Summer is finally here and the team is toiling away! We've got a few new faces added to the team and we're going to introduce them with some awesome headshots. On to what we're working on... QEYNOS RISES JULY 24 The new Qeynos is rife with intrigue and conflict as the city, Queen Antonia Bayle, and the Circle of Ten evolve and struggle to oversee the welfare of the goodly folk of Norrath. As is in most places in Norrath, power can tip the scales. The new racial quests, which are available at all levels, offer history and an introduction to your origins as well as a sense of your place within your race while experiencing the Qeynosian struggles. The new class and storyline quests, starting at level 20, drop you amidst the city's strife with your brethren all the way to the high court. PvP & BATTLEGROUNDS We have updated Player vs. Player (PvP) in several significant ways and I'll highlight a few here. For details, you can read this preview of the changes. Improvements include new and revised stats so the focus is on player skill, rather than primarily on gear, which is how it should be! Also, the ways tokens are earned have been adjusted to be more rewarding overall and there is a LOT of new gear starting at level 10 to spend tokens on. Another change we are happy to report is that we have returned to a system where your PvP stats are derived from PvE stats (and vice versa), which allows players to be effective in both styles of game play. This will make PvP more accessible overall. In addition, we have changed Battlegrounds to make it more fun, rewarding, and accessible for everyone. Anyone of any level can join a match from level 30 to 89 and be effective. We call this style of game play "Level Agnostic." Levels 90 to 92 will be in their own category for matches. In Battlegrounds, players can earn tokens and bonus tokens in several ways. There are achievements in each Battlegrounds type -- players can achieve bonus tokens for kill streaks, rewards for breaking streaks, capturing the flag, and more. We are excited to get feedback to these much-needed updates to PvP and Battlegrounds. CLASS FOCUS EFFECTS CHANGED Class Focus Effects have been consolidated and will now be available starting at level 9 and then every 9 levels in the Character Development window. General stat bonuses will be applied for every focus effect chosen. Class and Alternate Advancement ability dependencies do apply, but the progression is logical. That is, in order to select a focus effect for an ability, you have to earn the ability first. For more details, check out this post. When this change goes live with the Qeynos Rises Update, items with foci adornments will offer a currency refund. DUNGEON MAKER - PLAY AS YOUR CHARACTER Also this month, we expect to launch the ability to play as your character in Dungeon Maker. It's been on Test for several weeks and we have been tweaking and adjusting based on feedback. Like Battlegrounds, using your character in Dungeon Maker uses Level Agnostic gameplay. That means you can group with friends of any level and be effective. FIGHTER CHANGES Fighters will receive a new stance called "Recklessness," allowing them to do significant damage while sacrificing their ability to withstand damage. Also, fighter heals will be percentage-based, making them easier to understand and modify. A change to Strikethrough means that if you use a temporary buff to avoid NPC strikethroughs, you should actually notice the difference and take less damage. More detail is available in this post. NEWBIE EXPERIENCE TWEAKS We have made some tweaks and polished the newbie experiences for the New Halas and Neriak starting city areas to make them more rewarding and fun. Neriak’s Darklight Woods got a much-needed art overhaul which adds to the ambience of eeeeevil. New and better armor sets are available to level 20 and we will recommend that players opt for New Halas or Neriak upon entering the game their first time. One of our quest changes allows you to find NPCs that update your quests with easy-to-see icons next to their names. The other improvement is the ability to use quest items directly from your quest journal without having to go into your inventory. It's amazing what a difference those two changes make! Both will be live as of this week. Some minor adjustments based on feedback will trickle out also. We hope the newbie zone polish, coupled with these changes for questing, will improve the introduction of our game to new players and bring even more enthusiastic Norrathians into our community. SUMMER ONLY STUFF There is more coming! We will announce limited-time content for the summer that you won't want to miss. No spoilers yet, but I'm thrilled that we're going to be advancing the world story in subtle ways that have a real benefit to the community. SOEmote We've seen a lot of enthusiasm with the technology so we are going to make sure it's ready before we go live with it. Stay tuned! HELP US OUT! Please get on Test and Test Copy servers and help us make the best content possible for you. We find we get really great feedback when players participate. It makes our game better. For instructions on how to get your character over to Test Copy, go here.
The content is not ready to be tested at this time as far as the class focus changes go. Mitigation changes which are going to have the biggest impact (yes far bigger than the SOEmote) are not ready to be tested. The extra Mit has not been added to Magi's shielding, the group mit that will be added to the priest buffs, scout self buffs etc. Xelgad says it is coming, but when? This week having a holiday jammed right in the middle I'm not expecting an update to test much less live (still many pieces of SS equipment that were overlooked), the clock is quickly ticking away to the date that this content will be pushed live. The concerns that we will be going through weeks and weeks of tweaks to try to rectify what is being done to mitigation are not at all unreasonable. This is a BIG change, and is going to have a signifigant impact on the raiding community, and I do not see this getting a thorough look on test, hard enough to get 24 to log in to raid some nights, and there is really no incentive to doing it on test and right now there is not even any point whatsoever in looking at it at all, the data gathered will be worthless in regards to the mitigation changes.
Windstalker wrote: Any chance of changing the art on the race gates so you don't have flashing police lights interrupting your eeeeevil ambience?
Windstalker wrote: Speaking of advancing the world story, what are you doing to align your "story" with what is actually going on in the world? The current storyline is predicated on Rallos Zek having been killed. If you haven't noticed, he hasn't actually been killed. It's a bit ridiculous that all the NPCs are going on about this nonsense of him being dead when no one has so much as fought him.
Windstalker wrote: QEYNOS RISES JULY 24: The revamped Qeynos zones look like garbage. Not much of a difference at all, other than losing the suburbs, which numerous people have complained is a huge mistake, like the FP revamp. PVP & BATTLEGROUNDS: Good for them. I don't pvp or do bg, but they have been neglected for quite some time. Glad to see them get some much needed attention. CLASS FOCUS EFFECTS CHANGED: Again, another change from SoE that the players don't want, don't need, and are hugely up in arms about. DUNGEON MAKER-PLAY AS YOUR CHARACTER: I guess this is ok. People have asked for it, so it might get people to do player-made dungeons more. FIGHTER CHANGES: Not sure about this, as I don't have a high level fighter, but from all the screaming on the in-testing forums, seems to be a bad idea. NEWBIE EXPERIENCE TWEAKS: Honestly, recommending that players opt for TWO starting zones now? For the love of Tunare, let the players chose where they want to start. PLAY YOUR WAY, remember? SUMMER ONLY STUFF: No info, so no comment. SOEmote: Another useless fluff item that again, nobody asked for. HELP US OUT! Um, you already have dozens of people on test server, giving you excellent feedback, just as they have been doing for years. Unfortunately, their bug reports don't get read, things still get pushed live broken or ignored. There are things on test right now that can't be tested because the content isn't there. All in all, color me NOT impressed. Stop pushing things live when they are broken, and actually take the advice your player base and testers give you to heart.
Any chance of you guys adding more "Killer, Hunter, Slayer, Destroyer" Achievements any time soon? Since I mean, you haven't added any since RoK.
So I heard somewhere that there was going to be a guild revamp coming up. Not entirely sure where or when... My point being is I have an idea about a new guild "Feature" as you will for leaders the ability to make an alliance with guilds and possibly an allied guild roster. There are just TOO many small guilds on Freeport server and no one wants to leave all the people they have been playing with and gotten to know (I don't blame them) BUT this might open up an opportunity to more people getting into raiding whose guilds just don't have the reinforcements on their own without the worry of a usually fail PUG. Just an idea to toss around and play with although I'd love to see it really happen
I like the change to focus effects. Isn't this a good time to consider making the mythical buff a little easier to obtain at least for alts? The story lines of the epic quests are very good, but I think some of the faction building is a bit outdated. For example my new assassin needs Terrens Grast/Rillis/Reet faction, that is over 100 quests which are not at all relevant to a level 90 anymore.
jdawg_1_1 wrote: This is a great idea that has been brought up many times over the years. A guild merger tool would be an excellent way to bring small guilds together and make them stronger. All guild xp would be combined and guild roster joined. All member would retain their standings e.g. alt, leader etc I'd expect it to work like (one guild leader) /invite guildmerge (other guild leader)
Ritten@Splitpaw wrote: I'd counter that if you desire a reward that comes from doing the quest, then that quest is indeed relevant no matter your level. Certainly they wouldn't be CHALLENGING, just a time sink. Go quest, young man. (Or woman, or whatever race/gender pronoun applies.)
Gealaen_Gaiamancer wrote: So where is the fun in a dumb time sink? Especially when you've done the questlines more than once before? They could at least make a faction token like they did for DoV factions, or make the faction items heirloom. I'm not saying I want instant reward, I'm just saying that if you move focus effects from gear to character window, with the explanation that they are sort of 'standard' for the character these days, then what about the mythical buff. Isn't it sort of standard too? At least at level 92?
Gealaen_Gaiamancer wrote: Only thing is with a merger someone would have to give up a hall because it would become one guild and i'd assume with alliances they'd make you able to have more than one and add a new "ally roster" obviously there would have to be some sort of a limit say 5 or so but I assume most of the community would be on board and happy to see something like that implemented.
Would be nice to hear what a dev or mod has to say about that though. I don't think it would be too much work since the rosters are already made up from the guilds just have to combine them with each alliance ( Then again I'm not the one that has to code it in either )
Any chance we might have PvE level agnostic mentoring applied? I love being super saiyan when mentored down as much as the next person but sometimes 1 hit kills take some of the PvE interaction and strategy out of the game while solo and makes grouping with lowbies not following the train not possible. LA BG and LA DM are good but wouldn't PvE LA M also be good too?
jdawg_1_1 wrote: you dont even need to combine the rosters at all simply add a tab next to the ingame guild roster in the window it would display the allied guilds and their online/offline members (could be toggled like in the standard guild roster) Then there is the matter of alliance chat a seperate channel could be created while also giving guild in the alliance the option to transmit what is said in guild chat to alliance (and vice versa) as long as the reciving guild also has that option enabled. It achieves almost everying a guild merger would accopmlish except for merging the guild halls and leaders.
I just wish the Qeynos housing has better names than room 1, room 2, etc. Maybe do a portal (similar to prestige housing) and port players to Starcrest Commune Inn, or where ever. For the guild alliance recommendation, I don't think it's really necessary. One of my guilds, when it started out, had members with alts in another guild. We just invited them (playing the needed classes) to raid whenever necessary, or even go to open chat to look for people. There're raid chat and raid voice channel for easy communication. And we can friend those people we want to raid with, so we know when they're on. The problem with separate guilds is loot rights, and I don't see how a guild alliance will solve that; unless everyone will need to start over in collecting alliance status points.
Terrorpeutic wrote: Considering they left the FP newb inn rooms as "Inn Room 01", "Inn Room 02", etc... I wouldn't hold my breath on them changing the Qeynos ones. Both seriously need it though, reading (for example) "Nettleville Inn Room" would be a lot more descriptive than "Qeynos Inn Room 05".
