EQ Producers letter

[Lyion]

http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/news_ ... m?id=50421

wanted to say, "Thank You" to all of the players who had so much fun on April 1st. We threw in the new player models and had a great time putting it together for everyone to have fun with. It was a fun joke and something that many players will remember for quite some time. I can say that we did learn a lesson though; giving the players an option to disable such a feature will be included in the future. With that being said, I continue to get IM's about adding a stick figure spell which makes me laugh each time.

I have been paying quite a bit of attention to the Customer Support team as well. I know that many of the players feel that the CS team doesn't always communicate to the development team. It may not be obvious that the communication is actually constant and collaborative. I am working with the CS team and our Community team to better communicate to the players the reporting and fixing of CS related issues. The development team fixes multiple bugs each week that have been sent to us from CS and the players should know that we are listening and reacting to make your game play experience better each day. Look for new callouts of CS related fixes and make sure you submit game play issues to the CS reps. Many of the players assume that "someone" else has submitted the problem. Trust me the more reports the better!

Our team is hard at work on addressing Live game issues and working on discussing future expansions and plans. Along with the normal meetings that we have every week, we also have two meetings each year to discuss the future plans for EverQuest and create goals based on community feedback and team desires. In our last meeting the mood was different. We had a renewed passion for the game and were proposing big, exciting ideas that we didn't want to compromise on due to dates. We presented our ideas and new vision and received 100% support.

In this Producer letter I am proud to announce that we're changing our tactics so we can accomplish what we have set out to do and do it with the quality we know we can deliver. Our next expansion will be released in November. This will give us more time to polish the game content and features. I am also happy to announce that November will be the month for all future expansion releases as well. We realize that many players want more content but would like to be able to play through the last expansion before feeling like they are falling behind when a new one comes out. Our goal is to focus on the overall quality and let the players have time to enjoy the great work that we put into each release.

This is absolutely great news for our team and for our players as well. I look forward to giving everyone an inside look of the development of the next expansion so you can see the hard work going into the release.

Clint "Jourdian" Worley
EverQuest Producer
Sony Online Entertainment

[Dylan]

Looks like I will be firing up EQ again in Nov, assuming they keep their word.

[Lyion]

I'd like to screw around again if I could find a few people to hang with. It would justify my All Access~

[Xaiveir]

I play Lyion. If you do, look me up on it. I will try to catch you up.

[10sun]

Just let me know when you want to and I can log in for a few hours a week.

[Drem]

i've been thinking about it

[Lyion]

Whoah, Drem sighting.

How the hell are ya, man?

[Drem]

pretty good. working a lot and working a lot at maintaining a relationship so i've been keeping busy. i wish i played some cool new game with all you guys but nowadays i really just play diablo 2 on b.net and sometimes i play that shards of dalaya. araby got me on MSN and told me to come post again here. how're things on your side of the internet?

[Burgy99]

You guys really think you would go back to EQ1 because of a new expansion and the promise of better Customer Service ?

[Gargamellow]

I am always on in some form.

Of course, I will probably be farming at the moment.

Send me a tell or perhaps one of my officers and we can hang. Or at least I can buff your ass.

See ya.

[Drem]

eq1 is still fun but i probably only think that because i haven't branched out to the newer games

[Reynaldo]

EQ is the most fun for me simply because it doesn't tell you everything.

In Vanguard - every single stat tells you exactly the gains you're getting. Weapons have dps broken down on the item instead of just the dmg / delay of eq1. Quests show you exactly where to go and leave little pure exploration, unless you pretty much force yourself off the beaten path.

EQ was great just for being more unknown.

[Drem]

yeah yamori said a while ago that EQ started rolling downhill instead of walking when they implemented maps. that really fucked everything up and started EQ on its path to newb-friendliness which now appears to be an industry standard

[10sun]

Fuck maps. They were never any help for a lot of the Z-axis dungeons anyways. I still remember how to get to Phinny's room in Kedge almost perfectly

[Harrison]

I nearly soloed Phinny on Combine...

He's such a shitty encounter.

[Gaazy]

There a year or two ago when I played for a few weeks I could still run through Upper Guk to Lower blindfolded pretty much ><

[10sun]

I can still get to LGuk deadside through UGuk, liveside I always had issues with though =(

[Gargamellow]

i hate whiny bitches

[Reynaldo]

Concert hall post has the expansion as being based in steamfont, level cap raise to 80 and all that goes with it.

I might re-up in the fall when that comes out. Would be hard to pass up clockworks and evil gnomes.

[Lyion]

How many people still play EQ, I wonder?

[Gargamellow]

Enough for them to keep making expansions and milking us for cashola.

[Tacks]

From July 05 to July 06 EQ lost 250,000 subscribers bringing them down to just under 200,000 active subscribers I'm sure they've lost a lot more since then, probably about 100-150k now I'd guess. I think EQ2 has more subscribers now.