Future Content: A Letter from Director of Development Dave Georgeson

If you could feed this back to the team:

1. Do not use marketing terms when addressing a fan base that is becoming more and more disgruntled with your product. Quality isn't something this team does any more. Look at CTOF and your bug report that still exists for the first set of zones, or bug reports from the previous three expansions
2. Lots of content - HA's call them what they are busy work with minimal programming effort required. HoT was a fun expansion but since then things have gotten skewed against the casual player. How VoA was thought to be doable prior to the T3 and T4 nerf is beyond me for non raiders.
3. Your teams could have figured this model doesn't work if you would have observed any non-development expense company currently existing in the world. Those companies that run that business model have to buy their innovation (which is impossible for a video game to do). They also do a lot of shady tricks to appear successful buy their own stock back at alarming rates to drive up demand, immediately claim revenue as new from companies they buy, list goes on.

On a personal note I really hope at some point you guys can convince your upper management to provide the resource to turn this boat around. I have been with EQ for a long time, and continue to use it as my stand by. I never thought I would go down to one account, I just can't justify paying for expansions like this. RoF could have been avoided, CTOF is a disaster and I don't see a way out for your team. Moving forward I would suggest going to the HoT innovation you have a ton of Gods in the game you can explore content for in a cool way. Bring the players closer to this world we have grown up in (Over 10 years for some).

First of all, I really appreciate this post - while understanding it is also "marketing" - there is a sincerity in the tenor of the post that is positve. Additionally, I like many of the changes.

With this in mind - understand that the best talent you have for conceptual development, the greatest resource you have is... US. Collectively, we are the experts you cannot be. Know that there are MANY people here who view the game as something they contribute to and care about and would be part of the nourishing of community. I do not look at what i do is paying for a service, but rather contribute to something that I am part of. WIth that in mind, consider that you actually have a force of people that if given the opportunity - would contribute at a high level intellectually to the game. What does that mean? In "real life" I am a design and community engagement expert - literally. I work with communities to inspire positive change. As someone who does this also for a living, the most powerful resource I have is to include "the people" and the vast intelligence inherent in community as a creative engine. So, here we are. I am one of hundreds of people with a variety of talents that work professionally at a high level. The talent level for many people in real life has grown immensely as the game has aged, AND we are vested partners in this thing called EQ. The forum is not the right user-interface for this kind thoughtful talent to contribute. Put a call out to the existing "membership" - spend some time to learn the expertise that exists within your own organization (you do realize we are part of your org. yes?) And then leverage it for "awesomeness" ---- If given that opportunity to give back (and I do not mean designing graphical interfaces for the marketplace) we have enough talent collectively to power up this game beyond what the Devs have the existing capacity to even dream about.

A final note - the reason the forum is not the best "user-interface" for positive community development, is that it is a very narrow cross section of the community. Many people, myself included, consider the "white out condition" of a forum, that is the overwhelming amount of pure B.S. posted here with the loudest and most consistent level of feedback being negative and without constructive solution, a big effing soup of information where a thoughtful voice is just simply lost. Also, it is not a loop - as in, it does not feel like a conversation but a sounding board or a pullpit. Create a situation with a smaller, more thoughtful group of members, where it is a conversation with devs/marketing/coding folks. This is only but a handful of posts I have ever made for this exact reason.

Sometimes I feel like the composite summary of the posts is along the line of, "It's not how I wanted it to be, so I'm going to scream and holler and hold my breath until I'm blue in the face." Well, not really. But for some folks, their ability to reach conclusions is rather quite remarkable.

Personally, I will just play the game and when the weekly and monthly offerings appear, I will then decide then if I want to do that one or not. Seems better that way, not thinking or reacting about it until it actually appears.

I think the rush to complete weekly and monthly content will be an unfair
"corner cutter" that will eventually cascade down to the development teams and will have a detrimental effect on attitude which will be masked initially but will then end up in the game as half hearted content.

Maybe reduce it to monthly content and a small team to follow a hyperbola effect of weekly fixes after new expansions and then of course old content. There must be years of feedback and bug reports that just never get read or taken seriously. Big waste of a golden opportunity IMHO.

I think that if we the players had a choice most of us would rather have three expansions a year and pay for them outright with delivery outright. I think this trickle down effect of releasing tiers in expansions was a novel idea except the releases have slowly been disappointing - the last release last week is a typical example. No AA's and no new spells, just the zones and tripled the price of the raid gear whilst doubling the reward in chits kind of speaks for itself. I play the wizard class as a main (15 years now) so I can understand that devs will have a few challenges trying to give some new experiences and abilities without further hampering game and class balance. I have some ideas on some new direction for the class but this is not the place to post those.

In any case, we appreciate that zones take a long time to develop and fill with content and we welcome the use of old zones and revamping levels and itemization to match the player base but within reason. It is still fun to go to these older zones with new classes/toons or friends who are new to the game. Perhaps a system where the zone stays the same but we can request tasks that give instanced zones that dynamically adjust the mobs levels and loot?

This could be very interesting and good for players that don't have a lot of time to learn the new zones layout but can still play with high level content in zones where they already know the layout. The devs can put in a couple of curve balls by adding hidden walls- previously would block etc or traps to "fall" through to bottom levels in dungeons etc. This shouldn't take too much time to develop. Also I don't see a lot of use for resists nowadays - maybe because being maxed it doesn't show. I think a lot more should be done in the game to bring this into the game dynamics. Make more powerful poison gas and fire or spike traps where ac and agility play a big part and ramp up accordingly. This way the curing and resist spells can play a better part. In the old days a wizards self rune spell protected against any form of disease or poison effects as long as it was not damaged. Although this was probably not intended it somehow added to the playability of the game.

I also think that there should be more focus on developing arc type rewards from past expansions. This is an unleveraged part of the game that I really think the dev teams need to spend more time on.

Fair enough, the revamp of the shawl type quest was absolutely brilliant but it had a serious drawback with a reliance on max skills on the main trade skills. There are many other items that have been released in past expansions that would be really amazing to be able to continue to upgrade to current expansion group and raid item levels. Some of these past items had very beneficial effects that for some classes are still very useful and for many others are no longer used - level restrictions etc. I think that a vast number of your player base have these items and would relish the opportunity to follow long epic type quests to continue to use and wear. Items like:

Shield of the Otherworld
Black orb of Scrykin
tomb of new beginnings
pitted iron ring
serpent seekers charm of lore

and many many other items. I think the point here is that there is a huge player base that would relish the opportunity to continue to develop these items via quests and other tasks and dare I say it - trade skills!

Kind regards

Sorcerer Fortunbas Soulsender
Antonius Bayle

I definately agree with this. I have lots of alts and I'm tired of having to use the same content over and over, ad naseum, to get them to 40th and above.

Sounds good, just don't bite off more than you can chew. Big expansions that matter with a manageable amount of weekly/monthly updates should be the priority.

I like the HA's and the randomness of steps. It is nice not having to compete for every good camp/named/whatever. With the differences in difficulty it is easy to pick a HA that fits the group that I'm able to put together. This is important to me because I often group at odd hours and standard groups are difficult to put together.

Yes, I raid in a guild that is "end game" and has been for years. Raiding is why I play EQ but I also enjoy the group content.

Now I've had time to sleep on it, my mind is a little clearer.

Weekly content I feel will be too demanding for the devs to come up with something new every week and I don't fancy the server coming down every week for a patch, or quests which are broken at release and not completable before they are removed (unless they are permanent).

Monthly content, we already get some stuff monthly, anniversary, legacy and heritage events all of which take place from March - July/August. It is always the last and first part of the year which is lacking in events, this has shown up more with the lack of content from CotF. Sadly we are already nearly passed the time when we are lacking in yearly events for these changes to make much difference.

Things we already know are coming in the next few months.
February - Achievements for more run speed, 2 collections and 2 quests for Valentines
March - Anniversary events including Plane of War, & 2 new class/race combos (Gukta Monk and Wood Elf Treelord).

Other things we know are coming soon
Changes/discontinuation of the Leader AA system
Level 85 Heroic Chars

My thoughts on priorities
1. Get the URC Chat working and make sure it is stable and won't be up and down like a yoyo.
2. Get the anniversary stuff tested and released without any bugs! 15 years is a big milestone, it deserves a big celebration.
3. Get CotF finished, give the players the quality and quantity of content they have paid for.
4. There is still a stone not being used in Shards Landing, it must have had a use at some stage, get where ever it was supposed to go sorted and released. Don't make us wait years for it like we had to for Plane of War.
5. Get ahead start on the next expansion, ready to release all in one go or at least half of it at release.

It would also be nice to have achievements put in for all the anniversary quests so payers can see if they have missed anything.

Never played eq2 but I'd merge eq and eq2 devs to make same zones for both games. I'd even apply that to quests, mechanics, lore, items etc.

There is more content for a lvl 1-40 character than a lvl 100 character.

There is no issue here. If you are doing the exact same content over and over to get to lvl 40, then that is a personal choice.

So when can we expect new AAs and Spells?

I guess what bugs me the most is the "cookie cutter" approach to the new weapons and items. Same stats (exactly), just a different icon and proc. Maybe use a little imagination when creating these item, instead of just copying yourselves over and over again. I don't consider this new, just a fast way to put more stuff into the games.

I do consider the HA's and Raids challenging and use of several different mechanics quite enjoyable, annoying but still fun.

As far as new zones, has anybody sat down and counted how many travelers achievements are going live on Feb. 12? I counted around 400, little more. So I like the idea of giving people a reason to go back to them seems like a good one.

anyway that's my 2cp

I don't care about the weekly patches, not like they will take up a lot of the time and if it means better content and that we can enjoy the game more, go for it.

I agree with your 2nd two paragraphs.
However a cap at level 100 (or perhaps 101 for giggles) would not create any sort of "sandbox" if the actual content were developed to par. When you consider the classes and amount of spells (and Rk 1,2,3) the spell count per 5 level expansion alone is burdensome on dev. time.
As it is, we kinda need a level 95 daily of two from Franklin Teek now, to keep up and coming characters "catching up". Going up 5 more levels would almost mandate 95 and 100 Teek tanks, as well as some upgrades to Decap, Headshot, and beamable instance zones, - to keep the PL Krono sales flowing.
Lastly, there's a difference between a "casual player" and someone "who plays a lot" - but still has a real life.
-R

I am very much in agreement with this, especially the "wild growth of the level cap" comment! Maybe I am different but I have been experimenting with a lot of classes and even on several servers. After fifteen years, I am beginning to settle down a little and my highest character is only 85, after all this time!

Yes, being stuck with unpleasant Hot Zones (Undershore? Plane of Air?) for months on end, or even a whole year, is not fun! Also, I am not keen on upgraded low-level zones; where are the low levels supposed to go?

I am in total agreement here. There have been some great quests in EQ over the years that have been "mudflated" to near uselessness. I'd add to the list a few old school quests such as:

The Qeynos Badge of Nobility
Earring of Veracity
The Binden Concerteria
The Burning Rapier

As previously stated, these are just a few of the many quests that I'd like to see updated but you get the idea.

Thanks for listening.

Great news about releasing weekly/monthly updates. I'm all for it.

unless you'll be adding new aas, new evolving items, regular additions of ac augs and caster augs, and new progressions monthly..i will not be happy. release an expansion that includes things for raiders to improve or might as well on us between big releases and tell us to like it...why do you think so many of us get on for new raids, grab our augs, then go afk until next release?

I really like the idea of weekly and month updates.