Feldon SOE President John Smedley has teased two announcements, one Thursday, one Friday, on Twitter:
We have two HUGE announcements. One tomorrow. One Friday.
Tomorrows announcement is a complete and fundamental shift for SOE that is going to change our industry.
We think it’s going to be a big shift for SOE and I believe a lot of others in our industry will follow.
Meanwhile, Holly “Windstalker” Longdale has tweeted:
Putting the final touches on my Producer’s Letter for tomorrow morning!
Update from Brasse:
EQ2, EQ & Station Live sites will be down for approx 10-15 min for web changes to take place. {whistles some more and pours coffee}
It’s sad when fundamental shift is more of a scary thing to hear then something that excites you.
They are going to announce that we have already morphed into EQNext with F2P, microtrans, and SOEmote.
Sony are selling SOE not unexpected.
would this be Thursday as in today the 9/6/2012 and tomorrow Friday 9/7/2012 ?
Hmm. Several MMOs are banding together in order to finally surprass WoW, combining code, art, and management into a horrible chimera known as EverRift of the Guild Republic?
I bet that at least one of the two announcements is an obvious “we’ve already been doing the thing we now say we’re doing” kind of PR.
Mommy, i’m scared…
“tomorrow” is actually “today” the tweet looked to be made around 6pm last night.
at least for Smedley.
/scared
Lets see what other big announcements have they made in the past year or so…
SOEmote
F2P conversion
Switch from actual Expansions to GU + expansions that only give ‘features’ (hope that goes away with next one =p)
They will stat out sourcing all game servers and billing to third party vendors; like the ProSiebenSat.1 deal in Europe.
Lets see, they are combining eq1 and eq2 and calling it eq next? I am glad I am not the only one that gets nervous when SOE says “complete and fundamental shift for SOE that is going to change our industry”
Oh even better. All worlds will be one server now?
Everquest Next – The first ever LAMMORPG. (Live Action Massively….)
Kruzzen I like your idea but I think that has been done on at least a few games already. Eve and a tale in the desert come to mind. I am sure there must be more.
Just one megaserver is actually something that is quite possible probably, well 2 then Naggy remains as is.
producer’s Letter is up.
mostly info about the next expansion.
This just came on Twitter
SOE players are some of the most dedicated, emotionally invested players in any virtual world. For the first time, you have the opportunity to create parts of our world by designing new in-game items.
Player Studio™ is a new program that invites (initially US-based) players to download sample geometry, learn how virtual items are constructed, and try designing items. You can try your hand at writing a creative name, item description and rationale for how it fits into the ongoing narrative storyline.
Probably will be as exiting as Dungeon Maker, fun idea initself though.
so was this both the things or is there still something tomorrow? hmmm
Probably restructuring, going from in-house employees to contractors. It’s a trend that’s been starting lately in response to certain controversial regulatory moves which shall remain nameless. I suspect it had a hand in Player Studio as well, though only the insiders know the real score.
Apparently they made a big Planetside 2 announcement today, that very well could have been the other major announcement from SoE. Though I didn’t know SJ was involved with Planetside, he seems to be answering a large number of questions about it on his twitter.
So their huge industry changing announcement is that rather than paying game designers and creating jobs, they want their paying customers to do their work and pay them piecemeal instead of paying the going rate for quality designers.
Players will be able to create content where we own the rights; we don’t have to pay for it. As an added bonus, you’ll work for us for free.