Producer’s Letter: Coming Right Up!
From the EQ2 Forums (emphasis added by me):
Mighty Norrathians!
Since SOE Live and Game Update 67: Darkness Dawns there’s been a lot of focus and excitement here about Heroic Characters and this year’s expansion, Tears of Veeshan. We’re well on our way and working hard!
To begin with, we have some date adjustments. Our expansion launch date has moved out a bit to mid-November and our Level 85 Heroic Characters are likely coming in the first week of October.
We got some great feedback on Heroic Characters and we wanted to polish it up to make it more user-friendly before we launch! We are still working on fine-tuning the details and I will have more info soon, I promise. Until we nail it down, I don’t want to throw misinformation about.
The introduction of Heroic Characters also made us change a few other things, like including EverQuest II: Destiny of Velious zones into the Free and Silver account access so Heroic Characters have a place to play! And while we are still going to offer theEverQuest II: Age of Discovery expansion, we will also sell the features individually, including the Beastlord class, Mercenaries, Dungeon Maker, Reforging, and Tradeskill Apprentices. We’re still working on pricing and have some other cool things in progress we’ll announce shortly.
Our 10th expansion, EverQuest II: Tears of Veeshan, is getting closer to Beta. This team is putting together an expansion that will be something special! The overland — Vesspyr Isles, the Eternal Broodlands — is really amazing. Flying through it is incredible with more and more variety and flavor every day. The dungeons are coming together beautifully and the content is too! We appreciate all the feedback we got during SOE Live and are grateful for all the playtests of the Channeler class. We are putting final touches on that too.
When Beta opens on Oct. 15, we hope you’ll come take a look at Tears of Veeshan and give us feedback!
There will be lots more to come so you’ll be hearing from me sooner ™ rather than later!
Holly Longdale
Senior Producer
EverQuest II
Tags: expansion
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Comments (50)
Loch
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It’s been a long time since I’ve read something this long that said absolutely nothing.
Big surprise. ™
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Jim
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What a waste of her time and ours. Why even bother?
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Maergoth
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You can’t see the elephant in the room, but you can sure smell it. The fact that she didn’t mention it at all isn’t surprising, but it’s no less depressing.
Or isn’t it important that half of the dev team got the axe?
If it truly was a sad, hopefully temporary inevitability, then there’s no reason to be ashamed of it. Now all you’ve done is set everything back WITHOUT clear reasoning.
Wonderful.
Why is Holly on payroll, while the talented individuals are no longer?
Piestro could have written a better community address. Hell, I could have.
Sad times.
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Chronusxx
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I too struggle to justify having Holly on payroll in my head tbh.
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Loch
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And you know what? It’s completely understandable that things are being delayed after losing part of the team. But how about instead of constantly teasing with “some great things coming up that I can’t wait to tell you about!” you ACTUALLY tell us something.
Maybe that would help mitigate some of the negativity surrounding this whole layoff situation. It really just ends up sounding like they’ve got a whole lot of nothing behind that curtain, but don’t want us to know it.
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Dethdlr
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This isn’t the first round of layoffs they’ve had. Or even the second. Each time they’ve had one in the past, as far as I remember, they’ve done exactly the same thing. They make one announcement about it saying it sucks but had to be done, don’t name any names, don’t allow people to post about it on their forums, and don’t bring it up again. This is their corporate policy. If anyone is expecting them to mention it again, I suspect they’ll be waiting for quite some time.
But yes, I suspect immediately after the layoffs were announced, team leads were talking to producers saying “you don’t really think we’re going to be able to hit those same deadlines now, do you?”
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Loch
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I don’t think anyone is arguing that at all. It’s completely expected that they’ll be making due with less now.
But that garbage above was hyped all week and Holly made it seem like she’d have information to share about what is coming up for EQ2, including Heroic characters. Now she talks in circles restating everything that we already know. And doing nothing else but dropping information about a delay.
Why not give the players something to look forward to? Balance out this talk of delays and layoffs with a coming feature or change that players might have been wanting. She certainly hints at some being in the works.
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Ardur
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shocking
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nefa
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I think if SOE offered a free years subscription people would still complain.
Personally I am looking forward to a 85 that I don’t have to grind to get.
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Landiin
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Do you actually think they are going to give you a free lvl 85 char with out any strings?
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Blacktop
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Yes !
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nefa
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Yes. Bet u plat
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Feldon
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I’ll take some of that action. I could always use more plat.
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Tomoch
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Feldon I will see your plat and raise you 1cp. I am broke and haven’t played much in the past few months
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Striinger
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I’d say their announcement at FF was very ambitious, and they know that now. As for layoffs, no company I’ve been with dwells on it. It’s part of life, especially in big companies. I wouldn’t even assume that they are going to be perpetually short handed. Somehow people seem to recycle a lot…or get cycled out for staff who will work cheaper. Either way, November is what everyone was guessing even after the October announcement. No shocker, here (especially given the volume of feedback from FF).
I REALLY wish they’d post the feedback from in-game and Fan Faire somewhere…almost like a public bug tracker (but without the trouble of publicised exploits you’d get from bugs). At least then people could appreciate the volume of suggestions they are working through. I know I personally handed a compiled list of some 20+ ‘small’ enhancement suggestions to one dev…and there were hundreds of others just like me…and dozens of devs/designers/staff.
Holly’s biggest problem this time around was optimism. Don’t crucify her yet; give the groovy hippy chick a little more rope. 🙂
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Kruzzen
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Would be cool if they did round tables in EQ2 like they trying in EQ NExt…
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milliebii
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Go and look at the round table topics, the lack of an option for posting a new thread, the number or responses from SOE staff (zero) and then look at the weekly videos.
Then tell me that it is not a complete waste of time for EQ Next and why it would be cool for EQ2.
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milliebii
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also look at the amazing flow of information about EQ Next coming out of SOE, since SOE Live Feldon has found enough information for two posts:
Aug 8 “All Everquest Next players will be on SOE servers”
Aug 9 “EQ Next Are Director goes on defensive about character design”
The rest of the info from SOE has been repetition, smoke and noise.
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Nicolos
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There has been plenty of information the past few weeks. New things that had not been mentioned before. A lot of other news sites are reporting these and have not seen EQNWire mention any of it. Maybe he feels it redundant to post on his site or maybe he prefers to stick mainly with EQ2. Both are valid stances but don’t pretend there hasn’t been any new news on EQN. There’s been a flood gate of info compared to EQ2, up to and including this non informational producers letter.
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Feldon
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Nicolos is correct. As I feared I have been too busy with eq2wire and eq2u to keep up with the avalanche of eqnwire.
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milliebii
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@nicolo I say it again:repetition, smoke and noise with no real information about the game.
@Feldon ingenuous at best, An avalanche mostly consists of snow and that is what we are getting a snow job. As to your priorities, while I think you have it right, that there is not sufficient interest in your mind to report on EQ Next speaks volumes.
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Feldon
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I like the EQNext technology but the art design and 8 buttons is not my taste.
Also there’s just a few eq2 sites but over 30 EQNext sites.
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Bufee
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I agree that layoffs are regular spoken about for more than a half day or so. In the movie Margin Call, layoffs are portrayed like this:
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zerigo
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Breaking up and selling AoD bit by bit is not a bad idea, but it looks like if you want the extra 20 aa you will still need to buy the whole expansion at 40$….
As always more info soon, this time she promises.
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Vortix
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Everyone attacking Holly does not put her in an enviable position. I’m pretty sure it’s stressful, and you guys should encourage her to do better. I know if I had to go to work just to hear people complain, I would become disgruntled very quickly. Not saying that I approve of the choices being made, but she looked kind of worn down the last time I saw her in a telecast. There is a better way to suggest improvements than to whine about what’s not working, especially when it gets so bad you have to mute the noise.
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Tkia
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The only positive here is confirmation that Holly does actually know where the EQ2 forums are. Given the predilection for facebook and twitter these days I was seriously beginning to wonder about that.
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Tabri
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They are going to charge for an expac? Im not paying for anymore expacs for this game its too old now and there are too many full F2P games out now to play otherwise that aren’t a lagfest.
Maybe they should concentrate more on fixing the lagfest in raids, horrid dungeon maker, broken dungeon fnder, fix the horrid itemization with gear, get rid of all these stupid adornments on gear, fix their horrible RNG that has been the same for 9 yrs(grind for a year and not even get all the gear you need before the next expac), Oh dont forget the crappy loot you usually get from group zones, quests that also give you crap loot, really I could go on but I will stop there.
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Taivr
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wut. They haven’t given out any specific information on this at all. I hope they don’t consider reactionary panicking to be “great feedback”.
Though I suppose the other possibility is that this was pre-written a decent while ago with the information we were supposed to get last week in mind, said information presumably forgotten about in the layoff CF.
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Feldon
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At SOE Live, Holly mentioned Area 51 which is a group of eq2 players who provide feedback. It’s a good group. 😉
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Taivr
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Oh, well so long as some players somewhere know what’s going on and are giving feedback, I guess I’m OK with that.
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Alethus
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Isn’t Area 51 an by invite only group?
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Feldon
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Correct.
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Dethdlr
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Yep. And I’m not invited. 🙁
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Daalilama
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Those Bastards….they forgot Dethdlr!
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badcat
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I am the only one who things that they are going to have a hard time making those dates. Honestly wow a letter that said hey we got stuff, but you get no details.
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Keene
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The feedback on these letters is always good for a laugh.
When they don’t say anything and keep silent, people complain. When they come out and say something, people complain that it’s not enough. Throw in the unexplainable angst against heroic characters and the negativity SOE faces on a daily basis is unending.
For those asking about why the layoffs weren’t mentioned, why, exactly would they talk about them in a letter about upcoming content? There’s a time and a place for that, and it was when it was announced. There’s no reason whatsoever to mention the layoffs, then go into the new content/changes.
The resistance to heroic characters. Why? Because *you* had to grind your alts so you feel everyone has to? You think there’s going to be a surge of bad players? Pro tip: there’s bad players now who were able to max level, this isn’t going to change. If anything it will increase the talented player pool.
Sorry if this makes me out to be an ‘apologist’, but I just get so sick and tired of the unending negativity over every single announcement.
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Mermut
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I think the biggest disgruntlement with the ‘announcement’ is that the only new information is that the expac is going to be delayed. The rest is just fluff without anything new.
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In The Dark
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Keene,
I thought I heard a single person clap when Holly announced heroic characters at soe live.
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Twyxx
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I don’t think the target audience is so much people at SOE Live that have already leveled one of every class by now. It’s an option to reduce the solo leveling grind for new players.
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Keene
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As Twyxx stated, the target audience for heroic characters are not the folks going to live, which are the the most devoted game players. Same with most folks on forums/here. It’s good to have some objective distance from a topic you’re looking at.
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Twyxx
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Dunno what I expected. If the decision has been made to move the game away from raiding they’re not going to tell us so we can just walk away. It’s in their best interest to leave us hanging and try to milk the players as long as they can with lack of information.
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shang
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there is alot of old and useless AA on every class they should focus on before add more new AA.
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Daalilama
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There was a promised character revamp part 2 that was intended to address the KoS trees as well as issues that were ignored (I mean not able to get around to) in the previous character revamp. As of now that plan is probably buried under the latest round of marketplace fluff ideas.
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Mentin
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I’ll rewrite this letter for Holly in two brief sentences:
”
Sorry guys, because half the designer staff was laid off we have to postpone the expansion by one month.
Since the remaining staff will use a lot of their time just fixing bugs, the production of new content will be seriously reduced so I cannot really tell you about any new things right now.
”
That should cover all of Holly’s post?
There is no point in attacking Holly really. She is doing her job, and she has the unenviable job of wrapping up really bad news for us EQ2 customers in the best possible way.
If you need to vent some frustration the right target is the SOE management. But there are economic realities at the bottom of this, so I do suspect the SOE management has made a sound decision even if it is contrary to the wishes of the EQ2 population. 🙁
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Feldon
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You are pretty close.
Nearly every year, the EQ2 team has lost some members, but the cuts are very deep this time. I truly hope the team pulls together and delivers everything they announced, but when you lose half the design team, it’s tough to recover from that.
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Mermut
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Very true, and it’s not just the added workload that drags on the remaining members of the team. 🙁
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Baarbossa
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Thing that amazes me is how hyped everyone was before SOE live….then eqn showed to be not what we wanted and all the layoffs turned us from being excited about everquests future to being worried. Takes some talent to screw thing up this bad in a month!
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Sievert
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It is what it is, SOE must of not of made their profit goal corporate set for them so they had to cut some expenses. They are not going to cut people from new games so they picked more people from aging games.. Just to bad they chose to send the people they did packing and not middle tier people where they don’t get as much bang for the buck.
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Daalilama
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Would have loved to have seen pay cuts for Smedly, Smokejumper, Holly and some of the other dead weight in an attempt to retain some of the staff but guess that wasn’t an option for Smedly since he did state he had tried to avert the layoffs in every way possible.
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Hoot
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I really hate when SoE stamps out and deletes any mention of layoffs on their forums.
Right now, it’s a major issue. We have a new class being introduced in the game. Nevermind the unbalanced 25 classes we already have, but now we have a smaller dev team that must tackle this (or not).
Who thought of this idea? Who came up with the conclusion that yes, a new class is essential move to make?
What really frustrates me more is that something like Heroic Characters is being made into a bigger deal then this is.
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