E3 Progression Server Interview with Holly

Hey all! While at E3 this year I got to sit down with Holly Longdale and we talked about the upcoming progression servers and server merges. Check it out (it's under the EQ1 part)! http://eq2.zam.com/story.html?story=36218

Ty, i enjoyed reading that and Im happy that they are making overland mobs stronger on the TLE servers

Thanks so much for that link, and you did such a beautiful job on it! It's very professional and classy.

I see nothing mentioned except that crafting can kill you

I do enjoy that everyone so far has missed an important timeframe mentioned.

I hope she actually means permanently, and not 3 months or something.

Good stuff!

My guess, knowing how the voting works on EQ1, is that she probably imagines that the majority of players on the server will just continue choosing not to progress to the next expansion via vote, making it "permanent".

I noticed the launch plans for end of July, but as beta hasn't even begun yet, I kind of filed that away, in case something takes longer than originally planned.

And when she mentioned how crafting can kill you, I had deja vu back to launch not only from "death by crafting table," but also "death by backstab while you're in a crafting instance on the PvP server" haha! It will be interesting if they let people do that again, or even be killed while in their 2-room inn housing like it was originally, too. It sounds crazy (and it was!) but it was also a lot of fun.

I mean I already knew that the players would vote on openings content and that they would probably stop after a certain point, it only makes logical sense. So I didn't really care to see it confirmed again

I said it in the FAQ thread.

I just don't see how people think they can relive the old EQ2 days again, when there is basically NOTHING left of the old 1-50 experience!

- Old starter isles (Queens Colony) is gone!
- Qeynos and Freeport have been completely revamped! all voice packs are gone! All old content and questlines are gone!
- A lot of the old zones have been completely revamped / streamlined! Again lot of old questlines gone!
- Desert of Flames expansion areas have been completely revamped!
- Kingdom of Sky expansion areas have been completely revamped!
- Leveling experience is ultra fast now!

Even if they cut back the EXP gain to old levels, we will hit a problem with content! Since almost all content has been removed, there will be not enough quests left to reach level 50 without massive grinding!

Just the idea of having to start over and level through Frostfang Sea starter area again makes me vomit! I cannot stand that one anymore. While I have leveled many more times through Queens Colony / Qeynos and never felt that way, because of all the races having their own city states with their own unique questlines. /SIGH

And how is that going to change with TLS?


It will be today's sorry state of the Core game. Just with some restrictions slapped on top of it!

If they going to cut the XP gain to old levels, there will be a huge lack of content in the level 1-70 range! As they have revamped pretty much every zone in that level range, butchered litterally, with lots of content removed to simplify / streamline todays ridiculous fast leveling experience! Not to mention that all rewards will be completely out of wack / not appropriate to level.

And if they not going to adjust XP gains, then everyone will be level 50 within days. Even casuals will reach level 50 within a week or two.

It's just not going to work! Today's state of the game in level 1 to 85 range is terrible. You can't just lock the expansions content, apply some restrictions and think you got a TLS.

They have done so many (most of them terrible in every way) changes to both the core game and old zones in the last years. I just don't see how this is going to work, without reverting everything back to how it was.

This whole TLS is going to be a huge dissapointment! A total dissaster if you ask me!

They have removed a lot of questlines. Today's Qeynos and Freeport for example, is nothing of how it used to be!
A lot of the old zones have been revamped. And with those revamps they did sweeping changes in some of the zones. They added some new too, but in line of the current leveling speed and stat changes.

This is also a problem. All those sweeping stat changes they have done, have ruined a lot!

I would suggest giving the TLP servers a try once they go fully live before preaching doom etc etc.

Good thing we didn't ask you then, huh?

From the looks of it, you seem to be another end-of-the-world kind of player with the new servers. There has been plenty of posts and information about how these servers will turn out, and since they're (more or less) run by the player base them selves in terms of progression and such, I can't really see the PvP server (at least) turning out badly.

No doubt. I'll give them $15 to play. There's a few reasons many of us are apprehensive about the whole thing. It went from being impossible to being potentially announced and released in less than two months. The FAQ was worrisome. Are these servers meant to attract those of us that left the game because of what it turned into around SF's release? Maybe these servers are for those that currently play and enjoy the game the way it is. We really won't know who these servers are meant for until we get in there and play.

Maybe some of you will take it as being dramatic, but I know what I want to play, or more importantly I know what I don't want to play, and that's anything resembling the current state of EQ2.

I agree, there's a world of difference between making the current game more difficult and removing all the expansion packs and actually rolling back to the (more or less) original EQ2. They're practically not even the same game.

It would be nice to have some idea of just how far back they're going to go (and if that's even possible) - I mean, back in the day, EQ2 was hard, man - every level felt like a cause for celebration, every rare was a rush - Adept3's took a long time to craft, mastercrafted armour was worth having, mounts had to be earned, quest givers didn't even have an icon over their heads and that's all before we talk about access quests and Spirit Shards and having to recast your buffs every twenty minutes. And groups - you really needed a group and really had to work the HO's, cos, you know, it was an MMO.

So what are we saying? Are we talking about the old stat system, for example? Fine tuning your stats to suit your playstyle? What about crafting? Are we going back to WORTs (you know, those things Holly's never heard of)? Rares being REALLY rare? Those things were the gold standard of the economy. And you spend half a day finding a rare only to **** it up on the crafting table and lose it! Are we camping placeholders for hours while grinding and generally messing about? Are we shouting in chat that a mob is up becuse you know that people have been waiting days for him to pop??

So many features that made EQ2 a great game, involved, difficult, time consuming, frustrating - rewarding! So many features stripped away over the years to please people who then found it too easy and left, while the playerbase that really counted (the ones who would've stayed), the ones who wanted a challenge, were sidelined.

I'm not saying we should go back to any or all of these things, but there is so much to consider when devs talk about rolling back. Can it really even be done - and in such a short time? I've paid up too and I'm there at launch, excited, for the first time in maybe six years, but I have to say I'm not convinced.

Good lord, you sure are a broken record. Do you have to fill every thread on the TLE with your vitriol? I mean, c'mon. We get it, now can you please move on and find/play something you enjoy? You're just trolling at this point, and whatever impact you think you are having has long lost any meaning. Now you're just disrupting threads for the sake of it.

Please stop.

Look it's pretty evident that there's going to be a lot of differences from this to launch. The itemization won't change so they'll buff up mob HP's to counter it, that's fair. The isle/colony probably isn't going to make it in, same for the suburbs of the original city, because apparently they don't have time.

What would be good though if these things were worked on in the meantime so that if you do another TLE server down the track these things could make it in. The voice overs should never have been removed, it was just an attempt to make the new content that didn't have VO's not look as bad. That's a pretty god awful policy for removing content. "We can't put the same resources in to making new content for you guys, so resources that were used on old content that was actually pretty cool is being ripped out so that our new work looks as good as what we did before." Right..not that it had that effect.

You should never rip out old quests and stuff like that that were vital to the original design. And in EQ2's case it's even a more baffling redundant decision. You already made all these alternate areas to level up in and streamlined everything, pretty much by passing old content completely, which is fine if that's the direction you want to go. But what purpose does it serve to go back and "rework" the old stuff that you've made pretty clear by your new design that you don't want anyone to do? That's like dumping your girlfriend and coming back a week later and telling her "oh yeah BTW, you're ugly and I hate you." It's just bad karma and nothing was accomplished.

If the team would take the time to add all these and little things like this back to the original game, even if they can't make it on the first TLE server, it'd be a much appreciated effort for potential future ones or changes to the existing ones.

"The sky is falling, the sky is falling....."

We should, at least, let the servers launch. Let people play, then judge.

/Agree.

There's one very useful thing missing from these forums that we had back in the day on Freeport F2P server's old segregated forums: Troll Traps! These days we could use about 50 a week here.