Introduction The staff at Allakhazams recently had the opportunity to take a guided tour of the new Omens Of War expansion. I met up in game with Brenlo (the alter ego of Alan, manager of Community Relations with Sony Online Entertainment) and set off into the new world. Overall impressions After the initial announcement of the original OOW expansion, with its alien story line, inadequate testing time, and lack of community input, Sony developers went back and re-examined the entire concept for the expansion. The EverQuest guild community was polled for information, and based on their feedback the original storyline for the expansion was scrapped and re-tuned to be more in line with the fantasy genre. Developers also examined aspects of gameplay that have been problematic in the past, such as soloing, downtime, and looked at ways to improve them. The results are a visually impressive expansion with many new gameplay aspects. Overall the graphics upgrades of this expansion are the most fundamental since the Velious expansion Gameplay The biggest change to gameplay is the increased level cap to lvl 70. It remains to be seen how this will affect gameplay across the board. While the level cap increase will allow high end players further opportunities for advancement, some long time players argue that the increase will marginalize content from previous expansions. The subject has been under fairly intense debate amongst the beta community, a debate that will likely continue for some time without resolution. A new transportation system is also in place. Similar to the Magus network of the Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion, the Priests of Discord are now available to teleport adventurers to the new zones, as well as some of the existing ones. This expansion also includes new Epic Weapons. There will be 16 separate quests, geared towards the higher end raiding crowd. Not much information is available about them at this time, however you can view the concept art and some clues for the cleric epic here: http://everquest.allakhazam.com/news/sdetail4194.html?story=4194 The tribute system has been changed to allow entire guilds to benefit from items submitted for favor points. No more rotting lore equipment during raids, just have someone grab it and pop over to a tribute master. For solo players, the developers have added a task system. A player can go grab a task, then complete it at their leisure. The tasks are designed to take between 60 and 90 minutes on average, and will usually involve several facets (kill mob A., then deliver loot B. to quest mob C.). The difficulty level will be class based, with classes that have difficulty soloing placed on the easy end of the scale, and those traditionally more adept at soloing placed towards the hard end of the scale. Rewards from tasks will be typically cash and experience. There is some talk of tying the task system into the adventure point system, but that has not yet been implemented. Another new aspect in the game is the addition of custom player titles. These titles are based off of AA points earned, level, quests, or "other" criteria. The player will be able to choose any title they are entitled to from a drop down list. The more titles you earn, the more choices you will have. The last major change is the addition of new Alternative Advancement point rewards. A large portion of the new ones will be geared towards the tradeskill set, including the chance to recover items during a failed tradeskill attempt, and abilities to lessen the chances of those failures. There are also plenty of new abilities for the non tradeskillers, including increased spell and buff slots, the ability for non casters to Gate and the usual increases in skill and resist levels. At time of release there is some concern that the AA prices and levels are not fully tuned. This will likely be addressed in the future based on community feedback. Itemization tables were not fully in at Beta, but the ones that dropped so far look to continue the trend of "Mudflation" or ever increasing weapon statistics. It's going to be a chaotic few weeks in the Bazaar, that's for sure. The new zones themselves are quite impressive. Very, very large and highly detailed. Huge castles. Vast underground caverns, all highly detailed and populated with an impressive array of creatures. I did not get an opportunity to see how they hold up under raid conditions, but some of your guildmembers with older cards are definitely going to have some difficulties running in the new zones. Graphics The most noticeable feature of the new expansion zones are the new mob models. Over the years since the original EverQuest was released, mobs have steadily evolved as graphics hardware has improved. The mob models in Omens of War are much more complex than any we have seen previously. In addition to being some of the most complex 3d objects ever introduced in large numbers into a game environment, all the new models are fully bump mapped, giving the overlaying textures a more realistic look. For example, on the new drakeling models, when a wing is opened or closed, the area around the wing joint actually ripples and bunches. The feared Bazu boasts knobby armor spikes and protrusions. Movement also seems much smoother and more natural. These new models are currently only found in the expansion zones, but there are plans to eventually include similar updates in the older zones. A Bazu Another new Critter The landscape and terrain of the new zones also received a major upgrade. Prior to OOW, the zones were constructed of a 3d model, with a single texture layer. If you wanted an aged portion on a brick wall, you would need to create and load a texture for an aged brick wall. With OOW, zone designers can now add two separate layers of texture. The overall effect is a much more uniform, detailed surface. At this time, character models will still only have one layer, but the developers are looking into adding a second. I personally would like to see them use the second layer to show battle damage. Maybe an area of charring after a flame AOE or a nuke. We'll have to wait and see what they come up with though. Another new feature of the graphics engine updates is the ability to apply particle effects to characters in all zones, new and old. On a cold day, your character exhales frosty breath. When you go swimming, as you swim you see bubbles. They have also used this to great effect on creatures. Some Ice elemental creatures now emit frost, and as they walk they leave icy footprints. Poison clouds, flaming hair, these effects add realism and depth to the new mob models, especially when combined with some of the other character model enhancement elements below. If you recall your days as a hapless newb, I’m sure you remember your first encounter with an orc/gnoll/kobold/etc. Though it punched, kicked, slashed, hacked you to a pulp, it only made one sound for attack, and one sound when being hit. With the new mob models, not anymore! Under the new system, sounds are tied to animation. Now, when a Chimera attacks you, the lion head roars as it bites you, the snake part hisses as it strikes. This system will be in place only in the new zones for the time being Perhaps the biggest graphics change of all is the introduction of shadows. This is very cool. With the shadow setting toggled, all characters and mobs project a true to life drop shadow (I guess we'll finally find out if Vampires really don't have shadows next trip to Mistmoore!). These new shadows work just like their real life counterparts. If the sun is behind you, you get a long shadow. Overhead, and you get a relatively short shadow. If you are on broken terrain, your shadow follows the terrain. No more need for that /time command! Now you can tell when it is just by the position of the sun, or the moons! The one downside to the new shadow system is that it is very graphics intensive. During the tour I was running a P4 1.8 ghz, 1gb ram system with a Geforce FX 5900 Ultra 256mb graphics card. At 1024 x 768 resolution, 32 bit, I had to crank the clip plane back to about 75 percent to be able to play with shadows turned on even in the smaller zones. If you have an older graphics card and want to see the Shadows, you may want to think about upgrading. Another new graphic feature that was added is reflective water. Before, EverQuest water has been pretty much limited to murkey gloom with an image layer on the top. Now, you get a true reflective water. If you lean your character over the edge of a lake, you see your reflection. If someone jumps in the water near you, you see ripples in the water passing through your reflection. When Mr. big_angry_dragon_01 walks up behind you and taps you on the shoulder while you are admiring your reflection, you see his reflection in the water as well... right before he eats you. This feature will be limited to expansion zones for the time being. The moon's reflection. Note the wind ripples in the water. The EverQuest sky also gets an upgrade. In addition to providing reference points for the shadows, there are now more options to set the texture and detail levels, based on whatever your graphics card can handle. This system is still under construction, so I wasn't able to play around with it very much. The new Sky effects, with reflection on the water While many of these new zone enhancements will only be available in the new zones, the EverQuest development team is planning on eventually re-engineering the early existing zones and character models. No exact timeframe is available at this time, however, it will likely be released in conjunction with a future expansion, as a regular patch, not part of the expansion itself. The new Graphics Options windows. These may change before release Conclusions Overall I was very impressed with the graphics elements. The updates to the graphics engine should increase the realism factor quite a bit, and allow for future improvements. Gameplay has also been updated, though it remains to be seen how these updates will be received by the community at large. For being released as close as it was to GoD, the Omens of War expansion includes an impressive array of new features and content. The box