Everquest - Live Servers

Flipmode said:

Will do. Any essential adding or UI stuff I need?

Click to expand...

NeverPayForLag said:

Please check the double-opt-in first before proceeding..


Some minor elements of sarcasm and irony are perhaps insulting your mimosian soul....


But beware and be strong if you can beat this...


Else .. please GOTO ->End


_________________________




yep... thought I get some gear to be able to complete RoS progression but that was a wrong idea - but it is not the first time I remember in EQ, an expansion was a waste of money or a financial injection for the company until next try or fail. GoD, Underfoot, ... if I think about that, old memories caress my Alzheimer brain....




But to be fair I searched for some advantages and I found some.




Armor and Weapons are a dream (the first and most important reason to buy) - BUT locked behind everything as long as you don't let you drag along by some elite players. If you box, molo/solo, kite or anything which filled gaps between the grouping then you can cherry-pick small parts. If you have not this chance due to playtime or people you are simply stuck in one zone. But hey, it is a social network, you play because you like the people and the talking in the general chat (like.... "you are useless", "mercs are useless", "you suck", "you have no skillz", "xyz has no skills"... "your guild has no skillzsssss.... you know the level 1 guy with the typical ending .....bur...bim..bam..bum...who is entertaining e.g. AB for decades now? Hey, fun, jay... ).




The boni from Achievements are a dream - if you ever would be able to do them in this expansion to be able to use them accordingly and if EQ survives to the next expansion and you are even able to do some of them but for the real cool stuff you need ALL challenger achievements... oops... (somebody told me, everything before but is shh....). But I could even use Tome of Obulus despite it is old outdated crap as long as.. you don't need the added stats in the range item and you are happy with some DPS boost... but this is good stuff to twink-twink-twink your "little" alts.. I have a level 2 which is proud owner of it... is as useful sometimes...




Non-Prestige items are in this expansion only a touch better than in RoS. Not really an incentive. I even avoided Scaled T2 RoS and used Conflagrant and this is nearly on par with TBL (if you don't look at the numbers but at the percentage boost - but if you prefer good feeling and not logic, yes TBL T1 is world better for the gut ) (2).




The AAs are sparse and expensive and surely don't make a hell of difference with 1-2% boost partly. But if you need a bit positive emotion for your frontal lobe, take the reason on (2). Every collector is happy to collect, the more if only 1 piece is missing...




Spells now have been corrected (after being bugged from the start, but hey... I discovered it only on the 20th or so wipe ) but without progression they are on par with RoS/EoK (e.g. Dicho). Again if you like some moodsoothing bodyinternal drugs, use method (2) for it.




Allliance spells are useless except you PL regularly your dream team with bots into playable toons - I like my very first toons and have no fun in playing 3 SKs, 3 Zerkers, 3 Mages or 3 Whatsoevers only to use the Alliance stuff (which I didn't liked in EQ2 and now we have them here), neither do I want to waste my time racing something up to level 110 with 30k+ AA. The reason why somebody has a "character" is to evolve this, not to drop it all the time when the tasks doesn't fit anymore like a commodity. But EQ evolved now into the hire-and-fire-your-character-mentality. That fits a bit in DGBs latest layoffs. But perhaps this is a spoiler - a cheat - I miss the point - I should have 60-70 alts to choose according the taste of the season (sorry, couldn' resist because.... this is true for some players who really have them up to 110, including more than one guild only for themselves .. I bow before the gods of multiplaying and the big purse in devotion... and my condolence to the once who are the victim of the layoffs on christmas , I feel with you while I look into this screen of the first zone... ).




Drops are locked up behind insane named and they are all nodrop (and I include the named itself for casuals and boxers, they don't drop.... .. mh.. I believe I am in that picture a kind of a "hastydrop", this is short before FD, only with rezz addon ) - including tradeskill parts to make an end product (Gear -> Muhbis) - so also no incentive and no upgrade. BUT (remember the last idea about but?)... we have new bags if we can make something in that expansion to store them in 42 and 44 slots. I could store my non-existent Muhbis virtually to ease my mind and create some bags for it which I don't get until the next expansion perhaps.. is over... done... here......




You should buy the expansion?




If you are elite player and want a significant upgrade of your current stuff or tune up alts, as long as you pay them in "Gold". But hey, if anybody has a real clue about economics - the chinese buy gold, the russians buy gold, even the US-Boys don't trust their dollar anymore because all the insiders prepare the next banking crash in a strength so that all governments have to jump in and finance it via the taxes from the small people. It is not to-big-to-fail, meanwhile it is to-big-to-Jail - if you know HBSC but.. mh.. sounds like a shortcut from EQ... mh.. think-think-think-think... I need a drink...




If you are raider and you are in an elite guild - else stick to the raids you miss from later expansions because you - like a famous auto-polarizer in the general AB chat with the everchanging name of ...bur...bim..bam..bum..... and the evernotchanging level 1 likes to formulate - "have no skillszssss". Yes we appreciate our mascot... everybody needs a pet....




If you have no problem to wait till all bugs are done, all retuning (if any) are made and all first rollers have their gear and announce rotting things (as long as you can get a fellowship jump, because ports don't work, if nobody dragged you through the Trials of the first zone - oh and if so you can expect that the zone will aggro you somehow... interesting... I want to test that with a level 1 for fun. Nothing is cooler than jumping into a bunch of high end mobs and say "rrrrrrRAAANGERRRR" knowing that you cannot loose XP and you have no ability to gate.. yay...).




You are a grouper who likes the absolute edge of "good old classic" - means - TLP-style playfield with constant meddings, OOMs, time sinks and lockout timers (60h) from tasks which are comparable to old classic raid mob repops, only at the high end level instead of the "Kindergarden". And if you somehow use taskdrops mechanics which have the damocles sword of getting a ban levitating over your head. Adrenalin pure, suitjumping is dirt compared to that. Other people climb mountains without ropes which have 90 degrees upward slope, swim around Great Britain (did I see that living on an island is not healthy?), jump down from bridges with only a wingsuit - these "wussies" do not even know what danger is ! .




As a grouper who has a constant group available and has no problem for the typical "Looking for a group"-cycles. Hey, wasn't that fun years ago when no mercs or boxes were used - oh.. a good ole classic time revived from the graveyard of the old - but you should be fast because if the elite players are through the first zone, you can search for somebody to drag you through, except you are lucky in a guild who spends much time in dragging you through the locks, before they wear out.... but hey... your social skillzssss will improve exorbitantly and you never have even the chance to get into the low subculture of ....bur..bim..bam...bums for the need to spam the chat with spam-spam-spam, like Monty Python would sing..




If you are happy with having more Ding for the Bang on a Mob for a Slap while only cherry-picking the ones who are not the biggest problem - as long as you can pull them single, hint-hint ->(1) .




If you are happy with (1), have a box who is mighty mighty mighty (means capable of (1)) and you have no problem to get the "Fight Fire"-task of the first zone only to avoid any AEs and kill for the sake of XP and AA without interference, but also without named (you see, there are so many ands, ifs and ors in that text - you have to have a training in digital design to read that post ). This will have the advantage that you can sleep overnight for 6 hours in this zone to avoid login in again - so that you never encounter another failure on the login server and nobody really can complain that you are afk in the wide zoneland with accidental aggros and trains from players who want to give you a personal christmas gift... . But think about it, use the clock. If you sleep longer than 6 hours, the task fails and you a landing in front of the quest giver and this area is wellknown to knock-you-to-death out of whatever bugged reason ever - but if you are a necro then simply pretend that you do it by purpose with FD. It looks nearly the same...




You are a botter with complete elite setup, 3rd party tools up to the ear lobe, can automate everything, clap your shoes three times and say "there is no place like roam - there is no rezz like newborn - there is no face like moan" (I don't know which works best), gives a **** about DGB (like the ones who are currently botting in OT with a guild name which expresses exactly that or call it simply "no risk no run" or was it "Better level fast than be banned long"???) then you are the perfect candidat to program one year for a bot so that you are ready to play the xpac when the next one arrives..... yes.. I know.. some are there who are able to do that instantly with they manual ubah skillz and tell everybody that the xpac is easy and you only need TBM or EoK armor...




A seller who is only there for making profit for Kronos and has the tricks of the trade to do so. But there are nearly no people who do that, only bad gamblers on wallstreet and good not-only-chinese botters on crack who powerlevel a toon from L1 to L110 with 30k AA in a day while getting a streak .. darn english.. stroke or heart attack at the end of the session...




so.. this could be a nice summary... I hope it is not too obvious that I have a bit time while staring at the screen thinking what to do next...




XPing AAs in Fight Fire again is a viable option, that was a solution which does not make me so much happy but if an occasional LFG wants to have a non-elite dragging through the Trials I can kill some mobs for christmas.Thanks to the nice lady who desperately tried to port or zephyr me into Esianti. I must apologize, I had no clue that by buttock is so heavy and the gods so abs..abs... ähm.. absent (english word?)... Next time will will make some sports, trim my body shape and drop my weight. Next time it will work... next time I will take a sexy wingsuit so that Esianti will not stop me again from dropping down if I ever get a lift up...




This reminds me on Underfoot. Did only the first zone at that time. Now it is so wasted that nobody wants to play that anymore. But I BEAT it, yay... ! ...after about 5-6 expansion later.....


I think, this expansion will be the same - if EQ is still standing and not going down with this expansion... But I expect that another company buys it and perhaps they are more competent to put money into it instead into the pockets of some russian managers at the top, so that some zones are left for the Kindergarden who wants to play with some minor toys...




-> END


my 2 cents from the front...

Click to expand...

Dzarn said:

Strap in, it's a long post...
Obviously communication has been lacking on the systems front lately and I hope to offer the community a little insight. I'll lead with the main question and expound from there.
TLDR
Scheduling is tight and we don't have enough people.
Why so few AAs this time?
For the better part of 3 years I have been working as both a systems designer and and programmer, with the last 1.5 years of my time being split at approximately 70% code hours 30% design hours. The opportunity to gain experience working on larger code initiatives in addition to the smaller bugfixing I was previously doing to keep the game running was something that made a lot of sense. Not to mention the financial incentive to move onto the engineering track from the design track.
Going back to last year, in the 2-3 months leading up to the previous expansion I clocked in approximately 754 hours, coming into the office most weekends and putting in very long weekdays. Far less awful than the war stories many of my colleagues in the industry have suffered through, but we get to make games, which theoretically is something we want to be doing.
By the time the last expansion launched my communication with the community was obviously lacking but I was relatively happy with the systems work I was able to implement, or at last as happy as any developer can be. The team and I share the sort of driving passion that tends to carry us through the rough work days. So for all the anonymous negativity that gets projected at the team and company, we still derive fulfillment from what we do. We get to work on EverQuest, that's a big deal, it's something important and meaningful to us.
Unfortunately for our team EverQuest does not exist in a vacuum here. So when it came time for bonuses, which traditionally account for 15-20% of my annual pay, despite year over year strong performance from a passionate and consistently engaged community, I took a 7% pay cut from the previous year. Granted I remained employed, while a lot of incredibly talented and equally hard working people, through no fault of their own, did not.
That financial stress would have been fine if not for my banal human desire for family. So while working myself ragged so that I could be proud of my work I put an unfair burden on my fiance because I was never at home to help care for the puppy we adopted; or more importantly, be a partner to her.
So when I took stock of the important things in life I realized that sacrificing everything outside of work for the sake of pride and polish simply isn't sustainable, which hurt me a lot. I am someone who takes considerable pride in my work. I wear that Norrathian Martyr badge proudly. I was 12 years old when I started playing and have dedicated nearly all of my life to EverQuest since, first as a player and now as a developer. So to see the sum total of that dedication result in yet another year that I struggle to provide for the ones I love, it did some considerable damage to my motivation to give more than can be expected to keep the ship afloat.
After that revelation, I've striven to be a better human being. Foremost by being home on time to walk our dog in the evening so that my incredibly patient and understanding fiance doesn't have to ask at 11pm whether I'll be home for dinner or not. It wasn't feasible to go beyond the hours scheduled for AA development given the enormity of the engineering workload the team has slogged through this year.
So I more than fully understand the community's disappointment with the scope of AA development and while my post count has decreased substantially from earlier years I do honestly read just about everything posted here on the forums. My ever-expanding to-do list (in bullet point format) is 21 pages long.
Class AAs?
With the time that was available I made the decision that the more important part of AAs to get finished were passive ability upgrades. These take considerably less time than the activated abilities both because they're shared between more classes and because there is less spell implementation, which takes considerable time given the lack of tools to expedite the process.
Within the 30% of my work-year that comprises design work I also had to complete the implementation of achievements and their rewards, serve as a knowledge-base for all the strange arcana that defines how any-and-everything gets implemented, and I'm currently scrambling to ensure the design work for the faction window that the engineering team and I are putting the final touches on now will get done in time for launch.
More later?
I don't expect that to fit into the current schedule. The design team is already working on about 3 major initiatives for next year and the programming team on several more than that; much of which is mandatory behind-the-scenes efforts to fix services like the login servers, character data, stability issues, etc.
I want to be able to say that the EverQuest team is aware of community sentiment. We want to be able to do more for you but I feel there's a misconception on the size and scope of things. I would strongly encourage everyone to peruse the current credits and understand that the scope of things that get put into a release are done by people with the titles "Artist", "Designer", "Programmer".
This is not in any way meant to belittle the efforts of all the other shared services people that contribute to the game, but with 4.5 artists, 5.3 designers, and 5.7 programmers, there is only so much that is humanly possible. Not to mention the fact that the EverQuest team has been continually begging management for 2 additional content designers for multiple years to no avail.
So?
So that's the behind the curtains view of why AAs look like they are. I certainly wish I could paint a better picture but I feel like I owe you, the community that has given me so much, some sort of explanation. Please see TLDR version if you skipped this essay.

Click to expand...