Titanium Prophecies
by Loral on December 19, 2005
We've had a couple of busy weeks so let's dive right in.
A new producer takes the helm at the Everquest Live development team. As Craig Knapp moves off to a new project, Chris Lena takes over as the Everquest Producer. Chris introduced himself in his first Everquest Producer's letter after attending the most recent Everquest Developer's chat over at Stratics. The players congratulated Chris on his promotion and Caster's Realm posted an interview with the new producer.
I found this quote interesting:
"One of the issues is that many people feel a little intimidated by the sheer amount of content – it can be daunting. We are working on some things to address that as well but I can't say anything else on that at this time."
Here's another quote to stick in your scrapbook and come back to in five years:
"EverQuest will definitely be around a lot longer than 5 years."
Last week an accidental slip on the forum list revealed what is most likely the name of the next Everquest expansion, Prophecy of Ro. While no SOE represenative validated the name, none worked to quell the rumors either. Like every expansion since LDON, some players were very excited at the new prospect while others gave the same complaints we have heard for four years: "no new expansions, fix bugs!"
Everquest expansions have come out every six months since Planes of Power. The days of the yearly Everquest expansion are over. SOE stated at previous summits that they regularly see a drop off at the five to six month mark in any expansion release with a clear jump in subscriptions shortly after an expansion's release.
Six month expansions are the pulse of a healthy game. They regularly improve and add upon the existing game, giving players new content and features that go well beyond typical class reenvisionment issues or bug fixes.
Bugs need to be fixed. None of us have any doubt about this, but holding up expansions for smaller bug fixes will not help the health of the game. Players don't return to EQ because the boats started working again, they return to see features like monster missions, single group adventures, and new high-end raid content.
I expect we will hear more about the new expansion in January with a release probably in February or March of 2006.
On Thursday, 15 December 2006, SOE released EQ Players, a website that ties into Everquest more than any other website before. The EQ Players website closely matches the EQ2 Players website of Everquest 2 and includes features such as a live character page, character rankings, guild listings, leader boards, image galleries, item data, and spell data. While systems like Magelo helped players keep track of their fancy gear so they could drool over it while pretending to work, the EQ Players site automatically updates itself as your character improves. So now you can see exactly what Loral is truly like. Oops, I forgot to take off my Turtlebone ring!
The site's release was not without controversy. Eighteen of the twenty webservers used to host the site did not work correctly resulting in lousy performance for the first couple of days. Connecting EQ Players to the live game also created some problems resulting in two or three patches within a 24 hour period. One of Chris Lena's first public jobs was to apologise for the issues.
Other players were concerned about privacy. While the site allows characters to remove or restrict their listings and rankings, doing so requires active participation. Some feel that the privacy of those who do not yet know or understand the site is missing. Frankly, I think the site would be a lot less fun if it only had forty or fifty showoffs while the rest of the world hid in indifference. No real private data is revealed, there are no account titles or personal information. If players are really concerned that people will find out what hat they wear, they can always remove their listing.
Earlier this week SOE also announced the Everquest Titanium pack for release in January 2006. This pack will contain the base game, a free 30 day subscription, and all ten expansion packs including Depths of Darkhollow for $20. This is the first time a new player can buy the entire game for this low a cost. Unfortunately, the pack's release misses the holiday rush, and within one to two months of its release, a new expansion will also be released upping the total cost of Everquest to $50. Still, considering the cost of $80 to $100 before, this is a much better deal.
This holiday season, SOE also offered up a 21 day free account reactiviation for old players. If you no longer play EQ but want to see how the world has changed, now is a good time to go see. Unfortunately, reactivated players won't be able to try out some of the new features like Monster Missions or Spirit Shrouds, but at least they can poke their heads around and see what is new.
A patch on 7 December 2005 added a few new changes. A change to the monster missions now requires every member to enter the mission and receive a crystal in order to earn experience. This was included to prevent players earning experience without ever even attending the mission. Though a fair change that does little to increase the difficulty of monster missions, some players hiding under the flag of "Casual gamer" claimed that this change hurt their ability to match high-end hunters. No element of the game should ever reward experience with no effort. Earning up to an AA of experience without moving reveals a broken system. That system is now fixed.
A new Arena also finally made it from Stormhammer to the live servers.
Speaking of Stormhammer, it appears the elite server will soon close its doors. The high monthly cost for negligible improvement resulted in very few players on the server. While some felt that SOE could have done more to make the server attractive, it was unlikely that SOE could spare the resources for such a gamble. Closing the server and moving the players seemed the only reasonable choice. When I saw the numbers of active players on Stormhammer in comparison to other servers at the last Summit, it was clear to me that this was the only choice.
The difficulty of Overlord Mata Muram came up during the last Developer's Chat. A player asked if the end-boss of Omens of War would have his difficulty reduced considering the small number of guilds guilds able to defeat him. Rashere stated that while probably too difficult, OMM would remain at his current difficulty as a sign of guild power. Within 24 hours of his statement, two new guilds defeated Overlord Mata Muram bringing the total number to twenty. OMM still remains undefeated on some servers including my home server of Quellious.
The second tier of the Demiplane of Blood, the most powerful raiding zone in Everquest, has been entered. Many adventurers whisper rumors of the identity of the final encounter in the zone. Raging Fury has some excellent descriptions of the latest high-end raiding encounters.
If you are more of a single-group hunter, like myself, you may find Samanna's Guide to Depths of Darkhollow Missions useful. This single-page guide has every mission, reward, and progression tree for over fifty Depths of Darkhollow non-monster missions.
Pontificating about massive online games became a new past time of mine since writing for Mobhunter. I found the website Terra Nova to be a very interesting academic look at massive online games. Richard Bartle, the programmer of the world's first multiuser dungeon, writes for them on topics ranging from economics to reward systems. It's a great read.
Gamespot's interview with John Smedley had some interesting things to say about the recent Star Wars Galaxies changes. A recent Wired article titled Star Wars Fans Flee Net Galaxy discussed the exodus of older players due to a more action-based feel. In the interview, Smedley discusses the failure of sandbox games (the Sims, Second Life) compared to goal-oriented games (Everquest, Warcraft). He also talks about a lot of interesting topics including cross platform gaming on any device, massive online games on the PSO, and players in South Korea being unable to put down cigarettes to use the keyboard. It's a great read.
Here's another quote to add to your scrap book:
"People within the company feel so much pride in this game that they want it to beat the crap out of World of Warcraft."
With four and a half million players, a new expansion on the way, and being the number five best selling game a year after release, World of Warcraft has a pretty big ass to kick.
Loral Ciriclight
19 December 2005
loral@loralciriclight.com
Comment Posted by: simkine on December 19, 2005 08:00 AM
I'd like to see how many players completed the various expansion goals. Some sort of expansions tally.
eg.
How many players have various keys such as Vex Thal, Time, Texvu/Tavci, etc
How many finished the LDoN charm
How many maxed the various shrouds
How many completed Depths of Darkhollow progression quest
Things like that.
Expansions keep coming and I'd be curious just how many people completed the goals of the previous expansions before they become neglected for the next.
Comment Posted by: Tolaren on December 19, 2005 08:17 AM
It's nice how they were able to include all the expansions with the epic 1.5/2.0 quests. I also appreciated the trip back to Velious to do the holiday quests.
But I dislike expansions every 6 months, I understand SOEs reasons though. I just miss the grand epic scale of Kunark, Velious, even Luclin and PoP.
And it's about time we had some different fecking armor graphics. We had new graphics in Kunark, Velious, but with the new character models in Luclin which were nice I guess, we ended up with less customisation.
I also hate armor dies, that killed a very important aspect of the game.
Ah well, at least SOE have at least perliminary plans to support the game for 5 years.
Comment Posted by: Allegretta on December 19, 2005 08:56 AM
For academic looks at MMORPGs, I recommend The Daedalus Project at http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/. Nick Yee has been collecting data for at least five years, and it's fascinating to read.
Comment Posted by: Teremar on December 19, 2005 11:12 AM
I got the email from SOE inviting me to reactivate my account free for 21 days, and was thinking about doing it to see if the new stuff is all it's cracked up to be. It wasn't until I read your comments Loral that I realized I wouldn't be able to see all that new stuff since I never bought those expansions.
SOE should consider giving access to all the expansions during those 21 days. I know the bandwidth costs would be significant, and there could be other complications. On the other hand, I presume finding groups in older content would be difficult, and Monster Missions would be the perfect place for friends to get back together even if some of them never got the hundreds of AA's and level 70 that seem to be the norm now.
Besides, it's the last two expansions that were apparently designed to "to beat the crap out of World of Warcraft." People like me left EQ because we felt that it was WoW beating the crap out of EQ a year ago. If you want to change our minds, you're going to have show us what you've done since then.
Comment Posted by: Teremar on December 19, 2005 11:50 AM
I have to reply to simkine:
"I'd like to see how many players completed the various expansion goals."
Time=Progression, yes, but unless you want the gap between the 40 hours/week players and the 10 hours/week players to eventually become astronomical, there has to be some sort of diminishing returns. Progression at the low end must be faster than at the high end.
In EQ that means every new expansion has new ways for low end players to progress which are faster than what high end players had to do to get to the same level of power three or four expansions earlier. So naturally people move to the current expansion as soon as it comes out rather than completing the old ones.
Look at it this way: every expansion has to have something to keep the 40+ hours/week players busy for six months. Someone playing 10 hours/week would take two years to do the same thing, assuming no barriers that prevent them from doing it at all.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on December 19, 2005 12:01 PM
That's already the case. Getting a single raid upgrade in many weeks vs getting a large upgrade in a single DoD in 2hours tops x 6.
There's no question that currently 2hours of grouping = 3 weeks of raiding.
And as far as I know raiders spend more like 20-30 hours in raid not 40.
Comment Posted by: Simkine on December 19, 2005 12:40 PM
Not sure why you need to reply to my post. I simply think it would be interesting to see stats on how far players progressed in the various expansions.
Perhaps SOE already knows it, but knowing this would could be used to see if a new expansion is needed right away to keep people interested or perhaps poor content design is blocking too many people and their next expansion shouldn't go that direction.
Plus, I think it's just interesting stats they could yank out. Mine that data to make interesting "Fippy facts" for the eqplayers base.
As for eqplayers.com, it's way too limited and buggy right now. I also think the 24 hour wait time to manually sync is too much. Magelo has better value compared to what they are offering right now for paying customers.
Comment Posted by: sunshadow on December 19, 2005 04:55 PM
looking at EQplayers it will be another wasted effort. The information is useless as it only shows the most basic of stuff and in the case of spell not even that.
When I look at a spell I want to know what it does and what it costs. Instead I get 8 or so fields of information which I need to try and interpret. Bugger that. I meen how hard is it to actually add the text description from the ingame spell. As it is I may as well just look up Lucy as it works faster and has other links to get you more information.
The same goes for Items, who cares about the item information. The important things are who drops it, where does it drop and how hard is it to get.
The ranking suck cause it appears you are compared to every character that was ever created whether it is active or not.
The only slightly useful bit is the character profiles which at the moment don't update correctly. I have toon I haven't played for weeks and their stat's are still wrong.
Basically if your going to make something this big and "waste" a lot of developers time, survey what your customers want. Don't just dump them a lot of information make it look pretty and then stand back and say look how good we are. Make the stuff useful.
Comment Posted by: Teremar on December 19, 2005 05:30 PM
You're right that 40+ hours/week is on the extreme side Redcloud--shall we call it 30 for discussion purproses? Of course the reality is that people are all over. Beyond that I think we agree.
My point for simkine is that you can't judge the need for a new expansion by when a majority or even a large number of people have finished the old one. If the 30 hours/week crowd (/nod Redcloud) is done, they need new content. And if the 10 hours/week crowd is now into the slow progression content meant for the 30 hours/week crowd, they need new fast progression content so the gap between them and the 30 hours/week crowd doesn't grow.
I do wish they'd slow down though. Every new expansion has to have a new gimmick so good (in terms of in-game usefulness, not necessarily fun) that everyone has to buy the expansion, and I think the need to add a new gimmick every six months hurts the game.
Comment Posted by: Jyve on December 19, 2005 06:11 PM
I was pleasantly surprised at how many people have returned to the game recently, especially with the 21 day freebie. It was a bit unfortunate that they're unable to see all the new cool features, but can understand existing customers being upset if they had too much for free.
The main thing that SoE's really dropped the ball on is not having the Titanium pack ready to go hand in hand with the 21 day trial. There's been alot of players seeing all the cool stuff, but I've had to say 'wait, it's not worth getting DoN and DoD when there's the new thing coming out soon that'll save your money."
Comment Posted by: Armarant on December 19, 2005 06:16 PM
Jyve Wrote: The main thing that SoE's really dropped the ball on is not having the Titanium pack ready to go hand in hand with the 21 day trial.
...
if it comes out before the 13th of January some people will be able to take advantage of Titanium and the free 21 days of playtime at the same time, since you get 21 free days from logging in.. so if you log in on the 12th you get 21 free days from the 12th.
Comment Posted by: xsi on December 19, 2005 07:52 PM
"Everquest expansions have come out every six months since Planes of Power. The days of the yearly Everquest expansion are over. SOE stated at previous summits that they regularly see a drop off at the five to six month mark in any expansion release with a clear jump in subscriptions shortly after an expansion's release.
Six month expansions are the pulse of a healthy game. They regularly improve and add upon the existing game, giving players new content and features that go well beyond typical class reenvisionment issues or bug fixes."
I suppose it's too much to ask that SOE look at more than just subscription numbers to determine what is best for the health of the game. Given that 6-month expansions will therefore be a fact, I believe they absolutely must have a live team, separate from their expansion dev team, the way it reputedly used to be, years ago.
Otherwise, the ridiculously rapid pace of expansion development leaves just about two months a YEAR for fixes, revamps and game balance; the rest of that year is taken up with expansion development, expansion beta, and expansion bugfixes.
And we still need some new freaking character models. They are absolutely a necessity if they truly do expect EQ to keep going for five more years, and, per the recent interview on CR, want to bring in new EQ players from the MMO scene. The current models and animations cannot be tweaked (per a dev, because the Luclin models were created via an old process and different tools), so they must be replaced with scaleable, good looking, less memory intensive new models.
Comment Posted by: Loral on December 19, 2005 08:31 PM
The Master of Dreadspire:
http://www.lavanet.no/rf/images/mayong.jpg
Comment Posted by: Aarkan on December 19, 2005 10:04 PM
Holy... Is that REALLY Mayong?
Comment Posted by: Ladwenae_AB on December 20, 2005 12:34 AM
It was to late for us to test his mettle tonight, but we will see tomorrow.
I am sure it is Mayong and that as soon as we trigger him he will reveal himself.
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on December 20, 2005 03:10 AM
I hope it's not Mayong.
Comment Posted by: Chenkov on December 20, 2005 05:40 AM
Link to Wired article is wrong, should be http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,69816,00.html I guess
Comment Posted by: sdfsdf on December 20, 2005 04:13 PM
http://www.lavanet.no/rf/images/mayong2.jpg
Comment Posted by: Sunshadow on December 20, 2005 04:26 PM
Once again I visit Eqplayers and find my main still not updated. The last listed time I played is the 16th Nov, "Hello" that is over a month ago. C'mon I play several times a week so again this, to me is another half assed Sony project pushed out before completion and without being fully tested. Once again we the paying mugs, must test it for them and highlight all the bugs because Sony are to lazy to do that themselves. Yeah, I feel so special!!! For once I would like to see something from these guys that worked properly from day 1.
Comment Posted by: redcloud on December 20, 2005 06:00 PM
See, they can give decent graphics to toons. Just make the missing races and classes through raid targets, when done, rescale them and call it a done deal.
Comment Posted by: Aarkan on December 21, 2005 04:38 AM
Mayong looks a little less... Pale than I expected. I didn't expect a sword either, though when they said they were getting back to real EQ story after Omens they weren't kidding. You don't get very much more EQ than dragons and giants and MAYONG MISTMOORE OH MY!!!
I hope he's a total badass.
Comment Posted by: Trigga on December 21, 2005 06:56 AM
"Players don't return to EQ because the boats started working again"
No, but they may have quit because of them.
EQPlayers is another fine example of what not to do by SOE. Which is a real shame because the last years' developments have been tremendous, both in game and out. Although the cynic in me says this is due to some real competition from you know who.
Comment Posted by: Glormane on December 21, 2005 10:08 AM
I’ve been playing EQ since the Kunark Era. By the time I got to 65 it was late GoD. The guild I am in has just broken into Time, with a smattering of people with KT access and Volkara in DoN beaten. We haven’t started properly on GoD or CoA properly yet, and done nothing as a Guild in DoD. We are trying to catch up.
I think if SoE made their expansions yearly rather than 6 monthly it would give people a chance to catch up on content, I think its current schedule is too fast to allow all gamers to complete the content in an expansion, and if SoE hope to attract new gamers the thought of how many AA’s/lvls/gear they would need to catch up is daunting.
I know its hinted in your article that SOE are thinking of a way to cater to new gamers to alleviate this problem, my fear is it may trivialise the content we am striving to beat now.
Making expansions yearly would;
Allow SoE to bug test encounters more thoroughly
Allow players of more levels of progress to complete the raiding content.
Allow new players a greater opportunity to catch up to new content.
Allow hardcore raiders time to help out their newer members get up to speed
Actually ignore that last one. From what I have seen of high end raiding guilds on my server they aren’t very nice, they deguild people who’s real life problems/changes don’t allow them to raid enough, and block other guilds progress to protect their autonomy in a certain zone (this doesn’t happen as much any more, but before Time was instanced, Time Guilds used to God block pre ep guilds to stop their progress into Time so they did not have to share Time with anyone else, I think SoE knew about it but were powerless to do much, but it may explain why most raids are now instanced).
For the high end raiders I’d suggest putting them all into permanent Beta, they need testers, and high end raiders are hungry for new stuffs before the rank and file. Transfer them all to a server that gets new content to test for the rest of us.
Comment Posted by: elfguy on December 21, 2005 12:31 PM
You know one thing I checked right away when the Prophecy of Ro thing was leaked is if prophecyofro.com was registered, and it wasn't. Now I just checked and guess what, it's registered as of Dec 14, but not by SOE, by some random guy named James Willson in Oregon. Sorta interesting, I bet someone snatched it just to be mean to SOE!
Comment Posted by: elfguy on December 21, 2005 12:55 PM
btw anyone knows how to make a search of how many people owns a certain item on EQplayers? I can't seem to find any option for that but it could be very interesting to see. Could learn for example how many toons have access to Anguish, Demi-plane, etc.
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on December 21, 2005 05:23 PM
Yearly expansions are not a good idea. It would cut expansion revenue in half. It would mean new features, content and monsters half as often. 6-month expansions give us something cool to look forward too twice a year.
As for new gear/AAs/levels trivializing older content, well, of course that's going to happen. It does not diminish the accomplishments of those who did it when it was hard, however. If you beat time now, and it becomes trivial with the next expansion, why do you care? You still had the fun (and got the rewards) of doing it when it wasn't.
Also, as for new players having a ton of stuff to do to catch up, this isn't as bad as some make it sound. Every time the top bar is raised with new gear, levels or AAs, it becomes easier to reach the pevious top bar, if you can forgive my crappy metaphors. New gear flooding in from older expansions, new armor quests or the tutorial for lower level characters, new features like tribute or augments all help new characters or characters who aren't yet at the top get there.
Plus, I love getting new zones and monsters every 6 months, even if I'm nowhere near finishing the existing content.
Comment Posted by: Loral on December 22, 2005 08:05 AM
"Could learn for example how many toons have access to Anguish, Demi-plane, etc."
Not that many compared to total EQ players. The same is true for Time, however.
Even if they put expansions on a year schedule instead of six months most players still wouldn't finish all the content.
I don't think there is such a thing as "too much content". If you don't want it, don't buy it.
Comment Posted by: Teremar on December 23, 2005 12:08 PM
"If you don't want it, don't buy it."
Nice theory--but SOE works hard to make sure it doesn't work in practice.
I played in a casual guild where people sometimes tried not buying the latest expansion. They could live without the latest content, but it was the gimmicks that really put the pressure on. PoP was the worst ("X isn't here yet because he can't use the PoK stones, but when he does arrive don't forget to heal him just because he isn't in the raid.") but every expansion had something ("Okay everyone, X is MA...wait, I can't make you MA." "I don't have GoD." "Oh....um...Okay everyone, Y is MA."). Sooner or later they all caved and shelled out the money. (GoD was actually the one exception: leadership abilities couldn't make up for the content.)
Sometimes these were clearly needed improvements, but in any RPG there's a conflict between currying favor with the players by handing out goodies and maintaining the integrity of the game. The trouble is, expansions are now a major part of SOE's revenue, so every six months the devs have to come up with some goodie that makes the next expansion indispensible. That sets up an inherent conflict of interest between SOE's short-term revenue and the long-term health of EQ.
Comment Posted by: Loral on December 24, 2005 02:22 PM
Were those gitchy features or the fun they allowed people to access worth the price tag? I know I've save enough time with the guild lobby to make up for the $30 price tag. I feel the same way about Monster Missions in Depths. You get a lot more than just that with an expansion, but either the features are worth it or they are not.
Comment Posted by: Loral on December 27, 2005 03:34 PM
Here's a Mobhunter Exclusive for you (well, not really, but I love saying that). Prophecy of Ro will be released on 21 February 2006 according to both Gamespy and GameStats. While the source for that date is unconfirmed and SOE has yet to announce anything about the expansion, the brilliant writers of Mobhunter believe it to be true.
The beta for Prophecy will probably begin in early January.
Let the "OMG, no new expansions! Fix bugs!" cries begin. Oh, they already have.
Sources:
http://www.gamestats.com/objects/789/789071/
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/everquest-prophecy-of-ro/
Comment Posted by: Armarant on December 27, 2005 07:10 PM
http://pc.ign.com/objects/789/789071.html
a third source is also listing it at 21, Feb 06 IGN.com
Comment Posted by: Tharkis on December 30, 2005 09:29 AM
Well, after months of trying to get some level of communication with the people at SOE who have the ability to make executive decisions about Stormhammer and the legends service... they have finally spoken. Not in the manner any of us would have liked, there was no dialogue involved, no attempt to sit down and constructivly solve the issues with the service. Well, this is the end of the legends service , and perhaps our server as well.
I'm quite sad right now, so i'll just post the email that legends subscribers recieved this afternoon while waiting for the servers to come up from patch.
Dear Legends Subscriber,
We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued support of EverQuest and the EverQuest community and hope you have enjoyed our Legends service. As of February 1, 2006, however, we will be discontinuing the Legends service.
At this time we have not determined whether Stormhammer will become a standard server or if all current players will move to existing servers at no additional charge to you. We wanted to hear from you before we made a decision and we will be including the Stormhammer community in the upcoming decision making process so be sure to watch for more information on the forums or in-game via messages of the day, broadcasts, or in-game polls.
As a thank you to our loyal members, we are allowing all current Legends subscribers to maintain their seven Veteran Reward benefits regardless of length of subscription.
Effective immediately, your account billing will be labeled "pending status," which will allow you to choose a new subscription plan. This can be done by logging in at https://eqbl.station.sony.com/launchpad/subscription.jsp , and then choosing a new plan. Please be sure to do this prior to January 31, 2006 to ensure your subscription does not lapse.
Thank you for your cooperation with this matter and if you have any questions or concerns regarding your account subscription changes, please contact our accounts and billing department at: 858-537-0898 or go to the following link to chat live with Customer Support ( available Monday through Friday from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm PST): http://help.station.sony.com/cgi-bin/soe.cfg/php/enduser/live.php You can also visit http://www.station.sony.com/en/services/help/customer.jsp for more support options.
If you would like to submit feedback regarding your Legends experience, please feel free to email your comments to Legendsfeedback@soe.sony.com
Thank you,
The EverQuest Team
Sony Online Entertainment
Loral.....If you want to write a story about a major Everquest event and the closure of an EQ Community then the Legends Saga needs to be told.
Comment Posted by: Tharkis on December 30, 2005 09:32 AM
As people who have legends accounts know, when you try to log onto stormhammer you are given a poll with 2 options
On Feb 1st, close the server and allow everyone to move to the server of their choice
or
On Feb 1st turn stormhammer into a normal 'blue' server.
I voted to close the server and have people move.
Stormhammer was a unique experience. Stormhammer without the gm events and customer service etc just isnt stormhammer. I would much rather a clean severance than to have a pale shadow of the original sticking around for no particular reason.
With the endgame now almost entierly instanced, there is very very little incentive for people to move servers anymore except to play with friends. I fear that even if they /did/ keep stormhammer open as a 'normal' server, it would remain mostly a ghost town, and be merged with another server a few months down the road and lose it's name anyways.
I know people were flaming me in game when i said i voted to close the server, but most of them dont understand. I've been on the server since the very day it opened, i've put my heart and soul into trying to hlep keep stormhammer great. If they're finally going ot kill stormhammer, and ending legends service is killing it no matter how you look at it, then i want final closure. I dont want the name floating around. I want people who have the 'of stormhammer' suffix on their name to be a unique community who can reflect back on their time with the legends service, and not to become another dime-a-dozen suffix. All other servers that have been merged and closed have at least that common courtesy. If they're closing stormhammer, please, give us that, it's the least they can do.
If they want another "new server" to allow transfers to, give it a new name, dont use our name which over the last 4 years has come to mean something very special to many of us who play there.
Comment Posted by: Tharkis on December 30, 2005 09:36 AM
And the complete mistreatment of the stormhammer community closure continues.
I for one voted for the closure of hte server... but iv'e never seen a server closure delt with as poorly as this. So the people who have been some of the most dedicated supporters of SoE are not even being given the courtesy given to the merged servers? We're just told, we wont be able to keep our names, sorry? What about the merged name policies set in place for people. What about the people who, since there was no warning about the server being shut down, had accounts that had lapsed with characters on stormhammer? They're not ALLOWED to log in to movelog.
They quietly and without any warning shut down the movelog page for people who are still paying active subscriptions for stormhammer so they can not move characters on other servers to stormhammer to be with their others. So all stormhammer players are going to have to pay EXTRA money to move any characters not currently on stormhammer to where they end up with their other characters. It is not the PLAYERS fault that any of this is happening. We were not given any warning. Not only that but the GM's on SH have been told they are NOT allowed to manually move players to SH even though they have active legends accounts.
Is this how you treat your most loyal customers, your 'premium service' customers? What happens after January 31st if someone hasnt movelogged? Are they going to be told to cough up 75$ or however much it is to move characters just to recover them? With how poorly this has been handled thus far, it wouldnt suprise me.
As a server we've been asking for communication, on just about any level, with those who are making decisions about the server. Not only have we not recieved any communication beyond these terse messages reguarding our impending closure, but we're not even given any input beyond a "close it, or leave it open as normal server" poll. It would be the least they could do to have some sort of community meeting with the players of stormhammer. Lord knows there are few enough of us that you could fit everyone in a nice circle around someone like giant gnome-Smed or something.
How about allowing those on SH the opportunity to move to FV as an exception, and part of a way of appologizing for the whole situation? How about even acknowleding that we've been crying for help for a very long time now and have been ignored untill the point that we've been shut down?
SoE is doing something they've never done before even with their server merges. With the closing of stormhammer they are destroying a whole community. At least with mergers the communities that lost their servers remained together. With the closure of Stormhammer an entire community, which many have enjoyed for four years, is disapearing and being utterly destroyed.
So long and thanks for all the fish indeed.
For those that missed it:
As posted by Kytherea on the EverQuest forums under the Town Crier:
http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/board/message?board.id=Crier&message.id=250
Greetings Citizens of Stormhammer,
We have completed our poll and the vote is to take down the server when the Legends service is discontinued at midnight PST on February 1, 2006. We will be immediately beginning complimentary one-time moves to one server of your choice. All characters on that account will be moved to your selected server. All characters will bring their items with them in the transfer. Please note that once you have issued the /movelog command and you have been moved to your new server that you will not be able to return. Character names are not guaranteed on server to server transfers. If the character's name has already been used on the server you wish to move to, an "X" will be added to the end of the name
When you are ready to move your characters enter the game and type /movelog in the chat bar. You will see a dialog appear with a list of servers that you may move to. Select a server then click the "Select" button. The move will be completed as soon as is practical.
The deadline to select your new server with the /movelog command is midnight PST on January 31, 2006. If you have not selected your new server prior to this time, your characters will not be moved.
Thank you for your patience and continued support.
- The EverQuest Team
AGAIN - The Legends shutdown and mishandling by SOE needs to be communicated so this same style of community closure is not repeated. Lets see an article on this Loral/
Comment Posted by: Bubba on December 30, 2005 09:43 AM
To be very frank you have a very disapointed and very neglected feeling server right now. For many many months, over half a year, we have been asking for some level of communication to discuss the server and it's future. The only "communication" we recieved were our emails telling us that the server was being shut down.
Right now many feel that it would be the very least you could do to allow character transfers from SH to FV. As Stormhammer was always the only server that players from FV could move to and from in the first place, it is obvious that the characters should be compatible. Right now we're all being told all that we're getting for, in some cases, 4 years of dedication to the legends service and community is Vet AA's. Not very exciting to be honest.
As for those Vet AA's, well, I've spoken with many many people who have now left the server in the last few weeks, and not a single one of them has yet retained their vet AAs. Having spoken with a GM in game we're told that they /should/ have them, however when they've petitoned on their new servers the universal response they've recieved is "sorry we cant help you"
If you're going to promise something please at least be able to deliver on it. Right now all that your dying stormhammer community sees is a bunch of broken promises and destroyed hopes. Thank you for the Christmass present, the news that our server is being elminated, without any way to discuss it with anyone.
I've been with stormhammer since the day that it opened. When the server started it was wonderfull, the best thing since sliced bread. However over the years neglect let it decay to the present sad state. I'm sorry, but I truly feel that as a corporation SoE has done the entire Stormhammer community a disservice with the handling of the termination of the legends service. Despite many attempts and pleas for communication we were ignored or outright scorned. The very least you could do for the community is to cut them a little slack. I'm not even interested in FV server myself, but for some people it remains the very last hope for a "different" experience in Everquest now that stormhammer will no longer exist.
With the denial of transfers to the Firona Vie server i'm afraid many Stormhammer players will be playing their last day of everquest when the server closes. People become attached to their characters, and attached to being able to experience something out of hte ordinary. Please, despite everything that was involved in the destruction of the server: the lack of communication, the neglect, the broken promises about services, etc, I was stlil not ready to call the Legends service as a whole a failure. However the entierly underhanded ways in which the service's closure is being handled has made me revise that opinion.
Please, do not think that it was lost upon the Stormhammer community that EQplayers was announced only days after the termination of the legends service. EQplayers is part of what stormhammer players have been paying for going on 4 years now, yet have never ONCE had working properly as promised.
SOE is taking some of its most loyal and diehard customers and tossing them by the wayside with what ammounts to a "thanks, dont let the door hit you on the way out" attitude. Eqplayers, the fact that transfers of people who are still ACTIVLY paying for their legends service are not allowed to xfer their characters to the server (in breach of service mind you) and many other factors have turned the handling of this closure into what in my opinion is potentially the worst handled "premium service" expiration I've ever seen.
SoE has taken an opportunity to say "thank you" and to make amends for their neglect and mis-management of the Legends service and perhaps even more cement the loyalty of its customer base, and instead turned it into a nightmare, both for the paying customers, and for your GM support staff on the server.
As requested by others above....how about a story on the Legends Closure Loral!!
Comment Posted by: Jammer on December 30, 2005 09:53 AM
It sucks being evicted, homeless and not sure where you will be playing your next EQ game. This is how many of us on Legends feel at the moment.
Its been an utter discgrace the way SOE has handled the supposedly premium service. Not only have they not delivered on all the products and services as promised (updated character page with spells an itrems) to the Legends Subscribe they have now begun charging us an extra fee that was supposed to have been included in our premium monthly subscription fee through the new EQplayers service. I know there's a "Class Action" law suit in here some where since we've been paying for months the full Premium subscription for services not completely rendered on the Legends Server.
Comment Posted by: Zarithar on December 30, 2005 10:46 AM
The "expansion every six months" is part of what drove me to eventually quit the game. I felt a sense of frustration every time a new expansion was announced (starting with PoP). I felt that unless I was in one of the top two or three guilds on the server, there was no way I was ever going to get to see all of that new content. Hell, when SoL came out, I had still not seen ToV, Sleeper's Tomb, etc... and had only been to VP once. My point is, it just became too much and by the time I finally cancelled my account I was in a state of disgust with the whole thing. I think an expansion a year was more than reasonable.
Comment Posted by: Simkin on December 30, 2005 03:33 PM
Well, my Legends debacle is what caused me to cancel my 3 accounts. I decided to move one of my account toons to Legends for a month to see how it was. When I got there, the world was practically empty with no events or anything worthwhile.
So after a couple weeks, I wanted to move my toon back. Well guess what. SOE took my entire account balance and pro-rated it to Legends service. So instead of 8 months left on my account, I had 2 months. After a number of emails back and forth they refused to charge me 1 month Legends and leave my anniversary special alone, I said screw it and cancelled my accounts. No more paying for 3 expansions every 6 months.
Comment Posted by: Loral on December 30, 2005 03:51 PM
I will surely discuss the closing of the Stormhammer community as we get closer to the closing date. I can't promise an entire article, I simply don't know enough of what truly happened on that server but I will do my best to gather what information I can.
I would have preferred to see Stormhammer merged with an existing server - one with the lowest player count - as a default but I agree that keeping Stormhammer as a blue server probably wouldn't have worked.
It was an ugly situation but, although I am sure many disagree with me, there seemed few alternative choices. Stormhammer's time was at an end.
Comment Posted by: Brumm on January 1, 2006 04:52 AM
Although expansions rolled out every 6 months add some great new content, I'm not convinced that they add much in terms of new players, which have to be the future of every new mmporg.
EQ is still losing significant numbers, many zones are desrted and on some, peak time play numbers have the same feel as before the server mergers. A lot of people are still logging off lfg after a few hours, and there are almost no 'new' players that haven't bought the account or had a sibling/friend to PL them to the top end.
Hopefully this next expansion, or the one after, will take another look at these issues and try to address them.
I'm not convinced that the management will is there to take the short term 'loss' over the medium and long term potential though - look at the handling of the 'Matrix' online and Star Wars Galaxies. Look too the pay for use add-ons available to EQ2 and the quiet development of 'eqplayers for EQclassic. Not good trends, and suggest of a 'pillage' mentality at the helm rather than a 'nurture' one.
Comment Posted by: Armarant on January 1, 2006 08:50 AM
I feel as long as they can keep their development team and their web presence team divided they can do whatever they want to with EQplayers.com since it wont effect my game play or the quality of patchs.
but there is one thing they cant do.. they cant make the Dev team work for EQplayers. since there are not enough devs to go around as it is to write code, but to have the devs the players pay for working on code that requires more payments would be ugly.
I also personally feel they need to do more to make Everquest solo friendly, there is a ton of group encounters in the game, and now that every expansion comes with instances there are even more instanced group encounters then you can shake a stick at. but there has not been any real development of solo content since Luclin in my opinion. most of the new solo content is just there thru the ageing of content as it gets older it gets less powerfull.
Comment Posted by: Armarant on January 1, 2006 09:06 AM
Brumm Wrote:many zones are desrted and on some, peak time play numbers have the same feel as before the server mergers. A lot of people are still logging off lfg after a few hours.
in my opinion if they could get people to zones to do stuff like the New years eve event, even if they are doing it solo. it would mean for a larger presence and people would not feel they are the only ones in the game.
Comment Posted by: Loral on January 1, 2006 09:57 AM
"but there is one thing they cant do.. they cant make the Dev team work for EQplayers. since there are not enough devs to go around as it is to write code, but to have the devs the players pay for working on code that requires more payments would be ugly."
As far as I know, the team working on in-game EQlive content and the team working on EQ Players are not the same.
"EQ is still losing significant numbers, many zones are desrted and on some, peak time play numbers have the same feel as before the server mergers."
Empty zones aren't a good gauge of the numbers of players. Instancing greatly changed the landscape of EQ and with so many zones added since Kunark, many of them are bound to be empty. One way to fix this is to use monster missions and quests to bring players back to these zones. I want to see a new set of Antonican Bard quests that send players all over the world again. I want to see global scavenger hunts that send players all over. I want to see more monster missions take players across Kunark and Velious.
"I also personally feel they need to do more to make Everquest solo friendly"
I would rather see SOE find ways to make grouping faster with things like half-group monster missions or monster missions with 30 minute durations than see further refinement of solo play. The games that offer a lot of solo play right now just don't feel the same as a game that really requires group play to advance. The mission system and monster missions have a lot of potential to get groups up and running faster. There is still a lot of room for improvement.
Comment Posted by: Pomaikai Po'okela on January 1, 2006 11:04 AM
Damn, what are the "Pay for PL'ing" services going to do now that Stormhammer is gone?
Comment Posted by: Rogosh Eagleeye on January 1, 2006 11:44 AM
Personally, I would love to see new and improved character models in the next expansion. Its been over 2 years since the last improvement. I think most peoples comps can handle it.
Comment Posted by: Hemdell on January 2, 2006 07:19 AM
It's funny how people will attack others for wanting more solo content. They say that your being selfish when in fact I think it is the other way around. The ONLY reason that people complain that more solo content will hurt the game is because they feel it will hurt THEIR game. Just like people complaining about MMs ( everyone is doing MMs and their are no groups around.) Maybe, just maybe we should should put content in for everyone who pays the exact same price!
Comment Posted by: Loral on January 2, 2006 02:37 PM
I certainly wouldn't consider my comments an attack but I don't know if you were referring to me or not.
Both Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft include lots and lots of solo content. Requiring groups for any form of solid progression is one of the things that makes Everquest stand out. It has some of the best grouping features in any massive online game including the mission system, monster missions, one-time loot, and point-based loot.
I think most of the people who talk about solo content have specific reasons they want solo content and I think some of those reasons can still be met with group content. Time is often used as a reason, people want to be able to play faster and easier games. By eliminating travel time, focusing people in a single LFG area, eliminating class or level dependencies, and limiting group content to perhaps 30 minute sessions, players might be able to find that groups meet their goals. I wouldn't want to do this for ALL content in Everquest but I do think SOE should add some content for players who only have 30 minutes.
Frankly, I'm surprised people who really desire solo content haven't already jumped ship for WOW or EQ2. I am up to level 41 in WOW, mostly from solo hunting, and I'm having a blast. EQ is where I go when I want to group.
Comment Posted by: Armarant on January 2, 2006 11:25 PM
Loral Wrote:Frankly, I'm surprised people who really desire solo content haven't already jumped ship for WOW or EQ2. I am up to level 41 in WOW, mostly from solo hunting, and I'm having a blast. EQ is where I go when I want to group.
Because my friends arent in WoW.. I dont want to goto wow when I want to solo between groups or solo for a interesting storyline, I would perfer to get some of that content in EQ.
when one talks about a MMO I dont see grouping all the time as a answer or a healthy thing for the game. I see the trend that grouping is king and raiding its queen to be one of the major fumbling blocks in EQs ability to attract more players.
there are plenty of players out there for EQ, but EQ needs to tempt them in. while I feel that solo play should not be the main playstyle people should perfer, I dont think it should be relegated to past expansions either.
Comment Posted by: Hemdell on January 3, 2006 08:42 AM
If u pay for a WoW account for me I'll gladly have 2 games to switch back and forth from. Armarant points out something that really shouldnt be have to be pointed out. My friends dont play WoW! Why should I have to leave to solo. And I am not asking for everything to be soloable but there should be solo content where I can accually advance my char while I play of peak hours or LFG. I am not paying for 2 games of the same kind just cause I can solo betere there. And the people at WoW shouldnt have to come to EQ to raid.
Comment Posted by: Eldakka on January 4, 2006 04:45 PM
"Frankly, I think the site would be a lot less fun if it only had forty or fifty showoffs while the rest of the world hid in indifference."
If I didn't have to pay to view my own profile I'd probably have left my profile (at least worn equipment etc, not inventory or bank) visible.
However, since EQPlayers offers a less accurate, more difficult to use, slower, 'uglier' system than magelo and charges for it, I feel no desire to pay a fee to use it. And since I can't view my own profile without paying for this lesser service, no one else is going to see my profile either.
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