Kunark / Iksar considerations

[sgallaty]

The kunark release had several issues. Specifically there were items which were nerfed post-launch (RFS/Moss covered junk/probably others I don't recall) about 2 months or so after kunark launch. I think the expectation is that these mistakes will be adjusted up front on p99 without the need for reliving the bad part of the eq experience.

There were also less salient content issues which caused problems for players that relied on that content that I hope can be addressed the same way. The specific example I am referring to is that when iksar were first introduced, they had a significant exp penalty and an armor bonus, as well as a few curious racial traits. One of the 'adjustments' to the race was that the race was unable to use plate mail.

Presumably, this was because the designers intended to create special iks wearable only armor, but this ended up not happening. There was armor added to hateplane, but there was never an iks equivalent of the warrior cobalt or 'crafted' armor.

As we know, and for reasons that aren't entirely clear - many legacy items that 'should' have been iksar usable did not get retroactively updated. Rubicite for example which is usable by chain classes, did not get iks added to the list, as well as other examples.

By velious time, this became a nonissue because the devs then permitted iksar to use all of the warrior plate from quests, pog etc. Curiously, the older armors were never retroactively fixed. This one presumes because the dev time to modify the items was no longer a great return, since by this time there were few or no newbie iksar tank melee.

The problem was then, that in the intervening period between the release of kunark and the latter period before velious - iksar suffered a big content void where their ac was capped fairly low compared to end game items available to other tank classes.

I see that this server avoids some of the other major verant fuckups (shaman alchemy, pie tin price change, loot table corruption on kunark release) - I'd like to put this topic out there and point out that letting iks use crafted/cobalt/fine steel would 'fix' the issue verant caused by not adding the content they intended to add for iks in the first place and then later fixed by simply making all new content iks usable.

I am speaking from the position of one of the few people who played an iks warrior on release, and even slimmer position of someone who beta tested kunark as an iks warrior - I think I was the only one who got past 40 in that.

The specific problem occurs at about cap where the non iks warriors are wearing cobalt and iksar are wearing cab scale. The fall behind happens starting at about level 35 and gets worse until cap. Again, the jump up from seb scale is hate plane - and if your guild is taking an iks into hate plane in seb scale, it's welfare. If I remember the numbers, the iks with the best reasonable gear is sporting 1300 or so ac, which ends up being 400-500 points lower than the other tank classes at cap. My numbers might be off, it's been a while but I remember there being a significant gap until velious.

If this error which was corrected later by verant isn't rolled in to the release, then noone who intends to seriously play iks will start an sk or war until velious. If that needs to be reenacted verbatim, then so be it. I just wanted to bring it up in case we had the chance to avoid that particular stupidity this time around.

Thanks for listening.

ex-test server iks warrior