Feldon Believe it or not SmokeJumper posted a bit about Game Update 60, which will be anywhere from 1-3 months after the Destiny of Velious expansion launches. It’s expected to have some Battlegrounds and PvP tweaks. His post also talks about EQ2X marketing and EQ2X PvP servers:
Answers (but you might not like them):
1) We haven’t started spending marketing cash for Extended yet. That’s slated for January. The reason I bring that up is until we bring more people into Extended, we have no plans to open up a PvP server because too many servers dilutes the population and we’re not willing to do that yet. However, we *would* like to do a PvP server. It’s currently slated to be the third server, assuming we can kick start population beyond its current levels.
2) We plan on doing PvP- and BG-oriented improvements in GU 60 (the big game update after Velious launches). The details of that GU haven’t been finalized yet, but one of the issues we want to solve is the lack of players on the EQ2X Battlegrounds.
So in other words, I can’t offer you any quick fixes right now, but we’re aware of the issues and we intend to solve them through multiple means.
I hope this helps.
SmokeJumper also had something to say about WoW: Cataclysm. Normally we don’t hang on every post or announcement about EQ2X. This is EQ2Wire not EQ2XWire. But since he mentioned a competitor…
Surprisingly, we haven’t lost many folks to “that other game” this month at all. Or else, they’re working through that content really quickly and still playing here as well.
However, you’re correct. We’ll spin up another server as soon as population warrants that expansion. With the combination of new marketing spend in January, coupled with the launch of Destiny of Velious (and the PR & Marketing that accompanies it) in February, we’re hoping to grow fast in early 2011. We’ll see! (*fingers crossed*)
Interesting.
Firstly my experience of “that other game” chimes with what SmokeJumper is hinting at, which itself hints that the SOE dev teams look closely at what WoW does. That is that the content is incredibly easy to do and incredibly fast to power through, I’m talking one week to go from old level cap to new level cap playing moderately (hardcore players could do it in 12 hours or so play), the one week includes capping a profession at the same time, my guess is most players will burnout by Feb/March here.
Secondly on the PVP I’m reading into Smokejumpers comments that PVP and BG work that was probably intended to be released with Velious has been shifted to 3 months after it.
Thirdly I’m disapointed to see just talk about EQ2X BG populations, although to be fair since its from the EQ2X forum I guess I cannot read too much into it.
He did identify within the first couple of weeks of starting as a producer somthing along the lines of BG’s having too high a gear/commitment entry requirement. It will be interesting how he improves that though.