Early last week I was contacted by SOE to find out if I was able to come down to see a preview of Omens of War (OoW). They asked me to come into the office for this so they could demonstrate some of the new items and features that were going to be going in for all people who purchase OoW.

Sadly, the trip started by me being 10 minutes late due to heavy traffic between L.A. and San Diego. But, I was happily met at the door by Alan "Brenlo" Crosby who ushered us in with much enthusiasm to show us what the team had done. 

The Tour:

Stop One: Halas
We started out in Halas. Now before you ask "what's new in Halas?" I can tell you that two of the major items going in with this expansion are shadows, and breath effects. To see these new effects, we were viewing our character in 3rd person. We now see our character, the NPCs, and most of the objects are casting shadows on the ground. As for "why Halas" Brenlo then zooms in on the face to show us that as our character is breathing, he is able to see his breath since Halas is cold. We then jumped into the icy water of Halas we then see that our character every so often blows bubbles as he is slowly losing air (breath gauge). Now, to cover the technical side of this. These effects are done using the new DirectX 9.0b (or 9.0c) features, you will need a card fully DX9 compliant in order to take advantage of them. The upside is that, these items create little to no drain on your system resources and if for some reason they do, you can toggle them off in the options window (more on that at the bottom under DX9 Additions)

Stop Two: Dranik Scar
We then quickly headed over to Dranik Scar where we where shown the new smoother terrain. The new terrain has rolling hills that have almost no "polygon" look to them and the colors blend very nicely. Brenlo had his clipping plane all the way up and as objects came into view they faded in much nicer than the older "pop" in effect. We also saw some very well rendered  "dragonling" mobs that you have to see to really believe, their movement is much more fluid, and what little pathing I saw was fairly straight and right at their target. When we asked how people will get to this zone, Brenlo explained to us that the Priest of Discord in each city will be involved with getting to OoW (I won't say anymore to avoid spoiling it for those who want to discover it, see the Priest of Discord on Sept 14th for more info.)

Stop Three: Rift Seeker's Sanctum
Our next stop took us to an indoor zone, where the roof was simply amazing. it was almost like staring at an Esher painting. Once I got over that amazing sight we then went on to see a "Pyralen" who has fire for hair and was amazing to watch move around. Then we went on to see her counter part a "Gelidran" who has frost mist hovering around his torso, and freezes the ground wherever he walks. Again this is all done with the DX9 engine, so there was no lag as we moved around.

Stop Four: Tower of Anguish
Our last stop inside the game was the Tower of Anguish, this is the ONLY zone that requires a flag to enter. The tower is immense and getting to it will be no easy task. (The bridge is long, crooked and full of mobs). This zone is the culmination of the Wayfarer Brotherhood story line, it ends here. We were also treated to a view of the new water that will be going into EQ. (He had not turned this on earlier while in Halas, because he was saving it for this grand finale.) ALL water will be changing to a new reflective refractive water that will make you thankful they didn't add more boat zones (lol)

Last Stop: Epics 1.5/2.0
After we left OoW we were the first non-SOE people to be able to see the epics as they appear in game. First the surprise, Rangers I am sorry, your getting a kick-butt sword not a bow (don't kill me, I am just the messenger, head over to EQLive forums if you want to give feedback). Clerics will be the only class that can dual both 1.0 and 2.0 (they are getting a shield). We did get to see all 15 Epics in action. And got the explanation that there are two stages to the new epics. The first stage dubbed "1.5" takes minimal raiding and is not to hard to get. The second stage, the full "2.0" take plenty of raiding and is going to be very tough. For those who want to know, "do I need my first epic" the answer is "NO". If you have your epic it will let you bypass a portion of the 1.5 quest, and complete your 1.5 quicker. But, if you don't have it. You simply do the full quest and you still can get it. Though we were not able to get any screenshots of the epics, I can tell you that I was blown away. When asked about the "toughness" of the quest, Brenlo said the dev team work hard to make each epic the same level of difficulty to get, that unlike the first epic, where one is not to tough, and others are horribly tough, these "should" be about the same toughness

Summary:
We learned that all of OoW was scrapped and rewritten from the ground up after the guild summit. 100% of the stuff that is in OoW was created in some way from the feedback from the Summit. From the more "classic" looking monsters, to the limited use of keyed/flagged zones. All of it came from sifting through the hundreds of pages of feedback from the guild summit. While everyone will get to see the new shadows, water, breath effects I did ask where they were on new player models and the official answer of "a while still" was all Brenlo could say. While I like many of you are disappointed by this, It is something they are going to do, they just haven't told us when. I was however, thrilled to hear that the next expansion is on the drawing board, and that community feedback would again play a huge role in its development. So over all, I have to say that I went to SOE expecting the same old stuff, and was really surprised at how much they have "return to their roots" and released an expansion that involves  "classics" bad guys.

DirectX 9.0 Additions:
In the options window there will be a new button called "Advanced" on the display tab. This button opens a new window where you can toggle on/off Shadows, water swap (guessing old/new water) 2.xx pixel Shader, 1.xx Pixel Shader  and Vertex Shader. If you system seem to bog down under the new additions you will go in here and simply turn them off. Though what we were shown was not showing any direct increase in lag, This is more if your using a card that doesn't support these fully.

Some quick stats on OoW:

• Its base content is for levels 45 plus
• The task system will be availble starting at level 5
• All the zones except one are open to anyone. the last zone  is a key quest.
• All water is being replaced/upgrade
• Shadows are being added to all NPCs/PCs etc