Several items added to the EQ2 Wishlist:
EDIT — Blah. Embedding disabled. SUCK. ME. Amputate the leg at the foot, dumbasses.
Just go to YouTube and type in IMperative Reaction and you can hear all of their stuff. But the two below are really good.
I love IR.
Turn it up.
I love the siphon-filter in Giving Up.
… now that Lavastorm and Everfrost have both been revamped …
… how about we follow up with Solusek’s Eye and Permafrost, adjusting the mob difficulty up a bit (both in mechanics and in level), and the named loot tables …
Just a thought!
Live Update 51 (“The Elements of Corruption”) has been postponed. This was posted by Froech, late yesterday:
As many of you know, we’ve been working on Elements of Corruption (Game Update 51) for some time…there really is a lot of good stuff coming, including new zones, new raids, new quests, a revamp of Lavastorm, the list seems endless. However, we’re not quite ready to release it. I know many of you were expecting us to do so this week or next, but at this point, we just need some more time to spend working on it so that it’s just right for all of you. Please be patient with us while we finish polishing the update, and as soon as we have a good date that we can ship out all of this exciting goodness, we’ll let you know.
Also, for those of you who are trying to claim the item as promised in the Beckett’s magazine promotion, it will postpone that item as well. We hope you understand, and certainly appreciate your patience.
There is no option to reply on the forums, as it was posted to the Announcements board.
I never did understand the idea that there should be an update – any update – exactly every 30 days. Sure, it’s nice, but I often wondered at the point of releasing a small change and touting it as an update. Better, in my opinion, to really have something substantial for players to grasp. I feel that it is always best to polish and refine content, playtest it, bug track it, for as long as the content demands. Releasing a major patch too early results in annoyed players, and in the long run, requires excess development time to fix and do damage control.
So far, from what I gather, LU51 will have the following changes:
And also possibly, but I haven’t seen it confirmed to be released in LU51, per se:
I’ve added a new signature to the Signatures page. I made this one for Vermin’s tank, Dvara.
Why Sony, WHY? Why must I be subjected to what girlscout cookies are best and which devs like celebrity apprentice !?
WHYYYYYYYYYYY, god, why? …..
It is not needed!
Dev tracker and CRM tracker separate in 2009! Abused forum browsers for a better tomorrow!
Imago-Quem … some strange and often-silent developer at SOE, explains … sort of … how shadows work in EQ2:
Quality is a relative term here. Comparing CPU and GPU shadows isn’t straight forward. Here are some differences that make the comparison difficult:
1) Sharpness:
CPU shadows are always sharp (EQII engine).
GPU shadows are only sharp at high resolution shadow maps. This can be scaled and depends on how much graphics memory your graphics card supports. At low resolution shadow maps GPU shadows will appear “blocky”. A blurring technique can be applied to these maps to smooth out the “blockyness”. Blurring is limited to the Shader Model 3.0 limitations in size and complexity. A blurred low resolution shadow map is usually preferred rather than the sharp, less natural looking CPU shadow volumes.
Is this what determines quality?
2) Number of triangles shadowed:
CPU shadows generate in real time (every frame) an entirely new 3D object based on the 3D object casting a shadow. The more complex the object is the more CPU cycles are taken up to generate the new 3D object. The new 3D shadow is then rendered onto your screen and masking out lighting effects.
GPU shadows just render the original 3D object onto at least 2 screen buffers (1 of them is a shadow map buffer). With Cascading Shadow Maps (used in EQII) the object is potentially drawn to 2 additional shadow map buffers depending on the quality setting of the shadow maps. There are no CPU calculations for generating any 3D objects but there are additional draw calls sent to the 3D hardware. GPU shadows also use more intense / complex shaders to apply the shadow to the scene whereas volume shadows use a very simple shader in combination with an affect called stenciling.
This is where you’ll find the difference in frames per second between CPU and GPU shadows.
Is this what determines quality?
3) Dynamic Tree Shadows:
In EQII CPU shadows don’t cast dynamic shadows from trees or plants. They are static drop down shadows. For now, these shadows are always calculated for GPU shadows. They change depending on the angle of the sun and accurately shadow each leaf you see in the tree or plant.
Is this what determines quality?
4) Frames Per Second:
CPU Shadows provide different frames per second depending on how many objects are casting shadows. This can be scaled by adjusting a couple settings in EQII. For EQII, CPU shadows “pop” into view when they start to be shadowed.
GPU Shadows provide different frames per second depending on how blocky and fuzzy the shadows become and how far out you can see shadows from your player character. GPU shadows fade shadows in as they come into view.
If you shadow 100 complex objects with CPU shadows you will have a lower framerate than if you shadowed those same objects with GPU shadows. If you shadow 1 simple object with CPU shadows you will likely have higher framerates than if you shadowed the same 1 simple object with GPU shadows. This is because for GPU shadows the objects affected by the shadow must also be integrated into the shadow calculations, meaning rocks, trees, and the ground you’re walking on all must be passed through the graphics hardware and GPU shadow shader in order to cast shadows on them.
Is this what determines quality?
And there you have it?
This is the first part in a series I will dub “mmology.” I struggled with how I should actually type that out, by the way. MMO-logy? MM-Ology? MM-ology? So I finally went with the aforementioned. In case you aren’t getting it … it’s said the same way you would say “biology” or “psychology.” Hey, some people might not have got it! Stop the head shaking! I’m sure I’m not the first person to think of this phrase, especially in blog-land … so I won’t coin it as my own … but I am going to use it, all the same! 
Basically, I have a 3 page, running list of all the topics and ideas I want to blog about on here, whether they be gaming, industry-related, MMO-specific, or EQ2 topical. After I hit page 3, I realized there was a pattern forming — alot of my thoughts were falling into a pseudo-psychological, or perhaps sociological, category. Those particular posts were most often in the MMO category. Things like: why do we play, what motivates players, what do we really feel is important in an MMO, and what keeps us coming back – or keeps us away? To some degree, I’ve posted about all of these subjects in previous entries, sometimes at great length, and sometimes as tangents of other issues. (I apologize for not linking, but I promise, they are all in the archives. Maybe if I get ambitious I’ll go back and link to the pertinent ones.) So, I’ve decided to start a new editorial series, and this is part 1.
So, part 1 is really relevant to this entry, on what is keeping people occupied in PC gaming. But this time, specifically, I want to point out games in the MMO realm.
The idea is that great MMO’s fail not because they are intrinsically BAD … but because they aren’t necessarily any BETTER than what we’ve invested years of free time into, already!
I’m going to use two games as examples, here. The first one is Age of Conan.
Age of Conan could be classified as something of a failure. That’s not what I’m here to argue in favor of, or against. Commercially and critically, the industry received it as something of a failure. That much, I think, is understood. Hopefully it will work and improve itself, much the way EQ2 has done. Time will tell.
Why it failed? You could cite a number of reasons: high system requirements, strange, alien world, adult content, lack of solo content, restrictive group play rules … all of these have been listed in various reviews. Now, of course, all of that is subjective to the reviewer, and is really irrelevant. The point is: it didn’t succeed, for one reason or another.
Here is where my theory comes in: was it really because those things were true road blocks? Or is it simply that, given the choice, we would rather spend more time playing WoW or EQ2, or Guild Wars, further expanding our already-developed mains, or growing new alts, in a world and gameplay system we were already familiar with and socially connected to, than to dump all that and spend two months learning a brand new world, gameplay system, and cultivating new social relationships? Yes. I know. That was a HUGE run-on sentence. Re-read it a few times. This is a blog, not Grammar 101.
In a previous era, say, 4 years ago, had Age of Conan been released, I guarantee you it would have a large following, today. But Why? becuase we had lower expectations, and far more time to devote to whatever was on the horizon, than we do now!
Second case in point: Warhammer Online.
This is a game that had everything, absolutely everything, going for it, and every right to succeed. If any game could have threatened WoW, this ought to have been the one!
Except it didn’t.
Oh it came out with just as much hype as there could be. Magazine features and fancy CG trailers; tons and tons of internet fan gossip and speculation. EA, not just any mom-and-pop studio operation, but E-fucking-A, the 1000 pound gorilla of the gaming industry, was publishing it. And Mythic? No newcomer to the world of MMORPG’s. Alongside Sony, they practically invented the genre. To top it all off, one of the best, most well-known franchises in the gaming/nerd/geek/super uber table-top-gaming freak world: Warhammer. Warhammer, the name, has already appeared in more than half-a-dozen major studio releases, as role-playing/RTS hybrids.
The game had a polished interface, a very friendly new-player experience in the form of it’s many unique starting areas, a good dose of humor, a lot of lore, and well-developed world with an intriguing storyline that should have hooked players. It also introduced a relatively ingenuous playstyle, RvR, which actually gave reason to care about which race you chose.
Despite all of that … somehow, some way, the game just didn’t come out swinging like everyone thought. Oh it boasted a great first round … but then? Sat out 3 rounds for a breather.
No one who played Warhammer could, in all fairness, say it was a “bad” or “poorly done” game. It was a fantastic game, much like Age of Conan was a fantastic game.
So why then did it not maintain its player-base?
Again … not because it was BAD … but because it just wasn’t quite good ENOUGH to tip the scale away from the psychological weight of this thought: “Yeah, it’s good, but, man, I need to get back to my level 80 [your 4 year-old toon here].”
I have to honestly give props to the Station Cash artists and designers, and the administrative types who make executive decisions on said content …
… the Academy Field Plate and the Blue Silk sets are very, very nice. Sure, they use pre-existing patterns, but they come in pretty sweet packaging, nonetheless.
As for a more recent caveat, I will also add that I love the Sinci Hood. Especially on Sarnak! Finally a hat for my Sarnak! The eyes being lopsided really makes it.
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