Test Update 24

The notes are here.

I've discussed the new Betrayal system before but it sounds excellent. I love the fact that its a faction based system which is much more realistic. I also like the option to betray at any level. And the Exile stuff sounds quite good. Exiles will not have all the benefits of a regular city, which is as it should be.

I totally understand people being upset about the spell issues (reduction to App I's) when betraying. It hits those who are max-level especially hard. But there have to be some negative consequences to betrayal. And you have to reduce the spell levels to App I's when you switch classes because doing otherwise wouldn't make sense. And if you're doing that, why should the people who have to switch classes be penalized more than those who don't?

I'm torn on the access quest removals. I really enjoy access quests. I like to see people work for things and not just have access handed to them. With the major zones I could understand, but is it really necessary to remove access quests to smaller instances?

But I will give a counter argument. I've honestly never been to a lot of zones on that list. And I'm sure a lot of people like me never bother to do access quests for every zone. So there's a lot of content going unused. Maybe the numbers SOE have showed that a vast majority of players were not ever going to these zones. (I don't mean Nek Castle obviously, I mean places like the Vestibule or the Lair of the Necromancer which I've never heard of).

But to give a counter to that counter - some of these zones are really "rewards" and not actual zones. You do the access quest for the reward of getting the loot in a small instance. Just giving access to that zone would defeat the purpose.

Back in July of 2005 I talked about how memorable the Zek access quest was for me. And it was really a shared experience for most players. But then there is the issue of repetitiveness as you go through the same access quests on your alts over and over. However, these are smaller zones you really don't have to visit.

In the end I think this change is too sweeping. For most of these zones only one group member needed access anyway. For more commentary check our forums. And don't forget this may change before it goes live.

P.S. There's no access requirement to RoV. They probably mean CoI in RoV.

"Tradeskill societies have been removed."

I found these pretty pointless. It will be much more convenient to enter any tradeskill instance. And it will be a lot less confusing to new players. If I felt these societies had any narrative depth in the game, I wouldn't care about confusing new players. But since they don't, may as well be rid of them.

I really don't want to bog this blog down with class specific stuff, especially since I'm probably biased. I may comment but I'll wait to see the final changes.