EQ 'Next'

[disKret]

I'm pathetic and 59.95 poorer.

Curiosity is not a cheap bitch.

[Falconeer]

(Alpha) Launch was so good that NDA has been lifted.




EDIT: It is interesting to note that the game IS full of bugs and glitches, as expected from an alpha build, and there's very little content and features. Some of the bugs are game breaking, like disappearing starter tools and vanishing claim banners (so people can't claim their piece of land anymore), not to mention packed servers, queues, lagged chat, random teleports and crashes, and no tutorial whatsoever telling people how to claim land in already overcrowded spaces. Still, I agree with Georgeson, this is a success.

[01101010]

(Alpha) Launch was so good that NDA has been lifted.

Jesus what a farce. SoE, never change you sweet sweet company.

[Falconeer]

[palmer_eldritch]

I have been playing this.

It seems to involve a hell of a lot of mining and wood chopping. Maybe that was to be expected.

I like the way you can be mining some iron and you discover some silver beneath the iron so you dig that out too and you end up in such a deep hole that you then have to dig a tunnel out. I'm pretty sure you could tunnel through a mountain if you really wanted to.

I'm going to work on some sort of tower but you can set your claim - the area you own and are allowed to build on - partly below ground if you like, so there's scope for people to make small dungeons or maybe a wine cellar for their wizard's tower.

Right now there aren't any real structures to see. I've come across the foundations of buildings and steps that don't actually lead anywhere, but nothing that really looks like a structure, even in skeleton. I guess the servers have been up for less than 24 hours so that's to be expected. People seem to be concentrating on gathering resources and making tools and crafting stations at the moment. I'm looking forward to seeing what people make when buildings start to take shape.

One thing I didn't expect is that you can also craft a few magic items for your character too at this point, such as rings to increase their running speed etc.

[Venkman]

Well heck, maybe I will buy this ahead of time after all.

Edit: Oh so very typical. I swear, SOE is like the Nth degree of the "fool me once" phrase. Of fuckingcourse the first time I'd ever even considered impulse-buying a freakin' alpha is when their auth servers are hosed.

Yes yes, I see the twitter posts above. Or, now I do anyway...

[Threash]

Well heck, maybe I will buy this ahead of time after all.

Edit: Oh so very typical. I swear, SOE is like the Nth degree of the "fool me once" phrase. Of fuckingcourse the first time I'd ever even considered impulse-buying a freakin' alpha is when their auth servers are hosed.

Yes yes, I see the twitter posts above. Or, now I do anyway...

I got in right in time for the server outage.

[Falconeer]

Looks like they are gonna be back up in two hours. They are being hammered. Rumor went instantly out that the thing is good and too many accesses have been suddenly granted.

EDIT: Funny thing is the game will be free to play, and the Explorer Pack (60 dollars) doesn't really give you anything valuable other than early access to alpha.

[Threash]

Yes, thank you for the reminder.

[Signe]

I made a character.  I don't know what server I'm on because it kept flipping back to the first one even though I was trying for the second one.  Sometimes the "play" button after the login screen doesn't do anything but sometimes it does.  It's always a surprise.  Most of the terrain is just dark although when I first started it was choppy but eventually the terrain would show up.  It's stopped showing up.  :(  The little gear that shows things are loading (I guess) stays on constantly now and even though I'm moving forward, my character looks as if it's just jumping up and down.  So many claims were staked that I couldn't find one so I just kept running about and planting my flag anywhere until I got lucky.  Well, lucky in the sense that I found a place but since everything is so dark I have no idea what sort of ground it's on.  I think I might have a tree and a rock.  Not sure.  Even though I'm moving it doesn't show up in map mode although I can see other peoples arrows moving about.  I also seem to be permanently an ugly shade of blue even though I started out as a white girl with blond hair.  Whatever.

Other than that, hey, having a nice time playing Blackguards.   

[Nonentity]

I've spent entirely way too much time playing this.

Initial impressions are that their engine is really fucking cool. I see now why they have the super ridiculous bandwidth requirements on the alpha, it's constantly having to load both the heightmap + any geomod anyone has done on the heightmap. It actually makes me quite excited for EQ Next when most of that will be relatively static for the most part.

No caverns or water yet, only desert and forest biomes.

It's sort of like the mining, house building and tiering up parts of Terraria/Starbound without any of the combat (yet).

Few things:

- It's not immediately apparent what 'tier' of zone you're in. You can run to the wizard spire and choose one of the Tier 1 zones if you're not finding any copper.

- Good luck finding an empty claim in any of the Tier 1 zones. You'll have better luck heading into Tier 2 or Tier 3 zones and just heading any direction away from the spire.

- REMEMBER WHERE YOUR CLAIM IS. There's no immediate way of telling what zone your claim is in. I'm in Courage, Scarp (Tier 3) - once you zone in, you'll be able to filter out your claim on the map.

- You can hit esc and click 'return to surface' if you dig yourself into a big crazy hole.

- Craft the grapping hook as soon as you can. You equip it on your paperdoll and press E to shoot out a grappling hook and zip around. The range is pretty short on the starter bronze one, but if you pick and direction and sort of drag yourself along the ground with it, it helps travel speed.

[Simond]

NDA in place:

There's an NDA on a paid beta? 

Are you really shocked? Really?

Consider the company.

NDA dropped:

(Alpha) Launch was so good that NDA has been lifted.

Jesus what a farce. SoE, never change you sweet sweet company.

 

[Falconeer]

Anyway, not trying to make this epic or paint them as heroes or anything, but servers haven't been working properly since the moment they dropped the NDA about 10 hours ago. As a result, a bunch of them is still holed up in the office there in California as I type this (4am there), specificall Georgeson and Michaels (the leads), plus Gray, Klug, and Pettigrew. They have been at work for 20 hours straight and publically declared they are not going home until they bring the servers back up. And it's only alpha. Must at least appreciate their dedication and transparency (since everything is going live on Twitter). Even if it is only just an act to win customers' love back after all these years of SOE hating, can't say it's not appreciated.

[Bzalthek]

I like Georgeson.  I dunno why, but he's pretty much the sole reason I paid any attention to this and continue to do so.

[palmer_eldritch]

When you load up the Alpha client for the first time, the first thing you see is a video of Georgeson explaining what an Alpha is, lowering expectations and smiling a lot. It's a pretty good way of doing things.

[Numtini]

They're really being rather upfront about what is going on and what went wrong. More detail than you usually get. Apparently the disappearing claims and such were island servers crashing and the world server creating a new island and exiling the old one with everyone's stuff to the void.

[Pennilenko]

At least they are getting server stabilization out of the way early.

[Falconeer]

 

Nothing really new here but believe me when I say that tunneling has never been so much fun. My only gripe is that land starts healing itself in about twenty minutes so when you are somewhere deep down in the hole mining your way to the centre of Earth, the tunnel begins closing up behind you. Not a big deal since you can emerge with just a click, but it kills the epic scope of some serious spelunking. Here's hoping there will be different areas with different heal times.



EDIT: A rundown of what is coming. (The NDA at the bottom is not valid anymore as you know).

[Nyght]

That list just makes me sad.

So.. combat progression along with crafting progression? Best materials in higher tiers areas?

Groundbreaking..  

[shiznitz]

There was never any reason to expect anything different.

[Numtini]

I think they want there to be some kind of game. The materials progression isn't really that different from Minecraft when you get down to it. At least in a few hours of alpha it doesn't seem particularly oppressive. It just gives you something to work on. If anything, it needs more game. I have no idea what they have in mind, but this just cries out for community progression/goals in the manner of ATITD.

[Falconeer]

I think you are just reading it wrong. The thing you have in mind (and complaining about) is EverQuest Next. The hazards, combat and things they are talking about should be minor, like the creeps you find in Minecraft, Terraria, Starbound and the likes. They should be an aspect of the whole, not a wall to climb.

EDIT: What Numtini said.

[TripleDES]

My only gripe is that land starts healing itself in about twenty minutes so when you are somewhere deep down in the hole mining your way to the centre of Earth, the tunnel begins closing up behind you.

That's fucking stupid. How are you going to run an old school mining operation with several floors of tunnels?!

[Bzalthek]

It doesn't heal on your claim, only in public areas.

Of course, that's if you can find a claim.  I just ran across half of one server, everyplace is an invalid location as it overlaps other big squares.

[palmer_eldritch]

You don't have to run around - once you are in an island you can call up the map and you'll see where other claims are and where you can build. It's not very intuitive but the information is there.

[Falconeer]

The overlapping doesn't matter, or at least it is misleading. All that it matters is that the CENTER of your claim (not the larger, white buffer area) is outside of someone else's area. I don't doubt you, I am sure things are much worse today than they were yesterday, but there's a lot of misconception about where you can or can not place a claim. Open the map, use the "no permissions" filter and look for any free square small enough to host the smaller square of your claim, not the larger border. Or, just zone to some other zones, since the server keeps creating new ones as the old ones fill up there has to be some free space somewhere.

And no, running around trying to plant is just crazy. You HAVE to use the map and just head for a place that looks valid. That's the only way. Running around and trying will get you nowhere, while the map (with all the zooming, panning and filtering), make it pretty easy.

[Bzalthek]

It's kinda refreshing knowing you guys think I'm a blathering idiot.  I used the map, I skimmed around, I adjusted angles.  There are a few slivers that are "open" but they're on the very edge and still don't workj.  I know the centers are supposed to be the important bits, but any overlapping of the big boxes and my center piece is highlighted red and I get an invalid claim response.

Doing some research it looks like there is a bug where some people experience claims persisting from island to island, and thus everything is hyperclaimed.  I've tried relogging, which was a supposed fix, but this was not the case (the first time).  I'm in queue again, so we'll see how it goes.

Mind you I'm not complaining, just stating my experiences.  I'm in no rush here, just taking my time.

[Signe]

I'm sorry to disappoint you but I don't think you're a blathering idiot.  Or even a blithering one!  I'm probably going to let this go for a bit until the queues and plots and strange dark terrain is sorted.  And the fact that every person, including myself is blue with silver hair.  Weird.  There really isn't a rush.  I did find a plot not far from the big shiny place.  I have no idea how it got missed because it's a short distance from that big shiny place and it even has like stuff on it!

[Threash]

All im getting is a black screen and UI, is this normal?

[Pennilenko]

Servers are down.

[tmp]

Does anyone have any good screenshots of dick forests, yet?

[palmer_eldritch]

It's kinda refreshing knowing you guys think I'm a blathering idiot.  I used the map, I skimmed around, I adjusted angles.  There are a few slivers that are "open" but they're on the very edge and still don't workj.  I know the centers are supposed to be the important bits, but any overlapping of the big boxes and my center piece is highlighted red and I get an invalid claim response.

Doing some research it looks like there is a bug where some people experience claims persisting from island to island, and thus everything is hyperclaimed.  I've tried relogging, which was a supposed fix, but this was not the case (the first time).  I'm in queue again, so we'll see how it goes.

Mind you I'm not complaining, just stating my experiences.  I'm in no rush here, just taking my time.

I just assume everyone shares my general level of incompetence.

Servers are back up by the way!

[TripleDES]

It doesn't heal on your claim, only in public areas.

I'm not playing it (yet?), so I don't know how large a claim is, but I'd wager if you're roleplaying some mining operation, the tunnels would be crossing into public land pretty quickly. Since there's no elevators, you'd have to dig a spiral or stairway into the ground, which would probably take up a lot of your claim in the X-Y directions.

[Bzalthek]

Well, you don't have a huge depth in your claim.  It's roughly twice the width/length and you can adjust the height as you (attempt) to claim an area.  So it won't be far until you reach public space again.

Some people are reporting land healing on their claims too, so it may be that either they changed their mind since they did the video or it's bugging out for some people.

[Numtini]

Some people are reporting land healing on their claims too, so it may be that either they changed their mind since they did the video or it's bugging out for some people.

After the long downtime, there were some issues and they reset the land to the default.