Lost faith? or Lost mind? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Sunday, March 12, 2006 --  Telegareth It has been a while since the last update. I am fully to blame for this lapse in keeping you all informed as to what we have been doing, but I've been having a crisis of faith lately, which has been troubling. This faith isn't that of a religious nature, no, I've seemed to have misplaced my faith in Sony Online Entertainment. I'm not sure where it went. As far as faiths are concerned this one was pretty strong too. It held through some tough times, through some basic design flaws, or "designed flaws", of previous expansions to the fairly decently working expansions we've had lately. After Gates of Discord, I was about to call it a day, hang up my robe and spend the rest of my days in Azeroth with the other 5 million people. But something funny happened on the way to the forum, Omens of War launched. As far as expansions go, this one was almost perfect. I don't think there has been a cleaner expansion launch in EverQuest history. Not only was this launch virtually bug free, but the expansion was designed well, it made sense, and it progressed well with both single-group and raid-group content along with the loot from each. As my faith had previously wandered a bit over the past several expansions, you can imagine my surprise and glee at finding something that not only worked, but it made sense. But Dragons of Norrath and Depths of Darkhollow have brought up some of those old feelings about the game, and they aren't good feelings. Dragons of Norrath was a good expansion, in the vein of Lost Dungeons of Norrath meets Legacy of Ykeesha. It brought opporunities for very nice upgrades without the requirement of 50 friends to help you. Depths of Darkhollow was the expansion that really made me think twice about these intelligent folks who came up with the previous expansions. Maybe I just couldn't get over the fact that it took place underground. I could look past the fact that I was fighting drachnids again, bats again, snakes, mushrooms, and the squid-people, but undergound? For some reason I had a hard time processing that. Maybe it's because I've always thought of Mayong being in Castle Mistmoore, and knowing there is plenty of blank space left in Faydwer where they could have put this expansion and even the demi-plane of blood on or linked to that continent. I wish it would have ended there, though. I'd have happily placed the blinders on just as I did for Gates of Discord and Lost Dungeons of Norrath and plowed through that content waiting for the next expansion. But as we plowed our way through the progression raids, entered Demi-plane of Blood, and started to harvest the loots, something hit me like a 6k rampage: In an effort to bring the world we spend so much time in back to a sense of cohesion, it's starting to make even less sense now than it ever did. Blame it on Planes of Power if you must. Killing the pantheon is probably the biggest mistake you can make in an imaginary world. And we did it every week. It's hard to recover from a loss like that. I can understand why Gates of Discord happened. After killing the gods, we needed a suitably powerful enemy to fight, so they gave us one from outerspace. Following that disastrous outing, Omens of War was an exceptional expansion I think designed primarily to close that whole storyline by having us kill the boss of these otherworldly beings. Killing that storyline was very important. The only thing that would have been better is if we could have killed the wayfarer's brotherhood along with it. But now we've run into the problem of how to put the world back together again after having previously slain the pantheon and defended the planet from aliens. What better way than to have some warring factions we've all known for a long time rise from the ashes to try to take over? Only that seemed to only be for a little while, and really had no effect whatsoever on anything. Dragons of Norrath did nothing to further the storyline of Norrath. We killed some dragons in the name of Firiona or Lanys, whoopee. Nothing changed hands, nothing changed, the only effect was you had to choose which tunnel you ran through to get to the broodlands. Sure, the dark side took over Firiona Vie, which affected both people who go there. DoN was all about the crystals and buying crap with them. Depths of Darkhollow I've already vented on. It's underground for god's sake. Which brings us to Prophesy of Ro, which I'm not that clear on the lore of yet. I'm ever so hopeful that it will make more sense as we go through it. I don't want this entire update to be a collossal random rant about EverQuest. I love this game. It's one of my favorite hobbies, and it's better than 80% of the television on these days. But as I enjoy the game, I want to see it get better and better with each expansion. Okay, so here is what you really wanted to read here, and not the above scatterbrained ranting. Legacy of Steel has been progressing like many of the end-game guilds. We've been in Tier 2 of Demiplane, killed Tris Wallow, Roley, we've been hammering out Prophesy of Ro crap with Daosheen and the Theatre of Blood minis, and we're working hard on continuing that process. Here are a few pictures of some of the stuff we've been doing, for your enjoyment: Legacy of Steel is recruiting hardcore people from the following classes: Wizards, Clerics, Beastlords, Rangers, Enchanters, Bards. If you love to log in nightly and make stuff die, this just may be the home for you. We are currently progressing through Prophesy of Ro and Demi-plane of Blood. If you think you have what it takes, the first step is to send me an email or a tell in game. I'll be more than happy to talk to you. If your class isn't listed above, but you are still interested, send me an email or a tell, I'd still love to talk to you about other opportunities we may have available. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Tele's Top Five: 1. Fix the universal Chat Service. Spamming me every 10 minutes isn't funny. 2. New Character Animations! This one will never leave the list till they actuall put a plan in place to make it happen. 3. It is time to change your itemization equations, simply adding hitpoints and mana to an item while keeping the same focus effects doesn't make it superfantastic. 4. What's up with the lag when people leave/join your group or raid? Is this a new design feature? 5. For the love of whatever deity you worship make the target box on corpses larger. Yes, your mobs look neato, all 5 9 of them, but when they are dead, and I go to loot the body, I'm sick and tired of having to run around so i can click on the soles of feet or on the crotch to be able to get anything off the bod. Do all mobs hide their cash and goodies in their crotches? Killing a mob is less stressful than finding the correct spot on a corpse to click to get the loot. Something is amiss here and needs to be fixed. Got anything you would like to share for the Top Five list? email Telegareth or go visit our boards and post something for me and I'll keep it for the next update list. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Huge thanks to the awesome people at Bizfu.... Demitasse, Demiglaze, Demiplane..... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Sunday, December 4, 2005 --  Telegareth Yes, It has only been a week since the previous update, but then again, we have done some things this week that merit an update. You see, we've been hammering away at the Demiplane of Blood all week, working our way through Tier 1. Through the boredom of some encounters to the poor pathing of others, one could say that at least it is an exact copy of a previous zone, but I'm not going to get into that ball of wax. Research and Development hasn't let us down in this zone yet, as we have been able to come up with the required strategies to down two new mobs in this zone. Those feet belong to Hatchet the Torturer, who oddly enough closely resembles a few mobs we have seen before in EverQuest. The feet shot is directly due to the "Push" experiment gone extremely wrong and the tendency for this mob-type to fall forwards when dead. I'll try to get a full body shot next time, promise. But that's not all we've done. There are three sisters who are all fighting for the attention of "The Master" who we wanted to play with as well. I'm not sold on this encounter, it's fairly easy once you get the gist of it, the hardest part is keeping the raid focus somewhere other than on their Televisions while this thing is going on. It is a new type of encounter, and one I'm not terribly excited about, to be honest. So, those three girls were backstabbing each other trying to win the favor of the Master. Is it just me, or do you think that some of the developers need to find a date a little more often? At any rate, we were able to acquire some new goodies from our past week's endeavors. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Tele's Top Five: 1. Add more people to doing itemization. It's becoming more and more clear that the copy/paste button is being severely overused. 2. New Character Animations! Outsource it to someone who has the manpower to do it. I hate copouts... 3. Demi-Plane of Blood is a letdown after the rest of the expansion has been experienced. Either Dreadspire Keep shouldn't have been put in at all, or Demi-Plane of Blood should have been a different zone graphically. Although I have to admit it was a very skillful way to re-use old mob models. 4. The new spell research is annoying and totally un-fun. I mean, 5 sub-combines to even clean a piece of parchment is obnoxious. Whoever thought this would be cool probably still builds model airplanes.... 5. For the love of whatever deity you worship make the target box on corpses larger. Yes, your mobs look neato, all 5 9 of them, but when they are dead, and I go to loot the body, I'm sick and tired of having to run around so i can click on the soles of feet or on the crotch to be able to get anything off the bod. Do all mobs hide their cash and goodies in their crotches? Killing a mob is less stressful than finding the correct spot on a corpse to click to get the loot. Something is amiss here and needs to be fixed. Got anything you would like to share for the Top Five list? email Telegareth or go visit our boards and post something for me and I'll keep it for the next update list. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Huge thanks to the awesome people at Bizfu.... One is the lonliest number... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Sunday, November 27, 2005 --  Telegareth As we continue to go deeper into the latest expansion of EverQuest, Depths of Darkhollow, I am reminded of some of the aspects of previous expansions that may not have been the most fun. I'm not sure why these aspects have come to the surface yet again, but I'm almost certain that it wasn't intentional. I firmly believe that the developers currently working on the game we all enjoy experiencing day after day want to create a challenging yet fun experience for those of us who like to live out on the edge where there are no spoilers, walkthroughs or batphones. What is it about the latest expansion that harkens back to Veeshan's Peak and Plane of Hate V1.0? We have trash mobs respawning at an alarming rate and pathing that is remarkable in it's departure from the laws of physics. I can understand the reasoning for having trash mobs, however I am not a fan of adding additional mobs to clear for the sole purpose of adding time to a raid. Do these mobs offer anything else? Perhaps there is something loot-wise that would make the tedium of clearing less painful? Nope, unless you really are a fan of the new spell research. How about experience? Nope, raid experience is still way below what it should be. These mobs and their accelerated spawn time appear to only serve the purpose of adding time to an already long raid. What can be done to make the Demi-Plane of Blood more entertaining without cheapening the overall encounter? How about lengthen the respawn rates on mobs, alter the agro radius a slight bit to allow for the Player to use more than one strategy to get from Point A to Point B. All we are left with is brute force and mass slaying of everything in our path. There is no trickery, no sleight of hand, no flimflam, hocus-pocus or shenanigans. You go forward, and kill it all. If you get bogged down, you just added at least 30 minutes to your raid. This, my friends, is not fun. With all of the above taken into consideration, the Demi-Plane of Blood is not all bad. The named encounters are fun by themselves, and fully challenging with little quirks that make things more interesting than "Heal Tank, don't sux" This guy is the first encounter in Demi-Plane, and the first time you see him it can be a bit surprising. But in the end, he isn't as fearsome as one may have you believe. His loots are very nice, however, as shown below... We've also received the Monk and Rogue class items, however the screenshots I have are from before they were revised. The rogue item is now a range, and the monk item is shoulders or back slot, I forget. Here are the screenshots anyway... But we haven't been ignoring some of our old pals from the previous expansions. Oh no, too many people still want to finish off the Vish Eye quest and our good friend Overlord Mata Muram still drops some neato goodies. As an aside, I really want to know who has been poking Vishimtar the Fallen in one of his eyes to make it unusable in the quest. Or does he only have one eye to begin with? Yes, he's dead again, and he gave us some sweet loot too! I should have more stuff to share soon.... _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Quotes and Notes......... Been a little slack on the screenshot key, so only have one paladin quote for you this time. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Tele's Top Five: 1. Getting Faction with Expedition 328 is a total PITA. We need more mobs that give this faction! 2. Customer Service - We need server GM's back. The current customer solution is a poster child for laziness. 3. Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it! Fast spawn times and crappy pathing are not an example of fun. 4. The new spell research is annoying and totally un-fun. I mean, 5 sub-combines to even clean a piece of parchment is obnoxious. Whoever thought this would be cool probably still builds model airplanes.... 5. For the love of whatever deity you worship make the target box on corpses larger. Yes, your mobs look neato, all 5 9 of them, but when they are dead, and I go to loot the body, I'm sick and tired of having to run around so i can click on the soles of feet or on the crotch to be able to get anything off the bod. Do all mobs hide their cash and goodies in their crotches? Killing a mob is less stressful than finding the correct spot on a corpse to click to get the loot. Something is amiss here and needs to be fixed. Got anything you would like to share for the Top Five list? email Telegareth or go visit our boards and post something for me and I'll keep it for the next update list. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Huge thanks to the awesome people at Bizfu....