General Discussion

On Wednesday night, the folks from EverQuest stopped by our chat room to answer questions from the MMORPG.com community.

MMORPG_Taera: Greetings and welcome to MMORPG.com's Live Chat on irc.coldfront.net! I'm your host, MMORPG.com's community manager Laura Taera Genender.

MMORPG_Taera: Joining us today is the EverQuest dev team!

MMORPG_Taera: Our guests will do their best to answer as many questions as possible, but due to limited time and a high volume of inquiries, they may not be able to answer every single one. Users are limited to one question at a time, and you will be notified if your question is rejected or discarded.

MMORPG_Taera: To ask a question, please /msg MMORPGBot yourquestionhere

MMORPG_Taera: you can do that now :)

MMORPG_Taera: Now it's time for introductions! Feel free to start sending your questions to MMORPGBot while our guests introduce themselves!

EQ_Merloc: Hello, I'm Keith Turkowski, I work with systems and general content, I'm in charge of itemization, faction, and loot related systems.

EQ_Ngreth: Hello I am Adam Ngreth Bell, Game designer and tradeskills specialist.

EQ_Nodyin: Hello everyone, my name is David Ford and I work on the AA system and create raids and various content.

EQ_Rashere: G'evening everyone. I'm Travis McGeathy, lead designer for EQ and puppet for the man.

EQ_Prathun: Greetings all, I'm Jonathan Caraker. I'm on the systems team working on spells in addition to content.

EQ_juhans-dev: Hi, my name is Justin and I work on the EverQuest graphics engine and other miscelaneous EverQuest coding features.

EQ_Zatozia: Greetings deveryone. I'm Lydia Pope, preferably known as Zatozia the Torturess, EQ's Community Manager.

EQ_Zatozia: everyone 8)

EQ_Maddoc: Hey everyone, I'm Jason Mash, an Assistant Lead Designer on the EQ team and I work on a lot of the systems in the game.

Read it all here.

After the first question on adding a Classic Server was answered, I lost interested in the Dev chat.  I did stay and watch what they would cherry pick to answer.  It was like it took 5 to 10 min to answer a question.  I sent in another question about the Classic Server which did not get a response.  From what I was reading from the Devs they seemed to avoid certain questions.  In addition I notice they did not have or did not see any issues with game play from wizard dps to armor issues.  If you read different forums a lot of the old timers who play EQ would like to have a classic server.  People ask where should the Classic server stop so I looked on the Allakhazam web site under zones and they have it broken down as followed:

The old World;  Odus- Antonica - Faywer

The outer planes (Plane of Fear, hate and Sky)

The lost continent of Kunark

The Frozen Lands of Velious.

If they created a progression server which locked at the Velious expansion I think it would be a hit.  The devs were still talking about another expansion.  Actually I am tired of expansion, I don't want another expansion.  Maybe all the other players want another expansion.  As it is when I go through a lot of the zones I am the only one there or if you do a /who maybe one or two more are in the zone.  You can't get a low level group just to play around in the LDONS etc..etc.. or old zones just for the hell of it. 

My two cents worth,  people say Vanguard was to big when it started.  My point is why have expansions when so few players are on line it seems.   People kept asking about server mergers after the chat which I have a copy of and the devs who were still there said there were no plans for a server merger.  There is not shit out  there to play.  Humm I may try AO though since they are adding a new graphic engine or maybe go back to DAOC,  who know!!!

Also in the dev chat this was very interesting to find out:

MMORPG_Taera: sesshu asks, Wondering about resist checks for casters, especially with wizards. With current content, noticing that alot of our spells our suffering from the problems with resist. Will there be any look into adding more items like (t-flux staff for wizards upgrading it) AA that will increase resist checks, or Spell ranking set differently with each rank giving a different resist check?

EQ_Rashere: Spell resists are one of the older systems remaining in EQ and were built with the level 50 cap in mind and the range of NPCs you’d fight at that level. As players have gained more levels over the years, the range of NPCs you fight has grown and the old formulas don’t really hold up all that well. We’ve been working on a revamp of the spell resist system that will resolve these problems, but it’s a pretty major change to the gam gam

You would think when you start adding extra levels, first level 55, 60, 65, 70 and now 80 you would humm maybe the resist check formulas. :)

The Star Wars parts of the interview were funny.  Thanks for that

" EQ_Rashere: There are a lot of different definitions of “Classic EQ”, but even taking a broad approach, we don’t have plans to implement any new servers that would fall into those categories. We have been kicking around the idea of launching a new server (and to be perfectly clear, it’s just an idea at this point), but the closest they have come to a classic server would be ideas revolving around variants on the progression server. "

Dumb as posts.

SOE, as usual.

Ignore the customer base and just do whatever.

  It was nice of the EQ staffers to touch base with some of the EQ MMORPG.com players, but I thought the whole Q & A thing was lackluster.  Without a focused topic & the refusal to answer all the questions that were accepted it seemed one-sided a bit.  SOE is never one-sided when it comes to their customers either!

  They, EQ staffers, did seem to, "cherry-pick" their answers somewhat & just blow-over some questions without even addressing them.  Even a, "we would prefer not to answer that at this time," would be better than just ignoring a part of a question.  Nonetheless it's nice for them to take the time to give sum effort of interaction.

  Yes, I think it was smart marketing to have all previous content included with the newest expansion of Secrets of Faydwer, but that isn't free content.  The EQ staffers did mention a couple of free content ideas, but as always nothing concrete.  I figured the SoF mention was just to advertise it which makes sense.

  It was decent that the EQ staffers mentioned a bit about some of the inter-game logistics that are/will be worked on.  Sad though that with SOE it seems status quo for them to gloss-over previous mistakes &/or areas of a game that could change for the better.  No &/or little consideration or an urgency to correct things & keep the spotlight on the next expansion.

  I had hoped the EQ staffers were going to give a little more information about what possible enticements to lure new &/or former players back to EQ.  Again, though for many months it's just chit-chat so far & no action.  Makes me believe that chatter before SoF's release was an attempt to generate more excitement/sales for it.  Eventually, probably, there will be another type of progression server, after all it's a safe bet with the current players.  Not encouragung to new &/or former players though! 

  The one thing I gathered from the chat-log is that the EQ staffers are & will be working on in-game balancing/imbalancing issues.  All else was left not definite therefore speculation.  EQ was a grand ol' gal, but with so many more MMORPGs as competitors & with more on the horizon with newer/fresh ideas & approaches while seemingly having their ears to the crowd.  It makes sense that EQ will whittle away slowly.  SOE has priorities now elsewhere & the Marketing Gnomes still seem to ignore the crowd mostly.

  EQ, EQ2, SWG, MatrixO, Vanguard, & now PotBS is indeed a nice collection.  Concede that PotBS isn't all SOE's.  It's that whole quanity versus quality issue which each player/customer has to decide.  Not only with SOE's products & services but with other MMORPG companies as well. 2007 has been a dismal year for MMORPGs it seems.  Here's to hoping that 2008 will be better!

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Originally posted by patryns
After the first question on adding a Classic Server was answered, I lost interested in the Dev chat.

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SNAP!

I have no axe to grind with SOE, because I truly enjoyed my time playing EQ. Once the enjoyment ebbed away, and I saw that the game was progressing in a direction that ran counter to my playing style, I /quit without drama or rancour.

The Dev Chat irrevocably ended any flicker of interest that I once had in EQ [classic server], and I'll move on - as I did then - without drama or rancour.

Thanks for the memories.

Regards,
Riotgirl

so there wont be any new progressionserver for the moment.

its fascinating how ignorant soe is. they surely must have billions of $ to ignore those shiploads of potential customers who want to come back to oldschool eq.

brad mc quaid, where are thou....

That settles it for me.......

As far as im concerned no classic server means no game. I feel the same way about this issue that I do about SWG. If this company cant see the forest for the trees and revert these games back to the condition in which they were their most successful then i have no time and more importantly no money for them.