Patch Message 9-21-05Follow

September 21st, 2005
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*** Missions ***

- Lockout timers for missions are now fixed. You will no longer get the 50+ day lockout timers. Those that have these long lockout timers need to log those characters into the game to have those timers reset automatically for them. There is no need to petition to get them reset, they will be reset automatically.
- Orvin in West Commonlands should port players with the Zanivar quest.
- The chance that you would loot the required items for the mission Desert Crawl was increased.
- Corgoth has remembered his obligations and has returned to the Norrath’s Keeper faction.
- Adjusted the experience reward for some of the monster missions to be more in line with the time it is taking to complete them.
- Kathi Norman is on vacation. She will return to help Griffins find their eggs as soon as she can. (ooc: The mission she gave was just too easy and is being retrofitted with more fun and challenge).
- Lowered the difficulty of Warlord Drellak in the second mission of the Walls of Xill mission line in Stoneroot Falls.
- Some mission givers in Stoneroot Falls will now see through invisibility. You may now communicate with them while having invisibility up.


*** Items ***

- Evolving items that had the same recommended and required level will now only report the required level.
- Some Illsalin level 70 hard mission items have been slightly upgraded.
- A few belts throughout Darkhollow now increase the size of your potion belt.


*** Quests ***

– A few quest combines that had a lore result were failing. These should now work properly. In some cases, you will still have the container when you are done with it. Do with it what you want. This includes the combines for the Ranger and Druid epic 2.0 that were eating their containers.
- The unbridled fury of Korbuk Brimblade will no longer bring unwanted lag to Noble's Causeway.


*** Shrouds ***

- Modified the experience scaling for Spirit Shrouds, Evolving Items, and Leadership Abilities to grant more experience at lower levels.


*** AAs ***

- The AA description for some of the new DoD AAs will now show the proper required level.


*** Tradeskills ***

– Eureka! Players can now learn some of the Depths of Darkhollow recipes that were so forgettable.
- Nest Drake eggs now work with normal flour.
- The new snake eggs found in Darkhollow make scrumptious dough, noodles, egg batter, and snake egg oil.
- We have fixed an issue with a tradeskill combines where the container is lore and is also given back to the player after the combine is completed. You will now be able to complete these combines again.




- The EverQuest Team

It looks like they nerfed the xp you got from monster missions. Oh well, I knew it was too good to last, especially when you have people posting that they are getting 1.5aa's in 10 mins while afk.

Fixing the Risk/Reward on a mission that has you collect 10 ground spawns and kill two solo-able mobs for over an AA of experience means SOE hates casual players?

I'm a casual player. I've pretty much always been one. This expansion does not 'hurt' casuals. Planes of Power, on release, was a kick in the balls for casual players. Gates was arguably so. LDoN? Made for casuals. LoY? Hell, it only had mid to low upper level content. Nothing for the uber tiers to do at all for the most part. DoN? Buyable crystals and fairly easy missions for very nice gear and tradeskill paths for exceptional tradable gear? Sorry, they were bending over to help casuals there. Omens was even pretty much an "open" expansion for the non-raiding folks.

DoD allows players to take on archtype roles to help fill groups, allows players of any level to play together in Monster Missions and you look at SOE fixing an obvious imbalance and imply that SOE has it out for casual players? There's still stuff that SOE can do to assist casuals but this isn't any sort of blow against them.

I wasn't part of the Beta so I don't know how it was tested and can't really comment. But I'd rather the "OMG why wasn't this tested during beta?!" game flaws to be positive for the players than game-breaking technical issues.

From everything I can tell, Beta is focused on making sure nothing is Broken. They do check out the gameplay, but they tend to put huge Exp modifiers on things to enablet he Beta testers to test as much stuff as possible. I agree with Jophiel. If the worst mistake they made in this release was to have to tweak some of the Exp, then at least they have learned a few things in their first 9 expansion releases.

I'm comparing expansions because you left an impression that SOE was only interested in the upper tier raiding guilds. Their content from the last five or so expansions shows a very different story.

Personally, I feel more accomplishment from a reward for a job well done, not being given insane experience for a meager effort. I'll feel a lot more pride in defeating that friggin' Brownie suicide mission than I'll ever get from collecting ground spawns.

Even in the realm of "It let us casuals advance faster", again I point out that DoD allows for six people of totally disparate levels and classes to play together. You could have five warriors lvl 15-55 and all get together and go on a mission for an hour. I'd say that's a more powerful boon to casual players than just giving them free xp candy for 15min of minimal effort.

Or, people will do it for what it was originally intended for. Being able to play a different class, with other people without regard to gear or level.

It was never intended to be an alternate experience path for your main. The very word EXPERIENCE implies that you are learning how to play YOUR toon better. thats why you don't get experience for all the toons on your account for playing just one. If I'm playing a level 20 druid hybrid how exactly am I gaining more "experience" in playing my level and class as a 63 rogue?

So has anyone actually logged in to see if the exp has dropped dramatically or is everyone forum who**ing from work?

You mean like anyone who used a Spirit Shroud lost their innate regen? Or pets not equipping any gear?

How are your bard songs working, anyways?

Just did a Nek-Orc Mission and got 98 percent of an AA. Not too bad for an easy to get to and set up mission that took about 20 mins or so.

Just a thought here, .....advertise something ....sell it on how great it is, then change it 2 weeks in ...hmmm REFUND? lol.

If you have a problem with it stop paying and go play something else.

they made the werewolf mission alot harder, and halved the exp i don't know how much the other missions have changed i just know that the werewolf mission is now damn near impossible to pass.. three hours 1 out of 3 elders killed. with a full group.

Edited, Wed Sep 21 23:38:49 2005 by Turlisk