EverQuest Producer’s Letter April 2023

Oakwynd's the server EverQuest deserves, but not the one it needs right now.

2 years in a row you all have let me down. What is this… this is not any of the suggestions that the forums had spoke on. I guess Diablo 4 comes out basically at the same time so that’s the good news...

It's unclear what aspects of this server are being considered for Live servers. Is it just the encounter locking? Is it all of it?

About these "experiments":
- The Legacy stuff: Throw in flags/keys and make all gear heirloom and I think this is a 100% winner if it goes to Live. It would be nice to link multiple accounts together for the xp bonus, but certainly not a deal breaker.

- The progressive bonus stuff: Meh. This is just fluff for TLP. I'm assuming this wouldn't be ported to Live servers as they don't need it.

- Encounter locking: Look, I don't care about whatever nonsensical gimmick you guys come up with for the yearly TLP cash grab...as long it stays on the TLP servers. This...thing...you've come up with is absolute garbage. It's awful. The best thing you could do is just scrap it entirely. You sure as heck shouldn't put it on Live.

No one asked for encounter locking. The fact the devs are trying to turn the game we all love into WoW or Final Fantasy is sad, sickening and bad business. Making EQ like WoW is not going to make people leave WoW for EQ. Maybe the reverse.

Heirloom is a great middle ground between "no trade" and "free trade"

Will also have to say that this TLP seems to be completely out of touch with what the community was asking for that it really makes you wonder if they are paying any attention.

The XP bonus is very mehh considering almost no one will have more than 2; maybe 3, characters maxed on an account. There just isn't enough time before the next Xpac launches to maintain that many characters outside of boxing. Maybe if you got rid of the AOC account lock-outs and bumped the XP gain to 20-30% per max level character (up to 100%) it would improve this concept, but as it stands completely mehhh and not even sure if it was worth the dev time to implement.

The bonus per expansion isn't bad, but isn't enough to carry the server as is and will be mostly panned over.

The FTE concept may be decent but without more information on how things will be handled then I can see this being used more as a tool for griefers to exploit than fixing any real issue.

At this time the server seems to be very mehh at best, and I honestly don't think it will do all that great; it just really doesn't have anything that will make people really want to jump in and resub to join it, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if a PvP server pulled in more people than Oakwynd. At this point I think only thing that may save this server from being all but DOA is adding in Free Trade w/Random Loot.

Didn't the recent EQ2 change you guys rolled back not forewarn you that 'experimental' comes with monumental backlash? This TLP decision is terrible, much like the original POP Lock plan you had with Aradune. Please for the love of the game, go back to the drawing board and come back with something else. Also consider hiring a business analyst.

Hi Team,

I decided split my post into two portions. My feedback and some suggestions to make the server better as I plan to play on this server.

Feedback:

Encounter Locking: Encounter locking in Everquest 2 is one of the components of the “secret sauce” that make it feel unique. I remember first encountering it during the Beta and thinking it was very cool as it addressed some of the long-term issues in Everquest. There are several issues with implementing it into Everquest.

· Tethering

In Everquest 2 all encounters are tethered. They are also “encounters” not mobs. Groups of mobs are linked together and are generally designed to be fought in discrete increments. Pulling in Everquest is a unique experience in MMO’s. Tethering mobs would ruin it and I have seen no mention of it being implemented with the level locking. The issue is that in every MMO that has encounter locking there is tethering because it is required to prevent griefing. An example of this would be a Bard aggroing a named or quest mob then running the mob around indefinitely.

· Breaking Raid Encounters

The majority of the TLP community does it’s raiding inside of DZ’s as they have been a great quality of life improvement on TLP’s. Unfortunately, this means that like Vegas what happens in a DZ, stays in the DZ. Here are some quick back of the napkin ideas that floated around on discord within 90 minutes of the ruleset announcement.

o Removing people from the raid but not the DZ allowing you to manipulate the mob reset function of the encounter locking to bypass content. (Vex Thal Skips ect)

o Removing people from the raid but not the DZ allowing you to split encounters not designed to be split. If the encounters are not grouped like EQ2 this would not be difficult.

o Out of raid healing groups so that when a raid wipes the raid mob resets and the healers can rez without dying.

· Prone to Griefing

Due to the way Everquest works monsters are spawned into the world before they are visible to all clients. This means that it is possible to “Tag” a monster before anyone else even sees it. (This is often done using illegal 3rd party tools.) This behavior happened originally in TLPs with people using large squads of Shadowknights to Harm Touch raid mobs to death before they even rendered into the game. The same type of tool along with automation will allow a single antagonist to monopolize a named spawn with no recourse to the player base. Even players that follow the rules and do not use illicit programs will be forced into a game of trying to tag the mob as fast as possible just to get a chance at the named their group has been camping for hours. This fundamentally is not fun.

o It does not stop training, it makes it worse.

Because NPC’s lock upon damage people will simply use non damaging means to agro a mob. Then when they “train” the monsters over the innocent bystander and they damage the mob it will “lock” onto the trained targets. Allowing the perpetrator off scot-free as when the group dies the mobs will reset and not re-agro them.

o It’s not Everquest.

Encounter locking has never been part of Everquest. Complicated pulls, competition, and requiring players to be social with one another is a core part of what makes Everquest the game it is.

o There is a difference between a good puller and a great puller. This system will trivialize it and the gameplay of those who have come to enjoy it.

o While greifing and DPS racing are not things that make for an enjoyable experience, one guild racing another to assemble and kill an open world boss is enjoyable. With encounter locking as it is, a guild’s tracking box will simply agro the boss and run it around until their guild is ready to kill it. This could be hours later. Behavior like this kills the competitive “race” aspect of open world targets.

o While camps and the play nice policy are dead, there are still social contracts that exist in Everquest. Everyone is part of the community and bad behavior can result in exile from polite society. In most cases camps are respected and people display generally good behavior. This new system will chip away at that. There is nothing to stop a lone player from griefing a camp when a named spawns. This fosters an environment of distrust and generally is not fun.

Evolving modifiers: This is very cool. It seems like you listened to the community with the planned obsolesce of the Truebox code in the middle expansion era. I do think a modifier for Classic would be nice, but I’ll discuss that in my “suggestions” part at the end.

Unlock schedule: I think this one is a bit standard, nothing new here.

Legacy Characters: This is a feature I enjoyed in EQ2 and I’m glad to see coming to this TLP. The primary issue with it is that as DZ lockouts are currently setup you are incentivized to box instead of having alts as the lockout timer is account-wide.

Solutions / Suggestions

Encounter Locking:

o Implement a short period (Perhaps 1 second) of immunity for an NPC upon spawning into the world. This would negate the “East vs West coast” ping advantage and prevent people from being able to use 3rd party programs to get an advantage in tagging a mob first.

o State publicly that abusing the encounter locking system for advantage is grounds for account suspension / banning. (Similar to the statement made about pickzones when it was implemented).

o For now, keep this to Oakwynd. Fundamentally changing the base game would make our reaction this ruleset seem mild. If it works out fantastically then cautiously revisit it. Be sure to get community buy in before fundamentally changing the game we’ve been playing for 20 years.

Evolving modifiers:

o Consider providing a modifier in classic that increases rare spawn rate. People are much more forgiving of being griefed out of a named if there are more named. The rare spawn rate in EQ2 is much higher than Everquest for a reason.

Legacy Characters:

o Consider making DZ lockout timers’ character specific. This would encourage people to raid on more than one toon. Players could have a “main” in a raiding guild and raid with their casual friends on an alt.

o As Lucerin first suggested consider making No Trade items Heirloom. This would allow us to pass old gear onto alts and make them much easier to gear. In addition, it’s a middle ground between the current loot rules and the popular free trade loot rules. This would be an excellent “Experiment”.

In conclusion, when I first read the server rules today I was disappointed. Not because the server didn’t offer something new, but because I could tell immediately that it was going to receive “The Miragul” treatment from the community. The feedback I heard on discord was that the Devs did something “interesting” for them and ignored the community.

At the end of the day however, I just want to play on a new TLP server. I want that server to be successful. In order for it to be successful I think the community’s concerns need to be heard and addressed. If that is done I see no reason this can’t be a successful server.

My feedback:

- Encounter locking is w/e. I would prefer it be put on the test server first so we could mess around with it beforehand. I feel like encounter locking triggered mobs was a good alternative, as has been done already. This just seems like it's going to be abused and/or have unforeseen consequences.

- The bonuses are an ok idea, but some of them take too long to come online, or ramp up. We already spend so little time in each expansion compared to back in the day, loot should be doubled, at least, from the get go (raid loot for sure, group loot maybe). Waiting till SoD to do an experience modifier is a bit of a head scratcher, should be much earlier.

I personally think AA's are too slow in luclin, and would like to see that bonus a bit higher. Change the coin bonus to something else. The respawn timer reduction should also be a baseline thing, and more than 15% (god this would be nice to have in guk). I'd also change the GoD bonus, it's pretty useless.

I'll probably be playing here either way, as i'm thirsty for some EQ, and the alternative is catching up on Mischief, in content I know nothing about.

What a mess.

FV loot rules and or Mischief

Zerker/bst at launch.

100% xp bonus perma

Relaxed truebox 6 accnts / No afk kick

If the Encounter Locking thing keeps the RMT trader folks away from the server, I'm all for it. My dream EQ server would not have box armies, power leveling businesses, and phone calls at 2am to log on and kill Trakanon (this last problem is gone, I think).

Free trade would be cool, but it sounds like that may have exacerbated the RMT trading issues and created 'cartels', which is not cool. I don't know. I'll try it either way.

In my opinion, there should be a server setting that toggles off 'AFK Kick' when the server is not at max capacity. Then toggles it back on when the server reaches full capacity.

In any case, I could do without the AFK kick as well, if we are not at capacity.

Hmm.
-Encounter Locked needs to be explained more, because currently this seems like it could lead to major griefing. I dont know what more could be explained about it but it needs something. If it is literally just mob is locked to first engage then this server is absolutely DOA
- Evolving bonuses seem fine. Gold in pop seems silly but thats fine.
- Legacy toons is another just fine whatever. The only thing about it that is weird is the account wide lockouts on aoc's dont match up with making alts on the same account. I dont know many people who currently make alts on the same account, everyone just has different toons on different accounts, but I guess if im going to tryhard i will get multiple toons leveled to max before each expansion so I can grind aa's faster. It also would alleviate this issue if the server was freetrade. then i could have the alts and give them items i get from raiding too. otherwise they will be stuck in crap gear while leveling them because all my lockouts will be used on my main.

I really think evolving and legacy are fine, but encounter locked is just not something that makes sense in EQ. Change that with free trade and youve got yourself a solid tlp server where people can go crazy with alts, hand down gear from their mains, and get more bonuses as the tlp progresses.

You’re asking for that weeks before launch after they’ve announced the Ruleset. You’re made of spare parts bud. Best case someone checks their ego and gives the green light to a second server without a radical change to core mechanics for suckers to pay to beta test.

I'd take a second server Mischief Clone... i'd take it so fast it's not funny.

Make Classic to Kunark only 4 weeks + this you'll have a lot of fans

The rules are underwhelming but not the end of the world. If this server was already out I'd play it. You've made a very poor choice releasing so close to D4, this is likely gonna be a pass.

I would just like to have an alternative option along side the proposed TLP.

That is all....

This isn't an ask. This is Free advice to run a successful business.