Welcome to the very first Halfling HodgePodge Extreme! Your resident Community Halflings collected questions from the EQ Community then presented a selection of these questions to the EQ Developers. Here are the questions we selected and the responses to those questions!
Will future updates to the game (whether in the form of an expansion or in the form of a storyline such as the Age of War) introduce new class/race combinations, such as a Vah Shir Monk, a Wood Elf Beastlord, or a Froglok Magician and Enchanter? It’s something that comes up from time to time, but we don’t have plans for more at the moment. Racial diversity is part of the charm of the game.
Post Mistmoore revamp, Ring of Scale faction is MUCH MORE difficult to raise. Could you add a viable way to raise Ring of Scale faction? We added a quest to the new Mistmoore a bit ago to allow players another route to raise Ring of Scale faction.
Is there ever going to be a way to opt out of the jester's illusion effects? It’s not likely. The jester doesn’t actually cast illusions, but rather does a forced shape shift similar to what you’d see in various raid encounters. That being said, it is probable that his effects are going to be changed so they only affect the group of the player who cast it.
Given the success and popularity of Unrest and Hatesfury missions, are there plans for more such missions, both in the Unrest and Hatesfury zones and in other zones? Those missions were done as a precursor to the type of content we are adding in Depths of Darkhollow. Many of the monster missions with the expansion take you back to old world zones to experience their story from a different perspective.
When can we expect some more old world zones to be re-envisioned with new graphics and possible difficulty/level adjustments? It’s definitely something we intend to continue doing. In fact, a new version of Nektulos is on the way with Depths of Darkhollow. The zone’s difficulty isn’t changing, but it’s has undergone a complete graphical revamp similar to Lavastorm.
Are "stances" still considered for druids, and if so, will damage over time spells be affected too or only nukes? They’re still on the plate, yes, but the specifics haven’t been worked out yet.
Are there plans to update the Froglok Cultural armors to include the new classes? Yes
Have you thought about this issue (older zones being unpopulated making obtaining rare tradeskill items hard if not impossible) and ways to keep 'old' tradeskill recipes viable or are you content with how it works now? There are many changes being discussed that may impact this that have not been fleshed out at this time.
Are there any plans to implement a "Max # of combines" threshold, so that if you did not get a skillup after this threshold value, example: 150 combines, you would automatically get a skillup on combine 151 (and then the counter would reset for the next run of combines.)? The same as above, many changes are being discussed that may impact skillups but have not been decided upon at this time.
In the past, spells from older expansions appeared on vendors INSIDE the new expansion because fewer and fewer people went to those old locations. An example would be spells sold in the Abysmal Sea, can we please have this happen for Lost Dungeons of Norrath and Planes of Power spells in Depths of Darkhollow and Gates of Discord in the next expansion at the latest? There will be a host of new Research based recipes in Depths of Darkhollow which will allow players to research spells from Planes of Power and a spell or two from other, newer expansions. The expansion will also have areas where you can obtain the spells originally include with omens of war.
Can the developers tell us what they have decided Manaburn will be? What time frame they have on getting it live? We've currently working on unraveling the manaburn code. We are hoping to get this addressed shortly after the launch of Depths of Darkhollow.
Will a command to remove headgear graphics ever be implemented like in EQII? We currently have no plans to do this with our existing character models.
Is the extremely prevalent line of sight issues in most zones since Planes of Power, where a player can see and target an NPC, but you receive a Cannot See Target message when attempting to cast, an intentional design decision, or a bug? If it is a bug, should these be reported? This is a known issue that we plan to correct. Basically, the line of sight checks need to do a few more ray-casting samples to allow for a bit more leeway in what we consider visible. Right now only one line of sight ray-cast is performed, and it is done too low to the ground and the floor can sometimes interfere with it. It's high on the list of things to improve when we get a chance.
Why does the chat function often eat the last character of a message? Type "/gu Hello" and guild sees "Hell" or "/rs Stay here Group 1" and raid only sees "Stay here Group". We have not narrowed down the exact cause of this issue due to the lack of examples. In order to be able to fix this issue we would really need to get specific cases from the community. If you could /bug the text and what you typed, it would go along way to solving this issue.
Will the shield gfx bug (shield turned upside down and arm going thru it) for Dark Elves and High Elves on drogmor, ever get fixed? There are currently no plans to fix old graphics bugs. This includes the old bugged animations and equipable items.
With the change made to the quantity of AMMO to allow the player to stack to 100 from 20, can we expect the same change to be made for Bandages? Also, could we expect this change for Food and Drink as well? We have no plans on changing any other item types to be stackable over 20 for now. A big reason why we chose to only change ammo slot items is due to the fact that the items are expended much more rapidly than food, drink, and bandages.
Is there any chance that we can get trader bags (for bank and trader use) that have say, 20 slots? Larger bag sizes aren’t currently possible due to some limitations in the original game code.
Are you still intending to change the Bard Vishimtar Ring effect into something more substantial or keep it in its current form? We don’t have any plans to change the item at this time. The feedback after the resist mod went in was that the item was inline with other effects.
Is there the possibility to increase the necessary epic drops so as to prevent farming, or make those needed items no drop? There’s definitely a possibility, though it would have to be a global change to all epics, instead of a specific one. It’s something to keep in mind for the future, though there aren’t any immediate plans to change them.
Is there a plan to fix the links of an item that has the BiC augment in it? Maybe either fix the links or add a turn in of the final augment that is linkable. Yes. The plan is to have this fixed in next month’s patch.
Is there any work being done to repair, replace, and automate the Server Status page off the EQLive site so that it will once again show individual server up/down status information? That's not our department, unfortunately. We would like to see this automated too.
I really appreciate the "link all" button on looted corpses' inventory. Would it be possible to replace it with a "loot all" button while looting one's own corpse? We've heard the many requests for this feature and we agree that it's a good idea and something we would like to do, it's just a matter of finding the time to do it at this point.
Are there any plans on adding endurance regeneration to existing Bard Mana/Hit Point songs? Endurance was built and tuned around the innate regeneration so that endurance using classes weren’t even more beholden to spell casters than they already were. Adding endurance regeneration to spells goes against this principal so we don’t see it happening anytime soon. Items… sure.