EverQuest Welcomes a New Producer

Craig Knapp, the new producer of EverQuest, took some time to introduce himself: ------------------------------------------------------------ EverQuest Producer's Letter Greetings Norrathians! First off I wanted to take some time to introduce myself as the new producer of EverQuest. EverQuest has been a large part of my life for the past three years; including the past two years as the game's Associate Producer. During my time on the EverQuest team I've come to realize one of the great things about EQ is the friendships and the community that we’ve all come to love. We all remember the first time we logged into EQ. If your experience was anything like mine, you were shocked that so many windows could fit on one screen! Thankfully, most of us found our way out of the initial shock and found folks who showed us the ins and outs of the game. Many of these in-game friendships have grown into friendships outside of Norrath and for that I thank EverQuest. We all know that EverQuest is not just a game. The game and its community are both a large part of all our lives. Our team takes great pride in this fact, but at the same time we are humbled by the responsibilities that come along with it. As developers, our primary responsibilities are to make an entertaining game and to support the thriving EverQuest community. Only by working closely with you, can we keep EverQuest successful for years to come. As I hope you have noticed, our team spends a great deal of time on message boards and we are constantly gathering what's important to you and bringing that information to the forefront. We continue to develop procedures that facilitate that process, but allowing our community to thrive requires an ongoing dialogue with you. For instance, class re-envisionment has been, and continues to be, a hot topic. The recent patch represents many of the initial changes we’ve made together, and we welcome your continued feedback on them. Our goal is to get these changes out as quickly as is reasonable, but to pace ourselves knowing full well that this will take many iterations and updates. This continues to be a top priority and we've already made many changes based on your feedback. Your continued feedback allows us to make EverQuest a better game. Another hot topic in the EQ community right now is server merges. Merging servers was a tough decision, but it is necessary for the continued success of the game and these changes will make EverQuest healthier in the long run. Larger populations make it easier for players to interact, trade items, find groups, and establish guilds. As with many changes of this magnitude, there are bumps in the road along the way. To help things go a little smoother, we are planning a few changes to address some concerns that you have raised. First, we'll be instancing the Plane of Time to alleviate the bottle neck that many of you may face as a result of higher populations. Second, at the request of the players, we're going to combine the servers that have established a voluntary rotation system for raid targets. The Rathe and Karana will now be combined. The communities on The Rathe and Karana servers have put forth an extraordinary amount of time and energy to create their rotational systems and we want to do what we can to support these players and their chosen play style. As a result of this change, Bertoxxulous and Tholuxe Paells will be combined. Third, we've heard your opinions on which server names should be kept after the mergers. We feel the real answer to this question is that you, the community, should decide the name for your server. Therefore, we will be adding polls to allow every player the chance to vote for the name of their particular server (including servers that have already been merged). We're working out the details of that now so stay tuned for a post shortly. Moving forward, the EverQuest team has some ambitious plans for the next twelve months. I can't play spoiler to them all (yet), but I can say that we are extremely excited about the direction we're heading and I wanted to give you a sneak peek. As most of you already know, veteran players will be receiving bonuses this spring as a token of our appreciation for making EQ and the EQ community what it is today. This summer will bring a complete revamp of the newbie experience and will also hold some additional content for existing players that I can't wait to play. Also, be ready for art facelifts to some of our old stomping grounds this fall. I'd like to tell you about some of the other things we have planned, but you'll just have to wait and see. :) Our team has a tremendous responsibility to be faithful stewards to Norrath and its community. EverQuest has enjoyed over six years of success and we plan on keeping it that way for at least six more. My sincerest thanks go out to all of you for allowing me to be a part of the EverQuest community. Regards, Craig Knapp (aka Zorillius) Producer, EverQuest

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THE REVOLUTION BEGINS IN EQ
# Apr 16 2005 at 7:27 PM Rating: Decent
I know this is probably very unrealistic but I wish we had a "nostalgia" server where players can play the game in its original mode before any of the Luclin expansions, but keeping the zone revamps done for the sake of giving 60+ players places to hunt on the old continents.

Yes this may be very inconvenient for most players but for those who liked the game before the last 6 expansions were released, it gives us that extremely high level of difficulty again. Also obviously server transfers would not be allowed and only items from the Original/Kunark/Velious eras would exist.

This would bring back:
-Importance of Druids/Wizards in transportation. Why do we even have most of these circle spells anymore when there's a pok book or some form of "all class"-porting potions that can let you access most popular zones.

-Reduce the dreadfully advanced capitalistic society of the modern servers. No one even wastes their time selling low level items anymore and when they do it is terribly overpriced.

-Bring back the social atmosphere of Greater Faydark and East Commonlands, including the voluntarily produced auction tunnel in East Commonlands. These two zones being highly social had special meaning for a lot of us.

-Boats will also be more usable. It really is sad that in a game void of automobiles and airplanes that the characters don't even need to use a boat for last minute transportation. This server would be a godsend for those of us who like to play in leisure.

If all else fails I say one day every server and every bank is just wipe cleaned of every item, equipment piece, and money and the players are forced to rebuild their inventories from scratch because the number of plat farmers out there is beyond ridiculous and it ruins the game.
RE: THE REVOLUTION BEGINS IN EQ
# Apr 18 2005 at 12:11 PM Rating: Decent
Scholar
32 posts
hehe....
Maybe you should consider buying a Mac and joining us on Al`Kabor, SOE's ******* stepchild server. We have expansions only through Planes of Power. We are small, yet fiercely loyal to our server (and platform). Most of us are first time EQ players, although we do have quite a few PC converts that have come over to our community. Visit http://www.eqmac.com to get an idea about where we stand as a community. Most ex PC players find it rather refreshing.

That being said, I have comments and questions for Mr. Knapp.

For almost the 2 years that Al`Kabor has been in existence, we have fought for recognition to get patches for unplayable bugs, GM's to correct in game issues, ADVERTISEMENT of the Macintosh version and availability of a packaged product (although we have a workaround in case anyone is interested.. http://www.eqmac.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4639 ). What future does SOE have in store for the Macintosh platform? J. Smedley posts that SOE is planning on bringing all their titles to all platforms, yet we cannot get something like PoP flagging fixed that was broken on our last patch in when, February? You release 2 expansions for the PC side in the time we get ONE patch. You pull the ONLY coder off of Al`Kabor to fix all your bugs in DoN while we have to sit around wondering if and when we will ever see our CURRENT content functional.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade this server for any overpopulated PC server, but we pay the same amount of real money a month that everyone else does. So why then do we not get any GM or bug fixing luvin? This has nothing to do with a Mac -vs- PC our OS is better than your OS kind of issue. This is strictly a " You offered this product to us, we purchased it with the assumption that SOE would give us the necessary support to make our gaming experience pleasurable" kind of issue. SOE made promises, all we ask is that you keep them.

For those PC players that have read this far, Al`Kabor is a VERY playable server....up to Planar Progression. We have 2 main raiding guilds, one of which is knocking on the door to Vex Thall (the Emperor WILL die soon!) and another that was planning a more planar progression path. We wouldn't be so upset if we didn't love playing this game. So, if you can keep your fingers crossed, say a few prayers, send a few letters, etc.. on behalf of Al`Kabor we would appreciate any assistance we can get.

Thank you.


Edited, Mon Apr 18 13:14:38 2005
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Utdaan Twoswords
65 Forest Stalker of Al`Kabor, Macintosh server
http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=834254
RE: THE REVOLUTION BEGINS IN EQ
# Apr 16 2005 at 10:35 PM Rating: Decent
www.vanguardsoh.com ... read the FAQ
Reduce Servers adds more Questings like LDoN DoN Planes and
# Apr 16 2005 at 4:47 PM Rating: Default
As the server size continue to grow, when server numbers are reduced, more and more peeps will be available for questing in the many different genres about to come ... Keep developing you guys. /clap
Changes
# Apr 16 2005 at 2:16 PM Rating: Good
I would like to see many things change but a few things that come to mind.

1. Quested items should be upgraded and most certainly be better than dropped items, based on level of course, not to say that all dropped items should be trash, but rather if a player spends time to do a quest it should be for a great item or a great amount of exp. The game is called EVERQUEST not EVERDROP ( even though with all the population leaving for wow maybe EVERCANCELED ACCOUNT would be better:P )

2. Zone revamps should not be just a " lets get the level 70s back into splitpaw " type.

3. Charactor image/model expansion, too many druids running around with long white hair.

4. The ability to name our pets, one time only but every time we summon it it will be " bob " or whatever.

Oh yeah, druids need to be more powerful...than everybody :)))

these are just a few things that come to mind offhand, I love this game though I cant play like I could 4 years ago ( work and Family :) but I still like to bump around on weekends. I've played eq2 and wow and they are pretty to look at but they, at this time, lack any depth.

Safe Hunts and Rare drops!

RE: Changes
# Apr 16 2005 at 5:17 PM Rating: Default
SOE has already said that PC model revamps would be a BIG undertaking( every motion character does has to be revamped, from ducking to getting DDed).

They said they might consider outsourcing the job to a nnon SOE company, but have not decieded yet.

There was a big disscission on EQINTERFACE awhile back.
EQ
# Apr 16 2005 at 1:14 PM Rating: Decent
Scholar
***
2,607 posts
Personally, I believe EQ2 should have been an EQ1 expansion, revamping the game, if necessary -- one expansion at a time. Or a patch/update.


Edited, Mar 12th 2019 2:04pm by GOMN
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RE: EQ
# Apr 16 2005 at 5:34 PM Rating: Decent
Yep, EQ1 really is the best game ever. I've played eq2 (to paraphrase a quote from a friend of mine 'I'm embarassed to say I bought it'), WoW; (which took me to the end game in under a month, yippee), tried the free trial from "funcom" (someone should sue them for false representation), and a FPS is a FPS is a FPS... the only game I have played recentlythat can compare to EQ is life.

Improve EQ? You bet! The community is really here; the wishy-washies (yep, you Venen) claim that they're (community) all the same, but having tried them its just not there. Kinda like being the only race xxx in a race yyy city (IRL don'tcha know).. nobody to play with come daylight.

The people here know me the way my wife did; and they accepted me all the same. Its amazing.

Ean
hmm
# Apr 16 2005 at 10:26 AM Rating: Decent
Wait wait wait, this is just a guess, but um... more land and more loot??? OMG SWEET! I Dearly hope that they continue to add more eye-candy effects and more new stuffs instead of fixing old bugs, quests, pathing and stuff like boats!!!

Hurray for brilliance!
Hey Craig
# Apr 16 2005 at 6:27 AM Rating: Good
You doing anything for all the people you abandoned on the Ubisoft servers?


B
____________________________
Toucan Tanksem
of Vallon Zek, Sebilis, Venril Sathir, Antonius Bayle, and now Toukan of Povar
well
# Apr 15 2005 at 10:08 PM Rating: Default
hrm wonder what changes be coming our way this year
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