Feldon SOE are getting quick posting their Webcast videos. Below, find the video from tonight’s SOE Webcast for the upcoming Age of Discovery expansion:
44 thoughts on “SOE Webcast Video: Journey to the Age of Discovery”
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Sorry but after watching this I have since canceled all my pre-orders.. I can’t justify 60 for a half finished Feature Pack…
@Tomatoh
I was kinda shocked by their nonchalant attitude about not releasing everything and just adding it in in their “1.1” patch later. This expansion is insultingly light on content to begin with and then they don’t even deliver on what they said they were going to.
See my previous comment about a decided lack of enthusiasm by the team, imo.
as to the question that brasse said about what does the duck do. ask any D&D player and will find out that you should NEVER trust a duck in a dungon! and as far as it’s fighting style haven’t you ever seen howard the duck? Ducks are masters of quack-fu!
I do agree with the above posters about how we pay for a product (which should have been included with our subscription) and then a week before launch they announce that you will get some of that product now and the rest later. but you asked us to pay up front. How about if I pay some of my subscription now and the rest when the bugs get fixed?
best part was that he says releasing a 1.1 patch the following week was “standard operating procedure”
ya thought that was funny. Where is not testing a product before release standard procedure?? Maybe China? Lol… Probably not though.
So for $40 (more in Australia) I get:
Decorate Someone Else’s Dungeon
20 AA points to spend on the existing trees
Beast Lords — that look less exciting than I hoped.
Mercenaries — who look to be more expensive than expected and nerfed to boot.
The promise of more ‘as soon as the can get it to work’.
Have I missed something? Does not sound like even $10 worth to me.
So it’s pretty much being rushed out the door in a very unfinished state in order to cash in before players leave to try SW:TOR.
The promise of patches and bugfixes in the weeks to come fills me with exactly zero confidence. And I did’t think that SJ could go down further in my estimation . I was wrong.
As for Ducks .. Runequest was always home of very vicious ducks .. they should be a playable race!
Always thought this was a desperate cash grab before the star wars MMO and nothing has changed,utterly clueless the lot of them sad to say they looked so uninterested very,very sad.
How many aa’s will we be getting? “20 I think?” How will they be distributed? “uh I don’t remember” Sorry not trying to be negative but at least prepare before an interview.
only 20 aa what happened to the 50 that was discussed in prior discussions. rofl. This xpac is very light and well other than beast lords there is nothing interesting. I am also bugged by the lack of what I saw on the video of what I call them actually giving a rats rear end about the xpac. I have to say total lack of professionalism in this video.
“We’re listening..this time.”
Uhm, riiight. I am instilled with ZERO confidence that the product can be delivered as stated in the pre-order description. Its clearly a rush job that they nonchalantly accept, brushing off its anticipated incompleteness throughout the entire interview.
As for the staff themselves, just..wow. Could they be any less informed about their own product? Shouldn’t they have prepared flash cards at least to cover their ineptness over knowing basic features of a game that’s being released in a week? How utterly embarrassing for the people that sign their cheques, thinking, “This is our senior EQ2 team and this is what they are projecting to all of our customers”.
I am so relieved that I did not pre-order AoD. I thought $40 was steep for the steaming grab-bag of features they were presenting earlier and now they’ve confirmed that my suspicions were correct. I can’t wait for this to go live to hear the cacophony of anger and disappointment when everyone gets to see the utter mess that this will be.
So, “We’re listening..this time.”. Listening to whom? It can’t the players. It has to be the sound of $megly sitting in his office counting his profits and cracking his greasy whip to make the worker bees churn out more marketplace items and half-baked tripe labelled as “features” and “content”. “Faster, faster! I needs more gold on my pile!”
/eyeroll
(right thread this time, my apologies)
I don’t think they realize what a bad image of shoddy unprofessionalism they are projecting during these podcasts. Last night was just the bottom of the barrel. For me, they came off as somewhat sarcastic, disinterested in being present, bored, and totally unenthused about their product. No one seemed bothered about the very poor sound quality. I was very disturbed over the nonchalant attitude about rolling out badly prepared code and the repeated references to patches. Frankly, it was rather embarrassing to watch.
The only item they seemed somewhat enthused about was the dungeon builder. Whoever thought the idea of live webcasts would be a great morale booster for the players needs to revisit the idea. Or at least use people that know what it is they are talking about, are prepared, organized, and at the least want to be there.
I don’t know if the folks at EQ2 visit this website, but if they do, all I can say is pul-leeeese…guys. You are professional people. I’ve seen high schoolers put together a better webcast. If you can’t be excited over your work, how in the world do you expect the player base to be?
I find it interesting they didn’t talk about the free to play stuff at all; they could have spent 30 seconds of the 30 minutes being enthused, at least, about the merger (larger player base, etc.). The only discussion on the topic, basically, was how confusing the various subscription plans are.
I, too, was not clear that was also happening December 6.
Why do they have SJ sitting way behind and up? Linda Carlson seems to take center stage on these things (probably because she has the most enthusiasm and can talk in front of a crowd), but I think for customers, at least, he should be there front and center leading the charge, so to speak. The webcast really seemed to be kind of an afterthought, something they could do quickly, rather than an exciting presentation, as has been discussed.
I also found it interesting that Carlson suggested we all take the day off Tuesday. For what, exactly? A huge patch, so everyone can make a beastlord and a dungeon? Nothing really to explore or do, unlike other expansions. Better to take off next Tuesday, when they have at least fixed some stuff!
I agree… Take the day off to design my own dungeon? bahhhaa no thanks. if it is as bad as dungeon finder, I will not be using it. I am totally not interested in running an avatar, to get tokens to get items that will be destroyed and you cant repair. I’m like I don’t see the need to grind that out for sure.
Mercs sound expensive to get and to maintain, beast-lord, omg I think everybody is going to roll one. Freeport revamp might be interesting to see what they do, but honestly is this all we get for a 49 buck xpac, I feel totally uninspired by this xpac.
One thing for sure they were totally unprepared for the webcast, and you got to wonder what they really have in store for us.
The way that Destiny of Velious was handled was a grave mistake on the part of SOE. They totally screwed the pooch on progression and upset a lot of their end game players. They ignored feedback in beta and rushed to release a product that wasn’t prepared. They need to really step it up in order to make up for the respect and trust they lost.
That being said, I’m surprised at the number of people complaining about the content in this expansion. It was stated *months* ago, back at fanfaire time, that all expansions moving forward would no longer contain zones. You do NOT need to buy the expansion, these are “optional” features. When the GU in February comes out, we’ll receive the zones *for free* whether or not you bought the expansion or not.
If you don’t want the 5 new features in the expansion, then don’t buy it. It’s as simple as that.
Not knowing what tree caps had been increased? Definitely a flub there SOE. I am highly disappointed by the lack of new aa lines, having played EQ1 with its massive aa capabilities for years before I came to EQ2 oh so long ago. It seems to me that a lot more thought was put into tradeskill apprentices, reforging, mercs, (definitely) Beastlord’s and dungeon maker and that the 20 AA point increase was slapped in there to try to appease players because they didnt leave themselves enough time to properly do new AA trees too.
*Note: 50 AAs were NEVER promised to us this expansion. People just assumed.
However, on a side note to that, I am highly impressed by the new mechanics used to make the Beastlord a complex and diverse class. If these mechanics are going to be use to create EQ:Next, I cannot wait to see what it looks like.
As for the attitude of the individuals there, there definitely was a small lack of enthusiasm. Having friends in the gaming industry, I think the ‘lack of enthusiasm’ for most of the individuals in the webcast was probably caused by long days trying to fix the bugs in the content then it was boredom by their own product.
–> And people are seriously upset about them knowing they’re going to have to do patching? Pretty much every expansion released in MMO history, whether it be from SOE, Blizzard, Turbine, whoever, has had major bugs in it. The game designers and programmers behind our games are people too, and mistakes are going to make it in.
As long as its not horrible errors like what happened with the DoV expansion, errors that beta members pointed out, I’ll be happy (Please don’t let me down here SOE).
Lastly, I actually really appreciated SmokeJumper’s attitude the last few webcasts I’ve watched. Thank you for addressing the fact that beta feedback was not being listened to and commenting on some of the demands beta players made for this expansion. I’ll be waiting to see if those demands come through or not.
Thank you, too for taking so much time these past weeks to address players concerns and questions.
I’m in shock.
After that performance why would I think that this game deserved another $40.00 from me? Why would the head of the DF development team state that, “it’ll get done eventually” (15 seconds in to the broadcast) when I AM PAYING YOU to have it done WHEN I BUY IT. How has this entire development team lost this basic concept.
The whole webcast…F’ing pissed me off. What a bunch of snide, sarcastic, unprofessional, uninformed twits who once again reinforced the perception that they could care less about this game, not to mention the people who play it.
I love this game and it kills me to see how SJ (sitting on his throne) and his merry band of halfwits, are tearing it apart. His actions (and those of his staff) continue to speak far louder than his words.
@Feldon. Forgive my rant. This is not how I wanted my first post on your site to go down. Your hard work, timeliness and dedication to this game continues to be remarkable and appreciated.
– Sea…out.
@ Cristamir
I’m in complete agreement, and I’ve said it before. Their attitudes and the words that come out of their mouths are terrible. They might be trying for a relaxed, nonformal atmosphere, but they are way off mark.
I feel like i am out of the loop FELDON!, im at work (like usual) reading and waiting for the transcripts otherwise my employees will think i am not doing my work if i watch the video!
Wow. I mean really? A few things have changed with me since I said I’d buy the expansion. One is I got into this past weeks TOR beta, and after playing it, combined with what I just heard. I must say I am really doubting that I will continue playing much less purchase the new expansion.
Raiding has been the only thing keeping me playing. That, and hope. Hope that they would figure out how to make EQ2 fun again. I did have allot of hope for this expansion. I know it wasn’t delivering allot of content, but I wanted to build my own dungeon, and now that look more like Decorate Your Own Dungeon. They really f’ed up that one.
Also pointed out above. They didn’t seem to know much of anything about their own expansion. How hard is it to review the questions you are going to be asked, and prepare answers for them. I’ve been playing the game for seven years, and I should know better, but still if this is the best they can muster for a public broadcast, talking about features they want you to pay for. The least they could do is know their own content. This is what really broke the camels back for me.
It’s sad really. I put allot of time into the game, and I hate I feel this way. Both me and my wife love the game allot. Not sure if anyone remembers about two years ago, but we were the people who had the ratogan cake topper on our wedding cake. There was a news story on EQ2 main site about it a year and a half or so a go. But anyway it just shows how my our opinion about EQ2 has fallen in the last two years.
Sorry bud, not gonna be a Transcript this time. Check out the bullet point notes from here:
https://eq2wire.com/2011/11/29/soe-webcast-journey-to-the-age-of-discovery/
The rest of the Webcast was all over the place but no real details on anything we haven’t caught before. We’ll know soon enough!
People are pointing out that the Age of Discovery expansion seems to be a poor value for the $40 cost and will grossly under-deliver what was announced at Fan Faire.
At Fan Faire, Design Your Own Dungeon was pitched as player-made content that would allow players to arrange and build dungeons that others would want to play.
On December 6th, what we will get is a Dungeon Decorator with preset layouts and a very limited functionality set. Now, there’s lots planned for the future, but considering how other features have been released incomplete and there was never any time to revisit and complete it, don’t we have a right to be concerned that Dungeon Maker will only be used to grind tokens as long as the rewards are powerful enough?
At Fan Faire, Mercenaries were described as a variety of NPCs with a varied past that you or your group could pick up to do a variety of things including group and possibly raid. We were told to expect “elite” mercenaries and super-rare mercenaries like Lucan D’Lere and other major characters who would help us if we had the plat for it.
On December 6th, we will get a handful of straightforward Mercenaries. No “elites” and nothing really unique.
At Fan Faire, the Freeport Revamp was announced with the odd pronouncement that all of the neighborhoods would be locked off as personal instances exclusively for questing. The justification for this was that unique, dynamic, interactive story elements could be added, such as stealing something and the entire zone suddenly attacking you, etc.
On December 6th, we will get a beautiful unified Freeport, with the Neighborhoods used only for simple “Kill 10 Rats” quests with absolutely no dynamics or interactivity whatsoever.
Everything else you said is true. There was no AA number specified so people shouldn’t have pinned their hopes on an unrealistic number.
But I think people have a fair point that Age of Discovery was over-promised and under-delivered. Meanwhile Destiny of Velious needs serious work on Raid Progression and Itemization as guilds are literally falling apart and nobody is stepping up to replace them.
Feldon,
I highly appreciate your response. Despite the fact that I read the fanfaire info. (I wasn’t there – definitely can’t afford something like that) and watched these webcasts, I honestly didn’t realize that there was such a big difference.
Design Your Own Dungeon – Am I incorrect in believing that we’re getting monsters to put in these dungeons? Is that not being released on December 6th? Aren’t the items you put in the dungeon items that change what the mobs can do? I understand that it might be frustrating to players that they can’t make their own monsters, but I also understand how hard it would be for the EQ2 to give us that kind of customability. (Though I am disappointed that I don’t get to play my own toons)
Mercs – Having major characters like Lucan D’Lere would be awesome – but did anyone really expect that the mercs were going to be strong enough to replace real players? That would be counterproductive to merging servers and trying to attract new players. The only thing I really expected this to help was lower level characters leveling up to 90. How many people were interested in using these for grouping and raiding because of server population etc?
Freeport Revamp – I always remember hearing that Freeport was going to be combined into one zone (again, could be totally incorrect on this as I was’t there), but I do remember hearing it was supposed to be a central quest hub once more. Is this no longer the case/relevant?
What are peoples opinion on item reforging (I hear there’s a lot of beta issues with this), tradeskill apprentices, and beastlords?
–Please don’t get me wrong here. I think SOE has really dropped the ball in the last year and a half and has some serious work ahead of them to regain player trust (myself included). Even as dedicated as a player I am, I’ve contemplated over the last six months leaving the game and moving on to a new MMO because messed up progression. In fact, during the last 5-6 years I’ve played, I did leave twice. Once to go back and play EQ1 and another period of time where I tried out WoW and Warhammer. With that in mind, I know I’ve always come back for one reason or another.
With that in mind, I sort of had to play devil’s advocate here, because it seems like people are bashing on SOE and EQ2 quite a bit lately, and yet they’re still here and playing, or watching how its progressing. If that’s the case, there’s got to be some reason people are staying.
Isn’t there any positive feedback we can give SOE? Is there anything we, as a player base, think they’ve done right?
I dunno, maybe I’m just too optimistic that SOE and SmokeJumper will manage to bring the game back around from the wrong turn they took with it with DoV. Considering what the expansion is releasing, I have incredibly high expectations for the GU and zones to be released in February’s update.
months of comments like these ^^^ and they dont seem worried in the slightest. not just here but across all outlets, fan sites, forums etc. this is no way to run a business.
Not sure where you are form Mesa/Cristamir, but I got the same impression.
Now I am a Brit who has lived a long time in Australia so I put it down to cultural differences and different body language, giving them the benefit of the doubt. But it underlines the communication problem they are IMHO projecting the wrong kind of image to Overseas players.
Kind of like naming a car MR2 and trying to sell it in France. If you dont get that immediately try saying it as M R deux and you may get the message.
I see this as a huge problem, free to play is not going to help unless they get folks to go gold, free to play might get a lot of folks playing up till sundered frontier, only the ones who truly love it will get velioius.
I also agree with all the other stuff you said, expecting 50 aa was foolish of me despite most folks thought that number. Now we know why soe was so quite and tight lipped about the expansion and waited until it was almost hear to talk about it they probably did not want to deal with the player feedback. Unfortunately what I see is soe not understanding what the player base needs, and or wants and now they are just grabbing stuff from other games to plug the holes with.
I got the expansion for me and the wife as we did not want to fall behind in raiding progression and each aa helps. 20 AA seams well a number they just had to throw out there, and the comments of we will go with what we have and fix the rest later, thats been the mindset for velious as it is anyways.
Yes and my main gripe about all this is AOD seams might thin for the cash outlay of it. I just hope I am wrong and will be surpised ty the expansion and then have to eat my words wich I will.
I been playing this game for the past 7 years. I am not trying to bash soe, it is frustrating at best to see them running the game I love into the ground. Yes I complain and I thought I had the right to do so. I pay the same ammount you do to play, I still keep playing as there is nothing else better on the market. That is my mindset, if you see something you dont like folks doing then you should complain otherwise you just turn a blind eye to it, and pretend its ok.
The problem with giving soe feedback, is folks already do in beta and in the forums, they love the positive stuff, however a lot of the feedback has fallen on death ears the past few years. Stuff like removing the staring isles, item progression, the spell revamp, so forth and so on. The game has changed a lot since the current producer has been here.
Isest, I believe the reason they picked 20 points for the new AAs instead of player expected 50 or a new tree or anything like that is that this expansion is OPTIONAL and if they put too many new AAs in, then raiders would have to buy this expansion.
The other thing is I thought this was an MMO, where we buy the game with the expectation that more will come in time. I didn’t buy Sentinel’s Fate or Destiny of Velious expecting the expansion that was in the box to be all that I got. I bought both of those and I am buying Age of Discovery with the expectation of more content to come. They’ve already proven that they will do this with UD during SF and Drunder and Elements of War with DoV. Sure they are not giving us all the Mercs or Freeport quests or anything that they promised, but those are to come. They even stated that the “elite” Mercs were in the works. Buying an MMO and expansions for that MMO is an investment of that money. $40 for an expansion and $15 a month is pretty damn cheap for a hobby that goes as far as these games go.
I never siad that 15 bucks was not a good value for the game. What I and others have said compared to previous xpacs this AOD seams light in all area’s. Only time will tale what we wind up with in the long run with AOD.
They picked 20 AAs because that is about all you can add to the 3 existing trees not counting tradeskilling. Small boosts…
The 40 and 15 was not directed at you, Isest, it was a general comment towards the complaints that have been made by several people here and in other locations.
Kaufman, 20 is a small boost, but when Devs and programmers and a lot of people are dedicating time to creating an entire class, revamping a major zone, developing new TS content, etc then AAs gets left behind. Yes, most 90 toons have 300 AA, and yes, the 20 fills the existing trees, but when you see the time and effort put into the things that are in the expansion and can appreciate that then you know why they chose only 20.
I just don’t understand how you can release an expansion when you already have one expansion not complete. A question we can ask yourself is, will we be seeing another expansion in 6 months while we have two others not complete? Only a fool pays for something they not sure they will get or when they will get it.
The way I see it they are hoping that F2P will work for EQ2 like it did DCUO. $medley announced a huge 700% increase when DCUO went F2P.
I feel really saddened that this is the way they want EQ2 to go. I could accept them planning DoV content to be free. I could even accept this so called Expac being light on content, but asking us all to pay the standard fee for it? Hell no. I’m sorry EQ2. I’ve loved you and played you since DoF but for now I’m bowing out. My last sub for now will be December, just to see what my server thinks. But I will be cancelling after that. I’m not paying for BL’s or DYOD because they don’t seem worthy of the pricetag.
Like most people here I think this expac was rushed out hoping to claw players back from a certain star wars game inc. Well guess where I’ll be spending my Christmas? It sure won’t be in Frostfell.
R.I.P. EQ2.
Seriously isn’t there any rich geeks out there playing this game that can buy the franchise and give it the time it deserves?
Nobody asked us to be able to create our own monsters.
What we asked for is the ability to create a dungeon that bears even a passing resemblance to existing dungeons in EQ2. That requires us to put in clickable objects that do things, doors that can open/close, put keys and other items on mobs, linked encounters of mobs, and Names that have behavior the trash mobs don’t.
How are we as Dungeon Designers supposed to equal anything the Dev team produced? Look at Tower of Frozen Shadow. Holy crap all the quests and complexity in those zones. We can’t do ANY of that in our own dungeons. Our dungeons are going to look like antiquated crap by comparison.
At Fan Faire, we were shown overhead views of a dungeon strongly suggesting that we’d be able to rearrange hallways and customize the appearance.
Right now, we can place mobs and furniture in a handful of empty dungeon “houses”. Pick Crushbone 1, 2, 3, pick Sanctum of Scaleborn 1, 2, 3, or 4. Zone in. Place mobs. Place furniture. Place a few items like torches and campfires that give the mobs a few buffs. The end. That’s the end of the customization.
If you really think that is “Design Your Own Dungeon“, you’re out of your mind.
Now, there are plans beyond December 6th, but we’re talking about launch day.
A) you’re changing the subject
B) this is what we were told to expect from Mercenaries at Fan Faire. That they’d have variety, that they’d be interesting.
Please go back and watch the Freeport & Beyond video I recorded at Fan Faire or the Slides.
Tradeskill Apprentices — At Fan Faire, we were told they’d be customizable race, name, gender, and clothing. Then we saw the Webcast and they’re male or female Coldains. The end. Now it sounds like they’re making some last-minute changes in Beta, but come on.
These are just examples. We were given Dungeon Finder, and then they took out the Gear Requirements. This totally sabotaged it as people would show up in the hardest dungeons in Public Quest gear, or show up in Velious dungeons in level 80 gear or handcrafted stuff. I don’t know ANYONE who is using Dungeon Finder except for Shard of Love.
It’s this kind of nonsense where one impression is given at Fan Faire, and then 3 months later what’s delivered is totally watered down, stripped down, and half-done, that makes me NOT want to fly 6,000 miles each way and get lied to.
I remember when it was $15 a month and $40 a year for the expansion.
Then it was $15 a month, plus fluff on StationCash, and $40 a year for the expansion.
This year, it’s $15 a month, plus some core elements like Dungeon maps and spawners (and probably Beastlord warders) on StationCash, and $80 this year for two expansions. EQ2’s cost for 2011 is approaching $300 if you leave some wiggle room for Dungeon maps and other things we’ll have to buy.
For $300, I could buy Skyrim, Portal 2, Silent Hill 5, an Xbox Live subscription, etc. Outside of MMOs, $50 gets you a WHOLE GAME with 2 years of development.
Ferk is right in that the video game industry provides entertainment at a fraction of the annual price of alternative entertainment. However, the days of SOE being a big fish in the small MMO pond are long gone, and they can no longer rely on that to keep customers loyal. Rift is looking better by the day. Although my first look at the Old Republic made me dismiss it, it’s rising higher in the pool not on its own merits but because of the whirlpool created by sinking SOE games. My only thought after watching the webcast is “They don’t care – why should I?”
You have to remember though the items on the SC Marketplace and this second expansion are NOT needed to continue playing this game, even for high end raiders. Everything on the marketplace is, as you said, fluff and this expansion is only giving 20 AA (which is not needed by any class to continue at high end levels) and other things that are not needed to play.
So yes, if you want to buy everything that you mentioned on the SC Marketplace or this second “expansion” you will be spending a lot of money on EQ2 this year. But, if you don’t have the cash then you can just buy DoV and your $15/month and continue playing happily while SoE puts out content for free every 3 months, and on top of that, soon you may not even have to pay that $15/month if you so choose (though that has other complications to it that I don’t even want to bother thinking about).
I could go buy Skyrim, Portal 2, Silent Hill 5, plus all that other stuff for a similar price but even the best RPG and sand-box games outside of MMOs can only hold a gamer’s attention for 30-40 hours (not including online play) while MMOs hold our attention for years as Jazzalyn and Isest have both pointed out.
Feldon, I love what you do for the player base of this game by having this site, but you seem to be caught up in the same wave of pessimism that many players are in over optional things you can buy to enhance your experience. A lot of the complaints I see are over content and pricing of content that is not needed to continue playing, if you don’t want it, don’t get it.
Ferk,
During the Webcast about Dungeon Maker, when it came down to Dungeon Maps, Mob Spawners, and other things you could place in the dungeons, they couldn’t say “StationCash” fast enough. And I’m pretty sure they’re going to put Beastlord Warders on the Marketplace. So that $40 doesn’t even give you the full Beastlord and Dungeon Maker experience.
Dungeon Maker and the Beastlord class were built to be monetized.
It’s true that Dungeon Maker stuff will be on the marketplace, but they’ve also stated that some will be found from drops in regular dungeons.
As for Beastlords, I’ve done just fine in beta without buying anything except fluff armor from the marketplace and have been able to collect all the warder families just from running around looking for them. I’ve said this on the official forums and I’ll say it again here, if you haven’t played the beastlords in the beta there is NO way to judge the class because it is nothing like the classes in game currently, and that includes the usefulness of anything from the marketplace for the class.
I’m going to play the devil’s advocate here, and say maybe the sentiment they are exhibiting in that video isn’t that they don’t care about the game. Maybe the problem is that they DO care about the game, and know this expansion isn’t ready for prime time. Maybe they are embarrassed and disheartened, because they are being told by upper management to get this expansion out the door before it’s ready (to beat TOR), and then to add insult to injury, need to get on this podcast and say how incredibly awesome it is when they don’t feel it themselves. I’ve worked in business long enough to know that sometimes you are expected to put on a happy face even when you know stuff is hitting the fan behind the scenes, and saying how things really are would mean you don’t have a job tomorrow. I’m sure all of us have also seen plenty of businesses sacrifice long term viability for the short-term $$$$.
We know the the EQ2 team has been ripped to shreds over the years, and that they are likely horribly understaffed. Maybe this is truly the best they can put out in the amount of time they were given. I’m also a programmer in an understaffed department at another organization, and we also sometimes have deadlines set by when upper management expects things to be done, which aren’t always reasonable or even feasible. It’s sadly the way of things all over in the business world today – do more with less. Perhaps when they say there are going to be lots of patches over the next few weeks, they are simply trying to be honest with us, since they know it’s not ready, but have to release it. Perhaps the lack of enthusiasm is partially due to exhaustion from the long hours they’ve pulled trying to get this expansion done, with the knowledge it likely still won’t be complete. Could they have done a better job trying to sound enthused? Perhaps…but it’s hard to let true feelings not show through. I’m sure the pages of complaints on the EQ2Forums, Flames, and this site aren’t big morale boosters either.
Given the above, I wouldn’t necessarily blame them for “under-delivering.” The one thing I could fault them for is over-promising. I do think Smokejumper cares about this game, and believes in it’s potential. Unfortunately, I also think he isn’t the best PR person, and lets his enthusiasm get ahead of him. He talks about what they would love to do, instead of being realistic about what can be done with the skeleton crew and deadlines they have. I can imagine the brainstorming meetings before Fan Faire where they talked about “Wouldn’t it be awesome to have these elite mercs? Wouldn’t it be awesome if people could completely customize their tradeskill apprentices?” These back-door discussions then get turned into features, but then as deadlines loom reality sets in. What I don’t think SJ (and perhaps others) have realized (and need to), is the worst thing you can do is promise and not deliver. If you aren’t sure if you can deliver it, don’t say it. This may mean giving less information out (and I’m sure some people will complain about that too), but in my opinion it’s much better than it appearing that you “lied” or “failed,” which only serves to disappoint and erode trust.
Maybe I’m giving the team too much credit, but I do want to think they are trying their best with the resources they have. Unfortunately, I get the feeling the SOE corporate brain has likely moved on to EQNext and they are simply keeping EQ2 fed on crumbs until then, trying to get as much money out of it as they can. (Perhaps another reason for the move to F2P is the fact they know they won’t be able to support the game the way they have in the past without more income.) No matter what, I get the strong feeling we don’t know all that is going on behind the scenes here, and perhaps what the EQ2 team needs is our understanding and support instead of derision. If the team could be just a tad more honest with us about what is realistic for them to accomplish at this phase in the game, I think that would help a lot towards sentiment. Otherwise, I think we could all use a dose of stepping back and looking at all the good things about EQ2. We are all still here for a reason, and perhaps we should enjoy the game for what it is, instead of wanting more, more, more, from a team that is increasingly making due with less, less less.
Good and thoughtful post, Aeyri. I think you are probably exactly right. One thing Scott Hartsman did when he was the producer is he would hold many things back, and never over promised. He kept the flying dragon transports under wraps until the very last minute when Kunark came out, which made it a pleasant surprise. The team did lose many talented designers a few years ago, and although this team is good, they do have some people that are less experienced than previously. The veterans are fewer than the up and coming designers such as Domino, who is good but was promoted very quickly. I think she and others are probably still learning tricks and techniques. They have new community managers, as well, also learning the ropes. Smokejumper came from an entirely different background, and as people have pointed out, is most experienced in real money transactions.
I am lucky in that I am a very casual player, so there’s lots left for me to do. For the raiders and those with 10 -15 maxed out characters, well, I feel for you, since you don’t have as much to do as the rest of us. I think the DYOD was for you, in some part, but clearly in it’s current form it’s a bit of a disappointment. I think Aeyri is right, that if we lower our expectations a little bit, it might be easier to swallow.
Here’s what I think of AoD:
AAs: 20 new with no increased cap means its utterly worthless for most classes
Mercs: are very weak to the point that even if you’re a fresh 90 doing the easiest SF instances the mercs don’t contribute much. The tank mercs cant even tank trash in Erudin Library without 2 overgeared players healing it.
Dungeon builder: the amount of control you have in this is laughably feeble
Beastlords: these are actually interesting and at least add *some* value to this adventurepack.
Reforging: fairly useful, could be better (such as being able to reforge an item multiple times and change procs) but it’s definitely going to be used a lot.
Tradeskill apprentices: doesn’t seem to provide much functionality that wasn’t already available another way.