Magelo - Everquest

Game Update - 2/8/2012

Nepabrite — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:53:13 GMT

On Wednesday, all EQ servers saw a Game Update. We apologize for the lateness of these notes. Below we have quoted the notes as found on the EverQuest Community Site:

Highlights

Healer Mercenaries now have improved behavior and performance in their Reactive stance.

Many NPCs in House of Thule and Veil of Alaris zones no longer see through Shroud of Stealth.

In the Rubak Oseka raid "Time and Tides," High Priests and Templars will now wait a brief period before beginning to cast their snare spells.

Kalture Ashan has arrived in Sunrise Hills to sell Alaran furniture.

Items

Elegant, Stately, and Ostentatious Warmonger Leggings now modify the Frenzy skill.

Some Veil of Alaris warrior and knight weapons had their AC increased.

Kalture Ashan has arrived in Sunrise Hills to sell Alaran furniture.

The Secondary Anchor can now be placed on guild plots.

An Ancient Artifact is now a type 20 aug.

Bags of currency sold on the loyalty merchant are now lore.

Quests & Events

Quest - Tides of Change - When accepting the quest, players will be given the necessary items if they do not have them.

Quest - The Key to Freedom - You should now have more time to hail Silbek after you free him from his bonds in Rubak Oseka.

Raid - Time and Tides - High Priests and Templars will now wait a brief period before beginning to cast their snare spells.

Raid - The Triune God - Most of the Triunity's messages can now be seen throughout the entire zone.

Spells

Shadowknight - Reduced the mana cost of Scroll: Sholothian Skin significantly.

NPC

Many NPCs in House of Thule and Veil of Alaris zones no longer see through Shroud of Stealth.

Deathleaper's ability Earsplitting Howl now uses the magic resist type, and the damage has been lowered slightly.

AA

Monk - Suppressive Strike has been changed to Distant Strike. The silence has been removed, but the rest of the ability is unchanged.

Enchanter - Fixed a timer conflict issue with Glyph Spray and Divine Companion Aura.

Druid/Shaman - Fixed a timer conflict issue with Silent Casting and Paralytic Spores.

Mercenaries

Several changes have been made to Healer Mercenaries:

After level 85, healer mercenaries no longer cast the Promised or Elixir lines of spells. These spells may return in the future when mercenaries learn to cast them more effectively.

After level 75, healer mercenaries no longer cast Complete Heal.

When at full health and mana, healer mercenaries will no longer sit.

Healer mercenaries now respond more quickly when the main tank in their group enters combat.

The power of the healer mercenaries' spells have been slightly increased.

The Reactive stance has been modified to favor constantly casting direct heals without regard for mana cost.

Note: At the moment, mercenaries have trouble healing players that have high-HP regen buffs on them. Until this changes, avoid using spells such as Scroll: Splendrous Guardian, Scroll: Spiritual Enrichment, or Promised Renewal if you want your mercenary to heal you.

Previously Updated

Corrected a pathing problem in Veeshan's Peak that caused a number of its denizens to wander the lava pool near the entrance.

S&P Downgrades Sony's Credit Rating

Nepabrite — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:47:06 GMT

Poor performance, global competition cited in the downgrade

In a move which shocked some, credit agency Standard & Poor's has come forward regarding Sony, downgrading the Japan-based entertainment giant's credit rating.

Quoting the text report released by Reuters:

"Standard & Poor's Ratings Services today lowered its long-term corporate credit and senior unsecured debt ratings on Sony Corp. to 'BBB+' from 'A-' and removed the ratings from CreditWatch, where we placed them Nov. 4, 2011. The outlook on the long-term corporate credit rating is negative. We base the downgrade on our view that severe circumstances in Sony's mainstay electronics businesses make a strong recovery in earnings unlikely. We base the negative outlook on the long-term corporate credit rating on our expectation that we could lower the ratings further if we see no meaningful sign of a recovery in Sony's earnings within six to 12 months. We affirmed the 'A-2' short-term corporate credit rating on the company."

The report continues to state that Sony has had a series of revenue downfalls since 2004's fiscal year, also saying that the major contributor is, "Sony's strategy to aggressively expand its global market share despite strong competition, a massive erosion of prices, and its high cost structure compared with overseas competitors."

S&P also stated it is watching Sony's path toward recovery in the TV sales market to determine if any further downgrades will occur.

Gaming division not mentioned

It should be noted that the report made no mention of the gaming division (owner of several gaming studios and several MMO titles including EverQuest, EverQuest II and DC Universe Online) as a reason for success or failure for the company, who employs approximately 168k employees worldwide.

According to sources, the gaming division is unaffected by this downgrade and is looking forward to positive growth this year with its IP DC Universe Online having been announced as "Best MMO of 2011" by PC Gamer.

There has been no official statement made by Sony as of the time we went to print. However, we will continue to provide details as they become available.

Update (2/9/2012): Corrected information pertaining to the gaming division after contact with sources inside Sony.

SoE, GSA Inaugurate Gamer Safety Week

Nepabrite — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:03:05 GMT

Event dedicated to account and gamer security begins today

Today, the Merchant Risk Council announced the inauguration of Gamer Safety Week, an effort of the Gamer Safety Alliance.

Formed in 2007, this network of gaming companies is stated as, "a cross-industry effort to break down traditional competitive barriers and share information and best practices within the computer and video game industry."

“We pulled together some of the world’s top online entertainment companies and created the Gamer Safety Alliance to foster a greater awareness of safer gaming principles and best practices,” said Steve Levy, Global Director of Publishing for NCsoft West and founding member of the Gamer Safety Alliance. “The goal of Gamer Safety Week is to reach as many gamers as possible to inform and educate about how to have fun in a safer way.”

Thus far, nine studios have joined the effort. These include EA, En Masse Entertainment, Microsoft, MindCandy, NCSoft, Nexon, Square Enix and Turbine.

In an open letter to players, Linda Carlson (Global Communications Director for Sony Online Entertainment) kicked off Gamer Safety Week by warning players of the risks of a compromised account and simple measures to prevent account theft.

Carlson explains the typical way players learn of account theft:

"It’s 2:00 a.m. Friday morning—you are fast asleep, resting up for your big raid on Saturday. While you dream of rare loot drops, a person utterly unknown to you logs into your account and starts to strip it. If you’re lucky, they only sell off your equipment and broker items. It’s more likely that they will attempt to collect everything you have, even packing up your house items, and then sell it all to the broker. Then they use your Station Cash to buy a character transfer token, transfer your character to a new server, and give all your plat to some low level character named Ureiwoeri (or something similar – we apologize if there is an actual character out there named Ureiwoeri). Sometimes they delete your character, whether this is done for spite or just to attempt to cover the trail, we really don’t know. Years worth of personal investment is simply gone."

More information about Gamer Safety Week can be found at the Merchant Research Council website.

Developers Talk about Game and More - Part 3 with the Devs

Nepabrite — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:53:24 GMT

Developers talk to Magelo about VoA, Customer Service and more

Yesterday in our three-part series, we got to know a little more about the developers behind EverQuest.

In today's Q&A, we got to ask several game questions. These questions came from the community on the forums as well as from the staff of Magelo. Come with us as we talk about Veil of Alaris, general game development questions, how EverQuest will celebrate its 13th birthday, and customer service.

General Game Questions

Q: We all know that EverQuest focuses highly on group content. For some players, this content is currently locked behind missions. Given that previously progression-locked zones are unlocked with every expansion, are there any plans to include missions?

Thom: Typically, when we unlock, we unlock from a few expansions ago. We would consider unlocking some. I believe Underfoot would be due. We don't have a timeline, but it is something we would consider doing.

Q: Many players have jived about how broken the autofollow system is. Are there any plans to revamp this system?

Adam: Not at this time. It's a larger project than it sounds, because it's based on our whole pathing system (which has some problems).

Thom: Part of the vast, extensive nature of EverQuest content. Just in terms of static zones- well over 500- but if we add in instance zones, we're talking thousands. That sort of content doesn't exist anywhere else that I am aware of. So if we were to look into pathing, that would be something really, really big.

Q: Another big announcement recently was your cheater crackdown. What types of cheating are you specifically cracking down upon?

Adam: We very specifically don't want to release that at this time., because we'll tell people how to have an easier time getting around it.

Thom: Pretty much anyone cheating.

Q: So in short, you've designed a system to detect someone going beyond the game's design?

Adam, Thom: Yup

Q: Are you able to comment as to how long the crackdown has been in force?

Adam: About eight weeks.

Thom: We began implementing this right after the Veil of Alaris launch.

Adam: Yeah, we took a lot of time to watch the data, and figure out where we might be getting some false positives.We tried to clear out as much of that as is possible before doing anything. So we just watched it for a little bit, and watched the cheaters a little bit. And then we said, "Okay, we're confident enough. Now we're going to start getting people for it."

We're confident we're no longer getting false positives.

Q: Are there any plans (now or in the future) to add AoE Lurch for Enchanters?

Adam: No. The existing spell is too powerful, so no. So we do not plan to add it now. We do not plan to add it later. We do not want to make an overpowered ability an AOE overpowered ability. The answer is a very strong “NO.”

Veil of Alaris

Q: How does it feel to release VoA?

Adam: It is great. We put much work to it and it is gratifying to send it off into the world.

Q: What excites you the most about VoA?

Adam: We have a very strong storyline, and feel that we gave players many opportunities to experience that story.

Q: We are seeing a number of concerns about VoA, particularly a bug which prevents completion. Are fixes in the pipeline, and if so what will be focused on first?

Adam: We do continue to look and see if we can fix various issues.

Q: We have seen a couple of complaints that the tracking system causes a certain imbalance where VoA is concerned, are there any plans to address this, and if so, what is in your pipeline?

Adam: I would need information on how it creates an imbalance to answer this.

Customer Service

Q: Recently there has been quite a rumbling on the forums about petitions. Apparently the queue has been full and many petitions are auto-closing. Is this in the pipeline?

Eric: You have many situations that lead to petitions. For example, someone may accidentally click on 5 of something where they only wanted one. And so the GM staff goes in and tries to help the player. So on that, they're really really good.

But of course, around the holiday time, people take time off. The queue grew to a size that was a little bit larger than usual. And when support time began to be impacted, we had to make a decision. We had to say, "For cases of player error, we might have to turn some of these down."

Now for anything where it was the game still bugging, we still did that. We were focusing more on the immediate and pressing issues than, say, "Oh, I forgot to click this."

It's something every business has to go through. You try to help everyone. But sometimes, you have to focus on the more important things.

This is completely addressed now. Our petition times are back down to where they are normally at and we've started completely helping people once again.

Q: So this was temporary, and you had to triage your tickets?

Eric: Yes.

EverQuest's 13th Birthday

Q: EverQuest turns 13 in March, how do you intend to celebrate?

Adam: We hope to give a batch of extra content for everybody. Everybody who's a member will get it. March 14th is when we'll have our patch for that stuff, and we're hoping it's fun. Just keep thinking about "thirteen".

Thom: Yeah, we have a nice theme of "Thirteen" that we're delivering with the content.

We hope you have enjoyed our series as we covered so many aspects of the game and it's developers.

A big thank you goes out to Thom Terrazas, Adam Bell and Eric Cleaver for taking the time to sit down and talk with us. Also, a big thanks to Linda Carlson and the SoE team for helping us arrange this unique opportunity.

We will have more Q&A's coming in the near future, so watch this space!

A Day with the Developers - Part 2

Nepabrite — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:46:10 GMT

Developers discuss their beginning with the gaming industry, EverQuest

In yesterday's Q&A, we covered EverQuest's free-to-play announcement. However, as gamers, we are often too accustomed to canned statements and gameplay mechanics discussion that we forget to get to know the people behind the game. Who are those people in the office, making our games?

So today, we take a bit more relaxed stance as we get to know the developers, how they started in the gaming industry and how they arrived at EverQuest. Though we ran short on time during these questions, we were able to gain some insights into the people behind EverQuest.

Thom Terazzas, Producer

Q: What is your gaming history, both personal and professional?

I started out on consoles back when I was a little runt. The Atari 2600 was my first game system.

As I graduated to be an adult, I played various MMO's – many games which were similar to EverQuest. I do like to play sports games as well. I loved playing FIFA, Black Ops, first-person shooters. Planetside was a game that just kept on building on the FPS mode and taking it a different direction that no game I have ever seen will ever be able to match. It's exciting to see Planetside 2 come out in the near future.

Q: Was this your dream job? What got you started in this industry?

I completely fell in backwards. Much like the San Diego Chargers, how they enter the playoffs. And that is talking from a San Diego homer of course. I'm not bashing them, but telling how hard it must've been.

So if I can equate that to the hardship of falling in backwards, I was working in the horticultural field for about twelve years. And construction, development went kinda south. I was doing odd jobs for a few days. And one of my buddies went to work for Sony in the Customer Service Department and Testing Department. He was the brother of our past CEO Kelly Flock over at 989 Studios. And he said “Well, if you're tired of odd jobs and want something more steady, the pay isn't great but it's a great opportunity to put your foot in the door.” And it sure was.

That was back in 1998, I came to work for one of Sony's companies. 989 Sports, Verant Interactive and then SoE testing games. I then went into the Customer Service Department. I ran the Customer Service Department in end-game, and also on the Technical Support and Billing side. I did that for about 5 or 6 years and moved into Project Management on the development side.

I eventually made my way to Planetside. I've touched a lot of games. We were just talking about that – about how many games I've touched here on the development side. Vanguard, Planetside – just games we still see running around. But EverQuest was that game I played ever since it launched. Got myself into trouble with my spouse and family members, just like a lot of other people for playing it too much. And now its kinda cool to be on the game and actually leading the charge.

Adam Bell, Lead Designer

Q: What is your gaming history, both personal and professional?

I also started out on the Atari 2600. But then my father brought a terminal computer home from work. I played a little Space War on that, and it sorta got me hooked on computers.

We got a TRS-80 Model 1, way back in the age of computers. Tape drive to load everything, the sound was a crystal radio stuck on top of the computer. And I've had a computer ever since then.

Most of my play has been computer games. I've gotten a few consoles, but they never really stuck with me. I don't play them very much. I've played some Final Fantasy on console.

I typically play MMO's. I played EverQuest for a long time. I played EQ2, Star Wars Galaxies. I dabbled in WoW, but it just didn't interest me. I've dabbled with a few other people's games, but I find myself coming back to EverQuest.

Q: Was this your dream job? What got you started in this industry?

A: I didn't really start out in this industry. I started in college with Electrical Engineering, then veered off. I actually did technical support for America Online. And from there, I was doing a site called EQTraders. And from there, that launched into the job here.

Q: What would you call your biggest achievement in EverQuest?

As a designer, my biggest achievement that I liked was my first creation raid. I did the Underfoot final raid. I really liked it, despite players somewhat disliking it (because of how hard it was).

Eric Cleaver, Community Manager

Q: What is your gaming history, both personal and professional?

Well, just to be different than everyone else, I started with the ColecoVision. That is my console of choice. Which is far superior to the Atari 2600.

I am a longtime gamer. I got my start in the industry by being a community representative of NCSoft on the City of Heroes title, and I am now a Senior Community Manager over at SoE for EverQuest and Legends of Norrath.

Q: Was this your dream job? What got you started in this industry?

A friend of mine was working in the industry, and they said, “Hey! We want you to start working with us, but in order to get you working we gotta start you in Community” So I said, “What's 'Community'?” But it turned out to be the job I always wanted.

I was a day one EverQuest Player. So I always had a huge love of the game. And I always wanted to be that guy who was out there talking to the players, finding out what they wanted and communicating what the company wanted to tell the players.

And so, for me, it is the most interesting place in the MMO industry. These games are all about our players. So this was exactly the spot I wanted to be. And after several years, I found an opening I wanted to be in for EverQuest (it's always been my first love). It is my all-time favorite game, so I had to go for it.

Q: What would you call your biggest achievement in EverQuest?

In Community, it's hard to point out one achievement. But the thing I am happiest with right now would be successfully communicating the free-to-play release. That's definitely a big, exciting moment for us here. And to be involved in such a huge moment in EverQuest history is quite an honor.

In the third and final part of our coverage, we will tackle some game questions (including a couple from the community). We will also gain an insight into how EverQuest will celerate its 13th birthday.

Magelo Exclusive: Sony Talks to Magelo About F2P Decision

Nepabrite — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:15:01 GMT

Developers discuss F2P decision in part one of three in our exclusive interview

Yesterday, we got to sit down with Thom Terrazas (Executive Producer of EverQuest), Adam Bell (Lead Designer) and Eric Cleaver (Community Manager) and talked about EverQuest, the free-to-play announcement and so much more!

In the first of our three-part coverage, we focused on EverQuest's free-to-play announcement, and the changes the transition will bring.

Q: EverQuest is almost 13 years old. As such, it is the longest running paid MMO. Why go F2P?

Thom: For us, it's a no-brainer. It makes sense for us to go free to play like all our other games, and to give the same type of offering our other games have. We're designing a nice, flexible system for anybody to play the way they want to play. So many people have played our game that we see this as a great opportunity for our past players to come back and play, and to give new players an incentive to play.

Q: Will there be currency locks, such as we see in EQ2?

Adam: Yes, there will be a maximum amount of currency. Currency locks are in place for our free and Silver users.

Thom: The free-to-play system is something we have been working on for a long time – since long before the Veil of Alaris launch.

Q: So was this in the pipeline during VoA development?

Thom: We were talking about it then. Unfortunately, we couldn't do it at the same time. Veil of Alaris was consuming most of our time. It was something we wanted to take the extra time to do well, and to put a nice polish on it. Especially the tutorials.

Q: So will the F2P transition affect the pace of new content development?

Adam: No, it shouldn't have a significant impact. There was that one minor bump as we were developing the tutorials. We spent some time working on that where we weren't making new content. Going forward after launch, it shouldn't affect us at all.

Q: So will there be a reduction in services (such as customer service or technical service) for those who have the free service?

Adam: Yes, full customer service is only available to those with a Gold Membership. Billing will continue to provide full service.

Q: Will there be class locks, such as we see in EQ2?

Thom: Yes. There will be warrior, cleric, wizard and rogue. (To be clear, those are the ones that are UNLOCKED and available for free. The rest will need to be unlocked, unless of course you are gold)

Q: Will there be any type of system in place to balance any class flood-out (such as 100 warriors being rolled on the same day)?

Adam: We have no specific checks. Those things tend to balance themselves out, though. Plus, the mercenary mode would allow 100 warriors to play.

Q: Is the F2P transition a primer for any kind of merger of EverQuest and EQ2?

Adam: No. This is not due to any consolidation needs. EQ and EQ2 are completely different games.

Thom: Even though we've kinda toyed and talked about, “Wow! It would be cool to do this or that,” between the two games. It's definitely not a possibility.

Adam: The technology is too different.

Thom: Pretty much everything about it is too difficult for anything like a merge.

Q: You previously announced that there will be changes to EQPlayers along with the F2P launch. Any details you'd like to announce?

Adam: It is still a little too much in development at this point for us to go into it.

Q: What will happen to certain paid services, such as Recruit-a-Friend?

Thom: Recruit-a-friend has already been removed from our website. You cannot invite new recruits at this time. The recruit-a-friend program will then be unsupported at the time we go free-to-play. We are already in discussion about a new Recruit-a-friend program.

The development team did not have any information about whether there would be any compensation for paid services. The free-to-play transition will take place in early March.

Come back tomorrow, as we get to know the developers of Everquest, the games they like (and the football teams they don't).

Update (2/1/2012): Clarified answer attributions

EQ to Become Free-to-Play

Nepabrite — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:26:46 GMT

Early March signals beginning of EQ F2P

On March 18, 2012, Everquest will turn 13 years old. As such, it is the longest running paid MMORPG still in service.

This morning, Everquest Executive Producer Thom Terrazas announced that beginning in early March, Everquest will be free-to-play. According to Terrazas, this move is intended to make the game more accessible to every type of player.

Players who log in after the change will receive a welcome pack. Amongst other things, player will receive a unique Mercenary to fight by the player's side, Bayle Marks and Experience Potions.

Quoting from the Official Announcement:

We, the EverQuest dev team, are very excited about this new flexible system. Free-To-Play is the best fit for EverQuest and we are looking forward to supporting the game and our dedicated fans for years to come. This is a great year for everyone associated with EverQuest and SOE. We think you'll be pleasantly surprised at what's coming in 2012.

One last note, we will be doing a Community Webcast on Thursday February 2, 2012 covering all of the exciting free-to-play details.

We will continue to bring you further news and information about this development as its available.

Sony Releases Q&A with Chris “Dzarn” Black

Nepabrite — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:27:27 GMT

The Everquest community was invited to participate in a community question and answer event with Chris "Dzarn" Black. Many questions were asked, and Sony has posted answers on several subjects from the game's design to developer trivia.

Below we have quoted the write-up as posted by Piestro on the Everquest Community Website:

Piestro – People often discuss you as someone who “gets” EQ content. What’s your approach to content design and how has this evolved over the last year or so?

Playing EQ for as long as I have has helped a lot in terms of "getting" what EQ is, or at least, "what EQ is to me." There is an interesting transition that occurred for me when I went from "player" to "developer" in the way I understand the content of EQ. From the outside looking in, Norrath is a monolith, a unified world of stories and experiences. From the inside looking out, you begin to understand that Norrath is an amalgamation, the sum of many different creative and unique minds working together (and in some cases apart) to share their experiences and ideas with the players.

This transition has played a large part in shaping my approach to designing content over the last year. I went from believing that there was an ancient tome in the dark recesses of the office that housed the sacred direction and story of Norrath, to wanting to become the author of that tome. (Spoilers: Part of such a document is actually encased in glass on the wall of our meeting room.)

My "approach" to designing content comes down to wanting to tell a story. When I create characters, such as the inhabitants of Sunrise Hills, I start by asking myself questions about who the person is: where did they grow up and who are the members of their family, why are they in this part of the world now and what do they hope to accomplish, how do they react to the people around them and what is their general mood? Something that guides a lot of those questions is how I can incorporate parts of Norrath that I have fond memories of. To that extent I've tried to make everyone who lives in Sunrise Hills a relative of someone in classic starting cities of Norrath. Likewise, when I was working on the Pillars of Alra (will elaborate later), my goal was to tell the story of the warring factions through quests and game-play.

Morituus – What are some of your other favorite RPGs? How has playing RPG games influenced your work in EQ? Aerith or Tifa? (Editor’s note: I’m not sure Dzarn is old enough for that reference -P)

Without delving into argument over which title in the series is best, my favorite RPGs include the Final Fantasy series, Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, Secret of Evermore and Secret of Mana, Fable, and Earthbound (Mother I-III). Additionally, though not exactly RPGs I've always liked the Megaman series, the Legend of Zelda series, the Katamari Damacy titles, and most recently I've found Dark Souls to be a phenomenal gaming experience.

Playing RPGs (and games in general) has inspired me to both flesh out and hide Easter-eggs in a lot of my content. There are some rather overt references in the Freeport fair event of "an epic request" (more on this later) as well as hidden dialogue trees on most every NPC I make (if you've figured out who H`tathca's friend was in Pillars yet...) I try to sneak in little details that are often overlooked when designing things, like coloring the armor and customizing the facial appearance of my NPCs or putting a dismissive dialogue on individuals who wouldn't normally talk. (Just about every Alaran in Pillars responds to a hail.)

Other games also inspire me in more subtle ways. Often times when I am at a loss for ideas I think back on good game-play experiences I have had and try to analyze what made the moments memorable. Things like intertwining music with an important revelation or experience really helps solidify a moment as "epic". I think back to the first time I engaged Mayong Mistmoore in the Demiplane of Blood and being both shocked and awed when the battle-song started ringing out. I liken that moment to playing Final Fantasy VII and being emotionally struck with Aerith is killed. The ensuing boss fight is played against the backdrop of her melancholy and sad theme song rather than the traditional "boss theme", which really worked to highlight the significance of that moment.

Finally, between the two, Aerith.

Naugrin - What's your favorite quest that you didn't create and why?

That is a very difficult question. I have a few particular memories I hold very dear, all because of who I was with when I was playing. I have two that I have trouble deciding between; the summoning of Bloodspear the Wretched in the Crypt of Nadox and the recovery of Princess Lenya Thex.

The summoning of Bloodspear the Wretched was a quest a friend and I stumbled upon by accident. We were hunting for the drops needed to get his Pureblood spell when the two of us came under attack from a large number of zombie trolls. The two of us battled them off, wave after wave with no break in sight until the massive beast made his appearance. We engaged in combat low on health, nearly out of mana, with all of our supplies depleted. Combat was fierce, each of us nearly dying at several key points until finally the beast fell to the ground and we stood over its body victorious, utterly out of mana with less than 10% health, but still victorious. The memory of that fight is something we still talk about today. The design of the event was simple but it was well balanced and had the right combination of setting, music and theme to really make for an epic memory.

The recovery of Princess Lenya Thex is another quest that I found particularly memorable. A combination of intrigue, fearless story-telling and the depth of the original lore are all something I aspire to be able to recreate. Throughout each step of the quest I felt like I was adventuring in a living-breathing world. The way characters would respond and interact with both the players but also themselves is something I try to mimic in my quest design now. It also helps that I was doing the quest alongside friends.

Naugrin - What gives with the now infamous winter hat?

The ushanka was something I had wanted to get for a long time actually. I have a small but growing hat collection that I am fond of. The first of my collection is the green cap pictured above. I liked it because unlike most hats, it fit well. It's more difficult than I expected to find hats in XL sizes (23.5" circumference.) The ushanka in question was the latest addition to my collection and also the most interesting. The reason I chose to wear it stems from my previous on camera appearance during the launch of House of Thule where I appeared wearing a blue knit-cap my sister made for me. It was only logical that my second on camera appearance would have to have a hat even more noteworthy than the first.

Rorce – How do you feel about how Pillars turned out? Were you able to accomplish most of what you wanted to do?

The Pillars of Alra was an interesting experience for me. It was the first time I've ever worked on a zone and given nearly complete freedom on what I could create in it. If I had it to do over again I would have allocated my time a bit better and probably toned down the difficulty a bit. I am happy with how the story turned out and am still in awe of Allen Bond's amazing work on the art.

The zone has been a good learning experience though. The aura mechanic for each Pillar for example is something most people haven't figured out yet, but made perfect sense to me when I was making it. Each tower has a particular affinity or hatred for an appearance. I won't spoil it yet, but I've learned that clearly messaging how something works without breaking character is certainly a challenge.

Other things I like about the zone are: the sprites that I setup that fly around the arena/meditation areas of each Pillar, the peacekeepers which appear based on the number of inhabitants you have slain on a per floor basis, and that the difficulty of the rares can be mitigated significantly by following the mechanics of their fights.

The one thing I can say that I was not able to accomplish that I wanted to was to customize the dialogues of the inhabitants more. Too much of the time was spent on creating the individual rare fights that I ended up unable to really elaborate on the story you could get from speaking to people.

Shangsung – How many hats do you actually have?

Eight, not included is the 4 ft sombrero my sister got me in Mexico.

Tordail – What were the thoughts behind you wanting to do the as of yet unreleased Epic Ornamentation Quests? What was your approach to starting them?

Their inception is the product of not thinking things through actually... I was asked to create a task where players could speak to an NPC if they had their epic and receive an ornamentation. I asked if creating something a "little more interesting" would be acceptable. Ngreth in his naiveté of who I was at the time allowed it. At our next review meeting each member of the team presented what they had been working on in the last few weeks. I played a video in which a bard travelled to Dreadlands in search of Baldric Slezaf to learn what has become of the reclusive maestro. The event transformed into a cinematic encounter where famous bards from all around Norrath came together to perform the symphony that the bard collected when they obtained their Singing Short Sword.

I believe it was Aristo who said during the movie, "you're never going to finish on time." He was quite right, although the quest was interesting and different, it was radically time intensive. This trend continued with each class I worked on, a significant time investment to develop a new mechanic and present a memorable story.

My approach to the creation of each event is roughly the same. I look at a class and list out everything they are capable of, all unique aspects and spell lines they've developed and I think about how I can utilize a large number of these in puzzle form. For bards that meant incorporating the use of a number of instruments, for rangers it highlighted their tracking skills, for monks it was coming up with a way that they could incorporate all of their unique melee skills into an event, and so on.

After I had decided on what skills I would have the player employ I reacquainted myself with all the details of their first epic quest. I looked at the story-line, the characters, the locations, the themes and tried to find any unanswered questions. Once I was happy with my understanding of the event I would write an outline of what I wanted to accomplish; sometimes this was simple and other times it became very elaborate. From there I would expand the outline and detail every step of the quest and exactly how I wanted to implement it. This made it much easier to create the quests because I could think through all of the possibilities of implementation before delving into it. It was in this step I would write about 90% of the text/dialogue that is seen in each event. From there I simply worked through the outline creating the characters and mechanics for each event and putting the story in the appropriate places.

The project was very fulfilling personally because each time I made an event I tried to learn "how" to do something with the engine. With the bard event I learned simple things like how to get an NPC to move, how to check what a player is doing and what armor or weapons they have. With the wizard event I learned how to replace zone geometry to tear down buildings and use our particle system to add fire and smoke to areas. With the shadow knight event I learned how to link instances together so you can go from one area to another but remain in a play space I can control on a per-person basis.

More on this in a later question.

Crystilla - Now that you've seen your first expansion from the inside out, what thoughts come to mind about the process?

The biggest lesson from the expansion has been how to better allocate my time. The concept of deadlines is something I am far more familiar with now than I was prior to this expansion. The process has also taught me that I need to improve upon my zone designing skills in all regards, from doing a better job on an initial layout to really seeing each step of the zone creation process through with a better initial idea in mind. I look back to older zones and think that, while they are not as graphically impressive as our modern zones, there is a certain charm in which the environment and characters seem to mesh well together. That sense of a "complete" design is something I want to improve upon in my future zones.

The process is also much more segmented than I had originally imaged, which has its ups and downs. It works out as follows:

1. Initial pitches and brainstorming occurs. Once developers have all created a proposal they are discussed at a meeting and a winner is crowned, usually a combination of several ideas.
2. A master document is created where what needs to be made is listed. This includes zones, character models, systems changes, major code requests, etc.
3. Artists begin work on the zones.
4. When art is mostly complete designers begin placing NPCs, creating tasks, creating missions, creating raids.
5. Magic happens.
6. Beta happens.
7. Release happens.
8. Post launch fixes go out.
9. Beta rewards go out.
10. Elidroth breaks something.
11. Brainstorming for next expansion begins.

Crystilla - When trying to do something or fix something for the game, can you give an example of something that has been totally different than your "player side" background would have expected? For example we see the words "code can't support it" float around but rarely get insight into the 'why' or 'how'.

This one is sort of a two part question, so I'll start with how I as a designer have been surprised about fixing something.

It is interesting to see how different people react to something based on their understanding of the situation. For example, I just recently was fixing a task in Blightfire Moors where you have to go click on buckets of Jumjum to harvest items needed for a Drakkin scout. I was reviewing the mechanic where you click the bucket and it gives you an item and noticed that there was a mismatch between the object number in the zone and the expected values on the click "script*". What was happening was that if you clicked bucket number 1, it worked and updated your task, but if you clicked buckets 2 or 3 they disappeared and didn't update your task. It was by blind luck that bucket number 1 wasn't broken as well. I looked online and players had surmised that buckets 2 and 3 were simply decoys and that it was intended.
(Think of a script as like doing code with a crayon. Designers can write behaviors and attach it to a number of things but the range of tools we have are very different than what coders use.)

The above scenario is just one of many cases where how much information you have about something determines how you react to it. There are plenty of things that are intended to happen but are not messaged to the player well enough that people consider bugs and there are things that work in game that we don't intend and they're considered features.

Another example was when Goru Uldrock, the Reincarnate in Vergalid mines, stopped working. There were a number of theories as to why the event wouldn't function. What had happened was, at some point the script that started the fight just happened to be replaced with another script from the zone by accident.

The second part seems to suggest what fixes can or can't be done. I'll preface the second question's answer with the introduction that the coders we have now are some of the most amazing people I've ever had the pleasure of working with. Imagine if your day to day routine was go into a dark room and spend 9-15 hours a day unraveling tangled Christmas lights, with the caveat that the lights are plugged in, burning hot and if any of them go out you have to start over. That is the level of patience and unceasing tenacity our coders show every day.

What I think a lot of people lack is an understanding of how the disciplines are split and what responsibilities fall under each discipline. On the team there are coders, there are artists and there are designers. Within the company but not on the "EverQuest Team" are the people that maintain the servers, the website, the forums, managers, and whatever it is Piestro does.

When a player sees something wrong it is usually brought to the attention of the developers to fix a bug. Often times we can fix these things: items have wrong stats, an NPC isn't saying the right thing, a quest doesn't update correctly. Other times there are things wrong that are out of our hands: Dark Elves impale themselves with their shield when they ride on a horse, the client crashes because its hit the 2GB memory cap for a 32 bit application, an AA doesn't work because certain spell effects only work on NPCs and not players.

What happens most often when we say that "code doesn't support" something is that, at this time, the amount of time it takes for our coders to do a specific task doesn't outweigh the benefits of them doing something else. It's an answer that most players don't like hearing when it pertains to their particular issue and oftentimes something that we as developers are equally if not more frustrated with.

There are also times where, while it is theoretically possible for something to work, the risks involve outweigh the benefits of a particular solution. While it would be nice to have an NPC with such complex behaviors that it would "outsmart" a player in combat, it is also nice to have servers that don't crash due to over-processing AI behaviors or just upsetting players because the NPC is smart enough to ignore everyone until the healers are all dead.

Crystilla - In the weekly team meetings, who gets the most passionate/vocal when discussing a topic that has dissention?

Elidroth tends to be the most passionate, Ellie tends to be the most vocal (I think I hear her now), Aristo will fight vehemently when the time is right, Absor tends to be the more moderate voice of reason, Ngreth smashes those who get out of line and the rest of us are wildcards depending on the subject.

Crystilla - If the weekly team meetings were made into a movie... Which Devs/Coders/CMs would be leading stars and which would be supporting cast?

It would be a remake of Grumpy Old Men staring Absor and Elidroth as the leads.

Which actor/actresses would play each person: etc.)

Absor: Walter Matthau
Aristo: Cuba Gooding Jr.
Bembaru: Bruce Willis
Chandrok: Paul Bettany
Dzarn: Weird Al Yankovic
Elegist: Steve Buscemi
Elidroth: Andre the Giant
Ellie: Nicole Kidman
Jansan: Burgess Meredith (Time Enough at Last episode of the Twilight Zone)
JChan: Jennifer Tilly
JGray: Jonathan Goldsmith (The Most Interesting Man in the World)
Ngreth: Brad Pitt
Normando: George Wendt
Phathom: Tim Tebow
Piestro: Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf (Ed's note, I would have picked Doug Bradley -P)

Crystilla, Tendalos, etc. - And finally, only because someone has to ask Is there an ETA on the long awaited epic ornamentations?

Soon™? Given the amount of time it takes to write, implement, review, test, and release each quest there has been a noted delay in their release. What I can say for sure is that we as a team want their release to be something extraordinary and enjoyable for everyone to play.

Phathom: These quests are content we definitely want all our players to be able to experience and enjoy. In their current form these quests are designed to be played class specifically and this something we’d like to expand on by allowing other classes to play or participate in. In addition there are other developments (some very exciting stuff!) we are working on that might change slightly how we use this content, more on that later! Finally, before anyone asks, this content will be part of a future free content release, when it’s ready. This will not be behind the marketplace.

Keep Current with Our New RSS Feed!

Nepabrite — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:39:02 GMT

Keep current with what is going on in Everquest and at Magelo with our brand new RSS feed!

Available on every game channel, just click the RSS symbol at the top of the page to get up-to-date news, information, interviews, Magelo updates and more straight to your browser or your favorite newsgroup reader.

Just one of many innovations to bring information and convenience one step closer!

EverQuest Patch January 11 2012

Nepabrite — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:09:30 GMT

All servers will be offline at 3am PST for approximately five hours.

Magelo Sync has been patched!

Below are the Update Notes, which can also be found on the Everquest Official Site:

‎Highlights

Mercenary Roster Quest - A new tradeskill quest is available to obtain a mercenary slot for your roster by adding Hero's Barracks as a reward, if it has not been maxed at 4. See Mercenary Captain Cecille in the Plane of Knowledge. You must have mastered all basic tradeskills to take this quest.
The achievement "Master of Alaris" now grants Hero's Barracks as a reward, which grants an additional mercenary slot, up to the maximum of 4.
Players who participated in Beta can now Claim their reward!

Items

Vyers' Stud is now usable by beastlords.
Prescient Fleeting Quiver now has 39% haste.
Rustic Coat of Carnage and Modest Warmonger Coat now have Sundering Discipline Quickening.
Rustic Coat of the Assassin and Modest Carnifex Coat now have Eradicator Discipline Quickening.
Empowered Trophies now have their intended graphics.
The Token of Fanfare should now be far less intrusive.

Tradeskills

Some tradeskilled ornamentations were showing the incorrect icons. These have been fixed.
Soloist Ascension Sleeve Seal of the Firechief now correctly has String Resonance.

Quests & Events

Mercenary Roster Quest - A new tradeskill quest is available to obtain a mercenary slot for your roster by adding Hero's Barracks as a reward if it has not been maxed. See Mercenary Captain Cecille in the Plane of Knowledge. You must have mastered all basic tradeskills to take this quest.

Spells

Scent of Terris should now correctly modify corruption resists instead of counters.

NPC

Krongar the Enrager may now appear after killing Rallosian defectors in the Valley of Lunanyn.
Prowlers in Beasts' Domain will no longer remain in the same spot where they lose agro.

Origin is now auto-granted at level 5 to all players. The reuse time has been lowered to 18 minutes.
Hastened Origin has been refunded, as it is no longer relevant.

Achievements

The achievement "Master of Alaris" now grants Hero's Barracks as a reward, which grants an additional mercenary slot, up to the maximum of 4.
The achievement "Make Haste" for the mission "Secrets of the Stones" now requires the fragment delivery within 15 minutes, as intended, rather than 8 minutes.
Fixed a bug that would prevent the completion of the "Pillars of Success" achievement during the mission "The Growing Threat."

Progression Servers

Sooty Fine Runic Papyrus is now dropping on progression servers.
Unfired Shade Summoning Figurine and Shade Summoning Figurine, for the quest "Vampyre Troubles," can now be combined on progression servers.

Miscellaneous

Changed the default window size for EQ on a fresh install to default to the current desktop resolution.
Made a change to prevent out-of-memory crashes on 64-bit systems. On 64-bit operating systems, EverQuest will now use 4GB of address space instead of only 2GB.
Changed the default display for chat filters to automatically hide SPAM marked messages.

Added the ability to tint any control a certain color from the UI XML. The new property is called BackgroundTextureTint.
Converted the button tinting from the "Buy Slot" button in the Mercenary window to use the new tinting option.

Changed - EQUI_MercenaryManageWnd.xml SIDL.xml

Server Downtime for Game Update

Nepabrite — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 18:06:34 GMT

As posted by Piestro in the Norrathian Herald:

All EverQuest Live Servers will be coming down on Wednesday, January 11, 2012 at 3:00 am US Pacific* for a Game Update. The servers are estimated to be unavailable for approximately 5 hours. Keep an eye on the EQ Players website and the forums for status updates and for news if additional downtime is needed.

Profile stats are now all fixed!

Jelan — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 05:08:18 GMT

Wow it's been a long journey but I am happy to report that all your profile stats are now fixed and should match your ingame stats. Just to avoid any confusion, this means HP Mana Endur Ac Atk and all Regen are now fixed. If somehow you still have any issue with your character stats, please report it in this topic and we will fix it.

Now that this is behind us, we will focus on cleaning the database a bit (ya bunnies, I am looking at you..) and bringing more tools starting with a new advanced item search.

Magelo is a community driven website so your feedback is most welcome, if you have ideas on how to improve the website or how we could help you or your guild with some tools, make sure to share your thoughts in our suggestion forum.

Login Server Maintenance

Nepabrite — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 18:54:09 GMT

Posted by Piestro in the Norrathian Herald:

All EverQuest Login Servers will be coming down on Monday, January 9, 2012 at 1:00 am US Pacific for a emergency maintenance. Login Service is estimated to be unavailable for approximately 3 hours. Keep an eye on the EQ Players website and the forums for status updates and for news if additional downtime is needed.

Happy New Year!

loulina — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 08:05:11 GMT

The whole Magelo team wishes you a Happy New Year!

Many improvements and new features have been added in 2011 and we are looking forward to continue to bring you the best services we can in 2012 starting with innovative tools for guilds and other surprises.

Thank you all for your support and feedback. Please, keep them coming and spread the word!

Housing Items are now synced!

loulina — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:17:06 GMT

Check out the Inventory tool that display now your Housing Items!

You just need to synchronize your character to browse your housing items in the inventory tool. You can filter your inventory to see all the items stored in a specific location, as housing items are grouped by address (ex. 105 Vanward street).

Don't hesitate to suggest an improvement, or report any issue you may find in the forums. Thanks!

New Guild bank and Holiday special offer!

loulina — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 12:55:28 GMT

To celebrate this end of the year, a new exciting guild feature is live and our holiday special offer is back!

But first, we wanted to let you know we are working on getting rid of duplicate profiles. From now on, when you sync a character that already exist on another account, you will claim it back. We will delete the duplicates in a week keeping only the last updated characters.

New Guild Bank

Premium members can now unlock some features for their guilds, starting with the Guild Bank!
Only one member needs to be Premium to let other access the Guild bank. Ingame permissions are taken into account and only authorized guild mates will be able to see deposited and banked items on Magelo.

To add your bank in your guild page, you just need to sync your character once you have viewed your guild bank. In your guild page, you will be able to sort the content of your bank by category (item category, class, slot).

In the meantime, other improvements have been done in your guild tools:

The full guild roster is now created as soon as one member synchronizes his character.
The presentation of your guild page has been improved to display more clearly your guild identity, the roster and the guild bank.
The public guild page will reflect those changes as well and use now a nice URL that includes the server and the name of the guild. Check out http://eq.magelo.com/guild/antonius/Raging-Fury for example!

Finally the Guilds section is momentarily unavailable as well as the recruitment feature. We are working on them as part as our guild tools improvement plans.

Holiday special offer

To celebrate the end of the year our holiday special offer is back! Subscribe now for 1 year Premium and get 3 extra months free! This offer lasts until 15 January 2012 so you have plenty of time to enjoy it before it runs out.

More than ever, it is the best time of the year to show your support to Magelo! It’s been more than 10 years now that we are doing our best to build a great fansite for EverQuest. So help us keep going by becoming a Premium member! We have a bunch of great projects on the way for 2012 and this is thanks to your support that we will be able to achieve them.

We wish you all a happy holiday!

EverQuest Patch December 16 2011

loulina — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 04:38:20 GMT

Another patch has been applied on Friday December 16, 2011 at 6am Pacific time for an emergency maintenance, before we patched Magelo Sync. So we are also on it and we should patch Magelo Sync later today. We will keep you posted!

Update: Magelo Sync has been patched!

Veil of Alaris is now live!

loulina — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:08:49 GMT

Veil of Alaris, the 18th expansion of Everquest is finally out today!

In addition to a level cap raise from 90 to 95, over 800 AAs have been added and you can now quest through 12 new zones, enjoy new UI features, guild tools, and see also the introduction of guild housing and guild trophies in Veil of Alaris.

We are preparing an update for Magelo Sync to make it compatible with Veil of Alaris and we will let you know as soon as you can synchronize your characters again!

Update: Magelo Sync has been patched! Check out the 12 new zones with their maps and points of interest now! Thanks in advance for the contribution you will make running Magelo Sync when you play. All the community is waiting for new items, loot info, NPCs position, merchants sell tables,...

Browse bigger bags in Profile and other changes!

loulina — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 04:46:49 GMT

We recently updated the website to fix few bugs and introduce the possibility to browse bags bigger than 20 slots in the profile. This is now available and you will find below a quick overview of all the changes made.

New features

Ability to browse bags bigger than 20 slots in the profile
The Heroic statistics are now available in the Ranking

Bugs fixed

Heroic stats in the signature is not showing "0" anymore
Food and drinks no longer appear incorrectly as charm and ear in modifiers list
All skills are now displaying correct cap
Edit equipment was showing a system error for a few users. It is now fixed.
1H blunt skill is now back after a long vacation,...

Have a great week everyone!

Auto-complete database links & latest comments

loulina — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 04:33:27 GMT

Auto-complete database links

We just added a new feature to illustrate easily your forum post and comment with database links, in Magelo but also in any other website where our tooltips are used

Whenever you want to insert a link on an item, npc or anything from the database, just type the beginning of its name and press Ctrl+Space to auto complete the link. You will automatically get the link with the tooltip added in your post.

Database latest comments

You can now access all the Latest comments on the database! A direct link is available from the left menu, in the Community section. Add your contribution to the community now providing your own comment, in order to build together a better database outside of the game!