Kezzek
06-22-01, 12:08 PM
Vaslin, Glip, Aidden, and Kezzek were in attendance at the Fan Faire in Minneapolis, Minnesota on June 15th & 16th. Here are some bits of information they were able to dig up:
Facts:
--More trade skills will be implemented soon. The first one will be 'Carpentry' and the one example of an item to create was making canoes.
--Mechanical lockpicks are entirely equal to regular lockpicks. No code was ever put in place to allow different types of 'picking' to occur. Ditto on the telescopic fishing poles.
--The 'gemcutter' (a tinkered item) was created for the original Fiery Avenger quest, but that sub-plot was removed before the original quest went live. The gemcutter recipe remained however.
--Fishing will be enhanced so that special lures used in certain zones with high fishing skill will land different types of fish.
--Newspapers text will be changed every two weeks (during down times) and may even change while the servers are up. Old newspapers will appear in Harpy's Head Tavern once the birds are done with them.
--The main databases have had substantial updates to their functionality and new concepts can now be put into place without worrying about complete player-wipes just to change a field. This means that concepts that were deemed 'impossible' in the past are now back into play.
-- Poison skill is going to get tweaked again. This will not only involve more poisons and poison changes, but also the making of them.
-- Making poison will take on similarities to Shaman's alchemy in that Poison Containers will be created with multiple "charges"-- due to the game code, these will not be "right click to apply the poison" charges, but rather they will produce a poison vial when right clicked. This vial is then right clicked to apply the poison. So, this basically is a poison STORAGE fix. (And a desperately needed one.)
-- Recent game code/database changes will allow Verant to address the Zoneline/Poison issue.
-- They're talking about 10-15 more spells for each casting class (with wizards and druids getting the most due to needing port spells).
-- The Shadows of Luclin graphics look amazing already! They're vibrant, dynamic, and much more complex. The demonstrator mentioned that the minimum system requirements to play the game wouldn't change but I think that was a lot of BS. They were demonstrating on a high end comp with a GeForce 3 card in it and it was smoother than glass.
-- The next Fan Faire is in Europe. The one after that may be in Las Vegas.
--If all goes well we (The Safehouse) should be getting some very indepth interviews with Verant staff in the very near future..
Reaction to Ideas:
--The trade skill guy liked [Vaslin's] idea of having different levels of stacking when it came to items. Allowing 5, 10, or 20 items to stack seemed like a good idea, whereby cooking sheets could stack in groups of 10, skins could stack in groups of 5, etc.
--The concept of much more chocolate in the game was acknowledged and more brownies may appear in an area near you. (*distantly you hear the sound of Kezzek's wailing*)
--Warrens Loot Trivializing: The concept of making no-drop but non-magical items not disappear if a trivial encounter was brought up to the producers. But rather make trivial encounter quests so that those interested in lore can still do the quests was shot down by the producers.
--Some classes may get special focus items for certain types of spells. One example (jokingly, but half-hearted seriously) was a focus item for certain fire-ball spells. A tinkered 'flame-thrower' for example that adds extra damage for those types of spells.
-- Sleeper will never be killed. The designers tested it by Cazic Thule touching it (32,000 damage) for 10 minutes straight and it didn't die. We're talking "push button--32,000 damage, push button--32,000 damage", etc. for 10 minutes straight.)
[b]Safehouse Party stuff:
The Safehouse party was held Saturday night in a nifty 2-level suite on the top level of the Minneapolis Marriott. The Gods were looking out for us because we had no idea of the Beast We Had Created™. When we got the suite on Friday, we realized that the only access to the 31st floor (top level) was via the magnetic passkey that we were given (which allowed us to use the 31st Floor elevator button). Without it, the elevator doesn't go to 31. At first we were a truly bummed because it was going to make it a pain in the ass to get people to come to our party.
You see, we were still under the impression that since we didn't advertise the party very much on our site (and not at all at the Fan Faire), we were going to be hard pressed to get people (especially Verant staff) to come.
We were pretty naiive.
As Saturday progressed through the events, we began to realize as we were talking to the many, many people we encountered that the Safehouse party was the "Thing To Attend™". Instead of our previous feeling of worry that nobody was going to show up, our guts were now filled with a feeling of impending doom that we were going to be swamped, busted, and kicked out. (The hotel was passing out a flyer stating that very punishment for excessive parties.)
Thank @#%$ for passkeys.
As it was, our party turned out to be a complete success--we even had to turn people away and restrict access. It was a great time! Not only did I get to meet several Safehouse rogues, but Verant staff turned out IN FORCE. We might have had every single Verant staffer there at one point--from V.P. Jeff Butler on down to server GMs--so we had ample opportunity to chat with them and even pick their brains. Most of them stayed the entire night (~ 3 a.m).
The room was so full that it spilled out into the sitting area next to the room and the elevator area. (It was also so full that the 2 air cooling units couldn't possibly keep up and it got sweaty in there for a while.) Both levels of the suite were packed with people.
Best of all, we didn't get busted. No complaints or anything. Everyone was well-behaved and not overly loud. I think it helped that RPGwear was having a similar party further down the floor too. People kind of expected it to be a little raucous. =)
We held a very difficult Everquest trivia contest and gave away prizes (including a special edition Safehouse T-shirt specifically for the event). The trivia was pretty damn hard--even Verant staff didn't know all of them. Vaslin wowed everyone with his Everquest Compendium. If you haven't seen it yet, get it at www.eqcaster.com. It's chock full of background stories, NPC histories, storylines, and quests broken down into minute detail. As one developer put it, "The only things that have more info are his 3-ring binders at work."
It was a lot of fun meeting Safehousers, fellow EQ players, and Verant staff. They were universally nice, intelligent people. It was refreshing to see the faces behind the names.
Vaslin's Essay on "Why The Party Was Crowded" subtitled "Where the hell did Zalumbas go!?":
"Well, the biggest problem is the lack of a key to get up to that floor. It's a protected floor so guests must be accompanied up there.
Soo... I went down to pick up Tarew Marr's GM Zalumbas, and he brought about 30 of his friends. We got onto the elevator, I clicked on floor 31, and whoops... No Zalumbas.
I got off the elevator, and 30 people went up to the party.
Soo... I went back to the bar to pick up Tarew Marr's GM Zalumbas, and he brought about 30 of his friends. We got onto the elevator, I clicked on floor 31, and whoops... No Zalumbas.
I got off the elevator, and 30 people went up to the party.
Soo... I went back to the bar to pick up Tarew Marr's GM Zalumbas, and he brought about 20 of his friends. I said, um... I think the party is quite full right now, and lo and behold, it was Absor, Abashi and employees from Verant. Well, crud, had to invite them too.
We got on the elevator, and 22 people went up to the party.
Was a bit crowded after that. "
Edited by: Kezzek at: 6/22/01 6:37:52 pm
Facts:
--More trade skills will be implemented soon. The first one will be 'Carpentry' and the one example of an item to create was making canoes.
--Mechanical lockpicks are entirely equal to regular lockpicks. No code was ever put in place to allow different types of 'picking' to occur. Ditto on the telescopic fishing poles.
--The 'gemcutter' (a tinkered item) was created for the original Fiery Avenger quest, but that sub-plot was removed before the original quest went live. The gemcutter recipe remained however.
--Fishing will be enhanced so that special lures used in certain zones with high fishing skill will land different types of fish.
--Newspapers text will be changed every two weeks (during down times) and may even change while the servers are up. Old newspapers will appear in Harpy's Head Tavern once the birds are done with them.
--The main databases have had substantial updates to their functionality and new concepts can now be put into place without worrying about complete player-wipes just to change a field. This means that concepts that were deemed 'impossible' in the past are now back into play.
-- Poison skill is going to get tweaked again. This will not only involve more poisons and poison changes, but also the making of them.
-- Making poison will take on similarities to Shaman's alchemy in that Poison Containers will be created with multiple "charges"-- due to the game code, these will not be "right click to apply the poison" charges, but rather they will produce a poison vial when right clicked. This vial is then right clicked to apply the poison. So, this basically is a poison STORAGE fix. (And a desperately needed one.)
-- Recent game code/database changes will allow Verant to address the Zoneline/Poison issue.
-- They're talking about 10-15 more spells for each casting class (with wizards and druids getting the most due to needing port spells).
-- The Shadows of Luclin graphics look amazing already! They're vibrant, dynamic, and much more complex. The demonstrator mentioned that the minimum system requirements to play the game wouldn't change but I think that was a lot of BS. They were demonstrating on a high end comp with a GeForce 3 card in it and it was smoother than glass.
-- The next Fan Faire is in Europe. The one after that may be in Las Vegas.
--If all goes well we (The Safehouse) should be getting some very indepth interviews with Verant staff in the very near future..
Reaction to Ideas:
--The trade skill guy liked [Vaslin's] idea of having different levels of stacking when it came to items. Allowing 5, 10, or 20 items to stack seemed like a good idea, whereby cooking sheets could stack in groups of 10, skins could stack in groups of 5, etc.
--The concept of much more chocolate in the game was acknowledged and more brownies may appear in an area near you. (*distantly you hear the sound of Kezzek's wailing*)
--Warrens Loot Trivializing: The concept of making no-drop but non-magical items not disappear if a trivial encounter was brought up to the producers. But rather make trivial encounter quests so that those interested in lore can still do the quests was shot down by the producers.
--Some classes may get special focus items for certain types of spells. One example (jokingly, but half-hearted seriously) was a focus item for certain fire-ball spells. A tinkered 'flame-thrower' for example that adds extra damage for those types of spells.
-- Sleeper will never be killed. The designers tested it by Cazic Thule touching it (32,000 damage) for 10 minutes straight and it didn't die. We're talking "push button--32,000 damage, push button--32,000 damage", etc. for 10 minutes straight.)
[b]Safehouse Party stuff:
The Safehouse party was held Saturday night in a nifty 2-level suite on the top level of the Minneapolis Marriott. The Gods were looking out for us because we had no idea of the Beast We Had Created™. When we got the suite on Friday, we realized that the only access to the 31st floor (top level) was via the magnetic passkey that we were given (which allowed us to use the 31st Floor elevator button). Without it, the elevator doesn't go to 31. At first we were a truly bummed because it was going to make it a pain in the ass to get people to come to our party.
You see, we were still under the impression that since we didn't advertise the party very much on our site (and not at all at the Fan Faire), we were going to be hard pressed to get people (especially Verant staff) to come.
We were pretty naiive.
As Saturday progressed through the events, we began to realize as we were talking to the many, many people we encountered that the Safehouse party was the "Thing To Attend™". Instead of our previous feeling of worry that nobody was going to show up, our guts were now filled with a feeling of impending doom that we were going to be swamped, busted, and kicked out. (The hotel was passing out a flyer stating that very punishment for excessive parties.)
Thank @#%$ for passkeys.
As it was, our party turned out to be a complete success--we even had to turn people away and restrict access. It was a great time! Not only did I get to meet several Safehouse rogues, but Verant staff turned out IN FORCE. We might have had every single Verant staffer there at one point--from V.P. Jeff Butler on down to server GMs--so we had ample opportunity to chat with them and even pick their brains. Most of them stayed the entire night (~ 3 a.m).
The room was so full that it spilled out into the sitting area next to the room and the elevator area. (It was also so full that the 2 air cooling units couldn't possibly keep up and it got sweaty in there for a while.) Both levels of the suite were packed with people.
Best of all, we didn't get busted. No complaints or anything. Everyone was well-behaved and not overly loud. I think it helped that RPGwear was having a similar party further down the floor too. People kind of expected it to be a little raucous. =)
We held a very difficult Everquest trivia contest and gave away prizes (including a special edition Safehouse T-shirt specifically for the event). The trivia was pretty damn hard--even Verant staff didn't know all of them. Vaslin wowed everyone with his Everquest Compendium. If you haven't seen it yet, get it at www.eqcaster.com. It's chock full of background stories, NPC histories, storylines, and quests broken down into minute detail. As one developer put it, "The only things that have more info are his 3-ring binders at work."
It was a lot of fun meeting Safehousers, fellow EQ players, and Verant staff. They were universally nice, intelligent people. It was refreshing to see the faces behind the names.
Vaslin's Essay on "Why The Party Was Crowded" subtitled "Where the hell did Zalumbas go!?":
"Well, the biggest problem is the lack of a key to get up to that floor. It's a protected floor so guests must be accompanied up there.
Soo... I went down to pick up Tarew Marr's GM Zalumbas, and he brought about 30 of his friends. We got onto the elevator, I clicked on floor 31, and whoops... No Zalumbas.
I got off the elevator, and 30 people went up to the party.
Soo... I went back to the bar to pick up Tarew Marr's GM Zalumbas, and he brought about 30 of his friends. We got onto the elevator, I clicked on floor 31, and whoops... No Zalumbas.
I got off the elevator, and 30 people went up to the party.
Soo... I went back to the bar to pick up Tarew Marr's GM Zalumbas, and he brought about 20 of his friends. I said, um... I think the party is quite full right now, and lo and behold, it was Absor, Abashi and employees from Verant. Well, crud, had to invite them too.
We got on the elevator, and 22 people went up to the party.
Was a bit crowded after that. "
Edited by: Kezzek at: 6/22/01 6:37:52 pm