Producer's Letter Discussion Thread

For the love of God end this ethereal train in the next expansion:


1. No more game breaking items/runes to be handed out based on RNG or brute force grinding.

2. Balance itemisation so that solo < heroic < raid.

3. Stop the over use of fabled/mythical and ethereal tags on items. All completely out of whack. Prestige tag should be removed altogether!

4. Make items worthy of the time and effort being put into acquiring them.

5. Upon player inspection belonging to different tier of play guilds, one should clearly see the difference in items on display and NOT seeing 99.99% of player population wearing almost the same items in each slot. We want to see progression of gear! and NO, shiny collection gear is not progression!

6. Bring challenge back in to heroic/raid level of play (@Kander -- remember Zraxth Unseen Arcanum? ). The aforementioned items allowed steamrolling of the heroic zones in ToT which carried over in to T3 raids. Mind numbing trivial content needs to go away!

If one of these points are seen to be worked in the next expansion I would call that a win.

Silly monkey, you will never see point three fixed until you are six feet under.

They can't convince you to sub if you can't get totally locked out of getting stronger due to a monetized tag on gear.

I don't expect to see any of those 6 points even actually addressed, much less changed.

Aye, but the one most definitely not changing is point 6.

Sad thing is, my guild told me that "the prestige really isn't prevalent and there're normal gear pieces in every bit of new content"...only for most of said pieces not to be actual upgrades, so I literally cannot progress any further without subbing.

>.> I never really followed the golden path. XD My curiosity gets me lost too easily. =P I'm just as random and sporadic with quests now as I ever was, hell, 2004 I was determined to do every quest on every character I had. Nowadays I just decorate, bop around from one old zone to another looking for furniture, and quest when I feel nostalgic or need to lvl up for a furniture related quest or to gear up my small handful of 100s that gather shinies and stuff.
How sandbox it is really depends on the player and how willing they are to break away from the end-game herd, for the most part.

Even Mastercrafted got thrown around for the Thalumbra xpac.
I was soooo confused when I crafted items with common materials and the products were labeled MasterCrafted. I got some angry letters from some less ethical fellow crafters (when I was charging handcrafted prices on the broker for handcrafted equivalent gear) and they angrily told me to charge mastercrafted prices like them, basically so they could continue ripping people off. -.-

I still don't have a max level character and never have in this or original EQ. Just can't seem to stay interested in end game content enough to grind to that max level. I always go back to some low level alt and run my fav areas over and over. Still enjoy playing the game just don't do the 8+ hour play sessions and such that i used to do with mult characters. Doubt I'll buy this expansion but who knows it may have something that I want for all of my toons. I bought prev ex and swore i'd get at least one toon to max level and that didn't happen. lol I just love the feel of the content like level 60 and below way better than the upper game content.

I've been buying the expansions lately for the tradeskill content and house items. It takes me so long to get the last few levels I never do end game content in time to have other people to play with. I reached level 95 and within a couple of weeks the level was raised. I think the last time I was at end game was the othmir expansion.

Good thing I like crafting.

XD Same here, pretty much. I love the Collector Edition houses! I do make sure my main decorator gets to max adventuring lvl just incase there is any furniture I need to grind faction for, and max my Necro and SK for any furniture farming I might need to do.
Oh! And I run through the questlines at least once so I know what items to keep an eye out for on the broker. I hoard the one-per-character house items that most people sell off. >.> (Would be nice if they repeated the vendor idea in Bone mire and Q/FP; unlock the furniture from quests and such to buy off the NPC. I wouldn't need to hoard stuff any more, and that would make a decent currency sink since we decorators never vendor furniture. )

I would love if they would do that! I go back and buy that stuff from the vendors often when I'm decorating. For the beginner zones you can remake characters to repeat quests to get the house items but that gets boring. I'd much rather just buy from a vendor after completing. And for the high level zones, there is no way I would remake characters to do those quests over and over. It would take wayyyyy too long. You are right about that being a good plat sink.

Exactly. House items should never be one and done. It's furniture, hardly game breaking stuff. Decorating shouldn't be hindered by nope, too bad, you get one item A, that is it.

I have enjoyed reading all the different ideas on this thread. I wanted to ask something but until the decorators added their thoughts I felt a wee bit left out as I too am mainly a decorator. Absolutely love it. I don't have a max level character yet, prolly because I prefer the decorating side of the game. My question is, will there be a new prestige home with this expansion? if so, could I ask that it not be so big that it is a huge challenge to make it into a home - Kromzek Keep is a real nightmare for me. Speaking of prestige houses, would it be possible to provide us with a more "normal" type Prestige House such as a middle size house with a proper outdoor garden - would be nice to decorate a place like that to relax in after a long day of fighting and grinding.

Thank you Devs for everything you do. I am disabled and spend so much time in EQ2 I dread to think what would happen if it ever ended.

Problem with small houses is small item count. Small item counts just feel like strangulation. :\ (I ALWAYS run out of item room. Everyone I know that decorates has the same problem.)
I have 2 solutions for "too much space".
1) fence off the front area with dividers, tiles.. I've even used beds turned on one end and tiles to create a ceiling so it looked wallpapered (The tiles had the pillows above them.)
2) Create a fake "front porch" and put a teleporter in front of the door, and one in whichever room/rooms you are decorating, and fake doors in those rooms with teleporters in front of them (if they are completely separate).

Just remember, just because it's there, you don't HAVE to use it. Hiding it is always an option.

This is a really good post. QFE, or whatever.

I agree. I especially think that a moderate house with an attached porch or garden area would be great. Maybe with some of the built in modifications for floor, walls and ceiling that the Qeynos and Freeport houses get. With the standardization of item count + both expanders, I've yet to run out of count in a very well appointed and detailed house of any size. (guild halls are another matter!)

Variety is the spice of life!

I don't think it matters. They already know what we're getting. I hope it's not another house simply because the last few houses I've gotten from a pre-orders or vet rewards were best used for storage. If it is I'm sure it will just be a questionable reskin of something that already exists anyways.

Griffon Lady, thank you SO much for the ideas. I had not considered making the larger areas in those huge homes adaptable to my needs and your hints and tips have certainly fired up my old brain cells. Now I can't wait to try your ideas out. Never realized that house transporters would be so useful if used in that way. Brilliant ideas, thank you once again.

I hope for an Estate of Unrest update even if it's just for the Nights of the Dead event, make it like it only appears during this event (caught between planes type of thing lore). Was and still is one of my favorite instances.

I have a few houses that I've fenced off or used teleporters in that I can show you, if you have a toon on MAj'Dul server. If you have the graphics way up the loading slows down and you can see how I built it. XD (O'course, my PC is a couple years old and built on a budget... might just be when I load it. XD)

Erm... a lot of us were upset when they released an expansion that did NOT have a house in the collector's edition. Please do not make those of use who DO like houses suffer simply because you do not want another house. Just don't get the CE if you don't want it... o.0

I see what you did there. What I find funny is that you clearly don't.