Future Content: A Letter from Director of Development Dave Georgeson

Had to smile when I saw this, My SK just hit 90 and I only needed to change his armour etc at lvl's 50 & 70. So he was in effect fully 'Mastercrafted' at lvl 20, this lasted until Lvl 50, replaced about 5 items from drops along the way. At lvl 50 Master Crafted him again and then again at lvl 70. Now he has hit 90 I am just equipping him with quested gear in Withered Lands.

It seems to me that SOE's vision of zone progression is:- Make a LvL 85 character and skip the earlier game that way we get cash income and don't need to fix anything that is broken/bugged etc in the earlier part of the game.

Ive been a bit bummed about the game as of late, I hadn't log in to the game for a few weeks. But after reading this , Im interested in playing again ! ( Hope it was just boredom with the content I couldn't solo, and not that im getting to old and cranky )

I really do like the idea of the expansion pack being bigger! Even though, we've been getting content throughout the year and if you added it all up, it would equal a big expansion.. it will just feel like I am getting my money's worth if the expansions themselves get a little beefier.

Well it always sounds good. I guess ultimately the proof will be in the pudding.

1. I would and have asked for a long time that you create quests that are class specific, so I have something interesting for all my alts to do instead of repeating the same content over and over.

2. I would like to see the old content (low level) also be updated as you go so the equipment has relevant game stats and that the new content mobs don't drop old content loot as they sometimes do atm.

3. Please Please Please don't use old graphics for new gear put some time into new cool graphics for weapons and armor and again something distinct for different classes, I also hear people crying out for sexy too. This doesn't mean silly oversized weapons that look ridiculous or G-strings either. I do realize there are lots of cool graphics already but imo in a perfect world every weapon and armor set should be different!

Thanks for reading
Thanks for consideration

I am a bit worried about the comment of aging areas/dungeons to end game. They did that for a while in EQ and was why I abandoned that for EQ2 as it was "All about the end game" there. This of course meant less for mid and lower level characters, and that is just plain wrong. All levels need to count!
On a more personal side note, I would love to see the city of Kelithen expanded by a tree or two and become home for Tier 2 and Tier 3 guild halls, this could draw some of the guilds back to the Faydwer expansion, especially if we get a new region for us in there to accommodate the advanced players.

OK, the details will determine how I feel about this.

·What sorts of things will come out weekly?

oThese will be things like straight-up feature refinements, holiday events, short adventures, or pretty much anything that doesn’t merit being in the expansion or being a big monthly highlight. But something of this sort comes every week.

Honestly, this sounds like taking away the quarterly updates and leaving us the kinds of updates that have always been part of the regular holiday and events.

·What sorts of things will you deliver monthly?

oEach month, we’re going to do something interesting and fun, like aging a cool existing dungeon up to end-game levels and itemization, or adding a series of quests for players to find and explore. Maybe even a new zone sweeper or random world event, or that sort of thing. Something new and fun to experience with friends and guildies.

OK, for me and my characters, this is a unequivocal negative. When all is said and done, I'm a long time casual player and this will be taking zones away from my characters.

·How will this impact the quality of the expansion?

oWe’re putting a huge emphasis on how important the expansion pack is to you. The feedback on that has been almost universal. “Make Our Expansion Matter.” So that’s what we intend to do.

I would think making any expansion that didn't matter to the game would be sub-par design. Now if you mean you have listened to the high end raiders and plan to make every aspect of every expansion matter even more to them, then I can believe it and that isn't any good for my characters.

·Is SOE locked into this schedule? Do we mean EVERY week and EVERY month?

oAnswer: Yes, we mean it. We’re going to work hard to make it happen regularly and dependably.

Hey, here's one I feel neutral about. However, I'd give this up to have some of the other stuff not happen though!

But what do you think? Does this sound like fun to you too?
Honestly, as a person with lower level characters, this sounds like you are taking away from my characters to give to the higher level characters. This is nothing new, but while I'm not surprised, I surely can't view this as a positive.

Makes me regret a little having bought the 2 expansion download this past week. However, it does have some crafting features I can take advantage of, even if the adverturing is nothing I can take advantage of.

Me personally i would like to see new races either free or paid one like Orcs, Cold Daines, and Talonites i think they would make it more interesting. but with the orcs they should make it both snow and reg orcs. i would buy them if they put them in. thats for sure but it would be nice to get at least one of them free. just my opinion.

I like the ideas, my only concern is I hope you aren't making everything END GAME! Some of us like the journey. There are many different playstyles that play this game. From Raiders, to Soloers to crafters, and decorators. Myself I prefer to enjoy the content as I level, I don't rush to endgame, I have 5 toons with over 3k quests done now. Try to spread the love among everyone is all I ask

Revamping the EoF raid zones and dropping the class sets again would be awesome.

When you redo the Kunark raid zones how about new Epic Weapon timelines for each class that go through the zones......heroic and raid

I like new stuff more than anyone! However, this sounds overwhelming to me as a user. Here's why.

Say I take a month or two off EQII (like I just recently did). When you come back there's a heck of a lot of content to catch up on. You have to ask everyone, and still I'm sure I'm missing stuff. If you're introducing new stuff weekly, wow. I can't even finish what I'm doing now, let alone new weekly content. Updates to furnitures, events and other things are really wonderful. Introducing some new little quests too. But to catch up on many varied things each time you go away and come back to the game is pretty overwhelming.

Plus, it sounds a little overwhelming for you too "We WILL do this, we WILL commit to this." It sounds like you're forcibly trying to convince yourselves! We love to be spoiled by you, but the first week you don't release anything the hounds will come out. LOL

Maybe little content weekly if you want (new furniture, new updates to events, new dungeon fixes) and then quests and other things that most players may like to explore as it comes out a little less frequently...every month is ok I think.

I really like that there's still attention to guide quests and having the guides stop by. That's very fun.

Sounds good! I took a 4 year break from game and have come back. There is a lot of new content for me to explore and I still haven't seen it all, but I recently took a toon from beginning to 95, in doing so I saw a lot of the old zones I loved nearly empty. It was great for collecting shiny's, but lonely. I have to say the soloing aspect of the game has greatly improved. leveling a defiler was not nearly as daunting with the mercs as it was back in the day. It would be nice to see some of the old instances turned into fabled dungeons or even scaleable. Like Unrest, or Runnyeye, or even Splitpaw. It would be fun to go back there at 85, or 90 or even 95. And I would be okay with loot drops from the ToV zones in there rather than something new. Or, to be lore friendly, just revamp the current loot depending on level. I really think scaleable zones would bring back some life to the old zones.
Though in reality, in my opinion, the driving force for running zones is Etyma and gear. It has to be worth running or no one is going to do it. But making the gear even just slightly better than the current stuff just kills the current zones. I just think that rather than running halls and Labs in temple of Veeshan again, to try and get more potent gear, it would be nice to switch it up and run Unrest or something for the same potent gear. Or something other than just Dominion for the potent chest and legs. It doesn't even have to be the gear piece, maybe a token for the exchange merchant. Not asking for easy mode, Make it a tough zone like Mistmore castle or the Varsoon zone from The Shadow Odyssey, something really challenging. Put in the dps checks and the heal checks. If its the best gear (not talking about raid gear) then challenge needs to scale accordingly. Do it for the other stuff too for the more casual players.
Just my humble opinion

I personally think this is exciting news. I am an alt-a-holic. I would love to see a new starting zone. I'm pretty much burned out on Frostfang at this point. I have worked my way through all of the other starting areas as well and i'm pretty fried on them. I love playing the older content so a revamp on some of it would be awesome. I'm happy playing EQ2 and i'm glad it's still being developed.

Chas

How about fixing broken/aged mechanics and re-evaluating the AA's for each class? I don't care how long it takes it just needs to get done.

I already have a problem with all the new stuff showing up in both games, I and II. Pardon me for being a bit slow but there are somme people that have a difficult time tracking things- when new expansions, tradeskill, combat, armor stuff comes out, I loose track and pretty much give up on trying to advance my character(s).

I'm definitely not the only one with this problem.

What I'd like to see is a bit more low-level areas, zones, dungeons and possibly a different city / design for houses. Holiday zones and quests are nice. I have to go to Zam or wiki to track what needs to be done but I can deal with that.

Anyway- for soloers, non-guilded and low level characters, all this new stuff is too much and most of the time, we can't even participate because of their high level requirements.

Lol Im also an alt-a-holic . I have 26 toons on my gold account with 2 open slots to make more , and 2 silver accounts with 4 toons each so I would love to see a new starter zone as well !

Most of the major lag issue probably can't be fixed unless they completely revamp the game engine (or rein in the Art Department, but that's a different story). :-/

There was a time when I could play this game (not well, but it could be done) on dial-up, for cryin' out loud. Granted, it was at a very low graphics level, and I couldn't see opponents until I was about in melee range (made things tough for a primary tank with a bow for pulling to him, I can tell you), but it could be done. At the same time, I was also playing City of Heroes and WoW, and while CoH was a pain in the--epiglottis as well on dial-up (though not quite as bad as here), WoW, for all its other faults, was superb, and worked just fine without much of a hitch at all. The best thing one can say about That Other Game, in fact, is that its game engine is very robust, and one could probably play the full game on a smart phone these days. The Powers at SOE chose long ago to presume that by this point, if not earlier, the RL world would be using computers with 7-9 GHz speeds on a single core, and probably teleporting across solar systems and onto star ships moving at Warp Speed as well, presumably. I think one of the things they're trying to do with EQ3 (I am NOT calling it "EQNext"; I want people to know this game existed) is to fix that choice and get the engine more in line with what computers are capable of nowadays, but I'm just not sure about the rest of it. :-/

At any rate, don't expect the lag issues to be resolved any time soon. :-/

Uwk

Heh! Twenty-six and eight! Cute!

Uwk
of the burgeoning, increasing family of...64, counting Silver accounts

Hopefully, what with four other games "sunsetting," we'll get more folks working on this game again.

Uwk

I agree with almost everything in here except for maybe #6 (but then, I truly solo [mo molo for me; don't even have them unlocked] about 99.9% of the time, unless a guildie wants to run in something) and definitely #8. The sub-component idea was dumb; even in the Medieval days, you had places to go to buy what you needed for materials and other parts; that's what the (fabric) Dyers' Guild and the Bakers' Guild and the others were about, so you didn't need to be able to do everything all on your own...and it's hard enough trying to make anything these days (it's gotten worse than it was) until you're able to put AA points into your Tradeskilling. Feh. :-/

Uwk
who, yes, remembers the days of sub-combines and homicidal looms, let alone forges...no, thanks :-/