Future Content: A Letter from Director of Development Dave Georgeson

I'd love to see more done for the more casually inclined gamers. I'm not likely to enjoy old zones or dungeons being aged up if it means everything is going to have a bazillion hit points, a common formula that has pervaded every new expansion beyond Planes of Power. A more regular rotation of hot zones would be greatly appreciated or better yet, add a few more zones per level range to increase path of progression variety with alternate characters. I'll have to admit that non-hot zones are far too slow in regards to experience gains and I avoid them completely now, effectively eliminating huge amounts of content and variety.

I'd also love it if you could revisit tank / melee mercenary strength in the level 55 to 85 range. I know you don't seem to like soloing in this game, but mercenaries have become an important part of it and the non-casting ones really struggle if not become ineffective for that level range. Maybe you need to add gear at the earlier levels if it makes that much of a difference. Also, the AA's for mercs at low levels is virtually non-existant as they come way too slowly to make any difference at all. I recently rolled up a Ranger and his healer merc has only 2 AA's by level 45. I don't notice any difference in the strength of the merc to justify such a slow process.

The sound of having future like:
Wednesday patch, next Wednesday patch and so on ....
NO, that is not acceptable.
Rehire devs, return people who has been moved to EQNext to EQ.
Stop doing the staggered release, it has been mostly an failure.
CotW has been a failure due to lack of contents.
Stop doing all those cut/paste HA. They not good.
Make proper zones instead of zones where you cannot do anything, except the HA.

Can we get mercs in EQ that are as good as the mercs in EQ2 please

I for one miss architecture in CoTF; Neriak 4th Gate is allright I guess, or would be if it wasn't too dark to see further than the tip of one's nose, but other zones seem like huge wastelands with a tent thrown here and a blob/boulder there.

I'm not sure what kind of zones the Dev in chief had in mind when he said that they took forever to create but I'm fairly sure that the Deadhills, for instance, did not meet this problem. A 512x512 rock texture tiled over 10 square miles was great back in 99, not so much now

As angry as I am with the devs right now for ignoring their own class forums I'd be happy to provide 3D meshes or textures for free (it's my job) ; when I see mobs in the new karanas that use EQ2 models and stand on generic_grass_texture_7439 I cannot possibly believe that a single EQ artist has missed the train to EQNext.

That being said I like CotF, it just could use big interesting zones that are challenging to explore, not just open areas in which every single square centimeter can be reached safely while invised (or areas with no mobs at all, let people hunt without having to do heroic adventures if that's what they want, as is the case in the Ethernere tainted Karanas, only with creatures more densely packed).

And, again, ARCHITECTURE, actual dungeons, gotta build underground and upwards. I went back to the Resplendent Temple a couple days ago, it felt like a different game, like from the future or something.

no more half a tiers thats just stupid, id rather have content 6 monthly and get a whole tier rather than half a tier.

Personally, thinking back to the content I remember being "fun" and what made it fun for me I would suggest a couple of ideas for expansions in the future.

1) The dungeon crawl - now that there is a player studio, give players the opportunity to create their own Lost Dungeon type adventures (ok it would be relatively "cut n paste" to get the mechanics) allowing other players to access them through the gateway in Guild Lobby. Make rewards basically defiant level but allow real inspiration in the dungeon crawl experience.

2) More scope in the expansions, (granted I'm not top high level) Kunark was probably the prettiest expansion - offering by quick calculation a dozen new zones of varying difficulty. TSS followed this pattern - with the new quest system and I'm taking my warrior through the Hero's Journey and finding it very enjoyable - well done.

HoT (which I'm enjoying in terms of the xp and the storyline - by my reckoning tier 1 is 2 zones with 5 mob models in it - and the occasional named. It looks pretty, it is nice to explore and the quests are difficult but characterful BUT there isn't any "feel" to the zones. (For me).

Go back to what EQ was good at, until (sorry I'm going to say it) SoE started milking the cashcow and driving many of the original players away. Faction meaning something, different rewards for taking sides in battles, gameplay - difficulty and character. An achievement for travelling to zones is 1 step from WoW and their "congratulations on zoning have level 2 attitude".

I think the plan sounds good on paper, but I also think the bottom line players care about is whether or not EQ will get more dev resources. EQ team lost important members such as Ngreth & Sklug to EQN development (I know there are more). When can we expect EQ team to get staffed properly in order for them to release quality expansions again?

Players started seeing lower quality expansions well before you changed the expansion release model. I still favor the Blizzard way of releasing a large chunk of quality expansion content first, then add gradual content & story arc every few months after. Where EQ is falling behind is that EQ was not even getting that "large chunk of quality expansion content" in the first place. The quality of EQ expansions were getting lower and lower, it was one of the reasons why players suggested to release additional content throughout the year. People were burning through content so fast, that they demanded more. We also saw more things usually a part of expansions get placed on station cash marketplace, this is SOE's doing, it makes expansions not feel as "full" and "high quality".

So, is EQ going to get properly staffed? I see SOE finally are closing down some games. Hopefully SOE is moving more towards quality rather than quantity. For many years SOE went with quantity and the quality of expansions for real long term successful games such as EQ suffered as a result. It would be nice to see EQ get more deserved resources, and hopefully along with that enough resources to continue launching a new progression server every 2-3 years.

Probably never...sadly....when SOE feels JChan was overqualified (her words) upon hire. Her and the others on the team may have experience...but code is code...someone with 15+ years programming experience in a specific language can probably bring a lot to the table without ever having worked at a "gaming" company. Unless the attitude that someone with more experience (in years working in a specific language) than the senior developers isn't an option..things may never get better....

Sklug and Ngreth are not interns...and are not new to programming...so adding 4 interns/college grads each doesn't improve the productivity of the team...it actually slows it down.

It would be nice to have an appropriate number of experienced programmers to help support the designers with new tools and improve the code base while the game designers work on the content.

I disagree with this.

As a max level max AA player, there is very little reason for me to do anything currently other than raid and those raids are extremely lacking. The majority of rewards for doing anything is exp or AA which gives me very little desire to do any current content.

I'm having a blast doing lower level content with alts, I just hope they don't ruin that with aging content.

While more content is good...the raiding game has been broken and may never be fixed again...

Those that raid at the higher end...are very good at figuring out how to adjust to a mechanic despite the stupidity of the mechanic. It will be very hard to challenge those folks that raid at the high end given the dislike of UF and RT type raids.

WK II is probably the stupidest way to make a raid 'challenging'...with the meaningless prisons with an unknown purpose...and the lazy way of just increasing hps and how hard (and often i.e miss rate) the mobs hit...yet raiders have figured out either letting the dragon help tank the last works or toss tanks (and pets if you need to let tanks buff up) at the last mob until its health bar reaches zero.

Bixie II is a lot better raid but it has that fatal flaw that was promised to never happen again when raiders cried foul...one toon can wipe the raid...by not moving away from the boss mob. This wasn't suppose to happen anymore...per the dev teams comments at Fan Faire. The event is a fun event...and doesn't have the stupidity of simply ramping up the hps and amount of damage a mob hits for...but if the dev team is committed to that "one toon can't wipe the raid" concept it is not a good raid.

4th Gate II has problems with the number of mobs that have to die...it isn't a challenge it is just a time sink. Kiting 2 of the lich and killing whatever spawns when the 3rd dies...over and over and over and over and over and over until nothing pops....weee.... The charming mob is an anti-melee mob...so melee gets to sit and watch as it is ranged down...while being kited.

All of this was discovered during beta...and during the first week or so on live. Now? It is just the small refinements and the pain of doing WK II to let folks get the win...certainly isn't for the loot. 4th Gate II will be done for the BP...and that is about the only reason to do that raid...and once folks have the flag...it could easily be skipped and do other CoTF targets for coins on less days.

So...would these raids been better if the toons had 5 more levels and the mobs hit harder and had more hps? No.

Keeping the (top end) raiders occupied will be a continuing challenge. Flagging, requiring group content to be completed (language?), etc. are complained about...but it slows them down... Is it challenging? Nope....but it slows them down. Not suggesting that flagging or requiring group content is an answer but it does slow them down...

While the comparison to EQ Casual is easy to make...the point Rat was making is that level increases are not the only way to make the game interesting and challenging.

Strangely enough...all the points made about how to provide what Rat calls "power" to a toon is ignored and instead a back handed slap to EQ Casual is done. This isn't the thread for that....

A radical change to how gear is handled would make it possible to not have to give the cookie cutter 5 levels each year (or expansion?) with the cookie cutter 4 "tiers" of content where each "tier" has 4-8 zones and 8-16 missions, 4 - 12 raids.

It is probably too much to do for EQ now...and with the mindset of the devs that gear should not last very long or forever (epics!)...it seems clear that cookie cutter content is going to be the norm for the foreseeable future.

Would it be so bad if there were only a handful of new zones and those new zones (and existing zones) were used to tell a story over 12+ months? Instead of having to have new zones each tier...why not use the same zones for the entire year (or more) with different tasks impacting those zones in different ways.

Cookie cutter content is one of the big complaints...yet if it isn't cookie cutter it isn't good enough?

Would being max level and max AA prevent you from wanting to gain new spells, AA, and gear that helps your toon perform better?

If it is all about maxing out levels...bring back hell levels...at least it gives folks a reason to sit on a mount in the corner of SL killing bugs a million times to get that max level achievement.

Or...how about content that can be done to get an aug that helps your class...or a new spell that is better than your current max level spell. Ancient spells? What about a multi-part weapon that when completed is useful for a few years. Oh darn...the devs don't want gear and weapons to last more than 3 to 6 months...12 at the max....

Just toss out 20 new levels and water down the current content even faster...and give new gear with +128 hp/mana/end in each new 'tier' so we all know it is better to skip from tier 1 to tier 3 or 4 and not bother with going tier 1, 2, 3 ,4...since the differences are so minor.

Your point has changed my mind....bring back new levels each tier...so we have something to work on again...

So the rest CotF has been canceled?

Also sense you will never get players to buy the next expansion after what happens in CofF this is the last EQ expansion as well?

I've seen how the monthly road map in PS2 works well more like I've seen how it doesn't work. A few bones will be tossed but reality is the entire concept in practice is simply a pack of lies and broken promises. Even if the original intent was based on a good faith effort to do things differently. In practice breaking the money link between new content and SoE receiving money for that content mean SoE will simply cut funds for new content at every turn.

If that is the way EQ goes CotF will be the last expansion I will purchase. I dislike the cookie cutter HA's, as far as I am concerned HA's are the worse things to happen in EQ. Despite all the changes to lower missions I still cannot do HAs with lower level friends without making the missions to hard for them to complete.

So we are cutting our losses, creating new alts and are leveling up slowly in all the old content.

Instead of talking to us about fixing the UCS? Ok...as long as you ignore the big issues....

The reaction is: "What? When did you ever tell the community you has plans for four big updates a year?" That point has been repeated in many posts on the forums but perhaps you didn't notice since it wasn't on another non-SOE site for you to consider valid input.

Now you claim we should have known you planned 4 big updates during a year? When will they start for CoTF? Right now we are getting 1/2 of a small update every 3 months or so....

It was clearing a "good intentions" change since it never happened...lots of content?

Wasn't VoA all released at the beginning?

RoF was the first attempt as this "content spread around the year"??? So there was ONE expansion and it started with a bit of content but then we got TWO zones...FOUR missions and TWO raids...followed by 3 "zones" with TWO missions and THREE raids. The partisan and kill tasks were barely enough to keep folks busy for a week in each zone...and a lot of that was running across EW to kill snow bunnies.

What big pushes? RoF had a 'big' initial release and then it was small and small...

As others have said...since it isn't possible to make enough content every 3 months...now the dev team is going to make lots and lots of content every week and month?

Oh wait...weekly is for fixing broke things....does that include the UCS?

Also, since an update to the servers takes HOURS instead of MINUTES this will bring the total possible playable hours down...how long will each weekly 'improvement' take to implement? Lately, after each patch it seems there is a 24-48 hour window where folks need to plan for the unplanned down time on the server they play on...and hope that things don't break on the weekend because it may never get fixed.

Are the patches going to happen every Tuesday? Will all the folks that plan things on Monday evening or Tuesday evening (depends on when the 'update' is rolled out) have to start a new schedule?

Of course SOE likes this new strategy...it was made in a vacuum much like the staggered content strategy. That worked out well for SOE...

And some in this thread have asked if this new strategy will impact the rest of the CoTF content releases...and clearly it will...given....

"The EQ and EQII team Producers (Thom and Holly) have created detailed schedules of how the rhythm of this stuff will play out across the coming months."

Coming months? As in BEFORE AUGUST? This is great...instead of seeing 2a and 2b (you know...the second 'tier' of CoTF) now we will get to see 2a.1, 2a.2, 2a.3, 2a.4, 2b.1, 2b.2, 2b.3, 2b.4, 2c.1, 2c.2, 2c.3, 2c.4, 2d.1, 2d.2, 2d.3, 2d.4, and so on....$40 well spent for the expansion CoTF....

Of course it sounds fantastic to a casual player of EQ and EQ2...as much as EQ Casual will "redefine the genre" like you stated repeatedly pre-EQ Casual Fan Faire.

For the rest of the community...most of what is described sounds like a scramble to fix a broken release cycle...

Lets hope this fantastic idea magically makes everything great...

RoF T3 seems pretty slim...T4 was ugly tho....

CoTF is bad because there isn't any sense to the zones...Bixies and Dead Hills are just new LDON zone lines...and worse still they added more LDONs to the other zones. Instead of providing tasks...now the 'merc' tasks are LDONs...

And it sounds like quarterly parts will go away now since there isn't enough dev resources to make quarterly releases anyway...and nowhere does the announcement mention quarterly content going forward...just the part where it was claimed that we should have known they had planned quarterly content but never said so...

It is a big announcement...and it probably sounds great around the meeting table...sadly it is going to be really challenging to see the dev team push out all this supposed new content and still work on an annual expansion. In the past, the dev team pushed out annual expansions and then just patched things during the year...and once the staggered content (RoF) started...the content has been worse and worse.. Now it is weekly content releases AND an annual expansion....sounds great...$40 worth for sure...

Sure sounds like it....or the content may be doled out over weekly or monthly 'content' releases.

Can you just imagine seeing 2 new partisan tasks one week and a new mission the next week and a new raid the week after...this is going to be awesome....

What will happen is Smedly will make a tweet that all work on EQ is postponed until chat system is fixed. Then three months later they will finally push a semi fix to chats. But weekly monthly content releases wont have happened in those three months.

Truth is they will have raided EQ resources for other projects.

Planetside 2 players have already seen this new system in practice.

just like with ignoring the warrior fight over the NTTB issue ( 17 pages and growing ) . they are trying to push us to quit and then join up for EQ next .. but elder scrolls online is comeing out soon so that will give us all a place to go

i have been playing everquest since march 1999. over the years, while I have enjoyed watching more of the world of norrath become accessible, I've always felt that the empty zones were a waste. I really like the idea of updating old zones to today's level of play and itemization. I think that Mistmore and SolB showed how successful that type of content update can be even if those were temporary.