EverQuest Producer's Letter July 2022

Discussion in 'News and Announcements' started by Angeliana, Jul 21, 2022.

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  1. Trevor Elder

    funny that you chose to bring that up in this context, because it's still not fixed

    "It hurt itself in its confusion!"
  2. Benito EQ player since 2001.

    Was it a faux pas (or honest mistake) on your part? Sure, everyone gave you the benefit of the doubt.
  3. Nennius Curmudgeon

    After freely admitting that I have only faintest, myopic glimmer of how to develop a video game; I have a question? What game/graphics engine does EQ use? Is updating this sort of thing even practical in an economic sort of way? I find it interesting even if I only understand a small part of what I read on the topic.

    P.S. Another poster quoted Aurelio above on this topic. Is that info. correct?
  4. kizant Augur

    Some articles mentioned a rendering engine by a company called 7th Level but at this point it's more than likely been reworked so much that it's nothing like the original. It would be interesting to hear the devs talk about it some but there's likely no real way to migrate to a modern product. If it were me I'd probably be looking at open source implementations to borrow pieces from. Incorporate a few things every year and eventually you'll have a whole new system. But it's a never ending cycle and giving it a single cost probably doesn't make sense.
    Hobitses, MasterMagnus and Nennius like this.
  5. Atomos Augur

    You understand that RS has way more players than EQ, right? It's got more players than EQ1 and 2 combined. RS hits CONCURRENT ONLINE players equal to EQ1+2s MONTHLY numbers... RS is making $50m a year, EQ1+2 are making like $18m a year combined. This is profit numbers, not total revenue.

    There's your reason why, though I'm not sure why that wasn't obvious in the first place.
    Jumbur likes this.
  6. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    Its true that RuneScape is bigger than EQ1.
    My point is that Daybreak needs to stop chasing a mythological "next-gen game-changing title" and invest in the success they already have.
    RuneScape2 and RuneScape3 were all improvements to the existing game, rather than another reboot that would split the users between titles...(if I understand correctly).
    Imagine if all the development for EQ2 and EQNext would have been upgrades for the original EQ1 instead.

    Imagine if the "unannounced Title" DBG is working on is actually an upgrade for EQ1...I doubt it, but I think it would be a good idea...
  7. Benito EQ player since 2001.

    The unannounced title has been cancelled. It was a Marvel Spiderman Universe game.

    The "upgrade EQ" at the cost of $300+ million ship has sailed.
  8. Stymie Pendragon

    Beyond 2022:
    New UI Engine

    I hope this is still on the radar. I'd wager that a large number of players have moved past 1080p over the years, and it makes the current text and icons quite small on larger resolutions.

    Thank you all for the hard work and the solid improvements you've made already this year! While there is still work to do, your team is on the right track.
    Nennius likes this.
  9. Atomos Augur


    lol, sorry, but the "success they already have" ship sailed many many years ago. It depends on what you consider successful, but IMO EQ hasn't been successful since around Planes of Power. Successful as in doing well enough to comfortably stay afloat and continue service, sure. But successful as in making EQ have a relevant presence in the MMO market again, or giving it some sort of remake or reboot or graphics overhaul, no, those things physically cannot happen anymore because EQ does not produce that kind of $$$. They could have when they had Sony money, but Sony stopped caring about EQ a very long time ago. Something I'm still bitter about.

    Something else I'm still bitter about: EQ2 and EQN. I'm 100% on board that those 2 games were mistakes and should've never existed. Well, EQ2 anyway. Imagine if Blizzard had made WoW2 around the WOTLK era, LOL. That's pretty much what SOE did. Don't get me wrong, there are things that I appreciated about EQ2, I thought that it had more depth than most other WoW clones (yes, I'm aware EQ2 came out first, but we can see what good that did when the universal term is "WoW clone" and not "EQ2 clone"), including WoW itself. But it certainly did not feel like the right move at the time and apparently the market agrees.

    EQN at least made way more sense. EQ1 and even EQ2 were becoming pretty dated and I do believe EQN was necessary to bring EQ back as a relevant MMO franchise. Truth be told, though, I never understood why anyone was excited for EQN because I never saw anything that drew me in. I was not a fan of the Pixar graphics and never saw much that was very interesting. All the interesting stuff was just CONCEPTS, none of it ever actually became visible gameplay. Lots of games are like that, they tell you about these cool things they're working on that sound amazing, but a lot of stuff ends up not making it into the finished product. But EQN just never felt very Everquesty to me.

    And let me just clarify, I don't mean to offend any player, developer, or company when I say that EQ isn't relevant in the MMO market. Just because it is no longer a big name does not mean there aren't people who love it and enjoy playing it, or that it never gets new content. Sometimes I just think people aren't aware of what the MMO market is like these days, or even what it's been like the past 15 years. It's difficult to get some EQ players to understand that the type of gameplay EQ provides hasn't been developed as a new game since probably Final Fantasy XI in 2002. There might be some other games similar to EQ shortly after that time, but not anything worth mentioning that I can think of off the top of my head. So for nearly 20 years the only MMOs that have come out have been solo quest grinds to max level with instant queuing and teleporting into dungeons, generally a lack of depth, most of them lacking a feeling of adventure, and let's not forget the best part: constantly throwing equipment upgrades in your face that take little to no effort to obtain! My point is that the oldschool style MMO gameplay of the EQ era is very niche. I'm not saying there's not a market for it, but it's a pretty small market. I've been wishing for a modernized oldschool MMO for a long time, it's one of the main things missing from the MMO market, and it's really the only way that our niche market can grow again. But the risk is too great with the cost of development, especially if you want the game to look good (which is very important in todays gaming market, not just for MMOs). And the way the economies are lately...

    One final note, that unannounced DBG title was a Marvel game and it's already been cancelled. You should have known it wasn't EQ, they stated that it was based on "one of the most popular IPs in the world."
    Fenthen likes this.
  10. Fenthen aka Rath

    At this point it's just really difficult to believe anything that's officially said.


    But hey, multi-colored lions are now a thing, amirite?


    Yeah, I fully believe that's where we are at right now.



    I am super thumbs-upping these points right here.
    Koshk and Velisaris_MS like this.
  11. MasterMagnus The Oracle of AllHigh


    Ding ding ding

    It is pathetic when the delete happy 'community managers', who don't know anything about graphics software development, delete posts for using terms they don't even understand.

    Glad to see you worked it out.

    It doesn't use a nameable 'engine', it's called Hand Rolled (please don't delete this time).

    Absor is just sick of seeing 'engine' bandied about.

    Also, anyone remember Sklug?
  12. Benito EQ player since 2001.

    The incivility on the forums trends with the unruly airline passenger phenomenon in real life.
    ChiiChii likes this.
  13. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    Will we see a fix in the next patch to stop elements of the UI moving that many players are dealing with after this change?

    So far I've forgotten to alt return at char select and had to fix my UI and it is already getting to the stage where I log in less.
    Stymie likes this.
  14. Skrab East Cabilis #1 Realtor

    I just want to point out that this post violates the forum rules.

    "Accusing Others of Trolling - Calling someone a troll or accusing them of trolling is a form of trolling in itself. If you feel someone is behaving in a manner not consistent with these rules, please use the "Report this post to a Moderator" function on the forums."

    It's not trolling to say that by your standard, no player suggestion would be fed back to the dev team as the forum comprises a minority of the player-base.

    You don't develop the games, but you actually have a vital role that most game studios seem to ignore. EQ is resource limited, which places an extra emphasis on communication to ensure the best results, and staff time is focused on higher impact items.

    For instance Full-Screen crashing for new players, wasn't a big enough to issue to perform an emergency patch. This opens up an ideal opportunity to communicate with the player-base to see what else you can fix or adjust, while the staff time is allocated. When things are broken, it's the best time to fix more than one issue.

    Better communication can make the game better, and the community happier.
    Mesc, Koshk, Fenthen and 1 other person like this.
  15. Benito EQ player since 2001.

    I'm not sure whether this is intentional (getting under people's skin) or you simply lack a filter.

    Past moderators would simply issue a forum ban. I wouldn't push it.
    Hobitses and Stymie like this.
  16. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    I would like to hear from the Producer on a more regular basis. I'm sure I am not the only one!

    Would it be possible to get a regular update? Say, monthly or quarterly?
    Fenthen, Stymie and Nennius like this.
  17. Angeliana Senior Community Manager

    I do believe it is done quarterly already. We were just a bit overdue with the July one.
  18. MarttinPH Augur



    I am very confused by your post as there was a producer letter for July, and it was already released.

    https://www.everquest.com/news/eq-producers-letter-july-2022

    Maybe someone from Community Relations can verify it or not.
    Fenthen likes this.
  19. Angeliana Senior Community Manager

    The last letter (prior to the July one) was in April of this year. We were a bit late with the July one (meaning it should have been posted in June or earlier July I believe).

    However, generally speaking the letters will happen every 3 or so months.
  20. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    Thanks for clarifying!

    Any chance of a monthly-updated "pizza tracker" style progress bar on at least some of the more-requested projects/features currently underway? How close are we to Lvl 100 Heroic Characters, or what stage are we in on class tuning or perhaps how many iterations/steps/completions are we currently standing for reducing raid lag?
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