Veil of Alaris - Next Expansion Everquest Fan Faire Begins

EverQuest related news and other things relevant to all members.
User avatar
Danille
Moderator
Posts: 1207
Joined: Thu May 14, 2009 8:28 pm

Veil of Alaris - Next Expansion Everquest Fan Faire Begins

Post by Danille »

So everyone is arriving and the first event is a welcome speech from Smed in about an hour. No information yet as to the titles of the next expansions for EQ/EQ2. I bet you guys will hear it b4 they announce it here. Anyway, when things get said, I'll make posts here. Brought the AA list with me and tons of notes from the Fan Faire thread. If anything magely comes up, updates will be in this thread. :mrgreen:
Last edited by Danille on Sun Aug 07, 2011 11:22 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Image
User avatar
qibrme
Conjurer
Posts: 240
Joined: Thu Jun 04, 2009 12:34 pm

Re: Fan Faire Begins

Post by qibrme »

Thanks Danille, and don't forget to have some real life fun while you are in Vegas :)

Sued...
User avatar
Danille
Moderator
Posts: 1207
Joined: Thu May 14, 2009 8:28 pm

Re: Fan Faire Begins

Post by Danille »

New expansion name ->Veil of Alaris

A brand new continent is found. Additional zone count is 12!
(lore includes the backstory surrounding the demise of Cazic Thule.)

Level increase to 95, thousands of new AA's.

Totally revamped guild halls, with many rooms, much larger and lots of secret features.

Oh yea and one more thing they announced - the hotkey/hotbars are totally revamped.
Last edited by Danille on Sun Jul 10, 2011 12:35 pm, edited 4 times in total.
Image
User avatar
Piemastaj
Arch Magus
Posts: 817
Joined: Fri May 15, 2009 1:40 am

Re: Fan Faire Begins

Post by Piemastaj »

12 zones is what is being told. Multiple sources, they announced it on some web-chat thingy.
Image

"All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others."—Douglas Adams
User avatar
Danille
Moderator
Posts: 1207
Joined: Thu May 14, 2009 8:28 pm

Re: Fan Faire Begins

Post by Danille »

So as a recap,

Met Sol Invictus' mage class leader/officer and my ingame friend, Reclues (and his wife) for the first time after being in the guild for 5 years! Nice people, and good times. They were visiting Vegas on a 2nd honeymoon, and just stopped by to say hey!

Festivities started at 7:00 pm with a funny dwarf (he really was a dwarf) with an opening monologue. He then introduced Smed, Thom and a bunch of staff members (Nvidia parter too) and they all seemed pretty excited about what 2011-2012 has to offer.

Out of all the games that SoE is maintaining, I have to say that Everquest by far had the largest amount of fans there. With EQ2 being a close match. They kept hinting ....much much more that is in store for the world of Norrath. They are so secretive though. Too funny!

The whole grand ball room was filled to capacity. A real nice showing. One thing that suprised me the most was the age of the fans. I mean more than half of them were over 40 at least and many with grey hair, or no hair at all. And not from shaving either!

Smed begin his speech with an apology for the disruption during may due to the hackers, and it seems that event may have a silver lining as everyone at fan faire received a digital key chain with a secure id password to keep accout safety to a maximum. I guess it will be available to all players at a nominal cost? (maybe free who knows)

They announced a new graphics engine (LightForge TM) that is being designed by SoE and Nvidia, revolutionary they called it, they showed one screenshot of a playable race (and an ingame video of the effects) and it was amazing. It seems that the quality of the textures, gameworld and environment is like nothing that exists today, and they kept harping upon the faces of the players being able to convey emotion, versus cartoony bland features. They said that "Players will be able to create their ingame avatar, to show the emotion of their character. Pretty impressive but alas, not for EQ or EQ2, this is for EQNext and Planetside2. (nice thing is that it will play with no performance issues on legacy pcs going all the way back to 2005)

The guild halls for EQ that they showed were totally different from what we have today. They were HUGE, with many rooms. The design is gothic, with all dark stones, with pointy arches trimmed with black. They have vaulted ceilings and can be customizable. It looks like full housing functionality will be available too, with raid trophys, and player achievements all being tracked and represented. If I had to guess, it looked like about 10 rooms in total. They showed empty zones with no NPC's so no clue as to tradeskills, melee dummies, etc. I would have to say, everyone expects they will be there.

One thing that is clear is that SoE is refocusing on Norrath as a core customer focus, and going back to the roots of where it all began. They have plans to make Everquest, a groundbreaking game once again, and that is their goal for EQNext. The want to totally shake up the MMO world. (They kept bragging about how DC comics allows both PC and console gamers to play, but they bragged more about the technology than DC comics as a game. Which leads me to speculate, just a hunch that EQNext will do the same)

The next expansion details should be announced today in the events. I plan to attend the following forums:

10:00-11:00- "SoE Art Portal & Player Portfolios"
11:00-12:00- "Bringing Compainions to Life - Mounts and Pets"
12:00 "Silent Auction" - Who knows what goodies will be available?
Lunch
2:00-3:00- What's Coming for Everquest - (adam bell- <Ngreth, Lead Designer>; alan vancouvering- <Absor, Assistant Lead Designer>; ed hardin- <Aristo, Designer>; doug cromkhite- <Elidroth, Senior Designer>; jason leo- <Chandrok, Associate Designer>; julie berness, <Ellyra, Associate Designer>; steve klug- <Sklug, Lead Programmer>; jenn chan- JChan, Assistant Lead Programmer>; james rochelle, <Senior Artist>; harvey burgess?; and thom terrazas, <Phathom, Producer>.
3:00-4:00 Everquest - "Ask a Player, The Reverse Q&A" - same guys as above.
4:00-5:00 Everquest - "Systems, Systems, Systems - (all things systems related, i.e. spells, abilities, disciplines, and rewards)
5:00-6:00 Everquest - "The Birth of a Zone" artsy, fartsy and design session, including everything from conception to npc population, quest design and implementation and final polish.
8:00-? Pool Party! - splash!

Oh well thats it for now...
Last edited by Danille on Fri Jul 08, 2011 11:53 am, edited 4 times in total.
Image
User avatar
Danille
Moderator
Posts: 1207
Joined: Thu May 14, 2009 8:28 pm

Re: Fan Faire Begins

Post by Danille »

recap for Friday 6:00 pm....

Spent 6 hours in developer panels today....a few things...

The new race of people are called Alaria and they come from another planet and have been hiding on Norrath since the Age of Scale. The fled their planet to escape Discord. (There are no Discord in this expansion)

This race has their own gods, but their god's power comes from the people who worship them, versus from the gods themselves. The have stages of becoming a god, from being famous, all the way up to goodhood. The more people who worship them, the stronger they become, their power peaks when they can begin to influence their worshipers.

When they fled to Norrath all of the gods died during their fight with discord, some slayed, some self sacraficed, some held off discord so that others could escape......with the exception of one. That one god "Osaka" lived and brought the Alaria to Norrath and hid them on the continent that is indicated on the globe in skyfire. Osaka hid the entire continent under a magic "veil" and it has been hidden ever since. The dragons know about it, but never speak of it.

(they have over 40 pages of lore, that will be detailed in game.)

The first zone is called Argarth, the Bastion of Illdaera and is a tribute to the slain god of War. The second zone is called Windsong Sanctuary; the third is called City of Bronze; The forth is called Beast's Domain which contains the Resplentent Temple, a tribute to the slain god of Splendor; the fifth is called Sarith and is dedicated to the god of Tides; The seventh is called Robeca Ocah which is actually a giant snail shell inside Sarith. Then there is the another zone called the Pillars of Alaria which contains four points of interest temples dedicated to the gods of Magic which are Nature, Light, Dark and (forgot the last one..sorry) There is a Spulcher of Order in there too which contains the crypts of the fallen gods.

This expansionn then has four endzones and we were assured that the new T1 will be easier than T2, folllowed by T3, and T4- (they understand that HoT was bass akwards messed up)

Enough about lore and zone makeup.....

New Features:

-They are introducing a new parcel delivery systems which allows players to mail ingame money and items to their friends (same server limitation)

- They are introducing a guild rank permission system way beyond GL, Officer and banker, It is fully customizable and the titles can be anything you want...i.e. "grand poobar" and the permissions are also customizable to whatever that specific person has authority to do.

- there are two new guild halls and one external guild hall which can be set up within the guild neighborhoods. They come with guild trophys and add to guild tribute, as well as allowing guildies to place no trade items in the GH and retain ownership.

- The new hotbar system allows 12 hotkeys for each bar, 10 hotkeys in today, instead of only 4. The hotbars are fully customizable, sizable, can allow you to click and use items in bags, (yes they can be click while in the bag) They will have cool down shading, timer indicators, and will hold icons too. You can change the font size too.

- the epic ornament quest is still in process and will be released post launch (they have 14 of 16 classes done)

- We are getting new cultural armor with pet focus on it.

- They are adding the ability to change mercs on the fly, from cleric to tank to dps without having to go back to PoK.

About some questions I asked......

- Doug's response to the mage dps position in a raid situation is the "Goldilocks Zone" Between wizzy (burst) and necro (sustained). He said that he would be working on futher tweaks to the dps as it is not correct yet but was not sure if he would be able to get the work done prior to VoA launch in November. I spoke to getting it fixed prior to the launch, as to not multiply the issue to the new line of spells.

- Aristo's response to Spear not having a type 3 aug focus, was that it was an oversight, and will be corrected. He doubted that it would be added prior to expansion, but promised that it would be corrected with the new version of the spell in November. I spoke about getting it fixed prior to that time. I guess we will see what happens.

-I spoke about aa's but didn' have time to go through the whole mage aa list yet. Will try again tonite and tomorrow.
(He did say that when we have a pet die during a raid and we cast a new one that the pet should come out with ghold either on or off, depending upon how the last pet was set when it died. He told me to get the mages to "bug" it ingame, and it would get fixed.

I'll provide a further update either tonite or tomorrow. Depends upon how good the pool party is tonite.
Last edited by Danille on Fri Jul 08, 2011 11:10 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Image
User avatar
Piemastaj
Arch Magus
Posts: 817
Joined: Fri May 15, 2009 1:40 am

Re: Fan Faire Begins

Post by Piemastaj »

The pet focus thing is very interesting. It leads me to think that if they are putting it on cultural it will aslo be on raid visible aswell. If you could mind asking them a question about that?

The unacceptable thing here is, the darn mage DPs point. No reason why we can not be fixed during beta and not AFTER the expan launches.....

Anyway thank you for the update, look forward to more.
Image

"All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others."—Douglas Adams
User avatar
Danille
Moderator
Posts: 1207
Joined: Thu May 14, 2009 8:28 pm

Re: Fan Faire Begins

Post by Danille »

Yeah. The developers were actually very courtous, and spent alot of time brainstorming with fans on a number of topics. When he gave the answer that it may have to wait till next expansion, I pushed back in the most polite way possible, (I asked the question on a mic in a room of over 200 people) No need to get in a pissing match in that environment. But after the push back Doug and Ed both said they would see what they could do. They were not the least bit rude or arrogant. They clearly are very very busy and have to prioritize things.
Image
User avatar
Sunlace
Newbie
Posts: 24
Joined: Mon Jun 01, 2009 2:18 am

Re: Fan Faire Begins

Post by Sunlace »

Thanks for new info, Danille.
User avatar
Yaddab
Elementalist
Posts: 55
Joined: Mon May 18, 2009 3:08 am

Re: Fan Faire Begins

Post by Yaddab »

Thanks for the updates Danille
Image
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 19 guests