March 17th Producer’s Letter

After the deafening silence of the last 3 weeks with regards to the Fighter Revamp and the state of GU51 in general, we’ve got a response on March 17 from none other than Bruce Ferguson, Producer of EQ2. Read it Here.

The changes made with the initial release of the fighter revamp (on the Test server) need to be removed.  However, rather than just roll back your characters to when we first introduced the changes on Test back in January; we’re going to need to split out the consolidated spells, which will reset them to Adept 1.

For our Test Copy server, we’re going to need to wipe the entire character database, which will likely take several days.

For all of our players, this means that we’ll be reinitiating the adjustments to tank balance from a fresh point.  The difference is going to be in how we go about planning and communicating the changes, because we want, and need, to know what you think.

Our plan is to start an open dialogue with you, our players, and to get your feedback every step of the way. This will mean more time in between updates, but we think that it’s worth it to get you more involved in the direction of the game.  We hope that you agree.

We realize we haven’t been stellar at consistent communication in the past, but consider this a big step towards this goal.

We are also looking at incentives to get more of you playing on the Test server, for further feedback.  We truly believe that if we can get more of you testing and contributing your feedback, we will know more about what you all want, what you all believe is best for the game.

We want this to be a collaborative effort between SOE and its players. When we get the details of the Test server incentives worked out, we’ll be announcing it on the forums and on EQ2players.  We’ll also be announcing the plan for improving our communication and creating an open two-way dialogue with you as soon as we’ve worked out all of the details.

This is a very refreshing and surprising communication. It tells me that the Ivory Tower approach to the fighter revamp has cost SoE a lot and tarnished the praise they had been receiving from casual to hardcore groupers and raiders about how The Shadow Odyssey addressed a lot of their needs including Shadowknights and Berserkers becoming desireable tank classes and the introduction . I feel that the raid progression of TSO will be even better with the forthcoming x2 and x4 raid zone.

If there is one truly frustrating issue in all this, we don’t know when the Lavastorm Revamp of GU51 will go to the Live servers. I know I have been very excited about the x2 raid zone and other quests to help gain AA points.

We’ll keep you informed as soon as we know when GU51 is going live (and I have 99% confirmation that it will go live separate from the fighter revamp).