Empires of Kunark - Livestream HighlightsOct 6th, 2016 at 11:59 PM by Aaikan

Everquest: Empires of Kunark

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Hola!  It's been a good minute since I've visited but I wanted to take a few to share some highlights of the new expansion!

EverquestLive hosted a live feed today to provide further insight and details about the upcoming 23rd Everquest expansion - Empires of Kunark.

Members of the EQ Team, Ry "Roshen" Schueller, Jonathan "Brathen" Caraker and Josh "Augur" Augustine were briefely joned by Holly "Windstalker" Longdale and a new EQ Producer Lauren McLemore to share some of the details regarding the expansion, beta and launch.

Pre-Orders are available NOW!  First and foremost, Beta Access is granted immediately to anyone who preorders the expansion.  That means, if you pre-order the game today, you can immediately jump into Beta and start earning that reward currency.  Also, a unique monument statue will be granted to anyone who pre-orders the expansion.  The statue, a kneeling Iksar in armor and sword set inside a structure with four pillars, can be placed in homes and in guild halls as a centerpiece attraction.

Launch Date is scheduled for Wednesday, November 16th and in honor of the upcoming launch, EQ will have their usual Bi-Weekly incentives to get you into the game - Bonus XP Days, Rare Spawn Bonuses, Reduced Lockouts.

Read on to learn more about the features for this new expansion...

 

The EQ Story continues with the Combine and Sarnak Empires back and badder than ever. 

List of Features:

  • Familiar Key Ring (works just like your Mounts and Illusions Key Rings)
    • Pick and choose your familiar and buffs
  • 7 Expansion Zones (some older zones as well as some newer zones)
  • New Quests
  • New Missions
  • New Collectibles
  • 8 Additional Raids
  • Ability to have a Familiar AND a Pet at the same time
  • New Spells
  • New Items
  • New Tradeskills
  • More AA's
  • 3 New Hero's Forge Armor Sets (Raid, Group and Tradskill)
  • But.. no level increase

Beta Access: If you join the Beta, you also earn in game beta currency by simply exploring, testing the zone content or participating in raids and battles.  And as a reward for your efforts, you'll be able to redeem this currency for a unique illusion, Cowl of the Dreadlands Yeti - that funny looking red-wookie reject that you'll remember were the Brutes that chased you in old school zones of Kunark.

So there you have a quick and dirty glimpse at what to expect from this new expansion.  If you have the time and want to watch the Live stream for yourself, you can find a link to it on EQ Forums or follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQhf1ymw1Sk

Until next time.. Hasta!

 /salute

Tags: EverQuest, News

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Confirmed Bug
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# Oct 10 2016 at 11:19 PM Rating: Good
Aaikan
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Quote:

Speaking of zoning, I found a weird glitch - perhaps it's working as intended, or an "unintended feature (tm)", but when zoning from Frontier Mountains into Scorched Woods and immediately turning around to reenter FM, I found myself teleported to Chardok. I was at a door / zoneline I believe, but when I tried to exit, only half the door would open but it revealed another door behind it which could not be opened. Rather than run past some see-invis mobs, my Wiz evac'd to the other end of the zone where you could walk out and re-enter Scorched Woods again.


Ngreth has confirmed that this is an actual "Art Bug" in this thread:
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/zoneline-issue-frontier-mountains-to-scorched-woods.235459/

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Beta
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# Oct 09 2016 at 6:38 PM Rating: Excellent
Gidono
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I crash to desktop quite frequently just sitting still not doing anything. No crash box just EQ closes out. I almost crash every time I zone. I haven't experienced much of the other content because I'm busy logging back into the game lol.
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Beta
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# Oct 09 2016 at 3:22 PM Rating: Good
Aaikan
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I've only spent a little bit of time in the beta. As said below, Frontier Mountans and Scorched Woods are huge. The zones are much better visually (by EQ standards) and even the mobs seem to have been graphically improved. I was able to explore the two zones pretty freely as I didn't encounter any mobs in FM or SW that see through invis.

Other than what I mention below, I haven't really encountered any major bugs per-se, but I agree with the comments about pathing below. I did crash a couple of times though. I three box, (three different machines) and each one crashed at least once while zoning or porting.

Speaking of zoning, I found a weird glitch - perhaps it's working as intended, or an "unintended feature (tm)", but when zoning from Frontier Mountains into Scorched Woods and immediately turning around to reenter FM, I found myself teleported to Chardok. I was at a door / zoneline I believe, but when I tried to exit, only half the door would open but it revealed another door behind it which could not be opened. Rather than run past some see-invis mobs, my Wiz evac'd to the other end of the zone where you could walk out and re-enter Scorched Woods again.

Like I said, it was odd. Maybe it's a bug or maybe it's working as intended.

Edited, Oct 9th 2016 2:36pm by Aaikan
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# Oct 09 2016 at 6:03 AM Rating: Good
Sippin
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I've spent a little time in the open Beta zones and, boy, that's what they are, wide open. The new Frontier Mountains and Scorched Woods are huge. The mobs are well-spaced out. Very reminiscent of classic Kunark with mobs wandering all over the place. Trying to quad-kite will be a challenge unless you're able to snare and add any wanderers who aggro during the kite to your target group.

It's a beta so there will be bugs and it didn't take long for me to find a couple. First, one mob I snared had horrible pathing. I could have easily rotted him down taking advantage of the ridiculous path he took to get to me. But it didn't matter since once he lost 20% of his HPs to my DOTs, he just literally vanished. Went off my aggro-meter and vanished from track. Maybe he gated? More likely he bugged out.

Of course, this is just once instant and entirely anecdotal.
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meh
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# Oct 08 2016 at 5:04 PM Rating: Decent
fronglo
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Im still waiting for an expansion with content for non max level players.
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meh
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# Oct 08 2016 at 9:33 PM Rating: Decent
Lingum
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Never gonna happen.
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A couple of quick thoughts
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# Oct 07 2016 at 11:36 PM Rating: Good
wonkabc
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I spent part of the day in beta, visiting four or five zones at least briefly, and one in some detail.

Frustration with no level increase might be misplaced. Right now, probably as many players gave a sigh of relief at not having to level up their X number of toons. On the other hand, consider this: The benefits of level increase that are unique to leveling as basically skill related. Many of those skills (e.g., Alcohol Tolerance) are of marginal use and suffer from diminishing returns. There would be little to no gain. Some of those skills can be dealt with as AA's. I forget how many AA's my beta rogue ended up with but it was like 22K I saw one achievement that seemed to say that another player had hit 25K. That's a lot of AA's being added, many of which involve skills that would normally come from leveling up.

The other benefits of levels relate to AC/HP/Mana/End all of which can be accomplished with a lot less programming time by upgraded gear. It seemed like that might be what happened. That beta rogue was buffing out at 193K with betafish gear, which I'm guessing is a bit of an upgrade.

Frustration with the zones is a different matter. The revamped zones do look good and are as large as you would want. At least one of the zones did not appear to me to have been revamped, so much as repopulated. The new Droga is so close to the original that you wont need a new map. I did not mind that, Droga is a favorite of mine, and it was nice to run the zone basically from memory. A couple more such zones - Nurga being an obvious choice, would have gone some distance to ally the concern about the size of the expansion. If you agreed that some of the zones did not need to be filled with mercenary, partisan and heroic tasks - but could just be zones with loot and named, then adding a couple such zones could have softened the blow.

I can tell you I was terribly disappointed by The Broken Mirror, partly for the small size of the expansion, but more so by the huge fail in items that took months in live EQ to remedy. Based solely on my first day, I do not have the same level of disappointment with the zone structure. Time will tell if I have any issues with the items.

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Butt, No New Levels...
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# Oct 07 2016 at 5:42 PM Rating: Decent
nucle
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Second expansion in a row that I will not buy... Even with marginal new content I would have purchased any expansion that had new levels included. Guess my EQ days are finally over!
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well umm. . .
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# Oct 07 2016 at 5:18 PM Rating: Decent
FromTheFuture
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the sky is falling (if you know what i mean)
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If Daybreak is resource constrained...
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# Oct 07 2016 at 1:45 PM Rating: Excellent
__DEL__1717373800742
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If Daybreak is resource constrained and out of ideas they only have to look to the EQ1 community. Allowing us the tools to design content could turn this game around.
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Expectations
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# Oct 07 2016 at 9:49 AM Rating: Excellent
Rayder
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Pretty big let down in terms of content, at least what was presented during the live stream. Expectations have to be tempered nowadays with regards to what Daybreak is requiring of the EQ1 dev team and, more importantly, the size of the dev team. A friend and I were discussing it yesterday and came to the conclusion that we shouldn't expect more than what is being put out in terms of expansions these days.

With the success of the progression servers, I'm sure the team realized that they can capitalize on the nostalgia angle with going back to places like Kunark or Velious. The problem with that is our expectations are going to be very high when you bring in the name Kunark, and it is hard to get those expectations under control. Based on a lot of the comments during the live stream, and the presenters avoiding the most prevalent questions and those that they would have to say no to (i.e. Epic 3.0), only fielding the easy questions, most players were looking for more out of this expansion and the devs realize they just are not able to deliver some of these things with the size of their team. They did mention the amount of work involved and implied that it will be very difficult for them to ever have another level increase, obviously due to the size of their team and the resources at their disposal.

It was not a good sign of things to come when the first few things they talked about was a plug for the cash shop and skeletal cat pet. That is the definition of not coming out guns blazing. Overall a very lack luster presentation, very little information and substance given about the expansion. When the announcement was first made it was without a doubt a purchase for all of my accounts. I may still get it, but it will require some seriously convincing for me to do so.
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7 new zones? 7??
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# Oct 07 2016 at 7:37 AM Rating: Excellent
Sippin
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7 new zones. That's pretty sad. Especially with an xpac inspired by Kunark, the best xpac ever with over 20 new zones at the time. Pretty much what was expected, though. I guess we should be happy to see any kind of xpac. (That's called DUMBING DOWN EXPECTATIONS...)
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Sippin 115 DRU **** Firiona Vie ****Agnarr
FV: 115 WAR ENC CLE MAG WIZ SHD SHM Master Alchemist ROG Master Tinkerer & Poison-Maker
Master Artisan (300+) * Baker * Brewer * Fletcher * Jeweler * Potter * Researcher * Smith * Tailor
Agnarr: 65 DRU ENC SHD MAG CLE ROG WIZ BRD WAR
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