Producer's Letter: April 30, 2007 :: World of Warcraft :: ZAM

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Producer's Letter: April 30, 2007May 1st, 2007 at 10:51 AM by Railus

Here is the latest Producer's Letter, as seen on EQLive:

I wanted to say, "Thank You" to all of the players who had so much fun on April 1st. We threw in the new player models and had a great time putting it together for everyone to have fun with. It was a fun joke and something that many players will remember for quite some time. I can say that we did learn a lesson though; giving the players an option to disable such a feature will be included in the future. With that being said, I continue to get IM's about adding a stick figure spell which makes me laugh each time.

I have been paying quite a bit of attention to the Customer Support team as well. I know that many of the players feel that the CS team doesn't always communicate to the development team. It may not be obvious that the communication is actually constant and collaborative. I am working with the CS team and our Community team to better communicate to the players the reporting and fixing of CS related issues. The development team fixes multiple bugs each week that have been sent to us from CS and the players should know that we are listening and reacting to make your game play experience better each day. Look for new callouts of CS related fixes and make sure you submit game play issues to the CS reps. Many of the players assume that "someone" else has submitted the problem. Trust me the more reports the better!

Our team is hard at work on addressing Live game issues and working on discussing future expansions and plans. Along with the normal meetings that we have every week, we also have two meetings each year to discuss the future plans for EverQuest and create goals based on community feedback and team desires. In our last meeting the mood was different. We had a renewed passion for the game and were proposing big, exciting ideas that we didn't want to compromise on due to dates. We presented our ideas and new vision and received 100% support.

In this Producer letter I am proud to announce that we're changing our tactics so we can accomplish what we have set out to do and do it with the quality we know we can deliver. Our next expansion will be released in November. This will give us more time to polish the game content and features. I am also happy to announce that November will be the month for all future expansion releases as well. We realize that many players want more content but would like to be able to play through the last expansion before feeling like they are falling behind when a new one comes out. Our goal is to focus on the overall quality and let the players have time to enjoy the great work that we put into each release.

This is absolutely great news for our team and for our players as well. I look forward to giving everyone an inside look of the development of the next expansion so you can see the hard work going into the release.

Clint "Jourdian" Worley
EverQuest Producer
Sony Online Entertainment

Tags: EverQuest, News

Comments

Reply to Odie

# May 11 2007 at 7:22 PM Rating: Decent

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For some reason i can't reply, i get a 404 message.

Any how, I thought a cataclysm would be just the thing. Do that, and merg eq 1 and 2 into Eq forever, or eq 3 or even rename the game. There are tons of ways to make the game better, and even more to make it worse. I agree, adding new stuff to old stuff equals broken stuff. I guess what is comes down to, the more zones you add, the thinner the population gets, when that happens doesn't it make sence to solo?

Expansion Release Rate

# May 11 2007 at 1:11 PM Rating: Excellent

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Guru

546 posts

Interesting announcement with mixed results I expect to see.

I play basically every day for 2-5 hours and raid three days a week. My guild is progressing through Anguish and Theatre of Blood and Tacvi so we are by no means uber yet. I enjoy several different characters of different levels and playing them in different zones.

I like the idea of slowing expansions because I am also not able to see everything before the zones get abandoned when the masses move on to the new content. Everyone remember the push for skins in POR-Devastation that lasted about three weeks? Nobody would do anything else. That was all I saw every day then all of a sudden that zone was vacant and nary a cricket chirping was to be heard in there.

TSS has some very good content and a well developed progression path, and I thought it was a shame that so many ppl left it to go chase Buried Sea mobs. Ashengate is normally empty or maybe 5 or 7 ppl in zone during prime time now. Same thing for Frostcrypt.

(Frostcrypt is a poorly laid out zone with no places to have a group fight for exp and camp for the nite or afk for any length of time. Too too many mobs in there. Compare it with Velious-KaelDrakkel)

Anyway, ppl who play twice or three times as much as I do will still keep on playing. They are all hooked and so nobody needs to worry about them. What we need to be concerned with is incorporating new players or casual players into our play time. The long TBS skeletal hand quest, and other similar quests are just the ticket I think. There are several steps that can be soloed, several that can be done with 3 ppl, and several that take an average-not-uber group.

I just dont understand the faction thing with Katta quests though. There are many solo quests for Pirate faction but only one solo quest for Katta that was recently nerfed to be non-repeatable. Why is it a goal to stop ppl from soloing when they want to? Why force ppl to find or make faction hunting groups in TBS expansion when the list of LFG ppl is very short already? Especially since many of the LFG ppl did not purchase TBS.

Delaying the release of the next expansion is beneficial in this way. It prevents ppl from abandoning the most recent expansion when so many ppl who dont play long hours seven days a week want to enjoy it still.

Im sure this will be flamed. so be it...

# May 10 2007 at 8:18 PM Rating: Decent

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8 posts

Face it, the game is slowly dying.

Slowing down new content is ok but the player base is still evaporating. Sit in PoK at prime time on a weekend night and you can hear the figuretive crickets chirping. Pick up group for a DoN mission...what!? etc..

Whats needed is for the game to made "new". IMO, whats needed is a major "cataclysm". Theres how many zones now? How many actually get used in any meaningful way? Nuke em. One of the worse things ever to happen to EQ (again, IMO) is the tutorial and PoK. Theres people who have never been to their hometown, nor have a clue how to even get there. Being able to click on a stone and transport close to anywhere, while convenient, cheapens the game in a fundamental way.

Very basic concepts have fallen away in the name of getting newer players quick levels. I had to school a dark elf not long ago as to why the dorfs outside Kaladin attacked him. Faction...what? Over time the game has been "dumbed down" in order to ease the learning curve and while Im sure the intentions were good, are you really doing them a service?

Reworking the whole thing is a major undertaking. I know money is the bottom line. But adding more and more zones on top of dead or dying ones isnt a long term answer IF the powers that be want to maintain a revenue producing game with a pulse.

Im sure many will disagree with me. Im entitled to my opinion :)

Like it, love it, hate it?

# May 10 2007 at 2:05 PM Rating: Decent

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I like the idea of slowing down the expansions, but slowing down the content would be even better. I am a casual gamer, and the biggest reason is because you get to do the same old thing over and over and over and over and... well you get the picture. I will be frank, all of the old world zones and quests have been laid to the side for raiding, so instead of new zones, remake all of the old world zones, beef up some of the mobs there, ie. make Sargent Slate into a raid required mob, and put some good loot on him, or leave him whimpy and put some loot worth having on him. And that is why the old world zones are not used, the loot sucks. end of story. Even the epic weapons are only for show and tell now, and i just got an idea, have a quest to upgrade the your epic 1.0 and i don't mean the 1.5 either. say the singing short sword for instance have an extended quest that makes the sword topps over any weapon you could buy between the lvls 50 to 65 for a bard that is. Old world items should be revamped. And quit nerfing things, or make the experience bar go faster, because for a casual gamer, 4 hours a night trying to lvl one lvl at 58 really sucks, and i don't feel like playing for a week after that. I know that not everone is like me, sorry guys, but my "a" double crooked letter gets sore after grinding it out like i don't have to get up in the morning. However i will say, i like the game, i just don't love it.

Edited, May 10th 2007 7:07pm by Mcstarv

WTH is everyone thinking?

# May 09 2007 at 12:13 AM Rating: Decent

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65 posts

Im not trying to be negative here, I'm really not but if you think releasing expansions once a year is a good thing, please go get your head checked.

I agree that expansions needed to be slowed down but lets get seriouse. Once every six months would be about ideal, but once every year, you would have to desighn an expansion for levels 1-75+ and include level cap and 180+ AA's just to keep people interested until your next expansion in 365 days. How many people honestly think Sony is going to do that? How are you going to market this to new players (if they truly exist)? Hey we have this exciting game and we will give you an update in a year.

Please if you can think of a reasonable argument why we only need an expansion once a year, and it will include a level increase, 120+ new zones, 180+ new aa's for every class, quest, gear, and inovative new content, explain to me because im missing something. Or even better, if a developer has already answered the question, please link it because its not adding up to me at all. And I forgot about the cost. What are they going to charge me for this new, improved expansion once a year?

If your going to the Fan Fair (I'm trying but having finacial issue's) please get a petition going to increase it to at least twice a year.

And in my final thought of the evening (of day or afternoon whenever your reading this). Do you really think they are going to spend resources (i.e. Money and people) on a game they are only producing a product for once a year when they have EQ2 (Which has an active GM population) and Vanguard which they just now invested more money into. Sony is a buisness and they say the squeacky wheel gets the oil, well at this years Fair we need to be the loudest squeaky wheel because if not, only worse things are going to happen.

I love this game and have seen many friends come and go just like life, but its about time the player base starts flexing its muscle to get noticed to the people who can do something about it. Not just the desighners but the people who hold the purse strings. The CEO's of Sony.

fix the real issues

# May 05 2007 at 8:28 PM Rating: Decent

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16 posts

1. yep too late most of the casual would have played forever gamers are gone due to the frustation level of having to catch up in eq , the player base is so low most servers the high end guilds are devouring each other .

2. no game currently can support 54 man raids and eq is no exception , the content in eq needs to be retuned and designed around 36 peopl so we can stop all the reflagging nonsense and going back to 3 and 4 year old content to get new people up to speed .

3. everyone has different opinions but the life blood of eq is raiding , no game does it better and if sony expexts eq to remain profitable they better get a clue and , fix all of this nonsense, you cannot replace longtimne players with new people that dont have the gear or the flags or the aa's to do the content your on , in any reasonable manner , that does n ot involve months of refarming reflagging and forcing the older players to repaet content again and again , which in turn causes them to quit , or move on to another guild that seemingly has less reflagging issues than you do .

which of course is never really the case we all have the same issues ,and mostly its that there is not enough high end people anymore , which leads to ingame stress and drama especially for the fokls that spend the time to run these guilds.

Bad Ideas

# May 04 2007 at 6:01 AM Rating: Decent

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34 posts

Quote:

(4) Create a "Death" zone. An instanced zone with the level according to the group except, get this...you get killled, your character loses EVERYTHING and goes to level ONE. Make the loot worthy of the risk, but make the risk worth it. Nowadays, there is no corpse run fear, virtually no exp loss with everyone having a 96% rez.

sorry, but imo this is a ridiculous idea. Im in an anguish/demi raiding guild, and grouping, soloing, boxing i will always try to do a CR over summoning just for the fact that im a scrooge and value the little money i do have. I would never enter a zone knowing that if i die im going to lose all my gear, all my levels, and all my aa's etc. With a progressing guild, your normally guaranteed to lose atleast 5% of regular exp just from wiping on new targets.

one thing i think they do need to do is give us some way in which we can mentor aa exp to friends etc if your at max aa's/exp, thus giving us a reason to still exp etc, i may not be max aa's but im gettin really close to not wanting to get any more of the aa's i have left to buy.

uhh

# May 04 2007 at 4:44 AM Rating: Default

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532 posts

So make a zone that pretty much goes against every everquest zone ever and all it used to stand for? Losing your equipment was never in EQ to the degree it is in other games with idiotic generalized equipment that you either find and it wears out over time or forced to tradeskill and wear crappy items because you can't waste the time to get good stuff that dies anyway. If you get an item in EQ, you have that item period.

On the other hand with all the friggn armor that drops now that has +25 or +35 to all stats and +500 hp/mana there is no real point in getting armor. Stat inflation has ruined the aspect of the game where you could take pride in individual pieces, now it's just about getting the set to make yourself a little bit stronger.

I see no point in them slowing production of expansions now because they've already ruined the game doing them as they do, there's no saving everquest now. They've driven a lot of people off with their idiotic "re-envisioning" the life out of old zones that many people enjoyed. Also by making old world mobs drop these bland recommended level armors and using that as an excuse to make them quad hit for 200+ so now we can't even solo old content. You guys fu*ked yourself by driving off the people who knew how to maintain the game so just keep running the game how you always have been, have some dignity and don't limp away to your deathbed now that you've been proven wrong...

Liveye (lvl 70 Wizard)

lag

# May 04 2007 at 12:13 AM Rating: Decent

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Hey when Eq started you really didnt need a powerful puter to run it. Now it seems you need almost top end pc to run the thing in new zones.Thats ok..but when your in competitor is flawless and can run lag free, shouldnt you try to help that out? i have seen some good efforts but i think more can be done to help lag issues. Im sure there are some behind the scene efforts also. But how about some sort of settings we can switch when we raid..without haveing to turn everything back down and off? Did you some how miss my 20+ feedbacks about this ? EQ has come along way from the little viewports. But pretty graphics are nice. But being able to make it through the raid is better. So 54 player raid + 20+ mobs on ambush AG = WTF!! Cmon SOE help us out some plz. Many of my friends left Eq cause the lag was horrid at times. The stick man was great. No pc graphics = no lag. :)

ALERT!! EQ NEEDS PLAYERS!

# May 03 2007 at 9:44 PM Rating: Decent

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128 posts

I like the idea very much of slowing down the release of expansions.

Now all we need is another server merger to repopulate what is already available so groups can be found outside of the guild and I will be a very happy player.

Muuadib - Halcyon
The Rathe

Finally

# May 02 2007 at 8:34 AM Rating: Decent

Pani

Scholar

186 posts

I think November 2008 instead of 2007 sounds like a great idea. The expansions have come so quickly and with such uber gear, that it makes the older gear practically worthless. Why do x when z has such better stuff. I would like to be able to "finish" some of the older expansions before trying to tackle another new one. I also did not buy the lastest expansion. Didn't see much point in it with the three prior unexplored. Slow it down, revamp some of the old zones as far as gear,drops, even the difficulty of the mobs to make it more of a challenge for the new characters who always seem to be twinked very quickly.

Annual expansion plans

# May 02 2007 at 4:25 AM Rating: Good

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21 posts

Glad to hear it. I've bought each expansion in advance since I started but haven't fully explored the last three yet. It's getting harder to find people in the zones as the world expans. I hope that more servers will combine to bring the numbers up again. The way the game is designed it's hard to solo all the time. Aren't there enough zones?

Great Idea

# May 02 2007 at 3:16 AM Rating: Decent

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19 posts

Yes SLOW down the expansions. I entered EQ late in the game (2005). I leveled thru totally empty zones and seldom if ever grouped until I was in the mid 30s. There was just no one there. To make EQ1 still bring in new players:

1. Fix old world zone issues. ...non-working quest absolutely ridiculous drop rates etc.
2. UPGRADE old world loot tables. They dont have to be as great as the latest expansions but make them reasonable enough that a player can at least arm/equip themselves to fight in the zone. Plus this will at least make it where older ubers will at least explore the zones they blew by on the way up.
3. Re-think the epic drop rates. Yes it is supposed to be epic but in many cases now the mobs are still permacamped by people that have perma traders up. If you cant make the drop rate and spawn rates go up then make all epic items NO TRADE to eliminate campers.
4. Keep making the new expansions as good as TSS was. I cant comment on pirates it just didnt makes sense to buy it for my 4 accounts.

Boxing
66th Paladin
58th Cleric
57th Necromancer
56th druid

Plus many occasional alts from 30s to 55

Wayyyyy too late

# May 01 2007 at 10:16 PM Rating: Decent

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I know that negativity is rarely welcome. Nonetheless, here I go...

WAY too late. SOE lost casual gamers because of all the efforts to satisfy folks whose sole purpose is to "win" the game. This is now an attempt to hold on to the powergamers that are perhaps finally getting ready to pull the nipple out of their mouths.

<yawn>

reply to Now, How about.

# May 01 2007 at 10:01 PM Rating: Decent

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118 posts

LOL. 3 little letters. WTH?

Now, how about

# May 01 2007 at 2:27 PM Rating: Decent

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180 posts

I agree with slowing the expansions, heck, unless you are 70+, the Buried Sea is pretty much a waste of money. Stop making it so freakin easy to level. In addition....

(1) Raise max level to 200. Make levels 100+ ALL HELL LEVELS

(2) ALLOW SOLO LDoN zones. You cant get groups anymore, so you cant get a lot of the tradeskill/spells that come from these zones.

(3) Put a permanent "Buff for donation" guy in the PoK. Dependant upon player's level, the cost will be up to 500pp for a EXT Tenacity.

(4) Create a "Death" zone. An instanced zone with the level according to the group except, get this...you get killled, your character loses EVERYTHING and goes to level ONE. Make the loot worthy of the risk, but make the risk worth it. Nowadays, there is no corpse run fear, virtually no exp loss with everyone having a 96% rez.

great news, but could be one step better

# May 01 2007 at 1:01 PM Rating: Decent

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118 posts

Great news they are slowing down cranking out the less than full value expansions, to once a year. Perhaps now we can expect more of a value for our hard-earned dollars we are forking over. Finally, it seems SoE is listening to the majority of it's player base, and not the few VERY vocal ubers who are bored with top end game. Kudos to you SoE.

Now, take it a step better. . .
Start the new plan in November of 2008, with the next expansion. That way you can take care of two important issues: 1) Properly test and develope the next expansion, and 2)Fix existing issues.

While you are busy fixing the stuff you previously released into the game, undertested and/or broken, it will give us the time to enjoy the content from the last 4 expansions you rushed out, that we haven't even scratched the surface of.

Thank you

GREAT NEWS

# May 01 2007 at 10:37 AM Rating: Decent

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I for one am very excited to hear that they are slowing down the expansion train. I've pretty much skipped GoD due to people being onto bigger better things, which saddens me because my whole goal is to "beat" the game. I'm just now getting into the OoW raiding zone, and this took such a long time because people had moved on to TSS, and then to TBS... I've explored very little of TSS, and have only touched the surface of TBS.

I know much more effort is needed from me, but it will be nice to have other high enders there with me, not trying to keep up with all the content that kept coming. Great job SOE, I'm excited to hear the news!

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