I want to give you money so you can keep designing this game and I can keep enjoying it. But you are making this harder and harder. We are getting 15+ new raids but at least 7 of them are revamps. So 8 actual raids just like TDS. We are getting two tiers of raids but the gear will be the same in power just different between them. So there is one tier and people will min and max pieces here or there depending on the situation. We are getting spells that are powerful and useful but thats all the info you can give us. No clue how many, which lines are being upgraded, etc. We are getting AA that will are powerful and useful but thats all the info you can give us. No clue how many, which lines, new AA lines, etc. We are getting 7 zones. 3 revamps. 1 zone done two different ways. And 2 others. IE 3 new zones comprised of 1 twice and 2 others plus the revamps. You were able to provide more details about cats in bags, tlp stuff and trinket items from the expansion. Yet provided basically nothing detail wise in regards to your expansion during your expansion stream. Basically I have to buy your expansion to see what I get or get second hand information from someone else rather than having heard any of it from you. If you weren't ready to pass along the details or give us specifics yet then why did you even bother with this stream? What was the point of the thread that had a list of the most popular questions that was ignored so we can talk about random chatter that caught someones eye last minute. Hopeful but so far very disappointed. You did nothing to actually try and sell this expansion at all. You did set off a lot of warning bells and concerns that had somewhat subsided with your first expansion info post.
Don't forget up to 3 weeks of beta testing before it gets sent to test! An entire expansion beta that starts in design lock, lol.
7 new zones... 3 of which are revamped old zones. The 4 new zones are actually 2 zones that have alternate mobs and different lighting/fog/etc... so... 2 new zones. 2 NEW ZONES. 2! That's all you got this year... 2 new zones? Is this what EQ has become? I watched both reveals today, and the EQ2 expansion was a thousand times better. It's clear that DBG doesn't respect EQ1 anymore. This is the ugly step child that you would rather goes away. And, the whole discussion about the EPIC WEAPONS being too much work for the benefit. Yeah. I guess that would be believable if it wasn't for the fact that Blizzard is designing their next expansion around EPIC WEAPONS. They're able to throw millions at their expansion, and they chose such a low-reward design goal as "class-specific epic weapons". I'm just so disgusted with DBG right now. You're making it easier and easier to say goodbye every year.
I'm just saying it right now. I am not buying this expansion. Plain and simple. You did NOT sell me this one. This expansion is a rip off.
Yes, I am also disappointed in the lack of content and the lack of information about the expansion. They have been working on this expansion for how long? I think they need a whole new team if this is all they can come up with in the time they said they were working on this. What happened to the good old days when expansions were "Real Expansions" in EQ.
There's the Health and Decay zones for Anashti Sul each counting as zones, I don't think the other new zones were mentioned.
I watched the stream. Very little information was provided. Was mostly just a bunch of clowning around. Lots of expansion related questions never addressed. 1) The merc from the collector's edition. What special advantages does it offer? 2) The illusion from the collector's edition. What special advantages does it offer? 3) Not a word about tradeskills. Are we to assume there will be nothing new for crafters? Will the tradeskill cap ever be increased? The in-game economy could use a lot of help. 4) What about faction. Will we ever get back to an old world faction system that offers complex faction hits and provides a way for someone to differentiate themselves from everyone else? Faction that only goes in one direction is not a faction system. 5) Epic 3.0. Sorry to hear it is to hard to design. You would think they would want their players to be occupied in-game for months, working on a new epic. 6) Someone asked about all the cheating and third party hacking programs. Not a word in response. Why invest time into a game, where so many are cheating. Everquest is a rare example of technology that actually has de-evolved over the years. Everquest of 10 years past was so much more complex and challenging that its current state. So many systems have been streamlined, eliminated, or dumbed down. Just all very sad.
Here's your problem. You're comparing Costco to the mom & pop corner store. Blizzard could drop a billion (with a B) on an expansion development and it wouldn't even warrant a line item on their balance sheet. I'd venture a guess and say WoW's dev team is at least five times larger than EQ's. When you have that kind of manpower with that kind of budget, you can do stuff a lot faster and not have to worry about cost. One of the devs (Elidroth?) said something about taking a dollar and then spending 40 cents on one thing (epics) and then trying to make an expansion with the rest. Take it a step further. You build me a car with $50 and make sure it's comparable to a Bugatti Veyron. That's what you're demanding. Bottom line: Stop trying to compare the Walmart of MMOs (Blizzard) with the neighborhood corner store (DBG). In comparison to Blizzard, DBG is like Shock G once said: "Tryin' to make a dollar out of 15 cents". I should say that I completely agree with you on some points. There was very little substantive information given in this livestream. I'm hoping they'll do more in the future but this livestream didn't sell the expansion effectively, in my view. People didn't tune in to hear about a cat in a bag. No one even tried to give a reason why the Premium edition is a good value. No one tried to sell the new zones (except for the Transformer zone), really. For weeks people have been waiting for this big expansion announcement and it was as bland as matzo, in my opinion. It was nice to hear how JChan is trying to be MacGuyver and build a predator drone from a paper clip and some chewing gum (that's about the best comparison I can think of given what they say she's trying to do). It was nice to see confirmation that Absor is the resident curmudgeon. But all of the side tracks detracted from what (I thought) the livestream was supposed to be about: selling an expansion.
DBG is owned by a multi billion dollar company. If they won't invest in EQs future then why should we?
Guys, Positive Note: 'We're not selling power but it's only 140$ for premium to get the best stat mount in the game!" Could we get some spell data for that to check stacking before we throw piles of money please? I couldn't use most mount buffs previously because of stacking conflicts. Maybe that has changed since the addition of passive AA buffs.
They have that team and customer base because they listened and adapted. They didn't tell their customers we can't do that anymore or thats not what we want you to do anymore or this is how its going to be now even if its been this other way for the last 10 years. You guys find yourselves in this position based on your choices the past 7-8 years. It didn't just happen overnight and here you guys are. If you want 6 million customers or to have the 800k or whatever that originally played this game if thats the cap for this game then design the game they all loved and played. I can assure you wasting time on cats and the 60 nerfs you guys had the last patch is only setting yourselves up for next year when you announce the team is to small to do any content or whatever. You play hard or you go home. Its evidenced that either the team or the people who control you decided to go home a long time ago except for the hello kitty micro transactions $. You spent god knows how much time on everything tlp instead of making a vast and giant expansion that brought people back or kept them hooked for a few more years. Hopefully that works out for you guys but I don't think live will be getting back as much new blood as previously hoped. Its down to the diehards or simply wont move along types now.
/\ this sums it all up in a nutshell you can do more with less if your listening to your customers and be competitive the problem is the rigid obtuse management of the game. The idea that your forcing changes to make things harder after the front runner people have already completed most of the expansion just affects the casuals again with late nerfs.
How many of us won't touch WoW? What does EQ have that WoW doesn't to keep anyone loyal to it if Blizzard has such a superior team?
I'm one of those that won't. I played a free trial and was like this is painfully easy and not for me. EQ is such a better game in and of itself. However, EQ's choices both from the team and management the past 7-8 years lead us to where we are. Which is the point that they claim the team is to small to do this, this and this anymore. As Eli said they have a very limited team and resources now so they have to be very purposeful with that team and resources and yet.............. we see what we got so far. Lots of that limited time and resources, more then they will ever admit, went to the tlp, tlp fixes, and new tlp server. Rather than releasing more than was expected on live both in size and value of the content. They had a chance to win people back and based on what they showed they didn't. If you have 2 weeks to prepare a science project and come in the day its due with a cup of water and string don't con me into thinking you spent $500 and 2 weeks of time on it when in reality you spent 2 hours the night before on it.
