Producer's Letter: Progression Server, April Update, and Beyond

Discussion in 'News and Announcements' started by Windstalker, Apr 17, 2015.

  1. sojero One hit wonder


    I consider bixie and DH zones, and they are instance hubs, but in all honesty they have received more in game time than most the other CoTF zones, least on my server they do. I apprecaite the fact that it took the developers a lot of time to create each of the instances and that is nice, even though they were heavily bug riddled.

    There are certainly issues with both sides of this, creating more regular zones, or more instances, many like both, and its up to the dev team to decide which to push out when. this might be the nice thing about campaigns, get one that is heavily instanced, and one that is full of regular zones. that way it can appeal to all players.
  2. Reht The Dude abides...

    Not disagreeing, but they had unique artwork with exception of the Void - yeah was incredibly generous calling it a zone, which it technically is. Actually Bixie, as far as a zone goes, was pretty good when you consider the different ways it was presented in the different HA, the persistent version was kind of meh though.
  3. Sheex Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.

    Unlike LDON where the zones were unique, being similar but cookie cutter, CotF instances were just blocked off components of the exact same zone, so at best they're equivalent to 1 real zone. Since a lot of the geography wasn't even used in bixie/DH, though, I'd hesitate in calling them a complete zone.

    Regardless your point is right on - the EQ world is drastically shrinking and every time DBG decides to use marketing jargon to assure us things are going to reverse the downward spiral of the last couple years, the more skeptical we become. By trying to change what we call a content release they're trying to manage our expectations. Up until now we've expected expansions which have historically been large content releases (and most of the time, gotten them). Choosing a new buzzword clearly shows we won't be getting a large content release again, which is pretty sad for the future of the game we love(d).

    To quote the great John Oliver: "Sure, and that's not bull****...it's repurposed bovine waste."
  4. Iila Augur

    Someone remembered to add TDS as EQ dlc on steam. No updating the ad copy, but I'd guess that they will be on steam for you to buy with gabenbux.
    Pinecone likes this.
  5. Slasher Augur



    The lack of big zones was an art issue which I've been told has been resolved but we will see. COTF was not small you can say heroics are not content all you want but they're content and plenty of them COTF had 30 + heroics do you think it takes 10 minutes to make a heroic instance ? You do the SAME work you would a normal zone or normal group mission just at a smaller more focused scale.

    You would rather have 2 more zones and no heroics. I would rather have 30 + heroics over 2 stupid zones.
  6. Sheex Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.

    You're missing the point - both options are insufficient.

    Asking someone to choose which is better is like choosing between a giant and a turd sandwich for their school mascot. Neither is a good option.
    Geroblue likes this.
  7. Reht The Dude abides...

    I am certainly going to sleep better knowing that you have been told that issue has been resolved.
  8. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    I was thinking poor Roshen trying to say the same thing all over but make it seem like he was giving us more information.
    Geroblue likes this.
  9. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart


    What price point? Unless I missed something all they said were that campaigns would sell for less then expansions. But since they are supposed to be half an expansion less makes sense. My concern is they didn't say they would sell or half the cost of an expansion they said less. The fact they didnt say we sold expansions for $40.00 so we will be selling campaigns for $20.00 is a bit of a concern.
  10. Iila Augur

    I like when he gets so frustrated at people's inability to read that he just requotes the relevant part of the OP.
  11. Sheex Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.

    The price point of charging anything less than the standard $40. If they charged us that much for CotF, shuddering to think of how little content we'll get with them charging halfish of that. 2-3 zones evey 6 months or so? For $20-25?

    Given their adamant stance that we weren't being gouged in CotF, these "campaigns" must be really, really tiny for them to voluntarily lower the price.
  12. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    Well they are half the size... they get away with a lot but they would not get away with selling something half the size for $40.00. If they sell them for $20.00 each they will not have reduced their price at all it will be the same.... just in two payments instead of one. I a sort of expecting $25.00 per campaign as the price we will pay which will end up being a price increase per year from $40.00 to $50.00. If they had thought there announcement through price would have been one of the things they would figure people would be concerned about. Not addressing it all is what makes me think we will see an overall price increase per year.

    The only way I can see a price decrease of say $15.00 per campaign would be if you have to buy each campaign separately (i.e. no more getting everything with each campaign/expansion you buy. Short term at least something like this could generate more sales for them. Longer term (if they are considerig longer term for EQ) it wouldn't. A price decrease overall per year is probably wishful thinking though :(
  13. Sheex Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.

    Underfoot (12/09) - 13 zones - 19 raids
    House of Thule (10/10) - 13 zones - 18 raids
    Veil of Alaris (11/11) - 12 zones - 14 raids
    Rain of Fear (11/12) - 9 zones - 13 raids (This is missing the 5 later zones right? Pos, chelsith, and heartx3?)
    Call of the Forsaken (10/13) - 7* zones - 11 raids
    The Darkened Sea (10/14) - 8 zones - 7 raids

    To me that looks like they pretty much "got away with it" for CotF and TDS.
    Garshok and Geroblue like this.
  14. Iila Augur

    $15-$30 each, with the yearly total being $35-$45 would be my bet. Might be some package deals to encourage you to buy the next one 6 months ahead of time. Lower price points encourage more sales, $19.95 is more of an impulse buy than $39.95. Raiders still have to buy everything, but they'd pick up more of the casual audience.

    I've said before that RoF was a great expansion model, except that T3&T4 should have been packed together as one tier and released a bit later than T3 was. Looking at dates, RoF came out nov 28th, T3 came out april 17th, about 5 months. A 6 month cycle would fit that perfectly. The main problem is that everything since RoF/T3 has destroyed what faith we had in the development team.
    Corwyhn Lionheart and Sheex like this.
  15. Sheex Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.

    Very much agreed. RoF from a size and rollout perspective was pretty decent, though t4 was kinda sucky and anticlimactic. Still, it's light years ahead of the last two disasters.
    Garshok and Iila like this.
  16. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    You may have a point but the group game didn't come away as badly in some ways. With current server populations fewer group zones weren't as noticeable while fewer raids are. And its been a gradual decrease. Which is part of the point of them going to 2 campaigns. They can space out the release dates more gradually with two releases a year.
  17. Iila Augur

    I will 100% take revamped old zones over another heart of fear. HoF was all kinds of bad. But still not worse than parts of cotf and tds.

    If the plan for the art dept is to make some high quality zones like Xorbb, PoShadows or Caverns, and fill in the expansion with some reused zones instead of a putting out more low quality zones, I am completely fine with that. (Also the old zones are better for kiting because the ground doesn't block los).
  18. Geroblue Augur

    Yes, I do play Everquest. I don't zoom through content. I enjoy taking my time exploring Norrath. Zooming up to 105 would bore me.
  19. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    I think the problem is that people can read what is said and realize we aren't really being told much. Expand one line from the OP into a paragraph and it still says next to nothing.
  20. Geroblue Augur

    By 'book game' do you mean the old paper and pencil rgps from the 1980s ?