Future Content: A Letter from Director of Development Dave Georgeson

Could we have a bit more details about what raiders/groupers could expect from this change?
For example are raids possible for monthly updates? Also like many people here im a bit suspicious about the numbers of patches that may be needed with this change especially for euro players who suffer from patches occuring during the day.

I don't agree with this at all. But if they ever did anything like this they would also need a raid only option, I know there are a lot of raiders who log in and raid, log off once raids are over and don't log in again until the next raid.

Splitting the raiders off onto a separate server wouldn't work, that would mean that the old servers would lose all the raid content. No more open raids, no more epics, all of those include raid content to obtain.

Raiders used to have challengers, jumping to T4 group content in the first days of release when we had a level increase, before we got max level. After all T4 group gear used to be close if not equal to end game gear raid gear of the previous expansion.

Personally I don't mind group content not being over challenging, gives me somewhere to relax, but then I tend to raid with one char and group with a different one.

I would like to see more fixes to things like regression bugs (such as pets vanishing), fixing long-term bugs (such as mercenaries not zoning), and a stronger focus on user interface and user experience (such as enhanced chat filters, inventory sorting and item stacking).

New content is cool, but I'd like to have less things that make me get really angry and log off.

Firstly. EQ is an awesome game with insane amounts of content, which is probably why it has survived all these years with a faithful playerbase. That said.. i miss the old days which were unpredictable each new expansion and where you had basically 2 groups of players - those who were grouping and those who were raiding and where there was a huge gap in gear and spells between those 2 groups. Also last few expansions has felt like you added 15% to hp/mana/spelldmg/weapondmg etc..nothing really exciting. Its all the same only +15%. Gets boring after a while.. In luclin you wouldnt be able to get those awesome wizard nukes unless you raided VT and in PoP you wouldnt be able to enter end group zones unless you beat certain raid events - pofire was a mythical and mystical place where only the elite entered to xp - the day I entered that zone was magical. All these things gave players a HUGE sense of achievement once they got it done. Today everyone can do anything and get anything and kill anything.

The only way it could agreeably work is if the next expansion's new raid content got released ONLY to the new hardcore raiding servers. Everything else that proceeded it would stay as it is. So you could get your epics and one group old raids if you so chose, but there would be no new raiding content on those servers, if for example it started next expac, past CotF. People who have an interest in raiding can at least experience some older stuff.

The idea is more about balancing and being able to offer a challenge to both subsets based upon their abilities and gear. Right now, raids have to be dumbed down to be accessible to the more casual crowd, while raiders can steam role group content at will and cause grief to casual groupers. Plus there are many examples of bad balancing choices made because both side of the coin have to be addressed and the compromise stinks when they get it wrong.

They have done different ruleset servers to try to appeal to certain demographics and in this case, EQ has gone far enough in two different directions to acknowledge that the raider and the grouper are not playing the same game, even if the name is the same. That should be recognized and raiders should be allowed their own domain with a different ruleset that reflects their needs for true challenge.

Currently, with rare exceptions around expansion/major game updates, there is only 1 patch a month. The changes they are talking about will mean there will be 4 (or more) patches every month; possibly even 2-3 in some weeks if something is really wrong with one of the changes. It is going to be just like Guk/Unrest/SolB revamps. The only way I read it is that things like new zones are going to be limited to things linked to the expansion release(s).

As for the whole hardcore raiding only servers, that should never happen. It will not end well; there are far more players who enjoy both the raiding and the group side than those who only want to raid the toughest things. Make raids harder to win but doable in the existing servers; there is no need to make new servers for just raiding and excluding raiding from those who don't move/join those servers.

I could get behind this except it should be a grouping only server. This bunches up groupers better for pick up groups. This server should also have all raid gear and raid zones removed.

So, you just want people to move to different zones for you to group with them.

Wouldn't hot zones changing more often fix that issue?

I am not convinced that making tons of zones that will get little use as a typical person is being PLed by their merc is the best way to use the resources available.

I'm not sure I like the concept of a patch every single week. I'd almost prefer 4 weeks of content patched once a month.

I'm glad raid gear is as powerful as it is, it allows players that wouldn't normally be able to complete the same content as me added edge so that they too can complete the content Some raiders are truly good players, but i've also seen some raiders, even in end-game guilds (no guild has a perfect roster) that would be utterly helpless at eq without the massive advantage of inflated stats.

EQ is not particularly challenging for raiders OR groupers at the moment but i'd say the ability to gear up and get insane overpowered stats is easier now than it ever has been before in the history of eq, so if someone struggles in the group game, it's a good time to join the raid game and trivialize the non raid content!

The power gape for a few classes is particularly massive, a raid geared bard wont have much of an advantage over a group geared bard for the most part but if you compare a group geared warrior to a raid geared warrior/knight, the raid warrior/knight is basicallyt running around in god mode in group content. Same for mages really, Group focused pets tank decently in the group game.. ever seen a raid focused pet though? Raid pet focus is 5 tiers higher than the group pet focus at the moment, talk about a massive power gap!

It's good though because look at games like skyrim with their difficulty meter, some people genuinely enjoy scrolling the difficulty all the way to the easiest setting and exploring the world and powering through monsters with easy, EQ raid gear pretty much allows for the same thing, and choice is a good thing.

I think this will be amazing. My few questions for the team. Are these revamps going to be what we're all hoping they will be? Will there be a 3-5 hour patch every week (I'm in EST, so that pretty much wipes out any morning playing). And when would we expect this to start?

Just to add to what was already said... the CotF expansion really made me feel like I just lit 40 bucks on fire and pitched it out the window. There was very little content (something that I'm certainly expecting if I'm paying out almost as much as a new xbox game or something. Definitely, make my money count!

What I would like to see is the old quests updated to more current rewards. Most pre defiant quests (with a few exceptions) give rewards that are basically worthless to any level due to the upwards creep of power in items. Add to that the fact that most of these rewards are no drop and cannot even be tributed and it makes me feel bad to do a quest, then just destroy the reward so it does not clutter up my bank. There is a lot of great content out there that just needs a little tweaking to get people using it again. There is no need for vast sweeping changes to zones, just make the drops worthwhile in the old zones compared to new ones. And I DON'T mean throw in a lot more defiant crap.

That's why I had said in my direct reply that the weekly updates are only going to be tolerable if they can be done without bringing down the servers every week which is unlikely considering some of the things that the weekly content is aimed at.

well that is your opinion but not mine... group zones are tuned for group players in group gear... so if a group person cant complete the group content then i dont see how joining a raid guild to get raid gear is the answer...

i enjoy the group content with my group gear... yes it is a challenge for me and my wife...and we love it that way...we kill CotF names in mostly RoF T1 gear and the upgrades we get from the kills is nice... but i would never resort to raiding to beat group content... do you not see how bad that sounds...and someone else above posted that end game group content needs to be locked behind raid content....SERIOUSLY????

i am glad that there is stuff for those that like to raid... really i am... but the gap between group and raid is just stupid...now this is my opinion and obviously i am not the norm here but i wont back down from my opinion either

i do realize that soe devs like raids and the raid gear will probably get worse rather than bridging this gap.. but my voice will be heard to the contrary

If you're happy with the gear you have and you can beat the content, even if it is challenging. Why are you worrying what others are wearing?

I didn't see anyone posting about group content, all I saw was players asking for locked zones the same way HoT had locked zones, which were unlocked by doing group content.

I find it unlikely that they'll push updates every week that need downtime. As we saw from Hardcore Heritage - it's very possible for them to repopulate a zone without downtime. Similarly, I'm very sure that typical gear with a different name/icon and an armor template isn't time intensive for them to create and place on a creature - the named and their abilities probably take a bit more time, but, if you have a yearly cycle, then you only need to create it once and let it run - we've seen a lot of the re-running of old popular "one time" content and it goes over well.

As I stated on page 1 - I'm more curious as to what this means for T2 CotF and how to balance that with the typical creation of a big xpac. When they were doing the big xpac model, it wasn't a challenge to release SOME of the content initially in one big massive release (which was RoF) and then to extend development over a year. However, what I read into Dave's comments, is that while they were developing RoF content AND CotF content, they discovered shortcomings and that things that people liked took too long for the shorter development cycle when combined with preparing for a new major release.

They ended up sacrificing a bit on both ends it looks like given how small HoF was and how small the initial release of CotF was - moving into this model was a lot easier than it's going to be moving out of it.

the problem is that while i am trying to be challenged... some raider shows up and tries to take all the mobs because they can... then how is it that i can be challenged when the raiders going around in easy mode kill everything around me... i cant stop them since soe doesnt acknowledge camps.. but i cant enjoy my group content when raiders just do whatever they want to.. and if there wasnt such a HUGE gap between group and raid gear... then the raider woudnt be able to do this

I'm ok with weekly content pushing as long as there is ZERO extra downtime. The current patch schedule is good. (Expansion releases not included, of course.)

Raiders have always had a gear advantage like this since the first raid was put in basically. The gap used to be so much larger before it started getting closed starting with like SoF and on.

Look at the % gap instead of the pure #'s, it should be basically the same gap as it has been for the past like 4 or 5 years.

Your hatred for people who raid has been shown before, this is getting beyond ridiculous. Has it EVER occured to you, that those evil raiders might actually have friends who "only" group? You want those people separated so you can feel like in blessed grouper heaven without the nasty raiders with their raid gear diminishing your grouper fun?