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Development Post by Daemaas on the Sony EQOA Forums Oct 17/08

As some have guessed, as of the next update, players will be able to become Vampires. This include some Vampiresque abilities.

Becoming a Vampire will not be easy. Razeal will be releasing the infected bats into Tunaria, the same bats you had to try to destroy on ZP during the Khailmet storyline. Vampires will be getting the following abilities:
30 - Feed (Primary method for gaining Units of Blood which is used to power all Vampire abilities)
30 - Sanctuary (Will port the vampire player to the Sanctuary they have taken up in the old Warrior's Guild Hall on ZP. This connected to a network of coffins throughout Tunaria to illustrate the Vampire's ability to get from one place to another quickly.)
40 - Vampiric Strike (A life draining attack) 40 - Vampire Form (A simple form change that will change you into a Vampire in form. Since there is only a male and a female version, it is currently a simple form change. We are looking at the possibility of add some type of stat augments to it.)
50 - Vitality (A healing and defensive buff)
50 - Bat Form (Change into a Bat. Offensive buffs at the cost of defense. You will be unable to cast normal abilities while in this form)
60 - Frenzy (An offensive buff)
60 - Mist Form (Change in the Red Mist that is being used by the bolash in ZP. Defensive Buff at the cost of offense. You will unable to cast normal abilities while in this form.
60 - Vampiric Gaze (Ability will allow the vampire to "convince" a target to stop attacking them.) Important to remember is they way we handled replicating a Vampire's Hunger. Hunger is simulated through the use of Units of Blood. The Feed ability will allow you to attack a target in order to get blood from them. Units of Blood stack at 20 units. This may or may not change depending on the final findings of its current testing.

All Vampire abilities do not cost any mana at all to cast. Instead, they require Units of Blood as a reagent. So using a vampire ability will deplete your stack of Units of Blood. This in turn replicates your growning "hunger". once depleted, you will need to feed again in order to gain enough "strengh" back to cast your Vampire abilities.

Finally... A slight change to conventional Vampire lore... You will be weakend during daylight hours. Mechanically, we are unable to do something like block use of certain abilities during in-game daylight hours, so it will be in the form of a debuff. it will be a bit inconsistant, depending on a lot of factors that you will need to figure out. But there IS a tale told that Razeal and few others have the ability to walk in daylight unaffected. Players will have an opportunity to gain this same ability... but we'll leave that for a future discussion.

Related to the Vampirism... Currently, as hinted about in the Khalimet storyline. Anyone who is Lycan or Werehunter will NOT be able to become Vampires. Though I do not share by previous counterpart's feelings on whether Lycanthropy should have been cureable, I am afraid that their implementation of it, has made it "nearly" impossible" to do a cure now. I will be looking at the possibility of a cure, but I cannot promise anything more than to not rule it out until I can firgure out if I can come up with a way to do it. If it appears that it CAN be done, we will then have a discussion of whether it SHOULD be done.