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06.11.2005 Hatchet the Torturer slain! by Nineveh

Unlike his esthetic equivalents in Anguish, Hatchet used every pound to his advantage and through mere girthsize repeatedly plowed through a blithely unaware raidforce within his chambers of torture in the Demi-Plane of blood. This encounter is without a quiver of doubt the most entertaining fight we have seen for a long long time, and while the majority of Demi-Plane still remains wreathed, I feel safe in proclaiming that this is so far the best encounter in the Depths of Darkhollow expansion.

Hatchet the Torturer Hatchet the Torturer's corpse

That is where the praise ends however, one should always give praise when it is due, as should one always relay the reciprocal when needed. For more than a month now, the Demi-Plane of blood has remained the most poorly designed, and the least thought through zone in the game, ranging from named encounters that render themselves totally unfunctional, to mob respawns that literally makes it all but impossible to get from one location to the next within the zone without utilizing a magician corpse, a few necromancers for ressurrection purposes and obviously a willing batch of knights to lead the way.

This method of skipping content has up until the end of last week been the primary method of transportation utilized by 100% of the guilds that are currently progressing through the end game content of Everquest. Serverwide chat channels have made it a simplicity to communicate with other guilds experiencing exactly the same thing as we did over the last couple of weeks. Raiding in the Demi-Plane was not even remotely resemblant of anything one might regard as fun. Imagine having to wait for close to two hours while a fraction of your guild is involved in the process of moving a corpse from one location to the next. Based on the conversations I had with several high end guildleaders during the October month, their conclution was all but unanimous; if left in its current state, the Demi-Plane might very well cause an exodus reminiscent of the one we all bore witness to during the Gates of Discord. Regardless of what potential progression you might make within in a zone, it is hardly worth the effort if you are not even enjoying it.

There are always exceptions however, a minority of people were actually advocating that the zone should be made more difficult, as the current level of challenge was barely sufficient to satiate their need for adequate challenges. I have personally not seen any definitions of the epitome/paragon of hypocracy, but that statement comes extremely close if nothing else does. The same minority that refuted any change to the zone as it was not challenging enough as it was, backed their comments up by killing Zi-Thuuli inside the Dreadspire castle, as the encounter in its original state proved to be too tough to handle. Admittedly one might say that rendering the one challenge of this fight obsolete is merely thinking outside the box, but when you have to skip 100% of the trash spawns in a zone merely to reach a named encounter, I would hardly feel justified in proclaiming that something is too easy, atleast not until you've actually managed to handle something the way it was intended.

As mentioned earlier, the Demi-Plane of blood was seriously altered last week, including longer respawn times, lowering of assist range for certain inhabitants and several other minor changes that combined severely heighten the enjoyment of the zone. Clearing trash is still somewhat of a challenge, but at the moment is is possible to complete, within acceptable time limits. When altering content to such an extent as was the case last thursday, it would only be common courtesy to announce the alterations, had this been procrastinated much longer, I am pretty certain that the aftermath of such a delay would be highly noticable.

Two things that would help enforce the intentions behind the modifications to the zone would be to make it impossible to remove the zonewide area effect, and to disable the call of the hero spell within the Demi-Plane. Truth be told, being able to skip content in a zone through using a buff-stacking issue to remove an area effect; thus being able to make corpse runs that otherwise would be impossible while being snared is not original, it is unintentional.

Progression wise, Everquest seems to have entered a cold war era, new mobs are being killed but those killing them does not deem it important enough to update their newspages. As far as we are concerned though, a news posting is to announce a milestone your guild has overcome, nothing more.

Piercing Ring of the Torturer Rune-Etched Vampire Fang Boots of the Vampire Hunter






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