Fan Faire - Underfoot Announced

[Andorrabell]

-Can we get a forum for Underfoot now that it is official.

Also, PLEASE tell me we have someone who is there and is willing to post notes from the sessions, I'm not there and it's driving me batty.

Here is what I snagged from Smedley's Address:
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-Moved all GMs from India back to the states awhile back

-Have banned a ton of plat accounts (275 000) and they have a team tracking that called the Nuggets (worst team name EVER)

-You will be able to get real life art of your character / guild through a partnership with HP

-Underfoot - November

-Events will rollout starting in July, and by doing these events you can receive credit for those events be able to receive Underfoot the expansion before anyone else with this participation (No smurf clue, this is a direct quote, maybe early release like they did with OGH?)

-12 to 15 zones, and bonus zones for this through April 2010.

-Will come with achievement tracking for progression, sounds like there may be more than one progression path, hahahha supposedly we wont have to go to other websites

-2x as many weapons (I hope they are all 2 Handers for Knights!!!!)

-focus targeting window for health of friend or foe

-Something about a big ball of magma.

-Something about special rewards on the 51/50 server for killing 33 specific old world events

Dora

[Andorrabell]

Hearsay from the boards:
new expansion feature is a new target window that'll allow you to store up targets. no demo actually shown at this time of the window but the example was given to allow healers to get a few tanks able to be monitored.new weapon gfx, lots more gfx. lot of hope that the expansion will last longer, everyone asking that. raid size still 54. releasing some date in november.

more buff slots. more spell gems

there will be an npc again to hold the quest junk
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I see no "hook" here.. please tell me there are other things inc with this expansion besides another spell gem...

[Kepla]

I think this is supposed to be seen as a content expansion and not a "hook" expansion (i.e., mercs). A few bells and whistles to be sure, but nothing major. Having said that, the new target window seems like a nice boon to the healers and other classes which have to manage multiple tartgets (I'm thinking Enchanters here).

The rumor mill I'm seeing suggests two additional spell slots (and the Options > Keys dialog already has mappings to account for this), five new buffs slots, and five new song slots.

[Accerso]

The note about "achievement tracking" was really neat. The idea that you'd be able to track your character's progress without spreadsheets and the like appeals to me.

[Glaven]

The word is no level increase as well. Came as a bit of a surprise as I was under the impression all expansions would include this since the yearly cycle began.

If this is supposed to last a year, I hope there will be enough content.

[Calebe]

I was worried about the up coming expansion, as a bit under whelming but if what Elidroth (EQ dev) said on a post on eqlive is true it gives me hope. What he wrote:

It's strange.. so many of you said the level increase only added about a week's worth of grind time to the game, yet now no level increase has got some people in an uproar.

No level increase means I need to work extra hard to make sure the AA's are worthwhile. It means Raramor has to work extra hard to come up with new and unique spell ideas. It means Ngreth and Aristo have to work that much harder to give you quality tradeskills and items. We're well aware of the task we've taken on.. and not one of us thinks it's going to be easy.

BUT.. it also means that come tuning time, we'll have a much better reference point for raid tuning, rares, basic population, etc. We know SoD was too easy in the end, for whatever reason. There were several raids in SoD that nobody in beta came ANYWHERE CLOSE to beating, yet who blew through them come live release. Why that is nobody is really sure, but it is the way it happened.

You guys have been asking for more challenge.. and I believe the new raids we're making are going to give you exactly that.

New and unique spells. Last expansion we got Hulking Body Guard, which turned out to be a really nice spell, and of course the best of them was the RS line of pets that started with the DoDh expansion, so gives me hope they may come up with something unique. Of course no new levels means no new pets, unless they reintroduce the MS line as an upgraded pet for the expansion. We said we didn't want a new MS line of pets as it was basically an air pet in a new skin, but as no level increase, the new MS pet could be an upgrade over the Air pet, and noticably better. Something we may want to push for as a community. To play a mage without a new pet just unthinkable, so lets hope we get something. If not the MS pet maybe a new Mist Pet, combination a water pet and an air pet, it would have the durability of air, the dps of water, and the stun of the air pet. Would be my new favorite pet.

Calebe

[Darkenr]

I was worried about the up coming expansion, as a bit under whelming but if what Elidroth (EQ dev) said on a post on eqlive is true it gives me hope. What he wrote:

It's strange.. so many of you said the level increase only added about a week's worth of grind time to the game, yet now no level increase has got some people in an uproar.

No level increase means I need to work extra hard to make sure the AA's are worthwhile. It means Raramor has to work extra hard to come up with new and unique spell ideas. It means Ngreth and Aristo have to work that much harder to give you quality tradeskills and items. We're well aware of the task we've taken on.. and not one of us thinks it's going to be easy.

BUT.. it also means that come tuning time, we'll have a much better reference point for raid tuning, rares, basic population, etc. We know SoD was too easy in the end, for whatever reason. There were several raids in SoD that nobody in beta came ANYWHERE CLOSE to beating, yet who blew through them come live release. Why that is nobody is really sure, but it is the way it happened.

You guys have been asking for more challenge.. and I believe the new raids we're making are going to give you exactly that.

New and unique spells. Last expansion we got Hulking Body Guard, which turned out to be a really nice spell, and of course the best of them was the RS line of pets that started with the DoDh expansion, so gives me hope they may come up with something unique. Of course no new levels means no new pets, unless they reintroduce the MS line as an upgraded pet for the expansion. We said we didn't want a new MS line of pets as it was basically an air pet in a new skin, but as no level increase, the new MS pet could be an upgrade over the Air pet, and noticably better. Something we may want to push for as a community. To play a mage without a new pet just unthinkable, so lets hope we get something. If not the MS pet maybe a new Mist Pet, combination a water pet and an air pet, it would have the durability of air, the dps of water, and the stun of the air pet. Would be my new favorite pet.

Calebe

Well and another thing also, I find that the pets were rather lackluster in SoD considering the mobflation we had over what we had in SoF. They didn't in my opinion increase pets enough to make them equivelant to the overall power they had in SoF. To not get a level increase and have no new pets in this new expansion would be a severely poor decision imho.

If there is no level increase, I think something should be done with pets to balance them out to be more powerful at current end-game mob power, especially since a full expansion of new content on the same level cap is only going to be harder than our current end game and make our pets fall even further behind while everyone else still gets better and better gear.

[Andorrabell]

Well said- we are scrooed if we get an expansion worth of improved mobs and no changes to our current pets.

[qibrme]

Well said- we are scrooed if we get an expansion worth of improved mobs and no changes to our current pets.

Current with the proper pet focus magicians pets can tank most any groupable mob/named in the game.
I would expect the DeV's to continue increasing pet power through the use of improved foci in the new expansion.

If we don't get new pets, this should be the time to push for increased DPS from the pets by way of AA's, etc... As in the ideas posted before of having FBO work on fire pets etc.


Suediwenae...

[Darkenr]

Well said- we are scrooed if we get an expansion worth of improved mobs and no changes to our current pets.

Current with the proper pet focus magicians pets can tank most any groupable mob/named in the game.
I would expect the DeV's to continue increasing pet power through the use of improved foci in the new expansion.

If we don't get new pets, this should be the time to push for increased DPS from the pets by way of AA's, etc... As in the ideas posted before of having FBO work on fire pets etc.


Suediwenae...

Yes and no, our overall power is quite a bit less than what we had in SoF. People in end game group gear currently (like mnks and rangers even) can outtank a raid level focused pet as it stands atm where in SoF that wasn't true. I can understand that an end game raid geared monk/ranger should be able to outtank a raid focused pet, but I don't think it should be for group geared players outtanking a raid geared (max pet AAd) mage. So NO, we are NOT in a good state right now for the new expansion without new pets. We are just barely holding our own at end-game SoD currently imo. Our pets can hardly stand up to end-game named as it is with raid level pet focuses without some major healing backup, and if underfoot needs to last us another full year, you can BET that current end game mob power now is only going to be middle game in underfoot for difficulty. We either will need our pet focuses to affect our pets more than what they do now for the same pet focuses that we have today, or we're going to need new pets.

SoE has already said that pet focuses are only going to be bumped 2 focuses each expansion, or level cap increase. I highly doubt they're going to just add another 5 tiers+ of pet focuses, especially with the beast of work it is to make all of those new pets manually by hand for each new focus. If we don't make a stand to make our pets useful in this expansion we're going to end up being back in worst days where we won't be able to feel very useful at end game and will need to stick to the low game, or get pity spots in groups even if we're raid geared. (Oh and I do agree we need to push for some more DPS as well hehe)