Feldon
In the weeks or months leading up to a new Game Update or Expansion, players have come to expect the familiar call to Testers to try out new Group or Raid content. Sometimes a specific schedule is posted, with developer chaperones to monitor player reaction to encounters, zone design, and so forth. At other times, testing as at-your-own pace. Either way, Bug Reports are collected and placed in a queue to be fixed at some future date. If any “show stopping” bugs occurred during this Testing, such as a boss that would not spawn or could not be defeated,...
Commentary
Sorry for the lack of EQ2Wire updates, but I’m hard at work on another little data mining project that I think will be worth the effort. -Morgan
We have identified a problem with responses to the Sleeper’s Tomb Survey on EQ2Wire. Specifically, after looking at timestamps, we have determined that through some automated means, nearly 200 answers were submitted within a span of a few minutes. This is highly suspicious and casts doubt on the veracity of the survey. It is unfortunate that someone would abuse the system to try to pad or discredit results. Further surveys will be conducted on EQ2Wire only after we are able to prevent duplicate voting by a combination of IP addresses, sessions, and/or cookies. UPDATE: I’ve gone through and removed...
Brian Green, former developer on Meridian 59 (and currently on the Storybricks team), has posted an intriguing essay on the realities of Community Management for an MMO, the day-to-day challenges, and how it can go wrong if mishandled. At one time or another, I have made many of the same points as this article, but it is nice to see it all written down in one place. Many times people see community managers only as the people who post news about a game. Sometimes they’re derisively painted as the mouthpieces of developers or management, the hapless people who have...
NOTICE: We have identified a problem with responses to the Sleeper’s Tomb Survey on EQ2Wire. Specifically, after looking at timestamps, we have determined that through some automated means, approximately 180 answers were submitted within just a few minutes. This is highly suspicious and casts doubt on the veracity of the survey. It is unfortunate that someone would abuse the system to try to manipulate or discredit results. Further surveys will be conducted on EQ2Wire only after we are able to prevents duplicate voting by a combination of IP addresses, sessions, and/or cookies. UPDATE: The results of this survey have...
Have you taken on the group or raid versions of the new Sleeper’s Tomb found in the Eastern Wastes? If so, why not take our Sleeper’s Tomb Survey below. If you have not yet run the zone, please come back and take the poll when you do. Results will be posted in a week or so depending on response rate. UPDATE: There was a problem with the Survey Answers not matching up with the Survey Questions. I have RESET the Survey, so if you took it yesterday morning, please RE-TAKE the Survey! Thanks and I apologize for the inconvenience.
Nearly every EverQuest II expansion has included some kind of new feature, yet we tend to associate expansions with their content. Think of any EQ2 expansion and our recollections are of the continents, solo quests, group and raid zones, and level cap raises contained within each update. So what happened with Age of Discovery? It’s no secret that the original plan was to release two expansions — Velious I and Velious II — and charge for both of them. However it must have been felt that players would react negatively to a “Velious double-dip”. So Age of Discovery was...
Today brought a double helping of news for players of EverQuest II, and I wanted to share a few thoughts I’ve got on each subject. EverQuest II: Chains of Eternity After a features expansion, and then a “guspansion”, Chains of Eternity puts us back on track with a content expansion. This time around, we’ll see Guild, Tradeskill, and Adventuring Level Caps all raised to 95. We’ll also see more expansion in the Prestige AAs tab with new abilities for each Subclass. Also new in the expansion will be Prestige Tradeskills for crafters wanting to specialize their trade. A truly...
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...
All In Moderation The official support forums for any product must, by their very nature, present a good impression to potential customers. The forums should put the company’s best foot forward. The EQ2 forums have had their fair share of technical issues. But if customers criticize the product, this should be seen as an opportunity for Community Management, Developers, Designers, and Management to respond to these issues and show that customer feedback is valued. To avoid misunderstandings, Community Management can be a great liaison between developers and players.
Today was the “EQ2 Dev Team TweetChat” which saw EQ2 developers respond to a number of questions posed via Twitter and Facebook. EQ2 Zam now has the transcript of this “developer chat” available. Admittedly, there are few revelations but it is always good to see developer communication.
EQ2Wire updates have been a bit light lately. But it wasn’t my fault. I ran out of gas. I… I had a flat tire. I didn’t have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn’t come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts! IT WASN’T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD! Actually, I have a rather good excuse… One does not simply walk into St. Petersburg, Russia.
Flourchild
We all know about the Alternate Models. Some of us love them, some of us hate them, some of us just don’t care. But which is used more often? Do people use one over the other or a combination of both? Are people really happy with the way the models are set up right now or would they like to have a third option? If you’re one of those hoping for a third option, you may get your wish…or maybe not.
Players on the Nagafen server have had little to celebrate over the last year. Between a number of unpopular mechanics changes, and the popularity of Battlegrounds continually nibbling away at ‘proper’ PvP, it’s been a long time since there’s been any good news. But as if the forthcoming Game Update 64‘s substantive changes to PvP and Battlegrounds weren’t enough, tonight Nagafen players are celebrating the server first kill of Vyskudra the Ancient. If you haven’t heard about this, you’re not alone. Observers of GuildProgress may be puzzled to learn that this enemy has been defeated at all on Nagafen,...
How many times have you or someone you know looked around at the graphics on EQ2 and thought “I really wish that looked just a little better”? We play the game to not only enjoy the content, but also the visual aspects of the EverQuest2 world. A lot of people have to keep their graphics settings low in order not to get lag, and thus miss out on all the beauty and detail that the devs put into the game. And when you consider the graphics that so many newer games have, it’s sometimes puzzling as to why EQ2...
A couple of months ago, I was contacted by Michele Marvel, a doctoral student at Walden University. She and her husband have played MMOs together for some 13 years, including Aion, Conan, Everquest, Everquest 2, Guild Wars, Rift, Star Wars Galaxies, etc. As a Psychology student, she has been very interested in research into why people play MMOs, and the communities that develop between like-minded players. To that end, she has put together an intriguing MMO player survey Characteristics and Motivation to Play in Adults Who Play Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. It took me about 20 minutes...
UPDATE #2: EQ2Wire is now back in business! We have corrected a couple of issues on EQ2U and have now started posting to EQ2Wire again. Hope you all had a good July 4th if you’re in the US, otherwise I hope folks are having a good summer. UPDATE: Commenting was broken by the server upgrade, and is taking longer than anticipated. I hope to be back 100% on July 5th. We are continuing to work on getting EQ2Wire and EQ2U fully updated and operational after a short-notice Server Upgrade. There has been a lot of news in EQ2 in...
If there is one thing that must surely keep the producers and designers of MMOs up at night, it’s the pace at which players complete their content. It takes months and months to conceptualize, design, create, populate, and script quality MMO content. The producers and designers always start out with the best intentions of wanting their content to be fun and for the rewards to be commensurate to the challenge. But those goals must at some point take a back seat to the First Commandment of MMO design: Thou shalt make content that lasts!
A Sony Corp. logo pictured at an electronic store in Tokyo. (Yuriko Nakao / April 9, 2012) Although it is my understanding that this has no immediate ramifications for Sony Online Entertainment, which has already undergone two rounds of belt-tightening, and recently signed an exclusive European distribution deal with ProSiebenSat.1 which no doubt had financial incentives behind it, this is news that several people have reported in so I’m reposting it. UPDATE: Sony Corp has revised their expected financial losses for 2011 to $6.4 billion. From ArsTechnica: Sony Corp. is planning on cutting loose 10,000 of its employees in...
Linda “Brasse” Carlson led a panel on Community Management at Game Developers Conference 2012. Massively‘s Karen Bryan brings us the story: What do dwarves and Monty Python have in common? They both feature prominently in Linda “The Brasse” Carlson’s GDC 2012 talk about the front lines of the SOE community relations team. Given the recent roller coaster ride of the ProSiebenSat.1 deal and the turmoil on the forums that followed, I found it interesting to hear what it’s like to be a member of the community management folks as they try to handle being in the middle of it...
This is TOTALLY off-topic to EQ2 and SOE, but I feel it is worth breaking protocol to do a short article. Today is the last day to clear your Google Search History. In case you aren’t aware, every time you have searched Google over the last few years while an active cookie has been running for Youtube, Gmail, or another Google service, your search terms have been kept, including the keywords, date and time you searched, going back years. Washington Post / Bloomberg | Choosing What You Share with Google | MSNBC
This week, we’ve heard things crashing and crumbling down from all directions in the EQ2 community, so it was easy to miss an in-game barrier being shattered. We’re talking of course about the Plane of War! On August 25, 2011, Game Update 61 arrived, bringing with it the challenging Drunder and the War of Zek which rages inside it. It has taken six months for the first raid guild to clear the towers of Sullon, Tallon, and finally Vallon Zek on challenge mode, and thus unlocking the Plane of War on the Antonia Bayle server. We took a moment...
For many, the damage is already done, but here are some updates… From John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment via Twitter: We are working on a plan to insure we don’t split the communities up. More info to follow. From Brasse on the EQ2 Forums: As we approach the weekend, we wanted to share that we are working on a plan to keep our communities together with the ProSieben deal. Again, we thank you for your patience – we’ll provide more information as soon as it is available. From Protagonist, a Manager at Alaplaya, CEO of ProSiebenGames, via...
Eric “Piestro” Cleaver has been named as new EverQuest II Community Manager: Hey Folks, My name is Piestro, and I’m a Halfling. /em waits for the “Hi Piestro.” Some of you may have seen me in an occasional post, Facebook update, or tweet in my role as a member of the SOE Community Team. Previously I was assigned to EverQuest, but it’s my pleasure to announce that I am now taking on the role of EverQuest II Community Relations Manager! So who am I? Well, I’m a long time fan of SOE Games, and an experienced Community Relations professional....