EQ Forums Explode!

So the official EverQuest forums have been taken over by a new team of moderators.  It’s been laughable how heavy handed they’ve been, handing out bans left and right.  The EQ community is small and relatively self policing, so it’s slightly amusing to see moderators chiming in on any post that isn’t full of rainbows, sunshine, and love.

The forums have also received a major overhaul.  The most noticeable change is that the Veteran’s Lounge is no longer the one stop shop for all things EQ.  It’s been broken up into several sub categories.  So far, the response has been largely negative.  While I don’t feel it’s quite as big of an issue as others are making it out to be, it does feel like overkill.  When you get less than 10 new threads a day, do you really need to organize them into multiple forums?  Seems pretty silly.

Oh, and I maintain this site mostly for fun to keep some of my web skills from going totally dull, hence why I post 3 times a year if I’m lucky!

EverQuest to Merge Servers

Not that it’s surprising, but server merges are official hitting EQ for the second time in its lifespan.  Given the game is now 11 years old, that’s not too shabby.  Here’s the official list:

Stromm - Luclin

Drinal - Maelin

Xegony - Druzzil

Tribunal - Bristlebane

Fennin Ro - Cazic Thule

Saryrn - Bertoxxulous

Seventh Hammer - Tunare

Prexus - The Rathe

Quellious - Povar

Erollisi Marr - Nameless

Player with duplicate names will have an X added to the end of their name for the player whose character was created more recently and be offered a free name change.  This policy can be a bit of a bummer if you’re losing your name to a level 24 who hasn’t logged in since 2000, but it is what it is.

There will also be free server transfers available for seven days after your server has been merged.  I’d expect there will be some player shuffling going on.

Seeds of Destruction in Review

Yeah, it’s been awhile, I know.  I’m really bad at remembering to post.

So far, I’d give Seeds of Destruction a “C”.  It has a lot of issues, but it’s not as bad as some make it out to be.  On the positive side, I love the new mercs.  The days have sitting around doing nothing because you can’t find a cleric are over.  The mercs sometimes go stupid on you, but in general they do a nice job.  It’s opened up a lot of options for a lot of playerys.  I think the developers spent a lot of time working on the mercenaries, and they came out pretty well.

On the negative side, the entire expansion feels unfinished.  There were some broken raid events (some that are still pretty buggy).  The raid breastplates didn’t have clickies at launch and the entire line of other clickies (both group and raid) are entirely missing.  There are no “form of”, overhaste, manapool, etc type clickies at all in either group content or raids.  If you’re good at sifting through Lucy, you’ll notice the raid clicks were created before Seeds of Destruction, but were never added to the game.  I can’t quite figure out why they seem to think attaching the clickies to the items would be too difficult.  It’s frustrating to say the least.  In all, for a one year expansion, it feels painfully unfinished.

EmEmOh Not Dead!!

In case you’re wondering, the site isn’t dead.  I’ve just been a bit busy with Seeds of Destruction stuff.  Oh, and some techincal problems recently where I thought I lost the site.  Yuck!

Seeds of Destruction is a little over a month old and there’s plenty going on.  Current hot topics include the group weapons revamp and wizard DPS.  I’ll probably let my opinion be known on that stuff soon enough.

Oh, and for anybody working on SoD stuff, make sure to check out Rasper’s.  There’s still a few things missing, but it’ll get you through the progression and collection quests nice and easy!

Seeds of Destruction Beta Now Open

Over at the EQ Dev Blog they’ve indicated that the beta for Seeds of Destruction has just been opened. Grats to anybody that got in!

If you still haven’t applied, you can do so here. It looks like they’ll be letting players join in stages, so don’t get discouraged if they don’t pick you right away!

Seeds of Destruction

Well folks, here it is.  EverQuest, Seeds of Destruction, is officially announced. Allakhazam has a post on it.

To prevent the cataclysm and defeat the forces of chaos, players must journey through time portals to the greatest moments in EverQuest history. From the founding of Qeynos to the battle of Bloody Kithicor, players will be called upon to safeguard history and ensure that events unfold without interference from the gods of Discord.

EverQuest® Seeds of DestructionTM Features :

* Mercenaries Player controlled NPCs are available in EverQuest for the first time! Visit the EverQuest home page for a video demonstration!
* 20 New Zones Features re-imagined classic content as well as brand new realms to explore! Check the EQ Players community website for regular features on zones, NPCs and more!
* Level Cap Increase

The parts I bolded I found the most interesting. Lore wise, this sounds like a pretty dang neat expansion. Go through time and protect EQ’s events. I’m guessing there could be some pretty nifty content here. That’s got me pretty excited.

The mercenaries, on the other hand, scare me a bit. Obviously, until I actually know how they work, it’s all just speculation. I look at it two ways. On one hand, they will be effective, work in all zones, and get used a lot. To me, this would almost be a bad thing. I understand that the group game needs some help, but this would all but kill pickup groups. On the other hand, they could either be too weak or only work in certain instances, and will go pretty much unused (hello shrouds). I’m definitely interested in learning more about the mercenaries.