Flame of Chaos

Project on Hold

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:46:10 +1800

Hey Everyone,

Just wanted to announce the Flame of Chaos is on hold for the time being. Vithe and I were getting burned out between our normal lives and managing/developing this server so we are going to take a break for some time. We are very serious about returning to the project and continue to work towards the goals we have set forth. However, we need to take a break and relax for some time and enjoy life for a little bit.

If anyone who played on our server is interested, we are playing Aion during this break. We are on the Zikel server Elyos races. Please feel free to send us a /tell (both our names are the same, Krystlih/Vithe).

Server Down

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:50:00 +1800

Hey All:

It appears the server crashed this morning after I was on my way into work, if anyone is trying to get in, it is down right now and probably won't be back up until I get home after 6:00pm.

EDIT: The server should be back up now, sorry for the inconvenience.

--Krystlih

General Update as to where we are

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:09:25 +1800

Hey everyone,

Here is an update as to where we stand today:

1) Last week for me and Vithe was really non-productive in terms of the server. I worked around 70 hours and Vithe was on vacation last week so we really didn't get any work done on the server.

2) Our latest focus is going to be towards content, we have 3 boss encounters to finish up in the new 1-20 leveling zone, and then we will be moving on to the 20-30 leveling zone. Speaking of which, we've decided to make 1 zone for each tier leveling to 40+, we believe that with the lower population of the EMUs having more than that will just lead to people not being able to group as much, and PVP during those levels to be few and far between. We primarily will focus on making 40+ content very diverse and the most rewarding by far, you will also have the most options in places to level/gear up 40+. If the server ever demands a high enough population that we need more lower areas we will build them when such a time arises.

3) After 1-50 base content is fleshed out, we will be working on some more balancing/PVP issues. We want PVP stats working and then I will begin the much larger component of building a "Guildwars-like" PVP system. For those of you who do not know, there was an Everquest EMU PVP server, that most people regard as one of the best EMU servers to have ever existed. It was called "Guildwars" and existed before the stand-alone game "Guildwars" existed. The idea was that cities were capturable by guilds and there were certain perks and rewards for doing so. We plan on having such a system in the long term and we hope to expand on the idea. My thoughts are to build this system and then release the Faydwer continent as the first continent available for sieging. We are considering even customizing the dungeons on Faydwer for 50+ content and then making it so that if your guild captures a city they will have access to that dungeon, and nobody else will.

Hopefully after these things are fleshed out we will see a steady rise in population, and as such, we can start testing some of the other PVP changes that have already been put in place. Thanks to all who have supported us through this development time.

New Patcher Program

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 05:00:00 +1800

Hey Everyone,

I've written a patcher program to help people connect to the game. This program will ask you for your EQ directory, it will then patch any files that this server needs in order to play (spells_us.txt, and eqhost.txt right now), and then you can "launch eq" from this tool as well. From now on when you connect to our server use this program, as we will probably be changing the "spells_us.txt" file in the future.

This patcher will require .NET Framework (3.5) which can be downloaded here:

.NET Framework 3.5 download

Please let me know if there are any issues with the patcher, it can be downloaded here:

Flame of Chaos Patcher

Status Update (Making Progress)

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:07:49 +1800

Here is where we stand today:

1) The new "Hub/Starting" zone is somewhere around 50-75% finished.

2) We have a full armor quest setup, named spawns starting at level 9, boss encounters and quests. But we still have more named/boss encounters and quests to setup!

3) We've enabled resting on the server, if you or anyone in your party is not aggro from an NPC for 10 seconds you will enter a "rest" state. If you sit down you will begin to rest, during which you will heal 5% HP and 1% mana on top of your normal regen. We hope this will improve soloing and downtime in general.

4) PVP Spell Immunity Timers: These timers for the following areas are being setup: Snare, Root, Stun, Mez, Charm, Fear. Basically these timers will take effect after the effect has worn off and you will be immune from having a spell that has that negitive effect for a time we set. Right now all the timers are set for 1 minute, but we will tweak this as time goes on. Oh and incase you're thinking of it, no you cannot re-cast a spell that has the same negitive effect on a player (IE: You can't chain stun to beat out the immunity timer taking effect, the spell will fail and you will get a message saying the player already has that effect).

5) We've adjusted casters. We felt that Mages were overpowered in many ways, but in particular it seems that Mages can nuke as hard as a wizard most of the time as well as they have a pet to tank for them. In our testing we found that mages can rape mobs even designed for a group to kill. We've made a nuke change across the board. Basically if the nuke isn't resisted at all, it will then make a damage "roll" rather than just doing full damage. This roll for any caster not a wizard is 25-100, it then does damage % based on that roll, so if you roll a 25, your nuke is 25% what it would be at full damage. For wizards this roll is 50-100. We are still testing this change, but it definately has helped tone down what a mage can solo (takes more mana to kill downtime is higher, and group oriented mobs are harder to kill) (Note: This change also effects NPCs)

New Direction

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:15:09 +1800

After several weeks of beta we've decided to head in a new direction for the server. We are keeping the same core PVP ruleset, we believe in EQ, in order to do PVP this base coreset provides the most rewarding style of gameplay.

However the PVE side of things will change, please read more to find out about these changes....

Status Update

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:41:46 +1800

Sorry that we have not posted news in a while. We have been heads-down on the server and have not taken time to update the website.

We are getting closer and closer to having a stable build, and being ready to advertise across the board to try and get some more testers. Once we have converted the zones we need to, fix some of the minor zoning issues, and some various other bugs, I hope that we can start to advertise and get more players and we can start hashing out AA abilties.

Thanks to all of our beta testers who have been logging on and reporting bugs. I hope we can get some new/more players very soon.

Translocators

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:56:55 +1800

Translocators are now functional!

Zone locking out enabled!

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:08:50 +1800

Today I've patched the server and added the following important feature:

1) Initiating a PVP action will lock you into a zone for 5 minutes.

This will be an important aspect of PVP and so if you attack someone you better be able to bring it, because there is no easy way out for you :P

Minor patch today

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 11:40:15 +1800

Hey Guys,

Minor patch today, hopefully this will fix a zone crashing issue, also a minor feature installed:

1) Monk's Mend ability now works on other players! This might add some interesting strategy to PVP as Monks can now give a small heal to others.