The new patch message is up.
Marc Fuller
forgive any potential mangeling inflicted by my Word Wrap setting.) I've made a
few comments at the very bottom, if anyone cares. :)
Begin patch text:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
January 20th, 7:00am
--------------------
*Announcements*
The Plane of Sky is now open!!! As a reminder to our customers, the alternate
planes of reality do not necessarily follow the same physical or ethereal rules
as Norrath proper. Enjoy!
Today is patch day! The EverQuest servers have been patched with the following
changes:
*General Changes / Fixes*
- Some changes have been made to the exit of Nagafen's Lair into the Lavastorm
Mountains. This will hopefully reduce if not solve the bug that causes people
to fall into lava when exiting Nagafen's Lair. Please let us know how this
goes.
- Due to feedback received from the customers concerning the density of fog
during rainstorms, visibility has been increased.
- All drops of steel weapons have been replaced with higher quality fine-steel
weapons of the same type. This change was made to reduce the amount of new
currency coming into the world at the mid-to-upper levels. The fine-steel
weapons are in all cases superior to the steel weapons that were dropping, they
just sell to vendors for less money.
- Casting times have been implemented on several activatable items. This was
done to correct issues that could arise from people chain-casting these items.
- The safe-point (the point which you return if you fall below the world) in
Kithicor has been moved near the entrance to Rivervale, a safer part of the
zone.
- Corrected a bug that caused AC to be improperly displayed for higher level
characters. Your AC should now reflect all of your items.
Additional Bug Fixes:
- Corrected a bug in the client that could cause a crash if you were spammed
with emotes by someone on your /ignore list.
- Corrected a bug that allowed ships to move faster when disarmed
- Corrected a bug that caused the Aqualung to lose its charges if dropped on the
ground.
- Fire Giants in Nagafen's Lair should now recover properly when stuck in lava.
Consider yourself warned.
- The Instill Doubt skill has been disabled on the PvP servers.
*Spell Changes*
- Shadow Vortex is now a "drain" spell.
- Siphon Strength will now stack with strength buffs and debuffs
- Panic the Dead cast and recast delays have been reduced. In addition, the
spell is less resistable.
- Angstlich's Appalling Screech had its radius increased slightly.
- All Wizard AoE damage and stun spells have had their radius slightly increased
- Yonder will now interact better with levitate.
- Form of the Great Wolf had its speed component increased.
- Terrorize Animal had its casting time reduced and is less resistable.
- New magician's spells have been added. Check your spell vendors.
- Reoccurring Amnesia has been made more effective.
- NPCs will now treat the "Cancel Magic" series of spells as hostile.
Previously, NPCs did not mind if players dispelled all of their buffs before
attacking. Now they will.
- The Fear and Charm series of spells now properly notify the caster when they
break. No, seriously, we're certain this time.
- Harmtouch now does more damage beginning at level 41.
*Levitation Changed*
Due to the implementation of casting times on activatable items, the code that
disallowed refreshing of the Levitation spell while it was active is no longer
necessary and has been backed out. The Levitate spell may now be refreshed
while the spell is in use.
*Quests and Items*
- The Armor of Ro should be more obtainable. We will continue to evaluate and
adjust the rarity of other class-specific armor components to make the pieces
obtainable in a reasonable amount of time.
- We have changed the reward of a newbie quest in the Qeynos area from a level
49 scroll to a level 1 scroll. The issuance of a level 49 scroll was a typo in
the quest data, allowing new characters to amass an abnormally large amount of
currency.
- The stats on the reward for the Rogue Redemption quest have been increased to
make it better than the favorite dropped-weapon for the level range.
- Ravenscale boots will now drop as frequently as other Ravenscale items.
- The Mask of Deception may now be equipped by the appropriate races.
*Fletching Update*
All arrows created with the new Silver-Tipped Arrowhead (formerly the Bladed
Arrowhead) are now magical in nature, and may be used versus magical creatures.
All existing items in your possession will automatically morph into the new
magical items. Additionally, each successful attempt to create magical arrows
will yield 10 arrows instead of the previous 5. As such, the vendor buy-back
value has been decreased accordingly.
*Paw*
The difficulty of Paw has been decreased. We found that many of the gnolls in
the new Paw had too many hitpoints, making the dungeon more difficult than it
should have been for the desired level target. Please let us know how this
change affects the viability of the dungeon.
*The Plane of Fear*
The item-drop percentages in the Plane of Fear have been increased. This change
was supposed to have occurred in the last patch, however the data was not
exported. It has been tested and equipment drops are now occurring at a much
higher rate.
*The Plane of Hate*
The item-drop percentages on roaming and fast-spawning NPCs in the Plane of Hate
have been decreased. Previously, these NPCs used the same drop-percentages as
the slow-spawning NPCs, causing overall drop percentages to be extremely high.
Also, the inhabitants of the Plane of Hate no longer fall for illusions, and
tend to "Hate" everyone.
*Monk Enhancement*
A monk's speed in hand-to-hand combat will now improve with level, beginning in
the high 20s. This will result in higher level monks doing substantially more
damage in a given time-frame.
Though this change does increase the power of the average monk, it should be
stressed that the monk is now even more in need of true tank classes who have
the ability to taunt upset creatures off them. We want to stress that the "taunt
factor" of a monks fist has NOT been increased, though it may appear so due to
your increased damage.
*Paladin/Shadowknight Enhancement*
Paladins and Shadowknights now have a higher hitpoints and higher skill caps on
Bash and Taunt.
The additional hitpoints will be noticeable for Paladins and SKs over level 25.
This was done because the Paladins, SKs, and Rangers had the same HP base, which
upon further consideration is not compatible with our vision of those classes'
roles. This change will basically put Paladin and SK HPs midway (in terms of
Hit Points) between rangers and warriors of the same race.
The taunt skill was increased because SKs, and in particular, Paladins had
difficulty taunting opponents off of Rangers, Monks, Rogues, and Warriors due to
their lower damage output. Though the Paladin and SK will never equal the
warrior in their ability to taunt, this change in addition to some of the
taunting spells should help them become more effective tanks.
Bash was increased because Paladins typically aren't switching to two-handed
weapons, choosing instead to continue using the bash skill. Most warriors, being
ogres, trolls, or barbarians for the most part, do not worry about bash and
instead opt for slam, which uses the same skill. Paladins are typically the only
characters who use a shield throughout their lives.
*Rogue Enhancement*
Whenever a rogue is invisible, whether by spell, potion, or skill, they are now
also invisible to undead.
This change was made to add a definite class-advantage to the rogue, allowing
them to do something that no other class could do. It is the first step in a
multi-step process to improve the rogue class.
*Wizard Enhancement*
Level 35 or above wizards will find that their spells (Magic, Cold, or Fire)
much less likely to be resisted. This effect stacks with the Staff of Temperate
Flux and enchanter, shaman, and magician resistance debuffs.
This change was made to increase the effectiveness of wizards at about the level
that all spell-casting classes start seeing their resistance rates go up.
Wizards specialize in direct magical damage. It makes sense that they should be
better at causing that damage than the other classes.
*Bard Enhancement*
Bards will now receive the Meditate skill at 10th level. This skill will be
granted automatically the first time a bard zones after reaching 10th level, and
cannot be trained further. It will have the effect of decreasing the amount of
time that it takes a Bard to memorize their songs. Previously, it would take
50th level bards upwards of 2 minutes to memorize a song. Now it is much
faster.
*Druid Enhancement*
The skill cap on a Druid's tracking skill has been increased. This change was
implemented based upon general public opinion that the former cap was far too
low for the skill to be even marginally viable.
*Feign Death and Pets*
After a serious discussion regarding the Necromancer's Feign Death tactic, as
well as reviewing public opinion on the matter, we have implemented a change.
As we would like everyone to understand why we feel this change was necessary,
here is a summary of the issue:
Problem:
Feign death allows you to become an invalid target in all circumstances,
providing offensive tactics that are abusive. For this ability to remain
balanced, the pet should follow the same rules as invisibility. Offensive
tactics used by other classes involve the creature getting a saving throw verses
the effect. Since creatures do NOT get a direct save verses feign death (as you
cast it on yourself), and since you can retry the combat once you have feigned
death, there is very little risk to necromancer himself. As this tactic
involves charming an NPC and turning it against another NPC, which could be part
of the same spawn, it allows for Necromancers to solo MUCH bigger rooms than any
other class could. This situation is well beyond what would preserve game
balance for any other class (soloing the Bloodthirsty Ghoul room and Ghoul Lord
room, for example).
Example:
While there are many examples of how the Necromancer Feign Death tactic is
abusive, one of the most egregious occurs in the Ghoul Lord room of Lower Guk.
The room consists of 2 Bok Ghoul Guards and the Ghoul Lord himself. Using the
current system, a level 50 Necro can easily solo the room at virtually no risk
to himself. The Necro can get into the room quite easily with Invis To Undead.
To clear the room he uses Screaming Terror on one Bok and Charms the other.
When the Ghoul Lord rushes him, he feigns. The Lord then turns on the charmed
Bok and kills it, taking considerable damage during the fight. The Necromancer
waits until the Ghoul Lord returns to its spawn point. When the necromancer
gets back up, he is in no danger of being attacked due to the way Feign Death
works now. He then charms the 2nd Bok and Feigns again. The fight goes on and
the 2nd Bok is killed. When the Necromancer gets back up he has a VERY wounded
Ghoul Lord AND nearly full mana. The Lord is now an easy kill, and the Necro
collects his special items.
Solution:
Ideally, Feign Death should work like Invisibility, where summoned pets suicide
and the charmed ones break Charm. We do not want, however, to adversely affect
lower level Necromancers to such a large degree. What we do recognize is the
need to prevent higher level Necro's from exploiting key spawn points. Hence,
when you Feign Death, any charmed NPC will immediately break Charm. However,
summoned NPCs (pets) will NOT be affected. While this still allows the use of
the Feign Death tactic with your summoned pet, it does not imbalance the game
and many dungeon spawns to the degree that charming an NPC does.
*Manastone Changed*
The players have raised many concerns about the power of the Manastone, which no
longer drops. They cite that people without a Manastone are not as welcome in
expeditions to the outer planes and other areas as people with them. Since
dropping additional Manastones via quest or removing them from the existing
populace is not desirable, we've decided to make it so that the Manastone will
no longer function in the alternate planes. Furthermore, it will not function
in any of the zones included with the Kunark Expansion.
We apologize to those adversely affected by this change. Our general goal is to
avoid making changes to items in peoples' possession, however we felt this
change was, all things considered, warranted and for the benefit of the game as
a whole.
- The EverQuest Team
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
End of new patch text.
Well, it looks like the issue of Manastone efficiency/utility versus Modulating
Rods has just been rendered almost totally moot. If you want to go to the
planes, you need a Rod, since the stones no longer work there at all. I think
this was also probably done to return some kind of parity to those players who
weren't lucky enough to get the stone in the first place.
It is nice that they corrected the underlying bug for Levitate. Now I just wish
they'd do something similar for they Eye of Zomm. Yes, it's not the most useful
spell in the world. But since Magicians can't use it at all when they have a
pet, which is most of the time, they may as well not even bother with it. In
it's current form, the only use I've found for it is to scout out new areas of a
town from a position closer to the zone line, so that if I accidentally aggro a
merchant that hates me (Dark Elf Magician) I don't have to try and recover my
corpse from under them.
Lots of nice little additions and fixes overall. Other than the Manastone and
Necro's Feign Death, there don't seem to be any visible negative changes
mentioned. (Although I'm sure some Necros and Manastone owners will be
screaming about how nerfed they are for the next few months.) Rogues being
invisible to normal creatures *and* undead is a nice boost. Maybe they'll
actually go into Unrest now.
Marc Fuller
dstep
<kat...@mindspring.com> wrote:
Yay!
>Well, the patch has started. I've included the new patch message (please
>forgive any potential mangeling inflicted by my Word Wrap setting.) I've made a
>few comments at the very bottom, if anyone cares. :)
I've cut some stuff
>Begin patch text:
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>January 20th, 7:00am
>--------------------
>
>*Announcements*
>
>The Plane of Sky is now open!!! As a reminder to our customers, the alternate
>planes of reality do not necessarily follow the same physical or ethereal rules
>as Norrath proper. Enjoy!
translation: You are level 50! Get the hell out of our game or
play your level 10 ranger in full rubicite instead! Prepare
to die a lot and get hardly nothing for your trouble from this new
area! Maybe we did something really cool too, like only give
a magician the spell to get into the plane of sky, since who the hell
would group with a magician at level 50 anyway? HAR HAR HAR!
>Today is patch day! The EverQuest servers have been patched with the following
>changes:
Prepare to once again become jealous of others when things that
they could do are now taked away from you RIGHT when you have
reached the level to do them!!!
>*General Changes / Fixes*
General nerfs, ways to piss off paying customers, and a couple fixes.
(although sorry, you will still get bounced if trying to zone into
west karana from qey hills, we think fixing this bug would give
players on a new server an unfair advantage!)
>- Some changes have been made to the exit of Nagafen's Lair into the Lavastorm
>Mountains. This will hopefully reduce if not solve the bug that causes people
>to fall into lava when exiting Nagafen's Lair. Please let us know how this
>goes.
A thing we did to have fun at employee meetings at Verant has been
rectified now. Although it was fun to see a level 50 fall into lava
and have a horrible time, we decided we could at least improve
customer service in that area. Please let us know if you still die
so we can tell funny stories at our next employee meeting still,
giggle.
>- Due to feedback received from the customers concerning the density of fog
>during rainstorms, visibility has been increased.
Where as before you could not see your own hand in front of your face,
now you will be able to see your friend bob if he is 10 feet in front
of you, yay!
>- All drops of steel weapons have been replaced with higher quality fine-steel
>weapons of the same type. This change was made to reduce the amount of new
>currency coming into the world at the mid-to-upper levels. The fine-steel
>weapons are in all cases superior to the steel weapons that were dropping, they
>just sell to vendors for less money.
At level 35 you were making money, from a creature in the game!
Shame on you!!!! Though you were just now able to do this and thought
"good god I can afford to buy something I'd otherwise have to camp 36
hours for, which i don't really have the time to do" , now you can
instead make 4 plat from them and say "wow! I can afford to buy food
and water!"
>- The safe-point (the point which you return if you fall below the world) in
>Kithicor has been moved near the entrance to Rivervale, a safer part of the
>zone.
Something else we got our jollies from, "totally and completely
unsafe in every way "safe points" " sony has now told us
we are very bad little boys and girls for implementing = (.
>- Corrected a bug that caused AC to be improperly displayed for higher level
> characters. Your AC should now reflect all of your items.
This will not help your class at all, but you will think you are
buffer, so fun!
>Additional Bug Fixes:
>- Corrected a bug in the client that could cause a crash if you were spammed
>with emotes by someone on your /ignore list.
We made the ignore use have a point now.
>- Corrected a bug that allowed ships to move faster when disarmed
(ahaha never knew about that one... aHAHAH so funny.. oh make it
stop..)
>- Corrected a bug that caused the Aqualung to lose its charges if dropped on the
>ground.
Made tinkering have sort of a point.
>- NPCs will now treat the "Cancel Magic" series of spells as hostile.
>Previously, NPCs did not mind if players dispelled all of their buffs before
>attacking. Now they will.
(wow.. an semi exploit that I have been totally unaware
of since beta phase 3.. the exp I could have possibly made... )
>- The Fear and Charm series of spells now properly notify the caster when they
>break. No, seriously, we're certain this time.
Something which is seems should have always been that way, is now
done.
>- Harmtouch now does more damage beginning at level 41.
Something useless is slightly increased in its uselessness.
>*Levitation Changed*
>
>Due to the implementation of casting times on activatable items, the code that
>disallowed refreshing of the Levitation spell while it was active is no longer
>necessary and has been backed out. The Levitate spell may now be refreshed
>while the spell is in use.
This one is nice, people were getting tired of having to find
something to land on in areas like OOT to refresh this spell.
>*Quests and Items*
>
>- The Armor of Ro should be more obtainable. We will continue to evaluate and
>adjust the rarity of other class-specific armor components to make the pieces
>obtainable in a reasonable amount of time.
Ro is paladin right?? Damn.. So this won't help the paladins or
Clerics on that glacier bear hell camp.
>- We have changed the reward of a newbie quest in the Qeynos area from a level
>49 scroll to a level 1 scroll. The issuance of a level 49 scroll was a typo in
>the quest data, allowing new characters to amass an abnormally large amount of
>currency.
Yeah, that one was kinda fun, though I never had a low
level character on a new enough server to bother with it.
>- The stats on the reward for the Rogue Redemption quest have been increased to
>make it better than the favorite dropped-weapon for the level range.
>- Ravenscale boots will now drop as frequently as other Ravenscale items.
>- The Mask of Deception may now be equipped by the appropriate races.
Wow, sounds like a few nice rogue things, kinda.
>*Fletching Update*
>
>All arrows created with the new Silver-Tipped Arrowhead (formerly the Bladed
>Arrowhead) are now magical in nature, and may be used versus magical creatures.
>All existing items in your possession will automatically morph into the new
>magical items. Additionally, each successful attempt to create magical arrows
>will yield 10 arrows instead of the previous 5. As such, the vendor buy-back
>value has been decreased accordingly.
Wow, that is VERY nice. Making arrows has a purpose
now. Although I can't think of many creatures this would be useful
on, oh, be nice for rangers for the ghoul messenger if a not so high
ranger can snare it and has made about 3000 magic arrows ;)
>*Paw*
>The difficulty of Paw has been decreased. We found that many of the gnolls in
>the new Paw had too many hitpoints, making the dungeon more difficult than it
>should have been for the desired level target. Please let us know how this
>change affects the viability of the dungeon.
Good, that place seemed kind of a waste for as hard as it was in
there. Now if they had only increased what the gnolls dropped.
>*The Plane of Fear*
>
>The item-drop percentages in the Plane of Fear have been increased. This change
>was supposed to have occurred in the last patch, however the data was not
>exported. It has been tested and equipment drops are now occurring at a much
>higher rate.
Wow, reason to do fear again. Course they still have
it impossible to get in when really being level 46 - 50
should be enough.
This will make some people happy.
>*The Plane of Hate*
>
>The item-drop percentages on roaming and fast-spawning NPCs in the Plane of Hate
>have been decreased. Previously, these NPCs used the same drop-percentages as
>the slow-spawning NPCs, causing overall drop percentages to be extremely high.
>Also, the inhabitants of the Plane of Hate no longer fall for illusions, and
>tend to "Hate" everyone.
Wow, No more free ride in Hate.
No more "scouting" by players with illusions
or being a certain race either.
This is going to peeve some people.
>*Monk Enhancement*
>A monk's speed in hand-to-hand combat will now improve with level, beginning in
>the high 20s. This will result in higher level monks doing substantially more
>damage in a given time-frame.
That is nice, real nice. Gives monk a bit more soloing potential
and will make them more of a target in groups, gives warriors a use
for taunt ; ) (High 20's? sound like not level 25 like I thought,
level 26? 28? 29?)
>*Paladin/Shadowknight Enhancement*
>Paladins and Shadowknights now have a higher hitpoints and higher skill caps on
>Bash and Taunt.
>
>The additional hitpoints will be noticeable for Paladins and SKs over level 25.
Nice, course as he commented only paladin will really use a shield
(ghoulbane) and ogre or troll sks will benefit from the bash only (de
and human will be using 2 hand of some kind most likely)
Was silly that a ranger was just as buff as sk and paladin, and
even had armor as good.
>*Rogue Enhancement*
>Whenever a rogue is invisible, whether by spell, potion, or skill, they are now
>also invisible to undead.
>
>This change was made to add a definite class-advantage to the rogue, allowing
>them to do something that no other class could do. It is the first step in a
>multi-step process to improve the rogue class.
Wow,that makes rogues better but seems kinda goofy. My shaman
can only cast invis, if she casts invis on a rogue then herself, the
undead in an area won't see him but will see her. Guess if she is
grouped with a rogue at unrest though she can invis him and have him
pull. Nice that rogue can now hide/sneak by undead (if they could not
before)
>*Bard Enhancement*
>
>Bards will now receive the Meditate skill at 10th level. This skill will be
>granted automatically the first time a bard zones after reaching 10th level, and
>cannot be trained further. It will have the effect of decreasing the amount of
>time that it takes a Bard to memorize their songs. Previously, it would take
>50th level bards upwards of 2 minutes to memorize a song. Now it is much
>faster.
Nice, yeah i was having enough of a hard time memorinzing new
songs at level 10 or whatever even.
>*Druid Enhancement*
>
>The skill cap on a Druid's tracking skill has been increased. This change was
>implemented based upon general public opinion that the former cap was far too
>low for the skill to be even marginally viable.
Wow cool, they took the axe dwarves 21.5 plat axe away from me, but
made it easier for me to find other stuff to kill (wonder just how
much more improved it is?) Druid track, the way it was, was more
than viable or useful to me. Just before the server went down, I was
at the cauldren zone line in butcher and saw zarchoomi on track, she
was way overat that goblin camp near there. I killed her and got head
and logged out. Guess now I'd see her if even farther away.
(yeah, I'm level 35 but I don't think anyone else was going to find
Zarchoomi in the 2 minutes before the server went down an kill her.
Corflunks head is given away by people allthe time who have it, so now
some low dwarf will get a good item from me when I get the other
head0
>*Manastone Changed*
>
>The players have raised many concerns about the power of the Manastone, which no
>longer drops. They cite that people without a Manastone are not as welcome in
>expeditions to the outer planes and other areas as people with them. Since
>dropping additional Manastones via quest or removing them from the existing
>populace is not desirable, we've decided to make it so that the Manastone will
>no longer function in the alternate planes. Furthermore, it will not function
>in any of the zones included with the Kunark Expansion.
>
>We apologize to those adversely affected by this change. Our general goal is to
>avoid making changes to items in peoples' possession, however we felt this
>change was, all things considered, warranted and for the benefit of the game as
>a whole.
This acually please me. I can't get a manastone, I don't even like
that others have one. I think if an item is removed, it should
be globally. My druid feels all these new item drop nerfs and spell
nerfs, why should a level 50 one not feel the mana stone nerf?
At least now they will have no advantage in the new exapansion,
and players won't be discriminated against going to the planes without
a mana stone. Course it also means that if you are 50 and have one
it more or less is useless, well good.
>- The EverQuest Team
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>End of new patch text.
>
>Well, it looks like the issue of Manastone efficiency/utility versus Modulating
>Rods has just been rendered almost totally moot. If you want to go to the
>planes, you need a Rod, since the stones no longer work there at all. I think
>this was also probably done to return some kind of parity to those players who
>weren't lucky enough to get the stone in the first place.
Yeah, darn tooting. I should not get the shaft cause it doesn't drop,
AND cause I don't have one like other people already do.
>It is nice that they corrected the underlying bug for Levitate. Now I just wish
>they'd do something similar for they Eye of Zomm. Yes, it's not the most useful
>spell in the world. But since Magicians can't use it at all when they have a
>pet, which is most of the time, they may as well not even bother with it. In
>it's current form, the only use I've found for it is to scout out new areas of a
>town from a position closer to the zone line, so that if I accidentally aggro a
>merchant that hates me (Dark Elf Magician) I don't have to try and recover my
>corpse from under them.
Yeah, I've only seen newbies use that spell and it is kinda cool - a
floating eye. I never knew about the "you can't use it with pet"
thing, that is super useless then. Why would they even do that?
I guess they are too lazy to make it "not a pet" and you can
only have one pet at a time.
>Lots of nice little additions and fixes overall. Other than the Manastone and
>Necro's Feign Death, there don't seem to be any visible negative changes
>mentioned. (Although I'm sure some Necros and Manastone owners will be
>screaming about how nerfed they are for the next few months.) Rogues being
>invisible to normal creatures *and* undead is a nice boost. Maybe they'll
>actually go into Unrest now.
>
>Marc Fuller
Yeah, it renders rogues totally safe in unrest now
from a low level now ( if hidden), kinda overbalancing really
but they are pretty weak so throw them a bone I guess.
D
Marc Fuller
[snip]
>
> >It is nice that they corrected the underlying bug for Levitate. Now I just wish
> >they'd do something similar for they Eye of Zomm. Yes, it's not the most useful
> >spell in the world. But since Magicians can't use it at all when they have a
> >pet, which is most of the time, they may as well not even bother with it. In
> >it's current form, the only use I've found for it is to scout out new areas of a
> >town from a position closer to the zone line, so that if I accidentally aggro a
> >merchant that hates me (Dark Elf Magician) I don't have to try and recover my
> >corpse from under them.
>
> Yeah, I've only seen newbies use that spell and it is kinda cool - a
> floating eye. I never knew about the "you can't use it with pet"
> thing, that is super useless then. Why would they even do that?
> I guess they are too lazy to make it "not a pet" and you can
> only have one pet at a time.
>
Apparently, there is a glitch in the code. As near as I can tell, casting the
eye transfers control to the little eye-thing, temporarily turning your
character into an NPC. However, you can still cast spells. Thus, some
Magicians were using the Eye to create armies of pets, since NPCs aren't coded
with the "one pet per caster" restriction. Verant found out, and immediately
crippled the Eye to prevent the exploit, but they never got around to correcting
the underlying bug in the code.
Marc Fuller
Lwalgee
making changes in a patch to "fix" manastone ownership being a plane raid
requirement. Ummm, notice the levitate fix? Wonder why they didn't use that
one? A casting time! No more super stoning down.
But that would have left them looking funny for refusing to put it back in as a
drop or quest, after saying they would.
Ron Smith
Does this mean in FoGW a druid will run faster than with just SoW now?
*snip*
> *Spell Changes*
*snip*
Merchant
Here's mine.... you whine like a two year old child.
dstep
wrote:
>You are entitled to your opinions.
>
>Here's mine.... you whine like a two year old child.
Who? There are several posters, I can't remember any of them
whining. The thing that people fail to remember about computer
games is that they are a consumer product. Any consumer product
should have quality control and consumer service. If neither of those
are up to snuff, consumers have a right and a duty to complain.
Computer games are really one of the only consumer products that
I can think of that come on the market as buggy, and as crappy as
hell. The reason is, in fact, that we DON'T whine enough. We accept
it. We buy the next ones. Even we see the patch system as somehow
being okay. Console games are not that bad, they can't be patched so
they have to make them good. I would fully expect the first console
multplayer rpg world game (oh there will be one, at some point)
to be FAR more of a finished polished product than any computer one
is. The console one would be more finished even than a computer one
that had been on the market for a year. Flaws and bugs are not
accepted in any other products.
The whole multi player massively RPG games seem to be setting a
precedent of being the MOST unfinished of all software. They do it
under the guise of "everchanging and improving", this could be
translated into the more realistic terms "always buggy, never
finished and getting better for some players and worse for others at
the same time."
If you call consumer reactions to a product which they use being
fundamentally changed, whining, then so be it.
But I can tell you that if someone was driving a car and one day
it did not run as well since the company thought it was "running too
well" or one day less people could fit in it since the company felt
it was holding too many people and this was an exploit - AFTER
the person already bought the car, or was monthly leasing it, it would
make them pissed off. Yes, that can't actually happen but if it was
possible should it happen? I'd say no, and this is the same.
D
Marc Fuller
>
[snip]
Well, part of the differnce between designing console games and PC games, it
that with the consoles, you know that all the hardware out there is 99%
identicle, and 100% compatible, with the machines the programmers are testing
on. With PCs, you're lucky if the hardware is more than 50% similar to what
you're testing on. Different CPUs, different versions of Windoze, different
graphics cards, sound cards, mice, keyboards, system resident programs, all with
their own unique drivers. Any one of which can cause an unexpected bug.
Witness the current problems with SBLive audio cards. I'm sure everyone who has
one is bitching Verant to high heaven for not testing properly, but I'd be
willing to bet that none of Verant's in-house machines happens to have an SBLive
in it, so they simply didn't realize there was a problem.
Marc Fuller