Producer's Letter: Progression Server, April Update, and Beyond

Ya us druids should be quiet about stuff we don't.. oh wait no no thanks also, In Original EQ no one "pulled" in early raiding. That only happened once "pulling" became a thing for monks and bards also Lila never said it was used to pull on Raids .POINT BLANK buh buh brah

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You'd be surprised what many of the devs COULD actually do if set loose...problem with what you said here: ..."if only I went to school and got a degree in game design.[/quote]" is that then you would probs have to work within the confines of some company which would utilize a supervisor who would be beholden to some number-cruncher.

And then all your fabulous and innovative ideas (*which I personally think are awesome as listed above, heh) would have the soul sucked out as you marched along answering to the man as many of us have to do in real life in our real positions every frickken day until or unless we win the lottery and BUY the company. *Nods grimly and tries to look astute rather than hog-tied...

Well if you knew me in person you would know I would deal with it till I found a better company to work for . Or go out on my own which is what dbg basically just did the one controlling what changes that can be made within eq is Smedley . I believe the investors only care about the bottom line not how they run or design the games that they create or update.

Business is business. All we an do is hope they do it in the most player friendly way.

executive summary - it don't take a Game Design degree from RISD or USC.

1. While a dozen or more colleges do offer programs most are less than 10 years old, don't have a bigtime placement history, and their graduates are competing with non-certified people who have real stuff vs. student projects on their resumes.

2. While knowledge of a couple of engines is great any given design job may be using an odd skill set - SQL/MicroSoft DB, Python, Power Point, ... In some companies designers, application implementers, and engine/tools are different teams. In other companies design is done by a multi-discipline team with a lead designer.

3. A lot of designers got there via foot in the door. Mail room, marketing, testing, ... In smaller companies there are often more hats than people.

4. Age is not a barrier, chops are. There are several 60+ year old designers who are always working on something.

5. One can always do your own thing rather than ride someone else's pony. AP Store. A 3D 1st person MMoRPG might be out of reach but a racing game, space game, etc. might not be. Certainly as 100's of console game writers have shown a 2D game isn't impossible for a tiny team.

Do eeeet and when you've shown that you got the goods your email will be filled with offers.

(Btw - the designer gets input from dozens of people all of whom think they can do the job better and is answerable to the Executive Producer who is answerable to an internal or external client. The designer is just a resource who is responsible for producing stuff that's consistent with expectations - just like everyone else on the team. It's work. If it was 100% fun they'd call it play instead of a job.)

Yes.
And giving Rangers both SoW and Snare early in, made them a natural choice for outdoor pulling and rudimentary CC.
I think I was pulling, before everyone called it "pulling"; way back when it was just called "Rat, go get us more stuff".
-R

The player base of EQ1 is likely the most stalwart and die hard player base of any game, the last words I would use to describe such a loyal group of players.

Still messing around with the content release cycles, this is a little depressing for me, I was allowing myself to have such high hopes for the next real expansion, can't find the video for it but I believe there was an official statement made at SOE Live that you were listening and you know we don't like staggered release.

I'm losing hope for EQ1, the recipe seems to have been lost, now it's instancing and currency vendors.
The reality is that the players that have supported you for all these years did it because they liked the game it was, your changing that and alienating your players with changes few of them like.

All,

I know that I am a bit late to this thread but wanted to put my input in nevertheless.

I did not purchase the last two expansions but, th last three expansions that I really enjoyed through first hand play were HOT to ROF. I was really happy with ROF and hope the content will go back to that expansion. If campaigns are to equal half an expansion then I would hope to see 5-6 zones per campaign with 5-6 raid events as well.

As I understand some of these changes were to keep subscriptions current, I hope this idea is taken into account when designing the amount of content to be released in each campaign. I think this is very important in that the more people that I talk to are moving to short term investments in subscriptions vice the year long auto-re subs. This means even less money coming in. In my case due to being unsatisfied with the expansion releases, I have gone from reoccuring subs to FTP/silver enhanced with game card SC. Basically, it adds up to spending 75-85 percent less.

I had started completely over on a 4 boxing setup playing with three previously unplayed classes. I have been pretty happy with the experience coming up to the SOD/HOT expansions but still leary about investing more time/money into EQ until I feel the future experience is up to the EQ bar of past.

My thoughts,
Rykard

Hi, could we get that update and schedule on the mysterious appearance of Hardcore Heritage events that went live yesterday? That would be awesome.

Some infos about the campaign in works would be nice, i could use some motivation while farming Arx...
currently this is a game for all of us who like living in the past (progression server, P99 and dreaming of better new content) but the actual future is like a black hole - we know nothing about what's coming.
This would be easier to stomach if TDS would be a good time killer, but...oh well.

so i can expect the next "expansion" to have even less crap then this BS you guys served out which is Known as TDS?!? since you already went back on your word of giving us full "EXPANSION RELEASE AT ONCE" i shouldnt hold my breath on anything else you promised as well?!?

Devs have historically been emphatically against new epics. Don't count on it. Some epic 2.0's are indeed still useful. Some are for bragging rights only, and then there's the epic ornaments which is the closest thing we're going to come for what you want. And at least two of the epic clicks have been replaced by better AA's, anyway. If you don't want to do your epics, don't. But the epic weapon project is essentially end of life.

Over 3 months since our last update, any update coming in the next month?

This probably wont help much, but I don't think they are going to be doing big communication threads much anymore, except maybe release times. Looks like they had a change of mind about how to communicate, and didn't communicate that to us I do really appreciate Prathun and Dzarn and their efforts to talk with us.