AOD Update please (RED NAME RESPOND Please!!)

SOE,
I want to support your game. Even through all of your blunders and poor management, you're still better than all other MMOs.
What is included in the upcoming GU/Expac? What should we expect? Should we continue to play/sub?
Please give us something.
Also, what is the ROI on advertising dollars? Is it just not worth it?

I'm not a red but I think i can answer this. The features are well know, posted on Zam and EQ2Wire. Now it would be awesome to get a red confirmation on all the features but I think it is safe to say that all of those features will be released in AoD or included in the next GU after AoD. The reason that more information is not out is two-fold. Features can easily be drastically changed weeks before launch and if you think some released expansions are blunders then you would be shocked at the bad ideas that were worked on for weeks that got scrapped. Also new features do not look pretty at all until very close to release so there is not much they can show the players. This is a standard for all MMORPGs really, they run on their own time and release stuff only when it is ready to be shown and not a minute before.

As for advertising I can answer that and the answer is that no one knows. No really, no one knows how much added revenue advertising brings in. Sure more advertising usually means more revenue but which advertising brings in more subscribers and how many new subscribers are from advertising, corporations cannot even estimate. I can also say that older products such as EQ2 (a dinosaur in MMORPG years) does not usually benefit much from advertising. Advertising is best used when you have a new or substantially improved product/service so you should see internet advertising when AoD and other expansions are being launched but very little in between.

You can shout til you are blue in the face for an official SOE response on the expansion. You won't get anything beyond what we heard at Fan Faire. The EQ2 dev's hands are tied by marketing. You won't hear anything more about Age of Discovery until a couple weeks before it launches. And if it's anything like Velious, it will be the most secretive expansion ever, with no articles, dev interviews, or any of the things that Sentinel's Fate got. Just an article at Massively and an article at one of the other MMO conglomerates. We'll get a couple of content-free Webcasts and then bam the expansion is here.

xxFlukexx wrote:

Where have you been lately and if you don't mind disclosing what meds are you on? (Reason: I might look into getting some.)

Yes OP it pretty much is the best that is out there and that could very well be a big problem the bar is not very high right now, content is shoved out in whatever state it is and many things are left in a buggy state for weeks some for many months.
In the next update you can expect Beastlords, item reforging (where the job of itemization is shoved onto the playerbase), 50 new AA's (or maybe 25 can't remember for sure), a revamp of freeport, mercenaries (for SC cash grabs). That's about it, scheduled for November and not a word on any kind of beta.

The best way to not get a response is to put (RED NAME RESPOND) in your subject.

Nolrog wrote:

Might be a Mod, but that would be a red name after all. lol

crazey wrote:

The features of the expansion are well-known, just check EQ2Wire.
You're seriously asking a company to tell you whether you should buy their product? What kind of answer do you expect, exactly? Obviously they are going to tell you to buy it, why wouldn't they?
SOE has stated numerous times that they do not believe advertising for EQ2 would be profitable. If they thought it was worth the money, they'd be doing it. You're never going to get their market research data, as that is proprietary information, so asking for the return on investment is pointless.
***EDIT***
Oh, and asking for a dev response in a thread title is the most effective means of insuring you never actually get one. If they are seen replying to such topics, pretty soon every thread title on the forum would be calling them out.

Kenazeer wrote:

Heh. I stand corrected.

Lempo's pretty much got the gist of it.
It'll get shoved out, what little content is there will be unplayable for a few weeks, constant patching and hot fixes, old stuff that was broken will remain that way, and we'll get more AA.
That's what we've come to expect from SoE.

You know, it seems to me that the whole process is bass ackwards.
Marketing shouldn't be telling Development what to talk about or not talk about. Development should be telling Marketing what cool new features they should be talking about.

The marketing department is the one that has all the people who know how to build excitement and anticipation about the product. Their entire purpose in the company is to determine the best way to publicize a new product in such a way that potential customers will want to buy it. It's a lot easier to keep people interested in a product when you slowly dole-out information over time, rather than just dumping it all at once.
It's also a bad idea to give out too much information about a product that is still being developed. There's no telling what specific aspects of features may have to be altered or cancelled before launch, so it's important to have some group of people out there who can decide what is safe to advertise and what isn't.

The_Cheeseman wrote:

The ones that are currently working on EQ2 should reexamine their plan.
Zero actual information since Fan Faire. Zero information on even if there is going to be a true beta or not or if it is going to be like Fallen Dynasty & 'beta'd' on test server. No buzz, no snippets, no teaser You Tube videos. Nothing at all.
As for not giving out much information about a product still in developement, we were told Mid November I believe. That time is coming up very quickly and people are getting concerned about the lack of information about testing even.
I can't say I'm particularly excited about it even with beastlords. If the company can't get excited about what they are working on why should I?

I should clarify. I meant to say that the marketing department contains the people that are trained in building excitement and anticipation about a product. I make no value judgements regarding the effectiveness of their efforts. I was simply trying to explain why companies in general let marketing control the flow of information.

Lempo@Everfrost wrote:

I'm sorry but I have no time to give your post a good reply. I'm too busy watching in depth footage of the new AoD expansion for EQII and watching the accurate countdown for release that SOE has made available 6 months in advance.
Maybe you are confusing a trailer with actual ingame footage but insulting me does not change the fact that MMORPG X-pacs don't give out specific release dates far in advance and do not show release content far in advance either. Maybe you haven't been playing MMORPGs very long but I have and that is how they operate. They give out vauge impressions of the features and then about one month prior to release they bombard you with information. Feel free to continue to hate on me though, I love it.

xxFlukexx wrote:

Pre-Order goodies... remember them? The time to debate which tier expansion to buy; do you want a mount, a cloak, a frozen house? Time to arrange your schedule so that you can get some time off work? It is now November and we still don't have a date. This is not how all expansions work. I remember carrying the receipts for SF pre-order for several weeks between paying for it and launch.

The_Cheeseman wrote:

When are they going to start doing that?

They seem to be doing a pretty good job right now, seeing as how there are forum posts begging for more information. People are interested in the expansion and wish to know more, which is exactly what they want. There is no benefit to them telling us exactly what we'll be buying until we can actually buy it, until then we will continue to anticipate the release and speculate on what it will include.

The_Cheeseman wrote:

ARE YOU SERIOUS?

The_Cheeseman wrote:

People want to know more about the expansion because they want to see if their class, gear, spells, etc are getting nerfed or will become obsolete in any way, or to try to determine if there is something they can do now before the xpac gets here so they'll be ready. For example: what if the Tradeskill Apprentices take 40k thurg crafting faction before you can get one? Since it takes 10 days or so to max that, having that info early would be useful if you've been putting it off.
But i doubt there is little "general interest" in the expansion. It's usually pretty specific interest, and is usually motivated in some way by fear or anger. Now that's some great marketing!!

Maybe they should go ask Trion how to do Marketing. Because, regardless of what you thought of Rift, or even if you never even played it, you *have* heard of it. That's Marketing.