Panels are one of the things about Fan Faire that often concerns me because it's always a challenge to wade through the biased pool of opinions and quite frankly the pointless questions that are asked to get to the meat of anything really useful. Don't get me wrong, panels have great purpose and are actually priceless when it comes to developers hearing feedback about changes needing to be addressed that may be completely new to the development team due to their sometime inside the box look at their project.

I think the best way to get my point across is with the use of a metaphor. Think of a panel as a telephone; on one end you have the community and on the other you have the development team. Some of the community is giving valid information, or asking important questions that are of great benefit to one side or the other. However, an even larger group of the community is seemingly acting as static that interrupts the communication process and breaks down the bridge between the player base and the people who can make us happy. Static like, "Why is my class lame? " or "Can you break wizards again so they're all mini gods? " also "Any chance of buffing this item I have from three expansions ago so it's as good as the stuff dropping now? " Now I'm not one to attack my fellow players but quite frankly, I don't think many understand how much less improvement we see because of the static.

Having said my honest opinion as a gamer -- I'd love to share with you all the great things that came out of the EverQuest panels during Fan Faire! My favorite panel out of them all was the expansion highlights. I don't want to get into specifics in this article but some of the assets we were shown made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. In this article I will be sharing with you some of the highlights that came out of the General and Mechanics panels.

Attendance during the EverQuest panels was excellent; there was someone present to accurately and appropriately answer every question that the community had. The attendance for Sony Online Entertainment was the following:

• Ryan "Rytan" Barker - Lead Designer Alan
• Alan "Absor" VanCouvering - Assistant Lead Designer
• Jason "Maddoc" Mash - Assistant Lead Designer
• Jonathan "Prathun" Caraker - Designer
• Keith "Merloc" Turkowski - Designer
• Adam "Ngreth" Bell - Designer
• David "Nodyin" Ford - Designer
• John "Raramor" Boomershine - Designer
• Terry "NO-Fairan-NO" Michaels - Lead Programmer
• Steven "SKlug" Klug - Programmer

The first thing that came out of the panels is familiars being targetable. Several players raised the concern that it's making it very hard for healers to heal the owners of those familiars because the familiars are usually targeted unintentionally before the player. When this concern was raised the audience applauded the question and the development team replied positively letting the community know that they were looking into it as soon as they returned to the offices.

As quickly as the questions started, so did the technical problems. The light control panel for the conference room was next door and someone in the other room decided to have a light switch rave, which made it almost impossible for anyone in line to concentrate on questions and the questions that were asked were answered very poorly until the lighting problem was resolved. Those of you who were there might remember the Bat-Signal being flashed on the walls; that was most certainly not from my DC Universe Online pen.

After the lights were back on, the color of Augmentation Distillers was brought up. With Secrets of Faydwer they went from being all different colors to help players buy the right one to all grey. This is going to be looked at and likely fixed according to the team.

Mages asked a few different things that were notable: Group Call of the Hero and Nameable Pets. Nameable pets were quickly vetoed by Fairan with his famously subtle "NO" answer but group COTH sounded like it is in the realm of possibility. It sounded like Fairan first needed to make sure it was something that was possible mechanically and then pass it on to the development team to see if it would be something they would want to add. Personally, I think mages are long overdue for a group version of COTH. I definitely think if they add it, it should be an end game, max level, rare raid drop kind of a spell. But honestly, it's time!

While we're talking about single target vital spells getting some love, one of the Clerics in attendance asked  about a possible Mass Group rez type spell to save some time on CR's. Clerics have been talking about this for years and this is the first time I've ever heard a ‘maybe'. I'd be happy with a 90% Mass Group rez;  however, I have to doubt the validity of the ‘maybe'. 

Druids got their turn and griped about not having the healing power that Clerics do. The same argument was made for Shamans as well. Prathun said that balancing the healing in the game so that Druids and Shamans can heal along side Clerics in both groups and raids was something that has been needed for a long time but is unfortunately outside of the realm of possibility. My stance is that if Druids and Shamans are going to be buffed to heal along side a Cleric, there better be intentions for a new Cleric utility line. 

There were a few small things that are worth mentioning. First and foremost it sounds like the fix to the hate mod on the Warrior epic 1.5 will be working as intended soon and the Wizard AA line "Frenzied Devastation" may be getting some love soon. Additionally unfortunately citizens of the Zek (PvP) server have been recently exposed to an unorthodox transfer from a regular server and this individual being chased around by groups of people unable to kill him. The team made it sound like there is at least one ranger on Zek getting a nerf soon. 

That about wraps up all the important stuff in this batch; of all the questions asked and answered, those were the most pertinent issues that were addressed in more than the Fairan signature "No" style answer. Stay tuned for the Seeds of Destruction panel write-up!

Andrew "Tamat" Beegle
Editor-in-Chief
Allakhazam.com