Feldon From Calthine at EQ2 ZAM:
Good-bye, Domino!
Emily “Domino” Taylor, beloved Associate Producer of EverQuest II, announced on Facebook today that she’s leaving EQII. “… today is my last day on the EQ2 team and it’s been nothing but the best times, the best of co-workers, and the best of players, all of whom I’ll miss ridiculously much,” she posted. Emily is best known for being the Tradeskill Developer who took Norrathian tradeskills from a harvesting and creation grind to a playstyle filled with lore, quests, and rich rewards. She made no mention of what she’ll be doing next.SOE Announced a new EverQuest II Producer, Holly “Windstalker” Longsdale, earlier this month.
Correction: It’s important to note that ZAM only reported that Domino had left the EQ2 team.
UPDATE: Emily’s Facebook page now states “Worked at Sony Online Entertainment (Associate Producer)”.
Domino :'(
I’ll miss you 🙁
Probably moved off EQ2 onto something else.
It’s clear now, the better folks of EQ2’s dev team are getting scavenged. Bad times =(
I am thinking she is moving on to eqnext. She has deep roots in Sony. She spreads out her time on many other games including minecraft so who knows.
This is a seriously blow to a large community in EQ2, they should have made her Smed’s replacement, not that Holly person that came out of nowhere.
This makes me sick to my stomach. She was one of our best advocates.. Thank you, Domino. You know we love you and thank you for what you did for us.
Take care Domino good luck and safe journeys from “Chief kerra channel spammer at certain Crafting events”- thanks for the Ratonga cream:))
HUGS Will miss you.
Well, frak.
Good luck to her.
This deal keeps getting worse and worse…
This is sad. She was one of the few people I trusted over there. Will be missed. 🙁
I am at a complete loss for words. It looks as if all the good people left on the EQ2 side of SOE are going elsewhere.
You will be missed Domino 🙁
I’d like to think she’s moved to EQNext. She’s avoided saying “left SOE,” only “left the EQ2 team.” But if she’s gone on to EQNext, why wouldn’t she say so? Color me concerned 🙂
After all these years when you see Domino leave SOE you know the company really has ask the fat lady onto the stage for the final act.
All tradeskillers and your housing community will miss you. Good luck on whatever you will be doing in the future and if it is for a new game I hope they know what valuable asset they will get with you.
Greetings Mu From AB.
Rothgar (Greg) and Domino (Emily) were the two best SOE communicators on the forums the past few years and now both are gone from EQ2 in one way or another. When they replied you knew you weren’t getting platitudes but rather the real story with the reasons behind the scene as well.
Best of luck to you Domino!
Knowing how well she had communicated and responded to current feedback as a tradeskill dev, I had high hopes when the announcement was made that she was being promoted to producer. Since that announcement, I haven’t noticed a single thing that she was actively involved in working on outside SC/tradeskill/housing. Those are important parts of the game…but she was invisible on the adventure side. I wish her only the best as she moves on to other things, but don’t have any reason to think that her leaving will effect me in any way. (Side note: I hate that the announcement was not made on the forums first.)
If she was staying with soe I would think she would keep the Domino name.
@DoragonMama
Ok, listen
Holly didn’t come out of nowhere she was with the original EQ, she also did not replace Smedley, she really didn’t even replace SJ she took his title in EQ2, but SJ was moved ‘up’ to be in charge of the entire EQ franchise, but his efforts were going to me aminly focused on EQNext.
Now onto Windstalker, apparently that is nothing but a suit, whose name will be tacked on to posts made now I guess by Piestro, since Amnerys is no longer on the EQ2 side of the fence.
It is almost as if Smedley told corporate that he could kill these games off before the Mayan prophecy became true, someone threw the bullshit flag initiating the challenge and off he went.
@Lempo The Mayan prophecy/bullshit flag bit made me laugh to be sure.
Domino leaving signifies to me the loss of one of the last dev’s who really appeared to give a rats’ ass.
I wish her the best to be sure; she revolutionized crafting in MMO’s, and will be a great addition to any Dev team.
Looks like some of the folks are jumping ship, and soe is in restructure mode. This does not bode well.
That actually speaks volumes
Domino will be missed, she was one of the few devs where i consistently agreed with her changes done, she was always polite and very active on the forums, she kept tabs on her part of the community and what we wanted as a player-base, i hope wherever she goes, they treat her the way she deserves to be treated, like the top Dev she is!
much hugs and love to domino!
I always loved you Domino. You were the vest TS Dev, a perfect member of the community and you showed much love to all of us testers.
Looks like EQ2 is fading into the sunset….
Sad day.
*goes back genuflecting to her altar*
http://eq2artisans.faerylands.eu/uploads/images/img/autel-domino.jpg
It’s like someone found a deal on nails these past few months and now is really going to town banging that coffin lid shut.
I think Pentapod is an alias she used before she worked for SOE. Very sorry to see her go…I knew there was something going to happen when they brought the new producer on…a senior producer, a producer and an associate producer? Wasn’t going to happen.
Goodbye and Good Luck to you, Domino! Thank you sooo much for all your hard work and for advocating for us! You will be terribly missed!
*packs Domino a good-bye gift box full of cookies and jum-jum pie and cheese and other assorted goodies and all the goodwill her tiny mousie heart can muster!*
She did such amazing things for the crafting/tradeskilling community. Best wishes to Domino wherever life leads her next!
Best of luck and all of the Tradeskilling communities love go with ye Domino.
I would really like to see if Brasse will continue swallow the company Kool-Aid and drum this all up to new opportunities and different paths or if she will be the next to carry on ‘in a new direction’.
Having spent quite a few hours @ Fan Faire and on line with Domino, I’m pretty sure this all about community split up and the general attitude that SOE has been giving us the players (remember us? The ones who fund your paychecks?). I’ve not met too many folks like Domino, that could work in this industry and genuinely care about the fan base and what is being presented.
No matter if it is gaming or some other profession, someone just got right lucky having Domino aboard. If it is another game – I’m there. 15 years of taking smeg off SOE is wearing pretty thin. sorry for the SOE sour grapes….
Best of luck Domino, we all love you and you will be missed.
@Shazzer- Domino is the reason that I returned to EQ2. The things she did for us crafters were simply awesome. She would randomly drop into the crafting channel and chat for a while. She would even answer tells if you had a question or comment for her.
@whilhelmina
awesome tribute
Was much better in her Tradeskill role than Associate Producer. Wish her the best of luck since she seemed “nice”, but the non-crafting community won’t notice a difference imo.
it’s sad to see her go…especially wit hEQ2 in teh state it currently is in.
Thank you for everything Domino. I hope the best for you in the future.
EQ2 still does have some great devs, GNinja and Zoltorath come straight to mind, but it definitely is a loss to lose Domino 🙁
And I’d rather see her in charge of SOE too, some days I think Smedley lost his soul a few years ago. Every so often he seems to be in touch with the user base and makes good decisions, and then shortly later he’s back off in corporate numbers world just making decisions that suck the fun out of gaming.
For me Domino is the last link of the “great” EQ2 team of the Hartsman era,a sad day today for the game.
With Domino leaving and the change up in community releations…any normal time would have been sad but to occur at this particular moment with the cluster agreement one has to wonder if this was her way of taking a stand by leaving (if the new job is with a company other than SOE). Most of the devs and higher in SOE knew the details of this agreement long before the community so it is possible she left out of disgust…who knows.
The timing is quite coincidental, I will agree.
I feel so sad … the game is just imploding. I love EQ2, and I don’t want it to change (other than in more positive ways).
Hopefully the devs that are left will rally the team and keep going. If PSS1 does come through with a solution that everyone will like, as they have claimed today, things will stabilize and go back to at least a semblance of normality.
I still have hope…perhaps that’s really naive.
Forgive me if I am missing something but is she leaving SOE or EQ2? The title of the thread says SOE but I only see her mention EQ2. Perhaps shes moving to EQNext to make their tradeskills and housing not suck.
No one is sure. Wouldn’t they say if she was moving to EQNext? They announced that SJ was going there, and Amnerys was going to FreeRealms.
@ Nicolos I’m kinda assuming with her having gone back to her pre SOE identity of Pentapod, that she has indeed left Sony towers.
My my, this week has been a very sad episode in Everquest’s long history, and one that I think will go down in MMO history forevermore very sadly.
Very very dark days for EQ2, its loyal paying customers, and the whole EQ franchise as a whole.
Wow, I thought EQ2’s future couldn’t look any bleaker, and now this… :/
The information I have says she has left SOE.
Yes, she is gone.
Well to be fair the name that she changed was “Domino EQ2”. And considering EQNext’s official title has not been released that COULD explain why she changed it. As far as an announcement goes, it could just not have come yet; they ARE very busy banning folks after all. Oh well, I have zero “inside information” and I am only speculating here (or wishful thinking) but I just hate to see Norrath lose such a wonderful developer.
Domino was an exemplary dev. I played five years on Test as my main server and she was often on, chatting and taking feedback. Remember Behn (sp?), the crafting dev she replaced? He was the most uncommunicative, passive-aggressive, unimaginative example of how not to do things and when Domino took over it was like the sun coming up after a long, cold, dark night.
We’ve heard almost nothing from her since she was “promoted” a couple of months back so who knows if this has anything to do with the current events, with pre-existing internal politics or just whether she got a better offer.
I hope she’s going to be the crafting lead on WildStar. That would be cool. Good luck to her wherever she goes!
She will be greatly missed. Trying to make something positive out of all of this, at least it is one less reason for me to be upset about not going to fan faire this year.
Sad news indeed, and my hunch is that Domino has indeed left the company as she would otherwise have switched to another SOE tag and also explained to the community that she was switching to another project in the company, no reason why she wouldn’t have explained that and left all her friends and followers in the dark over something so uncontroversial as an internal move.
In a way I’m more concerned for our Producer, Windstalker. I’m wondering whether we should report her to the San Diego police as a missing person!
eq2 end is near …
This is sad news indeed.
It does say “the challenges of a new game” so she will lend her talents to another game, for sure. Lots of new titles coming out, many independent games. It is probably a good time to seek out new opportuniities, anyway.
Eq2 is on its deathbed, as is the sony corp. Very bad upper management has destroyed their company. Time for all us game players to find a new game. Maybe D3 who knows but it is sad.
Sorry to see Domino leaving. I think she did a lot of good while she was here.
BTW: As far as an official announcement about her departure, I heard that Smokejumper and Windstalker both posted announcements about it in the forums. But then SOE-MOD-02 and SOE-MOD-04 deleted the announcements since they broke the forum policy against “sharing personal information about other individuals” and then banned both of them. 🙂
Kidding of course. 🙂
Heyas Feldon!
I wanted to clarify that we (ZAM) did not say Emily was leaving SOE. In fact, our news piece specifically says “She made no mention of what she’ll be doing next.” http://eq2.zam.com/
Rumors abound, but don’t attribute them to us 🙂
where’s the Like button for Dethdlr’s comment.. lol
Domino was the best EQ2’s TS dev, no question about that.
As an associate producer ? Meh, dunno… Maybe things would have been even worth without her but other than soothing the decorator’s revolt over SC blocks I’ve a hard time remembering any of her accomplishement.
and with Domino leaving, so goes a long line of caring devs. Is there anymore left?
According to her Facebook page at least, she no longer works at SOE.
Yea she’s gone:( I would have a hard time working for a CO that has done what Sony/SOE did. I can’t blame here for seeking employments elsewhere.
EQ2Wire “Credit cards with legs.” – Kelly Flock, former CEO Sony Online Entertainment, describing customers to other #SOE top management.
Saw that on a cheese pirate page. Is that true? An actual quote? If so, it verifies what I’ve been feeling lately. Sadly, this has become the norm for many businesses lately.
Yes this is an actual quote.
I am really scared. I may not have been around while Domino was in the glory days but I remember being younger and watching my parents play (even EQ1 🙂 ). The early days were fun times.
Now, you’re either a decorator or a raider. It’s sad. I’ve really loved Norrath and its lore and environment and people are wild and imaginative – it’ll be sad to see it get corrupted by the real-world “need” for more and more money.
To be honest, I had hoped that I’d get to see newer things… Luclin, maybe? But now it seems just a lot of wishful thinking and being in the dark.
Re: Kelly Flock
Wow, all the goodness keeps pouring out of the woodwork, eh?
Re: Domino
Its really sad to read that she’s left. She really cared for the team and the community. I have to assume she took the moral high-ground on this whole fiasco and turned her back on SOE in disgust. Normally when someone leaves there is a pretty farewell letter on the main site, but not in this case, so (for me) its obvious it was sudden and not something SOE wanted to give a glorious fanfare and parade about. In other words, she probably flipped SJ the bird on her way out as well (please Jesus make that true).
She get tons of kudos from me for her work, her presence, her spirit, and for supporting the community in this upheaval. I wish her all the best in whatever she does.
(pssst, Emily: please give us the scoop!)
She was on test chat last night, and said she was leaving SOE on good terms, so at least she’s moving on to something better for her.
Re: “credit cards with legs”. Note that this Kelly Flock left SOE 10 years ago…don’t know if this quote should be considered relevant to the current SOE situation.
Noctew is correct, nothing Kelly Flock posts about SOE is relevant, since he has been gone before every game but Everquest was made. Sounds more like a disgruntled former CEO then anything else to me.
Damn . . . wonder if she’ll still go to Fan Faire as a guest at least . . . she’ll be missed.
She’s really a great example of how to build a career in the gaming industry: an active player, hired to do tradeskills by the game company, promoted to Associate Producer, and now moving on to a new job. I wish her the best of luck. I am sure we will see her name again in the gaming industry.
I guess in a way I’m glad that it isn’t EQNext. The way that the MMO business seems to be consolidating behind what WoW-players and former-WoW-players want in various “WoW-plus” forms, I would be highly doubtful that EQNext could have the rich environment of EQ2 or even EverQuest. If that’s the case, I feel that Domino would be wasted there.
‘Course the same will be true of other companies, but at least there’s a chance that a new game will have some depth instead of being a straight market response, which is the way SOE seems to be heading. I’m looking forward to discovering where she has moved to.
Mind you, the TS dev =before= Beghn was good (Frizznik?). But Domino was one of those people who really did contribute 110%. She is, quite likely, the reason my highest level character is my level 90 Provisioner, while my second-highest is my 55 Ranger.
Hey, if I’m lucky she’s going to Trion to work on Rift….
OH NOOO =( You will be missed Domino! Good luck with your next adventure!