If you could ask Darkpaw ONE question (For The EverQuest Show)...

Hasn't enough money been sucked out of EQ on previous failed games ?

Answered already - Shrouds.

There was a big problem with it, the devs do NOT want max level players getting anything that benefits their character in a significant way in any content outside of the the most recent expansion.
That's why last expansion XP gets nerfed. That's why Shroud XP got nerfed into oblivion. A level 120 goes down to 65 & get's level 65 XP, which is damn close to zero, without a tangible benefit to mentor down people are still going to powerlevel so any dev time spent on a mentor down approach is 100% wasted.

As I have said in the past Max players going down is the wrong way to do it. City of Heroes did it right with Side-Kicking, boosting the lower leveled player up close to the max level.

Shrouds are not playing your character -as- your character.

EQ2 has mentoring where you can play your character scaled down with others or even self-mentored via NPC on your own. There is even a special rules server that has every zone set to 'self-mentor' if you're higher level than the zone. All new characters on the server start at level 90. If you go to a level 60 zone, you're automagically 'mentored' or scaled down to level 60. This would also make every lower level zone more playable for any level of character.

The flip-side of mentoring would be like CoH's sidekicking but a bit more difficult to do. The lower level character just doesn't have the breadth of skills/spells/etc (game, not player abilities) to be as successful in higher level content.

I would ask when is the classic locked pvp server coming out.

Side-kicking was way more used than mentoring in EQ 2 ever was, from my own personal observations but I genuinely think the big issue is attractiveness & benefits to the higher level player as incentives to mentor as opposed to powerlevelling, and so long as power levelling is much more beneficial to the high level player than mentoring it will always be the preferred option, indeed not choosing powerlevelling while it is more beneficial will always be a sacrifice by the higher level player.

Sidekicking is what allows the higher level players to lose the least by helping a lower level player to catch up, therefore it provides the far greater incentive to help.

If given a chance to add another class, what would you add?

How many current EQ developers play regularily on TLP servers?

I played with roleplayers more than power gamers. Mentoring was common to allow players to play together even if their levels weren't compatible just to group or to help with a specific task.

Why can't I purchase Krono using funds from my PayPal account?

Disciple from vanguard. Monk type attacks that heal your group.
edit: oh wait was that a question for devs. ok nm

Monk group healer +1...why not!

Vanguard had the best classes, such a disappointment it’s gone. Blood Mage and Disciple were the most fun Ive had being a healer.

Do you feel that core EQ design philosophies still align with how the current player base plays the game? Lots of mechanics were put in place early on to encourage social interaction and interdependency between players. The reality of the modern game starting from scratch is a complete lack of social opportunities for the first 100+ levels of the game, and the only real answer to that seems to be boxing, which also goes against the social dynamic EQ was meant to highlight. Are there plans to address this and either force more social dependence between players, or open up more solo content opportunities for everyone to enjoy? Do you feel that multiboxing aligns with EQ design philosophy and belongs in the modern game, or do you feel crippled by it when designing encounters that need to be approachable by people playing multiple characters at the same time?

Fading, I think it's safe to say we all appreciate what you are doing with making your EverQuest videos. Coming to the forums and asking us this question is also very considerate of you and shows that you are willing to ask Darkpaw some potentially tough questions fielded from the players.

Many, many good questions here.

I'll add one: Can we please get a web Bug and Feedback Tracking program?

Adding duplicate bugs and feedback ideas because the current search is terrible (compared to actual Bug and Feedback programs) constantly happens. It's also pretty impossible to judge interest in these things beyond a short time after they are mentioned in the Bug and Veteran's forums as more threads are added and they get moved to the back of the bus.

There are even free versions that will do this.

We had the third party one that we were told by Darkpaw to use and then it disappeared one day with all the hard work people did to enter issues. I'm willing to host this and allow publicly available backups (just of the issues, not any private information) so that if it goes down someone else can take over.

Thank you.

No, this screams they are incapable of tracking and prioritizing their own issues.

Its bad enough you have to have enough likes on a bug report to get it looked at and then ignored.

They need to update their forums.

Great questions in here so far. I was talking with my friends this morning and we all were wondering why there havent been any new classes or races or race/class combos in so long. When will there be new ones?

What do you feel makes EQ the definitive MMO experience?

I like all the questions from the typical posters who do not understand the difference between a developer and a manager.

This has been asked 100s of times. They are at the "cap" of 16 races and classes due to coding issues and would take immense amount of work to extend this cap.

Also, making a new race is a tremendous amount of work and not feasible with the current team barely able to produce an expansion as is.

Making a new class would take years, to not only give it a purpose amongst the incredibly saturated classes we already have but then to balance every single event that the new class could exploit or otherwise not have much purpose in. It'd need new epic quests, gear from years of content reworked to include the new class, etc. Not feasible.

Plus we have so many classes for a dwindling player base, it's hard to find certain people of some classes already. We don't need more.