One thing has been bothering me since the whole summit thing; its been picking at the back of my brain constantly...

So we all know that Gates of Discord was a fubar'd expansion. It was unreasonable. News coming from the summit stated that originally another 3-5 character levels were to be added on the 5th year anniversery, and that content for Gates was tuned with this in mind (level ~70 content). And then... reports were given that the devs stopped this from happening (I can't find the quote, so I stand to be corrected, maybe it was the bigwigs).

Quite frankly, this pisses me off.

The devs, which most Summit go-ers tout as passionate EQ players, apparently stopped what would be a logical flow to Gates dead in its tracks.

Why?

To make the situation come to a head, resulting in where we're at now?
To incite change?
To antagonize the playerbase?

Somehow I feel we're not getting the whole story. Unless... they truely intended to release an expansion geared toward level ~70 to a 65 playerbase.

In the end, who knows which is the better route? Had the levels been given to us, maybe the status quo (problems and all) would have continued for a good while. Quite probably the current road will be better in the end, although a more painful one to travel. People have lost faith.

Why did they do it? I'd like to know...

Why did they do it? I'd like to know...$$

I sense a winner.

Did anyone bother to ask SOE why? Well I just read acording to "The President", "I did a bad thing. Just because I could."

When in doubt, always refer to the movie "Heathers" for an appropriate quote.

-"Heather, why are you being such a megabitch?"
-"Because I can be."

How about because it was pretty obvious the resources and time wasn't there to add 5 additional levels? If they had another 3 months sure but as it was adding even more to GoD would have made it worse not better.

If they realized player levels weren't going to change, they would have still needed another couple months, to retune GoD's level 70 content back to 65. But that would be assuming the content actually had been designed for level 70. Frankly I don't believe it.

Sure, it was a brilliant excuse because it was easily believable, but there isn't any evidence to support a claim that they had given levels 66-70 much thought between Fan Faire and GoD's release.

Which begs the question:
How in the world could devs possibly design appropriate 70th level content without knowing what sorts of abilities and spells player-classes would have from 66-70? Obviously, none of that stuff had been fleshed out until recently, and they're still tweaking the templates.

~Firemynd

I agree Firemynd. I don't think that there were any plans to raise levels until OoW. There were no spells, foci, armor adjustments... nothing to indicate the addition of higher levels with the exception of the zones being out of whack. Not the first time SOE has done something to block progression on an expansion then come back with an "oopsie! Our mistake".

And by the way... it all STILL translates to:$$

I thought you didn't play anymore Wyte?

Yeah... I haven't for a few months.

I always cancelled my subscription as soon as I renewed, 'cuz I wanna know when things are happening on my credit card (everyone should try this, you may just find yourself taking a much needed break).

And well... one day I was gonna log in and it said my subscription had expired. Bleh, I didn't feel like playing so much, not enough to warrant the effort of finding my wallet. And the nex day, still didn't. And the next, and the next and so on. Pretty soon I found myself with days chalked full of time (you think PoT has anything to do with 'time', PFFFTTTT!!).

Well, it was that and I didn't like the direction EQ has been taking around parts of PoP and definately GoD.

I still get my 'fix' from browsing the boards (although that's slowed as well).


But anyway, back to the topic....

I can't believe it was all about the cash. That can't be, can it? Surely they have more sense then to piss of the playerbase on the eve of the greatest competition ever by selling an impossible expansion. Don't they?

I dunno, it seems to all go back to the level cap increase thing for me. Either they were going to increase the cap on the 5th anniv or not. They say they wanted to. If so, someone or a group of someones stopped it. It wouldn't even matter who it was really, the devs, Smed, whoever, but "Why" is the burning question for me. Maybe I'm looking for some redeeming answer that really isn't there.

They were also supposed to launch the new graphics engine for the 5th aniversery and that didn't happen either. I think that it mostly had to do with them being way behind and couldn't see putting out the extra levels and the graphics engine when they weren't close to being ready.

GoD also had a beta. It's pretty humorous that the whole exercise happened if GoD was truly intended for level 70.

Thats one thing that doesnt add up... everyone in the GoD "beta" was level 65... yes with the best gear available, but they clearly tuned encounters and events for the level 65's, with level 65 spells and hit points and mana pools... So I dont know about this level 70 thing... I mean there was no evidence anywhere that they were even considering upping the level cap. No new test spells on lucy, nothing on Test, nothing in the beta... really just sounds more like an excuse for particularly bad design.

Thats one thing that doesnt add up... everyone in the GoD "beta" was level 65... yes with the best gear available, but they clearly tuned encounters and events for the level 65's, with level 65 spells and hit points and mana pools... So I dont know about this level 70 thing... I mean there was no evidence anywhere that they were even considering upping the level cap. No new test spells on lucy, nothing on Test, nothing in the beta... really just sounds more like an excuse for particularly bad design.

If you read your message again , you will giggle too. You assumed that SoE did anything with GoDs based on the feedback from the Beta testers.

Ok to answer this question lets take a look again at politics. You ever notice that politicians run on "hot issues" that they are going to go to washington to solve! But then you look and every election it's the same issues that need to be solved again and again. Even if they are new issues it is likely to be a problem the politicians made themselves that they are now going to solve. Well thats whats SOE is doing. They created the problem. Now they are going to sell you the solution. Are you buying it?

Tiane has an excellent point. Just look at tracking cons before/after. Most of the mob population couldn't hold a candle to the experience of the Tables in PoFire level-wise. Only after the 'tuning' did tracking pop up with a plethora of red con mobs (incidently, nerfing our Harmony against trash mobs at the same time... grrrrrr).

It doesn't look (in hindsight) like the mob levels were conducive to a level 70 environment.

Maybe it was just the $$

...If so, someone or a group of someones stopped it. It wouldn't even matter who it was really, the devs, Smed, whoever, but "Why" is the burning question for me. Maybe I'm looking for some redeeming answer that really isn't there.Because... If they "gave away" a few levels and sold the rest most players would wait to purchase the additional levels when they saw a need, ie when they had maxxed out the other levels and were ready to add more.

The recent expansions have all offered at least one amenity that is a "have to have" for the players. PoP = PoK portal books, LoY = bank space and a reasonably needed spell even for the 65s, LDoN = augments and the adventurer charm. What did GoD offer? Nothing really except content for the guilds that had been farming PoTime forever already. And with this omission, sales were WAY down for GoD with OoW in even worse shape even WITH the added amenity of new levels because (from what I have heard) OoW is the "second half" of GoD... the second part of the progression (ie they are NOT stand alone expansions).

Adding "FREE" levels would, in addition to delaying a lot of OoW purchases, require a retuning of parts of the game. SOE likes to "tune up" parts of the game AFTER the first rush of buyers has farmed the newly easy areas a bit so that they feel that they got an added bonus. (ever notice that some players rush to buy a new expansion because of the massive loot drops that are usually in the game for the first few days of a new expansion? The same is true of farming newly easier rares as well.) Saving all 5 levels for OoW means that EVERYONE level 65 would benefit immediately by buying the expansion, and would (so they hoped).

My personal opinion is simply that the levels they were gonna "give away" were an excuse. It almost sounded plausible until I started thinking... there was none of the standard preliminary workup done for adding in any levels.

In other words, I stand by my declared guild summit resolution to wait and see if SoE truly does implement gamewide changes prior to releasing OoW. Its been 3 weeks out of the promised 6 weeks delay of OoW, besides the original list of changes (which isn't enough) there hasn't been anymore news on further changes. So far not so good.

It was the lack of sales($$) and this conference was a method for PR to their quickly vanishing client base...

Like I said, PR only goes as far as getting me to wait and see. Positive action is what I am waiting for now. My account has already been cancelled and will expire in october. If 3 months later nothing much has improved, sorry I'm permanently out of EQ. Its as simple as that.

The whole "it was intended for level 70s" line that the devs gave smacked of spin to me. If that were true, which I doubt, then it is grounds for demanding refunds.

Tulas the crankier druid.

P.S.

"Which begs the question:
How in the world could devs possibly design appropriate 70th level content without knowing what sorts of abilities and spells player-classes would have from 66-70? Obviously, none of that stuff had been fleshed out until recently, and they're still tweaking the templates" by Firmynd is very smart, great post. It reminds me of the moment where Columbo nails the villain.

Smedley was the one who stated that they planned to increase the level limit to 70 during the 5th anniversery but then realized it was a bad idea. I never heard anything about the developers stopping it. The amount of time and energy it takes to increase levels by five is extreme. All sorts of new spells, abilities, equipment and content has to be built or re-tuned. It makes a lot more sense to tie it into an expansion.

The developers did retune much of the content for Gates for the appropriate level ranges. Ferubi is tuned as a valor-like zone with equipment and content meant to progress smaller guilds or pick-up raids. The sewers are tuned for pre-elemental level 65s. Tipt and Vxed are tuned for elemental / Time equipped folks. Kodtaz is time+.

While it was retuned around level 65s, GoD was designed to be really hard. We're used to easier difficulties with easy transportation, easier zones, and graveyards and they wanted to give us a challenging expansion again. Gates isn't inaccessible, its just really hard.

I've spent more time in Gates recently and I've enjoyed that time. Ferubi is a fun hard zone for 60+ folks with nice drops (though I've seen none). The sewers are now easier to do with a normal 65 group, the sort of group you'd build for a LDON hard adventure. Zones like Qinimi and Rewwi are empty but offer a lot of fun content for folks to carve into.

LDON and PoP spoiled me. When I first went to Gates I complained about a lack of graveyards, a lack of adventure zones, a lack of adventure point loot systems, and a lack of lower level content. When I compare Gates to Planes of Power, I like Gates a lot more. While I would have preferred more LDON-like content, on its own Gates isn't as bad as everyone thinks.

Loral Ciriclight
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The problem is people arent still yelling as loud as they were.

That cartoon/post by Woody at GU Comics scared the bejeesus out of Sony. They rode it out and got past it with wining and dining some guild leaders. That made em look good and public embarrassment has calmed down.

Now it seems easy for Sony. Create some private venting boards, throw em a little content bone ( VP promises ) and all is good. Now they can go back to working on the fixes and rolling them into OOW so they can bring in assloads of money.

While I would have preferred more LDON-like content, on its own Gates isn't as bad as everyone thinks.

Perhaps not, but consider the perspective of typical 65th level players who only have a couple hours to play each night. After wasting their first week or two in Gates on multiple CRs, many folks said screw this, I'm going back to PoP/LDoN.

Even the GoD exp/quest zones designed for 55+ are a miserable failure; just compare the average number of people in those zones with the number of people you'd find in any tier1 zone after PoP was released.

Remember the first few months? PoI, PoD, PoN... each of those zones was populated with close to a hundred (or more) players during prime time every night. After LDoN was released, there were hundreds of people spread across the five wayfarer camps, not counting those inside adventures.

SOE neglected to consider the overhead of time involved. They should have been paying closer attention to LDoN, which makes for a nice case study in how much time players spend trying to form a fairly balanced group (min-maxers galore). GoD increased that overhead by making travel to/from adventure areas more tedious and difficult.

Then consider: In every other expansion, word-of-mouth was effective advertising; thousands of links for new loot shooting across servers, people telling their friends how awesome the Exp was in new zones, etc. What kind of word-of-mouth advertising did GoD generate? People seeing guildmates constantly on CRs, and relating tales of trash mobs that could outrun SoW and beat a person down within seconds. Is it any wonder GoD sales never got off the ground?

Players might enjoy challenging content itself, but SOE has spent the last two years allowing players to forget the travel timesinks of the old Vision™... bringing all that back in a single expansion was a big, big mistake.

~Firemynd

Is it any wonder GoD sales never got off the ground?


Just like with LoY and LDoN I pre-ordered DoG with one of my accounts. My intention being to purchase a hard copy version for my other account after it was released. This never happened when I discovered that it was a worthless pile of DoG poo. I wonder how much this was the case accross the board with second/third accounts? I think one contributing factory was the huge over nerf of the tribute system after release. They shouldn't have nerfed it so much or, in the cynical view they should have waited longer. Then they might have had more sales.

The problem is people arent still yelling as loud as they were.

True, but it's only fair. They asked for a chance to implement some changes and we need to give it to them. But time is moving right along, and there's really not much that has changed. The upcoming patch in 2 weeks (July 8th I believe) needs to fulfill a lot of peoples expectations, or people will re-light the torches and get the pitchforks out of the barn, and I'll be right there with em.