Producer's Letter: May/June News!

Windstalker or anyone from SOE can you give out more sold hints on the Exp (besides Dino's) please and thank you, My worry about it is this going to be the sleeper part 3 (Tears of Veeshan part 2) and if it is I really would like to know.

All that will be revealed at SOE Live.

I am ridiculously excited about the NPCs, loyalty token items and status merchant revamp.

I do hope the old status items don't disappear though. There's nothing much WRONG with what we have available right now, there just isn't much of it. My only beef with the items we have now are appearance armors that aren't usable by everyone. I've been peeved with that since 2004 though...

oh my, status merchant revamp! =D

I am a bit curious regarding Deathtoll is it a dungeon or is it a raid or both, have alot of good memories of killing mobs in there

I can't wait to see these!

A couple points I wanted to add:

(1) They should make cross-server contested PvP zones, either from Dungeon Maker or Battlegrounds queues. Imagine being able to run High Keep Contested with people on Nagafen; with the respawn rates of mobs in that dungeon, it would give people a break from the monotony on their non-PvP servers every once in awhile to enjoy some intensity and new strategies.

(2) Bring back the Frozen Tundra battleground. Being able to attack towers and the gates of your enemies, while watching your back, had promise as a match type. The only problem I had is that the gates had too much HP, so people only killed each other rather than achieve the map objectives.

(3) 'Dungeon Finder 2.0' should require at most one tank and one healer, at least one mage for arcane cure (since some detriments require it), at least one scout, and at least one utility class (enchanter / bard).

(4) Why are CoE and ToV zones not in the Dungeon Finder? Let people earn double etyma for throwing chance to the wind when it might group them with poorly equipped players.

(5) Will we ever see old raid zones included in Dungeon Finder? Some DoV raids might require players be flagged with ToFSx2 debuff before they can queue, and lower tiers needing their raid clickies. For this kind of feature, it would be nice to see how many people have been called to the raid when the window comes up for you to accept an invitation. One problem might come around about who has been designated the leadership role; voting might be necessary to prevent abuse.

i really like the look of these new things. Double Double etyma will help me a lot. Great stuff Windstalker and all the other developers, Looks amazing. is there any ETA when battlegrounds will be fixed?

Nice stuff!

I'm wondering what those new 100 loyality items might be? Sounds like a lot of (new?) stuff. Any hints of what we will get?

I like the housing items, those are always a good thing. Expansions are ok as well but why are you guy always increasing the level cap? Why don't you guys keep it the same, there is nothing wrong with it the way it is. Lots of people are going to loose the 20% max bonus again like we did the last couple times and it really bites. To be honest people don't like change, they like to be comfortable, ask anyone who is at work if they want to be moved to a different desk every day. I guarantee they will most likely tell you no. Why not give us exploration and excitement, more challenge, and better gear. Give us something to work for different puzzles to solve, maybe even dungeons that change each time we go in them so its not going to be so easy to defeat the bosses. Perhaps a new beginner island or something low level challenging, when was the last time you guys did something low level so it was worth people wanting to come back. This game has been made so simple to play that we have forgotten how to have fun, we can buy our way to 85 then power level to 95 and never really get to experience any of what this was meant to be. What do you think EverQuest Next is going to be like?

I'll start at the end. I understand there is no leveling in EQdisney, so I'd hate it.

While we can buy our way to 85 it's not compulsory, and I see the only players that take that option are ones that have a squillion toons already,or, new players that aren't interested in anything other than being max level. Adding new starter content for these players would be a massive waste of resources. Tbh I think any major updates for low level adventure is a waste of resources, there's a megaton of stuff already there to do. A completely new player that complained of a lack of 'stuff'' to do I'd instantly place on ignore.

I'd also go as far to say a lot of players like level increases, maybe not the leveling process, but the new shiny gear and mobs that come with it. Gear cannot continue to be inflated without it, that is the main thing, the way I see it, that makes content faceroll easy.

I quite like change. Puzzles not so much.

Nunchaku for brawlers in 2014?

yes.

Well it depends on your playstyle whether you want it or not I guess.

Personally I'm more of an altoholic, questaholic, smell the roses, progression kind of player so once I reach level cap with a toon I actually mothball them and play an alt instead. I'm not into the end game endless grind to collect etymas, AA's etc. I have 5 level 95 toons, none of them have done the ToV overland quest series because I want those quests to gain me XP on the way to a new level. With the new L100 cap I will be happy to play that content and presumably what comes in the next expansion too as I'm assuming that the quest xp will be equally pitiful as the recent expansions (aka 5 prestige points = 1 new adventure level or 5 old adventure levels - I believe it was called "horizontal levelling" ).

I appreciate my personal playstyle doesn't follow the normal trend, but hey its the way I like to play the game and I wanted to explain that there are players like me who will love to see the level cap rise so we can dust off some old friends again and play them. YMMV.

If the last 10aa we just had are a sign, I'd imagine those next 5 levels will be a nightmare (to try to make content last longer.) Will be fun for the people who lose that 20% bonus per alt

So were getting 5 more levels. I guess this means a total gear revamp, new raid zones and the sort. Are we getting more aa's or prestige to go with those 5 levels. One would think you would. Hopefully you don't make those hell levels like the hell of the last 10 aa you did. Also what is the status of any possible server merges. Several of the smaller servers are dying, example GUK.

I think they're done with gear revamps. We'll likely just see an increase in stats. As for the pace of leveling, it depends on whether or not we get more prestige abilities. That was their justification for how long 90-95 took.

They're not going to talk about server merges in public until they come to a final decision on them. The best response you'll get from them is that they're always monitoring the situation. They have all the actual information on the populations, so they can decide on merges when they feel it's actually necessary.

So, let me summarize.....we get even more etymas, in my case I'm sitting on 14k that I doubt I'll ever use. More chances at RNG'd loot that never takes into account how well you might play your toon or the game, it's simply pure chance. Oh, and you diminished the chances that we had of ever seeing a Sparkling Gem. Again, simply summarizing, not bitter!

I'd guess the 100 new items may be more armor sets; seems to me when you look at gear slots and class overlap, you could do it for around 100 new items.

I'm pretty interested to see the revamp on loyalty merchant stuff and the npc additions. Always good to have a goal to save for and work for.

How very exciting! Sounds like a lot of cool stuff coming down the pipeline, and I can't wait!!!

One request, however: Please, please, please, for the love of all that's holy, give players a decent means of gaining experience during this new expansion that doesn't require them to choose between snail's pace xp gains from doing newly released content (i.e., quests) or everyone and their dog crams into Skyshrine...

It kinda feels like the past couple of expansion/level cap raises have been a tale of two extremes with regard to getting the most bang for your buck: you either progressed at a snail's pace doing the new questlines that the xpac introduced but enjoyed the ride while it lasted (even though you only wound up gaining probably at most 3 of the 5 levels available) and then found yourself looking elsewhere to finish up the remaining levels, -or-
You ran Skyshrine with a bazillion other people until your eyes bled because to be perfectly honest, it provided the best xp for your time and effort.

Most players have limited play time each night/weekend due to those pesky real life commitments, so I can understand their desire to feel like they're making the most of their valuable time, and choosing Skyshrine to get to the level cap asap, then go do the newly released content. But wouldn't it be awesome if they didn't have to choose effeciency over new content experience? If they had a viable alternative to Skyshrine?

What do you all think?