Search results

  1. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    Sandboxy Rallying Call: Players on server A have provided about 70% wood and 30% stone, most of the buildings in Halas are large log halls. Players from B provided 80% stone, 20% wood, and the buildings are all about sturdy stonewalled homes. Actual EQN Rallying Call: Players on server A have...
  2. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    Recipe for a sure-fire "key" access to zones: - If one of the characters on your account is enabled for the zone,everycharacter on the account is enabled - You can be enabled by obtaining the key (loot / quest / flag)orby defeating a majority of the encounters of the zone (zone has 5 bosses...
  3. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    Nope. Gaining abilities via levelling is: 1) Fungible (XP gained on killing Orcs in Crushbone is completely equal to XP gained on killing Gnolls in Blackburrow) 2) Linear (you get The Mighty Bash first, then the Small Kick next, then the Vital Knock next) 3) Static (every warrior gets...
  4. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    It does two things: 1) You can choose to become a wizard out of combat, swapping gear, weapon and skills. 2) You can pick any of the 4 generic wizard class skills that match one of your warrior class skills. If the war is (see above) 1 offense, 1 movement, 2 defensive, and the wizard is 2...
  5. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    Nope, they're faction/race/specific character-locked. They specially took Paladin as an example to say you couldn't improve the class if you didn't "live the life of the paladin". Meaning that, if you fuck up your faction, and the class trainer doesn't want to talk to you, then you can go from...
  6. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    It's a bit simplistic. The "aggro" is a good basic model, it dictates your target. What you need, rather than the base model of increasing aggo with modifiers is a per-ability aggro list with highly dynamic values. There's a general "threat" value, which is, for example, equal to the current...
  7. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    That's not AI-type stuff, that's ecology. We had numerous talks with UO devs at Nevrax back when Ryzom was started about it. And the end was that it was a "Turing error" (it was Alan Turing who said something like "when I design a submarine, I don't look at fish biology", and yes, it was his...
  8. Ukerric

    The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot (f2p MMO)

    They also got a lot of web-based F2P games (Heroes of Might and Magic Kingdoms, Settlers Online...)
  9. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    Nah. GW2 has TEN!
  10. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    I don't know. Minecraft's procedural content did generate a lot of epic-type landscape and challenges, even if they toned it down a bit for consistency's sake (if I say "gargamel", do you know what I'm talking about?). And that's with essentially one person doing it at the time. Thing is...
  11. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    However, from what they said, XP isn't all you need to progress. I think it goes like that: - To progress from tier 1 to tier 2, you need to spend XP to level each of the 12 of your class abilities to tier 2, which unlocks your tier 2 class. - To progress from tier 2 to tier 3, you need...
  12. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    It's not about whether the AI is smart or not, it's chiefly about how players do interact with each other, and which roles strengthen which other roles. The AI can be stupid, or smart, and all you need to adjust in practice is the HP and DPS of the mob. You can have an ultra-smart AI, but...
  13. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    Well, not exactly. The point is, the game can be either: - Very easy: Not require any role whatsoever in a group to be able to kill a given mob (trivial "every ratonga for itself" DPS zerg scenario) - Simple: Require combos of specific roles, not necessarily tank+heal, but one of which is...
  14. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    They should do it ATITD-style. You can use your login to access your spouse's character. Anytime (unless she/he's logged in already, that is). No divorce allowed.
  15. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    And WoW found the solution. Hit your "switch to shadow" button, and start melting faces. The question isn't about classes, it's about roles. All Lithose's metaphors of supply lines aside, you can have 6 people soloing the mob together, or a group doing the mob. The difference is that a...
  16. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    Math is hard, eh? Ok, let's walk you through the formula. XP needed to reach level N = F x 1000 x N^3. XP at end of previous level = F x 1000 x (N-1)^3. So, XP required during the level = F x 1000 x ( N^3 - (N-1)^3). Quick, what's the result? It's F x 1000 x (3xN^2 - 3xN + 1), because the...
  17. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    It wasn't given by the devs, it was simply figured out by players. Levels weren't hardcoded, they were computed with a very simple formula. Hell levels arose because one dev couldn't do simple math. Max xp for level N required a total of N^3 * 1000 * fudge factor, which started at 1.0 and then...
  18. Ukerric

    EQMac Now Free to Play

    I remember that, on Sebilis (the french euro server created by Ubisoft to try to expand the market in france), my guild managed to get formed about about 1h after the server went up. We got that ID 0 guild, because the guides and GM hadn't got around to create theirs yet.
  19. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    Snowball effect, mainly. The main reason you keep playing is because others keep playing; you play because your guildmates still play. As long as the guild keeps a healthy roster so that you always have a raid night, a couple guildies to dungeon run or BG with, it's ok. But when a couple people...
  20. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    Blizzard is 100% owned by Activision-Blizzard, which itself is no longer majority-owned by Vivendi.
  21. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    Apple has over 130 billion (yes, billion) $ in cash stored offshore. Think of the debt reduction one could do with those back taxes...
  22. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    ... until November 8th where the Return of the Legion is announced for Q2 2014 during Blizzcon opening. Which analysts estimate will be paid back in about 2 years.
  23. Ukerric

    Wildstar Launch Thread - Server: Stormtalon | Faction: Dominion

    So that everybody looks like everybody else.
  24. Ukerric

    The Elder Scrolls Online

    Also, they backpedaled, and are now saying this is "multiplayer Elder Scrolls", and are trying to bury the Massively qualifier under a citadel or something. (aka no end-game content whatsoever save doing the other 2 factions quests, and some RvR action)
  25. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    At this rate, they're going to have negative asian sub numbers to justify the stable EU/NA ones...
  26. Ukerric

    The Elder Scrolls Online

    Well, since we've got nothing to blame upon TESO these days, we might as well blame it for NCSoft's shortcomings!
  27. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    One week. One week.
  28. Ukerric

    The Elder Scrolls Online

    In what way? Do you suffer from the delusion that, somehow, sub money is fully reinvested in some quality content rather than lining up the pockets of the publisher? If so, I'd like to introduce you to this handsome man. Mr Kotick, meet Mr Creed. Mr Creed, meet Mr Kotick. He'll teach you how...
  29. Ukerric

    The Elder Scrolls Online

    That's Ut we're talking about. By definition, he's never wrong and can't be wrong. And he doesn't agree to disagree either.
  30. Ukerric

    The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot (f2p MMO)

    Just got spammed by Ubi to get into the "free beta", so I assume it's now open.
  31. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    Phasing is a vehicle to deliver a single-player story in a multiplayer context. In other words, it's a kludge, a band-aid, to shoehorn things that, according to many, have no place in a MMO (i.e. the conceit that You Are the Awesome Prophesied Savior of the Universe... along with everyone else...
  32. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    About every major multinational company these days operates on the same system. A stack of off-shore companies holding "IP rights" that your real company has to pay at exorbitant rates, which happen to just match the amount of profit you made. In a world where the majority of the stockholder...
  33. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    With ONE major difference that changed everything. Every class could solo and level at relatively close to the same rate, from 1 to max. (there's of course a few differences, such as the major use of questing as a mechanism of levelling and directing players to content, but the above is...
  34. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    No. It's because of risk management. Today, WoW has become the"To save the cat"of MMO space: a type of game that appears to work (10 million subs can't be wrong), and thus, must be faithfully copied to minimize risk. Up to 2005 (coincidence?) when that book came around, you had all kind of...
  35. Ukerric

    Wildstar Launch Thread - Server: Stormtalon | Faction: Dominion

    You may need to play a beta (or demo) to have a VALID opinion, but you will have an opinion without the beta. And that opinion will, for most people, determine whether or not they're going to give it a chance. At the moment, it's "sunday morning cartoons WoW", with a lot of opportunities to...
  36. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    Well, early this year, Smedley seemed very confident we'd (I quote): "get (our) hands on an actual release version ... ? and I don?t mean a beta". So, no, the pre-alpha was when he said that in january, and alpha was Q2 when they tweeted being able to play it, and beta will start after Fan...
  37. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    Befallen was a hell. Early in 99, a friend of mine did the "oops, I dropped thru the well" and then went with a few passerby trying to recover his corpse. After dying 4 or 5 times, he asked for help in guild, and that's when things got wrong. It turns out that the Bard "locate corpse" would...
  38. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    I think it was a quote from one of the devs/CM. Although they might have not referred to heroics in general but more about server/world-first racing guilds; I'm not sure.
  39. Ukerric

    World of Warcraft: Current Year

    The current model is, in ilvl: LFR (25) -> Flex (10 to 25) -> Normal (10/25) -> Heroic (10/25) A lot of us expect that the Return of the Legion (or whatever it ends being called) expansion will collapse that to LFR -> Flex -> Heroic 25 (since the immense majority of heroics are done in 25...
  40. Ukerric

    EQ Never

    It's all in the context. "Go to the forest next door, kill young red bears until you find an ass and bring it back" is a task. "Go to Innoruuk's bedroom in Plane of Hate, and bring me his paperknife" is a quest.