Shadows of Luclin
I finally got the chance to talk to Brad McQuaid and Jeff Butler about Luclin... theres really not that much to be said about it this soon, but some tidbits nonetheless.
The new race, the Kerran-like-people look more like tigers and panthers than they do the Kerrans from Kerra Isle on Odus. They're slated as a primitive race, so they'll tentatively be able to play Shamen, Warriors, Rogues, Bards and Beastlords.
The new class, Beastlord, will tentativelybe playable by the current races that can play shamen. I'd suspect personally that the two classes (Shaman and beastlord) will share some similarities.
The new graphics look good. They've added more polygons to most models I saw, the new creatures are rather *ahem* interesting, and the new models for characters look pretty good. The trolls look like they've become a health conscious race, and they've lost a wee bit of weight. Their standing animations look quite fearsome though.
One big thing both Brad and Jeff spoke of was that the level of customization of your character goes up a fair amount. When creating a new character, you can pick the body the character has, the hairstyle the character has and the facial hair. This should go along ways to reduce the cookie cutter look of lower level characters at least. I don't believe they've finalized how to import the existing characters.
The content is going to cover the full scope of the current level range. With no plans to allow leveling over 60 (big shocker eh?), the content is going to be mostly non-raid focused. Jeff was saying that as velious provided alot of high level options for the groups of 36+ people, Luclin will be provinging content aimed at the typical group of 6.
High level characters will have "ways to advance their character", though they have not yet finalized what it will be in. My guess is that nothing will make you that much more powerful, and Jeff was saying that the advancements will also not be the sort of thing that takes 1000 hours of playing to do.
With new content, and the complete face lift of the graphical engine, it seems that luclin is a worthy expansion. The new class will give the old EQ player something really new to do, as well as new takes on old classes with the introduction of the new race.
I'll post more later on Luclin and a few other games I've been impressed with here, but for now I need a beer... this press center is hot and crowded... ;)
--Illia
