Feldon NOTE: Contains no EQ2 content.
From the EQ2 Forums:
Greetings Norrathians!
DING! Another year has slipped by like a roguish Gigglegibber. Santa Glug is up to his old tricks and it’s time to usher in another new year!
This past year was a whirlwind with GU100 in Spring, live events, weekly live and Stormhold updates, new Isle of Refuge and Race to Trakanon servers, and, of course, the Kunark Ascending expansion. Whew!
And we are ready to keep on keepin’ on! We are well into our planning for 2017 and have some exciting plans, including a very cool concept for our next expansion that we are running through now. Big plans for Norrath!
The Race to Trakanon server was our first experiment with an event server and we are looking at options for what we may do in the coming year.
You can expect to see a content update in the next few months., Our plans for you for 2017 include more content, focus on performance, fixing bugs, and of course, FUN!
There is plenty more to come and we are truly thankful and amazed by you, the community, who play our game and love Norrath! We’re heading into year 13 and it feels lucky!
Here’s wishing you and yours a warm, wonderful holiday and a staggeringly great new year!
Sincerely,
Holly “Windstalker” Longdale
Executive Producer, EQ & EQ2
Was “Race to Trak” that successful? I was always dubious on that.
I suppose that depends on how you would define “success”. Was is it profitable for them? I imagine so. The ruleset was largely the same as Stormhold’s, with just a few additional restrictions. The work that was done in terms of itemization, etc. would have been done anyway for Stormhold, so that’s a sunk cost. And of course, server longevity isn’t really an issue; it’s not intended to be.
There were two major downsides, from what I could tell. One was that people from the standard servers really didn’t know what to expect. Their reaction to the restrictions and limitations of the server (very slow leveling, lack of fast travel options, etc.) were fairly negative. Players from Stormhold who went there had an advantage in the sense that they knew what to expect, and how to level efficiently and progress under that ruleset (e.g.: leveling using collections and so on)
The second issue was just one of toxicity. By account of most people I’ve talked with who stuck it out there, the community (such that it was) was fairly terrible. Its competitive nature meant that helping someone else could mean you losing out on server first achievements, etc. Playing on a server where the Asshat-O-Meter is constantly red-lining doesn’t really make for engaging gameplay in an MMO.
En France on appelle ça : Service minimum ! 🙁
In France we are used to talk of : Minimal Service 🙁
Really no news and no needs writing us for so few to tell us ! I remember of ages ago where there were a real communication between SOE and players.
Margaret Luperza Kron you miss us !
I don’t blame Holly Longdale, she must probably (surely ?) obey orders, but really it’s frustating for players
French translation of the Windstalker Communication can be found on : http://www.guerrier-celeste.fr/48-frontnews/734-windstalker-communique.html
I don’t want to sound overly snarky especially at the Holidays, but really this Letter is kind of disappointing. It reads as if to say “OMG, today is my last day in the office before I leave for holiday break and I better slap together something and get it published before I leave”.
It is a series of one to two sentence paragraphs most of which are highlighting the accomplishments of 2016 and how great and highly successful their endeavors were.
And when it comes to talking about the future it uses open ended vague terms like more content and fun (in all caps) and of course bug fixing and performance tuning.
Is any of that new to us? Or really is it just rehashing BAU activities for them and us as customers…
And really how is that different from any other time? I bet if you aligned this with last years Letter there would be a pretty consistent theme of vague references.
I guess if there was a highlight to it – something to point to – she used the word “expansion”. Not adventure pack, not GU, not guspansion, campaign, or campspanion… She said expansion – – now what does that mean? Who knows…it’s about as elastic as the vendor needs it to be when they size it and launch it.
So to me this Letter is as much directed at her staff and team and patting them on the back for their hard work and effort as it is a message to their customers. It certainly didn’t excite me or make me jazzed up to buy more Daybreak widgets next year.
To me (snarky on) – this Letter could have been as short as “Thank you for being our customers. Happy Holidays. See you in 2017” and would have conveyed the same message and amount of information.
You summed up what I felt but couldn’t articulate after reading it. Have 5 internets.
Completely Spot On. The only people this would be newsworthy to are first-time EQ2 players who aren’t aware that there is a spring game update and November expansion every year.
I wish there was a way to put 1000 likes on what you just said. I have to agree I read this and it was hey we did great for our customers. Im like well, yea if you like to group maybe. I felt this past year very lacking. The letter read expect more of the same.
I’m sorry, but I’m going to stop reading comments on this web-site too.
Why tell us?
We’ll never know, because he/she isn’t going to read comments any more 😉
I’ve got a plan. Of course I’ve got a plan. It’s a great plan. I’m telling you, it will be GREAT! That’s what it sounded like to me…
Make Norrath Great Again.
si seulement ? 🙂
if only it is still possible …
Your disclaimer note at the top was spot-on, Feldon. :\
Dear Feldon, i am very, very sad to tell you :
for this plan, it is DEFINITLY much to late 😥
Daybreak lost thousands of European Players 2016 becourse of their “phantastic” plans and all the work they did not have done.
A game cant live when the Game-Developers dont care for the players and the Community..
Take a look at the raid progression HP, you can see how many Forces died becourse of the “great” plans of Daybreak 2016…..
Do you realy think 2017 is going much better ? 😯
Daybreak got $7 million from ProSeiben in exchange for EU SOE customers. It was all about the cash.