Tonight. Sometime between 11 and 2am ish (eastern) or so i will try to nail the time a bit more precise
go outside and look NORTH and or up- if it is clear out- there was a solar flare and it is heading Straight For the earth , not sure on the strength but with luck it will probably trigger an northern lights effect for us to see.
This morning, EverQuest II Producer, Dave "Smokejumper" Georgeson, posted a Producer's Letter announcing an exciting new service for EverQuest II!
This new service will be applied to our NEW EQII Extended servers only. The service will not be available on our existing servers.
Hi there, Norrathians, As they say, the one thing that’s always true about the world is that it changes. That’s true of the world in general, the game industry, and it’s always been true with “EverQuest II”. The very nature of an MMO is change. We listen, we adapt, and the game grows in features, content, and fun factor as the months and years pass. Now, the expectations of gamers and the industry itself are changing around us, and it’s time for “EverQuest II” to spring forward so it can continue to expand and be successful. Many of you are aware of the free-to-play model that’s being embraced by many of the big game developers out there. We’re not the first folks to entertain the idea for an MMO, but we do have the biggest and best virtual world to offer in such a model and we firmly believe that we can expose thousands and thousands of new players to the world of Norrath if we embrace that concept. However, before going any further, I’d like to stop and say that we’re tied into what you, the community of EQII players, have said about selling items with stats and how they affect a game where you traditionally earn your way forward. We completely understand there’s a solid core of you that want nothing at all to do with that. We respect your wishes and, as I’ve personally stated previously, we’re not planning any changes to the current subscription worlds at all. Those servers, that subscription service and that gameplay will continue as normal. We’ll continue to support the existing Live service with content, expansions, features, and events…just as we’ve always done. In fact, we’re upping the ante by providing subscription rewards packages for active users that buy multi-month subscriptions, giving them rewards like cool, unique, exclusive items and Station Cash. But the free-to-play concept is a strong way to expose the world of Norrath to hordes of new players. Think of it as a huge new way to run a “free trial” like we’ve always done, but without the “14-day” limit, and with a lot more content available to try before you decide whether you want to commit to the game or not. We’ve had over eight years to grow this game, its content and its features, and there’s simply nothing else like it out there. So, we’re about to launch a bold new service named “EverQuest II Extended” (EQ2X). This is a completely separate service from the standard EQII Live subscription service (EQII). For all intents and purposes, it’s a completely separate gameplay mechanic with the aim to attract new players to the world of “EverQuest II”. “EverQuest II Extended” shares all the content and features of Live EQII. It plays the same. It looks the same. It *is* the same, with two obvious exceptions: a) it’s free-to-play, and b) it has a more robust marketplace. What does “free-to-play” mean? It means that you can download the game and play all of it (except the most recent expansion) all the way up to level 80. Your character is restricted in a bunch of different ways (limited class selection, limited races, limited coin, etc.) and to unlock those features fully, you’ll need to subscribe to Gold level membership. Which, coincidentally, is $15/month. Sound familiar? What is a “robust marketplace”? It’s exactly the same marketplace that you see on the EQII service, but it also adds lots of “convenience” items. Can’t find a good shield in-game? We sell one appropriate to your level and class. Want a healing potion to use in a pinch? Need an emergency buff? Want to shortcut your research time? Items like that are all available in the marketplace. Do we sell the very best items and equipment? Nope. Legendary and Fabled gear are better than what you can buy in the marketplace. Has the game been rebalanced so that you *need* to buy these “convenience” items? Nope. EQ2X is exactly the same game that you’re playing currently on the EQII servers. Those items are just there if you want them. They are true “convenience” items. There’s lots more details about all of this (and you can find the FAQ at http://eq2players.station.sony.com/f...y/extended_faq), but remember…this only affects you if you want it to affect you. If you ignore EQ2X completely, then your existing subscription, game, and support are unchanged. If you’re a current subscriber, and you’d like to take a peek at “EverQuest II Extended” on its new Test server, you can jump into the game at the Free membership level by clicking here and streaming down the game client you’ll need. This is the Alpha version of the service and its currently only available to existing subscribers so you can see it for yourselves before the public sees it later. The beta launch of the EQ2X service will occur in mid-August. Whether you check out the new stuff as a Live subscription player, or as an Extended player, you’ll see examples of how we upgrade the content simultaneously across both services. We’ve significantly improved the UI, skill progressions, new user quest content, tutorials, created the “Regions of Interest” system so you can see where your quests are located, and much more. Enjoy. -- Dave (Smokejumper) Georgeson
First off Happy birthday to me, i'm officially "older" been there for a while) 44 today.
next the news
World of warcraft released patch 3.5 or whatever it is, putting in cross server chat etc for the battlenet explansion- you want to look me up i'm Lenardo on Exodar (i've turned most of the real id crapola off sooo pm me here and i'll turn it on.
Everquest, wow have not done news for that in a while (peers at the news feed that does 90% of the news for that) MY son asked me today what happened to the game and i said, it's still going on,,, and on. you know i hate websites that use a lot of flash...
looks like they are merging servers- again,,,
Server 1
Server 2
Result Name
Stromm
Luclin
Luclin - Stromm
Drinal
Maelin Starpyre
Drinal - Maelin Starpyre
Xegony
Druzzil Ro
Xegony - Druzzil Ro
The Tribunal
Bristlebane
Bristlebane - The Tribunal
Fennin Ro
Cazic-Thule
Cazic-Thule - Fennin Ro
Saryrn
Bertoxxulous
Bertoxxulous - Saryrn
The Seventh Hammer
Tunare
Tunare - The Seventh Hammer
Prexus
The Rathe
The Rathe - Prexus
Quellious
Povar
Povar - Quellious
Erollisi Marr
The Nameless
Erollisi Marr - The Nameless
Keep an eye on EQPlayers each day leading up to the server merges for tips about preparing for merge.
We are going to take the opportunity in Cataclysm to try and fix some of the problems with the Rage mechanic for both warriors and druids. Some of these problems include:
Warriors/druids in the lowest levels of gear can be Rage-starved.
Warriors/druids in the highest levels of gear no longer have to manage their Rage when it becomes infinite.
Warrior/druid tanks lose Rage income as they improve their gear and take less damage.
The gameplay of warrior and druid tanks loses a lot of depth when massive boss hits means never having to manage Rage.
Heroic Strike and Maul are effective, but tedious abilities for using up extra Rage.
In general, warriors and druids don’t have enough control over their Rage.
To resolve these issues, Rage will be normalized in Cataclysm. This will make the Rage gained by characters more consistent and avoid drastic differences between low-end and high-end gear.
The concept of normalized Rage may leave a negative impression on some veteran players, as we tried it once before in The Burning Crusade and it wasn't successful, resulting in them feeling weakened. However, we think that the concept is still sound -- it was just that the previous implementation didn't balance the values correctly, leading to players being Rage-starved. That is not the goal. As part of the change, we want to give warriors and druids a lot of ways to control their rage, so even in the worst-case scenarios they won’t feel like they lack the resource to do their job.
Here are some of the ways the Rage mechanic will change in Cataclysm:
1) Rage is no longer generated based on damage done by auto-attacks. Instead, each auto-attack provides a set amount of Rage, and off-hand weapons will generate 50% of the Rage main hands do. This amount is based on a constant formula which factors in the base swing speed of the weapon. This means the Rage gained should be averaged out between fast and slow weapons. The constant formula also gives us the ability to easily increase the rage gained if it feels too low (or reduce it if is too high). We are also implementing the following mechanics, which will still allow rage to improve to some extent as you improve gear:
If the attack is a critical strike, it will generate 200% Rage.
Haste will accelerate swing times to generate Rage faster.
2) Rage from damage taken will no longer be based on a standard creature of the character’s level, but instead will based on the health of the warrior or druid. Again, there is a constant that is multiplied by the rage generated in order to allow for fine-tuning. This calculation ignores all damage reduction from armor, absorption, avoidance, block, or similar mechanics, so improving your gear will not reduce Rage gained.
3) We will provide warriors and druids with more instant sources of rage. For example, the warrior shouts are changing to work more like the death knight ability Horn of Winter. Instead of Battle Shout consuming Rage, it will generate Rage but have a short cooldown. Both classes will have additional methods to generate Rage in an emergency or bleed off Rage when they have too much.
4) All “on next swing” attacks in Cataclysm are being removed. Heroic Strike and Maul will be instant swings that cost a variable amount of Rage. For example, imagine Heroic Strike costs between 10 and 30 Rage. You must have at least 10 Rage to use the attack, but it will consume all available Rage up to a maximum of 30. Any Rage consumed above the minimum will cause the ability to hit harder, and in some cases much harder. We will tune the ability so that it’s generally not a good idea to hit it when you have low Rage (unless everything else is somehow on cooldown) but becomes a more attractive button the higher your Rage.
We understand this change may be scary for many players, but keep in mind that the constants in the formulas for gaining Rage will give us the ability to make quick adjustments if we feel Rage generation is too low. Our goal is for each character's Rage to not be always high or always low, but rather a resource that needs to be managed properly by the player.
Dispell Mechanic Changes:
We wanted to introduce some of the changes to dispel mechanics coming in Cataclysm. Our goals were to make dispelling a little less trivial to do in PvP, and to make sure there is more equity in dispel capabilities among healers in both PvP and PvE.
Within the system, there are currently five types of dispellable (or curable) buffs and debuffs: curse, disease, poison, defensive magic, and offensive magic. An example of defensive magic dispelling would be using a dispel to free a polymorphed ally, while offensive magic dispelling would be utilizing a dispel ability to strip away an enemy’s buff or heal-over-time (HoT) spell. The main distinction between these two types is in whether or not you can target an enemy with your dispel.
In Cataclysm each healing class will be getting three out of the five types of dispels, with one of these always being a defensive dispel magic. This design makes sure that finding a healer with the ability to remove magic isn’t restrictive in building teams for Arenas or rated Battlegrounds. It also allows the encounter designers to assume, when designing dungeon or raid fights, that every group can dispel magic.
In addition, we're making the opportunity cost (what the player could have accomplished with different actions) for dispelling a bit steeper. We think the cost is too low for three reasons: 1) The actual mana cost is low. 2) You never waste a dispel. If you try to dispel a debuff that isn’t there then the dispel just won’t go off. 3) We have spells that remove debuffs with minimal input on the part of the player. In Cataclysm we are raising the mana costs, making it possible to waste mana by casting a dispel when there is nothing to dispel, and removing Cleansing Totem, Abolish Disease, and Abolish Poison from the game. With these changes in mind, we are working to plan dungeon and raid encounters where dispels aren’t in constant demand or spammed in order to be successful, though some need for dispels will still be a part of the design.
As previously mentioned, we are providing three dispel capabilities to all healing classes as follows:
Druids will be able to dispel defensive magic, curses, and poison.
Paladins will be able to dispel defensive magic, diseases, and poison.
Priests will be able to dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and disease.
Shaman will be able to dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and curses.
There is some trade-off that is being made in making these changes and we wanted to expand on this further.
Protection and Retribution paladins will lose their current ability to dispel magic.
All shaman will lose dispel disease and dispel poison in exchange for Restoration gaining dispel magic.
Restoration shaman, Restoration druids, and Holy paladins will need to talent into their defensive magic dispels.
Shadow priests won’t be able to remove disease in Shadowform.
Mage, hunter, and warlock will retain their current dispel mechanics.
Body and Soul remains the same, and basically any dispel mechanic not mentioned above is currently planned to remain as it is.
When possible, we’d like to combine dispels into a single action. For example, the druid ability to dispel curses and poisons might be a single spell with a Restoration talent that also allows it to dispel magic. This part of the design isn’t finalized, however.
As with all of our Cataclysm previews, keep in mind that any of these decisions could change when we’re in beta.
Edit: personally dislike the proposed shaman change, i LIKE being able to do diseases and poisons and ORIGINALLY shaman where the only ones that COULD NOT DISPEL MAGIC keep it that way.
CLASS INFO COMING:
Beginning Wednesday, April 7 we will begin releasing class previews containing an overview of some of the changes currently being planned for each of the 10 World of Warcraft classes. The type of information you can expect from these posts are a list of the new spells from 80-85, the new passive mastery bonuses for all talent trees, a brief outline of some of the talent changes we're currently planning, and in some cases new low level spells for select classes.
These changes will by no means be comprehensive, and are subject to change between now and the launch of the expansion. It's also important to understand that some classes are currently further along in the development process than others, and as a result the amount of information will vary from class to class. Please do not let this frustrate you should your class be amongst those which are on the "lighter" side of things, as all classes will receive the same level of design attention before the expansion is released. Additionally we'll be providing more information for all classes, especially as we move into the beta phase.
Below is the schedule for each class:
Shaman - April 7
Priest - April 7
Warlock - April 7
Warrior - April 8
Death Knight - April 8
Rogue - April 8
Hunter - April 9
Druid - April 9
Mage - April 9
Paladin - April 16*
These posts are being coordinated internationally so they'll be posted at different times throughout the day and night on the given dates to give players around the world the ability to see posts made at a convenient time. This thread will be updated with links directly to each class preview as they're posted.
*The paladin is still deep in development. Instead of giving a preview that would be potentially less comprehensive than the other classes we made the decision to post it when it's ready, in order to properly honor the paladin class and those that play them. The wait isn't too long however as we're expecting to be able to post it on April 16.
Shaman - April 7
Priest - April 7
Warlock - April 7
Warrior - April 8
Death Knight - April 8
Rogue - April 8
Hunter - April 9
Druid - April 9
Mage - April 9
Paladin - April 16*