I think we are past due for a position at DBG to act as a paid player's advocate. Yes, I'm saying they should pay someone to actually play the game on a daily basis and then have the role at DBG that allows them to walk into a team meeting and present the player's perspective. This position should probably be kept secret from the players so that we don't inundate them with unlimited whining, complaints, and petitions. The person should have an account that includes at least one character who raids in a top 20 guild while having another character in a more socially-oriented guild. The person's Internet connection should be provisioned from outside the company so that they connect similarly to all the rest of us. And they should not have any GM or Dev command authority so they have to play just like the rest of us. I would think that with all the Guides they've had over the years they could find one who could easily fill this slot and provide some much needed context and guidance to the staff on the EQ team at DBG. I'm not trying to offer myself for this role because I think it will be a real headache and I still like to enjoy the game. In fact this position might have to be re-filled on a yearly basis to avoid burnout. But somebody at DBG needs to like, you know, totally radically, like, PLAY THE GAME!
So not only would this person not have to pay for their monthly subscription (or grind kronos), nor pay for the expansions, but they actually get paid to play the game? Sign me up! Could even double-dip and stream while you're at it, although I don't think there's much to be made for EQ-streamers. All kidding aside, I believe there are (or were?) class representatives who had a bit more of a dev's ear than the rest of us. I'm not sure how much influence they have these days, if this role is still active, if the players who were class reps still play, or have even been replaced if they've retired. The best bet would be to create more of an incentive to have players play on the Test server. A single player wouldn't be representative of the population as a whole. Top 5 guilds are vastly different than top 20, which are vastly different than casual/family-style guilds. Having a larger representation of players on Test would be the best option to get things properly evaluated.
There have been a few of these class reps who have since retired prior to this expansion due to the lack of response given by the dev team and was a definite sign of how things have been going lately. I am not at all surprised...
I know of at least one DBG employee plays EQ on a regular basis. And yes they work on EQ. I'm not going to say who they are. There might be others on the EQ team as well who play on a regular basis.
I'm sure the intent behind your suggestion is to help the game, but I think you are solving the wrong issue. The game is having problems specifically BECAUSE the Devs only listen to one or a small handful of folks...and it seems all of these folks are high end raiders because of the changes made. Picking one person for the Devs to focus on would do nothing to address the real issue...the Devs don't know what a regular group in EQ is anymore. I'm not sure I know what a regular group in EQ is anymore either. Is it the person with 1 main all access and 2 ftp accounts working through content with 3 mercs? Is it the 6 boxer? Is it the guild pick up group that may alternate between 2 and 5 real players, some of which are new to the game or just returning? Is it 3 long term friends, who each box 2 toons? And I haven't even started to talk about caster heavy vs melee heavy vs balanced vs all one class (those mage groups). Or gear (including past achievement specialties which can make some difference). I'm not sure it matters that much. What does matter is performance in group content, specifically group missions. There are hundreds of group missions undertaken each day on the servers. There is so much feedback that could be learned by Devs just watching people play a bit. But they don't seem to have a way to gain this feedback back into their development cycle. Here's one suggestion. Pick a day a month. Have a thread on the forums for folks to post what mission they will undertake that day, what time (obviously with time zone adjustments), what the group makeup will be (including mercs and merc level when needed), roughly what gear level folks are at, and anything else I'm missing. And then the people that post just play what they said they would and the devs could just stop by in game and watch the mission...they could see, ah a caster group is getting rolled on this part or is going faster than I thought. If the devs wanted, they could ask questions directly to people playing right then and there or post through conversations in the forum. Or just parse. But if taken seriously, then at least some level of group feedback would be now in the development process. And the best thing is that I'm sure after several months, the devs could then have some specific type groups that commonly post to invite to Test or even Beta and do more intensive testing.
that person SHOULD NOT be in top 15 guilds. if he is in top raiding guild he will think the raids are too easy beatable. and do heroics task as a tank with current group gears only.
