EverQuest Anthology - EQEmu Premiere, new zone available

[KhaN]

Greetings,

The EverQuest Anthology Team is proud to announce that the first new playable zone is available on the EverQuest Anthology server. This zone is 100% new and custom and not available on EQLive!

This new zone is called "Astral Plane", its the character starting zone for EverQuest Anthology, where all characters pop after character creation, and also the zone where all the characters that die will respawn.
The game design of the zone is a peaceful, mystical place, beyond space and time. It contains one main island, where players will be able to start and learn about EverQuest Anthology lore. There are tunnels inside the main island where the player starts where he will be able to start some quests, and a third island with an astral spirit, where a player will start its EQA adventures.
Astral Plane is far from being finished, it doesnt include ambiance sounds and lights, there are still some glitchs to fix, parts of the tunnels are missing connections, but the basis of the zone is there.
We plan to add more islands later, as the server advances.

You will be able to download Astral Plane on the EverQuest Anthology forum, download section, to have access to it you will have to register.
Be sure to follow the instructions and extract the .RAR file into your EverQuest Anthology directory to be able to play in Astral Plane.
We suggest that you download the EverQuest Anthology User Interface and Client package to fully experience the server, or simply run the EverQuest Anthology Patcher.

In EQLive, all of the zones are fixed in time, in EverQuest Anthology, at its final stage, we will run 100% new zones, you will see the zones evolve, following different factors, like PC / NPC actions, you will make your world change. Expect also to see new zones / dungeons open only for a short amount time, that will never be available again.

We would like to thank WindCatcher for making OpenZone and answering all our questions, Manus for his monologues on IRC about what would be cool to add to EQA, King / Valruv / Tulkas / Xan for doing our Quests like a million times and debugging EQA and also all the people that are involved / interested in the EverQuest Anthology project and helping us everyday by making the project move, because yes, what the players think of the server is very important.
EverQuest Anthology Test Server will open/delocked during US evening times, and we invite all players to login and test the new zone, give us feedback, your impression, and your suggestions. We are always open and want to hear what you have to say.

What all were waiting for, some screenshots.
Screenshot 01
Screenshot 02
Screenshot 03
Screenshot 04
Screenshot 05

EverQuest Anthology Website
EverQuest Anthology Forums
EverQuest Anthology Informations

Salutation / Everquest Anthology Team

[Jezebell]

thats all I have to say, simply amazing work.

[Zkhava]

KhAn, im speechless man..... 100% good job.... wow

[jimbox114]

WOW how was you able to make a whole new zone, or is it just a edited zone? Looks like it might have started out as airplane maybe? STill that is very impressive. I ahve been itching to play this server, but last time i checked it wasn't on there :(. I am going to have to try again now!

[Minuss]

We were switching on a new and faster server Jimbox. The new one will be up and playable this weekend.
As for the zone, it is a whole new zone made from nothing.
Also Khan did not said it in his message, but I invite you to join us on our irc channel, #eqa on eqemulator.net, to speak with us about the server.
See you online

[Cisyouc]

Very Impressive. Im definatly going to sign up and check it out =)

[jimbox114]

Well I downloaded all the files and patched, I tried to log in and it just kicks me back to log-in server every time. I downloaded the file for the astral plane, so don't know what the problem is?

[KhaN]

By looking at your post date, i can say server was locked~
Server is now open, quests are being converted/added to the new zone.

WOW how was you able to make a whole new zone, or is it just a edited zone?

Zone was made from scratch, anyway, editing an existing zone would be much harder than create one from scratch, you would have to retexture all the zone using multimaterials, this would take a long as creating your custom zone.
This zone is made under 3DSMax 5 / Maya, and converted using WindCatcher OpenZone, anyone interesting in making a zone should look at this software, its not that hard (cept maybe for the texture part) to make a simple zone like West Common. Doing a zone like this one with flying islands, tunnels, bridge is another story.

In order to help more people to make zones and use WindCatcher OpenZone, EverQuest Anthology Team will release in a few weeks, tutorials, explaining you how to create a zone, from 3D Ground mesh in 3DSMax to Ambiance Sounds placement under OpenZone.

[jimbox114]

Just curious, are these programs you talk about free downloads, or expensive graphic design software?

[Melwin]

Originally Posted by jimbox114

Just curious, are these programs you talk about free downloads, or expensive graphic design software?

3D Studio Max is very expensive and I'm pretty sure Maya is too.

In all likelihood he warezed it, I guess. :P

[KhaN]

3DSMax and Maya are professionnals softwares, read very expensive. But you dont need them to make interesting zones. There is a "free" versions of 3DSMax called GMax, its a software used in many games to mod them (Battlefield, Command and Conquer, ...) If you dont have the money to buy 3DSMax or Maya, i would suggest you to download GMax.

Also WindCatcher made 2 softwares (Free)
- Openzone : it allow you to make basic zones (Around EQLive Old World Quality), also that can import 3DS to export them as EQ playable zones.
- Dungeon Builder : Latest WindCatcher Software, and designed for "newbies", it allow to build dungeon zone easily, without almost any 3D knowledge, its actually very easy to make a zone with.

In all likelihood he warezed it, I guess.

My company got the licenses, thanks ;p