Ok, stop reading now if you don't like anyone attacking your favorite game, EQ.

I'm warning you... don't press this button if you don't want to hear a sour, old former EQ player talk about EQ...

Last chance...



Fine! Don't cry to me, Argentina, if you don't like it.

I wonder how much of the summit was to just get people stirred up and talking about EQ again.

The EQ message forums have been sooooo quiet for a long, long time. Even expansions aren't rousting up much talk. Meanwhile there's lots of glowing reviews and discussion of some other new games. The biggest news coming out of EQ was which Uber guild had dissolved.

Even most of the fan boy sites have gone away and lost interest in the game.

EQ was becoming old news... or even worse, no news.

So, what do you do? If people aren't talking about it, looking forward to something changing wtih it, they probably start to lose interest.

So SOE holds the summit. It stirs up controversy, some people had their enthusiasm rekindled, some are angry and posting their bitterness over it because their kind of class/player isn't represented. But dang, everyone has an opinion!

All of a sudden, message forums are overloaded.

So, I'd say the summit did something EQ needed to do badly. It needed to be news again. Whether its good news, or bad news, doesn't really matter so much. What I think matters more is that it doesn't fall into total obscurity. At least to SOE. :)

Of course, silly.


/tar pan
/smile

Ever-What?

I love EQ, but if I was offered an immediate WoW Beta account and a retail box delivered to my home the day before release but all I had to do was cancel my Everquest account.


Bye Paldor....

Yeah, its beginning to look that way, Pana.

Well I'd be a bit kinder to Sony. They are doing the right thing but it's far far too late. Finding quick wins they can deliver to customers while formluating a long term strategy is actually good management.

I'd guess the EQ management were just toodling along in their own little world counting expansion sales when the figures stopped adding up and a big big Sony boss gave them a rocket and told them to listen to customers. This does happen in all business and not just in games companies. It's very hard to recover customer confidence once you've lost it though.

Actually, I think the true cynic's view would be - COH and L2 just came out, so therefore, just like when DAOC, AC2, DAOC expansions, AO, SB, and a host of others "just came out," Sony's going to push out some amazing "Oooh, ahhh" changes for two months, then fade away into the background again, back to status quo. Just long enough for news about "EQ's changing!" to overshadow the news that "MMORPG_034 just came out!"

I can't believe with the way classes are set up, too dang many of them, they'll every acheive any kind of balance. Unless they're prepared to scrap the class system they adopted, and I think that's highly unlikely, or unless they're prepared to severely screw up one class to fix a few others, then they're always going to have this healing shortage problem.

Hindsight is 20/20, but they really should have given you, as a priest of any sort, an opportunity to specialize in certain areas, then you can trade off nuking for healing, slowing, buffing whatever. And make it possible to respecialize, which is infinity better than encouraging people to PL heal-bots. :p That's the main thing I think, if they really want to save EQ, they gotta change the danged class system.

I'm having fun in CoH with my healer. She heals, but she also has the dark blast powers which means she nukes halfway decently too. I just got her a sniper attack (moonbeam) which is sooooo fun!

I downloaded Anarchy Online,

You all should try it.. you can download the game and play for 7 days free.

I tried a doctor and even though the game does have a difficult learning curve it does have it benefits.

At any time you can choose a "mission" which creates an instanced dungeon for just you. You can choose what type of mission, where the mission is (father away is more money), and you can SEE the reward you will get before you accept it.

There is also a slider on the bottem that lets you scale the difficulty up and down (harder is more money/xp).

Really a wonderful system for a casual player... and if you get tired of your mission just log out.. you can go back in infinite times (most missions have a 2 day window to complete) and any mobs you kill will stay dead.

Also.. Picking a locked chest can be done by anyone with a lockpick.. and doing it sucessfully gets you xps.. and converting a "monster part" into Blood (using pharmacy skill) is very profitable since blood sells to vendors for a lot more money then the "monster part"

Finally, They DO have 200 levels.. but you do feel more powerful ever time you ding up a level .. its weird.. and since they have 200 levels, it is NOT hard to level up multiple times in a casual play session.

I am not saying that it will overtake EQ.. but it is a fun diversion.. and for the first 7 days it is free. heh.

Never attribute to malice....

I dont' think Sony maliciously simply wanted to get in the news for the sake of getting in the news. It does, however, appear to me that they have either no idea what they want to do with the game or they have a very different plan than most players want to play.

I think things are far too out of whack for them to fix without major changes. They need a real plan for each of the classes they have and fix things to fit into that plan. They need an overall plan for what they want the game to be about and stick to it.

Doing this, of course, is just like making a new game. So I doubt it will really happen.

The EQ message forums have been sooooo quiet for a long, long time

Well my wife frequents The Steel Warrior and it hasn't been quiet at all.

I am a MOD over at The Runes and if you look at the forum statistics, there has been no slow down there in the last year nearly. With that said I too have noticed that there has been a major slow down here at TDG, but I would say there is another reason for that other than general game atrophy, because not all sites have exerpienced it. Though I don't know what the answer is.

I don't know maybe The Runes and TSW are the exceptions rather than the rule.

There's no denying that it was a PR move. I am pretty certain most of the player base recognizes that fact. That was probably the best spent $80k advertising that they have done. Any postings and/or updates to the game would have been simply viewed as hot air... invitations of more visible players gained them some time. At the moment, all the hubub is about hoping they will act on their words now.

Yes, it did open way to the benefit of the doubt for a very cynical player base. Once burned, twice shy?

I think the Druid forums have been quiet only because we've been pretty much brushed aside so many times already for the same suggestions you see here today.

PR move... sure. Depends how you see it.

If you see it as only a tool to make people talk, vainly renew some hopes, make some folks have a good time, and try and market your product, then I think it doesn't cover all that the Summit was.

Imho the Summit was all of the above, and more. Because in the end, the best PR for EQ will be an improved game.

Callahad

I think the Druid forums have been quiet only because we've been pretty much brushed aside so many times already for the same suggestions you see here today.

It wasn't just TDG that was quiet, it was all the forums I visit semi-regular: EQClerics, Safehouse and others.

Yes, they couldn't have gotten better advertising for the $$'s spent.

I am pretty certain most of the player base recognizes that fact.

I don't know. Seems like a lot of folks are giving this more credence than they would PR or advertising done in another way. Only time will tell though. I think if expectations fall too far short, they'll be shooting themselves in the foot though as people have built up their expectations probably well out of proportion to what SOE can deliver.

Patch on Wednesday morning, we'll see what they were able to cram into a week of dev time.

And yeah, AO's a great game. I still log on and play it now and then. (Even though Shadowlands felt a bit like a "Worst of EQ Ideas" showcase...)

Anything a company like SoE does, will be have to be considered from a PR standpoint, and compare it against other priorities. Thats well... Business.

IMO (as someone who attended) I dont think it was hey guys EQ is failing lets have people put on happy faces for a few weeks with a summit. Because ultimatly thats a very bad manuever, because you'll piss of all the people who went, and most of the people who went, in some form or another has a base of players from large to small that listens to them in some form or another. and well, thats just not a good thing

I think that the devolpers are working hard, (I often see them working on stuff up to midnight PST) then on again when I log back on in morning) and honsetly want to make a game, I think there was, and ultimatly still is communication issues both internall and externally, but EQ has a very varied playerbase in the same vein, its not exactly easy to communciate with, and I often see changes suggested that a lot of people want, but I personally think wouldnt be good for game /shrug

One of biggest things is just that EQ is old, I see people go on about how great CoH or some other game is, but most of those people are still in the stages of the game where your "leveling" the designers had a long time to design the path so to speak, but what happens when people get to the end, will it be much better then EQ? Sure maybe first exspantion pack that they have been devolping since before it was released, but how about #2, 3, 4it even lats that long, as you get longer into a games lifespan, its harder and harder to make new content for the playerbase

People have all these ideas in how EQ should be inproved or what went wrong, but look at how many people disagree with them from different playstyles to class balance

I think that EQ for now is on the right track, but there two main issues are

A) Can the things be fixxed in time, will it be too late for a lot of people playing, changes take time, people who are exspecting a magic bullet are well... exspecting too much
B) Are they fixxable, or is the engine/base that EQ is built on (the play mechanics, not the fact that its run on NT =( !)

Well said Madrone.

y philosophy is "Time Will Tell"

One of biggest things is just that EQ is old

Yes, playing a new game really made me understand just how antiquated EQ feels.

I see people go on about how great CoH or some other game is, but most of those people are still in the stages of the game where your "leveling" the designers had a long time to design the path so to speak, but what happens when people get to the end, will it be much better then EQ?

Dunno, I know some people are leveling so fast that they've pretty much completed the game so far. There's more stuff coming, just like in EQ. But the thing I like about CoH so far is this isn't a game (yet) where there is a hamster wheel of time-sinks like in EQ. For someone that can play 1-2 hours a night, a few hours on the weekend, this is divine. Hope the game stays this way. It'd be frustrating for someone who is a career player though.

B) Are they fixxable, or is the engine/base that EQ is built on (the play mechanics, not the fact that its run on NT =( !)

y own feeling is that EQ isn't going to change in a manner that would bring me back. They'd need to create a game for high level characters that only have a limited amount of time to play. Oh sure, there's a game there now, only I didn't find much fun in it.

FYI Brenlo hasnt responded to my requests for information regarding inviting other class forums to the "Leader" forum on the SOE site...

Seems like they arent all that interested in getting some balanced, representative feedback after all.

No matter how many people they add groups will feel left out, where does it stop?

True, but I dont think ignoring entire class communities is a good place to stop, nor is restricting the contributers to the "uber" guilds for the most part at all healthy for the future of the game.

It's not reasonable to, for example, exclude Monkly Business and EQ Cleric for any reason when TDG has a (and only one) person with access.

It smacks of Absor and his personal vendettas against doing his job on forums he found distasteful.

Amen, Sister Tiane.

PS If anyone else would like to express their thoughts about that situation, and take their luck on the black hole that is email, Brenlo's addy is acrosby@soe.sony.com

if it was based on what forums asbored liked the bards woulda had someone attending =p