The Plane of War

The Plane of War is a zone due to be launched on or about April 2, 2014 for the anniversary celebration in 2014. It will be accessed through the previously inactive stone in the cave in the Plane of Tranquility. Depending on your progression through The Plane of War there may be a second zone line inside the Plane of Tactics. The zone will be tuned for level 100 players.

Details

 * Plane of War (maybe or Maybe not) - SOE forum thread with Dev posts describing The Plane of War.


 * The zone will remain permanent when it goes live.
 * It will be locked on progression servers until Call of the Forsaken goes live on them.
 * There will be anniversary specific content that takes place in instances of The Plane of War and those will only be available during the anniversary holiday season.
 * There will be anniversary specific content that is instanced, the base zone will be static.
 * There will be achievements for both the anniversary content and the base zone content.
 * There is no plan to require you to have Call of the Forsaken to zone into The Plane of War.
 * The zone will be tuned for level 100 players, so it is likely there will be a minimum level of 95 to zone in.
 * The ZEM (Zone Experience Modifier) of The Plane of War will be a value appropriate for a Planes of Power era zone (much less than modern zones).

NPCs

 * The basic NPCs in the zone will be beatable by a group, possibly less.
 * The rare NPCs in the zone will be targeted for two full groups and will drop loot commensurate with their difficulty (better than one groupable gear).
 * The rares will also have a percentage chance to drop an additional utility item / augmentation / clicky piece that are among the best in game for both group and raid level players.
 * The difficulty of the NPCs will be based on the quality of their additional percentage chance item.
 * The rares are intended to use mechanics and force players to apply strategy to defeat them.

Loot

 * Most of the loot will be No Drop. However, there will be random drops off of any mob that will be tradeable.
 * The rares (named) will always drop an item or items that are superior to Call of the Forsaken group level items.
 * The named mobs have a percentage chance to drop an additional item that is an augmentation, a right click utility item, or a piece of gear of raid level quality (at this time only four items fall into that final category).

Name of zone
The zone's full name is "The Plane of War". This hasn't stopped people, including SOE Devs, from calling it the "Plane of War".

Quests
One of the principles that the team working on the quests in the Plane of War are trying to stick to are quests that are in the spirit of ones that would have actually taken place during Planes of Power. We're avoiding using the task system for the quests that take place in the zone so that they will better resemble 'classic quests'.

Progression
There will be in-zone progression. Completing the in-zone progression will allow you access to the areas where the rare NPCs spawn. The progression is designed to take a considerable amount of time.

Named mobs
At this time SOE is planning on having 11 rare NPCs in the zone. This is subject to change.

Graphics
The zone's style, use of objects, and texture rendering methods are all in line with zones of the Planes of Power era. One of the most obvious differences between zones prior to Omens of War and modern zones is the use of normal maps which add detail to the zone based on light sources. There are no normal maps set up for Plane of War and the majority of the textures used throughout the zone are unchanged from the ones originally created for Planes of Power. You'll notice a lot of the textures are shared between this zone and Plane of Tactics.

The only textures that needed to be updated were the ones used for the ground because the shader technology used for zones from Luclin through Gates of Discord is not in use anymore. A good example of this shader can be seen in Dawnshroud Peaks. If you look at the ground from a distance it is a relatively low quality texture that increases in detail the closer you get to it. The original Plane of War made use of this shader tech and blended a grey rock and white sand texture. The version of the zone that will be released now will use a rock texture similar to the one used in Pillars of Alra and a ground texture pulled from Brell's Rest.

Bonus Dev Trivia: Both Pillars of Alra and Brell's Rest were created by artist Allen Bond who was the one who helped teach me enough about 3DS Max to complete the geometry fixes on the Plane of War. Fixing the bugs in the zone geomtry is among the first times I've ever done anything in a 3d graphics program, so the whole experience was a fun chance to do something new.

Lore
The forces of Vallon and Tallon Zek are locked in constant battle in the Field of Strife. Each god has appointed a commander to lead their castle's army in an ongoing effort to win their father's favor. This element will be clearly visible once players have completed the quest in the Zekarian (refered to originally as the Field of Blood) and gained access to the Field of Strife.

Zone history
The original quests that were documented for the zone:

1. A quest in each castle to despawn the first floor and spawn NPCs on the second floor. These quests were put in because outdoor zones during this era had numerous Z-axis aggro problems which would cause the second floor to train down onto the first floor on just about any pull.

2. A quest where you would obtain the battle plans of the opposing castle and bring them to the herald of the castle you are working for. Doing this would trigger a small ring-war style event in the central field in which your party was tasked with killing several waves of enemies that marched from the opposing castle toward your castle. If any of them made it, it would be considered a loss. This event did not appear to be finished when I looked into it.

3. Originally, many of the Planes of Power zones were going to have a quest that better explained the back-story and history of Zebuxoruk. One such quest involved a warrior who, while battling in the Field of Strife, laid down his arms and allowed himself to be defeated. The punishment for defeat on the Field of Strife is banishment to the slave mines of Narikor. The Zebuxoruk back-story quest would have involved finding out why this warrior would willingly do such a thing. This too was never implemented.

4. The last quest in the zone has to do with the fact that this zone was intended to come before Drunder (Plane of Tactics) in zone progression order. At the southern end of the Field of Strife is a small tower with a large chessboard on the lower floor. There were several golems of two opposing colors. In order to progress to Drunder you would have to defeat the pieces in the correct order. When it goes live you will be able to very clearly see how this southern tower would have lead to Drunder. Although the golems existed on the chessboard in the zone's original data, the quest to zone-in to the Plane of Tactics did not appear to be finished.

5. An aside to the comments about quest 4; in the southern tower are two rooms on the second floor. Tallon and Vallon Zek resided in these upper rooms. The original progression between War and Tactics would have involved entering Drunder from the Plane of War, progressing through either the east or west wing of Drunder and then returning to the Plane of War to fight Tallon and Vallon. After doing that you would be able to return to Drunder to do battle with Rallos Zek.

The spirit of some of these original quests will be incorporated into the quests that you'll encounter in War.

The first step will be gaining access to the Field of Strife by paying tribute to the great Sphinx that guards the door separating the Zekarian from the Field of Strife. Once you have gained access to the Field of Strife you will also have gained access to the mines of Narikor.

From there you will have to prove your might on the Field of Strife and gain keys that will allow you entry into each castle. Once you have proven your worth to each side you will have earned the right to enter the southern tower.

The 15th anniversary mission that takes place in the Plane of War is designed to be a modern recreation of mini ring-war that was written in the original documents.