Hey guys! This thread is for me to both announce and explain some of the current things that are being changed in the future, and to provide a forum for discussion of these changes. This initial posting might be a little long, but, hopefully it will give you guys a better idea of what I'm trying to do with the future plane as a whole.

I've been talking to players recently, and have been getting a lot of good feedback about the game. One topic that tends to come up is the topic of boredom. We have a lot of players that have one or more Gen 10, Level 49 characters. These players have done about as much as they can do on Tempus, and may be looking for new challenges. The easiest way to combat boredom is to open new zones, with new things for players to explore. If you step back and look at Tempus, though, we already have a ton of zones. A lot of these zones go completely unused by players. Why make an effort at creating a new zone, when the zones we already have don't even get run? Even worse, we have opened new zones recently, only to have them be more or less ignored. I've seen it stated many times on these realm boards that players only run a few select zones, because those zones provide the best bang for the buck.

So what am I getting at?

I need to do a better job of making all of the future zones worth running, not just the ones that are currently popular. This means improving the zones that aren't popular, and, possibly modifying zones that already are. The main focus is bringing the underused zones up to par. We've already made small progress towards that. So far we've fixed typos noticed in those zones, and fixed bugs in some zones (like Cybertech) that kept them from working properly. I've also started adding mob-based mini-quests in old zones, but haven't made as much progress on that as I would have liked.

Speaking of Cybertech, we added an old, popular object to a mob there, in order to increase the traffic. That zone is a hard zone, but hopefully, the objects available there are worth the risk. Keep looking for some more objects to pop up in unexpected places.

Another comment that continues to pop up relates to grouping. Players seem to want to see more grouping opportunities. To that end, I've started to (but haven't finished!) modifying La'Mogra. Let's face it: if you knew what you were doing, that zone was way easy. It's easy to lure those guys out and take them one on one and pick them off. Running that zone, you hardly broke a sweat. If your AC was decent, they barely hit you, and when they did hit you, they didn't do a ton of damage. Sure, you've gotta watch out for getting stunned, but, that's comparatively rare.

The mobs out in the forest were giving a ton of experience. There were mobs in Cybertech, Hell, and many other zones that are MUCH harder, and only gave half of the experience. Instead of simply dropping the experience given by those guys (which, I think would be kind of lame), I've decided to up the difficulty of that zone. By upping the difficulty to a point that makes the zone a credible challenge for a solo player, the high experience is justified. In fact, I'd like to raise the experience given, in an attempt to encourage grouping there. If a group can take the zone much more easily than a solo player, and the experience is slightly higher, than players might actually want to group to do the zone.

I really appreciate all of the help and input that I've received from you guys, and I'm always open to feedback. Without hearing from you guys, I would have never known about any of the typos that I've fixed in recent months, or known exactly what was wrong with Cybertech that needed fixing. Please let me know if you guys have any comments on anything I've written here, or if you have any suggestions on how to make Tempus a better place.

I don't know if this is true of anyone else, but I am SUPER paranoid of DTs. Like, SUPER paranoid. Thus, I generally won't venture/explore into a zone unless people have assured me that it's DT-free, or when the DTs are obvious. Moreover, I generally play when few people are online, so I can often get gold/xp at places that repop by the time I'm done running to my favorite areas.

Maybe the key here is to extend repop times. This'll definitely be unpopular, but I think it might be good for the MUD. I dunno…it could force people to find new zones to enjoy.

Frychu has a good point. DT's are a big problem for some players and play a large part in deterring people from adventuring. However, most DT's (lose everything in 1 instant and no chance of getting it back) have been turned into DS's, which allow retrieving of corpses most times.
Personally, I think Wish's story quest in Wemic really showed how fun exploring zones and learning new places could be. It might be a clever idea to do this with more zones as you have to learn the places/characters/events that correspond to the zone in order to write the story. It won't necessarily keep everyone coming back, but I found a couple decent items and mobs whilst exploring Wemic that made me keep coming back when I otherwise wouldn't set foot there as it wasn't one of the big item/exp/gold places on everyone's list.

DTs are all but eliminated. DTs are typically found in high-gen remort zones, and have been removed from the low-level zones and replaced with damage traps. If you wander into the wrong room, you'll probably take a lot of damage, enough to maybe even kill you, but you should always be able to retrieve your corpse.

DTs aren't the end of the world, I personally lose my eq set about every month or so due to dying from a DT, hell, heaven or some other !retrieve place.

I wish eq played a smaller role on being able to take the hardest parts of the mud but I suppose that's realistic. You need to have the best eq you can to expect to challenge a duke of hell or god of heaven.