http://eq.stratics.com/content/hoclogs/20070516.php
here is the link....
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Monday, May 14, 2007
Lucy's List of Solteris Armor
this was a request from Pidagog.... the greatest ranger in the world....
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/itemlist.html?searchtext=energeiac
:)
or just ranger armor:;;;;
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/itemlist.html?searchtext=gleaming+ener
use lucy!
-funk
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/itemlist.html?searchtext=energeiac
:)
or just ranger armor:;;;;
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/itemlist.html?searchtext=gleaming+ener
use lucy!
-funk
Fabled Video Results!
Whelp! I didn't even make the top 10! oh well! Trolls aren't really the best artists...
If you'd like to see the official SOE release follow this link: http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/news_article.vm?id=50435
I really enjoye the winner, and I'd like to say I called it way in advance! (seriously, I believe if you search through my old post there is a specific spot where I said I think the winner's name would start with a Q.)
I'll be posting some updates on uber guild news later. Also, going over some of my forcasts for the next expansion... soo stay tuned, you can see the future of eq!
lol
-funk
If you'd like to see the official SOE release follow this link: http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/news_article.vm?id=50435
I really enjoye the winner, and I'd like to say I called it way in advance! (seriously, I believe if you search through my old post there is a specific spot where I said I think the winner's name would start with a Q.)
I'll be posting some updates on uber guild news later. Also, going over some of my forcasts for the next expansion... soo stay tuned, you can see the future of eq!
lol
-funk
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Swampfunk is a pirate?
Yo ho!
And since I am, I'd like to direct the attention of my readers to a story from the New York Times.
It's a funny story of pirates, lawyers, and a giant middle finger directed at the encryption of movies. The entertainment industry will have a crazy battle to fight if they ever want to prevent people from sharing films.
But, this has nothing to do about EverQuest! So, back to your gaming!
-Pirate Funk
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
If I were a Dev for a day!
EverQuest offers the best 54 person content available on the market. It also has the AA point system which keeps players playing. But EverQuest lacks a strong single group game play and a system of competition. EverQuest also lacks something that helps players to feel a skill ranking in the community. The closest thing to a ranking system currently is the Magelo Rankings and EQPlayers. The popularity of these ranking systems proves that the players do desire to compete with each other. It is unfeasible to fix and balance the current PvP system. Instead, I suggest a system that pits two groups against each other in instanced content, competitive PvE. These two groups would be placed in a identical instanced dungeon and would race to complete the goal of that dungeon. This system would offer players a place to meet, compete, and win loot in a short amount of time. There would be greater rewards, rankings, loot, and experience for winning a challenge. This system would not require any drastic changes to EverQuest game engine, the mechanics can be already found in the instanced system and the LDON ranking system. My design proposal is the EverQuest Dungeon Challenge.
Dungeon Challenges would require only one small static zone to serve as a meeting hub. This hub would allow players to gather, seek more players, prepare for a challenge, and find another group to challenge. Since all the challenges would be instanced, I believe it would be easy to also setup a system for cross server challenges. This change could really improve the community from a competitive and social stand point and attract a new crowd of players. An all-server leader board gives new players a way of meeting each other and gives successful players a bit of bragging rights. The Dungeon Challenges could be a recreation/imitation of any event that EverQuest has ever used. Building challenges to be similar to previous content would save time in design and creation. I will discuss a few of the various suggestions I would make if a system like this was ever implemented.
There would be three fields of Challenge; the first challenge is called the Skill Challenge. These challenges place two groups of any six members in a monster mission aimed at being completed in about an hour. Since monster missions have completely controlled conditions, the levels, gear, and AA of the players would not matter. The design of skill challenges would force the players to do a set of tasks that require real EverQuest related skills. A simple example challenge could be setting up a typical tank, slower, puller, healer, dps, and crowd control situation with a limited amount of tools. Since both teams have the exact same tools, the players’ skill would be the defining factor. The first team to finish would receive a superior reward for winning and the losing team would win a lesser reward. I will cover the loot system in great detail later. They would also be rewarded with the proper amount of experience for completing a skill challenge.
Currently in EverQuest, most content seems to be designed to take two, three, or more hours to complete. And while that is exactly what some players want, many other players want an activity that is quick: they don’t have the time to fight across a zone to get to another zone to get to another spot. They want to log in, find a group quickly, do something productive to get a reward (or a positive effect of some sort), and they want to do it in about an hour and a half. I propose that another style of challenge; a fast paced, short, yet exciting mission, what I have dubbed “DPS Challenge”.
A DPS Challenge could be any variety of fights aimed at testing the various styles of combat in EverQuest. These challenges would be designed for completion in around thirty minutes. There could be challenges aimed at one single rough and tough boss, or waves of attacking foes, or challenges in the fields of ice, fire, poison, disease, healing, curing, mezzing, or any other particular skill that the classes have. Basically you would have groups being formed for specific and very specialized tasks. Rarely seen models of bosses from older content could be recycled in as the various challenges (I think it would be very funny to get the Quarm challenge). The content would be properly tuned for a 6 man group, but you could keep the flavor of the original boss intact. Since these challenges would be short, they reward very little experience and only 1 loot per challenge (I will cover the loot system later).
In comparison to the short, and yet fast paced DPS Challenges, I would also introduce a third category of challenge; the Epic Challenge. An Epic Challenge would be similar to the nature of the LDON raid dungeon. If you take a really well geared level 75 group and attempt to do a LDON raid, you will get a similar product to what I would develop. These challenges would be three part dungeons involving scripts, puzzles, and various other obstacles (all using the current tools EverQuest already has in place). The goal of these challenges is to place the players, using their current characters, in a dungeon where they race to fight through a dungeon script to accomplish a list of tasks given to them. The time length to complete these dungeons would be around two hours, but it would be easy to add a few longer duration challenges for the especially hardcore matches. For each of the three parts of the dungeon that the teams complete they would recieve one loot. When each part of the dungeon is defeated there would need to be a mechanism to compare the status of the two groups; if winning they get a superior loot, if losing, the lesser loot for that leg of the challenge. These challenges would have the side benefit of giving the most experience (large number of foes to fight and defeat) and the most loot, but they take the longest to do.
A major problem currently in EverQuest is the loot gap between the high end players and the more casual players. If my proposal were created I would make sure that the loot that came from these events would be based off of the difficulty of the event (similar idea to the MPG trials loot system), giving everyone a chance to earn gear that they deserve. Groups will be able to read the description of a challenge before accepting it. The players will see what group (names, levels, AA, guild tag) is challenging them and the Dungeon Challenge they are being challenged on. One of the important factors would be the difficulty rating of the events. A simple rating of hard, medium, and easy in the description could let the players know how tough an event will be in comparison to their group’s level. Hard events could be aimed and matched to the current high end content, these events would be very difficult for anyone that doesn’t have the best gear and AA to complete, yet still difficult for those that event is designed for. The Medium rating would be more toned down events, designed with a more average player in mind. And finally the easy events could be designed for the less experienced players. There would be a variety of events, aimed at the various tiers of player strength; e.g. events that are aimed at Ashengate (75 Hard) Demiplane (75Medium/70 Hard), Anguish (70 Medium), Tacvi (68 hard) Qvic (65 hard), Time (65 medium), Elemental (65 easy), Luclin (60 hard), Velious (60 medium), and Kunark (60 easy), and so on.
The quality of loot would be determined by the challenge difficulty and the position the group finished. For example Group A challenges Group B on DPS Challenge: Ashengate Challenge. Ashengate Challenge is a level 75, Hard Event. Group A beats Ashengate first and wins a greater reward, group B gets a lesser reward when they finally beat Ashengate. Group A’s greater reward would be around 85% as effective as the current Ashengate raiding gear since they just completed a task that was aimed to be a challenge for a raiding single group. Group B lost, and will get a reward that is still 70% as nice as raiding gear, since they still managed to complete that exact same difficult task. Since that was a DPS challenge, and it only took 20-30 minutes, the groups will only get 1 loot. But don’t forget! Group A now has bragging rights for beating Group B (and the ranking boards will show that). The loot and gear should be inferior to real raid loot (but better than the current gear gap). I proposed 15%, but that is just a theoretical number and a real balance could be figured out once the difficulty of the events is determined.
The sense of competition and ability to gain loot via an alternative mean could attract a whole new crowd of players. EverQuest lacks a good method of player vs. player competition; the Dungeon Challenge system would fill this gap. There are many benefit of a system like this: All the content is instanced, making it easy to add, modify, or improve challenges. You can incorporate old unused models into the challenges in a fresh new way. You can incorporate older content flags into the challenge system to give more incentive to do older flag content (e.g. if you don’t have the Plane of Time flag you can’t request the Quarm challenge, but you could still be challenged to it).
The ability to gain loot in a single group setting is also a crucial part of this proposal. Currently, the lack of solid single group gear has become a sour spot in EverQuest. The MPG Trials of Omen of War really did a good job of challenging and rewarding the single group and it was very popular in the player community for this alternate form of progression (opposed to the raiding path). Since these challenges are actually two group events (even though they are competing, it still takes 2 groups), there is justification for giving loot that is superior to the current static content rewards. The Dungeon Challenge system offers the competitive player a way to progress through a variety of challenging and fun content in less than two hours. This will attract the players that cannot commit 30-40 hours a week raiding into EverQuest; it will also give an alternative form of competition and progress. Lockout timers can prevent abusive players from gaining too much, too fast. There is a field of competitive players that wishes to progress and they wish to compare themselves to the best of the game. The Dungeon Challenge system also offers the raider a chance to compete with other guilds (something that raiding guilds don’t get to do much), perhaps even with teams from other servers. A true ranking system would lead to greater competition and perhaps a larger crowd of players.
I want to recreate the instanced dungeon crawl; the idea is to give the players an alternative form of progression, a new form of competition, and still force them do the same sort of challenges that the raiding guilds have been doing for years. This will allow players to see the best part of EverQuest, a part that many have not seen. By challenging players with specific content, the development team can reward the players with loot that is tuned to difficulty of the event. Since these events revolve around two groups, there would be an added bonus for being able to bring together two groups. Even though a challenge is a competition, it should still be treated as a two group event (a neglected content type in EverQuest). The best part of this proposal is truly how easy a system like this would be to implement, it uses game mechanics that are already in place. There is a beauty about being able to sit down for two hours after dinner and complete something in EverQuest. I believe this could attract a very large crowd of players. It could offer an alternative form of progress for players to work on, without forcing the huge amount of time for raiding, (but yet the raiding guilds would still have the edge). This is a system of PvP without ever swinging a sword at another player, a true and thrilling system of competitive PvE that no other MMO on the market offers.
Dungeon Challenges would require only one small static zone to serve as a meeting hub. This hub would allow players to gather, seek more players, prepare for a challenge, and find another group to challenge. Since all the challenges would be instanced, I believe it would be easy to also setup a system for cross server challenges. This change could really improve the community from a competitive and social stand point and attract a new crowd of players. An all-server leader board gives new players a way of meeting each other and gives successful players a bit of bragging rights. The Dungeon Challenges could be a recreation/imitation of any event that EverQuest has ever used. Building challenges to be similar to previous content would save time in design and creation. I will discuss a few of the various suggestions I would make if a system like this was ever implemented.
There would be three fields of Challenge; the first challenge is called the Skill Challenge. These challenges place two groups of any six members in a monster mission aimed at being completed in about an hour. Since monster missions have completely controlled conditions, the levels, gear, and AA of the players would not matter. The design of skill challenges would force the players to do a set of tasks that require real EverQuest related skills. A simple example challenge could be setting up a typical tank, slower, puller, healer, dps, and crowd control situation with a limited amount of tools. Since both teams have the exact same tools, the players’ skill would be the defining factor. The first team to finish would receive a superior reward for winning and the losing team would win a lesser reward. I will cover the loot system in great detail later. They would also be rewarded with the proper amount of experience for completing a skill challenge.
Currently in EverQuest, most content seems to be designed to take two, three, or more hours to complete. And while that is exactly what some players want, many other players want an activity that is quick: they don’t have the time to fight across a zone to get to another zone to get to another spot. They want to log in, find a group quickly, do something productive to get a reward (or a positive effect of some sort), and they want to do it in about an hour and a half. I propose that another style of challenge; a fast paced, short, yet exciting mission, what I have dubbed “DPS Challenge”.
A DPS Challenge could be any variety of fights aimed at testing the various styles of combat in EverQuest. These challenges would be designed for completion in around thirty minutes. There could be challenges aimed at one single rough and tough boss, or waves of attacking foes, or challenges in the fields of ice, fire, poison, disease, healing, curing, mezzing, or any other particular skill that the classes have. Basically you would have groups being formed for specific and very specialized tasks. Rarely seen models of bosses from older content could be recycled in as the various challenges (I think it would be very funny to get the Quarm challenge). The content would be properly tuned for a 6 man group, but you could keep the flavor of the original boss intact. Since these challenges would be short, they reward very little experience and only 1 loot per challenge (I will cover the loot system later).
In comparison to the short, and yet fast paced DPS Challenges, I would also introduce a third category of challenge; the Epic Challenge. An Epic Challenge would be similar to the nature of the LDON raid dungeon. If you take a really well geared level 75 group and attempt to do a LDON raid, you will get a similar product to what I would develop. These challenges would be three part dungeons involving scripts, puzzles, and various other obstacles (all using the current tools EverQuest already has in place). The goal of these challenges is to place the players, using their current characters, in a dungeon where they race to fight through a dungeon script to accomplish a list of tasks given to them. The time length to complete these dungeons would be around two hours, but it would be easy to add a few longer duration challenges for the especially hardcore matches. For each of the three parts of the dungeon that the teams complete they would recieve one loot. When each part of the dungeon is defeated there would need to be a mechanism to compare the status of the two groups; if winning they get a superior loot, if losing, the lesser loot for that leg of the challenge. These challenges would have the side benefit of giving the most experience (large number of foes to fight and defeat) and the most loot, but they take the longest to do.
A major problem currently in EverQuest is the loot gap between the high end players and the more casual players. If my proposal were created I would make sure that the loot that came from these events would be based off of the difficulty of the event (similar idea to the MPG trials loot system), giving everyone a chance to earn gear that they deserve. Groups will be able to read the description of a challenge before accepting it. The players will see what group (names, levels, AA, guild tag) is challenging them and the Dungeon Challenge they are being challenged on. One of the important factors would be the difficulty rating of the events. A simple rating of hard, medium, and easy in the description could let the players know how tough an event will be in comparison to their group’s level. Hard events could be aimed and matched to the current high end content, these events would be very difficult for anyone that doesn’t have the best gear and AA to complete, yet still difficult for those that event is designed for. The Medium rating would be more toned down events, designed with a more average player in mind. And finally the easy events could be designed for the less experienced players. There would be a variety of events, aimed at the various tiers of player strength; e.g. events that are aimed at Ashengate (75 Hard) Demiplane (75Medium/70 Hard), Anguish (70 Medium), Tacvi (68 hard) Qvic (65 hard), Time (65 medium), Elemental (65 easy), Luclin (60 hard), Velious (60 medium), and Kunark (60 easy), and so on.
The quality of loot would be determined by the challenge difficulty and the position the group finished. For example Group A challenges Group B on DPS Challenge: Ashengate Challenge. Ashengate Challenge is a level 75, Hard Event. Group A beats Ashengate first and wins a greater reward, group B gets a lesser reward when they finally beat Ashengate. Group A’s greater reward would be around 85% as effective as the current Ashengate raiding gear since they just completed a task that was aimed to be a challenge for a raiding single group. Group B lost, and will get a reward that is still 70% as nice as raiding gear, since they still managed to complete that exact same difficult task. Since that was a DPS challenge, and it only took 20-30 minutes, the groups will only get 1 loot. But don’t forget! Group A now has bragging rights for beating Group B (and the ranking boards will show that). The loot and gear should be inferior to real raid loot (but better than the current gear gap). I proposed 15%, but that is just a theoretical number and a real balance could be figured out once the difficulty of the events is determined.
The sense of competition and ability to gain loot via an alternative mean could attract a whole new crowd of players. EverQuest lacks a good method of player vs. player competition; the Dungeon Challenge system would fill this gap. There are many benefit of a system like this: All the content is instanced, making it easy to add, modify, or improve challenges. You can incorporate old unused models into the challenges in a fresh new way. You can incorporate older content flags into the challenge system to give more incentive to do older flag content (e.g. if you don’t have the Plane of Time flag you can’t request the Quarm challenge, but you could still be challenged to it).
The ability to gain loot in a single group setting is also a crucial part of this proposal. Currently, the lack of solid single group gear has become a sour spot in EverQuest. The MPG Trials of Omen of War really did a good job of challenging and rewarding the single group and it was very popular in the player community for this alternate form of progression (opposed to the raiding path). Since these challenges are actually two group events (even though they are competing, it still takes 2 groups), there is justification for giving loot that is superior to the current static content rewards. The Dungeon Challenge system offers the competitive player a way to progress through a variety of challenging and fun content in less than two hours. This will attract the players that cannot commit 30-40 hours a week raiding into EverQuest; it will also give an alternative form of competition and progress. Lockout timers can prevent abusive players from gaining too much, too fast. There is a field of competitive players that wishes to progress and they wish to compare themselves to the best of the game. The Dungeon Challenge system also offers the raider a chance to compete with other guilds (something that raiding guilds don’t get to do much), perhaps even with teams from other servers. A true ranking system would lead to greater competition and perhaps a larger crowd of players.
I want to recreate the instanced dungeon crawl; the idea is to give the players an alternative form of progression, a new form of competition, and still force them do the same sort of challenges that the raiding guilds have been doing for years. This will allow players to see the best part of EverQuest, a part that many have not seen. By challenging players with specific content, the development team can reward the players with loot that is tuned to difficulty of the event. Since these events revolve around two groups, there would be an added bonus for being able to bring together two groups. Even though a challenge is a competition, it should still be treated as a two group event (a neglected content type in EverQuest). The best part of this proposal is truly how easy a system like this would be to implement, it uses game mechanics that are already in place. There is a beauty about being able to sit down for two hours after dinner and complete something in EverQuest. I believe this could attract a very large crowd of players. It could offer an alternative form of progress for players to work on, without forcing the huge amount of time for raiding, (but yet the raiding guilds would still have the edge). This is a system of PvP without ever swinging a sword at another player, a true and thrilling system of competitive PvE that no other MMO on the market offers.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Producer's Letter
http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/news_article.vm?id=50421
Follow that link to see the latest Producer's Letter from EverQuest's Cliny Worley. It really wasn't an interesting read. In short he says, "oh hi! sorry we screwed up a few things, we'll fix that in the future" ... "oh yea, next expansion is in November... and will be a yearly cycle release during november!"
Oh wow that's weird, a yearly cycle release schedule... who was the guy saying that it needed to be changed over a year ago? ME! Who was the one that predicted that would change the release cycle this expansion! ME!!! So, in short, you guys should always listen to my EQ predictions...lol
What does this mean to the gamers of everquest? well it means next year is going to be a LOOONG year. Swapping from 6 month expacs to 12 months means that everything should slow down.... I'd expect to see a Solteris 2.0 raid designed... something that soo hard that it takes the ubers a full 12 months to beat it.
What I wonder about the most is how will SoE keep people interested with events and shit during the year... and with the extra time, what will we be seeing Developers doing with that time? Will they be fixing shit? I doubt it....
Truth is, I'm probably more scared of this change, than I am happy. If SOE keeps dropping the ball like they have been since Omens of War... then I really worry for the future of EQ.... but if they take a card from that uber MMO WoW, then I think we might start seeing an improvement. Either way, it's change, and hopefully it is for the better.
Follow that link to see the latest Producer's Letter from EverQuest's Cliny Worley. It really wasn't an interesting read. In short he says, "oh hi! sorry we screwed up a few things, we'll fix that in the future" ... "oh yea, next expansion is in November... and will be a yearly cycle release during november!"
Oh wow that's weird, a yearly cycle release schedule... who was the guy saying that it needed to be changed over a year ago? ME! Who was the one that predicted that would change the release cycle this expansion! ME!!! So, in short, you guys should always listen to my EQ predictions...lol
What does this mean to the gamers of everquest? well it means next year is going to be a LOOONG year. Swapping from 6 month expacs to 12 months means that everything should slow down.... I'd expect to see a Solteris 2.0 raid designed... something that soo hard that it takes the ubers a full 12 months to beat it.
What I wonder about the most is how will SoE keep people interested with events and shit during the year... and with the extra time, what will we be seeing Developers doing with that time? Will they be fixing shit? I doubt it....
Truth is, I'm probably more scared of this change, than I am happy. If SOE keeps dropping the ball like they have been since Omens of War... then I really worry for the future of EQ.... but if they take a card from that uber MMO WoW, then I think we might start seeing an improvement. Either way, it's change, and hopefully it is for the better.
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