Tacvi

[Tastian]

This just in from Rashere.


Later today, we'll be pushing out a patch for Tacvi to all live servers. Although this patch will only affect a small portion of the audience for EverQuest, those that are affected have been waiting eagerly for it so I wanted to run through the changes that you'll notice and talk briefly about what is coming in the near future for that zone.

First, I believe that I've located and corrected the problem that was sometimes causing a crash in the first event in Tacvi. I've run through the event for many hours now both by myself and with the aid of a testing guild and the zone has remained stable throughout.

Second, some tuning changes have been made to the bosses of Tacvi, so some things may work slightly differently than before. Although the encounters themselves haven't changed in any major fashion, don't assume that tactics you've ruled out in the past still won't work.

Finally, I've laid the groundwork for a change to how the zone works. Although this is the least noticeable of the changes, it's also the biggest. Tacvi currently works like other dynamic raid zones. Players gain lockout times based on their accomplishments in the zone. I'm in the process of changing Tacvi so that it will remember which bosses you have killed recently. Then, the next time you start up the dynamic zone, the zone will only spawn those NPCs that would have respawned since you last killed them. This will negate the need for lockout timers in Tacvi. The code to support this change is brand new and doesn't exist on live servers yet, so this change must wait until the next full patch to EverQuest before it can go in. In the meantime, the most noticeable difference you'll see is that all of the bosses in Tacvi are now up as soon as the zone spawns.

Although I'd normally rather wait until all the changes are all done before pushing the zone out, I'm pushing out these first changes now because I know how eager people are for the changes to the initial encounters.

Rashere

[Ukator Iceblood]

I will be watching Lucy tomorrow then:)

[Skanda]

On July 29th, 2004 at 3AM PDT (-7 UTC), Ayonae Ro, Brell Serilis, Drinal, Druzzil Ro, E'ci, Erollisi Marr, Fennin Ro, Innoruuk, Maelin Starpyre, Morell Thule, Povar, Rodcet Nife, Solusek Ro, Stormhammer, Sullon Zek, Tarew Marr, Terris Thule, The Rathe, The Tribunal, Tholuxe Paells, Vallon Zek, Vazaelle, Veeshan, Xev, and Zebuxoruk will be coming down for a brief maintenance. The expected downtime is 1 hour.

I wonder why they're only patching about 1/3rd of the servers with this now instead of all of them.

[Tastian]

Not all servers needed to go down.  That shouldn't have effected the changes being pushed though.

[Fibbs]

Lets hope the talk of lock out timers filters through to the rest of the zones. That should help the backflagging process considerably.

Thats a Major cause for loss of interest in Attendance to some including myself.

For my next wish i'd like to see the GoD raid caps removed or raised to 72, just so we dont have people sitting on their hands bored to tears.

Fibbs

[Rhaynne]

That should help the backflagging process considerably.

How?  I would guess that the boss of an instanced zone would have the same spawn timer as the old zone lockout... so you will still have to wait just as long to get flaggs.