Regarding changes to gameplay:

AA System – With the increase to level 75, we’ve run into a problem with AAs.  AAs are built around a static amount of experience, roughly what is required to get level 51.  As levels have gone up, the amount of experience you get for killing a creature goes up too and we’re at the point now where a few kills at level 75 would be worth an AA point.  To avoid this problem and the problems associated with continually inflating AA costs to compensate, we’re moving the AA system to a more relative system so the amount of AA experience you gain will be based on the difficulty (con level) of the NPC you killed rather than its level (quest XP and other ways of getting AA are likewise converted over to the new system).  The amount of experience required to get an AA is based around what a level 70 player currently requires in the old system, so players at level 70 shouldn’t see much difference.  Players below level 70 will gain AA at a faster rate than before the change because they were previously gaining at a much slower rate than a level 70 can.

Spell Resists – We’ll be introducing a new spell resist formula that will make spell resists much more lenient than they have been in the past.  The old system was built for the original game when the levels were capped at 50 and the resists were under 300.  It wasn’t built to be very flexible and as the levels have gone up and the resists have gone up, it has maintained the same narrow range of values that meant a spell was unresisted as it had back then.  In a good system, appropriate level spells should land most of the time, but not all of the time, against appropriate level NPCs.  Because of the narrow range on the older system, that isn’t the case currently.  Most spells these days tend to be all-or-nother.  They either land or they don’t and you don’t see much deviation from that.  The new system introduces a formula that scales a lot better and will result in more spells falling into the right realm where spells can land, but don’t always land.

Death – We’ll be changing death so that when you die, you will be “hovering” over your body and can choose to stay that way while waiting for a resurrection instead of immediately zoning to your bind point.  This is being done to help players on slow connections who take a big hit from having to zone twice when they die.

Character Creation – We’ve changed character creation to make it more graphical, allow characters to be created from a single page, and update it to include features associated with the new Drakkin race.  As part of this, we’ve set up some character defaults so starting point allocation, starting city, and starting deity all have defaults now which can be changed if you wish.

Endless Quiver – A longstanding issue we’ve had with ranger itemization is the inability to create specialized arrows because they are never expended due to the Endless Quiver AA.  This has led to arrows become a bit stale over the years.  To resolve this issue, we’ve introduced the ability to create new arrows that are not affected by Endless Quiver.  These arrows will specifically be marked as “Expendable”.   It’s important to note that old arrows will not change and we will continue to create new arrows that work with Endless Quiver.  This just allows us the flexibility to create arrows that have a big effect without the balance issues associated with them sticking around forever.

Dark Blue Con – The concept of a dark blue con NPC has existed in EQ for a while now.  It represents a range of blue con NPCs that give a bonus to their experience due to being very close to your level, generally within 5 levels.  We’ve decided to change the con system to include this range as well so you can visually see when an NPC falls into this “sweet spot”.

Regarding changes to downtime:

Likely the biggest change we are making is one aimed at reducing the amount of downtime in EverQuest.  As EverQuest has grown over the years, the amount of downtime imposed upon players has grown as well and we’d rather players find challenge in the fights themselves than in the tedium between them.  Toward that end, we’ve created a new system that is simple to use, but powerful and flexible enough to control downtime as the game continues to grow.

The basics of the new system are relatively simple.  Once you have been out-of-combat for a sufficient amount of time, you can sit down (or be on a non-moving horse) and begin to rest.  While resting, you enter an accelerated regeneration state that will quickly recover your mana, health, and endurance.  For most single group content, once you are out of combat for 30 seconds you can rest.  While dealing with multi-group content, that time is 5 minutes.  The amount of time you have to be out-of-combat before you can rest varies for group content and raid content due to the different needs of the different encounter types. 

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.

Every NPC in the game has a rest timer associated with it.  When you enter combat with a creature, you will gain their rest timer if it is greater than any rest timer you currently have on you.  Once you are no longer in a combat state, that timer will begin to count down.  The rest timer varies depending on the difficulty of the encounter you are fighting.  For most creatures, the rest timer is 30 seconds but for multi-group content (defined by the initial intention of the content) the rest timer is 5 minutes.  This difference is included to prevent potential exploits associated with classes that can drop hate at will (fading memories, evacs, etc.).  In a raid situation where fights can last for quite a while, this could easily be abused.  Rest timers are persistent through zoning and logging out, but are cleared upon death (the death debuff itself, though, keeps you from being able to rest until it is gone).  NPCs that give the extended rest timer will have extra text in their con message that denotes them as a multi-group encounter so you can know ahead of time that they will give you the longer rest timer.

There are a few special cases that we included to ensure we’re covering any potential loopholes.

• If you buff, heal, or otherwise positively interact with a player who has an active rest timer, you will inherit their timer if it is greater than the one you currently have.
• If you attack (or are attacked by) another player in a pvp setting, you will gain a 30 second rest timer.
• If you have a debuff on yourself, you cannot rest even if you do not have a rest timer on yourself.  Certain debuffs can be flagged to not impact your ability to rest if needed.  Those debuffs will have a yellow border instead of a red one on their buff icon.
• If you are attacked, you gain the rest timer of the creature attacking you.  The exception is if this is self-inflicted damage.  Self-inflicted damage does not incur a rest timer.

Resting regeneration is percentage-based regeneration for health, mana, and endurance and is currently set to take you from 0 to full in 3 minutes.  This allows it to scale with gear, so you aren’t penalized for getting better gear, and ensures that downtime never becomes a problem again as the game continues to grow.  This system replaces the older advanced regeneration that was introduced for health.

Rashere