On some druids issues. Spent most on my (sober) time attending Developer meetings and then talking to them afterwards.

1. Yes, they know about tracking. Will fix it eventually. Will roll it back eventually. Seems a low priority.

2. Sec. Forte already fixed. Will roll back eventually. Not going to raise it to 200. Really worried (for reasons I can't personally understand) about its being unbalancing.

3. SotW. It was discussed after the last FF. They aren't changing it. At least not now. For reasons not at all understood by me, they really think the DS is a very big deal. Apparently DS >> more healing or Mana regen. /shrug.

4. No new Healing changes. Just reporting. The decision at this time is to address the healing issue - and at least they do seem to have a concept that Clerics are too required right now - is to adjust it via content. To be honest, they really were not too receptive or pursueded by raid Cleric numbers being a problem, but they were concerned about the Ikki trials. Though, some comments were made that as people progressed that trial that now require two Clerics would eventually be doable by a Cleric and another Healer. I guess the thing I have most to comment here is that if we want healing changes, we still have to overcome the barrier of convincing the design team that there is a problem. They seem to acknowledge that Raids require more Clerics than any other class, but dismiss it as a real problem, accepting instead that it is "part of the game."

5. For our Cleric readers here - no changes to Clerics outside of healing. Many questioners suggested changes to the Hammer and none were provided postive replies. I personally suggested increasing Cleric DPS when discussing Druid healing after a panel, the response from the lead spell developer was essentially - "might be nice, but then its not Everquest anymore." Like comment 3 - if changes along these lines are desired, there are significant hurdles to overcome before worrying about any details.

6. In good news, they read these boards. I was able to discuss quickly some of the concepts raised here in threads - including Corlaist's % difference vs. raw number difference thread. They are paying attention to these sites, or at least to this site, though they do not currently see the same problems we see. They are, however, reopening the EQ boards and these will include Class specific areas. Not sure what that means in the future for SOE participation on fan sites.

7. Druid charm. A confused Druid asked a member on the EQ Live panel (This was not the Spell and AA panel) about why Druids could not charm a level 63 animal where a Chanter could. Complained about the "level too high" text and assumed it was a bug. She did not realize that CoT is restricted to level 60, while CoD is restricted to 64. The odd thing was, the panel member did not reply "because Druid charm is restricted to a lower level than all other charms." They seemed suprised, said they would look into it and jotted down some notes. I would not hold your breath, as this was EQ Live and not lead spells developer, but still, I would have expected them to know the difference. Maybe its a typo in the DB. There was no follow up possible.

8. Exodus. I am sure many of you have pounded on Exodus, died, then had Exodus go off when you got to your bind point. Its a server lag issue. They were unaware of teh problem. They are going to look into it. They won't be making it so you live and Exodus successfully goes off, but they will see about not having it trigger after your death, thus blowing the timer.

9. "Spell time not yet met" issue on fast casting spells. They are aware of it and looking to fix it.

Tons more, and lots on the Graphic engine, but those are it for Druid Specific issues possed during the panel discussions or in private discussion afterwards.

Kinda ok I guess. No SOTW change its kinda lame though. Rollback sucks but I personally don't get bugged by it since my tracking its only 126. :p ( yes I am selfish ! ) Doubt they going to fix the charm level on COT. I personally don't see any reason etc for it. Just imo though.

Great report Aaeamdar! Thanks! Folks, feel free to add your comments and reports from the meetings/panels you added as well here.

So nothing going to change, and nothing really new in the plans.

Great report!

Good report, thanks!

8. Exodus. I am sure many of you have pounded on Exodus, died, then had Exodus go off when you got to your bind point. Its a server lag issue. They were unaware of teh problem. They are going to look into it. They won't be making it so you live and Exodus successfully goes off, but they will see about not having it trigger after your death, thus blowing the timer.
They said that last year, and the year before that too.

So nothing going to change, and nothing really new in the plans.
Yup. Which is really quite stupid considering the downward trend their subsciption numbers have taken in recent months.

the response from the lead spell developer was essentially - "might be nice, but then its not Everquest anymore."
I've got news for this guy... it hasnt been "Everquest anymore" by that definition since 3 months after release. The game he's working on only passingly resembles the game I originally started playing. Bottom line, change or die, and get with the program. You keep hanging on to tired old definitions of "EQ" and your customers will find something else to do.

True, Tiane. Seems remarkably out of touch. Somehow, though, I am finding it hard to muster enough interest to really care at this point...

I know Sobe was there so hopefully he has some more to report. Good job Aaeamdar, thanks.

3. SotW. It was discussed after the last FF. They aren't changing it. At least not now. For reasons not at all understood by me, they really think the DS is a very big deal. Apparently DS >> more healing or Mana regen. /shrug.I'd say lose the DS, and make it a 15 min timer. In which situation is the DS powerful anyway? Coirnav AE'ing, that's about the only place I can think of. Or maybe for those that AE some of the Earth rings, or VT. heh

Does anyone honestly AE SOTW for the DS? Anyone ever?

Hey SOE, we like it for the heal part. Whoddathunkit?!


*edit* I can't freaking type today to save my soul.

Yeah, that is my thought as well. I don't get it. Its clear to me that I would rather have Paragon or CR than Wood even if the recast time of Wood were reduced below Para/CR (e.g., imo, CR/Para at 15 mins recast >> Wood at 10). They don't see it that way though.

Wyte, Coirnav would be uneffected by 15 min wood. Each Druid gets 1 cast of it either way.

Well from what you have posted (great info btw ). It doesn't seem that they are going to be doing anything other than fixing tracking and 2ndary Forte "sometime". They seem to be aware of a lot of things but nothing plans to be changed.

Ikkinz trials somewhere down the road more easily. I'd like to see some dates or at least something in writing saying they are looking into this and what time frame they expect to do something. Until then I won't hold my breath.

I feel ripped off that my secondary forte is stuck at 100 while a select group of people get to enjoy it at 200. I can see this being a back-burner issue for 6+ months too, which just gets to me. It's just not fair!!

4. No new Healing changes. Just reporting. The decision at this time is to address the healing issue - and at least they do seem to have a concept that Clerics are too required right now - is to adjust it via content. To be honest, they really were not too receptive or pursueded by raid Cleric numbers being a problem, but they were concerned about the Ikki trials. Though, some comments were made that as people progressed that trial that now require two Clerics would eventually be doable by a Cleric and another Healer. I guess the thing I have most to comment here is that if we want healing changes, we still have to overcome the barrier of convincing the design team that there is a problem. They seem to acknowledge that Raids require more Clerics than any other class, but dismiss it as a real problem, accepting instead that it is "part of the game."

I am pretty amazed that they arent considering some added variety in the druid healing abilities. We have a decent (not totally sufficient) fast heal in SI, but due to our single obvious dependance on that spell alone is one of our greatest weaknesses in our healing abilities....combined with our specialization split evenly between evoc and alt is another issue and their insitstance that allowing secondary forte to go to 200 would be imbalancing just Shouts that they think druids would be overpowered with that as we would use that to its fullest. Add on increased agro for our spells, not-so-good mana/(dmg, utility, hps) ratios, lower mana regen than most casters, and lower average hps, mana pool, and damage mitigation/avoidance, gives the druid WAY too many defficiencies supposedly due solely to their Varied Spell set...

Druid is the only class I have had as my main and pretty much the only one I have wanted to play as main in the whole 5 years of playing this game. If I stop playing my druid I am going to stop playing EQ, no changing classes for this old druid.

well I went up to the mike to talk about druid and shaman healing... they are aware of it, but dont really expect anything till near the end of the expansion or start of next one. Unfortuneatly after I had several clerics jump me, accusing me of trying to get their heals nerfed...

Unfortuneatly after I had several clerics jump me, accusing me of trying to get their heals nerfed...


With SOE, that's not an unreasonable concern....

9. "Spell time not yet met" issue on fast casting spells. They are aware of it and looking to fix it.

Heh, haven't they been working on this one for years? I remember Enchanters complaining about it when Boggle first was added. I recall them adding the first part of a fix and were later going to add the second part, but I never remember that going in. *shrug* Hopefully they get it fixed, it sort of removes the advantage of having these fast casting spells.

well I went up to the mike to talk about druid and shaman healing... they are aware of it, but dont really expect anything till near the end of the expansion or start of next one.It boggles me that a MMOG company would openly acknowledge a problem, then blatently and deliberately refuse to do anything about it until the next expansion (which is probably months away).

I am quite certain that other companies in this business will go out of their way to not alienate their customer base this way.

I sometimes dread these fan faires because they seem to only let the the clueless devs go attend them.

Really I'm just as frustrated by the seeming willingness to let the cleric numbers thing go on. I think GoD's only saving grace is you don't have people trying to cram in up to 20 clerics on a 72 man raid (jury seems out on the 2 cleric vs cleric + druid thing on excursions). I know why they're saying that: EQ2 is way behind schedule and over budget and they're making the big push toward open beta to catch up to WoW. That means they need the EQ1 devs working around the clock (we've already lost Rich Waters to it) so they're going to just play dumb and pull the Abashi (not Absor, Abashi) bit of "I think everything is just fine as it is".

I sometimes wonder why we bother... we've gone from decent dev response back to "You play our way or go elsewhere". Now we all play second string to EQ2 development (note how long it's taken them to fix the login servers...)

I can say, with some certainty, that the next round of major changes will immediately follow the drop on players after WoW opens (it happened after DAoC opened) and you'll suddenly see devs on all the class boards trying to figure out why we're all so upset.

As for paranoid clerics... I can't say I'm surprised. We're still built around healing and who wants their core role adjusted. More importantly, nobody is talking to us as a class (have I mentioned I miss Rich Waters?) so when you have Brenlo and other devs make comments like this (http://forums.interealms.com/shaman/showthread.php?threadid=20190&mode=linear&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post232447) without clarifying exactly what the heck he meant it makes people jumpy. I mean, druids and shamen got a pretty decent heal boost last time but our promised offense boost never materialized and the hammers... well, let's just say clerics are no better at melee than druids and the proc rates don't scale at all (the 63 hammer procs at the same rate as the rarest cleric hammer from Time). I'm still not opposed to an improvement to the healing system in general but they can't make those changes and ignore the lack of cleric offense any longer.

Brenlo is a GM, not a Dev. The lead spell Dev I spoke with - Rytan - was not clueless. He understood the problem, though disagreed about its extent and about the right way to solve it (he thinks content, I think spells).

Brenlo is a Dev. He's said so himself.

Hehe well I think clarification was in order. There seems to be a misconception that I am in CS or PR. I was in CS, I work closely with PR, but in all actuality I am on the EQ Dev team. When I communicate with you fine folks, it is communication from the EQ dev team.

Brenlo

I am sure many of you have pounded on Exodus, died, then had Exodus go off when you got to your bind point. Its a server lag issue. They were unaware of teh problem.

I think I've only put a bug report in for this every time it's happened. I have been a professional software tester so I report bugs accurately. Unfortunately I've died pressing exodus an awful lot of times so it's been reported an awful lot of times too. The lack of feedback they give you for reporting "bugs" and "feedback" in game is atrocious. It's not that surprising if they're ignoring it entirely.

Just today we were raiding RZ and an enchanter told us she was sitting in PoK memming her spells after she died and she was suddenly zoned into PoK somewhere else. Quite baffled her. Seems like a druid in her group was pressing exodus, got killed, and whoops ... :).

If Brenlo's a dev then exactly who is the one who keeps us informed? The Janitor? And exactly why is there his assumption that burnt out PR people make excellent EQ dev's.

I'm now fairly convinced SOE has put EQ onto "end of life" maintenance mode. They don't honestly think it will make forward progress against more modern MMORPG's so they're funneling all their resources towards EQ2 which they think has better hopes. If / When EQ2 launches I expect EQ1 support to get dramatically worse. They'll release expansions every 6 months, as long as that generates cash, but I expect em to be pretty half-arsed. And if it doesn't generate cash, and isn't a critical / easily fixable problem, it will be "working as intended".

It boggles me that a MMOG company would openly acknowledge a problem, then blatently and deliberately refuse to do anything about it until the next expansion (which is probably months away).Simple. This expansion is done to them. People have already bought it. If you want better healing and you feel you deserve it, you have buy the next. Doesn't matter that you can't PLAY this one until then. Those who are bound and determined to move forward WILL. The rest just have to pay for the ability to do it later. This, by the way, doesn't mean that things are working. Just that some can get guildies and friends to pull them through and the rest can't.


If Brenlo's a dev then exactly who is the one who keeps us informed? The Janitor? And exactly why is there his assumption that burnt out PR people make excellent EQ dev's.Perhaps they felt he was worth keeping but he

1) didn't speak Indian
or
2) didn't want to move to India.

I also stood up and took a crack at the EQ Live team. My question was about wolf form and the faction issues it has particularly in Plane of Storms. Literally the Dev who answered me said with a strait face since the problem only effects Druids it was a good thing. When I mentioned that it also effects Rangers they all just laughed. There was no flurry of pencils writing anything down. No hope that this 4 year old issue would be resolved even though the original reason for making wolf form KoS is pretty much gone. It is a fact that the original exploit that the change was made for is still achievable now through other means. A little later I had a chance to speak with Scott Hartsman about it but, he is on the EQ2 team now. Even though Wolf Form would be a low priority even in my mind. I still would have expected a bit more of an acknowledgement of this 4 year old issue. The fact that it was perceived as a joke because it only effected druids shows what the current live team thinks of us and shows their ignorance. The funny thing is I did not originally plan on asking any questions but, the EQLive line was so short on Friday I figured I would take a shot. Personally I amazed at their response. It pretty much ruined the forum portion of the fan faire for me. It is also another thing for me to think about when I am feeling like quitting EQ. Happy 5th Anniversary EQ :moon: .

I heard Uqua and Ikkinz single group trials are going to be adjusted some, but that still wont fix the hell that is GoD. This is a step in the right direction as Uqua is just retardedly stupid in its current form rather than being a good challenge. However, it sounds like druids arent going to be adjusted at all, nor have the new dot replaced with something useful.

Glad City of Heroes comes out April 29 and hopefully a new phase of WoW beta will come soon...

Just a small note on the Exodus thing...

I've had the exact same thing happen with both Divine Arbitration and Bestow Divine Aura AAs. Hit button, die, zone, AA goes off on other side (really annoying on BDA since it's almost 2.5 hr refresh). You're not alone on that particular issue.

LOL, the next expansion? The next expansion for me will be The World of Warcraft. This whole expansion is nothing but fluff. The AA's are horrible, the content is horrible, and the bugs are unforgiveable. I don't see how they think people are gonna play EQ2 when they can't or won't fix problems with the game that got them there in the first place.

One day they need to have a 2 hour live developers chat where they explain to us how 15 minute Paragon is good but 15 minute (vs 22) SoTW is overpowered. I would love to hear someone back that up without showing how out of touch with the reality of the game most of the design team is.

What I pulled from this, was the fact that at one panel. I believe it was a developer that said (paraphased) that if groups have a warrior, then end mobs will do their normal damage. But if groups have a paladin or warrior tank, then the end mobs will do less DPS.

I sometimes dread these fan faires because they seem to only let the the clueless devs go attend them.
First off, Developers are no more clueless then the people on this forum. Don't think for a minute that a dev is someone who sits in a dark corner staring at the Monitor while furiously typing code that is so cryptic that he doesn't understand it either.
Developers work on stated business requirements…i.e.: bugs, enhancements and new functionality that comes from (hopefully) a team of business analysts that gather these requirements from the end user, US! These requirements are prioritized and then given to the specific developer or developer team to fix.
If the SOE dev’s at FF didn’t give the answers you wanted to hear or just blew you off (as some threads here suggest) then that probably comes from the people who make the decisions on what’s fixed and when, like the program mangers and such. The dev’s at FF may not have been truly prepared to hold group discussions, that’s SOE’s fault. If they acted like they don’t care, SOE again. If pencils weren’t busy writing everything everyone said at every moment, SOE…maybe, or maybe they heard it a thousand times before, have it committed to memory and either really don’t care or are tired of responding to it.
And if something doesn’t get fixed over a period of time, maybe it’s because they don’t budget for it. Just because SOE is making $$$$$$$ on us, doesn’t mean they are going to spend $$$$$$$ on us…profits to the stakeholders comes first. Shortsighted as they are, SOE bigwigs are, IMO, the root of all that fails in EQ. SOE personnel as a whole seem to have crappy attitudes and that is reason enough to want to quit sometimes (WoW is not out yet). The CS stinks, and obviously the whole FF thing didn’t sit well with anyone from what I’ve heard. Don’t blame the messenger when it’s the fat king sitting on his throne eating and drinking to the profits that are building up around his feet.

Long time lurker, first time poster.

I used to play this game for a year or soo with a druid of course, quit because of this *&*&^ company. Agree completely with the above poster, SOE is milking this thing for all its worth. They don't care anymore, stopped caring after POP's release. I personally can't wait for WOW (a game which is more complete in beta then some games 5 yrs in existence *cough* EQ anyone *cough*), and I sincerely hope SOE loses a TON of $$ on EQ2.

I'm now fairly convinced SOE has put EQ onto "end of life" maintenance mode. They don't honestly think it will make forward progress against more modern MMORPG's so they're funneling all their resources towards EQ2 which they think has better hopes.

Get the right people drunk and you can find out all kinds of things ... I heard a little a rumor that EQII actually came quite close to being "Mythica-ed" by SOE when they found out how far behind it was in January (remember it was originally due Q3 2003 - now will release ~Nov/Dec. '04). A long debate ensued which nearly resulted in EQII being scraped in favor of a total revamp of EQI using the EQII engine and a "core" of the EQII dev team. The alternative - which they went for, to bolster Kir's case - is to shift some EQI resources to EQII (Rich had already been moved in November) and hold off on major new investments in EQI until EQII was done (which had to be 2004 or it was being cancelled and people would be axed) - note one EQII dev's comment that 'the game would release in 2004 or his head would explode'.

If they went for the EQI revamp plan, by the way, in order to access the new EQI content you'd have to pay a $50 fee for an improved client and EQII-graphics revamped and new zones would be "phased in" on a Legends-type server first and then later added to new live servers (you need new servers cause the EQII engine requires >= Geforce 4) which people would have to pay a "discounted" move fee to switch to. Just a rumor but it sounded like such an SoE cash grab I couldnt help but believe it.

That doesn't sound terribly hard to believe. It's pretty obvious that EQII is well behind where they wanted it to be (launched before WoW) and the natural reaction is either cut it or sink a lot more resources into development.

Ultimately though I don't think they can re-vamp EQ1. Sure they could phase in the new graphics, but the EQ1 game systems also need a reset. The class system, power progression and population imbalances are all under pressure from the game progressing well beyond what they were designed to handle. They really want everyone back to level 1 so they can start with a fresh slate.

Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if the new EQ1 graphics engine is the EQ2 engine with all the bells and whistles turned off. From their point of view it would make good financial sense to only have to support a single graphics engine.

I think revamping EQ 1 would have been a huge mistake. They need to undo all these years of mudflation, all their game design mistakes and start fresh.

I would not mind a total revamp of Everquest from the ground up. I, like Panamah, would rather them just shut down Everquest completely and focus on not making the same mudflation mistakes in Everquest 2.

Eq2 will not be the same game. I watched, and read, and it's pretty far in spirit to what EQ is/was. I got no desire to play EQ2, and no amount of graphics dazzlement will change my mind. Even the voice-over is unimpressive to me. Deliver a game that strikes me as enjoyable, and I will consider it. But EQ2 ain't it for me.

Since I *do* enjoy EQ, I would much rather they go the way of supporting what works/worked. But not focus so much on graphics. Make the game more polished, balance the thing so that every class is enjoyable at every stage of the game, fix the encounters and bugs, add new involved quests. In other words, focus on the game mechanics, not the display. Graphics only brings people in, it doesnt keep em in. Only the depth of gameplay does.

Callahad

I very much expected the graphic revamp of EQ1.
Right now, it's just dismal in comparison to the new MMOGs.

And as far as I can tell, I don't expect to play EQ2.