Breaking News: Dragons of Norrath

by Loral on January 10, 2005

Early today rumors started spreading like wildfire of a new Everquest expansion. This evening we finally have more details. Most of your questions can be answered at the Official Dragons of Norrath Website. Lets dig right into the main features:

Everquest: The Dragons of Norrath, release on February 15th.

- New Zones, Creatures and Content - From Lavastorm to the Thundercrest Isles adventure in graphically enhanced zones with all new themes. Brave challenging new quests, discover new treasures, and battle new NPCs including drakes, goblins, and fierce dragons.

- New Interactive World Map - A full-color interactive map of the world allows players to point-and-click from a world view, to a continent view, to a zone view of the traditional line maps.

- Player Barter System - Allows players to set up their own method of giving platinum or items for other items. Players can now buy items!

- Potion Belt - Allows for quick use of consumable items, such as potions or food.

- Bandolier Equip - Lets your character have pre-arranged, multiple sets of weapons accessible by a single mouse click.

- New spells and Tradeskill Recipes

- All-New Guild Halls - Individual instanced Guild Halls for guild members to meet and prepare for playing. Includes the following features and benefits:

- Guild Bank - Bank slot for storage of items accessible by all (designated) members of a guild.

- Mana/health Regen Pool - Allows players to easily regenerate their mana and health in preparation for battle (available only at the Guild Hall).

- Mass Corpse Summoning Altar - Allows guilds to summon guild corpses en masse to the altar room after a wipe out.

- Guild Portal - Allows guild members to purchase the ability to have a persistent port to pre-determined areas around the world.

- Guild Tradeskill Objects - Various tradeskill tools are located in the guild hall for easy access by guild members.

- Guild 'Looking for Members' Tool - Allows guilds to recruit by placing persistent “ads” on bulletin boards, search for player characters who match guild criteria and send in-game emails to those members.

- Players 'Looking for Guild' Tool - Allows players to find guilds recruiting members.

- Buff Timers - In the Guild Halls buff times can be paused for Guild Members.

The front page also mentions a "In-game email system" when you highlight one of the crazy spires.

Loral's Comments:

The front page of the website mentions a release date of February 15th (Looks like I may owe Nanyea a drink). I didn't expect it this soon but the schedule fits inside of the traditional six month delivery of new expansions since PoP. While the boards already crawl with "but they haven't fixed all the doors in Freeport" comments already, and while many others feel that SOE is bringing this out too soon, history since PoP shows a six month delivery cycle. Personally, I enjoy seeing the world shift and change as often and as radically as it does. Change is growth and growth is good.

I love the mentioned guild features, however, I fear the associated in-game costs. Hopefully the guild costs scale well for non-high end raiding guilds. The mass summon corpse feature interests me the most. While I feel SOE should give this feature to every player of the game in the form of a Shadowrest NPC, even in a guild hall this feature will help many players. However, if the cost is scaled around guilds with 54 raiders of level 70, it won't scale well for a guild of 12 level 20 to 50 players. The costs of guildhall features should scale well for guilds of all sizes in order to be a truly great feature.

In-game email, a guild recruitment service, and a player search of recruiting guilds will help people get together and find groups of friends with similar goals and play-styles. I like that a lot. Now if only we would see a "recruit" guild status to streamline the guild recruitment process.

The UI elements look to be nice additions. One of these, the bandolier, was a feature asked for at the guild summit. The world map should help new players but many of us who have the zone maps permanently laid over the neural paths of our brains will find little use in them.

The beta signup appears and disappears on the front page of EQLive. If you don't blink at the wrong moment and you desire to betatest the expansion, keep watch the Everquest homepage.

In other news, John Smedley, president of SOE, posted an interesting note about Everquest 2 including this comment about a new form of $5 bit of content called "Adventure Packs":

"Adventure Packs are a new style of content that we are introducing to EverQuest II. You can think of them as being similar to "Modules" from traditional tabletop RPGs. They will be heavily story driven and themed adventuring areas. We will provide a part of each of these Adventure Packs, at no extra charge, to all of our players. This should give everyone the opportunity to see if a particular Adventure Pack is the kind of thing they are interested in. You'll be able to buy these at any time, since they will be delivered digitally. We plan on keeping the price point for these low... In fact, our first one will be just US$4.99."

Read the John Smedley's full EQ2 letter.

Adventure packs interest me. This is an opportunity for SOE to release mini-games or campaigns for EQ2 in a more traditional RPG sense. I imagine modules like Temple of Elemental Evil and Queen of the Demonweb Pits. I imagine single story lines that progress from beginning to end. Where typical EQ2 expansions will focus on large scale world-based content, these adventures will offer a specific and focused story, gameplay element, zone, and quests. So why not have this for EQ1? The idea of paying another $5 every three months will turn some people off, but considering the time we get for our dollar, $5 for twenty hours of content is a pretty good deal.

Earlier today, Everquest Executive Producer, Robert Pfister, posted The State of Everquest in 2005. In it he discusses many of the past and future points of interest for Everquest including possible server merges for the Zeks and a review of other servers after Dragons of Norrath, the class role review, and the release of Dragons of Norrath. It is unclear when we may first see class changes occurring and I would bet it won't be until after the release of Dragons of Norrath. That will surely vex some people. Minor class tweaks don't excite me like a new expansion does, however, and I bet I am not alone.

Yes, I get all googly eyed when I see the glossy propaganda for a new expansion. I know we still have class discussions ahead of us and new patches that update old-world content like the task system. I know there are still plenty of bugs. But I see a screenshot like this Frost Giant and I can't help but get giddy. I love Norrath and I love watching it grow. I look forward to the days ahead.

Loral Ciriclight
11 January 2005
loral@loralciriclight.com

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Comment Posted by: Abalieno on January 11, 2005 05:21 PM

I'll paste what you wrote some time ago :)

--
Omens of War brings us over a dozen new zones, half of them instanced. It expands the physical worlds of Norrath even further. I wonder if SOE might best spend their time working on new expansions that take Everquest into directions other than new zones to explore. Everquest is certainly wide, it is the largest physical game I've ever played, but it isn't very deep. The vast majority of content builds around combat against bosses. The numbers increase but the gameplay is generally the same. New lines of progression need to be developed.

Comment Posted by: on January 11, 2005 06:03 PM

Does anyone else notice that there seems to be less and less reasons to be in a "progressing" guild, as opposed to one which would still have you but is further along? Seems to be with this new expansion the bigger guilds will continue growing, while the smaller ones remain in flux. Other than that, I can see great possibilities for applications of some of these functions for raiders, but not so much for people grouping. Also, regarding every six months there being an expansion, am I the only one who thinks that Sony's track record re: bugs hasn't exactly been the best since PoP came out...? GoD wasn't exactly running "smoothly" for quite a while, and OoW while visually beautiful caused quite a few problems uniquely its own. This expansion will be mine, but not for a month or three as far as I'm willing to guess.

Comment Posted by: Wombat on January 11, 2005 09:54 PM

I love the Guid features, the new graphics look like they will require EQ2 levels of computer power, many poeople stayed with EQ1 because they couldnt upgrade their comps.

To be honest 6 months ago this would have excited me, but my current concerns with server population make this expansion seem like too little too late. Whats in it that will attract new players into the gamme and to survive in empty zones pre 50?

They are looking to release it for the 15th February which appears far too early for any Beta tuning and balancing any of the class changes that are being considered.

It may be a knee jerk rush job to get back players so they dont have to address server population issues.

Stop Press!

Wow has not been released yet in Europe/Rest of the World that does not have it yet. Release date is 25th Feb

Ok that answers that. Expect a massive bug fest from a rushed marketting ploy.

Currently our servers newbie population is almost non existant and if someone does start up brand new there are not groups pre 50 for them in most zones. They need to address this before new high level expansions.

However there are some Guilds at the bleeding edge who will need new content so they need to balance that also. I would have thought some new higher level reworking of old zones would have helped that (over and above MM and SP).

A bug ridden disaster is all we need to further depress population...

There is a theory they are using EQ1 as a beta for the next expansion changes for EQ2.... I think a lot will hold off purchasing it till its debugged and to also assess server population trends which will make the Guild features a little hard to implement if half the people in Guilds dont have it.

The Guild Features should have been free upgrades so all could use them. Whats this about us having to pay to use the Guild features?

Currently our servers newbie population is almost non existant and if someone does start up brand new there are not groups pre 50 for them in most zones. They need to address this before new high level expansions.

However there are some Guilds at the bleeding edge who will need new content so they need to balance that also. I would have thought some new higher level reworking of old zones would have helped that (over and above MM and SP).

The new EQ2 adventure packs are a moot point, with up to 4 a year it will be interesting to see how many are bought. I can see groups having to sift through who has what in order to work out where to fight next. Or over time people forgetting what they have and on getting there find they cant go in and the group having to recruit all over again.

People on access accounts will get the Adventure zones free but they pay twice as much for their account in the first place. Which, if you only play one game, is a bit like playing on Legends, costwise.

The mapping system isnt bad as there are an amazing number of people who dont know their way around, this at least is newbie friendly. With the number of zones that exist now its impossible for new players to learn them all quickly.

Wombat

Comment Posted by: Naladini on January 12, 2005 01:12 AM

"Adventure packs interest me. This is an opportunity for SOE to release mini-games or campaigns for EQ2 in a more traditional RPG sense. I imagine modules like Temple of Elemental Evil and Queen of the Demonweb Pits. I imagine single story lines that progress from beginning to end. Where typical EQ2 expansions will focus on large scale world-based content, these adventures will offer a specific and focused story, gameplay element, zone, and quests. So why not have this for EQ1? The idea of paying another $5 every three months will turn some people off, but considering the time we get for our dollar, $5 for twenty hours of content is a pretty good deal."

Sell me some EQ1 solo adventure packs, geared for solo play, I'll pay full expansion price if they're actually do-able and I won't need more than a zone or two to justify it. ;)

Honestly though, I've read a lot of negative feedback on various sites regarding the adventure pack offering, mainly of the "i can't believe they're charging for what other games give away for free" variety. Personally, I don't really buy into that arguement because they will still offer free content from time to time (not like free zones are released on a regular schedule anyways). I like this concept especially since this means SOE is starting to offer some real incentives to move up to the Station Access subscription program for those who don't split time regularly between EQ1/EQ2. Get more people on the Station Access subscription, then you've got the ability to sell more expansions to everyone, for either game.

You'll see some population flux from time to time as a result, but in the end, if you drive your new EQ2 subscribers to Station Access, they're that much more likely to give EQ1 a try since its included as well.

Comment Posted by: Pants on January 12, 2005 01:47 AM

This expansion sounds better than many of the recent ones if it pans out as worded, concentrating more on new features than just plain old more zones with not much else. I especially like the sound of the guild stuff. I kind of doubt though that this is really going to bring many people back to EQ though it could stem the tide of losses.

I think it is foolish to give a release date though because who knows if it'll really be ready then or not. All the new features increase the chance for many bugs that might need to be worked out before it is released. SOE would be smart to push back the release date if it is not ready rather than release it anyway and fix it on the fly because they don't need to be giving people any more excuses to leave for other games than they already have in 2004. Maybe the success with pushing back OOW has taught them a lasting lesson.

The first half of 2005 is going to be critical for the future of EQ1. With a good expansion and addressing of class balance and server population issues they could solidify a long future for EQ. If they mess up I think they might shorten EQ's future significantly. Why is it so critical now? Competition, lots of it and successful. EQ2 itself has drawn many players away from EQ1 and is up to 300,000 (I think I read that somewhere). WoW has surpassed 600,000 copies sold in a month and half, and it hasn't even been released in Europe and Asia yet. That is a lot of people now playing the newest generation of games and they should grow even more. No matter what people say many of those who left for these other games aren’t going to return to EQ so they need to try to hang on to the people left the best they can. It's crunch time for EQ now because it can't just rest on it’s Lorals anymore. LOL sorry bad pun I meant laurels.

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on January 12, 2005 05:04 AM

I'm a bit sceptical that announcing a new expansion in February is a good thing while EQ1 struggles for fun factor and attractiveness.

It seems awfully early to do so when they say that they want to revamp classes big time.

Comment Posted by: one angry ex-EQ player on January 12, 2005 08:55 AM

I find it amusing that SOE is now fully acknowleding after 5 years of indifference to the concept of class balance they have announced the following:

"Our goal is to make certain that each class has a desirable role to play when grouped and while raiding."

This is an elementary fact that any seasoned EQ player would surely grasp. I spent years promoting this concept on various EQ discussion forums. Interestingly enough EQ celebrities Loral and Woody do not believe in the concept of class balance and their postions on this issue are frankly embarrasing. I suspect both of them will have conversions on the road to Freeport and suddenly believe in class balance as a worth goal of MMORPG's--just intime for them to attend the next "all expenses paid" summit in San Diego.

I feel sorry for those poor souls still enslaved to an inferior online gaming experience otherwise known as EverQuest despite the news of the new expansion. I think SOE is realizing that EQ2 may not be the saviour for their company that they thought it would be so expect to see a new focus on EQ.

In the process of putting their eggs in the same EQ2 basket they alienated many of their core players and literally drove them away into the waiting arms of Blizzard and other online gaming companies. Anyone with a shred of talent left EQ for EQ2 and/or other companies leaving EQ in the hands of a few ex-GM's leaving us with the most untalented, uncommunicative, incompetent Dev Team in EQ's history. Hiring Alan VanCouvering as a designer is just one example of adding insult to injury to the EQ community.

Am I bitter? You bet I am. I gave 5 years of my free time to EverQuest and I believed in it 100%. I contributed much to the community and helped in more ways then anyone will ever know. Sadly that love and committment was never reciprocated by SOE. EverQuest could have been amazing and really had promise but they blew it. Someone I can't help feeling that EQ died when Brad McQuaid left. His departure was the beginning of the end.

Pfister and Smedley are just too late in my opinion to save EQ. They had their chance at the summit to really change the way things were done at SOE and EQ Live but they failed. Instead of open communication with SOE and the playerbase a new era of obfuscation and non-communication was ushered in. Summits with barbeque, beer and baseball are not the answer--unless of course you are a fanboy. Another expansion is not the answer either. What is needed is a drastic change in the corporate culture at SOE--which will never happen. SOE needs to be honest, open and humble with respect to it's relationship with it's customers.

Comment Posted by: Talaen on January 12, 2005 09:13 AM

I took a longer look at this expansions's feature list.

The guild and communication features are very nice, and are mostly things that people have been asking to have for a while, or are things that have worked very well in SWG or in the competition. I'm glad to see that Sony is working on adding these features to EQ, that helps to keep it on a more even footing with other, newer games.

However, as I've stated before, that also means a lot of new code. EverQuest as a product is spaghetti code anyway - it almost never fails that when a new feature is introduced or a big change is made, dozens of other things get broken. Will this happen here? Who knows. They might do an amazing job and release it with almost no bugs. BUT it won't make a difference.

Every EQ player I know is skeptical about expansions. They all expect bugs. They all expect things to be promised and then for those promises to be broken. They expect to be, in their words, lied to, and many of them are simply going to refuse to buy this one straight off.

It is important for SOE to reestablish EQ as a viable game in light of EQ2 and WoW, and getting an expansion on shelves is a good part of that - but they also need to work harder on winning back the hearts and minds of their existing players. The best possible thing they can do is to start inviting existing players into the beta for Dragons - and quickly. They shouldn't wait for people to sign up - they should literally throw this one up on the test server and say "here it is!! come help us make sure it works!!" The more visible they can make the expansion before release, the more likely players will be to pick it up - assuming that they are responsive during the beta period and manage to get it out the door fairly bug-free.

On the content side - the new art looks interesting. I like the fact that it takes place pretty much in the "Old World" of EverQuest - Antonica/Odus/Faydwer have needed some love for quite some time now. I really hope we see a revamped Lavastorm out of this that everyone gets, as the zone could look much, much cooler given the new default graphics engine. However, let's talk about the backstory for a minute.

Firiona Vie coming back to the forefront was a good thing. Morden Rasp's hero concept (leader of some NPC uberguild) annoyed many players, although he was decently written. Firiona on the other hand always had a solid basis for being at the forefront of events.

Lanys T'vyl - not so good an idea. Lanys has died twice, fallen out of favor with her dad, and generally been a screwup since the battle of Bloody Kithicor. Her own people didn't even follow her the last time - in fact King Naythox sent troops out just to make sure she didn't try anything funny. I don't really see how they can write her back into the storyline and have it sound halfway plausible.

If they really want to make this storyline work and appeal to old-scholl EQ players, then they need to draw upon the lore that's out there from the Beta - Kunark period. Edril the Lancer, the Veil, the Ring of Scale, the Claws of Veeshan - all those stories and histories need to be used as the backdrop for this one. And more importantly, it needs to be something that players experience and take part in rather than read about.

I have not been impressed by the last few expansions in terms of story content (which is generally reflected in quests), but I have been extremely impressed by the story writing for the Epic 2.0 quests, and by all of the writing thus far in EQ2, so perhaps they will do a good job here. I am skeptical however, if only because of what they've put up on that web page. Many players may not really care about the storyline in their MMO, but many others do, so I hope that SOE improves over their past efforts.

At any rate, we'll have to see how it goes. This expansion will mark a turning point for EQ1 - the game is on shaky ground due to population problems, design imbalances caused by horrendous mudflation, and a generally cynical outlook by most of its players. In the eyes of most players, I think this expansion will either dig the grave for EverQuest, or it will revitalize the old game long enough for the developers to fix some of the big problems with the existing game. Time will tell.

Comment Posted by: Daehron on January 12, 2005 10:39 AM

One Angry Ex Player has a remarkable ability to forget vast amounts of developer communication re: class balance / group roles / raid roles over the past 5 years. They made casters too powerful in Kunark, the nerfed them in Velious. They made monks too powerful in Luclin, then nerfed them and warriors in PoP (til the warriors hit elemental gear and they were over the top).

SOE has constantly been tweaking and adjusting the balances between the classes. Claims of 5 years of indifference are utterly ludicrous.

Whiners complain that their fav class is not the best at what they want it to be. Well, it is not your world, you don't set the rules. They do, and for the most part, they work.

I would say, if you don't like it, leave. But you have, so that is pointless.

People like you whine that EQ is unresponsive and doesn't do anything (that you want). Then when they are responsive its 'a marketing ploy.'

Regarding bugs, folks have selective memories.

LoY extension releasing maps, and the LFG tool *VERY* smoothly and relatively bug free. The Raid tool in PoP still is buggy, a lot of that seems to be due to the way servers handle groups. Still... they kept working on it and it works pretty well now.

The bug ridden fiasco's have always been re: the graphic interface... the Velious revamp, the Luclin revamp, the spring 2004 revamp, all had huge impacts on how the game was played, and therefore also had the most bugs.

All the rampant "sub 50 players have no place to group" crap is just that. Prime time -- go hit the hot spots. I did that with some alts and got plenty of groups. I got groups as fast if not faster than my 67 bard does.

I don't buy into most of the whining on the boards these days.

[Note, Loral edited the personal attacks out of this post. Discuss the issues and leave the individuals alone.]

Comment Posted by: Loral on January 12, 2005 01:24 PM

Please keep personal attacks out of the discussions here. I would sure love to avoid any typical EQ vs EQ2 vs WoW debates unless they have clear and meaningful points that help the discussions at hand.

Abalieno, I still agree what what I said back then. We don't know all of the content features of Dragons of Norrath yet, but I hope it is more than just zones full of mobs.

Brenlo stated an intent to discuss the new class role looks this week or next. He mentions that while all of this DoN stuff is going on, they haven't forgotten their statement about efforts to help redefine class roles. Hopefully we'll hear more soon.

I always look to history when I predict the future. Some expansions, like LDON and Omens, get released with very few problems. Others, like Gates, get released with so many that people can't even describe how much it hurt. I still tie much of the perceived failure of Gates to these bugs more so than the content. Gates offered more content than Plane of Power did for 55+ unflagged players but crash bugs, geometry bugs, pathing bugs, and graphic bugs really hurt a lot of people at one of the highest points in EQ's population.

Will the expansion release bug free? No. Nothing is ever bug free. Are the bugs so severe that it hurts the enjoyment of the expansion? That one is hard to say. I loved LDON when it came out and I loved Omens when it came out. I liked Gates when it came out too until I hit the sewers, Tipt, and Vxed and couldn't really get anywhere else. A lot of people couldn't even log in for a while. That's never good.

Anyone who reads these articles knows I am an optimist, so my views shouldn't come as any real surprise. Some players are more cynical and some are more optimistic. Reality usually falls in between.

My next article will talk about some of my hopes for the next expansion and some of the details of the features I would like to see.

Pardon me while I pontificate a little bit about a subject that just came up...story.

Story in a MMOG is a very difficult thing. I write a lot of fiction, self contained stories with all variables already filled out. Writers who write without an outline often talk about how the world sort of builds itself as your pen runs across the page. Many good authors discuss how the story gets away from them and becomes its own entity. Compare this to the idea that statues are already within a block of stone and the sculptor just releases it.

The key to an MMO story is to leave many of these variables undefined. MMO stories aren't self contained, there is one huge missing gap; the protagonist. Players are the central characters in a MMO. They define the story. The best way to create stories in MMOs is to put out variables such as PC motivation and interactions, political or social shifts and directions, physics, science and magic, and let the story build itself from those variables. If the story is defined too much, players feel like they walk a path already laid out for them. This can still work; games like Final Fantasy and Baldur's Gate have central storylines you can follow. Some games like Knights of the Old Republic have a couple of stories and you can jump between them (the good vs evil storylines). Few games just lay out a world for you and let the story roll itself out.

Consider Grand Theft Auto Vice City. One day, while playing this game, I was told to get a suitcase from a female gang leader who was helicoptoring in and driving to her hideout. I had to stop her and get the suitcase.

Now the game developers didn't plot it out for me. They didn't set up a series of traps for me to spring. They gave me a world with cars and guns and let me figure out how to solve the problem.

I ended up in a wacky car chase, me in a semi that I switched out for a motorcycle when the semi exploded, she in her BMW racing along the streets. Cops chased us as we ran, gang members took pot shots at me. I finally ended up chasing her on foot in an alley and shooting her down before getting the suitcase and getting away from the cops. It was like a dynamic version of Scarface. None of it was planned out but it felt like I was in a Scorsese movie.

That's freedom in a game. You set up the physics, the magic, the NPCs and their motivations. You give a general beginning to the story. In fiction writing this is called a "seed" such as "family of four watch as space aliens land over the world" or "crazy fan kidnaps her favorite romance author". In games this seed is something like "Firiona Vie runs away from Felwithe" or "The Muramites finally get wind of Norrath and begin to invade". From then on, the player is the one who actually finishes the story and adds in the narration and dialog.

This is really tricky in a MMOG. Everquest doesn't have the same freedom that GTA does. It has physics and it has magic, but most variables get narrowed down into very few things. You have mobs with hitpoints who do damage and reward experience. We have new elements in every adventure or hunt. Sometimes a mob gates and brings down hoards of beasts upon us. Sometimes we accidently pull four beasts but manage to fight our way through it.

One of the reasons most people didn't like the Mordin Rasp storyline may be that Mordin Rasp took out spot as the protagonist in the story. We felt like wacky sidekicks instead of the heroes. The Firiona Vie story line works better because she's not a hero or adventurer; she's the kings lost daughter. We're the ones who have to find her and make sure she's ok.

Too much story in EQ ends up shoving us on the outside and peeking in. Sometimes it's more fun to have a wide open world with only a few seeds out there to let us build our own stories. Motivation and direction isn't always clear. Sometimes the seeds lack the nouns and verbs we need to even begin our story. When we have them, they work. When we don't we either make our own up (Loral heads to Kuua to find a weapon against the vampires who threaten Felwithe) or we just ignore it and seek out experience and loot.

Well, this was a lot longer than I intended. Let us discuss...

Comment Posted by: Talaen on January 12, 2005 02:54 PM

Good points Loral. I've always felt that the best way to bring "story" into the game is to come up with a good backdrop of plots and counterplots, settings and events - and then drop the players into the middle of it. You're absolutely right that there shouldn't be a clear protagonist and that's why Morden Rasp isn't well liked. The major NPCs that we interact with should be powerful, and have agendas - but they should be agendas so much greater than our daily struggles that they're on a whole different level.

If Firiona Vie is to recover the Lifeguide, then it should be adventurers who bring it to her and through their actions help her do it. If the Muramites are to invade Norrath, then it should be the actions of adventurers that ultimately stop them and lead to their defeat. The adventurers should be the protagonists, and the NPCs just the hooks.

I guess when I use the word story, I really mean backstory more than anything.

The one thing I will say is that if they start a story arc like that, then they need to follow through with it. I have had some great story moments in EverQuest - especially with the first Firiona Vie/Lifeguide storyline. I remember how the Plague of the Karanas event started, with the trial in Qeynos. But I have also been disappointed when they don't follow through with something and really take it as far as the players would like - the Plague of the Karanas event is a prime example. They built it up and up and up and in the end, an army of adventurers had gathered to destroy the Avatar of Bertoxxulous and fight off his army - and instead we watched and did nothing as divine intervention ended the plague and everything went back to exactly the way it was before. It was such a waste of a good story, and it wasn't long after that that the "storyline" became completely the province of articles in city newspapers and out-of-game websites, and GM events became glorified contests where they basically just handed out loot for no real reason.

Anyway, the plot should always move around the adventurers - they should be caught up in it, carried along with it - and given the opportunity and ability to help to bring it to conclusion.

Comment Posted by: Naladini on January 12, 2005 04:20 PM

Loral, you chose wisely when you picked the word protagonist for your comments. One of the things I've found missing in EQ is the ability to be a "hero" (another concept that is diffuclt in a MMO). This was primarily due to the raiding focus, as 36-72 "hero's" attacking one target is probably a bad thing. Unfortunately, the result is that the raiding game has more of a "don't screw up" mentality than a "how can I kill this creature and save my friends" kind of feeling.

This is where I think focusing adventure packs for both EQ1 and EQ2 towards more of a solo style of play would be interesting (and quite popular). The EQ Lorewriters would have a chance to tell a more involved story, while at the same time, allowing each person who chooses to get involved a chance to be the hero.

Comment Posted by: Horzek on January 12, 2005 06:55 PM

Looks like another $29.99 for the opportunity to spend 300k of in game plat. This time I will not be laying down my cash. I am sick to death of being milked every 6 months.

On the bright side, the in game mail is a great idea and one of the things I really enjoy about WoW. Makes you wonder if the EQ team does get out once in a while.

Horzy

Comment Posted by: Wombat on January 12, 2005 10:19 PM

While we are on the "Road to Damascus" (yes its another "Road" movie with Dorathy Lamour... or is it El 'Aurens)ahem.

You could make the game more dynamic by triggerring events. Helping FV escape from a trap by completing a quest or storming a citadel. This leads to various events elsewhere in the game. Some can be reversed by evil players completing a counter quest or storming another strongpoint.

Keep the 70lvl Time equipped types from dominating by having some events level restricted ie magic wards have been set to exclude the strongest knights from zone X, who can come to the aid of FV in the level 40 or below zone?

Random pathing for gangs of mobs that have to be taken down on the fly, you cant camp them. Chanter/Bard mez becomes essential to overcome these gangs. Make it group friendly except for the Storming events which will perhaps require several raids. Dont make it all PST prime time also, spread the timing of things around.

Put limits on those in a zone for an event to stop lag destroying it.

So a storming of a cititadel and keeping it clear of mobs for 5 mins triggers the march of reinforcements in another zone, if these arent stopped before the zone line FV is holed up in a small fort and must be rescued etc and so on.

Of course you need a viable server population in all tiemzones for the whole server to enjoy these things. basically you log on not knowing what you will find.

At least its better than hearing about the one GM event that year and getting to it to find it dominated by 70 levels or detroyed by crowd lag.

In terms of this expansion I am glad that some find /lfg a 5 min affair, on my PvE server in my playtime they better have plenty of kiting opportunites for half groups to run behind or my guild wont have much to do with it. We are losing our last warrior and have 2 paladins left (both part time players). Clerics and Druids have left for other games, our DPS classes are getting fed up /lfg and we are waiting for the game changes that will mean more newbies in the game so its viable for us.

Sony has made no consessions to poulation problems yet, they have just started to acknowledge it. The first thing they could do is dramatically reduce transfer server and account transfer costs so that people can rationalise accounts and move servers to maintain their gameplay.

At the moment people wont pay the money Sony is asking and leaving the gamme or letting some accounts lapse.

People will leave low pop servers themselves, of course this will make life hell for those left behind and perhaps force Sony to make a decision...

Wombat

Comment Posted by: Loral on January 12, 2005 11:47 PM

By the way, there are some very exciting and temporary quests going on on all servers. These server-altering events should be a lot of fun leading up to the release. Give them a look. You can read more about them over on the quest forum:

http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/board?board.id=Quests

Comment Posted by: Pants on January 13, 2005 12:23 AM

And here I was thinking Firiona Vie was popular for her rather obvious "assets" LOL.

By the way I would point out that many class balance issues that have popped up over the years were not directly due to changes in the classes themselves, but rather due to changes in content that did not have cooresponding changes with classes to keep pace with that content. Also the way gear has been designed in the past has shown little thought as to how it will effect the ease of dealing with that content. Thus when SOE felt things got out of hand they would typically nerf some classes in a way that did more harm than good. Long term planning has always been a problem with EQ. There is no long term plan for where the story/expansions will head which is plainly obvious the way the story keeps jumping all over the place. No long term thinking in how changes to classes, or the addition of classes, will impact the game further down the road (not just immediately but say after an expansion or 3).

It's not like that is a problem specific to EQ because many games suffer the same problem of lack of a long term plan. In fact the only game I can think of that has one is City of Heroes. Stateman has the story planned out way ahead and the free content upgrades are planned out a few ahead. I think out of all the games out there they do the best job developing it and communicating with players. They tell players when they are going to make a major change to a class/archtype and say go check it out on the test server. People do and post opinions on their test forums and when a change goes too far and too much throws the class out of balance they withdraw the idea, come up with something new and test that. They have a data mining system built into the game that they also use extensively to backup decisions. When they make a mistake they admit it and fix it ASAP instead of holding onto some kind of pride that it is "us vs. them" mentality. Believe it or not sometimes devs are wrong and their ideas don't pan out in reality. In some cases players do actually know more about a class than the devs because some players spend so much time playing it they know how it really plays beyond the formulas/numbers. It isn't impossible to sort out the good suggestions from the bad with a little effort and this resource should not be ignored. If SOE can improve in this area, come up with a long term plan for EQ for the next 2 years and not worry about the "expansion every 6 months" plan, instead only releasing them when they are ready and needed, then EQ will surely be around many years to come. It really is the attitude and decision making process that will matter. Solidify that and the players will be there. Keep going about it willy nilly and making it up as they go along and more people will leave for the competition. And yes discussing the competition is completely relevent and directly impacts EQ's success. EQ isn't living in a vacuum.

Comment Posted by: Wombat on January 13, 2005 12:30 AM

Unless I read the wrong bits its already over and the shouts and emotes in zones were only in primetime? Judging by the posts the clues werent very clear?

No one in my Guild has mentioned anything to do with this quest, is it only on certain servers or in zones that are empty on my server?

Thank you to the two people who PM'd me about population issues on their PvE servers. It would help if you posted here yourselves so it doesnt look like its only me with concerns, all the time :)

Wombat

Comment Posted by: Wombat on January 13, 2005 01:54 AM

Good post Pants :)

btw my post (above was in answer to Lorals).

I think the class thing is about people maintaining useful roles in groups or raids, and in some cases being able to solo, if thats what they can do.

Roles need to complementary to a degree to enable groups to function without set classes. So if you dont have a cleric to Pacify a Paladin will do, a Bard can mez if a Chanter isnt there etc. They dont have to do things equally as well but you can put together a functional group without th3e top classes for a role in each slot.

As a Paladin I had a lot of utility thats been lost since level 55. I dont see why it was necessary to lose that. I dont want Monk/Rog/Wiz DPS its not my role. My role is to be hit and live long enuff to be healed while keeping agro and to add group utility, back up buffs, CC, etc.

The context in which classes operate has changed with nastier mob hp, dps and resists etc. This has made some classes redundant in higher level group situtaions and even in raids. Chanters replaced by buffbots etc.

Roles need to overlap to a degree but some classes should remain the best at their main role.

I think that basically implementing the classes top 10 or at least most of it is all thats required. There has been considerable seiving of info and the lists are pretty good.

The classes need tuning more than reinvisaging.

This new expansion is being tuned to the current unsatisfactory situation (what else could it be tuned for, lets hope its not tuned for level 75 players) so unless its being dumbed down hugely as a bribe to players to stay in the game, I fear the worst.

Wombat

Comment Posted by: FeliasGrimm/SFG on January 13, 2005 03:07 AM

I read a LOT of articles about managing games - between owning a gaming company and the occasional D&D style tabletop game (where I usually get stuck as a gm) I try to stay fairly well educated. Some of the best articles I've ever read (and have helped shape how my company does things) are written by Palladium Books staffers (say what you want about the mudflation and power curve in Rifts, but Siembieda and the other staffers have some amazing ideas about how games should be run) and really have a lot to say about what's important in a game, where the focus should be, etc.

Storyline SHOULD be the most important thing, and players should be the most important part of the story. Period. Amen Loral.

It's really easy to say "Classes are out of balance", but I don't think very many people know exactly what it takes to put them IN balance. It's a *LOT* of work.

I'm not trying to defend SOE on this, nor am I trying to say that classes are indeed balanced (quite the opposite, since they're getting paid for game design they should be doing better at it) - but it's not simply as easy as adding and taking away a few things then saying the classes are balanced.

You can't even judge class balance based on soloability - From a design standpoint, you have two conflicting opinions on clerics alone:
1) Clerics, in order to be balanced, should be able to solo as well as a necro.
2) Because of their healing, Cleric DPS should be seriously stunted and their nukes should in no way rival a wizard's.

Without tailored instance zones, some classes simply can't (or shouldn't be able to) solo. If a Necro can solo a DB mob, a cleric should be able to as well. And if a cleric can solo a DB, why would you need another class... just have 6 clerics in a group.

I'm not trying to pick on the clerics - I don't even know if they've been trying to make an arguement for soloing, I just grabbed a class that was easy to illustrate the point.

What EQ needs is either:

Enough players to where grouping is ALWAYS feasible, and remove the abilities of ALL classes to solo

OR

Meaningful soloable content that is specially designed on a class by class basis.

SFG

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on January 13, 2005 06:08 AM

Because of EQ aging, soloability is a very big issue when group desirability isn't spread around.

No amount of denying it from SOE will alleviate the pain of people spending hours LFG in a game, a hobby, where they are supposed to be entertained.

If tradeskilling didn't involve repetitive ungratefull tasks which challenge the boredom threshhold of players, that could have been an option. Tasks might work out, some day.

But still, SoE needs to solve this in order to not bleed off people quitting just out of sheer boredom. They need that on every level of play.

Look at some design decisions: they spread roles and blurred the lines more and more. Just maybe that was the one thing not to do. If there's no variety, content boils down to soaking damage of a single pull, heal fast enough and long enough, dish as much dps as possible and slow/snare. If you have that, you are pretty much golden since POP. There's little CC or other things involved and the game being poorer, the specific qualities of a number of classes aren't just required.

Mpg trials try to reintroduce variety which is a step in the right direction but since everything else isn't like that, it's a bit hard to find enough people with enough time at the right moment to pick the right classes and go through loops to reach a trial that locks out for way too long even on fail. I'm wondering how they got the clue on the first part but not really grasped the second or didn't implemented it in a player's friendly way. Just an example, mind you.

Comment Posted by: Pants on January 13, 2005 06:52 AM

I've seen some excellent analysis on the problems EQ has and ideas on how to fix those problems here and on other forums. There are many people that have put a lot of thought into these issues, people who have posted rational and reasonable suggestions, but the frustration lies in the pace things get done. I really think if they would take the rest of 2005, after this upcoming expansion, to retune and redo as much of the old content as possible, and specifically define and retune class roles to fit into that content, that EQ would become a much better game. They need to spend all their time and resources on this though, not continue using most of it on making more expansions. At the rate they get things done now this could take years. If they put in an all out effort on it it could be done by the end of the year maybe. They'll never accomplish anything of it though if they don't try though. Yes they now say they are going to work on classes but I'll believe when I see it actually done because they've been saying this for a long time.

Maybe now we'll see action though because the competition is bigger than ever and it isn't going away. Already WoW has more people playing it than EQ has ever had at any point in it's history and it's only going to grow more as it's released world wide. That has to be a wakeup call if people are so willing to jump ship for other games. I would guess that is why we are seeing announcements of progress. Talk is nice but action is better though. A little competition in any market is always good for the consumers as companies can't sit on their butts and must keep up with customer desires.

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on January 13, 2005 07:40 AM

From a players point of view, not the pocketbook:

I believe that SoE had to loose large amounts of customers to change attitude and start putting its acts together. When I read smed gloating that they did 1 million USD with transfers (iirc) I thought that he badly needed competition and mostly to get over himself and start to look out for the customer base as a customer base not some ever lasting cows to milk.

SoE has first and foremost an attitude problem from its management, then a bad need of veterans within EQ team not to repeat the same mistakes again (ie that don't do sweeping changes like during POP regardless of the impact), then a coherent vision of the game (today EQ is a patch work that goes in 12 different directions) and a coherent style and play style (raid size as an example).

They need to get their management straight, then their team, then the game. And that won't happen by shoving expansions while they don't even have players' feedback on sweeping changes that they want to make.

If they were a tad less obsessed in making profit in every possible way and minimise the cost and effort to provide the absolute lowest amount of quality that could cut it in the marketplace, just maybe we wouldn't be in the situation we're now. This has nothing to do with the devs skills and everything to do with bad business practices (aka short term return on investment vs longer term). It's maybe the current trend but he looks to me suicidal and downright incompetent to throw away a gem in the market as EQ has been.

Comment Posted by: Loral on January 13, 2005 08:15 AM

"Unless I read the wrong bits its already over and the shouts and emotes in zones were only in primetime? Judging by the posts the clues werent very clear?"

The quests aren't just GM events, they're NPCs all over the world that do in-zone shouts. I believe the quests are going around the clock, not just prime time. The quests pop up and go away (a little too quickly if you ask me) but they stick around. The Firiona Vie one is already over but other quests from other areas will come up. We have to keep an eye up, however, and make sure to grab them when they show up. They sound like a lot of fun, though. I did a few pieces of the FV quest and it was a great time.

Pants, you touch on a very important consideration that most people miss when discussing class issues. Its not the class, its the content. Enchanters complain that they don't have enough crowd control in Omens because single pulls are much easier. Paladins with druids and shaman can heal just fine unless they're in MPG or Riftseekers. In many cases, helping classes means working on content to support those classes, not just giving those classes new abilities or boosting the ones they have.

I still believe that upgrading soloing isn't as good an answer as finding better and faster ways for people to group. Grouping should always come first and everyone should be motivated to group first before choosing to solo. The reasons people solo (limited time, lots of afk time, need to log quickly) should be addressed in grouping first. Also, equipment matters far more than anyone really discusses. Ever since I saw a paladin one-man AE team in the Gray a few years ago, I knew that various equipment levels within each class made a huge difference. I took one of the new Gunthak tasks to hunt guys in Natox. I finished a task in under an hour and earned a nice bunch of experience for it. It wasn't near as much as I would have received grouping, but it filled out an hour.

Fixing, tuning, and increasing the tasks go a long way to balancing out solo opportunities. We'll know more after the January patch and the new tasks it will hopefully bring.

My point is, class issues become moot when you have two different level 70 characters, one with 25 AAs and one with 600 AAs. One has gear they bought in the bazaar, earned in LDON, and got an occational drop in the wall of slaughter. The other has Anguish / Txevu / Epic 2.0 gear. These two characters are far more radically different than even a druid and a wizard are. One can solo much more efficiently than the other. One can earn far more experience per hour than the other. Class balance is meaningless when you have this huge discrepency just within one level of one class. I think thats something worth just as much investment as the class issues are.

So:

- Many class issues can be addressed by tuning content.

- Many solo issues can be addressed by tuning and improving tasks.

- While the spotlight holds class issues, gear and AA issues are just as important and as unbalancing.

- SOE should always focus on ways to improve grouping before soloing. Players should always desire groups before soloing or we're all playing Morrowind.

"When I read smed gloating that they did 1 million USD with transfers (iirc) I thought that he badly needed competition and mostly to get over himself and start to look out for the customer base as a customer base not some ever lasting cows to milk."

I thought this quote turned out to be false. I heard this somewhere else and it turned out that someone had made up the quote as satire but people grabbed onto it. Do you have the full quote and a source?

Comment Posted by: Talaen on January 13, 2005 08:56 AM

Here's a thought:

What if players started earning AA points and could take AA abilities earlier, as follows:

- Players could start earning AA at level 20.
- The amount of experience to gain a point scaled based on level from 20 to 50 - such that a character at 50% AA could gain 1 point per level.
- Players could purchase generic abilities starting at level 20 and archetype abilities starting at level 40 - Class abilities would remain at 60.

Would this make a big difference (over time) in the AA inequity?

Right now, most people I know have chosen to gain exp until they hit 65 or 70 and THEN grind AAs. My guildmates always used to tell me I was nuts for working AAs since 51. But even though I leveled slower, the AAs gave me a decided edge (even that small an amount), and it really helped quite a bit. The nicest thing about it was that I was able to start saving/spending points immediatley on my archetype/class abilities when I hit level 55 and 60 respectively. I didn't have to go grind AAs out so I could start getting the cool stuff like everyone else was doing - I basically had a head start.

Still, I wonder if the option was available earlier to start working on those general abilities, if players might see more value in them, start doing AAs earlier, and ultimately when they hit the top end there would be less of a gap.

Comment Posted by: Crimsonsplat on January 13, 2005 10:01 AM

The cost of an AA point would have to scale with levels to make that scheme work, since trying to earn xp = lvl 51 while at lvl 20 would be a daunting task. But I agree that the basic abilities should be lowered, at least to level 30 or so, archetypes at 45, and then class at 60 as you suggested.

Many players say "go to max level to get your AA," but what they forget about is the range of levels one can get xp from moves. Each individual mob may give more xp in relation to how much is needed, but they also become harder to kill, meaning the speed of kills (and therefore xp) drops. At level 65, it's easier for me to kill a level 62 mob than it would be at 70 to kill a 67.

I do think something needs to be done; as I've posted elsewhere, EQ is developing a "hump" in numbers around 60-65 where players need high-level content for XP or AAXP but the numbers needed to find groups aren't dense enough anymore to operate in the best zones. If those players try to go to the zones "where everyone is" (GOD/OOW), they lack the AA's. My cousins 68th warrior (50 AA) found this out the hard way when he tried to tank in OOW. The cleric ran out of mana trying to heal him "You only got 8k hp? Oh no, we gotta get a 10k tank..." This problem is only going to get worse, and will lead to abandoned characters from players who can't "get over the hump" to join the 75th level players with 1000AA a couple of expansions down the road.

Straight server mergers won't do it. Then you end up with super-crowded raid zones and guilds ckblocking each other, just so you can get a reasonable density of new players earning xp at lower levels. I'll just have to keep pounding away at it I guess. Level segregation by server is _needed_.

Oh and another point: By not even encouraging new players to experience older zones & older content, Sony is wasting the money it spent to develop them. Just a thought.

Comment Posted by: Loral on January 13, 2005 10:11 AM

Earning AAs earlier would help and also help people slow down in leveling to get the player-base not so top heavy.

You still cannot guarentee that some player will hit 70 but have no AAs and thus get torn to shreds by the only mobs from which he or she could earn experience.

In hindsight, it may have worked better to limit level growth by AAs. You can't breech 50 without 18 AAs, you cannot breech 60 without 54, you cannot breech 65 without 108, you cannot breech 70 without 162. Something like that. It would make leveling a lot slower but again, it would spread the level ranges out a bit more and people would be fighting in areas more appropriate for their power.

Items, with the new level restrictions, should also work better but when you hit level 65 and 70 items, again the power curve is too severe. A level 66 required item you can buy in the bazaar is far less powerful than a level 66 required item you earn in any of the Omens raids.

Up through level 65 or so, level corrisponds well to player power. You know roughly how powerful a player is if they are level 65 or below (unless twinked with 100k worth of gear which is too rare to worry about). Above 65, however, and the lines between level and power get blurry. You cannot guarentee how powerful a level 70 really is. Maybe they were just persistant and got to 70 with LDON / Ornate / WoS gear. Maybe they're a level 70 Anguish raider. How do you tune content to fit both people without making it too easy or too hard for the other? Thats a real trick and I don't think there is a clear answer to solve that yet. LDON difficulties are one way. Dynamic mob scaling is another but people hate that when they learn its happening. Just separating out content into two distinct sets (like the sewers, tipt, vxed, and the ikkinz trials or like WoS / Riftseekers / MPG), but then you're splitting people up across content rather than giving out content everyone can use. It's a real hard problem.

I always liked the D&D encounter levels and challenge ratings but even those didn't work real well. I was very strict with challenge ratings and encounter levels in my current D&D 3.5 campaign but it ended up turning into nonsense. Most often the encounter level ended up being far far less difficult than I desired. I ended up bumping it up by two to three times just to challenge the players which means two to three times the experience and gear. Even though they meet the exact requirements of the challenge rating, the CR of the beast doesn't really help me figure out if its going to eat the party or the party will destroy the beast. I still have to wing it a lot.

Comment Posted by: Me on January 13, 2005 10:31 AM

Loral wrote:
"In hindsight, it may have worked better to limit level growth by AAs. You can't breech 50 without 18 AAs, you cannot breech 60 without 54, you cannot breech 65 without 108, you cannot breech 70 without 162. Something like that. It would make leveling a lot slower but again, it would spread the level ranges out a bit more and people would be fighting in areas more appropriate for their power."

I'm sorry, but this is a terrible idea. It's called "alternate" advancement for a reason. Your suggestion increases "required" exping which is bad for casual players.

You say that your idea would mean people would be fighting in areas more appropriate for their power. This is flawed in multiple ways:

1. Power = level + skill + gear + aa, with gear being one of the largest parts of the equation. A tank with 100 aa and Time gear > a tank with 300 aa and Bazaar gear.

2. There is already a simple way to make sure people fight in appropriate areas. If they can function somewhere, it's an appropriate area. If the tank dies repeatedly, he'll have to go someplace else. If the cleric is incapable of keeping up the heals, he'll have to go someplace else. Etc.

3. Truthfully, most classes can function anywhere. It is only the tank and healer, and to a lesser extent slower/cc who have to be up to the zone. DPS goes wherever.

Comment Posted by: Loral on January 13, 2005 10:55 AM

True, it is called Alternate Advancement, but those skills matter a lot. I'm not so sure that a difference of 200 AAs is smaller than bazaar to high-end gear. I know, as a cleric, that much of my skills and power come from my AAs as well as my equipment.

The problem you run into is that a mob rewards the same experience at a certain level. If you're level 70 with no AAs and bad gear, you won't be able to hunt effectivly in MPG or Riftseekers. But you're also a high enough level that the experience reward from Wall of Slaughter and other places are very low. Every time a mob is more than five levels below you, you don't get the experience bonus for fighting a tough mob.

This is why its important for players to stop at each set of required levels and earn as many AAs as they can before leveling up. You will earn better experience if you are a lower level fighting the same mob than if you are higher.

No one is forced to earn experience. Many people choose to hunt at a certain level and enjoy it at that level rather than grind as hard as they can to get to the top. But if they level too fast - something the game currently allows - they will find themselves overpowered yet too high level to hunt below.

Other classes than a healer and a tank matter. If your DPS, crowd control, evacers, pullers, or any of your other group members are too low, they won't pull their own weight at best or at worst they will kill off the group. Wizards and druids will fail on low-end evacs because they don't have the instant one, pullers will die from single volleys of hits, crowd controllers will be resisted and eaten by mobs, damage dealers and all casters will run out of mana and need to med. It will slow the group down so far that, like low powered healers and tanks, they cannot really hunt there.

Comment Posted by: wombat on January 13, 2005 11:03 AM

Loral wrote:
"In hindsight, it may have worked better to limit level growth by AAs. You can't breech 50 without 18 AAs, you cannot breech 60 without 54, you cannot breech 65 without 108, you cannot breech 70 without 162. Something like that. It would make leveling a lot slower but again, it would spread the level ranges out a bit more and people would be fighting in areas more appropriate for their power."

I think this is bang on Loral, well done!!! Without defensive AA your extra 2khp from gear get eaten up very fast.

I have done AA slowly since 51 while levelling and its made a lot of difference, I am 66 and doing 90% AA since it gives me a lot more zones I can exp in with unbalanced groups than I could if I was 70.

Helping grouping at lower levels (under 50) with grouping tools is fine but you have to have the people to group with, this is the fundamental problem, empty zones due to low pre 60 population.

It also mitigates against doing AA pre 50 as people dont want to hang about where nothing is happening (empty zones). We have to get more newbies into the game!

btw "going somewhere else for groups" assumes you can get groups somewhere else at level 70 Me. Often on my server 70's are lfg waiting for a group in MPG as its empty. They slum it in NC kiting or slowly solo tanking.

Felias made a good point on storyline it basically went down the gurgler when the Home cities were made redundant with the PoP melting plot. All the faction work etc went with it.

The speed at which change is happening is a problem. I know things cant be redeveloped overnight, maybe its too late and by the time changes are made too many will have left for many communities to survive.

As far as the new quests are concerned NPC's may be advertising them to zones with no movement but tumbleweeds blowing through them. BB is often empty nowadays. It might explain why my guild hadnt heard about it. Of course you need a group to do the quests I suppose? That assumes you can get a balanced one to start it.

Btw whats the news on all the Guild stuff in DoN requiring large tributes so smaller Guilds cant use them? Scaling will be very hard, my guild accepts all alts of mains to promote community, so we look bigger than we are.

What are peoples ideas for getting Newbies back in? Cheaper subscriptions? Cheaper expansions? More soloing tasks at lower levels? Lower level restricted proccing weapons to help mellees self heal and solo? or play in unbalanced groups? Free transfers off "newbie servers"?

The game needs quest journals with quest details on it, with quest items not taking up bank space also.

Wombat

Comment Posted by: wombat on January 13, 2005 11:13 AM

I just had a thought, newbies want the same sort of quality help with gameplay as they get in WoW or EQ2 (quest journals, waypoints to corpse etc) can EQ1's spaghetti code come close to providing it?

Is it a lost cause? Will they accept something looking like a model T ford when they want a corvette? can the Model T be retooled to work like a Corvette?

Wombat

Comment Posted by: Kubb on January 13, 2005 11:31 AM

The comment about making a million dollars off of character transfers is true as far as my feeble memory goes. I believe it was the wall street journal that did an interview with him. Unfortunately their archives are pay to view so I can't verify this quote.

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on January 13, 2005 12:47 PM

I didn't keep the source Loral but it was an interview iirc. Though it could have been overstated by the author. The context seemed fairly professional so I didn't question the authenticity. But you're right, it's always possible that it is a fake.

Level, AAs, gear, all fall into the same category of type of gameplay. With so much variety out there in mixing them, I wonder how they can come up with a progression path fitting most.

I wouldn't underestimate AAs too much tho. They seem to go pretty far in increasing the "power" of a character. Be it by giving new abilities or just filling the gaps in gear.

Comment Posted by: Roger on January 13, 2005 12:49 PM

Where are the new PC's!!!!??? Weren't these promised by the end of last year! That is one thing that will get newbies in...PC's that look as good as the current NPC's.!

Comment Posted by: on January 13, 2005 12:54 PM

[In hindsight, it may have worked better to limit level growth by AAs. You can't breech 50 without 18 AAs, you cannot breech 60 without 54, you cannot breech 65 without 108, you cannot breech 70 without 162. Something like that. It would make leveling a lot slower but again, it would spread the level ranges out a bit more and people would be fighting in areas more appropriate for their power.]

I PRAYED for this for POP when the level increase was announced, and then PRAYED again for OOW when 70 annouced. It was vehemontly resisted by many different posters in different boards, however it IS one way of helping player BALANCE THEMSELVES.

Character development in EQ is primary 3 axis.

Level
Equipment
AA Abilities

If you try to max one axis to the detriment of the others you are screwing yourself big time.

Comment Posted by: Loral on January 13, 2005 01:50 PM

"I just had a thought, newbies want the same sort of quality help with gameplay as they get in WoW or EQ2 (quest journals, waypoints to corpse etc) can EQ1's spaghetti code come close to providing it?"

Sure it can. We already have "find" and "Find Group Member" (although it should be taken out of leadership abilities and given to everyone). We already have the task system which, with some nice modifications, would make an excellent quest journal.

There is nothing in EQ that can't really be fixed one way or another.

Comment Posted by: Solistic on January 13, 2005 06:46 PM

We already have a quest journal, sort of. When I do a quest, each person I speak to about the quest I go into the journal and save it for furture refrence. Example, newbie armor, you speak to the quest giver, the quest giver says their bit, and you say boots, gloves, tunic and so on. Each on the quest giver tells you what you need to do. You can save that and next time you log on look into journal for what you need. I have the spidersilks I need that low quallity cat pelts. Seems to me, that would be easier to tweak, since it is pretty much all there.

Comment Posted by: Pants on January 13, 2005 07:26 PM

Having group search features is fine but what good will it do a true newbie (actually really new to EQ) if there are few other newbies to group with? Most low level zones tend to be pretty barren of players these days. The people who do make alts to level up tend to solo or get PLed and thus aren't looking to group with strangers. Now before someone says something like "I went into blahblah zone the other day and there were 200 level 1-20 people there" I will point out that one example, even ones that aren't very believable, does not make it fact. Low level zones have for the most part been deserted for a year now, except places like PC. If features like that are to be useful you need another way to get people into EQ to begin with. A graphical update could help as could making quests much easier to find and do. A way to guide the player along like other bewer games do so well. Even despite all that it's doubtful many people new to the genre will be looking to play a dated game so another thing necessary to bring in new players would be to advertise EQ. I don't really see that happening though because SOE has dedicated it's advertising dollars to pushing EQ2. At the end of 2004 I was seeing constant ads for EQ2 on G4 Tech TV and in magazines and really it probably makes more sense to push the newer game than the other.

People are going to have to learn to deal with the fact that EQ is going to be stuck with what players they have plus the ones who left but may return. They can still keep EQ viable though by improving what is there now moreso than continuing to add to it.

By the way if server population remain low or become even smaller they have to merge servers, not doing so will only speed the loss of people. EQ is not designed to work well with a low population. It is very much geared towards grouping and high end content such as raiding. It's kind of hard to group or raid with few people around to pick from to join you. It would be foolish to pretend there isn't a problem and not merge servers just because they don't want to admit they are losing players.

Comment Posted by: Naladini on January 13, 2005 09:35 PM

In spite of the many niceties that have been added to the game to make it more newbie friendly over the past 2 or so years, generally speaking, empty zones are more dangerous and less fun than populated zones.

Yes they can fix everything "technical" that causes problems at lower levels, but it is a difficult game to play without a steady stream of players starting out filling in the many level ranges with a variety of casual and powergaming playstyles.

If you were brand new to MMO's, would you really want to start out in a mature game with a steep levelling curve through 70 levels and several hundred AA abilities, but a declining player population? Would you, in good faith, recommend EQ1 in its current state over EQ2 or WoW to a friend interested in taking up online games for the first time?

To me, its not a question of fixing the lower levels (<40), its more a question of removing them completely. If you want more players playing the game, you have to smooth out the curve, you have to lessen the time requirement necessary to catch up with the bulk of the active players.

When I log in to play an online RPG, I don't want to (and should never have to) use a technological tool to mysteriously find players several zones (or planets, dimensions, planes of existance, etc.) away, then decide on a meeting place, then travel. I want to log in, travel to a zone and start adventuring. If there's no one else in the zone, I need to have the capabilities to adventure on my own. The player cannot be at the mercy of the "grouping design" of a game, if the population of the game is on the decline.

Comment Posted by: Naladini on January 13, 2005 09:41 PM

Edit sorry, somehow submitted early.

The flavor of the game is diminished without new blood coming in. New blood won't join when they see the active, existing players standing near the top of an ever growing levelling mountain, knowing that they have little or no chance to catch up with people they may know already playing the game.

I do think things like the Task System/Quest Journal will help gameplay at higher levels, but I don't think much can save the lower levels of EQ as they could be preventing people from wanting to play the game in the first place.

The problem is, many people DO like to play the lower levels, they do like rolling up alts. Such a change could negatively impact a decent % of the active playerbase.

Difficult to say without real #'s. The only thing I can say anecdotally about "alt-happy" players is that their re-roll point seems to coincide with various XP changes in the levelling curve. Some stop in their 20's, some in their 30's, etc.

Comment Posted by: Wombat on January 13, 2005 09:45 PM

Once again I have to say that rather than merge servers as such, close down the lowest few on population and allow free transfers off them to other servers of their choice. Guide them with general information on the population gradients on other servers.

If Sony wont advertise EQ1 or aggressivelly cut entry costs to EQ1 then we may as well resign ourselves to slow cabbabilism. And it may not be that slow. There are a least a few servers where lfg/lfraid problems are severe enough to stop people resubscribing and move to other games.

Wombat

Comment Posted by: Wombat on January 13, 2005 09:49 PM

Oops meant cannibalism not the formation of cabals!

Wombat

Comment Posted by: Pants on January 13, 2005 11:40 PM

Your idea is a form of merging of servers Wombat but give people more freedom of where to go. I like that idea and it should be done, and it should be free like you stated. I always thought charging $50 or $75 for server transfers was rediculous anyway. That service should cost the same as one month's fee. I also like the idea of making EQ cheaper, perhaps $5 a month and just forget making expansions so often or at all. That could actually bring new people into the game. They could even sell advertising in the form of banners on the login screen to make some extra money.

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on January 14, 2005 05:44 AM

At first, transfering when the game was going full steam, wasn't a necessity. Having free transfer for people to escape reputations or consequences of their actions, isn't a good thing either. That was probably valid during POP.

Since then, the game has changed, the population has declined and it's time to fix that before too many just quit running out of things to do. As it has been already said, nobody in his right mind would spend 75USD to transfer when EQ2 or WoW are cheaper and fresher...

Comment Posted by: Crimsonsplat on January 14, 2005 09:06 AM

Put all the newbies (including current ones)on just 2-3 servers. When they get higher, boot'em to another.

Even if you skipped the last part, it would help immensely. Maelin and Mordan are the only two servers with really good low-level density... and even they are weaker than I remember my server being in it's heyday.

Comment Posted by: Nahhtee on January 14, 2005 09:57 AM

I've made a deliberate decision to gain AA's with every level. I know it's "less efficient" but I play EQ for enjoyment and a break from the pressures of real life, not to race to the top and get a vanity plate with my character's name on it.

Getting to the end-game is something I'm trying to avoid.

The journey is much more fun than reaching the destination. By taking my time I get a chance to see more and do more, and gain abilities in the process. I can cast SoW as a ranger, but I still put the time into AA's to get Run 3. I don't level myself into a narrowing chute, to be boxed in the higher I rise in levels.

I still enjoy the game. I don't need new expansions to keep me playing.

Comment Posted by: Solistic on January 14, 2005 12:03 PM

Nahhtee wrote:
"I've made a deliberate decision to gain AA's with every level. I know it's "less efficient" but I play EQ for enjoyment and a break from the pressures of real life, not to race to the top and get a vanity plate with my character's name on it"

Bravo! That is the way to play, I do the same and enjoy myself.

With all the talk about no new people in the game and empty newbie zones. I remember my first character was from Freeport, West Freeport was a big zone to me. I remember being the only one in the zone many times. This was few years ago.

I spent time next in East and West Commonland. Yes East Commonland was extremely crowded back them, but back them there was not a Bazaar. I next spent time in the Karanas. Sometimes there were serveral people in the zones (usually around the druid circles and spires) but most of the time there was maybe 3 or 4 in zone (NK).

I wish when people say that there are not any new blood, they would compare their stats with what the new people influx was last year, the year before and such.

In our guild we have 5 people brand new to the game. Sure four of them are friends of people already in the guild, but "word or mouth" and friends telling friends seems to be how most people have gotten into the game.

Before people preach doom, I would like to see facts and statistics.

Comment Posted by: Naladini on January 14, 2005 02:01 PM

The journey should be more fun than the destination, but in the case of what I suggested, the destination is not level 70. The destination is getting more people into a groupable level range. I'm talking about scenarios like where there were 90 + people in Lake of Ill Omen. That is where a lot of us found fun in the game.

Yes there are fun elements to the low level game, quests, stories, great zones, etc. However, they're not as much fun without an active community that exists without the planning and determination of the individual player.

Right now we see a lot of comments directed at "join a guild if you expect to group" or "use the lfg tool and travel to the people". That's a pretty radical change from the game that drew a lot of us in, and not a welcoming environment for new players to step into.

Comment Posted by: Naladini on January 14, 2005 02:25 PM

Oh, and back to my comment about SOE looking to drive more people into the combo subscription, looks like SWG will now be included in station access.

http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/board/message?board.id=Crier&message.id=66#M66

Very interesting.

Comment Posted by: Glamdrigg on January 16, 2005 03:32 PM

As far as solo friendly content. Why not take a hard look at LDON and Give me LDON content tailored to be class specific. Instanced class solo zones. Let me take my pally, cleric etc. into an LDON type adventure that my class can solo.

I've seen a Pally at an LDON camp ask people to group with him so he can get an adv and then have them leave adv so he could solo it himself for exp. I have my doubts as to how well he did and it seemed ridiculous since he had to group first to get at the solo content. But, Let us do something like this. I love grouping and believe it to be the heart of the game. However, sometimes soloing is the only option ... or rather would be if we could all do it.

Comment Posted by: Wombat on January 16, 2005 08:23 PM

More flexible Access account bundling should be looked at. 3 accounts could be bundled into one access? ie 2 EQ1 and 1 EQ2? It encourages people to get multiple accounts which means more expansions etc sold. While keeping costs down for people playing both EQ's and maintaining player populations.

Making EQ1 accounts much cheaper as well as making transfers between accounts and servers cheaper should be part of the marketting strategy to get new players in. However cheaper EQ1 accounts competes with the "herd them all into Access" strategy so I cant see it happening.

Access accounts arent attractive to players of limited means, its paying twice as much if you only play one game even if you have multiple accounts.

My 2 EQ1 accounts are on one month subscriptions so I can bail out if it becomes even more of a problem populationwise. I am not looking for Access accounts when I may only be playing EQ2 in the future.

Wombat

Comment Posted by: Naladini on January 16, 2005 09:06 PM

"I am not looking for Access accounts when I may only be playing EQ2 in the future."

Which is why SOE has been aggressively bundling features specific to EQ2 into the Access subscription as well. With the Access subscription giving players 4 extra character slots and free access to the proposed adventure packs, along with access to all the other games, its still an intriguing option (though it would be better if it included EQ2players as well).

I agree that it is difficult for most people to consistently play more than 1 MMO at a time, and it sets all of those games up for potentially dramatic population swings as features or expansions get added. I'm guessing that SOE is thinking that if they can give you an option that doesn't send you to the Account Management screen everytime you want to try something different, their income will be a bit more stable. Add to that, the player mentality "oh well, I get X game for free with my subscription, I might as well check out the new expansion" and they can get a bit of a revenue boost from subscription sales.

It will be interesting to see what, if any, additional perks will be given within EQ1, Planetside and SWG to help draw more of those subscribers into the Access subscription, without the emphasis on the other games.

Comment Posted by: Wombat on January 16, 2005 11:27 PM

Game loyalty is spawned by the online communities, especially amoungst really old players like me ;) Swapping amoung games erodes this and makes it more likely to ecourage people to go off to Vanguard or WoW.

I think an important market they are overlooking is families. We have 2 comps on a cable LAN. My family has 3 EQ1 accounts, 3 of us have characters on each account, we are not going to pay double the ammount to only play one game (there are only so many hours in the week so we play only one game). If we shift to EQ2 due to population issues, we will only have normal accounts and will probably have 1 or 2 accounts to start with.

If there was a "Family" account where you could bundle multiple accounts for one game together to encourage more accounts (more account keys and expansions bought etc) this could be a nice little earner. You could have "Access Family" with 3 accounts for the price of 2 and adventures thrown in, but only one game accessable.

I still think Adventures will divide the player community and make grouping harder. People will forget which ones they have and have to reform groups when they find some cant enter or find it harder to form groups with people that have that adventure.

Its bad enuff in EQ1 with expansions at raid time "we are raiding where? I havent heard of that zone before. Its in which expansion? Argh I havent got that" etc..

Some countries have big lags in getting expansions etc on their shelves also.

PS My timezones raiding Guild is now poaching our remaining (non VT equipped) Clerics so its getting desperate for some of them and disasterous for our Guild. It will take them forever to gear up a Cleric thats sub VT with no flags, unless they are doing such old content everything that drops is rotting.

Comment Posted by: Pants on January 17, 2005 06:35 AM

I doubt they'll ever add a package to include multiple accounts for a price lower than what they would be seperately. That has been one of EQ's biggest money makers over the years, people with 2 or more accounts. Almost every single person I knew in EQ had more than one account in recent years. It wasn't like that way back in the beginning. So many people seem to love to 2 box or 3 box or even more. The game has become so progessively harder to solo over the years that people who like to do it find they need that extra character to do it, which ironically isn't really soloing at that point. Either that or they do it for raiding purposes. There was/is (not sure since I don't play anymore) a high end guild on my server that was made up entirely of people with 2 or more accounts. They would raid the Plane of Time with everyone using 2 or more accounts. That always struck me as a bit weird.

It do think it would be a good idea to keep some old timers around but it wouldn't bring in many new players. I really think the best solution to keep EQ viable is to lower the price significantly, like to $5 a month and just forget making more expansions, which would save a lot of expense.

I think their motive for adding all those games to their packages is so that they encourage people to switch to one of their other ones when they quit their previous games instead of going to something different like WoW. Who knows if it will really work but at least they can pretend more people are playing their older games than really are since they count All Access Pass numbers in their subscription numbers for all their games that are included in the pass, even if those people might not actually be playing nor have ever played some of those games.

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on January 17, 2005 10:29 AM

Boxing is symptomatic of a game design problem. Why would anyone need to box if the game was healthy?

People end up boxing clerics for groups, for raids. They box to even have a chance to start or be part of a xp group, same goes sometimes for guilds.

The more people box, the less they will rely on random people. The less the game will be newbie friendly. It's a self-feeding loop.

This dates back to POP at least at this scale. I seem to pump into boxers about every few groups lately.

I don't recall boxing being so widespread during Luclin.

Omens is fun but too holy trinity bound still. I'm glad I'm not the one needing to figure out a way to fix EQ1 gameplay and playstyles.

Back to multi-accounts cost, when EQ1 was the game in town, one could understand that they wouldn't do a sort of package for those being for multiple expansions on the same credit card, but now? They will loose customers like all those that quit rather than pay 75USD for a transfer. All the more than they need to prove us that they aren't ONLY interested in our wallets and are also listening to our requirements. Which in terms of cost, is having expansions cost cut down for someone paying for more than one.

That or EQ will bleed even faster to WoW than it does now.

Comment Posted by: Loral on January 17, 2005 12:11 PM

I agree, Redcloud. Boxing is usually a symptom of too little action. Imagine trying to box a Counterstrike team. While people dual or triple box in EQ2, their efficiency goes down enough that people know it.

It's one thing to buff bot, I suppose, but another to actually take up two slots in a group or raid with only one brain behind them. If you can get away with one person running multiple characters, that usually means they don't have enough to do. In 54 person raids there's little you can do to make sure every one of them is busy, but in single groups, like the LDON timed events, you can help ensure people are playing to their fullest.

EQ could really use some extra gameplay elements for nearly every class. Whether it's a heroic opportunity like system, an opening like system, spell combinations, or some other feature, giving each player more to do on one box will keep them from getting bored and multi-boxing.

Comment Posted by: Pants on January 17, 2005 05:43 PM

I knew a guy that would 3 box LDoNs all the time, playing a warrior, bard and wizard, he also had a cleric that he could 4 box if he wanted to but usually had a friend play his cleric instead. He would fill out the rest of the group with friends. He was actually very good at this and his groups were more efficient than any pickup group. I think he was a freak myself but whatever works I guess. I didn't play this way and would never want to. I have 2 boxed from time to time but didn't like it really. I would prefer to have my wife play her character instead but she just grew to hate EQ after awhile and didn't want to play anymore.

I really agree that the boxing problem is symptomatic of poor judgement in the direction of the game and game design issues. I think PoP was the worst expansion ever because it started pushing EQ into the high end, huge guild, huge raid direction geared more towards power gamers. It made EQ much harder because of the lack of proper class upgrades to keep up with the content. This ended up requiring people to have that cleric or shaman bot if they wanted to continue to "solo" especially if they are a melee class. Add to that the continued increase in the necessity for more and more clerics on raids and they have seen to it that clerics are without a doubt the most 2 boxed class in the game. Really the way EQ has turned out they should rename it ClericQuest. Once EQ gets to the point where enough people with clerics have stopped playing I don't think the game is going to be viable anymore. That class reinvisioning thing coming up is going to be very important, if it really gets done.

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on January 17, 2005 07:16 PM

Well you don't really need to add twitching content to make EQ grouping more dynamic. Look at guk, sol b, sebilis. All dungeons where you needed real people to do most of it. There we dungeons. There were packed. There were with no line of sight, with geometry that was pushing in the right direction.

POP faults: outdoor zones, no pulling, little CC. group content overly trivial. environment and encounter was trivialized. The problem wasn't the raiding or powergamer. It was just too dumped down. Somehow dranik hollow instances are a bit like it but still too simplified. The geometry is a joke. Those instanced dungeons need a lot more depth and originality and care to cut it. But that's a bit of what it'd take.

Comment Posted by: Talaen on January 17, 2005 07:55 PM

I think it's important to note that the challenge of the old dungeons came as much from the interior layout as anything. When Luclin released, dungeons went from being twisty, windy, mostly tight corridor places to being huge wide hallways and rooms laid out pretty much at 90 degree angles from each other. Luclin made up for it with generous use of trap spawns and scripted encounters (Akheva is nuts!) The only exception to that since then has been LDoN, and then only in a few of the templates (Guk is the best as far as that goes).

In most of the PoP zones, you could keep the same mobs, redraw the map, and the challenge level would jump up quite a bit for single groups. Crowd control would be necessary again in a lot more instances :)

Comment Posted by: Wombat on January 17, 2005 09:00 PM

They could improve soloing to give people something to do while /lfg and keep up the action by halving mob damage and HP and doubling the spawn times.

Basically with a weak group you can do weak singles and with a strong group you can chain multis.

Doubling mana/hp regen would also reduce downtime. The game is so huge now that retuning all those zones to this may be impossible for a spaghetti code system?

Perhaps its all too late, if they wont cut charges etc, to attract newbies and address population issues for established players then like the pusher biplane, its on the scrap heap.

Perhaps making the game more interesting (doubling mellee speed etc) will cause too much lag? The new graphics for DoN have LAG written all over them for those who stayed with EQ1 because of lower comp specs.

Wombat

Comment Posted by: Wombat on January 17, 2005 09:06 PM

Btw I think they put in big corridors so big raids could move through them. Imagine a 72 person raid winding through Lower Guk?

Roaming mobs are far more interesting than static spawns and arent as campable.

Wombat

Comment Posted by: Pants on January 17, 2005 11:48 PM

Yes power gaming and raiding was and continues to be a problem caused by PoP that changed the focus of EQ. Think about all the smaller guilds that were torn apart because they could no longer keep up with raid content, and as people left them to join the big guilds. Think about the soloers who could no longer solo because it the mobs hit too hard and have way more HPs than previous expansions. Think about how the level cap was raised to level 65 with no cooresponding increase in skill caps. 72 person raids? Insane. All this contributed to shifting EQ away from a game that was balanced for both casual and raider types of gamers more towards the raider end, and increased the need for boxing. Of course also the zones were ugly, unimaginative and all outdoors, a complaint with many players which lead to LDoN. I think PoP is directly responsible for what is happening to EQ today because they forever changed what EQ was into somehting else. If the original design team had been around then I have a feeling PoP would have never happened, or been very different. I know the original team was extremely stubborn and their vision at times seemed to set in stone and stupid but at least they had a vision. Now with the current team it's more like a "make it up as they go along" method to design.

Comment Posted by: Wombat on January 18, 2005 01:55 AM

Yes I think things started to go downhill when the abandoned faction on city and racial lines and made the home cities irrelevant with POK.

They could have made movement easier with portstones to home cities or to a Nexus point but there was no need for POK they could have increased tradeskilling options in each city just as well.

They were looking for something to put in the next expansion and things that make life easier is what goes into expansions. So its dumbing down, removing factions, and destroying the home city story threads.

Once they left for the moon it lost its traditional flavour. They should have stuck with the main game.

Wombat

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on January 18, 2005 03:39 AM

POP is a lesson of what not to do in MMOs:

The main problem wasn't the raid content per se, it was the ability to zerg anything and everything with 72+ crews of passengers. Seriously, how can you hope to have the RL of 72 people freeze in time for 4+ hours and keep going day after day? It's just nuts.

You were saying that corridors had to let 72 crews pass in there. Remember Nagafen and the stone spider passage? You could only fit 1 person at a time and 2 fire giants waited there. Yet nagafen was raid content.

The raid size, the zone design and the overly trivialized raid content for the masses hurt badly the fun factor in EQ. And the ridiculous funneling of flags during more than a year. 30 flags in POP alone. Some manager at SOE HAD to say something. But didn't. That is nothing less than inept. People claim that devs know the game better than us players. Technically yes. Practically in a number of instances, like POP, evidently not.

EQ needs good design but most of all, a team that lasts. People that have the time to learn from past content and don't make every single mistake in the book at each expansion because they guy before him moved on. Know-how and seniority are in dire need for a MMO to last.

Comment Posted by: wombat on January 18, 2005 10:18 AM

Yes the need for the last player summit indicated the poor state of intra company communication and the lack of communication by the minions to the overlord.

Surprising to find in this day and age in a high tech company!

Wombat

Comment Posted by: Bearage on January 18, 2005 12:02 PM

It is highly unlikely that EQ will attract any new players. Consider two washing up liquids. One is the Original and the other is 'New and Improved'. You are hardly likely to buy the original knowing full well the new one is better or at least advertised as being better.

The problem is Sony - certainly the EQ side made the incredibly silly mistake of announcing their new game as 'II' - an advancement of Everquest. They admit it themselves that they wished they had called it something else. The moment they announced EQ2 they sealed the fate for EQ.

There will be no new customers for EQ. Indeed how many retail outlets actually Sell EQ? The only new people buying accounts are boxers - as said earlier. The reason people box is so they can achieve what they want to achieve given there is simply not the resource available. I am also a boxer. In fact, my household has four accounts - my girlfriend and myself have two each on 4 PCs. We raid a lot and we take them to the raid to fill in for missing classes - also what was said earlier.

So on the basis you haven't got any new customers. You can forget the need to design for new players - newbies - you just wont get them. Even if you did it might be less than 1% of the community and business wise it is just not worth it to design for them - also given the fact - just like kids in real life - they will grow up super fast.

So is we are just designing for existing players - probably at least level 50 and above then we can design content for those players.

Now consider what the guilds at the very end of the game (i.e. done PoP, done GoD, done OoW) want. My opinion (being halfway through the game in the above description) is that high end players love to show off. It is about status. Keys. Zone access. Power. Power over other players. You used to see them hanging around the bazaar arena or in PoK waiting to be inspected or showing off their new wepons. I say used to because they don't even do that now. In fact those players mostly left for WoW and EQ2 because it was the 'in thing' to do. However, the end players still want status, they still want keys and they still want power.

The problem is as I see it people see no need to grind anymore. Sure there is more AA - but it's not really fun - its just more of the same - same with the spells for casters. With no need to grind people are left with raiding and even that - even with so many varied encounters has become 'samey'.

What is required is fun. Lots of it. Original fun. This wont happen for EQ however because it will overshadow EQ2 and they wont do that. EQ has been cloeseted. They would like to keep their player base - so expect expansions but they wont do major overhauls - it's just not worth the support - they will add a few fun things - but again they wont put EQ2's nose out of place.

I enjoy EQ because I am not finished with all encounters on a raid persepctive. However, as far as grouping goes - I'm finished with all the AA I could want - or at least find fun or useful - the only reason I grind is to keep me from hitting 69 after too many deaths.

Sony. Think Fun.
Flying Dragons
Buying Houses
Crazy Illusions with effects
Special things others don't have
Guild specific benfits
New forms of fighting
New forms of magic - not like new spells - but new methods of spells etc

i.e. original - brand new..

This is your market. Yes it sounds terrible - but this is the reality. I feel Sony once knew their market - they catered to the above - but somewhere along the line too many key staff left who knew this - and now they think they have to cater to a casual market.

Even casual players like to show off what they have.

Indeed, you may not realise but I'd bet people would love to do solo LDoNs/GoD adventures that get them uber stuff. Remember, they want to show off. Why not let them solo for it to prove their worth/skills - after all - they can always do the solo content then hang around the arena/PoK which is what they really want.

Put yourself in the position of the player - do some research. Take the 'armour dye' as a testcase. Did it make players feel more or less special? Ask yourself - then ask why.

Bearage.

Comment Posted by: on January 18, 2005 02:28 PM

pop was not the origin of the problems, it was merely the culmination issues which began in ToV, then started full force in luclin...

And before POK, there was the bazaar and nexus where I know that MANY people used to congegrate and meet up for groups etc.

In any case, for those of you who are truely interested in a new dungeon, there is a least one new zone in the DoN that should harken you back to the days of yore, when you were deep in solesk where the lava runs deep and hot.

Comment Posted by: Katahn on January 18, 2005 04:40 PM

I once suggested the ability to /lfg for multiple characters on the same account would be a nice solution, as would a friends list that showed what alt the person was playing and would not show them if they had ignored you or any of your other characters. The reason for both would be to reduce the disincentive to playing alts or levelling a "new main" completely.

One could solo as character A and /lfg with characters B, C, and D. Even if all were in differant level ranges you could be easily found. Currently a limitation of the lfg tool since if you play your level 15 necromancer the comment "also LFG with my level 65 cleric" isn't likely to be found in a use of the tool to find a level 65+ priest.

The benefit of being able to see what alt a friend is on, or having tells auto-forwarded, would likewise make it easier to stay in touch (ie. community) without having to remember the alts of all your friends or having them all guilded together (currently a major reason for guilds to have alts tagged is for this easy communication, so it seems to me that this is a need that should be filled.)

Other concerns, like balancing classes and making changes to the game are valid and need to be addressed, but I challenge myself along with everyone else to not think in terms of "me" but in terms of "what is best for everyone?"

Katahn

Comment Posted by: Talaen on January 19, 2005 12:22 AM

There've been some very compelling arguments posted that no matter what happens, it's unlikely for EQ1 to start gaining lots of population again. While I hate that for the game, I have to admit that it's probably an accurate assessment.

The game needs to be brought back from huge raid encounters even at the high end, and focused on single group events. Raids need to somehow go back to being "special" things, that aren't business as usual for players. Otherwise, EQ1 will simply continue to burn players out and the population will continue to decline through attrition. The raiding playstyle is very demanding, both socially and in terms of time invested, and the requirements for entering top end raiding keep going up and up. This trend needs to be stopped somehow.

I am very firm in my opinion that the game should be interesting, fun, and challenging at low levels, and that advancement should not be sped up, or characters "bootstrapped" to get them to the high end. The game needs to have a good newbie experience, and it needs to be something other than a hardcoded PL-fest. At the same time though, something's got to be done to funnel those new characters together so that they can have people to group with - and that probably means some radical content changes at the low levels.

Population issues in general need to be addressed, and quickly, before a large portion of the off-peak players just simply give up.

Anyway, it's all been said before. I really hope that SOE's senior leadership team are willing to act quickly and do whatever is needed to keep their game going another year or two. We all know that eventually the game is going to go away, because you can only keep one going for so long. But now is not that time. EQ still has a few years of life left in it, while EQ2 catches up on expansions and content, and works the bugs out, and players themselves get better hardware such that moving to a new game isn't a serious issue. I'd rather see EQ1 finally die off a few years from now when SOE gives all remaining players a free or low-cost upgrade to an EQ2 account because the game is finally truly obsolete, than to have it die off because there just aren't enough people willing to play it anymore.

Comment Posted by: Wombat on January 19, 2005 02:05 AM

Well I am giving Sony one more month, I am not paying for 6 months for a Summit that may not deliver anything new. I would like some solid indicators of the direction they are going in.

The game has severely declined in value for me and my guild has been decimated and I am not the only one in this position.

Wombat

Comment Posted by: Aladinsane on January 19, 2005 02:56 AM

well

i still have an active eq1 account - but only because i have a station pass :)

lets be really brutally honest here - Everquest 1 is dead

you will not see the high numbers of players, and you will not see those players that enable the rest of us to push the boundries to win stuff etc

accept it, and go get either Wow or EQ2 - THAT is where it is at

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on January 19, 2005 08:38 AM

Talaen, right now I don't see how EQ1 will compete with WoW and EQ2 to attract casual non-raiding newbies. There's just too much of a gap between them and the rest of the playerbase. Bending over backwards the existing or new content to a potential playerbase that will probably never get hooked up while loosing the current one isn't a prudent course of action, nor reasonnable I'd say.

EQ1 longevity is probably due to lack of compelling competition and because of raiding too. Single group content can be fun, it can be varied. It can have a lot of qualities but I don't believe that EQ1 would have lasted this long with only that.

In my opinion a large part of EQ success comes from the possibility to come and go from raid to non raid playstyles and still be entertained. The game needs both.

Let's face it, WoW and EQ2 are more single group friendly.
Gaining true newbies unless it isn't differentiated from EQ2, ain't gonna happen and the only thing that does, is the sheer amount of raiding available in EQ1. EQ1 for raiders or semi-raiders. EQ2 for casual non-raiders. WoW for possibly both but different looks and to some extent different vision and community.

Comment Posted by: Utziel on January 19, 2005 10:52 AM

Im really tired off peeple telling me what to play. I'm not in the flavor-of-the-month club. I play EQ cause I like it, not because everyone was playing it or it was the new thing. If EQ does end ( and I don't think that will happen for a long while) I will not play EQ2 or WOW. It will be time for ME to move on to something else.

Its funny, I've brought 8-10 people to this game through word of mouth and we still play and enjoy the game very much. We dont raid hardly at all and don't have the best gear but who cares we are having fun. Remember the word fun? EQ is a game remember. HAVE FUN! I don't have an ego to rub or need to look at level 50 char as a noob.

It seems to me that there are many who post on message boards who think they are some type of know-it-all about THIER game. If I didn't like the game anymore I would simply stop playing, not posting on message boards that they need to do this and that to fix the game for me.

Sorry for the rant but I fell better now )

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on January 19, 2005 11:33 AM

Simple question really: Why would a new player choose EQ1 over EQ2 today? Other than hardware requirements.

Comment Posted by: crimsonsplat on January 19, 2005 12:24 PM

No reason at all. I pointed that out this morning in a long, long thread on server mergers. The SOE fanbois maintain that there is NO problem whatsoever.

Blackburrow is a ghost town. Orc Hill in Gfay _might_ have a group on it, but probably not. EC & WC are mostly empty; the only time I got a group there was on Maelin.

Two years ago, when POP came out, I took a drubbing on my server boards for standing up for the casual player, and pointing out that there were more of them than raiders; that they were the financial backbone of the game.

I was told I had no right to speak because I wasn't a top-end player; the game wasn't written for me, it was written for raiders.

SOE has doomed EQ in the long run, but they did it by listening to the squeeky wheels of raiding uberguilds. They made everything bigger, badder, richer, and more time-consuming. Somewhere along the way, they lost sight of JoeSchmoe, who paid the same amount as RaiderBoy, but only spent half the time online--and was therefore more profitable and easier to please.

There's still a few of us Schmoes around, but "there's less of them ever-ry year. You can still hear Sony, but Sony cannot hear youuuuuu...."

As for myself.... glutton for punishment. I'm probably here until Vanguard. But I refused to buy OOW after the horrid rippoff of GOD, and from what I see of my class spells in DON, it's pointless to buy it also. I am so hoping Sigil can recreate the magic once again...

Comment Posted by: Horzek on January 19, 2005 04:31 PM

It was after much consideration I cancelled the billing on my EQ account. Effective the end of February I will no longer have the option of wandering the halls therein.

It all seemed to start when I found that it was getting harder and harder for me to get groups. At this time I had reached level 68 with 200 aa points. AS a cleric Solo was pretty much not possible. I know some claim that it can be done but in my experience, that is just not so.

If you think about it some, Clerics are for raids and groups. Lets say I was to log in and go for a raid today. I would be spending hours and hours closely watching a health bar and some heal chain or the other. My eyes get tired, my body gets sore from the sitting in one position for a long period of time, and IM not so sure its fun.

There was once a saying put out by the EQ developers that if much was risked the rewards were great. Let me take this apart. We put in a 72 player raid, and the raid takes us 4 hours to complete. In the end of that raid we manage to actually pick up 2 or 3 good items. As I look at the numbers I am seeing something like 288 player hours for 3 items. This amounts to a gigantic waste of time for 69 of the 72 players.

Once you do manage to put in enough time, say 90 hours for the shot at one item which within a short time is devalued by the game economics I think you begin to realise that you have slipped into a gigantic time sink. Is any one item, be it shield, sword, cape, or what ever really worth all that time/?

Were it all a lot of fun, perhaps the answer would be yes. If it isnt fun anymore than all that has happened is that the entire experience has become a huge waste of time. Lets call it the Black Hole of EverQuest. I say that because it sucks everything into it and very seldom releases anything.

In the end, I am only one person. There are times I would like to come in, play for an hour or a few minutes. Does EQ really allow that? The answer is a resounding NO!

The other reason I cancelled my EQ account was because I discovered the World of WoW.. Now I really can get in, play for an hour or for five hours. I can pick something large, or something small. Within two weeks of playing WoW I found that I had no desire at all to log back in to EQ. I look back over the past 60 days and I find that my EQ time is in the area of 30 minutes. My WoW time is as much or more than it ever was in the prime days of my EQ play.

Now do you know what really makes things work? WoW is not terribly demanding on your computer. I can keep the computer I am running for another year without upgrading and it will be fine. Mind you, its not a slouch, but its nice to know I can relax on the upgrade wagon for a while.

Why on earth would a newbee want to come in and play EQ? What would it cost to actually begin playing with full expansion? Think about it. I know there are some consolidation packs out now, but the bottom line is that you get a whole lot more game for your buck if you do not buy EQ. If you are a true mmorpg newbee, you would be much more likely to head towards the competition.,

Comment Posted by: Armarant on January 19, 2005 05:18 PM

I think everyone who quit EQ should take in a new new years resolution

1. I will stop whineing about a game after I quit it

Comment Posted by: Pants on January 19, 2005 11:48 PM

Or you can make a resolution to write a post making some points instead of whining about other people's points. People don't all have to agree with eachother and just because they don't play a game anymore doesn't mean they don't have valid points. I'll just throw that post in the troll bin.

Comment Posted by: Armarant on January 20, 2005 03:50 AM

Pants Wrote

"Or you can make a resolution to write a post making some points instead of whining about other people's points. People don't all have to agree with eachother and just because they don't play a game anymore doesn't mean they don't have valid points. I'll just throw that post in the troll bin"

I seem to remember certain people getting all up ons when a certain editorial writer for Mobhunter stopped playing EQ full time.. saying his editorials would suffer as a consequence of not being in the game.

so now people who dont play can suddenly have perfect crystal clear vision of the fall of EQ? despite not knowing what they are talking about.. and not playing Everquest.

/boggle

Comment Posted by: wombat on January 20, 2005 10:31 AM

Well thats a much better way of saying it than calling it "whining".

It helps if we can keep things civil :)

People who have left a game can still care about it even if their information is dated, in which case they should stick to general gaming trend info.

Wombat

Comment Posted by: Horzek on January 20, 2005 02:33 PM

I guess you miss my point entirely.

I put an awful lot into EQ, far more than I can admit to here. I really would like to see a few improvements, particularly where it comes to those who dont dedicate their lives to raiding.

There is a difference between whining and constructive criticism. I play to have fun though and sadly, the fun I was once having in EQ has left. Many of the things that are not so fun however, still remain. Remember trying to pick up the pieces for the shawl quest while competing with people running those eq cheating programs? For all I know some of you may be in that category.

I really dont understand why one point of View would be called whining unless a difference of opinion is not tolerated. when it comes down to it, that sword of uberness you have last week is not the measure of your ego nor your worth as a person or as a player. It isnt even REAL. In a way that has always been a pet peeve of mine when it comes to self inflated game egos. It is in my view a deficit of character when any "uber" item is the measure of a person when in reality it is simply a measure of the amount of time that person has available for games.

Comment Posted by: Pants on January 20, 2005 06:53 PM

Yes people who have quit EQ can have a clear view of where the game is going because it has been following a pattern for years. I only recently quit myself and I have played more EQ than probably almost everyone here, both as a casual and raiding type of player. You're not special or have all the answers just because you still play. Really all you're saying is nothing more than "I really like EQ and I don't want to hear people criticize it, so shutup and go away." Welcome to the real world where not everyone agrees with you but many are going to voice their opinions whether you like it or not, and whether they currently play the game or not is not a prerequisite to for the ability to post about the subject. Now do you have anything to add as far as ideas for EQ's future go or you still going to try to play forum cop?

Comment Posted by: BigFoot on January 20, 2005 08:21 PM

OK I quit, I was going to play again. See you around Sony. I will never buy any of your crap again if there is another product that will do the same thing. Read that as WOW. From computers to software to music, Sony is on my lame azz brand list forever.
Good bye all you good citezen of Norrath, your kingdom is doomed. You can keep the rats and bugs this troll is leaving.

Comment Posted by: Wombat on January 20, 2005 09:12 PM

Hmm can we keep it construcyive please and a little more in depth than "lame ass".

Wombat

Comment Posted by: Naladini on January 20, 2005 11:30 PM

Anything that requires some sort of attention from SOE could be considered "whining". ;) Whining should probably be added to Loral's list of "naughty" words, because in essence, its nothing more than a label used to dismiss what could be a valid arguement. Granted, the way the request is phrased has an awful lot to do with the way people would classify the post.

The bottom line is that old players as well as current players should provide meaningful feedback, especially if they still care about the game and think that if certain changes are made it would raw them back to the game.

Its just a lot better for everyone if you speak for yourself and don't pretend to represent the interests of hundreds of other players when you present your opinion (despite how easy it is to assume that there are many other players in your exact predicament with similar feelings).

Comment Posted by: BigFoot on January 21, 2005 04:45 AM

hey Wombat your lame to.
Trolls got killed as a race in game when Grobb got over run. Froglok really suck, yeah I mean it.
I am not sure what kind of management Sony has.
I use to work a tech bench job, meters and scopes and all. Sony hardware is weak, so remember the old school boys and VERAINT just made a mistake and took the money and lost controll. Sony has always had weak products. Think about this Sony makes CD burners, then complains when people copy music, yeah that is lame management.

Comment Posted by: crimsonsplat on January 21, 2005 10:50 AM

/trollfilter on

Pity. This had been a uniformly intelligent thread...

Comment Posted by: Loral on January 21, 2005 02:20 PM

Yes, we have some great discussions going on here. Let's try to stay constructive.

"Simple question really: Why would a new player choose EQ1 over EQ2 today? Other than hardware requirements."

This is probably the biggest question any of us have. What features can they put in to make people want to buy EQ1 over EQ2.

There are two parts to this question. 1. How do you get people to buy it. 2. How do you get people to keep playing it once they buy it. I covered a few possible solutions in a previous article:

- Better marketing. Offer a $30 package with every expansion. EQ Platinum offers the game with seven expansions for $30. EQ Chronicles offers the game with three expansions (including Luclin models) for $10. The monthly subscription is lower. Whether we like it or not, the only real way to get new players playing is marketing. Features that we might know about won't really do it. They can't put "balanced classes and fixed bugs" on the back of a box. They can, however put in "dynamic guild halls".

Few of us probably care too much about marketing and are more interested in features.

One major advantage EQ has over EQ2 is the vast amount of content. However, as others pointed out in this thread, there isn't a whole lot of point to that content if people don't go. A newly balanced and expanded task system including tasks for groups can add new layers of quests and challenges over existing zones. New quests like the Epic 1.5, help bring people to zones they may not have seen. The key is for SOE to capitalize on that vast content.

There are other advantages as well:

- Older player base
- Lower system costs
- Simpler interface (yes, it needs to be improved a lot for lower level players)
- Faster transportation to deeper areas
- A more customer friendly bazaar system
- No group experience debt
- A centralized zone for buffing, meeting, and transportation (Knowledge)

There are a few things they need to improve on to get EQ up to speed with the other games:

- Quest journal and easier questing interface elements.
- Revamped lower-level quests.
- A better tutorial zone
- Better city and newbie zone graphics (perhaps city consolidation into a good and evil city like EQ2 or just use Knowledge as the starting city with new graphics and new good / neutral / evil neighborhoods).
- A redesigned interface for easier play.

One thing EQ should work on, and it appears they are doing this already, is to rebuild EQ into a more flexible system; a system that allows them to update and revamp zones, quests, character features, and items without having to spend a lot of time and money.

I think Dragons will bring a lot of exciting new features to the game; features that will show the existing and previous players that they haven't given up and still plan to not only support EQ but allow it to grow well into the future. Guild halls are a big example but rumors whisper of others as well.

Comment Posted by: Teremar on January 21, 2005 04:57 PM

A year ago I would have heartily agreed with most of your list, Loral. And most of them are still good ideas that I'd love to see implemented.

But all of them will take time and effort, which of course is in limited supply. Any effort they spend on features for new players will not be spent on things that could help convince older players to stay. So it's really question of numbers.

How many people, realistically, can SOE bring in with a better interface or tutorial?

How many people can SOE convince not to quit by improving class roles or designing more interesting high-end content?

Of course no one knows the answers to these questions. But SOE will have to make their decisions based on what info