Producer’s Letter: Quick Update on EQII & Livestream on Feb 18th
From Holly “Windstalker” Longdale on the EQ2 Forums:
Hello, Norrathians!
As you’ve likely heard by now, there’s been some changes around here in staff. I want to assure you though that this team is still in full-time dev and operation mode, and we continue to have awesome plans for EQ2. We’re shuffling a few things about, but our goals in delivering fun stuff won’t change. For example, in a couple of weeks we’ll be releasing rare bosses for the AoM dungeons and more. We’re tinkering a bit so I apologize for the silence and certainly any concerns or worry it may have caused you.
We’ll have more news as we rip along here doing what we do and what we love – which is keeping our world busy and alive for our incredible community of players. Above all, we are grateful for your continued support and love of the game.
I would really like to hear from everyone and chat with you about all of this which is why we’ll be hosting a Twitch livestream on Wednesday, Feb. 18 at 3pm at twitch.tv/everquest2. The team looks forward to having you tune in so we can address any questions you may have.
Thanks and see you in game!
Holly Longdale
Executive Producer, EverQuest & EverQuest II
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Comments (46)
Keedahm
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No more expansion?
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Kruzzen
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No one knows anything yet. Best option is to pay month to month, enjoy your game and wait to see where things go. One thing is for sure though. If peeps up and leave they will shut it down. so it is in our best interest to enjoy what we have. As always expect the best but plan for the worst. It is a game and hopefully the passion will keep it going for some time.
Only time will tell.
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Deveryn
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See that server status list on the right? When that goes down to about 2-4, then you can start to pack your bags and get ready to call time of death. EQ and EQ2 both have good populations and won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
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Froak
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the problem is that from here on out its all down hill. you cannot expect to get the same content from such a huge cut in staff. look at kunark and everything it had with a much bigger staff, and compare it to ToV and AoM. even with what staff they had before the layoffs they barely even managed to get out what they did with AoM, gear wasn’t even solidified on the beta server till the last second.
new expansions will either be less engaging, have less content or come farther apart. wouldn’t be far off to expect them every 2 years now instead of every year. patches will have less to them as well, or be farther apart.
longer gaps or a reduction in updates and content will just thin out the population far worse then it does already. look at how busy servers felt the last 3 months before AoM came out compared to now. now imagine people having to wait 2 years for an expansion or getting bored far quicker. the games may not be instantly dead but it is no where near business as usual.
lots of people say this is a shake up that we needed. but its not a shake up to come in and just cut people. you replace them with new minds with fresh ideas to shake things up. saying “business as usual” and “we are still working on the same plan” is not a shake up.
there is nothing positive about this. not 1 single aspect of eq2 can be made better by expecting half the staff to do twice the work. it will be a slow death and they are stringing you along to squeeze every penny out they can. SoE may have cut 45% of their staff but majority of the people cut were long timers or higher ups so they probably cut closer to 60%-70% of their payroll budget.
i for one will not sit here and pump money into a game that is doing the exact opposite of trying to better itself.
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Tarb
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Doesn’t sound like its going to be shut down to me, but ill bet they do cancel EQN
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Feldon
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That would make no sense given the concentration of the layoffs. There would be zero chance of growth. They cut EQN the least, DCUO some, and PS2, EQ and EQ2 were cut the worst. They’re clearly putting all their eggs in the EQN/Landmark and DCUO and maybe if there’s enough money next year they’ll grow EQ and EQ2 teams again.
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GriffonLady
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IMHO, if they at least put in for a copyright/trademark/patent for the next expansion name, that would give people a little hope that there will be an expansion (and still a game, for that matter), it would do a fair bit of good for the player base.
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Eric T Lewis
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I am still looking at what was said they they would have access to more resources, then shortly after 40% cut to the eq2 team. I am the glass half full guy on this one. Having been burnt before. I just hope we keep going and don’t get the vanguard treatment. This letter was so small and just contained small term goals. I just hope they are not shining us on.
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milliebii
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Reply if they are not thinking of growing the EQ/EQ2 teams now why would they do it after the EQ Not! launch?
If EQ Not! fails there will be no cash so no expansion of the teams.
If EQ Not! succeeds why would they not look to develop new games and/or continue investing in its success?
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Oxymorphone
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It was mentioned before AoM that the devs have way better tools (from Landmark) now, to create content more efficient. Hope this small team can make good use of those 🙂
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Blacktopnl
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I remember post on the EQ1 forum of 2004 about how SoE was cutting EQ1 and hang it out to bleed to death when EQ2 would release,
And i keep reading the same post on EQ2, for what its worth, Smed kept his word he won’t close a game as long as it didn’t lose any money.
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Eric T Lewis
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I would feel a lot better about this if they posted a 6 month to one year road map. Just saying we got some short term stuff is ok. I guess I will have to give them to trust them.
I say this even knowing all the stuff that went down with swg and the nge and all the mess that went down before the nge, during and after. I felt burnt for a very long time. However I stuck with eq2 even though they let me down with swg. I just hope that smedley learns from his past mistakes, and decides to be transparent with us. (i hope)
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Blacktopnl
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I cant really blame Smed or SOE for NGE, that was Lucasarts fault, thy had to make Jedi accessible, or they would lose the Star wars IP
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S1lence1
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They barely had enough staff to produce and maintain the game before the layoffs and not we’re supposed to believe this gutting of the staff is going to improve things?
This is nothing but damage control so they can use the players blind loyalty to milk whatever they can before it becomes full pay-to-win.
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Carnifex
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This. I tried posting something similar, but I’ve yet to see it. To be fair, this is the next logical step after the layoffs.
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Eric Poling
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It sounds like they are trying to rush something out quickly to alleviate fears. We all know what happens when they rush content. I am sure they have been working on this for a while but I am wondering how ready this is. Damage control can backfire if it isn’t really ready for prime time. I wish them well on this.
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milliebii
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Interesting so exactly when did EQ2 Senior Producer Holly “Windstalker” Longdale become Executive Producer, EverQuest & EverQuest II and what happened to the Producer of Everquest? I presume that they had one until recently.
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Cheggers
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Yeah, that would have been SmokeJumper, although his role was a little more all-encompassing, but he was basically the director for the EQ franchise as a whole. My guess is, CN figured Holly could absorb his EQ and EQII roles, and Terry Michaels could take over EQN. Makes sense from a business standpoint, tbh.
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Cheggers
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Oh, and EQ might still have a senior producer, although with all the cuts who knows. Possibly, Holly just took over both, which could be a pretty damning indictment as to what CN intend to do with those two, i.e. simply coast until EQN is done.
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Tom
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R.I.P. EQ & EQ2
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Armageddoux
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Very conventional and hollow speech
nothing to learn in it, Guess we just have to read between the lines.
Holly tells what she has to tell, nothing more
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grundge
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Looks like they pulled the plug on their pc games. Website is down and launcher isn’t working.
good riddance!
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Casey Sattler
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You beat me to it 😛
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Kallinia
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Must admit that has me worried, too. It could just be a hiccup but the timing is …… strange. But then again, why pull the plug on everything ?!
Hoping for the best but having this saturday morning sucks
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Lonsen
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Na just some script kiddie douchebag
https://twitter.com/LizardPhoenix
“H1Z1 #offline”
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Edoo
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“All of SOE is down.”
Apparently they don’t realize it is not SoE anymore. lol
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Gak
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Will be interesting to see how well they can handle this attack or if they laid off too many or the wrong people.
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Cheggers
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As of yesterday they still had a job listing for an associate programmer for EQ2. I was tempted to send my resume even if it would be a major step down career wise. But at least then I might have some chance to influence over my favorite game 🙁
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bhagpuss
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This is going to take at least 6-12 months to settle down. Anyone who’s experienced this in their own working life will know the drill. For now, things will run on much as they have done, while the CN people get to grips with what they have acquired and what the genuine potential (rather than what they were sold as the potential) is.
We won’t really have much of an idea of the medium-term future until the autumn at the earliest, more probably next year. In the meantime it should be business as usual, there or thereabouts, although it would be surprising if that extended to full expansions for EQ2 or EQ this year.
It is probably fair to expect the main focus to be on development for consoles from now on, though. The statements made so far seem to indicate that was the area that most interested the new owners. So long as the PC games remain meaningfully profitable, though, they *should* be safe, although you can never be sure.
There’s always the example of Lineage to consider – it’s older than Everquest and yet it remains NCSoft’s most profitable MMO. Being old isn’t the same thing as being over.
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Murfalad
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If they truly believe that money spent on console games will have a better return then they should be looking to offload their PC assets. Since with that thinking the money gained now will get a better return being spent on consoles then the current PC dev teams.
It also makes sense from a technology standpoint where they can focus their efforts on just two fixed hardware platforms rather than three, and also thanks to the closed nature of consoles its hard to get a online game working cross platform.
Its a mess of a company, they really should be looking at either offloading their PC work (and entire games if PC only) to someone else, or offloading their console work to someone else. Instead they their actions don’t really seem to show much faith in the newer titles being more profitable than older ones, yet they have continued to produce console like games now for some time.
With the shallow and very simple gameplay in recent titles they seem to be all in for console development (case DCUO, left click for success :P), yet they are relying on their income from older, more complex, and more social gaming.
Someone at Daybreak games needs to figure out if they want to be a console company or PC one and make a real decision. The muddle of the last few years has just resulted in a company that subsidised continuing failure with the dwindling profits from successful but resource starved games.
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Norlac
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XBone and PS4 are almost a PC – AMD 8 core processor in both you could slap right into a PC. PC development will continue as the “beta” for console versions – they will not split it up.Why do you think they said EQN is only gonna have 8 buttons to press ? Console controller, that’s why.
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alawi
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On the plus side, if anyone should take over the EQ2 mantle she’s the right person. She’s passionate about the franchise, she plays the game and she’s approachable on Twitter and always answers any queries.
I’m glad she wasn’t removed. She probably will take over Smokejumper’s duties and continue.
I do however, believe that the ear of expansions is over. You might get a dungeon here or a adventure pack style there, but for all practical purposes, the game is in Vanguard mode, it will sputter for a few years with minimal content.
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Sub
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Well, as of 1030, 14th Feb, there is no response from SOE or EQ2 websites and the launcher will not run.
Hope it’s not the nuclear option!
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Saute
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Lizardsquad DDoSing the servers. See 2:04 AM 14 Feb update on twitter feed — https://twitter.com/LizardPhoenix
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Saute
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This post doesn’t have anything to do with the article but figured it was one of the surest ways to interact with you (other than in game since we actually play on the same server).
I was wondering if it would be possible to have the server statuses displayed on your eq2wire homepage. From what I can tell, currently, the server statuses are only shown on the right side of the webpage if I click on a link to an article.
Love the site and use it and EQ2u quite a lot.
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Feldon
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There is some kind of glitch causing all of the right-side navigation to slide down to the bottom of the page. Will investigate.
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Merriel
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Sooo, we can’t get in the game, launchpad won’t launch….can’t log into or view the forums, can’t access the SOE website…what’s going on here? I can’t even find any kind of news anywhere on the web about this, other than the few comments posted here. Pretty troublesome news, it seems. :/
Are Daybreak and/or ColumbusNova hiding out while they perform some dastardly deed they failed to tell us about? Or did someone nuke them off the face of the earth? Some news, posted somewhere, would be nice…if only to let us know this is being investigated and looked into.
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Merriel
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Also, be careful with the launchpad. It took a good while for it to load, but it only flashed a moment, then a box popped up saying ‘canceling’. No idea what it was ‘canceling’ but it took several attempts with the task manager to abort the window.
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Avithax
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Idiots at work again
https://twitter.com/LizardPhoenix
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Mentin
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The basic message Holly is trying to convey is that there will be business as usual with EQ2. That is of course pure nonsense. With a 50% staffing cut, and a part of the staff tied down to operational issues that cannot be reduced, of course there will be more than 50% cut in the resources availble to make new content.
Holly has to say that of course, to try avoid people taking their money and walking away. If she had flat out admitted that there is a 75% cut om EQ2 content production, guess what had happened?
But that doesn’t change reality, content production for EQ2 is down by likely way more than 50%.
Will be interesting to see if they are able to make another expansion.. could be just a slightly inflated GU they charge expansion prices for 🙂
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Sub
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Splitpaw is back up
12:00 UTC
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Dulcenia
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The servers were never down. Just the access to them has been clogged up by lizards doing DDOS attacks.
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Carnifex
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So, once again, because they channel logging into games through one central point, EQ2 suffers, even though the attack is aimed at another product. I’m assuming we’ll just have to wait till the hackers get tired because DGC certainly doesn’t have the resources anymore to combat this.
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Adrastus
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I haven’t seen anywhere, but going on assumption, I take it that LoN was part of this deal too? Or is it just flat out dead in the water already? I don’t recall seeing anything new about LoN in a very long time. Not that I ever played it, but do seem to have horrible luck on opening the free monthly packs!
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Feldon
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LON has been on maintenance for a while. It won’t be affected until one day someone forgets how to keep it running.
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Miragian
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I would not be at all surprised if LoN just goes away and the loot goes straight into marketplace. I don’t expect the game itself actually has much in the way of a player base that isn’t just playing for the loot for EQ and EQ2.
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