I am thankful that the devs answered all the AMA's, with way more transparency then I expected to be honest, but there seemed to be a clear theme with all the answers. We can't. To Hard. Not in the plans. We haven't discussed this yet. Nope. EQ is to old. Not enough manpower. To much work. To time consuming. This is premium member only. No plans to merge. Low population not worth it. No real interest in housing. Tech is to old. This is possible, but low priority. NO ETA. There were some very key moments thought when they straight up answered a bunch of things that people have been asking for and gave direct "no's" not going to happen like: Early housing Level 1 BST/Zerker Agnarr expac unlocks Agnarr FTP Raid performance not happening soon and probably not enough to be noticed. Raid size changes Raid scaling Etc These blunt answers will hopefully give some closure to many players who have been holding out hope for change. This clearly means to me that TLP's are just going to be very easy to change and rehashed themes. If "big changes" occur it will be because it is something they want to test for their own reasons like FTE or they will try something big like Vaniki, but will never be able to supply support to it when it goes off the rails like it did 4 months into it's lifespan. I do hope that the TLP's that will be released this year are at least a good balance of what was presented in the past.
They premised early that they would never say never but this response is as close to a no as you can get. They have talked about it and come to the conclusion if the player-base was OK with the solution that the dev team wouldn't adjust anything and those playing a BST/Zerker would just have to be ok with every other class getting their epic in Kunark, but those two classes would have to wait till Luclin/Gates. Which brings me back to it does not seem that there is any chance of bring new stuff to the TLP's, just a remix of what was before. This was the exact qoute: Q: Are there any plans to allow Beastlords and Beserkers at lvl 1 on new TLP launches? Ngreth: It is something we have considered but have not yet implemented. If these classes are okay with minimal new character quests, no epic until the release time of that epic, and other things like that, it is feasible. Changing these classes' starting experiences such that it is the “same” as the original classes is not feasible currently.
I'm only surprised at how blunt the tone of the AMA's where, not at all of the current state of EQ. I will say that last year did bring some potential to the game because the Dev's starting talking about real systems upgrades like Directx and UI overhaul, especially after they upgraded the client the year before to 64 bit, but the reality of the impact of those systems to the actual player base has been absent. All those upgrades hasn't change in terms of TLP request that players have been asking for. I am sure it helped the devs thou.
One thing I did notice that was absent from the AMA for TLP's was a statement about introducing mercs at level 1 for a TLP. The fact that this was absent, and is something that is already happening on live servers, leads me to believe there is still a chance to be in this year's TLP's or the next round. (unless I missed them squashing the idea somewhere else previously).
I'm kinda confused how we read the same words and got two wildly different things from it. It clearly says to me if the community can convince the devs that they would be okay with "these classes having minimal new character quests, delayed epics, and other things" then it's possible. And that fixing those listed issues is not an option.
What really stands out to me is that is seems like there's only 2 devs who play the game outside work.
the moment we get BST-BER with minimal quest and no epic, is the moment people will ask for more quest and epic to be implemented for those classes... and the dev probably know this too.
There's 2 that bothered to answer the question - that does not mean that the others did not. Most devs did not answer all questions.
I could just be reaching but it feels like you are reading it as someone who has a vested interest in it's coming to reality, where as I read it face value. The face value to me is it is not worth the headache . If the community was happy with the bare minimum effort, and promised not to complain about how nothing was fixed for it's launch, then they would be open to it. In it's current state the game and the devs are not in a position to do anything more then open the classes to level 1 with itemization, epics, quest, and anything else related to these classes prior to Luclin/Gates not balanced with any type of priority. The above would never actually fly with real players. They would have to suffer through months of "Please fix BST/ZERKER, they are worthless without epics" and other similar topics.
Beastlords wouldn't need fixing, hell we would have a class that would be on par with enchanter DPS during classic especially since the pet proc line is so powerful early on. If anything you would have an issue with beastlords being too overpowered for the early expansions. "Most" people i'd assume would be perfectly fine having beastlords and berserkers early even if it ment them not having access to certain quests/epics.
I didn't actually consider this at first. However, I think if they release them with the stipulation or something saying "We heard you wanted this but please don't expect this/that" upon the release then every post requesting more quests and changes would have a 1st reply saying "don't bother asking because they aren't going to do this - they stated this already."
is there and Q and A that I missed, can someone post where they saw this? or if I even can see it? thankis!
I found it interesting they ignored the FTE question, I asked if it would be on all TLP servers going forward. They either missed the question or decided it was something they didn't want to back themselves into a corner with.
I know this is the TLP section but the answer here should scare everyone silly. Basically prepare ourselves for even less next year as most of the productive hours are being spent on the Darkpaw event. The keywords hope and herculean does not bode well for new expansion or new tlp servers.
