Item / Spell Timer Issue To Be Fixed

This problem affects all items which cast or proc a spell which is the same as a player cast spell. It was mainly noticed with the DA hammer. Characters who cast the DA spell found that the DA hammer would not proc during the 15 minute DA spell refresh time.

Found the problem...

Looks like its caused by linked spell timers. Any item that is activating a PC spell that has a linked spell timer will use up the timer for any other spell on that same timer (including itself). It's just how linked spell timers work.

There's about 30 items that are affected, including the DA hammer. To fix this, I'm going to create new versions of the spells that aren't PC usable and attach those to the items. Should go out next time we patch items and spells to live servers.

Rashere, Lead Designer

The full thread is here.

"A Daring Rescue" Task To Be Fixed

After slaying the Arbiter of Ash, the NPC Hidaga appears and must be hailed. However, on occasion, Hidaga will remain up for only about 20 seconds.

Hey everyone -- here is a little information behind this quest -- Hidaga currently only gives out 12 quest completions per spawn, which may have been why she left in a hurry. Also, once the first player completes their quest by hailing her, she only waits for a short while before porting out unless another player comes to her with the quest. I have removed this timed departure, so she will now wait around for much longer, but will still only complete up to 12 quests.

On a side note, I increased the spawn rate on the Arbiter to be more in line with other rares found in the zone. I hope this helps. - Celrak, EQ Designer

I've just increased the amount of time this NPC will remain up to 30 minutes but Hidaga will still only give out a set number of flags before despawning. I'm passing it to QA and we'll get it out to the Live servers as soon as possible after it clears QA. - Nodyin, EQ Designer

The full thread is here.

EverQuest Newsletter?

Yes, I just discovered that there actually is an official EverQuest Newsletter that Sony supposedly sends out quarterly. It seems like it is a secret, but I'm going to let the word out :).

To sign up for it, go here.

I think they should do it monthly but at least it is something. As soon as I start to receive the newsletter, I'll post links to it in case you are interested in checking it out without signing up.

Developer Chats

I've been slacking with keeping this blog up to date. As a result, some past Developer Chats were not posted here. Here are the links to them:

House of Commons Dev Chat Log - November 29, 2006

House of Commons Dev Chat Log - December 20, 2006 (Note that the page says November 29 even though this is the December 20 chat)

The next Developer Chat is scheduled for January 24, 2007.

Ferocity VII Broken

It looks like the min_damage_done modifier on Ferocity VII isn't providing any useful bonus to min damage. This is something that we'll need to look into further. - Prathun, EQ Developer

The full thread is here.

Dimensional Instability AA To Be Adjusted

Currently the Dimensional Instability AA will shadowstep you for a maximum distance of 9,000. This can create problems. Other shadowstep abilities have a maximum distance of 50 or 900.

You're right. After confirming with Code that the range is the max distance you can be ported with the spell I changed this AA to a much lower value. I'll pass this on to QA for verification and we'll go from there. - Nodyin, EQ Developer

The full thread is here.

Glyph AA Stacking Failure To Be Fixed

The new TSS Glyph expendable AAs currently use up the three AAs spent on them even when the ability fails due to stacking issues.

I'll talk to Rashere when we get back into the office and see if we can get this changed so if the ability "bounces" for any reason you do not lose it. It's a code change, however, so I'm not in control of when it gets implemented. - Nodyin, EQ Developer

The full thread is here.

"Bane Weapon" Charm Problem To Be Fixed

The Worn Iron Rallosian Relic charm currently has no stats unless you equip a bane weapon. However, there are no bane weapons in the TSS expansion.

This is on my list of things to fix, I agree that it's kind of dumb to have a charm like this with no bane weapons in the expansion. - Merloc, EQ Developer

The full thread is here.

Quest History Limited To 50 Tasks

The Quest History tab that is part of the task window (officially called the Quest Journal) only lists the last 50 tasks you have done.

When you complete more than 50 tasks, the oldest one is removed from the list. Thus, it only lists the last 50.

Read more about it here.

TSS Rank 2 Spell Drops Increased

To address some issues with spell rarity and location I made the following changes to spell drops:

Effectively doubled the rate that spells drop

Changed it so that each NPC that can drop spells can theoretically drop 4 spells at a time (although the odds of getting 4 spells are very very very very remote)

Changed it so that each NPC that can drop a spell of a given level can now drop all spells from that level. So instead of one spot to get a level 72 Mage spell, you can now go to any spot that drops level 72 spells and potentially get a Mage spell.

We hope that this will address any issues with the spell drops. The expansion is still very young so it will probably be a while of watch-and-wait before we make any further changes to how spells drop in TSS for Teir 2.

- Nodyin, EQ Developer

Full thread is here.

Upcoming Changes to EQ

Rashere, Lead Designer, discusses some changes in the game coming with The Serpent's Spine.

Included are how you earn AAs, spell resists, 'hovering' over your body upon death, character creation, Endless Quiver and dark blue con mobs.

Read it here.

Rashere also talks about the new Out-of-Combat regen system here.

House of Commons Dev Chat Logs – August 23, 2006

Here.

9th Step in BiC Bugged, Fix Due "Soon".

We have a fix for the issues reported in the 9th step of this task currently on the Beta server. Beta players who were copied over and on this step report that they can now progress to the rest of the quest. After the fix is verified by QA we can look into getting this copied out to the Live servers. When I have an ETA I'll let you know.

- Nodyin, EQ Designer

Full thread is here.

A closer look seems to indicate that it will not be fixed until after the release of The Serpent's Spine on Sept. 19, so I would guess the end of September or so.

The Serpent's Spine due September 19

Most likely the next Game Update will be with the launch of The Serpent's Spine on September 19. - Raghnell, EQ Producer

Dev Chat from 8/10 (Unofficial)

News on the new out of combat regen coming and other issues.

Read about it here.

Patch: July 18, 2006

July 18th, 2006
_____________________

- /raid commands should now work appropriately.
- Added /decaycorpse command on The Combine and The Sleeper. You can now target and manually decay any of your own corpses that no longer have items on them. Please help us keep Norrath clean of unnecessary corpse litter.
- Fixed a bug that would cause ground items to not respawn appropriately.

The main reason for this mornings update was to upgrade our hardware (although we did slip in a few minor things). Our operations team is working very hard to get this done but we are going to have to push the server uptime another hour to 11am PDT. Sorry for the delay. - Raghnell, EQ Producer

Stealth Changes to Dain 3 Monster Mission

In the last patch I increased the distance from basecamp the Dwarves have to be before they return to full strength. It's about midway from basecamp to position one so if you move them to a position and then attack from there they'll be full DPS. If you pull the Giants to basecamp they'll do a lot less DPS.

- Nodyin, EQ Designer

Full thread is here.

More changes:

The Dwarves will now be unable to locate the Giants until the zone emote announces they are on the move.

- Nodyin, EQ Designer

The dwarves were never intended to hang out by the East Waste zoneline and perform a coordinated attack as soon as the giants stepped off.

Sound strategic use of the armies is still possible and is now, quite possibly, the only way to win the misison.

- Nodyin, EQ Designer

Full thread is here.

New Expansion Announced

SAN DIEGO, CA – July 10, 2006 – Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE), a global leader in the online games industry, today announced EverQuest® The Serpent’s Spine™, a new expansion for the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMOPRG), EverQuest. EverQuest The Serpent’s Spine will only be available via digital download beginning in September for the suggested price of U.S. $29.99.

“In an ongoing commitment to introducing new features into EverQuest, The Serpent’s Spine introduces the Drakkin, the first new player race since the Frogloks were added to the game seven expansions ago,” said Chris Sturr, Senior Brand Manager, Sony Online Entertainment. “In addition to the new race, players of all levels will benefit from this expansion, as we are including content for levels 1 to 75.”

Players will also be able to explore a new starting city, Crescent Reach, which contains merchants, quests and combat. As in the last expansion, there will be new dynamic features such as auras, traps and destructible terrain. Players will be able to reach level 75 with new spells, raids and abilities.

Read about it here.

More on NPC Changes

Some NPCs are likely hitting for more and others for less than before the patch. The change involved switching old world NPCs over to newer systems. Old NPCs all had hand-set values, which led to a lot of variance from NPC to NPC even within the same level range due to different designers making different NPCs (the dreaded "under con"). It also made it very difficult to tune since each individual NPC has to be tracked down and changed if you decide a certain range of NPCs needs to be adjusted.

Under the newer system, NPCs of the same level start with the same baseline values and modify from there based on the NPCs capabilities and class (warriors have more hps, giants hit slower and harder, werewolves are vulnerable to fire, golems have low intelligence, etc.) so depending on what the NPC was set at before, it may have gained or lost damage dealing capabilities in the conversion or it may be dealing similar damage, but in a different fashion (hitting harder, but slower for instance).

This only affected NPCs who weren't already on the new system, which is basically NPCs from Original EQ, Kunark, Velious, and Luclin. It was also limited mainly to NPCs below level 50 and excluded event NPCs, which have to be tuned case by case regardless.

If you come across any particular NPC that seems to be way out of line compared to other NPCs of the same level around it, feel free to call it out and I'll go have a look. I'll just need the zone and the full name of the NPC to find it.

Rashere - EQ Lead Designer

Full thread is here.

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.