Producer's Letter: Expansion 17, Beta and Preorders!

Why are some folks unable to login and others aren't having any problems? I have had zero issues.

 

I logged in one of my free accounts to test the problem - got straight in with no issues, camped to other characters with no issues (Maj'dul server). It seems to be affecting only continental North America?

 

It's not affecting me and I'm smack dab in the middle of continental North America. There has never been a point in time since the issue started that I wasn't able to login in to either of my paid accounts on both EQ1 and 2.

 

Nope. I haven't bought the expac. That means no beta for me.

 

I have been in Beta and my first impression was.....so they used all the art design /Zone design from BoL for the Starterzone .In essence the starterzone are all 3 Fordel Mist Zones combined.

I wondered whether there is something new as in new overland zones.

I came across the Echo Caverns and it didn't look that great to me. The zone reminded of wailing caves and other zones.

Then looking at the Ranger AAs and my thought is what a waste of money.

The new RoS Endline abilities are spells and not CAs, meaning on Solo Content you have a 50% Hitrate, now imagine Raidmobs.

They are done with old Poisons judging by the new AAs

I hope with more patches that it will start to look better.

 

There's no reason to expect major art changes or further AA changes with patches. Beta patches generally just bug fixes and stuff they didn't get in at the start. They don't actually CHANGE things like AAs. They're not interested in feedback. The decisions have already been made.

 

As far as I can tell there are several factors involved:
Geographic location - are you close enough to be hitting a bad node? Siggy did point out that most of her affected guildies seem to be in the SE US.
Are you running full download or streaming? Streaming clients are always downloading. And lots of people reporting issues also mention dinosaurs.
Did you get fully patched up after the Tuesday server maintenance and before the problem hit? If not ...

Personally I've had no issues getting to any of my 4 servers in 3 installs from London. But I know I'm fully patched and can use the back door if the launcher craps out. In fact I always do on the EU installation due to the timeout issues using the hostname in the default config files.

 

How long is the signature line? Has anyone done it?
Have they announced raid testing and see if the servers can handle 3 guilds raiding at once?
Is there any new features?
Is there any way to progress your character outside of raiding?
How is the group content?

Anyone know ?

 

Beta has basically been out 1 day, because the CDN issues stopped them doing anything more with it when it launched.

I think most people havent got past the Sig line because one of the quests has a broken location they cant patch

 

I don't have the game installed, so I can't see this AA stuff for myself and the description Caith wrote up is really vague and not terribly useful.

Ok, so AA ability rank increases now add a tiny amount of fervor instead of whatever bonus was there previously.

However, this new AA fervor stat also translates into tiny bumps to other values.

Yesterday, I was perusing through the Brigand section, and iirc, someone said this AA apliied fervor effects the value of brig debuffs like dispatch.

If someone who has played around with this stuff will take a moment describe how this process actually works, I'll be super grateful.

 

Fuli, now Fervor X is just a crappy way to say that all numerical values are increased by X%

So giving Dispatch 20 Fervor increases its damage by 20% and the debuff amount by 20% but not change the duration.
A group buff giving 50 haste would give 55 if it has an AA that gives it 10 Fervor

 

Thanks!

 

If you take out the word Fervor, and replace it with Effectiveness, it makes a lot more sense.

"Increases the effectiveness of Dispatch by 20%" would be 20% more damage & debuff amount.

Apparantly they are open to changing the term Fervor, which I really do hope they do.

 

I haven't poked around the other class threads, but the brigand thread is indicating that the base values of many abilities have been reduced by a sizeable amount?

Edit:
Seeking clarification on this, because on the surface and especially for utility classes, this would make the AA revamp quite useful.

But, if they've nerfed the base values, then not so much.

 

Just looking at the notes, they're removing lots of things from the AAs too. Pretty much, if it isn't direct damage or directly debuffing or directly healing, it's probably being stripped from the AA on the first 2 pages.
Wardens lose mitigation, accuracy, dps, haste, MA, resistibility, stat reduction, crit bonus boost, reuse, power and agility buffs, stamina boosts, combat art buffs, block chance, power use reduction.. and those are just the ones I can decipher comparing live AA from the patch notes.

 

It looks like clerics lost steadfast too based on the forum patch notes, which is a bizarre decision. Even aside from the class mechanics this is just ripping away class flavor which is a horrible idea.

 

And they'll use the pushback on this to say, "Players don't like change" when it comes to evaluate things that do need changing.

 

What I would like to know is if you don't purchase the expanision will the changes to the AAs still happen?