Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
EverQuest: What Lies Behind the Veil of Alaris?
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
SOE's Fan Faire was recently held in Las Vegas. During the annual event, several big announcements were launched including the newest Everquest expansion, The Veil of Alaris. MMORPG.com's Drew Wood had the opportunity to sit down for a chat with EQ's producer, Thom Terrazas. Read on!
While at SOE Fan Faire earlier this month, I had the opportunity to sit down and speak with EverQuest Producer, Thom Terrazas to discuss the just-announced expansion pack for EverQuest, The Veil of Alaris. Thom was excited to talk about the content and to help expand on anything that we learned in the opening address. We already knew that the expansion would be bringing us twelve new zones, more raids, and quests so what else was Thom able to shine a light on?
Read more of Drew Wood's Everquest: What Lies Behind the Veil of Alaris?
)
Comments
I didn't know that many people still played everquest
Playing: Single player games |
Awaiting: Wild Star |Blade & Soul | The Repopulation | The Elder Scrolls online | ArcheAge | Firefall | Survarium | Bless | Black Desert |
Played: Guild Wars | Diablo 3 |The War Z | Runescape |World of Warcraft |Combat Arms |Perfect World | Rift | Fiesta | DC universe online | Aion | Age of Conan |Allods | Vindictus | The Secret World | Forge | Battle of the Immortals | Global Agenda| Cabal Online | Tera |
i think more than EQ2
EQ is still going strong. I usually use the bazaar to see how each server is doing when I play. The cap on traders in the bazaar was 500 and during it's peak, players would have to fight for slots.
Now a days there is usally 200-300 active sellers in the bazaar on each server at all times. With that many people I would guess that at least 4 times that many players on each server are not afk'ing in the bazaar during peak play times.
Each server has it's own raiding guilds, casual players, serious groupers and very active guilds offering psuedo-PUG style raids via "Open Raids". For the PUG raids most have a seperate website that you sign up for and a list of rules that each player follows, they are usually well organized.
The community is still active and I make sure I play at least a few months each year to re-connect with old friends in game and try out the new content.
A lot of people just trying out the game will wonder where a lot of people are and complain that the game is dead. It's not dead, there is just so much to do and so many zones available that your chances of running into people outside of the current expansion is low. Which actually makes going back and killing old raid mobs solo that were designed for raids of players 25 levels lower than the level 90 cap pretty damned fun.
What they need is either an auction house or the ability for your toon to go into vendor mode without you having to stay logged on all day and night. They also need to seriously streamline and improve the rewards for level up questing with better bread crumbs to the next areas, this includes making it more visible for the hot zone areas to be found by newbies and having the XP bonus apply to quests, not just mob kills. It's about time they allowed right click functionality for more items in your backpacks. The potion belt was a start, but not nearly enough. They really need to implement more questing / explorational content for end game with real rewards and tie in all that story that is currently exclusive to raiders.
I'd return to EQ even now if the rewards and the progression weren't all tied up in raiding. Even the dungeons have become superflous with all of the raiding gear that can be bought on the market. There is absolutely no incentive to do anything but raiding if you want to actually be rewarded for your efforts.
Yes, I know about the Defiant gear sets that drop from killing mobs, not from questing. I also like to point out that you have to hunt in level 50 areas to get level 30 gear to drop, yeah, the same old EQ worthless gear drops for your level, forcing you to buy everything from the Bazaar or get hand me downs from your higher level toons for higher level buddies. Risk vs reward is out the window and yes, incentive as well.
It's a bit sad really, I was sat here considering going back to EverQuest. Then I came to this site, saw this post, and realised that they're making it even harder for new players to join the game. Level cap now raising to 95?! The last time I went back it took weeks just to get to 70, adding on the time needed to get all the required AA's, the lack of groups in lower level areas - yep, 70 is considered a lower level area now - and it was just too much. With the increase to 95 it's just going to be even worse.
The game is now being kept alive by those that refuse to leave, I can't see it getting anyone new, or at least anyone new that stays for more than a few weeks.
Yah it doesnt take weeks to level. If you have friends in the game its even faster triple xp until you're the same level as your friend after that its double xp forever.
Actually, I think you'd be surprised. You can get to 60 in the matter of a couple days and 80 quickly after that. Then you are within jumping distance of level 90's to really help you level and gain the gear you need in order to play in the 85-90 group game.
Also note, that although it was not mentioned in the article, they are also auto-granting AA's with the next expansion. By the time you reach level 90 or 95 (not sure yet), you will have been auto-granted roughly 2,500 AA's. Note that these will be primarily those AA's which most people feel are pretty much mandatory for classes, like agility, mitigation, hps, melee or spell crits, etc.
To be honest, getting to about level 80 is easy, the only hard part is the last 15 levels for the most part. If you started now, you could easily be 90 by the time the expac came out and with smart AAxp, you could go from level 90 and 1000 AA's or so to level 95 and 3-4000 AA's in a matter of days after the expac.
Now, if you are talking about being a raider, yeah, you are pretty much correct. Give up now. But if you can be happy with the group game, then it isn't that much effort.
I doubt this, although I suppose EQ did have a lot more players initially. EQ2 never had more than 300k and it's retained players fairly well, still having around 200k.
They make it very difficult for new or returning players to catch up with the veterans. Most who do return end up quitting again.
Each expansion adds ranks to AA's that are important for fighting in that expansion. To get those certain aa ranks you need to get all previous expansion aa's.
On top of this, the game is group-only. Some classes CAN solo (relevant content), and it's said most classes can with enough AA"s and raid gear, but it's very inefficeint compared to a good group, and not at all fun.
The problem with grouping in HoT, I've found, is that it progresses in tiers of group missions. It's not like old eq, where you get into a desired zone and look for a group. You Need to have a close guild or group of friends that will constantly help eachother, or, somehow be on the same point of progression, to get things done.
If you're a returning player, you will most likely end up joining a guild and being carried through most of the content to "catch up" with whatever most are doing. Most now are just skipping to the final content. It's kind of lame and not fun.
The marketplace is starting to become free to play ish as well.
AHHHH!!
I remember when it took me a year and a half to get to 75. Of course this was playing pretty much from the game starting and just having to go along with each expansion, but damn, a week or so to 80?
I remember quad or swarm kiting to get massive exp over others and the grind was still slow.
How times change.
always EQ (and II)
Leveling Hard in EQ? Hardly.... Taking more than 5 minutes for an AA point, thats the past. Here is some screenshots of the past double exp weekend to prove my point. You can easily hit up to max level with a thousand AA in a couple days PLing, and if you are returning you can either box it with a RAF and make it in a week or two, or solo it out in more time. Either way, EQ isn't the time sink it once was.
Here is a character I PLed on double exp weekend, and his AA count from a couple weeks ago. Hes now well over 3000 AAs.
So all you whiners can go shut it, with the EQ takes to long talk...