Feldon If you use Twitter, you’re probably following EverQuest II. EQ2’s new Community Manager Isulith has been making use of the service largely by posting questions to readers. We found Yesterday’s question to be most interesting:
What are your most used fan sites?
If you’d like your opinion to be heard, reply on Facebook.
UPDATE: 33% of 71 respondents said they read EQ2Wire. Thanks for your support!
For me it would be EQ2Wire most of the time, with a little bit of Zam, Ten ton hammer and flames. I used to do a lot with EQ2Daily, but I do less with its successor site guildm8s as it is more Rift focussed and has a couple of very vocal bitter ex-EQ2 people who seem to feel hard done by something…
Overall with fansites I’m more interested in ones with geniune enthusiasm then some jaded bitter types, I can get negativity anywhere, being inspired though is a nicer feeling.
Alas though our EQ2 community manager will never know this though as her survey is deeply flawed and off to a bad start already – I don’t do twitter.
At least the effort is there, looking forward to seeing more.
I don’t use twitter (don’t see any point to it) so I can’t support you.
Murfalad,
It’s hard to stay positive about EQ2 when you see such obvious mistakes coming down the pike. When they do something that doesn’t work out well, like the Velious beta, or the Spires event, or Reitemization, what should happen:
* Producers/Execs go under review and have to answer some tough questions about what went wrong.
* Designers have to do a white paper on how to prevent these problems in the future.
* A Producer’s Letter that explains what went wrong and what will be changed in the future.
What seems to be happening instead:
* “Whew, we scraped by on that, we can probably get away with that again!”
* “We delivered on-time, even though the quality was horrendous.”
* “We don’t have time to stop and do any kind of analysis on what went wrong or how to fix it because we’re already working on deadlines 6 months out.”
So yeah it’s hard to see such obvious mistakes made over and over with no sign that any of them are being learned from. If they’d stop and think about what’s going on instead of just depending on the “stickiness” of the MMO playerbase to stick around through thick-and-thin, EQ2 could be such a better game.
Also communication is so minimal right now it’s astounding. I’ve never felt so cut off from the EverQuest II development team.
I don’t use Twitter either.
SOE struggles with using all mediums at once. They’re supposed to be using the SOE Press site, Facebook, Twitter, the Forums, Youtube, and EverQuest2.com. However something always gets left out.
This survey is locked to Twitter only. Past trailers have been left off Youtube. An alarming number of news items go to Facebook, bypassing EverQuest2.com entirely, and the SOE Press site is basically dead.
The screenshots out of Fan Faire went exclusively to MMO news/press sites.
so they wanna know who their fan base is but do not contact their fan base thru the normal channels but rather assume that everyone that plays an MMO must use twitter (this gamer doesn’t twitter either). therefore, it will only lead to more poor decisions coming down the pike. By far my most used site is EQ2Wire, for quest and mob and item info I mostly use Zam. but for the up to date of what is going on this is my site of choice by far.
Too bad the eq2 team does not know this! Hey feldon why don’t you collect a bunch of these messages of support and forward them to Isulith. Dunno if it would do any good but perhaps it would give a clue as to where the customers really are, cause it’s not twitterpated 😀
I don’t do the twitter thing. I’ve never understand the lure myself. I’ve got enough to keep up with now.
And I totally agree with you Feldon. It’s beginning to get than SWG NGE vibe and I’m not happy about that at all.
Don’t use faceplant or tweeker, so I don’t care. I really only care about raid updates and stuff that directly affects my toons. All the fluff can just go on by, pisses me off I have to read an e-mail and delete stuff. EQ2 Wire is my main source of info 😀
Hey, thought i’d stop by as i noticed another expansion posted on massively? What happened to the rest of Velious?
You know i play wow now, and i think i like it because i never played it before (no investment), however all the vets are always freaking out, sound familiar ie: “me” with EQ2 lol.
I was playing Rift and that game rocks, but dunno EQ2 is trying to be more wow, Rift is based on wow, so many other mmos are based on wow, so wtf may as well play wow.
Again i think i like wow because i have zero investment over the years in it and honestly could care less about what they do, (if that makes sense) as long as I’m having fun I’ll stay subbed.
Velious content is continuing to be released through mid-2013, whether you buy this new expansion or not.
And I can’t comment on WoW or all the desperate game companies trying to clone WoW.
I don’t know if their Twitter is tied to their Facebook or not, but the same question was asked on their Facebook page as well. I don’t “do” Twitter either, but I do use Facebook (I know, for some, both are evil. hehe) Here’s the link to their FB page: http://www.facebook.com/EverQuest2
As for the other, I feel mostly the same regarding the recent changes/updates/etc. The part I’m not liking the most though is the lack of communication. You hit the nail on the head, Feldon, when you said, “I’ve never felt so cut off from the EverQuest II development team.”
“”So yeah it’s hard to see such obvious mistakes made over and over with no sign that any of them are being learned from””
Playing the devil’s advocate here, but what if they (the devs) don’t feel like anything is wrong or is a mistake? Hard to believe, I know, but what if they truly think things are hunky dory currently?
I set up twitter used it like 5 times, I hate it as much as I do face-book. Honestly they need to find a better way to communicate with me.
Oh wait did I say communicate, gee wiz, It would be nice if they did, and they heard what folks said, however they seam to have a rift between us the players, and the dev base.
In fact that rift is so huge, I honestly believe they have no clue what their user base wants. We asked for the starting isles back, we get a revamped freeport that’s going to be a shade of what it was, they say we asked for a df its a joke, they say we want a dond design your on dungeon, who wants to do that with an avatar.
They need to learn to communicate with us via the formus and the forums only, all this external media like face-book, and twitter does is further muddy the waters of commuication.
To bad they don’t use the tools they have, but then if they did we would probably hear the same old replies I have gotten from a well known dev. Anybody remember the response I got one time, “who wants to hear that, that’s why we don’t use the forums” from the lead dev. I say well you probably need to hear what we say so you would clue up.
Oh well face-book and twitter fail, just as bad as that face-book tie in that was supposed to give rewards.
Please SOE just learn to use your forums for communication. Uggg!!!!!
Hey Feldon, Thanks.
When i read that on Mass I thought “a new expansion, wtf, they totally forget about the rest of Velious”.
Yeah i’m not here trying to stir anything, only that i find the familiarity interesting with wow vets, they are as pissed as EQ2 vets and when you have nothing vested you simply say, “OH Well” to these posts and play the game. Crazy lol
I played vanilla wow at launch for about a month and was right back into EQ2, the vets all say vanilla wow was awesome, to bad they weren’t playing EQ2 back then if they thought that was awesome.
Yeah you know i agree with you EQ2, “EQ2 could be such a better game.” just read all the posts here. WoW is becoming more of a traditional mmo than all the new mmo’s and/or convert mmo’s trying to be like wow, no cash shop pay your monthly and play.
Anyway enough about wow not here trying to sell it. Still holding out hope that EQ Next will be something to write home about. I just can’t bring myself to fire up even EQ2 Extended anymore. The game is so mixed mashed i get a headache even thinking about it let alone play it.
For the record Twitter and Facebook, do people really use that chit. (in case anyone wanted my view on that garbage) so yeah, SOE better think of better way of communication than general lemming tools.
Love EQ2Wire – will make a stupid twitter account just so i can vote.
What i love here is that there are intellectual people with a passion for the game talking about real experiences and issues.
And all the hate and the trolling is left in EQ2 flames.
I can’t say this enough, SMOKEJUMPER NEEDS TO BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE AND FIRED.
As Marilla pointed out, it looks like you really need a Facebook account to vote for this thing.
If they really want a direct connection with fans why don’t they expand EQ2 Players where it’s a stand alone feature rather than just a search engine. They could add a news section and include an interface for comment as to host community question/answer sessions. To top it all off it could be a part of the mobile platform they already have that doesn’t work. One nice and tidy package rather than multiple media platforms, bits here and pieces there. There would be large up front price tag to pull it off but the feature could garner attention in the industry to offset.
They don’t do anything with EQ2Players because they have some bizarre outsourcing contract that means some other company has control of it as far as i can make out. I wouldn’t claim to understand how or why but apparently SoE isn’t in direct control of EQ2Players and can only ask for things to be done, which apparently is falling on deaf ears.
I do have a Twitter account but I haven’t used it in a while. However I don’t have a Facebook account so I wouldn’t be able to vote in any case. I don’t have a problem with them using social media for information gathering, but i do have a problem with them *only* using social media. Would it be too much to ask for a forum thread on the topic and they could aggregate the replies?
Having read today about Sony’s upcoming fourth consecutive annual multi-billion Yen loss, however, at this stage I’m just grateful the servers stay up.
Feldon, just to clarify things I think you are actually (when critical) one of the level headed types, hence its always good to visit EQ2Wire, even when the news isn’t good 😉
And I have to agree with you on the game lately, ironically its not that there isn’t enough work going on from the devs on it. Or even that the work is buggy on release, its just that so much effort is being put into something that really doesn’t improve the game.
I’m still cheesed off with the gear revamp (or mega buff), while the last minute included SF gear is actually really good (SF raid zones fit in nicely between Ry’gor/Tofsx2 and x4 zones), the 20-80 loot is just so poorly thought out its depressing.
From clearly overpowered rewards for killing one up heroics (removing any desire or reason to visit a dungeon), to the badly planned out gear (a classic example is a RoK item where a treasured reward is much better then a legendary…), I’m just left thinking whoever did it has no idea how the game works.
Its game mechanics that the game really needs looking at right now imo, not making content accessible (mind dribblingly easy) or challenging (requires X of a stat and has enough health to hold out for 2 hours!).
Back to the subject, I have no desire for a twitter account, although maybe I can do something with my facebook account.
Forgot to say, I’m disappointed too how little involvement SOE gets with its real fansites such as EQ2Wire, perhaps I’ll get to mention that at Fanfaire next year, I’m as good as booked here 😉
Maybe with a change of community manager things can change…