Ok, first impressions of "Desert of Flames" or as I like to call it, The Great Nerf or Unreal Tournament: Norrath's Awakening.

The Good

First up.. holy hell WOW. Nothing you have seen will prepare you for this. The graphics are just flat out amazing, the zones are insanely well done in terms of layout and graphics. I never thought a desert could look so inviting and menacing at the same time, but it can.

You arrive at - get this - the Oasis Docks. Think I'm kidding? Walk five yards from the dock and you'll enter "The Oasis of Marr", complete with the specter tower and the undying little bastards. They've changed a bit, however; no more scythes and actual legs. I haven't been able to get too close but I think the origional sound is still there.

And watch out for the camians, they bite.

Ok, go in further and be awarded with a stunning desert landscape.. and the orc highway. If you don't know what that is this will have no meaning to you BUT if you do know what I mean, if you recall the little canyon on the north edge of the highway that we never ever could go into in EQ1.. we can now. Rujikan Cliffs - orcland. Haven't been able to go in there for more than a minute, but..

Right off the bat as you explore the desert, there are at least 2 group x3 named mobs and at least two named heroics. And they're big.. bring your giant and lizardman masteries here. You'll see all manner of familiar critters from EQ1 - madmen, spiders, sand giants and other things.

But, should you choose not to go towards the sands, you'll encounter.. pirates. Lots and lots of pirates. And if you wander around the islands, you'll discover a genie bottle that will take you into a solo instance (that kicked my ass but royal) that will be itemized to have some really nice rewards if you can beat it, a-la the Solo Arena in Splitpaw. (Plus there's a lot of concubines, so it's all good.)

There are also croc caves and a few other things. Honestly I haven't been able to explore much of the area, my mind has been on other things.. that are next.

So within about 9hrs after DoF's release, you're going to see a few dozen people on flying carpets. But how? Are they l33t players with more gold than Ghandi could have ever refused? Nay sir! There is a 3 stage quest that grants you your own flying carpet with 30% speed (crap, yes) but also grants you the ability to use various 'ghost carpet' accesss poitns... think griffon towers you have to do an access quest for. I expect this quest to be spoiled within a few minutes of release, and I promise I'll do my best to do so. http://boards.immortalfellowship.com/images/smilies/smile.gif The quest itself starts about 10 feet from the docks.. so go for it.

Also, right off the bat, you get to choose your alignment. Basically, if you're familiar with Scars of Velious you're familiar with DoF's faction system. Court of Blades - warriors, city army. Court of Coin - merchants, tradeskillers. Court of Truth - city guards, justice minded folks, casters. Allying with one makes you hated by the others. At best, you're going to be Ally-Neutral-Enemy but don't count on it. You do a few quests, you join your faction. What rewards does this have for you?

Damned if I know for sure. However there are quests specific to each faction, and likewise, rewards. There are also Arena Champions specific to each faction.. more on that later.

Now onto the city itself. You can skip the entire Shifting Sands and go straight to the city of Maj'Dul - but you won't find a bank here, or a mender. You'll find a city full of people.. and every single one of them is killable. And every single one of them is on their own faction. And you'll eventually have to sneak around it like a thief in the night if you want to survive as you do various quests.. and as others do them unto you. As you kill guards and guard captains of other factions, guards of your chosen faction will spawn in their place, allowing you to completely take over the city. Makes it harder for some players; makes it easier for others.

And some exicted gamblers will just flat out kill you because they want to.

But what, Akaran, are they so excited about?!
Well, I'll tell you!


Enter the Arena. Right now, there's not much point for it. That's expected to change.

Straight up, it's Unreal Tournament with EQ2 toons. Two basic types of battle: play as yourself and do battle with others playing as themselves (Oultaw vs Zeijandi - last bowshot wins) or Arena Champions. The Champions will be bought, dropped, and quested for as you journey. Champions serve the purpose as 'avatars' that you controll, each with their own abilities, strengths, weaknesses. There are capture the flag, deathmatch, and destroy the 'objective' modes in a few different arenas. Anyone can enter, you can set the battles to be for certain level ranges, ect. I love this and honestly plan on ripping it up as soon as the expansion comes out. You want me, you'll find me here.

Now for the not so good.

New Combat System
Under the new system I get gang raped by groups of solo green mobs. I loose fights with groups of solo blues. There are no cast timers on combat abilities, so burst damage is possible - and mobs do the same thing. The nerf bat connected firmly against my balls and put them up around my chin - and guess what, it's hitting your class too. I haven't heard a single class that's happy about the changes that's actually played their handcrafted toon in it. Hell.. my 59% mitigation I have now goes down to 39% in DoF. My buffs take concentration slots, I lose my high damage skill, my haste, ect... I'm sickened.

Gear gets torn up badly, as well. Jewelry items have had their mitigation values halved, which hurts. They just did something to make treasured gear and fabled gear not suck so badly in comparrasion to each other, so those of us with high grade equipment will have a greater distance between their stats and the stats of those of us with treasured.

That's truly the only bad I've seen so far. But it's a big one.

More comming soon...

More changes....these we on the beta notes today.

*** Headlines ***

- Encounter locking restrictions have been relaxed.


*** Encounter Locking Changes ***


- Encounter locking restrictions have been relaxed for non-raid
encounters.

- Raid encounters should continue to behave exactly as before with the
previous encounter locking rules.

- Non-raid encounters have been changed as follows:

- There are no longer lock icons on you or your enemies.

- The first group or person to attack a creature will receive any
reward it grants upon death, including loot and experience.

- Other players can assist in your fight by damaging your enemies or
healing you.

- You will receive a reduced XP reward if your group contributes less
than 50% of the damage needed to kill something.

- You can change group options and add/remove people from groups while
fighting (note that fighting raid encounters still prevents this).

- Damage credit is correctly tracked if you add people helping you to
the group before something dies.

- Any faction increase or decrease the creature grants will be applied
to everyone the creature hates when it dies.

considering im only level 18 and I am a casual player I prob wont be high enough to play in oasis for awhile but I cant wait to see it for nostalgia reasons.. PALADIN lfg at ORC HIGHWAY :-D

You're correct the expansion (I think) is geared for the 40ish+ crowd. My "casual" guild is raiding Darathar for the first time Tuesday. It is possible to see and do most anything you want EQ2 no matter your pace. The way they have changed the game since launch you can easily level 1 to 20 in a day maybe 2 if you hit the right exp spots ;)

oh yeah i'm leveling quite fast as it is..but considering I still raid on eq a good bit of time I am using eq2 as a relaxation game so in no rush to level.

btw they took out guild point decay didnt they?

they got rid of decay and when the expansion comes the concept of patrons goes away...there will be an equation to determine the number of patrons per guild, it will either be 12 or 24 depending on the number of "unique" accounts who wear the tag. Not only did they do this but now when a patron leaves or is depatroned their contributed points do not take away from guild status level.

good finally the game is helping the casual player considering its suppose to be a game made for casual players :/

I must admit I'm looking at the upcoming revamp with apprehensive anticipation. I can understand some of the reasons but not all. It's certainly going to change some things. I can only speak from a Paladin's perspective but I am happy to hear I will get a group heal or two, and my mitigation will be better, however my DPS is going to the dumpster. I guess the scouts and mage classes didn't like that I could reel off nearly 2k of damage in just a few seconds of an encounter /sigh. So 25% DPS nerf. The good news Paladins get to keep their battle rez, that nearly caused more controversy than when they nerfed our horse. Time will tell, but the more I hear from people in beta and on test is that they actually like it. It seems at first you hate it but after a while it makes sense.

I like EQ2, it can be for casual people or it can be for people who are hardcore. The content is amazing (even at the high end) the loot tables leave allot to be desired for the casters, and the smaller raids are more manageable. One thing that was missing was replayability. But with the encounter changes that may help a bit...I see PL'ing on the horizon. The game is shaping more into a better version of EQ1, but it's been a long process. I do hate lockout timers but since they added contested mobs it gives us something to do while waiting 7 days. Unlike EQ1, you don't need a group to get anything done. There are lots of things you can do solo or even duo (they've added this since launch). I don't feel like I need hours and hours to get things done.

Indeed the game is much much different than it was a year ago. And come a couple of weeks it's about to be even more different. I just want us to kill Darathar a few more times before then. :D

For those who can access it, here's a great link with tons of beta pictures.

http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=desert&message.id=5318#M5318

Sounds good. Maybe i'll level up faster to get into the new expansion quicker..hehe Am also a casual player so most likely won't be seeing the end game for a few months at least. Plus playing an enchanter isn't exactly superfast on xp...:o

Here's another guildie's story who got in beta like this week lol..


Story

Day 1

My character was not transferred so off to newbie land. I make a froglok priest for now. Calenuil joins me and we set off on our questing. Get our gear, kill the first goblin, talk to the class quest guy. Then the interesting part, we go to blow up totems. I have done this before, no problem right? Well Cal and I are grouped, here comes a white SOLO goblin, a few seconds later, that goblin is having all you can eat frog legs. Now from what they have said melee on test is a bit messed up right now, way to difficult. Well we managed to get through newbie island after many many deaths. Time for bed



Day 2

I log on to see my character still not transferred, but they have put back the bell to DoF and the super dupper auto leveler guy (yay beta). So I make a Froglok Conjurer, head to DoF and level straight to 50. It takes some time for the levels to click through, and takes me even more time to figure out my new spells. Everything is different, check the next post down for more info. Only bad thing about having this guy and not Barrak, all my spell are at apprentice 1, and my gear is very generic, so much weaker of a character than I am used to.



Just as I am finishing up choosing and organizing my traits and spells Cal shows up. Calengreen (Calenuil) is a 50 froglok Fury, who of course, is missing a few shards. We group up and prepare to head out and get his shards. Wait before we go, /Duel bitch. If any of you have played WOW you will noticed that Sony TOTALLY ripped them off, but it is a good system, it works and it is fun. After a quick killing of the weakened Calengreen (he was missing more than 1 shard after all) I get challenged by a 50 bruiser. I managed to win with ½ a bubble of health. Good fight. I can tell that /duel will be happening a lot!



We go out manage to get his shards back, one of which was in a bad place. One thing I noticed right away, Caster beware, you are paper thin now, much more so than before! After getting the shards Cal shows me the big 52 x4 giant that roams around the desert, very cool looking, Sand giants must die! (not today though) So after telling Cal there was no way in hell I was going to try and take on the raid mob we decided to head to Maj’Dul and check it out.



Wow, I feel like I was in an Aladdin movie. Elephants, camels, snake charmers, girls in those hot belly dancer outfits, people on flying carpets, dirty beggars on the street. The next 20 or 30 minutes we spent saying, “wow look at that” or “You have got to come see this” The city is HUGE, and very maze like. Multi levels, winding staircases, buildings that look the same. Very easy to get lost. Also, all NPC’s are attackable, though if you do get in a fight on the street look out for the level 65 guards that will come whoop your ass. There are 3 factions in the city, the blades, coin, and truth (I will double check those names). From what people say, as you gain faction with one group, the others will become KOS to you, which will make the city very very interesting.



Calengreen-“ I found the arena!!” Well off we go. The Arena ROCKS! If you have played any first person shooter online you will be comfortable with the setup. You click on the door and a screen comes up showing all of the arena “rooms” that are currently running. You can choose to join one of those, or create your own. We decided to create our own. You can choose from Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, or Destroy the Idol (not sure what this one is, will update later). You can set number of player, number of kills, time limit. Also you can choose to use only the Arena Champions (the pokemon type creatures you can find/buy in the world) or only Player characters, or a combo of both. There are also a half dozen or so “zones” you can choose from to have your battle. Hopefully they will keep expanding on this.



We choose no time limit, 10 kill Deathmatch with player characters, the pokemon that we saw available were 10 gold a piece, since we have no money yet we didn’t get to try them out. The first room you are in is a staging room, you can cast spells but they do not do anything, so you cannot prebuff, summon pets, ext ext. Then the main room is bigger, has things to hide around, just a good place to do battle. There are health and mana potions lying around, you just run over them to reap the benefits. Also, there are Power ups that you can run over that give you a one time use spell. Reminded me a lot of Mario Cart 64 when I say the giant lighting bolt icon I can pick up. These one time spells are very good, my favorite was the one that nuke your opponent for 600 or so, Stuns him for a few seconds, and teleports you right on top of him.



Ok, Conjurers KICK ASS in the arena, at least vs. Furys J after the 10 – 0 victory we head back out to city and do a little more exploring. We found some housing, the 1 room version, 8 gold or so and 22000 or 220000 status, I have to check my zero’s again. Not bad looking, but not great. It was getting late so I decided to call it a night.. wait /duel bitch ! Calengreen goes down again. When you duel and loose you do not die, just end up at 1 health or so. Somehow my DoT’s bypassed that rule and actually killed him causing him to die for real, XP debt and all. A good way to end the night /camp.
General Info

Info screens, like personal (when you hit P) and even the mouse overs show much more detailed information, very nice


Spells – Be prepared to spend some time reading through each one of these. Just about every spell I had changed in some manner. Some just minor changes, others had huge changes. For example, Blazing Presence, used to be a pet Mitigation buff, is not a Pet Damage proc. Many had new icons, some have new names. Not to mention the brand new spells you get.



Racial Trains and class training options - Much more detailed information with the racial traits. The calls training options now start at 14 and every 10 levels after. You get to choose one spell from 4 options to set at Master 2 level. When the patch goes live you will be doing a respect, so be prepared