Seven years later is better than never

[Lyion]

Upcoming EQ changes

http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/boa ... .id=274364

In addition to the upcoming launch of The Serpent’s Spine, we are working on a number of improvements to EverQuest at the same time. I wanted to give everyone else a head’s up on some of the changes that are coming your way. These changes are still undergoing testing so may change before they go live. We are attempting to get these out in the same patch that introduces The Serpent’s Spine, but they are not part of the expansion and if deemed necessary, may be introduced at a later date. Due to the size of the post, this one is specific to downtime changes.

Likely the biggest change we are making is one aimed at reducing the amount of downtime in EverQuest. As EverQuest has grown over the years, the amount of downtime imposed upon players has grown as well and we’d rather players find challenge in the fights themselves than in the tedium between them. Toward that end, we’ve created a new system that is simple to use, but powerful and flexible enough to control downtime as the game continues to grow.

The basics of the new system are relatively simple. Once you have been out-of-combat for a sufficient amount of time, you can sit down (or be on a non-moving horse) and begin to rest. While resting, you enter an accelerated regeneration state that will quickly recover your mana, health, and endurance. For most single group content, once you are out of combat for 30 seconds you can rest. While dealing with multi-group content, that time is 5 minutes. The amount of time you have to be out-of-combat before you can rest varies for group content and raid content due to the different needs of the different encounter types.

There are a series of icons that will display by your character’s name to let you know what your character’s current state is.

Crossed Swords – You are currently in-combat.

Hour Glass – You are out of combat, but not yet in a resting state. In addition to the hourglass, there is a timer bar beneath the endurance bar that will count down as you get closer to being rested.

Poison Drop – You are no longer in combat, but cannot rest because of a debuff that is affecting you. You must get rid of the debuff before you can rest.

Void – The void is the default icon and indicates that you are not in-combat and you can rest at any time.

Energy Swirl – The energy swirl indicates that you are currently resting.

That is pretty much all you need to know to make full use of the new system when it goes live, but for those of you interested in the behind-the-scenes details, here is how the system works.

The system is based around you being in one of two states at all times: in-combat or out-of-combat. Being in-combat is defined by being on the hate list of any creature in the zone. To prevent problems with being stuck in a combat state due to some creature on the other side of the zone hating you because you ran past it 15 minutes ago, creatures will remove you from their hate list if you get far enough away from them that they no longer care about you and remain that way for more than 30 seconds.

Every NPC in the game has a rest timer associated with it. When you enter combat with a creature, you will gain their rest timer if it is greater than any rest timer you currently have on you. Once you are no longer in a combat state, that timer will begin to count down. The rest timer varies depending on the difficulty of the encounter you are fighting. For most creatures, the rest timer is 30 seconds but for multi-group content (defined by the initial intention of the content) the rest timer is 5 minutes. This difference is included to prevent potential exploits associated with classes that can drop hate at will (fading memories, evacs, etc.). In a raid situation where fights can last for quite a while, this could easily be abused. Rest timers are persistent through zoning and logging out, but are cleared upon death (the death debuff itself, though, keeps you from being able to rest until it is gone). NPCs that give the extended rest timer will have extra text in their con message that denotes them as a multi-group encounter so you can know ahead of time that they will give you the longer rest timer.

There are a few special cases that we included to ensure we’re covering any potential loopholes.

*
If you buff, heal, or otherwise positively interact with a player who has an active rest timer, you will inherit their timer if it is greater than the one you currently have.
*
If you attack (or are attacked by) another player in a pvp setting, you will gain a 30 second rest timer.
*
If you have a debuff on yourself, you cannot rest even if you do not have a rest timer on yourself. Certain debuffs can be flagged to not impact your ability to rest if needed. Those debuffs will have a yellow border instead of a red one on their buff icon.
*
If you are attacked, you gain the rest timer of the creature attacking you. The exception is if this is self-inflicted damage. Self-inflicted damage does not incur a rest timer.

Resting regeneration is percentage-based regeneration for health, mana, and endurance and is currently set to take you from 0 to full in 3 minutes. This allows it to scale with gear, so you aren’t penalized for getting better gear, and ensures that downtime never becomes a problem again as the game continues to grow. This system replaces the older advanced regeneration that was introduced for health.

[Gargamellow]

yay changing the game...what fucking assholes...

maybe ill quit

[Zanchief]

All the purests who say WoW ripped off EQ can now go screw themselves.

[Lyion]

WOW ripped off just about every popular MMO out there. They were wise enough not to just copy EQ.

Generally, good developers take the better parts of competitors products and integrate them into their own. The better ones don't take quite as long as SOE.

[Snero]

theres tons of stuff in eq that wow copies

when I played eq, down time was never an issue, this would help after wipes but other then that it'll mostly help soloers which is the bane of all mmorpgs. Wizards quad kiting just got made a hell of a lot more powerful, now they can unload all their mana, destroy something and then go back for more right after. Downtime was the one disadvantage over grouping really (that and boredom), if you soloed you did stuff then sat down for a while, whereas if you grouped you kept going all the time. For a good soloing class, theres like, no reason to group ever if you're just looking for xp

[Zanchief]

theres tons of stuff in eq that wow copies

And almost all those things EQ stole from someone beforehand.

[Snero]

how does that in any way change the fact that they copied stuff from eq? your response has nothing to do with what I wrote

All the purests who say WoW ripped off EQ can now go screw themselves.

they did, at least in many respects. EQ may have not come up with a lot of what they did, but they did make it popular. A lot of the programmers and people in charge of wow were avid EQers, to say they took nothing away from their experience is dead wrong

[Dylan]

These changes are stupid.

And arguing over who stole what from who is even stupider.

Of course WoW took ideas from EQ, they saw what good things EQ had done and used some of those, but they also saw ALOT of things EQ did wrong and avoided them. To say WoW didn't rip off anything from EQ is ignorant.

And now that EQ sees something that WoW did that they think is a good idea, good for them. I'd rather see them change, than sit in a cave in the dark with their fingers in their ears.

[Harrison]

I'm going to own up and down with this change.

[Tikker]

creatures will remove you from their hate list if you get far enough away from them that they no longer care about you and remain that way for more than 30 seconds.

i sense manalope reloading his account now

[Zanchief]

how does that in any way change the fact that they copied stuff from eq? your response has nothing to do with what I wrote

It doesn't change the fact that they copied stuff from EQ, but EQ is hardly the victim you paint them out to be, which is why my response is relevant. Thanks being a rule nazi though. Those people are super awesome.

[Snero]

ha, a rule nazi, thats pathetic, no where in any post have I mentioned any kind of rules. Also nobody sees EQ as being any kind of victim

[Zanchief]

EQ may have not come up with a lot of what they did, but they did make it popular.

EQ may have made things popular to some degree, but Blizzard elevated the entire MMO genre in a way that EQ never could.

It doesn't matter who copied what, in the end Blizzard has the superior product with the far stronger player base. Arguing who stole what from whom is pointless, which was my point.

[Gargamellow]

um..no...eq rocks..all other games blow ass...

[Zanchief]

um..no...eq rocks..all other games blow ass...

true...

<img src ="http://www.wonderlandblog.com/wonderland/images/subscriptions_12473_image001.gif">

[Gargamellow]

WoW is easier..so of course mroe people are going to want to play it..duh!

[Snero]

and I'm in no way saying that eq or wow is a better game, I played eq for a long time and I've been playing wow for months now, they both have their good sides and their bad sides. You can't really argue with wow's popularity though, they're to eq, what eq was to mmorpgs before

[Gargamellow]

killing people is popular too and you won't see me doing it

[Zanchief]

WoW is easier..so of course mroe people are going to want to play it..duh!

I don't think more is quite the right word in this situation. Mroe either~

[Gargamellow]

yay typo...u suck donkeydong

[Snero]

in reference to the original post, it seems that eq is trying to out wow wow with a crappy engin, out of date graphics and a lot of old mistakes they made but don't have the balls or time to fix (cheal, endless quiver, rez stick)

they really should try to identify their niche and keep those people, eq was never really an ideal game for people who only had 30 mins to spend here and there

[Reynaldo]

they really should try to identify their niche and keep those people, eq was never really an ideal game for people who only had 30 mins to spend here and there

No kidding. I can see this only being a last ditch effort to try to lure in the fence-sitters for the new expansion.

But in reality, with every new race it's going to be 9/10 twinks with the 1 possible new player. Looks like they're adopting the slogan I've seen on some WoW posts in that "the game starts at 75".

[Gargamellow]

YAY TWINKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Lyion]

um..no...eq rocks..all other games blow ass...

true...

<img src ="http://www.wonderlandblog.com/wonderland/images/subscriptions_12473_image001.gif">

90% of that subscription bulb for WOW is actually Chinese players who pay a fraction of what North America does.

WOW has about double the North American player base that SOE does. That's a nice feat, but hardly what the fake pie chart iterates. It's hardly an Apple/Microsoft like deal.

Anyways, the argument is a red herring. I'm sure The Sims is at the top of your game playing list, since it's such a monster seller, too.

In regards to EQ, the only thing they've done to remotely attract new people is the Progression server, and given the idiotic implementation they did with it, they probably chased away future customers.

There are a lot of WOW and other gaming people who would jump at another innovative and good game, or even an expansion that allowed for something along these lines. Unfortunately, SOE quit being a gamer company and started being a conglomeration of suits about the time they quit being 989 Games, and seems pretty clueless.

[Gargamellow]

i also enjoy the sims..and i also enjoyed dark cloud, and ff, and ummmmmmmmmmmm i also enjoy playing gauntlet and ummmmmmmm

i like playing all video games..shit man..i been playing video games since they were invented

anyone remember the riddle of the sphinx?