NPC Changes

As posted by Maddoc:

Hey everyone,

In the last few years, much has changed in the world of EverQuest, which is a great thing for all of us -- It's what keeps us all interested in the game and enjoying the time we spent playing.

In developing a server like this, we have to be mindful and aware of those changes such that we can make an informed decision on what course of action to take when addressing any issues as they come up. As you might imagine, there are years worth of content to be aware of, enough so that some of the changes require a lot of time.

The change that I'm about to explain makes huge strides towards dealing with what you guys feel is one of the biggest issues to overcome for this server. This same change is also why I've been largely unavailable for the last week or two. The change is not small, affecting a great portion of EverQuest and it's NPC's, nor is the change to be taken lightly, needing as much testing time as you guys are able to muster. If you have a character and haven't participated in beta for a week or two, I'd encourage you to please log in and test everything out.

With that said, the changes that have been made are going to affect a number of NPC attributes in an effort to address the power disparity between melee-classes and caster-classes in the early stages of progression on these servers. So, without further ado...

NPC Health - This has been increased on average for most NPC's.
NPC Armor Class - This has been reduced on average for most NPC's.
NPC Overall DPS - The overall dps done by NPC's has been reduced slightly on average for most NPC's.
NPC Damage - This has been reduced on average for most NPC's.
NPC Melee Speed - This has been reduced slightly (meaning they hit faster than previously) on some NPC's, though most will be roughly the same.
NPC Resists - This remains largely unchanged, staying the same on average for most NPC's.

NPC Effective Spellcasting Level - In the last year or so, PC spells got a pretty big boost in power, which means that NPC's also got a pretty good sized boost in power as well. I think the best way to address this is to get a means to specify an NPC's spellcasting-level independent of it's actual level.

As an example, this means that I can now tell a level 50 NPC to only cast level 42 and lower spells, without changing the NPC's level at all. With this functionality, I can reduce the spellcasting power of the NPC's without reducing anything else. With this change, you should see a very noticeable change in the NPC's spellcasting power, particularly in the level 25 to 40 range.

DISCLAIMER : Given the nature of these changes, I'm speaking of an 'average', so there will be situations where an NPC or small group of NPC's that now resist more now than they did previously, likewise you will see situations where an NPC or small group of NPC's will resist less now than they did previously. This applies to all of the information listed above.

I've made these adjustments to about 70% of the NPC's so far and that data will be hitting the server this afternoon. There are still some NPC's that have not been fully converted yet, so I'll post when those are done as well.

There's one more thing that I have on my plate to do to address some of the melee concerns (that I'm sure will be posted in this thread), so stay tuned and please throw as much testing as you can at this change.

This change has reportedly happened on all live servers, not just the progression ones. Changes have happened to many NPCs in most pre-PoP zones. Resistances are reported to have increased as well.

This quote taken from here.