Feldon Alan “Brenlo” Crosby, Senior Producer of EverQuest II has posted this Producer’s Letter:
Happy Valentine’s Day All!
Here we are, perched on the precipice of another big launch for our beloved game, EQII. Next week is a big week for us and for you, the players of this grand game. You will finally be able to log into the new areas of Odus and explore, level and play in the new area that the team has spent nearly a year putting together. Characters can now advance to level 90 as adventurers and tradeskillers. More items, more spells, more AA’s and we hope lots more fun.
As many have noticed, Halas is not going out with the expansion, many have asked why and the reasoning is twofold. We have three pretty decent starting areas already. Darklight, Greater Faydark and Timorous Deep. We know they are not perfect and so the team has done considerable work in reworking those areas, streamlining the progress path to make for a better experience. We believe that you will find the experience in those zones to be far better than it had been. So, we went to work on higher level content for this launch, which we have with the expansion content and the new Battlegrounds.
Additionally we really want new Halas to be something special. We want more time to polish the area and make sure the progression path is fun and smooth. We also hope to get kilts in there. Currently we are looking to have Halas out with the Halas Reborn update later in the year.
With this release, we are proud to open up the Pre-Season of EQII Battlegrounds. Three zones will be available, each with a different playstyle. They will have progression and items and we hope add a whole new element of fun to the game. Unfortunately we didn’t quite get as many players as we had hoped on the server to give it a proper test, so we are going to use this pre-season phase to iron out any kinks and tweak the balance a bit more beyond the testing phase. When we are ready, we will begin Season 1 and the mayhem will begin in earnest. You will be able to work towards the new Chaos Armor during the pre-season, which might be the best looking armor we have added to the game.
With a game like EQII, it is evergrowing and everchanging, on occasion we find the need to adjust items, spells etc. . . and some mythicals had their power reduced with the release of the expansion. With each launch, we have to look at the items released previously and decide if they are perhaps too high to encourage players to look for upgrades. EQII is, at its core, a game driven by itemization. The constant desire to get the next biggest, baddest piece of gear. So on occasion we have to make some difficult decisions. This was one of them. For those who feel their mythical was devalued, I offer my apologies.
Next Tuesday is the retail head start, so to get you all ready, we are turning on Bonus XP from now until the servers come down for the update Tuesday morning. I hope you all login and enjoy. We look forward to seeing you on the Battlegrounds and running around Odus. Mostly, we thank you for playing EQII.
Alan “Brenlo” Crosby
Senior Producer EQII
R O F L. So they extend it to the next LU, and now Brenlo is HONEST and says it will just be sometime in 2010, kthxbai. P.S. We f*cked up allot of mythicals.
It’s crazy to me that they went back and changed 2 year old content. It took them TWO years to realize that the mana gain from the illy myth was too much. One of the only highlights of having a warden was they were a rock you could place in a group to trust to not run out of power and to have a large enough power pool to have a really nice split for that coercer “averaging out power” spell incase there was a large mana drain. Even with all the changes, they still did more and made more appealing changes to furies and they didn’t alter the fury mythical at all. Lovely work SoE.
“we have to look at the items released previously and decide if they are perhaps too high to encourage players to look for upgrades” … considering the effect of the weapons will be stripped and changed to a buff, this is big nonsense!
I just cancelled my account, no reason to continue playing with this dev team in place.
They really proved to me that their work is not worth paying for… which sucks because I was pretty enthusiastic about this expansion.
Thanks Feldon for at least keeping me well-entertained for the last 2 weeks!
It was a very depressing Producer’s Letter. “This slipped, this other thing didn’t get tested, we’re nerfing your gear, and we have no idea when this other stuff is coming.” All things being equal, NOT posting any kind of Producer’s Letter would have been wiser. When it’s all bad news, no amount of positive spin will save you. And Brenlo sounds too exhausted to spin.
Terrible letter honestly i dont think they know what they’re doing anymore.
I can almost imagine him tapping that out sat in a bunker somewhere, Comical Ali style (‘there are no tanks, we shall proceed to slaughter the invaders – as usual!)
It’s good to see that the random nerf cycle continues unabated though. After all, we can’t expect them to have altered any effects during the past two years…
If we assume Crosby’s appointment is an indication that EQ2 is very much entering it’s death phase (and given his complete lack of experience at anything that turned out well, we probably can) I can’t help but wonder who we’ll get next when he’s exhausted and tossed aside. Oh well.