Crystal Caverns, to name a few). This system would help get people out and explore these places. If some players feel this way, I think that is fine. I think for many players we are seeking additional challenge as the game has become quite easy. The terror zones do offer incentives to players that wish to take on the additional challenge. If you don't, you are free to go wherever you wish.
While anything new to the core game is welcome imo, we know what this looks like in EQ already from Fabled/HH zones. They are only as popular as long as the gear is relevant, and they are a cesspool of killstealing grief while that is true. Also consider updating the npc/loot tables every year to the current bis/max gear level becomes a scheduled task with an ever-increasing level of effort. Hard to get a dev manager to agree to that. Also consider doing this would further funnel the max level playerbase further into a subset of zones and create even more camp/spawn disputes where players trample each other for the best rewards. What would be much more preferable would be the ability to spawn a Fabled/HH/Terror instance on demand. Also regarding some of your 'tweaks' Seems arbitrary and more of a "your" preference thing. Hard no. Like above, don't force your preferences on others, especially by nerfing everything else. Yes! This exactly. And if I could add anything to this, increasing NPC density and respawn rate would be the ultimate way to make these attractive. In short, I like the idea of terrorizing zones, just don't terrorize the rest of the game while you're at it.
Totally agree with Dre above. No one is gate keeping here and no one said its rubbish. This is not our first rodeo and we like EQ for what it is. If we wanted all these cool features well...we can just go play a game like D2R. But we don't, you know why? We like EQ how it is.
This is basically a glorified hot zone. I don't doubt it would be interesting, but itemization would be an issue. Look at the CazicThule zone revamp that happened (the first one). No one uses the items because they are out of whack for the era, outside of the few useful clickies that come from the zone.
Something like this was done about 20 years ago. At night in certain zones, such as the forest by Paineel, higher lvl mobs would spawn. In each zone the mobs could drop up to 3 different items which were pretty nice for the lvl of people xp'ing there. IIRC a couple of the items were nice 2hb, and either a ring or earring. I probably still have the 2hb on an alt on live. Sadly that event seems to have disappeared over the years.
Decreasing exp in the other zones is a bad idea. Your just punishing players who don't want to join the rat race. I do like the general idea, though it should be instance zones. An issue with the HH zones was they took the base zone away from people who wanted it. Lots of quests cannot be done when HH is going on. Instead, just offer instances.
