Producer's Letter -- February Update Coming!

Discussion in 'General Gameplay Discussion' started by Windstalker, Feb 5, 2013.

  1. Windstalker Executive Producer

    Greetings Norrath!

    It's been an exciting time for us since EverQuest II: Chains of Eternity went live. We are charging full steam ahead with creating more rewarding, memorable experiences and have redoubled our efforts to tell stories better than any other game.

    Speaking of memorable experiences, we are leading up to Erollisi Day with live events that run Feb. 7 to 20. This year there are nine new achievements, new items -- including a set of flying wings, and new reward choices.

    Since December, we've been hard at work crafting the "long view" for EQII to forge a really great year for our game. And I am comfortable telling you we have really great stuff coming into the game this year. At the same time, we are watching and listening to the community to resolve issues and fix bugs.

    We are starting the year with a Game Update on February 26.

    First, we have some new content that's a Two-Group dungeon set in Wurmbone's End. We have heard the community ask for X2 content and so the team went to work on it late last year. Now it’s ready and is being tested.

    In this same update we are also adding a Raid version of Dreadcutter -- the ship zone in Ethernere -- with fun raids and new items.

    Also, in our ongoing efforts to improve our game, we added enhancements to inventory management with new Bag features. You can now easily sort, deposit, and even categorize your bags. Now when you loot a specific item type, like jewelry, it will drop into your Jewelry bag! You can even dump a small bag of items into a bigger bag, or swap bags. The Bag Options button will be added to the Bag Window for ease of access. You can also quickly sort your inventory from the “Sort” button on the character window, or by typing /sort_bags followed by either “Name” or “Level” to sort by name or level, respectively.

    The team has also created daily, weekly, and monthly objectives that offer real and useful items for playing the game. Think of this like a Loyalty program that gives you rewards AS you play the game! This came out of our team wanting to improve upon our Veteran Rewards system that simply required you to wait for your account to get older to get some nifty items. We will still offer a commemorative item for old and wise active accounts each year, but our focus will be on building great rewards into the new objectives system. We will follow up with a more detailed look at the system in the coming weeks.

    Last, but certainly not least, are some significant updates to PvP. Not only are there balance tweaks, but new blue adornments with passive and proc effects (several grow in power the more you have), new armor set bonuses, and more. To give you details, we'll put together a separate article and post on that.

    Exciting news on the team front too. Kyle "Kander" Vallee is now charging ahead as the Lead Designer of EQII as Akil "Lyndro" Hooper becomes the Creative Director. And to help keep the game in greatness, Nathan "Kaitheel" McCall is now an Assistant Lead Designer.

    We will be sharing more details soon too as we prepare our big content update (GU66) for Spring!

    Sincerely, as always,

    Holly Longdale
    Producer, EQII
    Tylia and Kerrthunk like this.
  2. Le Clown Active Member

    awww yeaaa!

    tl;dr GU66 on Feb26
  3. Mae- Well-Known Member

    Interested to see what these "objectives" are and what kind of rewards they get. If they mean vet rewards will become more than a bunch of consumables again, I'm all for it.
  4. Foretold Well-Known Member

    X2 Raid... exciting :D New raid zone...exciting :D
  5. Terein Active Member

    Great, the story has been very subpar recently.

    Relic gear and signature quest rewards (such as prismatic and peacock club) weren't touched by the itemization revamp, at the very least important items like these should be fixed even if you guys don't do another full sweep. :(

    Awesome, I might actually get interested in playing my 95 again. :)

    Sounds pretty hit or miss, in my experience nothing good comes out of "objective systems", they're usually just annoying chores.



    I've noticed the developers posting a lot more since CoE than during SF, DoV, and SS, even though I complain about the game a lot I still want to say thanks, it's great to see some developer interaction again, even if it's not as much as pre-SF.
  6. Malahk Active Member

    Great looking updates. Good job.
  7. Geothe Active Member

    So, Class Improvements from the feedback threads are not going to be part of the GU now?
    You only mentioned PvP.
    Guiscard, Jrel and Taysa like this.
  8. Kerrthunk Member

  9. ShyMidnight Active Member

    Letter sounded very promising, thanks much. Erollisi looks to be full of good stuff, it'll be my first time doing Erollisi content - should be great for home decorating plans. Hoping I manage to win some of those Rose topiaries.

    It's nice news that there's already another update on Feb 26 - I'm looking forward to those new daily/weekly/monthly objective rewards and the inventory sorting improvements.

    Very curious about the big Spring update. Always glad when there's more houses/mounts/furnishings items in an update/expansion.

    Thanks

    SM
    Jrel likes this.
  10. Salty21db Active Member

    I normally am a somewhat SoE fanboy, but I have to complain here.

    First I get an expansion which has very little scripts in terms of boss fights and is just pretty much ridiculously easy along with a lack of factions, access quests, heritage quests, actual raid quests, etc.

    Now the first update is basically turning instance zones into raid zones. Currently there are 3 zones that are used three times, heck the ST layout has been used like 5? Now with this update 5 zones will have three different versions of the SAME INSTANCE. Really? I hope that for your sake you are putting your income into EQNext or something because this is getting pretty ridiculous at this point. This isn't new content being added, this is content already in game being modified.
  11. Atan Well-Known Member

    I know I'm the negative nancy around here, but that sounds an aweful lot like more stuff you do for 5 mins then wait till the next day to do for 5 mins type of things.
    Guiscard likes this.
  12. Kalderon Well-Known Member

    x2 hum.... maybe at least a challenging group zone :D:eek:
    Oh, but then, great news at all *thumbs up*
  13. Dinwiz Active Member

    lol @ dc raid
  14. Kinya Active Member

    I have to totally agree with this.

    I had really big hopes for GU66 since CoE xpac disappointed me (not art as this is awesome imo).

    So more than 3 months passed from CoE release and yet you are not going to introduce to us any new instances? (Another version of existing instances do not count as new zones imo)
    What happen to Cobalt Scar and Siren's Grotto zones which screenshots were showed to us during SOE Live?
    What happen to heritage quests?
    What happen to tradeskiller quests?
    Will we ever see all CoE raid mobs "working as intended"?

    It looks for me like there are few people left who are working on eq2 right now and all your forces were moved towards EQ2Next...

    Also I am dissapointed with lack of communication from your side Holly. You are producer of this game, yet since new forum was introduced I can find only your 3 posts. Really? 3? EQ2 producer who is not communicating with eq2 playerbase...

    So what is your idea of telling storries better than any other game?

    I really would love to see that 'long view" and hear what are your plans for eq2. Telling "it will be great" is not enough for many of us any more.
    Developers from Planetside 2 posted RoadMap with all their ideas and plans for the next 6 months. Players have possibility to actually vote there and show if they like that idea or hate it. Thanks to RoadMap several ideas were already canceled and some of them were re-scheduled earlier due to community request. Is there any chance we can get something similar for EQ2? At the end EQ2 and PS2 is part of the same company - SOE...

    Holly, please don't take my post as an attack on you. It is not. I am just showing my disappointment with GU66 and your Producer Letter as I was expecting much more honestly... And I really hope to see you posting more often on this forum.
    Ridolain and Guiscard like this.
  15. brokenshieldd Active Member

    Ok guys lets give Holly a Break! I have read her letter over and over and No where dose it say this is GU66. What it dose say it that its a update. They update this game every week so dont get crazy. Last post I saw was that GU66 was to come out in April with Cobalt Scars and Sirens Grotto. One thing I do agree with is that they use the same Zones over and over they really need to look at this.
  16. Kinya Active Member

    I am pretty sure there wasn't (GU66) note in the last sentence, when letter was posted... I didn't see it honestly, so I am sorry if I made a mistake. I can't edit my post unfortunately so instead of "I had really big hopes for GU66" it should be "I HAVE really big hopes for GU66..." And I really hope Holly will post more often on this forum than once a month...

    Well if it is not GU66 then it doesn't look so bad, although we will be doing the same zones over and over again (Dreadcutter and Wurbone Crag) :D

    So exactly how many big GU's will we see in EQ2 in 2013?
  17. Buffrat Well-Known Member


    It would be 100% totally completely amazingly awesome if EQ2 did something like this.
    Kinya, Jrel, Le Clown and 3 others like this.
  18. Terein Active Member

    Raid content has almost always used existing layouts, it's been pretty rare for raids to get unique instances.
    Estred likes this.
  19. Belissa Active Member

    I remember they did this to some extend quite some time ago in EQ1 as well (Haven't played since EQ2 went Beta).
    An ingame poll when you log in with questions about stuff. Actually I really loved it, since I somehow felt "involved" in what they are planning to do.
  20. Blissa Active Member

    You guys are bleeding players left and right and you still don't get it. There isn't enough solo content in this game to keep people happy. The days of forced grouping are over! Instead of making new content for the people playing your game. You make new content for the 10% of the players who log in for a raid and log out.

    This game is doomed and I am done giving you my money. I am canceling my subs today and I will never buy another SC or krono again. Smoke Jumper said pay me what you think I am worth when the game went free to play. And I don't think this game is worth anything anymore.

    I can't find a group because I play late nights. I can't get the new gear because obals and shard drop in group zones only. There isn't enough solo content to keep me content. The mercs flat out suck to the point there almost useless. 98% of my friends and family who use to play this game have quit.

    I have two friend's who still play this game, when they quit I am done logging in this game!
    Guiscard likes this.