You think your petition took a long time? It took them a year to fix me!

The Patch of Hallow's Eve 2005

by Loral on October 29, 2005

SOE released the first major patch since the release of Depths on Thursday. The new user interface was one of the most noticeable changes. This new UI was released with the Escape to Norrath Everquest demo, and finally made it to our servers this week. Reactions to new user interfaces are pretty easy to predict. Some folks hated it, some folks loved it. While most of the changes were cosmetic, the new horizontal and vertical hotboxes shook some people up. I found it a lot easier to run all four hotbox sets at once with this new layout. I keep two above my array of chat boxes on the bottom of the screen and two along the left and right sides of the screen.

The new spell gems are a bit of a change. Anyone who has used Thomas King's UIs in the past will recognize the style but they aren't quite as intuitive as the older spell gems. SOE moved the older UI to a new "default_old" folder so traditionalists can stay with the older UI, but I imagine we'll see less support for the old UI as new features are added. Overall, however, the new user interface gives EQ a nice fresh look, an important move for a six year old game.

The new audio trigger feature introduces a lot of potential. One can set up the audio triggers to alert them when they receive tells, when buffs have worn off, when invis drops, when someone mentions their name, or even add some nice sound effects to critical blasts and critical heals. The tool is flexible enough to use in very specific situations like the emotes in Anguish or complete heal rotation triggers. Powerusers will most likely find the best uses for this tool, but it offers a lot of possibilities.

Everquest now uses the default system mouse during play. The biggest improvement seems to be mouse cursor speed regardless of the framerate of your game. Players can also mouse out of the EQ window in windowed mode without having to release the mouse. This addition wasn't without bugs, however. It appears some discrepancy between Microsoft's use of the mouse and EQ's caused the mouse to stick in the upper left corner. Dev Rapez posted a fix that requires an upgrade from Microsoft.

Stormhammer received a new Arena. I heard whispers of this new Arena at the last Fan Faire and I expect we will see it on live servers in a month or so. Stormhammer is a server in dire straights at the moment. At nearly 1/10th the population of the other servers, players on Stormhammer find it harder and harder to progress through the content of newer expansions. While most servers had the Nest opened up within a month or two after the release of Dragons of Norrath, Stormhammer only had it opened up recently. Sony needs to make a decision about Stormhammer and the most likely solution is to disband the server, send the players to any other server they'd like to go, and lower their monthly rate back to the normal fee.

The patch message mentioned power improvements to spirit shrouds. We have yet to see how much more powerful these shrouds will be. My "Shroud the Creator" contest is still going on. Send me a screenshot of six spirit shrouded characters defeating the Creator and win a new copy of God of War for the Playstation 2. The screenshot must show six shrouded players, a /who to show the levels and races, and the dead creator all in one shot.

This patch also included this year's Halloween events. Keep an eye out in Kithicor woods for some strange activities including a trick-or-treat scavenger hunt, an undead attack in East Commonlands, a high level quest in Hate, and what appears to be a monster mission of divine proportions. There is also an excellent spoiler thread on the EQLive forums for weaker souls.

We didn't see any improvements to Depths of Darkhollow's loot in this patch, but we can expect it for the next one. A few developers commented on the loot balancing process and while the exact statistics of these new improvements aren't yet known, we can expect some nice upgrades.

The patch did include a new quest NPC in Undershore who rewards players for finishing Depths of Darkhollow mission sets. The rewards for these quests appear to be items with a clickable +50 resist buff, one for each of the five resists and a final one for all five at once. From the quest's text, it appears to open up some event as well but details are not yet known.

The developers joined EQ Stratics on Thursday night for another developer's chat. Aside from pompous egotistical pasty jerks hogging all of the questions, the chat went well. We learned that SOE is as excited about the success of Monster Missions as many players. Zorillius mentioned the release of one or more new monster missions before the end of the year.

Prathun, the force behind the creation of the Demi-Plane of Blood, the top raid zone in the game said that he felt progress through raid content in Depths is about where he expected or "slightly behind par".

The raiders of Anguish learned that during the last patch, the raid mob Hanvar grew in strength. This nerf appeared to fix an outstanding bug from the previous designer that fell through the cracks. While many raiders are upset about the nerf, the most common complaint seems to be about the time it took to fix it. Raiders have already defeated the encounter and it is unlikely to severely block those seeking the epic 2.0 spheres that Hanvar drops.

While the Hanvar nerf may seem like a very big deal to those currently working on epic 2.0s, it is unlikely to stay a big deal for long. Player power continues to go up so any upgrade to difficulty will simply keep Hanvar from turning into the next Qvic M'Shas. In a couple of months, people won't know the difference. How many people still complain about the Vulak nerf? From all accounts, Hanvar was bugged and finally got fixed.

Everquest is up for a star at the Walk of Games at the Sony Meteron in San Francisco. These stars celebrate the most influential games of our time. While Everquest no doubt often faces criticism, I can think of no other game I have played for this long and one that has had the most impact on my life. I can't think of a more influential game on that list.

Time to go trick or treating!

Loral Ciriclight
29 October 2005
loral@loralciriclight.com

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Comment Posted by: Quesci on October 31, 2005 01:26 AM

Wait, you say that EQ is up for some kind of award? Hmm, this is the first I've heard of it. Well, besides the pop ups when I log in. And the reminders on the EQlive site. And the message posted on the EQ forums. And the spam three or more times a night while in the freaking game.

Comment Posted by: xsi on October 31, 2005 01:36 AM

It took me almost four hours, but I finally got my custom UI straightened out, incorporating the one or two things I liked from the new UI, (basically, the filigrees and new scrollbars), while abandoning the rest, (everything else).

The chat seemed pretty light on information, and I thought it a bit odd that, with ~70 people reputedly present, only seven people had questions answered at all. The fact that those answers were exceedingly general was to be expected of course, and, given the nature of software development, it's not something I even fault the devs for.

For perhaps the second time since beta 4, I find myself losing interest in EQ. As a level 70 casual, there is still plenty for me to do, (I have to camp my 69 lull, so I can do DoN missions for crystals so I can gear up for OoW and DoD), but... I'm not all that motivated to do any of it. I even found myself browsing the EQ2 boards to take a gander at the new SOGA models that are being provided as an option to North American/European players... and I hated EQ2.

Ah well. There are plenty of other things to do. :)

Comment Posted by: Elemer on October 31, 2005 10:18 AM

Shouldn't you have mentioned the increased lock out timer on MM's? Or the fact the timer now effects all MM's not just the one you just did?

On the Nameless server I've seen 5 MM's in regular use drop down to 1 as a result.

Comment Posted by: Hemdell on October 31, 2005 11:49 AM

Well its offical, DoD is a complete waste. How many times they nerf MM?? They were the best part for the casual gamer! I could get on and get something done in a short period of time. Now its back to the same old drawn out GRIND game. Wow thanks for nothing. Shrouds suck. SO what exactly did DoD do for us ??? The silence....

Comment Posted by: Tuppet on October 31, 2005 12:12 PM

They put a lockout on ALL monster missions?? that is extremely poor decision IMHO. if they want to prevent abuse, they should get them all on separate timers.

Comment Posted by: Loral on October 31, 2005 01:19 PM

I haven't actually finished a mission and gotten to another one without going over 45 minutes anyway. I think for most groups it would be pretty hard to complete one mission and begin another within 45 minutes. A 45 minute lockout is not the end of Everquest as we know it. Go get a soda.

Comment Posted by: Hemdell on October 31, 2005 01:37 PM

Why increase the time limit?? It came out that way and from what Ive seen most people flocked to them. It was a way for the peeps who dont spend every waking hour on the game to catch up in AA's a bit. Why waste 45 mins waitng when i can get 1-2 AA's in a Creator mission that takes less time. The MM will go the way of LDoN. No one there! Well a least I got some before they killed em. They were fine the way they were is what I'm saying. Some people would defend SOE if they took thir first born from them.

Comment Posted by: Gordulek on October 31, 2005 01:47 PM

"I could get on and get something done in a short period of time. Now its back to the same old drawn out GRIND game."

I did a fairy mission after the patch in about 15 minutes and had a 20 minute lockout timer. An AA every 35 minutes. Still very nice if you only have a short time to play, or if you feel the rest of the game is a grind.

"if they want to prevent abuse, they should get them all on separate timers"

Actually, putting them all on the same timer is a good way to prevent abuse. If they are all on separate timers (as they were before patch), you can just rotate between 2 or 3 missions and render the lockouts meaningless.

IMO, the best solution was suggested by several folks on eqlive: have the xp from mms only apply to AAs. The primary concern, it seems, is folks leveling too fast. Outleveling their gear, aas, spells, and game knowledge. This is a legitimate concern, though the likelihood of a ton of level 70 toons in newbie armor asking "what is aggro?" in RSS is overblown on the message boards. Anyway, restricting the xp to AAs would have solved this concern, while allowing folks to catch up to the AAs they need at level 65+.

Comment Posted by: Hemdell on October 31, 2005 01:52 PM

"the best solution was suggested by several folks on eqlive: have the xp from mms only apply to AAs. The primary concern, it seems, is folks leveling too fast. Outleveling their gear, aas, spells, and game knowledge. This is a legitimate concern, though the likelihood of a ton of level 70 toons in newbie armor asking "what is aggro?" in RSS is overblown on the message boards. Anyway, restricting the xp to AAs would have solved this concern, while allowing folks to catch up to the AAs they need at level 65+."

Totally Agree!

Comment Posted by: Gordulek on October 31, 2005 01:56 PM

Couple posts above about a 45 min timer. Maybe the mission I did took 25 minutes, not 15. Anyway, 35 or 45 min AAs without lfg time finding a healer, slower, etc is quite nice, and a good addition to the game for casual folks such as myself.

Comment Posted by: Tuppey on October 31, 2005 02:50 PM

"if they want to prevent abuse, they should get them all on separate timers"

-well, of course, that was my point. what if some players want to do only monster missions? do one here, and do one over there. or what if for kicks, someone wanted to play everquest on halloween and decided to make it more fun, let's do nothing but monster missions! but with the lockout timer, you wouldn't be able to do this.

even if you wanted to do them back-to-back, there is still some travel time involved, rebuffs, med, split, etc. then there are RL issues like restroom breaks, food+drink, etc.

part of me sees this as MM's weren't balanced correctly, so SOE needs to slow down potential abusers. On the other hand there is more to EQ than just MM's, so you want to encourage players to try other zones, like The Hole.

I guess it's the removal of a choice. If someone wants to rot away, gorging themselves on MM's, why not let them?

Comment Posted by: Caleem on October 31, 2005 02:53 PM

So when they upgrade the items from DoD spell progression quests, if you've already done the quest and have the item, will your item be upgraded or will you have to repeat the mission to get the new items?

Comment Posted by: Merrick on October 31, 2005 03:23 PM

Well, it really doesn't stop anyone.
What most of us are doing is playing a mission on our mains, then logging and doing a mission on our alts, then back to mains.

I highly disagree with the idea of restricting the XP to only AA's.

Have any of you played through the 50's lately?
There is NOONE to group with unless it's peak time because the rest of the time, the few people that are on at that level are being PL'd and multi-boxed.

MM's are the one way a legitimate player of a non-solo class can get XP through the 40's and 50's without needing to multi-box or convince someone to PL them.

Comment Posted by: Loral on October 31, 2005 04:35 PM

"So when they upgrade the items from DoD spell progression quests, if you've already done the quest and have the item, will your item be upgraded or will you have to repeat the mission to get the new items?"

From the last dev posts I read, the items you already have will be upgraded. Those that destroyed these items can get them again by doing the mission again. If you destroy the item for a DOD mission, you will get it again if you do the mission again.

Comment Posted by: Maitreya on October 31, 2005 05:00 PM

Hemdell wrote: "Well its offical, DoD is a complete waste."

If by complete waste you mean best expansion ever, then I agree. As for how many times they nerfed monster missions: none. As for going back to the same old "grind," well, if you want to. I still love monster missions, and I know plenty of others do as well. They're still bucket loads of fun. I think the griffon mission is far better now than before it was tuned. Also, how is the xp "grind" so bad, while chain doing mind numbingly easy missions over and over is the best thing for a casual gamer?

Merrick wrote: "Have any of you played through the 50's lately?
There is NOONE to group with unless it's peak time because the rest of the time, the few people that are on at that level are being PL'd and multi-boxed."

Yes, I have. What you say here is completely untrue. I have no trouble finding a group with my 54 magician when I want one, even during very off peak hours.

"MM's are the one way a legitimate player of a non-solo class can get XP through the 40's and 50's without needing to multi-box or convince someone to PL them."

Other than, y'know, questing and adventuring and all that other stuff.

Comment Posted by: Sithas on October 31, 2005 05:42 PM

No mention of the patch breaking the use of laptops and some PCs because of poor coding. Since I'm not a techy, I had to depend on some helpful people in forums (not SOE personnel of course) to figure out what was causing the problem. Not knowing the origin of the problem, I spent a lot of time trying to fix it myself including deleting and repatching EQ. Between that and fixing ALL of my UIs on multiple accounts, I wasted about 10 hours of my only playtime (weekends) due to a bunch of 'features' that no one ever asked for. Thanks.

Regarding MMs, they had to be retuned. It was the single most unbalanced XP addition in 7 years of the game. People were advancing thru the 50s to 70 in 2 or 3 days thanks to MMs. A big slap in the face to people who had to XP 'the hard way' for so many years. Even without MMs, XP is 10 times easier now than it was before PoP. But in MMs, you aren't even playing your class so you learn absolutely nothing about your class or role during the process. Heck, next patch why not let people transfer characters from Diablo or WoW to EQ since we're putting another completely different game in the middle of EQ with MMs now.

MMs are a good idea in concept but they shouldn't be ridiculously out of balance with the rest of the game like they were and possibly still are...

Comment Posted by: Fred on October 31, 2005 08:17 PM

They tuned intelligent items slightly. These now appear to level up twice as fast as before - ie. probably around 300 aa's to achieve final form as opposed to around 600 aa's before. Note that I'm talking about intelligent items only, not necessarily all evolving items. Personally, I think the leveling pace is still 3X too slow...but I sold all my intelligent items so it doesn't really matter to me any more.

Comment Posted by: Fred on October 31, 2005 08:22 PM

Instead of the arbitrary timer on MM's I wish they had: 1) eliminated AFK xp, 2) penalized deaths during MM's through an xp adjustment, 3) slightly lowered the aa's per mission especially at the higher levels. MM pickup groups were a lot of fun and LFG was never an issue. Now I find a lot of pickup groups disband after a single mission.

Comment Posted by: Ompa on October 31, 2005 08:32 PM

the spoiler thread for the halloween stuff moved to http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/board/message?board.id=Quests&message.id=1865&view=by_date_ascending&page=6

the bigest info in that thread is on page 6 where a dev confirms that the quest is bugged as people are not getting credited for 4 of the 5 tasks (the trick or treat collection is the only one that is being recorded) what bothers me most in days of spam from SoE about the walk of game garbage they have yet to inform anyone of this in any official manner beyond a comment in a thread many wont read. Esspecially since the dev said there'd likely be no way of getting credit once it is fixed other than re-doing 4 of the 5 tasks.

Comment Posted by: Aarkan on October 31, 2005 11:11 PM

Well, I haven't played any content that's new to the game but some stuff is new to me! After 2 years out of the game it's better than ever, DoN looks super sweet and the new bazaar is confusingly awesome. Way to go SOE!

And all of you whiners who say that the game is now trivialized because of monster missions and all that stuff and that getting to 70 now means nothing because any idiot can do it let me just remind you something, when LDoN came out people said the EXACT same thing. Same with PoP. Same with Luclin. Same with Velious. The game gets quicker because there's more to do at the higher levels, the game is still just as massive and just as difficult and just as awesome, get off of your high horse. We all walked 15 miles uphill both ways in the snow at some point or another.
(this rant was not directed at anyone in this thread)

Comment Posted by: Maitreya on November 1, 2005 01:46 AM

Aarkan,

I agree with you almost completely. Lower levels will always become a bit more trivial every expansion so that new players can reach the high end (Gloomingdeep, PoK, no xp loss until level 10, etc.). If levels 1-50 were as hard now as they were when EQ was launched, someone starting today couldn't be expected to reach level 70 for years. The newbie game HAS to get easier each time the top bar is raised (new levels or AAs).

Some of the untunted mosnter missions, however, took it a step too far. A mission that one person can solo in 10 minutes potentially giving 6 people an AA's worth of xp (possibly less if they're lower level) isn't just helping newbies catch up, it's literally free xp for 5 AFK people and terribly easy xp for 1.

So, yeah. The monster mission changes were needed. I also don't consider them a "nerf." They were a "fix."

Comment Posted by: xsi on November 1, 2005 03:34 AM

I'd live to give a slap to the face to all the people who constantly describe everything as being a slap in the face.... all I can say, is you must not have been slapped much.

What's next... people describing everything as having jumped the shark? Oh, wait...

Presumably tonight (10/31)'s patch will fix the halloween events, the bugged stats on the cloak of greater pernicity and the FV char creation issues. I don't think we'll see the new rewards for the DoN progression missions until the next full patch...

Comment Posted by: Elemer on November 1, 2005 04:58 AM

Well on The Nameless tonight before heading out to work I logged into Nek to try and get one MM mission.

After 30 minutes of trying to get a group together I finally had to fold and leave as I was out of time to do a mission.

The max number of people in the zone during that time was 7.

That's right. Pre-lock out change there where on average 40-80 people all interacting, grouping together, and chatting together.

Post lockout change.... 7....

So much for Massively Multi-player....

We're now back to logging in, sitting LFG for 1+ hours hoping for a pick-up group that may or may not last 15 minutes.

/cong SOE on yet another stellar move to expand the ever growing chasm between the guild orriented raider and the casual player.

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on November 1, 2005 05:05 AM

New UI is ok I guess (I don't use it so don't know).

But they should do something about the spell icons. Maybe it's me but I find them hard to recognize and ugly.

+50resist clickie: smart move to keep up interest for the DoD misssions. Very good idea and not really unbalancing since most of the time raid AEs are unresistable.

Fixing Hanvar now makes no sense whatsoever. If it was important enough, it would have been fixed a year ago. Since it wasn't, doing it now is completely inadequate and unfair to those who come up now. Very dumb PR mistake.

There's a generic problem with raid trend: EQ isn't a platform game nor a short timespan game.
Requiring better and better execution to break the same old tactics is ok to some extent. But it doesn't fit in the 4-6 hours timeframe of a raid. People will loose focus over that long a period. It's BOUND to happen. There is a balance between gear, skills, tactic, execution. Going overboard on the execution side doesn't make the game more fun, it just makes it more elitist and narrow imho. DOD is flawed to me that way. It lost it's balance between those 4 components.

Comment Posted by: Skuz on November 1, 2005 06:39 AM

I would agree with the above poster, the new trend in OOW, DoN and now it seems in DoD for the Emote-driven "jumping through hoops" is a great device to involve every single member of a raid- up to a point, turning EQ into a reactive, "simple simon says" game can go to far, it's a nice addition if not overdone, as a part of a script it's fine, but for it to become the bulk of the script design is a flawed approach to raid encounter design, from my own conversations with top end raid guild friends the majority feel its gone way too far and that the Vishimtar encounter had the level of this emote driven reaction gaming balanced about where it should be.

Comment Posted by: Maitreya on November 1, 2005 12:07 PM

"/cong SOE on yet another stellar move to expand the ever growing chasm between the guild orriented raider and the casual player."

Umm...what? How does this have anything to do with raider vs. non-raider? Wait, I'll answer that for you. It doesn't.

If you're having trouble getting a group in Nektulos, try somewhere else. I've been able to put together groups for the Naggy or griffon missions in just a few minutes. If that doesn't work, use the LFG window. Finding groups really isn't as hard as some people say.

Comment Posted by: Aarkan on November 1, 2005 01:58 PM

The LFG window in EQ is a great tool, rivaling that of CoH. If everyone (or more people) used it things would go much much smoother.
And if that was the state of MM's then I'm glad SoE fixed it, though I hear LDoN is completely useless now... That was one of my favorite expansions, so I really hope that they up the point and exp rewards to make them worth doing from 50-70 again.

Anyway, make use of LFG window and general chat and being LFG for 2 hours should be a thing of the past.

Comment Posted by: Loral on November 1, 2005 04:10 PM

"But they should do something about the spell icons. Maybe it's me but I find them hard to recognize and ugly."

I agree - the new icons do very little to tell me which spell is which. I'm using a lightly customized version of the new UI but with the old icons because at least I know what those mean.

As far as twitchy gameplay in high end raids, I cannot commment as I've never done those raids, however I have seen on Time raids that 20% of your raid can go afk and you can still win. People don't always pay attention because being 1/54 is a lot less important than 1/6.

Game mechanics that get people to pay attention and shake up the traditional play style can add some fun and flavor. It's not everyone's bag and moderation is important, but I think its not exactly a bad thing overall.

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on November 1, 2005 05:40 PM

Within reason, Loral. Ruining a 2hours prep+raid because one person wasn't on the ball for one or two seconds over 20-30 minutes is not ok.

We aren't trained chimps, that's at least not my definition of fun. Maybe it is for early teens enjoying conditionned reflexes games but it's miles away of what made EQ raiding interesting.

Remove the brain, put a single eye/finger coordination reflex in between, kthx.

It's a big dumping down of the game for me.

Comment Posted by: Armarant on November 1, 2005 08:56 PM

redcloud wrote:Within reason, Loral. Ruining a 2hours prep+raid because one person wasn't on the ball for one or two seconds over 20-30 minutes is not ok.

I tend to think the same. if they turn everquest into a ton of OMM raids. with that level of difficulty alot of people will tune out of raiding and the game alltogether.

OMM is a event no one really wants.. one mistake causes a wipe. while I agree mistakes should set a raid back. one mistake killing off an entire hour of time is nonsense.

Comment Posted by: Loral on November 2, 2005 07:47 AM

"Within reason, Loral. Ruining a 2hours prep+raid because one person wasn't on the ball for one or two seconds over 20-30 minutes is not ok."

I wouldn't want it everywhere but this is the highest tier we're talking about. I talked with Prathun at the Summit and he said that OMM was about as much of that sort of thing as they could ever expect people to be able to handle. I wouldn't expect to see it get any worse. As far as having it on OMM, well, it is the hardest encounter in the game short of the newer stuff in Demiplane of Blood. Expecting all 54 people to be on the ball doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

Comment Posted by: bob on November 2, 2005 10:50 AM

If EQ gets an award, it should get cedited to Brad McQuaid and his crew that is now at Sigil Games.

All SOE has been doing since they left is milking their design for all its worth. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to simply ratchet up the mob levels, and loot tables and reuse the same textures and models and call it an expansion.

After playing multiple SOE games, I have seen them all turn into EQ in terms of design and playstyle.

Given that SOE relies so heavily on the EQ framework, Brad McQUaid and Co. deserve TONS of credit for the award. W/O them there would be no EQ, and SOE should give credit to them if they get this award.

w/o the design work by the folks of Verant, there would simply be no SOE. SOE exists solely because of Verant and EQ and their dependancy on Verant's orginal design still shows today by their perpetual reuse of said design.

If they didn't have that Verant template, I dont think SOE would have ever been able to design a game on their own.

Comment Posted by: Loral on November 2, 2005 02:45 PM

I believe the award will be to "Everquest". It won't say SOE's Everquest or Brad Mcquaid's Everquest or the Age of Rashere's Everquest.

It's a celebration of Everquest which, in my mind, includes all six years.

However, saying that Everquest is now only milking the design of the original game isn't exactly accurate. Here's just a short list off of the top of my head of things we've seen since Verant went to SOE:

- Single group events that broke away from static hunting
- Better defined quest system.
- Instancing for single groups and raids.
- The Mission system: focused single group adventures.
- Clear focus on the raiding game with much more exciting raid encounters.
- Monster Missions.
- Point-based loot systems.

Norrath is a much different place than it once was. In fact, for some players, the shift is so great that it is difficult to get their hands around it.

I think the changes to Everquest since LDON have done more to improve the game than anything before it since its creation. Kunark and Luclin were fine expansions but they were just lots of zones with lots of stuff to kill. It's the more recent expansions that improved upon the game's system and really brought adventure back into EQ.

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on November 2, 2005 04:16 PM

Well noone new killed Mata in months. That should be proof enough that execution only raids are flawed. It is putting players off and make everybody look bad but a handful. Aside from patting the dev ego and a few chosen ones, that looks like a very poor PR move to show SOE's opinion of its playerbase. And poor understanding.

But if they enjoy shooting their own foot, by all means...

Comment Posted by: Elemer on November 3, 2005 04:27 AM

Loral,

Do you honestly thing there was ever a question that EQ would get an "award"?

I mean, http://www.walkofgame.com/, the site people where sent to to vote is registered by:

Metreon - A Sony Entertainment Center
101 4th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103

Metreon is a registered trademark of LTMA Inc., a business unit of Sony Corporation of America

I mean, let's call the kettle black here, SOE is giving SOE an award. The whole "vote" thing boils down to a press/PR stunt.

Comment Posted by: Maitreya on November 3, 2005 12:45 PM

Your statement is far from the wonderful land of correctness. Metreon is a huge super theater in San Diego. SoE is a computer and video game company in San Diego. SoE is NOT giving SoE an award, Metreon is giving 4 deserving games and 2 game designers and award.

Comment Posted by: Maitreya on November 3, 2005 12:46 PM

Or rather, a theater in San Francisco, not San Diego.

Comment Posted by: Gordulek on November 3, 2005 01:15 PM

Actually, the above poster's facts are correct. The Metreon facility is owned by Sony, as is the Walk of Game website. Metreon and SoE are sister companies. But the l33t detective work of the poster wasn't necessary, I remember that at least one of the reminders to vote mentioned the "Sony Metreon". It struck me as odd at the time, but then I don't really care either. /shrug

Comment Posted by: Maitreya on November 3, 2005 11:42 PM

Yes, I know they are both owned by Sony. However, they totally seperate branches. I just think it's silly that so many people are completely sure the contest will be rigged in EQ's favor just because they're both Sony.

Comment Posted by: stupid idiot on November 6, 2005 04:29 AM

hi, im one of the 1000 people to get banned for cheating, but first some background history, ive played eq since 2 weeks after release, im in my 30's, when eq first came out, i had a lot of free time, and i spent it all on this game. ive been a guild leader, and big advocate of eq, ive tackled scammers and ksers in my time, about 50 friends and family play this game because of my recommendations.

as the years have gone on, work has got harder and longer, so i have had less time to play eq, but even still, even thru these years, i resisted the temptation to cheat, in the last month or so, i have seen more and more people using macroquest even bragging about it openly, and what did sony do.... nothing

so yes, i was tempted by sonys lack of caring, by my very limited time to play, a friend sent me a copy of macroquest which i used for 1 week, before being banned, suddenly sony decides to get tough on people for PR reasons or something, they could have done it years ago, but didnt. anyways, i took my chances, and now after being a good and loyal eqer for 6 years, im banned for a weeks lapse of judgement, shrug, eq was my main hobby and im missing it totally, ive sent tons of emails to sony, telling them im sorry, but get zero response, even if its to say tough your staying banned that would at least close the issue for me, but as it stands im left in a sort of limbo state hoping against the odds that they will unban me, oh well, just one persons story, good luck all, and bye to all my friends.

Comment Posted by: RosesAreRedEQ on November 7, 2005 02:46 PM

I doubt you will be reinstated. I recently had copy of an e mail from SOE to a long time gamer friend ... one with 5 active accounts!

Apparently he was hacked (same time frame as when you were banned) and his accounts used for some unspecified illegal activity. His accounts were closed and he was told in no uncertain terms he would never get them back.

Like you, he had recruited and played with family members and friends since the beta days - not to mention the amount of subscription money he paid over the years. It made no difference.

Comment Posted by: yech on November 7, 2005 04:50 PM

ROFLMAO, take a dying game and start banning people for what has been going on for years. Another smart move brought to you by the self destructing idiots over at SoE.

Comment Posted by: wondering on November 7, 2005 05:17 PM

I suspect the banned people where the ones doing 'naughty' things and not the standard automation macros. Some popular hacks included shared bank, ability to trade no drop items, and warping. Those are the things I bet there were able to log and ban the perps.

There's cheating and then there's *cheating*. I used to wish I'd get banned thinking I'd never be able to stop playing EQ but then DoDH came out and did that for me.

Comment Posted by: Armarant on November 8, 2005 08:24 AM

Yech: ROFLMAO, take a dying game and start banning people for what has been going on for years. Another smart move brought to you by the self destructing idiots over at SoE.

I would ask one simple question. if this game is so quickly dieing then why are such hacks propogating so fast. one would assume all the plat sellers and hackers would quickly flee from a dieing game for the next best thing (World of warcraft, Guild wars) but they are doing quite the opposite with a large onslaught of hackers invadeing norrath, it was time they fought back against this voracious blight upon the game.

Comment Posted by: Loral on November 8, 2005 10:39 AM

I'm not sure I'd use hacks and cheats as a way to gauge the health of a game. Right now, I'm not sure what I would use to measure the health of a MMO. I wrote before that I used expansions as a metric. As long as expansions continued to come out, a game was healthy. However, the recent Ashron's Call 2 expansion mixed with their nearly immediate closing of the game shows that expansions alone don't show health. Population numbers are a pretty good metric but we don't get to see those - probably a good reason.

I'm not sure the health matters that much. Again, we play these games because they're fun. If they die, we'll get upset or feel sad but we'll move on. MMOs have grown a lot in the past five years; there will always be good ones available.

I don't think EQ's going to go away for a long long time. EQ is just one of a few MMOs that SOE now provides. They have a much better facility for keeping low-numbered games alive than a company who only supports one game. SOE picked up Matrix Online, a game with very low numbers right off the bat.

I would consider gauging the health of EQ, should one care about such things for any other purpose than simple trolling and flaming, based on their other MMOs. If they can keep Matrix Online, Planetside, and Everquest Online Adventures going - they can keep EQ going just as long. Right now EQ has a lot more people playing - based on server numbers alone - than EQOA.

As far as cheats go, it is hard to have a lot of sympathy. I've played for five years, I pay for multiple accounts, I have a lot of time and energy invested, but I've never cheated and never plan to. It is not that hard to avoid the temptations of macroquest or other exploits and cheats. For two years I have heard people screaming about cheats and SOE's lack of action. Now I hear screams that SOE's action is unfair.

I have also not heard of any SOE "zero tolerance" (an idiotic Orwellian term if I ever heard one) policy. I imagine if one pursues it enough, hat in hand and apology on lip, one can get back into EQ. If not, there is always "Escape to Norrath". You'd be surprised how much fun the newbie game can be.

SOE's policy to ban cheaters is directly based on continued pressure from the community. If you must blame anyone, blame those who screamed about it for so long.

Comment Posted by: Sunshadow on November 8, 2005 04:55 PM

All I hope is that these mass bannings are not a flash in the pan. Continual vigilance is a great deterant. Things have gotten as bad as they have, because of CS apathy by SOE. These days you are lucky to see a GM or Guide logged into a server. 3 years ago you would see at least 1 GM and 3 or 4 guides logged on at any time. This lack of "police presence" has allowed the "crimminal element" to feel safe.

If you go up to any policeman in any country and as what are the biggest deterents to crimminals and they will tell you it's a visible police presence and an active community.

So as long as the Coders/Developers continue with this project there is hope as long as it is comunicated to the community in some way. If what happens is invisible then the crimminals will come back.

I am however concerned that the lack of decent CS is actually forcing the developers to spend time on this rather than improving/fixing a lot of other issues. But I suppose it's a case of some othe SOE's departments money then rather than the CS department.

Comment Posted by: Kinladar on November 9, 2005 08:52 AM

Quite frankly, the exploits that MQ2 allowed, that any class can check/track spawns, and so many other things was a big turn off for me, and one of the reasons I am ultra casual in EQ anymore, with the bulk of my playing time in WoW now.

The other aspect that was stupid was the Simon Sez methods of raiding. This was a total turn off, and completely assinine. Should WoW put in alot of content like that, then I'll leave that behind as well.

Talk about a lack of imagination in game design!

I'll just have the zone spam what they need to do, and watch as they have to immitate trained chimps and all do exactly the same thing at the same time. We'll even give them a treat at the end.

DoD does have some innovations that make it better than previous expansions, but to be honest, OoW, DoN, etc... were nothing special.

All that OoW did was continue the GoD legacy, and other than the big Epic 2.0 (just another epeen stroker) just gave us the simon sez raiding model. Which I think we all know by now I think is poor design at the least.

DoN... New point systems totally unsuable with anything that came before it! Some fluff in dragons, pure marcitecture, (IE Marketing said, "Put in a buncha dragons that will draw them in!" So the design was all dragons. Happy happy joy joy!) Granted the missions system wasn't too bad, but it's once again another system that has reward methods that are incompatible with anything that came prior to DoN.

DoD is the first expansion in a long time with real innovation, and some intelligent design.

The bad side is, they are starting to "retune" some aspects that really got people playing. I'm sorry, but the shared lockout timers on the missions is just a killer for people who are skilled enough to zip through a mission in under 45 minutes.

Comment Posted by: Utziel on November 9, 2005 03:27 PM

Just what was wrong with the timers? I agree with above post that they are killing the very thing that got people excited. NERF- cant have people excited! Cut the regular xp not the AA xp and put the old timers back !!!!!

Comment Posted by: hmm on November 9, 2005 05:25 PM

Loral said, "SOE's policy to ban cheaters is directly based on continued pressure from the community. If you must blame anyone, blame those who screamed about it for so long."

WTF?!?!?

Anyone who gets banned has only *ONE* person to blame.

*THEMSELVES*

Idiots.

Comment Posted by: Loral on November 10, 2005 03:13 PM

I have a nice treat coming on Monday. I landed an interview with Maddoc, one of the minds behind the Everquest Live events we've seen over the past six months. I'll be posting it Monday.

Comment Posted by: Tuunes on November 10, 2005 10:11 PM

I'm writing this out of extreme concern for the state of Stormhammer, and in the hopes that perhaps, just MAYBE, we can open up dialog with someone at Sony Online Entertainment that can speak with us, the players, honestly and candidly.

For many years Stormhammer was an enjoyable server with a vibrant economy and a large, if transient, population. Over the years the lack of active support from the eqlive development team and from PR promoting the server took it's slow but steady toll on the server population. The first nail in the coffin however came about when SoE began to offer server transfers with full gear. Very quickly people on Stormhammer realized that for the price of moving one character with full gear to any server of their choice, they could recoup the cost within 2 months of leaving the server with the money they save by downgrading from a Legends account. Not even weeks after the announcement of the service, the mass exodus of guilds and players began. At first it was a trickle, some of the smaller guilds who were not able to compete at the end game, and some players who were unable to gain access to the resident 'uber' guilds departed. Very shortly after it progressed into a torrent of players leaving the server. Leviathan, Vexare, Precision Strike, Scions of War, and other guilds all left the server. This left Township Rebellion alone on the server as a true raiding guild. TR stuck around long enough to obtain access to the Citadel of Anguish before leaving for Luclin.

At this point there were no longer any raiding guilds left on the server. Fie of Nobility attempted to fill in this roll to retain some players by pushing hard and managing to get much of their guild elemental flagged. By this point they were fighting an uphill battle however against the stream of constantly leaving players. By this time the economy on the server had entirely collapsed, and trying to get a group for xp was nearing an impossibility. There were so few traders in the bazaar that ebay plat farmers had a death grip on the server's wares, buying out items from all the other traders and marking them up 50% so that they were the 'sole provider' of many if not most items of any quality on the server. FoN struggled and managed to get access to time, and even clear the zone 3 times, before the steady migration of players away from the server made it so that they were incapable of raiding much more than pofire named.

The situation on Stormhammer has become intolerable for many, if not most, on the server. Just in the past couple of weeks, the last guild capable of killing and raiding just about anything at all, Fie of Nobility, disbanded and left the server. The server was in dire straits before their leaving, but With their dispersal almost 50% of the active players that people could group with and interact with. The non existent economy on the server is even worse now, with perhaps an average of 8 traders in the bazaar, of which fully half of them are the bazaar bots of some of the 6-8 boxers who only buy items to mark them up again on their own vendor.

The server chat channels as of late have been filled with almost nothing but players debating the future of the server. Zones that on other servers would be overflowing with people have no one in them, or the occasional 6 or 8 box farmer pleveling characters or farming plat and items for off server sales. People have all discussed ways to attempt to get people back on the server. Suggestions have ranged from giving Stormhammer a permanent double xp bonus on the whole server, to making the server use Firiona Vie's rule set for no drop items. Unfortunately at this point in time it will take something extreme along those lines, perhaps many somethings, to attract players back to the server. There is significant negative word of mouth about the state of the server from all the people leaving it. Every last one of these ideas has one apparently fatal flaw however, they all require developer time and commitment. This has been something that has been very much lacking for the server for years now. There are people who have waited well over 6 months for a simple legendary item to be created.

There has not been any legends specific content since Marauder's Mire was removed a few months after the server opened. The occasional zone we get to see 'first' is not a draw to other players. And when most of these zones were pushed to Stormhammer they were unusable by the players on Stormhammer for various reasons. Things started out not too poorly when there were actually players on Stormhammer, with the revamped Temple of Cazic Thule, and the revamped Sleepers Tomb, but then came a series of failures. First there was the low level LDON on a server that was primarily level 60 + I'm not sure if it even was entered before it got pushed live a few weeks later. Then was the LDON raid that after failing it had a broken lock out for 30 days, by which time the lock out was fixed and the zone had been pushed to live servers, so no one on Stormhammer got to use it. And lastly were the revamped Split Paw and Mistmore, which by the time they were put on Stormhammer, there were no guilds on the server even capable of raiding them. None of these were legends specific content either, they were to be put on the other live servers within weeks of showing up on Stormhammer, and provided no compelling reason to draw players to the server.

Throughout this all just about the only constant has been the impeccable customer service from the Stormhammer support staff. The players of Stormhammer have been blessed with some of the most talented and fun GM's and lead GM's in the gaming industry. They do the best they can with the tools given to provide great fun with dynamic events and the fastest responses to petitions and problems. Even the best GM's on the planet however can not do much with no population to attend their events, and no developer support to create items needed / promised to players. Unfortunately as well, the best GM support available is not enough of a draw to get players to the server.

There have been many instances of very minor policy changes that could have been made along the way to support Stormhammer and it's population. Many of these oversights made it seem to players on Stormhammer that the populous was being punished for playing there. Instances are such as the anniversary year subscription deals that Legends subscribers could not take advantage of (there has never been a bulk subscription for legends players to use) The fact that characters on Stormhammer could not take advantage of the movelog offered when their "home server" merged without leaving the server. After leaving the server to take advantage of the free server xfer, 95% of players did not return to Stormhammer, just causing an additional drain to our limited resources. The problem was that there was no attention from the people who had the power to make decisions and policy changes to these problems. The GM staff was well aware of them but powerless to take action.

Right now most of the chat in guilds and the server channels is debate over how much longer the server will last. Almost universally the feeling is that Stormhammer has been neglected from the top down and that there no longer exists a commitment to the server. As one person put it, perhaps controversially, "Stormhammer is the Terry Schaivo server. It's been dead a long time and just waiting for someone to acknowledge that fact and pull the plug so it can go on to it's final rest." With the near impossibility of getting a group, the complete absence of any raiding guilds, and the non existent economy, one can not blame people for the talk either. At peak hours the other night we estimated conservatively that if 50% of the server was anon / role playing then there were only between 80 to 100 people online, 10 of which were bazaar mules, another 10 to 12 of which were one person bot-farms who do not group with others, leaving only around 50 to 60 people possible to group with, and not enough of the right classes to accomplish anything. Most of these people left are only on Stormhammer still because they care about it. These people deserve some sort of communication, some sort of answers to their question that our GM staff is either not able or not allowed to provide.

In all honesty what has the population remaining on Stormhammer more upset than anything is the complete and utter silence from SoE concerning our server. I think right now everyone would prefer to be told bad news such as "We're sorry but your server is no longer financially viable and we will be shutting it down in 2 months" and to at least KNOW the fate of the server, than the continuing silence.

On behalf of all of Stormhammer, this is a plea for some communication about the state of our server with some of the people who have power to make decisions about it.
Thank you very much for reading,

Tharkis the Paragon of Stormhammer

Comment Posted by: KODIA on November 10, 2005 10:15 PM

A Balst from the Past - Legends Server Was Born......But where are we today versus what SOE promised to deliver?

**************************************************

Earlier this month, Sony Online unveiled EverQuest Legends, a new premium subscription service for its popular online role-playing game EverQuest. The service is designed to offer players additional features and exclusive content for an additional fee--$39.95 per month versus the basic subscription fee of about $10 per month. While the official Legends Web site offers information about the features that will be included in the service, we had some questions about the reasoning behind the move and how the service has been received so far. To get answers to these and other questions, we talked to John Smedley, COO and senior vice president of Sony Online Entertainment.

GameSpot: Thanks for taking the time for this interview. First, can you tell us what inspired Sony to launch a premium subscription service for EverQuest?

John Smedley: We felt that our customer base was large enough that we could try out something very unique.

GS: How long has the project been in development?

JS: About five months.

GS: What is the service designed to provide?

JS: We're trying to provide much more of a tabletop RPG experience to our Legends customers. We really want to try to have people feel like they are part of a world that's changing at a much more rapid pace. In fact, players will feel like they impact the world in a much greater way. For example, if players complete a specific dynamic quest, they could end up getting a sword named after them. Eventually, that sword could find its way to other servers. How cool would it be to have other people getting the "Sword of (your character)" and know that the epic adventure you had on Legends is what led to that item actually being created. That's the level we're going to go to. It's going to be absolutely mind-blowing.

GS: Is the service live now? What kinds of changes have you had to implement in EverQuest in order to support the Legends service?

JS: The server will be live soon. As for changes, what we've mostly done is assembled a Legends-specific quest team. This team is in addition to the EQ Live team and is totally funded by Legends revenue

GS: How has the response been so far? Can you tell us how many of the 8,000 spots have been filled?

JS: Excellent--we should launch with all 8,000 slots on the first Legends server full, and we're expecting to potentially have another one live shortly after that.

GS: Is there a minimum number of players required in order to make the service worth launching?

JS: Yes, but we don't give out that kind of info. Needless to say, we're past that number.

GS: Will the effort and resources required to maintain the new service detract at all from the basic EverQuest servers?

JS: Absolutely not--in fact, it's just the opposite. We plan on moving the content from the Legends servers over to the other servers on a periodic basis.

GS: Will any of the exclusive Legends content eventually make its way to onto the non-premium servers?

JS: Yes, but only after Legends folks have had time with it first.

GS: What do you have to say to players who claim that Legends is an elitist service? Shouldn't everyone who subscribes to EverQuest get the same treatment?

JS: I wouldn't want to characterize it as elitist--it's more for an audience that's looking to get a special kind of experience.

GS: Can you tell us about some of the plans you have for exclusive in-game content?

JS: The first big thing we're doing is going to be called Marauder's Mire. It's essentially an undead pirate invasion across a lot of zones. We also have some awesome high-level surprises in store.

GS: If EverQuest Legends is a success, do you envision launching more premium servers?

JS: Yes

GS: Some have claimed that Legends is Sony's attempt to capitalize on the online market for unique items, essentially saying that if players are willing to pay extra for powerful items in online auctions, they must be willing to pay extra for additional quests and legendary items on a premium server. Is this true?

JS: It has nothing to do with trying to capitalize on the online market for unique items

GS: Will players be able to transfer characters and items between premium and non-premium servers? If so, will players be able to sell or trade their Legends items with non-premium players?

JS: Legends-specific items that accompany character transfers will be flagged as "no drop" until such items migrate to the regular servers.

GS: Does Sony have any plans to offer trial subscriptions or reduced-price packages for those players who can't afford $40 per month? How was the subscription rate determined?

JS: No. The rate was determined by studying exactly what we wanted to offer and how much it would cost.

GS: What's next for EverQuest? Can you tell us anything about upcoming additions or expansions to the game?

JS: We'll be making some big announcements soon!

GS: Thanks for your time, John.

By Trey Walker, GameSpot POSTED: 02/19/02 03:23 PM

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/everquest/news_2848677.html

THIS IS NOT WHAT THE LEGENDS SERVER IS GETTING TODAY!!!! SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!

Comment Posted by: Yamar on November 10, 2005 10:18 PM

Death to the Legends Server? A players opinion!

**************************************************

With the upcoming move of PS, nov 20th and soon to follow TR off of Stormhammer, we arrive at yet to another one of SOE's collasal failures.

Let me share with you all what a few members of the SOE staff who represent Stormhammer have told me.

For the last few months they have been going to Brenlo's office (Allen Crosby) telling him of the issues with our server, the lack of support from the development team and other key resorces.

Here was Brenlo's response to this, he said he did not see Stormhammer as being broken, or having any issues, and that the loss of PS and TR was not a big deal since they were only a few of the total accounts still on Stormhammer.

For the last few years the services pitched in the selling of this server have been comeing up short to absolutely not delivering on what was promised. Rather then do the moral and ethical thing which would be to refund the accounts for services not rendered, SOE and especialy Brenlo have decided on a different course of action.

The tact they have chosen is this. Dont do a thing, remove little by little the few things the sever still has while milking those of us here who were promised things like items for EQ2 for staying on SH wonder in perplexment why we are not getting what we paid for look like fools. Have you noticed even the once beloved and only saving grace (our GMs) are no longer online as much?. (mind you its not our GMs fault, they are trying their hardest to save our server in fact).

This tact is so that people dont start an uproar, that little by little everyone who has become disanfrancised will leave Stormhammer, and when they decide to pull the plug no one will be left to complain.

Hats off to you Brenlo, your tact has worked to perfection, you have achieved your gaol. If you had even a fraction of moral fiber or ethical values you would refund those of us on Stormhammer who paid for services not rendered. Indeed false advertisement.

If you worked for me i would have fired you a long time ago. www.planbny.com i deal with thousands of people a year and understand what it is to provide service and make sure that what i promise to sell is achived in a manner that the customer if happy with it.

Shame on you sir, shame on you.

To those the CS team on Stormhammer past and present, thank you very much for making the best of what little you had to work with, i personaly appricate all those extra things you did for us and the time you vested in making sure we always had the best of times on the server. Without you this place would never have merrited the cost. /Salute to the Stormhammer staff.

Comment Posted by: Dahrnell on November 10, 2005 10:35 PM

I came back to Everquest after about a 9 month break or so. Figured I would give Legends a try since I had the spare money. Really wish I would have stopped by the forums first. Everyone on the server is nice, but what is the point of the server? No raids, no xp groups, no progression. GM events that I cannot attend? Access to all the veteran rewards? Yeah like that's worth $40 a month. The ability after spending $240 to transfer to a server I want? Why when you can pay $75 and get the same thign.

So to all the people on the server. You are a nice bunch of people. However Sony you are not a nice bunch of people. My experience on Legends has seriously made me reconsider even maintaining a normal subscription to Everquest. So congratulations for running me off from your game for the second time.

Comment Posted by: Loral on November 11, 2005 01:22 PM

What do you feel SOE can do about the Stormhammer situation? It is certainly in need of some sort of response, but what should that response be? If one asks me, I'd say the only solution is to disband it and let those on Stormhammer move off to other servers, perhaps with a nice trinket to remind them of the past.

Comment Posted by: Naladini on November 11, 2005 09:38 PM

Since when has there ever been only one solution to a problem? Quitting on the service isn't the best answer, when a fairly minimal amount of effort from development and marketing could quickly turn things around.

Recently, I had posted a question on the EQLive site asking in the Newbie forum what kind of features might attract someone to the Legends Service?

What I found most interesting about many of the replies that I saw were many of them seemed to be extremely misinformed about the service and what was offered, and were suggesting features that already exist. What can we learn from this excercise? Legends is very under promoted. People rely on whispers and old rumors as opposed to facts, and since SOE hasn't been making much of a promotional effort to set the record straight, we don't get many new players signing up.

Stormhammer has had a great staff of GM's over the years, who do what they can to provide incredible entertainment value for their customers. The problem is, the GM staff can't play the rest of the game for you outside of their events. There has to be a population for a server to survive.

Opening a dialog with the stormhammer playerbase would be a good start. However, opening a dialog with the non-stormhammer playerbase about what kind of value added features would draw them to the service would be a great start, since in the end, the goal is to boost the population to the point where the full game of EverQuest can be played within the Legends service. This means high end content progression, this means a player based economy, this means attracting more players to the server.

It wouldn't take a lot of effort to create a bit of a snowball effect either. The #1 way to recruit players to a service like Legends is to rely on player referrals. Draw in some new blood, this pleases the old blood, and everyone starts talking again about how much fun they're having.

No. Shutting down the server is not the answer, its a cop out. Especially given the fact that so little has been done to address these issues up until now.

My suggestion would be to make a good faith effort to market the server, to provide value added features (maybe one or two ideas from the many suggestions that have been made). Then, if things don't stabilize or improve, pull the plug.

Until that good faith effort is made, quitting should not be the answer.

Comment Posted by: Loral on November 12, 2005 01:04 PM

"Quitting on the service isn't the best answer, when a fairly minimal amount of effort from development and marketing could quickly turn things around."

I don't think you can get a lot of people to pay $30 a month for a single EQ account when they can play Warcraft for half that price. You'd get a small dedicated set of people but you will never get the amount you see on other servers. I don't know what they could offer me to pay 3x the price I pay now.

Comment Posted by: Naladini on November 12, 2005 01:57 PM

That's a pretty speculative statement though, especially given the lack of promotion that the server has received over the years. (Don't you normally ask for hard numbers when readers make statements like those? =) )

How many people multi-box? Isn't that essentially the same kind of expense? You're adding a second or third character to round out your EQ experience, to do things you can't do with a single account. Legends seems to fall into that category, as the events and storylines should fill in for the fairly widespread need that some players feel to have that second or third character active at the same time.

The type of promotion the Server needs is largely free. GM's discussing events with players on messageboards as the event actor, promoting storylines on the EQLive message board, full discussion of features and GM assistance capabilities. Attach these discussions to an Account viewable in the Tracker feature of the forums, and you generate an enormous amount of clarity and publicity.

From a cost-benefit perspective, the two places Legends has missed over the years are:

1)Adding some events or legendary type rewards focused on guilds, and guild progression. The calendar system used to fit this pretty well, but is really no longer necessary. Guild raid and progression time frames tend to cross and conflict with event times, so guilds need a stronger benefit.

2) Adding longer term rewards for all legends subscribers, a stronger incentive to stay with the service and stabilize the population would be quite helpful as well.

Comment Posted by: Trevelan on November 13, 2005 01:17 AM

I think the fact that we are still going and still getting new people proves otherwise. What would be the state of EQ if almost 3 years ago they had stopped advertising, released no new content, quit patching the game, and reduced the gm staff by 75% all the while never saying a word? That is what they did to Stormhammer. There was more than enough support from players to make the legends service viable but finally after years of neglect alot of people were basically forced to leave to enjoy the game. SOE has simply refused to try to run the service properly. The one thing we ask for is a dialogue with people that make decisions about legends. They owe us that much. But all we get is stone cold silence.

Comment Posted by: Armarant on November 13, 2005 09:35 AM

Naladini Wrote:How many people multi-box? Isn't that essentially the same kind of expense? You're adding a second or third character to round out your EQ experience, to do things you can't do with a single account. Legends seems to fall into that category, as the events and storylines should fill in for the fairly widespread need that some players feel to have that second or third character active at the same time.

There is a essential difference between multi-boxing and a stormahammer account. if I get 3 multi accounts together, I can get myself a instance and try my hand at it solo.

I pay that same amount on stormhammer, I am garunteed the need to spend 3X the amount to get that solo instance. or I am forced to group. Stormhammer doesnt provide the same benifits a 2nd or 3rd account would provide.. it provides more "Content"., but in no way does stormhammer give people a better solo experience then any other server.

Comment Posted by: Naladini on November 13, 2005 01:51 PM

That's why I've long been an advocate of Solo instances, and limiting their existance to Stormhammer. ;) (Sorry, didn't feel like this was a place to rehash the myriad of suggestions that have been submitted over the past many months).

Some people say soloing is bad for the game, but in all honesty, its there for the people who want to spend extra for it on any server they like. Why not push that concept to the Legends service, but allow people to do it with one character?

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