EverQuest Expansion #12 Announced : The Serpent's Spine

[Aslanna]

http://www.everquest.com

Six dragons defied the Council of the Ancient Dragons of the Nest and chose to create a new race to protect their future. The Drakkin are borne of humans touched by a dragon's blood and their colors and appearance represent the dragon who created them. Rapidly aging and reaching maturity in only months, the Drakkin forget their human beginnings and make their pilgrimage to Crescent Reach, the home of their dragon creators and the rest of their kind.

Features:

- New Player Race: The Drakkin have been created from human and dragon blood to protect the future of all dragon kind.

- Level Cap Increase: Players can now reach level 75 complete with new spells, abilities, raids and quests with greater power.

- Level 1 to 75 content. Reach every level of the game without leaving the Serpent Spine Mountains.

- New starting City: Crescent Reach is a fully functioning city with all that is required to learn and thrive in EverQuest, including merchant, quest, combat, and tradeskill areas.

- More auras, traps, destructible and interactive objects.

- New spell, Alternate and Leadership Advancement Abilities.

[Winnow]

I dont see any picts of the new race!

[Mr Bacon]

From the description Winnow - they just sound like Humans with different color skin.

But what does this mean?

[Aslanna]

- New spell, Alternate and Leadership Advancement Abilities.

Nerfing already began and it's not even out yet! Word is no new Leadership AAs.

[Aabidano]

Nerfing already began and it's not even out yet! Word is no new Leadership AAs.

How long would it take for a "new" character to catch up and be worth anything? Grinding 75 levels and a gazillion AAs. A year, perhaps two?

[Aslanna]

How long would it take for a "new" character to catch up and be worth anything? Grinding 75 levels and a gazillion AAs. A year, perhaps two?

Nah, not that long. It all depends on how much time you have to play I guess. Play fairly regularly you can probably level up and gather a decent amount of AA in 6 months or less.

[Winnow]

The Three Amigos could do it in four months!

[Aslanna]

Good day folks!

There's a lot of speculation on the drakkin, so I thought I'd give you their background here and show a couple of concepts. The drakkins are dragon-touched humans. They retain most of the their human physical attributes and take on traits of the dragon that created them -- like unique runic patterns of scales on their faces, chests, arms, and legs. Some vulnerable parts of their bodies take on some scale qualities but they are subtle and difficult to distinguish from normal skin. The drakkin also get small horns on their foreheads in a variety of arrangements. No tails, no wings. They have created amazing armor for themselves as well. Because their skin is scaled in some areas, like their sides and ribs, their armor is built around it, revealing their scale patterns underneath. We'll get some of that concept art up soon.

There are six dragon parents that create six types of drakkin, identified by color -- blue, black, red, green, white, gold. Each drakkin reflects their parentage in the color of their hair, draconic scale patterns, and horns. As you can see, they are more human than dragon with a regal beauty.

Here is the drakkin background:

After Venril Sathir's curse was released into the Nest and destroyed the dragon eggs, it was clear that the future of dragonkind was in danger. With the next generation of dragons lost forever, Veeshan's bloodline was in jeopardy. Six dragons who were children of the Nest proposed a plan to their elders -- the creation of a race to protect dragons and the Wyrmqueen's bloodline, something they had seen done once before.

The six dragons were scoffed at by the elders of the Nest, but they were so adamant with the idea that the elder dragons ordered their exile so their ideas would not gain a foothold. To the elders, it was unthinkable. The six left the Nest and ignored the decree of the elders. They settled in the nearby Serpent Spine Mountains to carry out their plan to create a new race to protect the existence of Veeshan's bloodline on Norrath. They would create a race of dragon-touched humans and call them Drakkin which means “Dragon Child” in the language of the elders.

They called themselves the Circle of the Crystalwing, defining themselves as the future of dragonkind. The six dragons in the Circle: Venesh the Greenblood; Draton`ra, Master of the Void; Keikolin, Bringer of Enlightenment; Mysaphar, Seeker of All; Atathus the Red Lord; and Osh`vir the Windspirit.

In human form, the dragons traveled to Freeport and combed through the taverns and inns, looking for the right humans to suit this new race. The honorable dragons found many who sympathized with their plight and plans and agreed to help right the wrongs that mortals inflicted on dragons of the Nest by unleashing Venril's curse. Many humans considered it a great honor. The darker dragons were not so willing to negotiate and simply took the human subjects they desired. Each human taken was touched by the magic of a single drop of dragon’s blood across their cheek.

In only a matter of months, the dragon-touched humans began to experience changes, a coming-of-age that became known as the Awakening. It is then that the latent strengths they inherit from their dragon bloodline surface and they have a burning desire to better understand them. Their hair takes on new texture and color – the same color as the dragon who touched them. Parts of their skin show small, toughened scales, and runic patterns representing their new race began to show on their face, torsos and legs – all in the color of their dragon progenitor. Delicate horns appear in patterns on their foreheads. They are the essence of beauty to most who see them.

As their new traits develop, the drakkins yearn to meet their parents. They find themselves on a pilgrimage into the Serpent Spine Mountains. Their final destination is the ancient abandoned ogre city of Nokk, now alive with drakkin who call it Crescent Reach.

As they enter the Dragon’s Grove of the great stone city where their parents await them, their human past is lost forever. It is from their parents that the drakkin learn their purpose – to live and grow stronger to protect the future of Veeshan's bloodline on Norrath. With their new identity affirmed, their drakkin life truly begins.

Here are two samples of the original concept art for the drakkin who are created by Mysaphar, the white dragon:

I want to reiterate that these are just concepts. The actual model is different than what you see depicted here. The eyes of the final drakkin model are serpentine and colored. Their noses have a less human bent. The idea is to just get you all to see that these aren't dragons with human blood. They are humans with dragon blood. The idea is to illustrate that they aren't sarnak-like, for example.

As soon as we can, we'll get you a peek at the final model, but we're still refining it, as you can imagine.

[Leonaerd]

I don't like how successive EQ expansions tend to distance themselves from their elders. By the time Luclin came out, Drakes in Skyfire were already not worth killing because of how little experience they gave in comparison to mobs in The Grey.

[CaRn the Cleric]

god dammnet i hate leveling!

[nneenaK]

god dammnet i hate leveling!

That is because you are a slacker! /wave

[CaRn the Cleric]

god dammnet i hate leveling!

That is because you are a slacker! /wave

thats true, BUT i work very hard at slacking...

[Winnow]

god dammnet i hate leveling!

This time Sony is offering a buy-a-level option. for $5.00 per level, or special 22.00 for all five at once, you won't need to grind it out. Rumor has it AAs will run .50 each.

[Aslanna]

One big change that was introduced (and you don't need to buy the expansion for it) was downtime reduction. I guess that might be similar to EQ2 from what some have said but I've never played it so couldn't say.

Rest State Changes (OOC Regen) will greatly reduce downtime between fights. There are a series of icons that will display by your character’s name to let you know what your character’s current state is.

Crossed Swords – You are currently in-combat.

Hour Glass – You are out of combat, but not yet in a resting state. In addition to the hourglass, there is a timer bar beneath the endurance bar that will count down as you get closer to being rested.

Poison Drop – You are no longer in combat, but cannot rest because of a debuff that is affecting you. You must get rid of the debuff before you can rest.

Void – The void is the default icon and indicates that you are not in-combat and you can rest at any time.

Energy Swirl – The energy swirl indicates that you are currently resting.

That is pretty much all you need to know to make full use of the new system when it goes live, but for those of you interested in the behind-the-scenes details, here is how the system works.

The system is based around you being in one of two states at all times: in-combat or out-of-combat. Being in-combat is defined by being on the hate list of any creature in the zone. To prevent problems with being stuck in a combat state due to some creature on the other side of the zone hating you because you ran past it 15 minutes ago, creatures will remove you from their hate list if you get far enough away from them that they no longer care about you and remain that way for more than 30 seconds.

The system was designed to get anyone, regardless of level and gear, to full mana/hp/endurance in three minutes (max) after being set to out of combat. For group type stuff that is 30 seconds. For raids it is 5 minutes.

What that means is no more waiting 10 minutes for mana to regen. Soloing is also a lot more viable now for some classes since the most downtime between mobs they'd have would be 3 mins 30 seconds (assuming no debuffs on them). Depending on your point of view this is either great or not-so-great ("dumbing down" some would say). I personally like it but it does make things such as bind wounds mostly obsolete.

Oh, and levelling isn't that bad. There are already a lot of 74-75 characters. In a good group you should be able to get a new level every 5 hours or so. Boring? Sure. But you only have to do it once. Until they up it to level 80 that is.

[Kwonryu DragonFist]

Nice to see that EQ (the game that started it all for most of us and brought us all together to the vault) is still alive and kicking!

[Dal-KoE]

god dammnet i hate leveling!

This time Sony is offering a buy-a-level option. for $5.00 per level, or special 22.00 for all five at once, you won't need to grind it out. Rumor has it AAs will run .50 each.

Once again Winnow shows what a nimrod he is and his utter stupidity just about most everything.. Not offered and not going to happen..

[Winnow]

Email Dal-KoE your paypal money for the levels and AAs you want to bypass.

[Soreali]

god dammnet i hate leveling!

This time Sony is offering a buy-a-level option. for $5.00 per level, or special 22.00 for all five at once, you won't need to grind it out. Rumor has it AAs will run .50 each.

Once again Winnow shows what a nimrod he is and his utter stupidity just about most everything.. Not offered and not going to happen..

That little thing right there...the bold letters..some of us in the normal world would call that Sarcasm

Sarcasm - a sharply ironical taunt; sneering or cutting remark

/asshole off

[Winnow]

god dammnet i hate leveling!

This time Sony is offering a buy-a-level option. for $5.00 per level, or special 22.00 for all five at once, you won't need to grind it out. Rumor has it AAs will run .50 each.

Once again Winnow shows what a nimrod he is and his utter stupidity just about most everything.. Not offered and not going to happen..

I see the future before u! It wont be long.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs. ... 10/16/5634

October 16, 2006 @ 4:51PM - posted by Ben Kuchera

Why play for unlockables when you can just pay for them?

Unlockables can be fun, but they can also be a giant pain the ass. When I was younger I used to love going through all my games and unlocking everything; the harder something was to get, the more I enjoyed working for it. Now that I'm older I hate unlockables. With fighting games I want the fighters now, because I don't have the time to play through some tacked-on single-player story mode for 20 hours to unlock the good characters. EA has an answer to this problem: you simply pay for the content.

This isn't new content that you're paying for, it's simply content available in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 that you can pay to unlock without having to play the game to get it. You can pay to unlock all the courses, max out your golfer, unlock all the golfers, and get everything in the Pro Shop. If you want to get everything open in the game, it will be 1140 points, which translates into just under $15. A lot of people are coming down on this idea, but I love it. You can still get this content for free if you'd like, or you can give up some cash and get all the content now. While it's a money grab, I could see myself paying for this sort of thing with the right game.

With the interest people have for cheating devices and hint guides, this may be a good way for developers to get a little of that business themselves. Is this a new trend?

[kyoukan]

do you just post in every thread in every forum hoping that one day you'll accidentally write something worth reading?

[kyoukan]

Anyway, I just recently started playing again and although I'm twinked to jesus and back, I'm levelling a lot faster than the last time I restarted and was twinked to jesus and back, so take what you will from that.

I did 25 levels in two or three days without playing super hard and doing a fair amount of running around looking for cool places to go to. I find myself coming back to the newbie areas in the new expansion though. The mobs give a good amount of experience and because the new continent isn't huge, I don't have to run for 3 goddam hours every time I progress into a higher level area. In fact you could comfortably level to 23 or so without even leaving the newbie zone (but you wouldn't have hardly any items or money as they seem to have designed it for people twinking). There's also an area right in town filled with low 20's undead that are set up in a way that you'd have to be fucking kylere to pull more than two mobs by accident. The outdoor zones are like a cross between old EQ and WoW in that the animals are fairly more condensed and respawn a lot faster so you arent running around looking for another snake to waste.

From thre you can range out to a big zone that is kind of like the karanas or commons in that its just a lot of grass and animals running about that you can kill. Although some huge green fucking lizard was quadding me for 224 and summoning me when I tied to run away so I guess he is like the hill giant of the new continent.

If you have some dough to spend you can level even faster. You can buy potions for dirt cheap that give you a 20 pt damage shield at level 15, regen potions and SoW potions. You wouldn't be able to afford them as a brand new player, but if you buy a whack of plat off playerauctions (well worth it imo) or have an anonymous benefactor, you can pretty much kill non stop.

[Rayquan]

thats my main problem with eq now adays, why make it so hard for new players to join. Why wouldnt new content-mobs be dropping money?

Anyway doesnt sound too enthralling, unless u just wanna grind mindlessly.