EverQuest Producer’s Letter April 2023

I've never once bought or sold a Krono, I have never paid for a PL, and I have always been max level, max AA-ed and only logging in for raids by the fourth week of expansions. I'm also extremely lazy. I can't think of a single expansions level limit increase that takes more than 12 hours of play time to get through.

The people who demand we give encounter locking a chance as written are forgetting a few things.

This could go onto EVERY server, and clearly the majority don't want that.
Not all Powerleveling is done for sale, some people powerlevel friends, or alts, or just because they're bored.

And the one I notice the most. The servers continue after PoP.

WHAT purpose does this solve, after even Velious? I've played on just about every TLP so far, and I have yet to Be KS-ed, And I'm still waiting on these trains that people are claiming this will solve.

I keep seeing people crowing that this will finally kill all those evil boxers, and stop their dastardly crime of playing differently than those posters want them to play.
It won't.


What I'm trying to get at, is.. If this is what took the devs a year to come up with, Nobody should expect this to go well at all. Especially since there are reasonable implementations of encounter locking out there. I mean they looked at the possibility of "First person to tag, gets credit no matter who kills it." or the less easy to implement/balance "everyone who beats the mob down gets credit no matter who tagged it." and decided to go with the worst solution, of only the first person who engages the mob can damage it"?!

This strikes me as unfinished homework, hurriedly done the day before the presentation. It's a terrible idea, and I think the devs know it, or they'd have a second server with a different ruleset.

I have to say that Oakwynd may actually far exceed the original Mangler announcement on player base disappointment.

Please do not bring First to Engage mechanics to live servers.

You are absolutely incorrect, and to say that DB has more info is wrong. DB has said 100 times over that they get their info from forum post, discord, polls, etc. You can, literally, do a search on discord, these forums, and look at poll. Not one, and I mean not one post, suggestion or poll uses any term related to "Encounter Locking". Actually, its quite the opposite on the EQ2 forums there has been post asking it to be removed and be more like EQ1. Stop using the RMT as an excuse, this benefits RMTers more than it does casual players the fact that you don't see that is mind blowing. I feel like you have to be a burner account for a Dev to try and save face for this horrible announcement they made. There's almost 400 post on this thread and over 97% say its bad. Its not even close to a 50/50 split like past rulesets on what people thought about it, and that should seriously worry DB. They dropped the ball, and still have time to make this right. There's no secret data that support this, and only a burner account would suggest such a thing.

guys lets not confuse the message, FTE = bad, expansion related bonus = amazing

Since you are quoting me, I'll respond by saying that I never said "as written."

In fact, I think in most, if not all, of my statements and opinions about the FTE mechanic, included that I was unsure about the details and/or it definitely will need some tweaks in addition to what we already know -- or something to that effect.

We all share the same concern, or I should say that many of us do as I won't pretend to speak for everyone. But this is indeed a non-trivial matter. I hope that it is implemented with forward thinking and thoughtfulness, for everyone's sake.

I'm hopeful and optimistic, and if that means they modify things as they go, or change the ruleset altogether, I'll give it a go and see if it's fun. I always do, even if it's not my preferred ruleset, which at this point would be a Mischief 2.0 with a few tweaks.

or the other TLPs

Neither Aradune nor Phinny needed a second server to handle the overflow. As for the begrudging comment you made earlier about how mischief might have a slightly higher retention rate? Sure, if by slightly you mean 2-3 times the population of other servers that have made it to TSS.

This server won't even make it to POP, hell it might not make it out of classic, so the expansion related bonuses are useless. I never thought DB would do another Vaniki like server that would be DOA, but here we are. They're not doing a 2nd server this year because they got embarrassed after the failure of Vaniki, so they know the only way to get people on this server is to make it the only option.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall for Thursdays meeting. I'd expect the opening line for discussion would be

"The new TLP ruleset went down like a lead balloon! Now what?"

For Aradune that's partly because the people on it were so toxic one of the most "I Don't want to box, I don't like boxing, and I will never box" players I've ever known left it for Rizlona.

Hell yeah I can't wait to grief the hell outa this new server with locked encounters - My brother and I were talking last night who have played this game since launch and we came up with sooooooooo many scenarios to grief with locked encounters.

Bards pulling and locking entire zones - Gonna be fun
Running through camps and tagging named - Gonna be fun
Open world content - I see xyz guild forming for a kill - na lets tag that and run around wasting that guilds entire time
OH epic kills..............
DPSing outa group to help friends when the group is full - NA

Want me to keep going

Then relaxing true box what 10 expansions into it - LOL who cares about that. Most TLP are suffering pop problems by that point - Is that an effort to dangle a carrot for players to keep them playing?

How about you get some people who actually played this game in it's prime and have them design a TLP. Hell give anyone on this forum 30 minutes on the phone and Ill take whatever they come up with instead of this sad sad excuse for a server.

Remember when you announced the server in honor the brad - and this community torched you guys. Then you had to back track and change things to make it not as bad.

Then you had mischief that was a good - different and successful server. Now this...........

Go back to the drawing board and think of something that is tailored to the damn people who actually play this game.

Its actually shocking at how many casual players think the server is going to do well lol.

Atabishii was "slightly" off about the Mischief server population.

Lets try to keep this Civil and provide feedback. Us picking at each other does nothing to let the Devs know what we think or what needs to be adjusted.

This is completely untrue because you're comparing Mischief VS Aradune and Phinny instead of what you should be comparing is Mischief/Thornblade Vs Aradune and Phinny. The leak server stats shows that Mschief/Thornblade was the king of TLPS. These were identical servers, and they had to create two just to manage the population because the turn out on Mischief was so extreme, so if you're going to argue about server population at least use the correct numbers.

No...I don't think they have any data at all to back up this mechanic. They don't have any data because they've never cared about it...even discussed or floated the idea...until now. This is not an "experiment". This is a fundamental change to the way the game is played in a near quarter century-old game. It's supposedly over just a month away from going live and they haven't even TESTED it to see if can actually be done...unless all the people on the Test server are keeping their mouths shut about it. The idea that they're gonna make customers pay money to beta test something like this is even worse.

I think they were 100% invested in some version of the personal loot system and loot boxes for EQ, and when that backfired in spectacular fashion, they were scrambling to find SOMETHING to try. I think they looked around at other modern games (including EQ2) and looked for some concept they could try and steal and cram into EQ.

And that's where we are right now. This reeks of some random idea they decided to try with zero thought as to how it would affect a game that was never intended to use these kind of mechanics.

The issue is there very, very few people who have suggest FTE is going to be good I can guarantee are 100% burner accounts for the Devs. The downright outpouring of people that are against this server is something I don't think they have ever seen. Its not just these forums, its also discord, twitter, and FB. Theres such a small amount of people, and I mean I went through forums and discord and took a quick tally and at this point in time I found less than 9 people, so it only make sense that they're burner accounts. I don't know how DB will not have to do something about this, in almost every TLP release they had a 50/50 60/40 split of like/dislike. This server has almost already been canceled by all of the people and where still almost 60 days away.

This looks like a dev Server which i'm ok with if i don't have a choice in it. but where's the server that you took time and worked with long time TLPers or the Eq community in General. seems to me you could do your thing server and have another one where you ask the players. keep this one and make another one from the players request, i'm not sure how that's so hard to understand.

my opinion on The Encounter Lock is neat but shouldn't you toss that into a beta test? also why do we even need it? a little competition and arguing over mobs is good, you don't see people watching football because they wanna see the dudes hold hands and hug.

Mods of the new server i ignore, i mean they sell mods now if that brings people in to keep the lights on it is what it is.

My suggestion from what i have seen people wanting is another Mischief clone tweaked

just my thoughts love the name of the server though oddly

Yes, everyone wants to suckle the new Mischief teat, but that is not currently an option.

It's sad to see such a dramatic response in it's absence, when you can still go enjoy Mischief in all its' glory, and they'd be happy to have you.