An EQ Player's Council that Represents Players

I wonder if there is any support from the EQ player community for an EverQuest Player's Council? It would be an group of players is elected by the players for the players.

It is important to note that this organization would be completely different than the Community Resource Council.

The Mission Statement for the CRC is here:

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...ty-resource-council-mission-statement.280525/

From what I can tell, the CRC is primarily a private sounding board for the devs to see what a small group of hand picked vetted players think about certain upcoming design mechanics. I can definately see that this kind of arrangement is potentially useful for the devs in making sure that certain decisions they make are palatable to players who are represented by the CRC.

Since we don't know which decisions are sent to the CRC and which ones are not, we don't know if every new feature and mechanic updates have had the input of the council. Given the small sample size of players and the fact that the CRC does not necessarily represent the will of the playerbase there is the possibility of a disconnect with the devs and the playerbase as a whole.

Since the devs and the CRC meet in private, there is no way for the EQ community to evaluate it's effectiveness and the "player perspective on topics" (mentioned directly in the mission statement). If we knew that certain decisions that made their way into the game were vetted by the CRC, then I think it would have more legitmacy in the eyes of the EQ community.

This got me to thinking that maybe the reason the devs do not spend much time on the forums interacting with players in recent years is that most of their bandwidth is taken up with the council. This is pure speculation on my part. I'm sure there are many valid reasons why the devs may not wish to participate on the forums as much as they would like.

EverQuest is almost 25 years old and I wager it has the most knowledgable and passionate MMORPG playerbase out there. Given that, I think some form of elected volunteer representation from the players might be worth considering. I'm thinking something like one representative from each EQ class for EQ live and EQ TLP.

There's a lof of activity on the forums (a good thing) but there is a lot of noise as well. At least having dedicated reps from each class (which are 16 in total) from each version of EQ might be be useful to both the devs and to the community to offer a semblance of inclusionary consensus. Darkpaw is a very small studio and they can use all the help they can get. At the very least, I think this idea is worthy of discussion. Thanks for hearing me out.

Nope - redundant

The CRC is under an NDA as would any group of players that meet with the devs. They would not be able to give you any details about what is going on either unless they got permission from Daybreak to talk about what has been discussed.

I trust the devs to pick out effective players more than the community, but more importantly I predict developers to invest more time communicating with players they picked out.

Wood elf beastlord

Yep, popular does not equal effective or useful, especially when you take into account the way voting would work.

While I agree with the OPs sentiment, I'm sure that Daybreak/Darkpaw can continue to ignore customer feedback without any help from us.

Was that not the result of a public vote?

Speaking of that, why is the pet a tree?

Beastlord, meaning controls a beast. A tree/bush isn't a beast.
Its a mini tree too, which is even more non-beastlike.

Beast, thats overwhelming, powerful, animal.

Nope, devs rigged it cause they didn't want to fix the ber epic to include iksar race and didnt realize it till it was too late.

What exactly would have been hard about fixing it to include iksar?

Spaghetti code and altering old epic quests don't seem to mix. There's a big segment where you gotta go to your home city of your zerkers race. They'd have to add all that in for iksar and I'm sure they were too lazy and it's probably break 100 other things just by trying.

You mean the step of the 1.5 that has you talk to the guild master in your home city? The one they would be adding to the zone as part of making the new class combination?

If the devs really didn't want to do it why would they even offer it as an option?

Like I said, they prob realized it too late.

Let me believe in my conspiracy theory!

Isengard.

Illusion of choice is a useful tool.

What would be the realistic response Darkpaw are permitted to give?

I have a very strong suspicion it would go exactly like this:

Because it is not a tree, it is an animal that looks like a tree, kinda like how some insects look like a stick, or a leaf, or a fish that looks like a stone.

You're going to be real disappointed if you ever learn the truth.

The devs probably don't post on the forums because there are way too many bad/stupid/pointless posters.

Personally, I see nothing wrong with a player-organized, player-elected, group of players who rationally discuss and hone their own opinions and present those opinions to the company's staff. That's how advocacy organizations work.

Here's some advice from someone well-versed in the field:

1. Moderate your expectations. Anticipate that nothing will happen, but hold out hope. If you over-invest, operational realities will crush your will and you'll just give up. Morale matters when volunteering time, work, and stress.
2. You only your group's membership and thus don't have the weight of the "entire player population" behind you, so don't attempt to assert it. Doing so will get you ignored pretty quickly. (This is the issue with online petitions.)
3. Make sure you learn how best to communicate with your target recipient that is best for them. Your assertions and guidance is only useful if it's received well.
4. If you're easy to work with, people will want to work with you.