Thank you for that explanation. I'm pretty sure I understood what the beta server was for the first few times I was invited. What I found odd was having announced beta content for the current expansion reachable the usual way ie hailing an npc in pok and at the same time having unannounced content for a future expansion that is only reachable with the assistance of a guide or dev. I assume at some point in the future SOE will announce open beta for the next expansion and the new zones will be reachable by hailing the same npc in pok. I guess it's a result of staggered development overlapping with future development.
If you think its odd the new expansions zones are up in this beta but not accessible you dont understand at all The content is pushed to beta once they develop it and it is continued to be developed on beta this is a COTF beta locking the next expansion content that is no where near ready to be tested by players is a smart thing
As Slasher said they don't pull content from BETA just because it isn't the focus of player testing. It should always be remembered that this is the primary server where the devs work so you should always expect there to be content on there that is for future releases that are not being tested currently.
I'm at a loss about this idea of staggered releases. From what I can tell, it looks like a response to the migratory population of MMO players... folks who come back to EQ to play new content, then move on to WoW when it releases new content, and so on with games they each prefer. It makes them have to check back in more regularly throughout the year instead of popping in over the fall/winter, destroying the new content, and then leaving till next expansion. BUT It also seems like a cheap excuse to not have to do more content. Why can't they just make more content to keep players absorbed for longer each year? I noticed this is also an issue with locking things behind locked zones or faction. It's kind of sad and could be resolved so much more easily by just generating more content per expansion. Looking at old expansions versus current ones, it seems like the game is attenuating badly as the level goes up. Why this bothers me is as Fendy says: I don't want to pay for a full expansion, get half an expansion up front and then have it all suck as it comes out. But if I wait till the whole expansion comes out, then it's almost time for the next one. It's a vicious cycle that leaves me unsure when and where to spend my meager entertainment budget. Just say no to staggered releases, and yes to more content. I'd spend my money sooner if they did. Oh, and PS: Microtransactions are a sickness in video game history. I wouldn't be so upset about them if everything didn't cost about 3x to 10x what it should. SOE and other game studios need to recheck the idea of getting people to spend money for what adds up to nothing once an item is implemented; it requires almost no post-development maintenance to support, say, a character illusion from the SC store.
IMO Luclin was an excellent expansion even after it was current content because of Vex Thal and other raids like Emp and Seru (hell, on most servers, VT, Ssra temple and Seru are always perm camped). It seemed impossible to match the sense of accomplishment and excitement from finally having your key and being able to just zone in. Then Omens came out. Lucid shard farming came back in Signet fashion. Then once you finally got into Anguish, the visible armor was faction locked. My point is: non staggered releases tend to have more tedious flagging / keys / etc. At this point I would welcome that over another staggered release expansion.
Yep Ngreth started back at SOE 2 days before beta started, when I had a chat with him after I got over my shock of seeing him online, he said he was on a 6 month contract working on something new and having a wander around a zone he'd never seen yet. /who GM had already shown him as being in Degmar (I think it was). Yes Ngreth is one dev, but how many other extras are working on EQ that we don't know about? It wasn't that long ago it was announced 4 SOE games were being sunsetted, I've not seen any announcements of SOE layoffs so those devs have to be working on something. EQ maybe? Smedley posted somewhere EQ would be getting some love in the next expansion, I can't remember where. but I am sure we will hear from SOE Fanfaire what to expect from the next expansion and how it will be released, only a month and a half to wait.
I wouldn't. I believe (personal guess here based on nothing more than speculation) that they wound up smaller than planned for CotF and put that time back into "A Streetcar Named Mayong" instead, so they could beef it up for the release. There was someone that said (I thought it was Smed in the AMAA, but maybe it was the producer, I'm old, and the memory doesn't work so well), that they heard the player base wanted more content at expansion release, and they adjusted their work to accommodate. The lead time on an expansion is very very long. In fact, (again, IMO speculation, not necessarily fact) the 2015 expansion (Gone with the Mayong? Mayong on a Hot Tin Roof?) is probably already mapped out and the artists are probably working on the zone art already. We will see in a couple weeks I guess. I'm sure people will ask about that at Fan Fai . . . I mean SOE Live. There is only one beta server, which is where the Devs work. They are well into design of the next expansion, so that work is up there already. There is no way to hide it from the people that are beta testing the rest of CotF though, so they can see bits and pieces (like the AAs and some other stuff.)
Riou's post made it sound as if some favored players were being summoned to the new expansion zones by guides or devs. Unless that was a guess. during my years as a guide we weren't allowed in beta zones.
A few years ago we were told that the artwork on an expansion/zone started up to and possibly 16+ months before the Devs ever started working in the zone to do their pathing, NPC work and so on. Not sure how true that is today still.
Most people were surprised that CoF was not a level increasing expansion. The general expectation, which is not quite the same thing as the general desire, is that most expansions will be level increasing expansions.
There are *a lot* of things that could happen here if we put consideration into a huge amount of trickery and deceit on the developer's part. Unfortunately, I don't think it passes a simple intuition test. The Beta server is continually being worked on, putting pieces in place for the next expansion release. You see staggered AA counts at various levels, leading to a culmination of level 105. It isn't that they're all set at 105 - some of the next ranks are set at 101, as we'd expect, for things like CS/CA. One-rank advances of large class abilities are set at max level. It's laid out perfectly. I think it's a given that we're going to see a level cap increase. The same would go for the information that I posted on the first page. The developers have started putting in the collections for the zones, what they'll be, and the lore information behind them. They've laid out the tier structure as well, even if it wasn't for us to really know yet. The zones, the descriptions of the collections, and all the information has been designed and implemented beta-side from the developers. I take that to the bank. There is a chance for last minute design changes, sure, but this is definitely the 'course set' at the moment. The information they put into pre-beta is always solid, and has been ever since I've done beta for the last couple of expansions. Changes don't get made to that large of a scale. Also, I have no idea if there will be more than two tiers. CoTF Beta only released information on T1 pre-release. It wasn't until they designed things later that we had any idea of what was to come. The eight zones appear to be launch zones.
Just an additional quick comment - for those of you impatient or doubtful, we have SoE live coming up shortly. If you just wait for the livestream of that, you'll get all the answers you're looking for. I highly doubt any SoE representative is going to comment on the next expansion before the 'big' announcement where the marketing team gets a chance to prepare and hype the next release of EQ content.
You have to be a guide on beta, they don't really have rules like that afaik, except devs will be upset if they see in you there with them
There was an actual statement from a developer in 2008 that all expansions from that point forward were going to be level-cap increasing. Of course with old forum archives being lost with a clickity-click, that post is long lost. (The more conspiracy-theory-minded among us might posit that the disappearance of old archives was to make things like that disappear)
Why do we need to reboot everything? Directed at the business side of SOE: I agree with other customers in this thread I am done with the gimmicks and the preorders of expansions that quite frankly do not deliver (When will mercs get upgrade gear that matters? It certainly is not a part of the raids or the garbage you put on the vendors as an example). The downside is people go out and try a game with a new dynamic like GW2 and find, that why it is different there is a ton of good content provided without having to pay 45 bucks a month to get through it. Also games are realizing getting a person to the maximum level to take advantage of content is a huge bonus, here it seems getting someone to 85 really doesnt cut much. I tried a new wizard at 85 looking for groups. Each day I would travel around and found some daily type groups but finding something in HoT or even VoA - doesn't happen often. For those of use with deactivated accounts it is really hard to justify 14.99 per account or even 10 bucks on a prepay of a year + the 120 or so (if you have three ) per expansion when the Cotf expansion (in my opinion) is this bad. Clearly the development staff at SOE is out of touch with the player base, it has not been well received. Not to mention in VoA you introduced, what I would consider to be, the Anti merc mobs that expose a huge weakness in your merc AI. This has continued expansion to expansion, which would be fine if the population of the regular players was high... But it really isnt. Those who do not belong to a raid guild tend to struggle, you put hooks into new zones that limit ones ability for pet tanking or others making it even harder to find a group. Congrats its hard but is it right? I liked HoT for the originality and the challenges were doable with the mercs. You couldnt plow through the mobs, but if you learned each ones abilities they were doable, unlike today when you check the logs during a big AoE fight with a named only to find your cleric mercs are casting Group HoT and overriding that same HoT on the tank with the single person HoT only to get the tank killed because they wasted time. Not putting in something as simple as a spell block for a merc would allow players to kind of by pass this like we had to for HoT and above on player controlled avatars but its just bad. Mercs are great because it allows you the freedom of getting into a group quickly (for those of us with kids that have grown up with this game sense 99 or 00 or 01). Please, I know it is too late for this expansion but ditch the darn reboots and write something original, or just quit trying to release full expansions and have a couple raids released here and there and minor things to keep people paying the 14.99 a month till you kill this for eq next.
IIRC, not all the AAs were set to be 101+. But they are all locked behind an expansion that the beta clients don't have access to, so people cannot buy them.
