Tag: EQ2

You don’t need to have a huge mansion in order to do really neat things in EQ2 housing – this video is of my Templar’s home, Dasie. She’s a halfling (that automatically makes her home amazing without any work) on the Oasis server. Enjoy!

Players will be able to pre-order the next EQ2 expansion starting on January 18th according to the EQ2players web site. On that same note, if you were looking forward to diving into the expansion at the previous release date of February 8th, you’ll have a little bit more of a wait. It’s been said that the expansion will now be releasing the 22nd of February.

As you know, we’ve been working hard on the “Destiny of Velious” expansion pack. It was originally scheduled for release on Feb 8th, but after getting feedback from players, spending time playing the game internally, and discussing ways to make things better, we’ve decided to move the release date back to Feb 22nd instead.

Feb 22nd gives us another couple of weeks for polish, tuning, and a honing of the fun factor for the expansion. We think the wait will be well worthwhile.

Check EverQuest2.com for the announcement on pre-order dates! And also stay tuned for an announcement about a raft of cool events coming out in the week after DoV becomes available!

On a side note, we’ll be adding another batch of players into the Closed Beta on Jan 24th, so if you put in an application and haven’t been accepted yet, don’t give up yet. Your time may be coming! – SmokeJumper announced on the EQ2 forums.

Fine tuning is always a good thing and I have no doubt that the developers and community involved are all working incredibly hard to get this expansion out the door. Thoughts? Please feel free to post them in comments below!

I know, by now you’re thinking to yourselves “Stargrace! Stop beating a dead horse!” but it’s not so easy to simply stop writing about something I’m incredibly passionate about. Plus a lot of my friends are still playing the game, so I hear about this subject all of the time. I wanted to name a few things that Sony could have done different to avoid the feedback from the public that they are now receiving.

In regards to the TrueFreeblood race: In order to avoid a huge amount of screaming from the public (but note, this would not eliminate all screaming; because then we wouldn’t be human) all Sony had to do was offer the race for free to everyone without conditions. Release it as a Velious race or a perk before Velious if you want (so the company at least sells a few extra boxes) but allow every player to create one without cost. Now, add all of your vampire goodies to the station market. Sure you won’t make as much money as offering the entire race for $20 early to the masses, but you’ll save yourself a lot of fallout. After all, one of the finer things that must be done is finding a balance between making money and selling things on the marketplace, and keeping players (old and new) happy. As my previous arguments pointed out I do not mind the market, but I feel that a RACE is supposed to come with the very basic $14.99/m that I pay (or an expansion). Froglok. Sarnak. Arasai. Fae. Make us pay for every little cultural extra (animations, appearance weapons, homes, mounts special to the race) but the basics should be included.

In regards to the Lucan D’Lere merger. I thought of, and discussed with Arkenor, a few possibilities for this and none of them will make sony any money which is probably the problem. Lets assume that people from LDL are upset with the news of their merger, because I know at least a few are (Arkenor, Ysharros, G33kg0dd3ss I’m looking at you three in specific). I know a good number are happy to be moving to a higher population server but I’m going to play the side of the role player in this scenario. Number one, Sony said that they could not move LDL players to AB because the population on AB is already far too high. Why not allow those who want to leave AB do so, for free. Lots of people pick a server based on its population. Due to the recent merges, I’d expect those populations to be much higher now then they were before. I also imagine there are a lot of non role play players who would not mind moving to another server. On that same note, why not allow those role players of AB who are tired of the crowds, to move to LDL for free. AND why not open up moving to LDL in general for free. The part that irks me is that although Sony has stated AB is overflowing with players – you can still pay $25 and move there. If the folks from LDL merging are adamant about staying on an RP server (and lets assume that a handful will be) they will be more than happy to pay $25 to move to another RP server instead of losing their ‘culture’ (for lack of a better term). Win-win for Sony.

In regards to the Velious Beta forums fiasco. For those who were unaware, the Velious beta forums were moved from the EQ2players web site, to the EQ2X players web site. Why? Because EQ2X players are unable to view the EQ2 forums without a regular EQ2 subscription. Now this entire time we’ve been hearing that “EQ2X will be completely separate, you won’t even know it’s there!” – except for those people in the Velious beta, because you’ll have to log into your beta forums from the EQ2X forums. Also when you actually play the Velious beta (note – I am NOT in the beta, this is through observation of others playing) it announces on Raptr that you’re playing – you guessed it – EQ2X. I realize this is because it’s using the same servers and what not, but still. For the life of me I can not figure out why EQ2X players need an entire forum to themselves. Why don’t they just have a sub topic in the EQ2 forums like the Bazaar and Vox servers do. Aside from stuff being on sale is there that much different in the basic game play? The mechanics (as far as I’m aware) all work the same for both games except one is Pay to Play and one runs on a subscription. I think Sony created extra work for themselves in fabricating these entirely new forums, and it should not have been done in the first place.

I realize it’s easy for me to say all of this stuff since I am a 3rd party, removed from any of the actual facts and decision making. I know the people at Sony work really hard and I have nothing but admiration for the Developers and the folks in Community Management because I know that a lot of these choices are out of their hands – but – someone really needs to wake up. Time and time again these past few weeks I have seen veteran players state that they no longer know the games they once loved. That things have changed, the company has changed. New direction is good; but not at the cost of your loyal veteran players.

I was asked if I was interested in doing a guest post over at mmorpg-info.org regarding my decision to leave EQ2. It’s  not often I get asked to do these and I was flattered (plus I’ve been a long fan of the site) so of course I said yes. You can find the article over here: Guest Post. Hopefully with that this unpleasantness of giving up a game is behind me and I will move on to writing about other adventures.

A few notes. Since I’ve posted my goodbye things have changed even more. There is the server merge between Lucan D’Lere and Crushbone, which for those who do not know is the merge of an RP server into a non-RP server. We already saw this when Vanguard merged, and while it doesn’t affect me I do know how disheartening it is for those role players out there. I also think that this choice is better than no choice, or the choice of letting a server completely die.

Then there was the fact that all of the Velious beta forums were moved to the EQ2X forums which means those people who wanted to completely ignore EQ2X would also have to ignore those beta forums and never log in. With this move came a leak of everything that was on those forums, as they were set to public. Not only that but the old forums which resided on the EQ2 (regular) section were actually completely deleted, not transferred over. Players were requested to start their beta posts from scratch, no archives.

My question to that would be – why are there completely separate forums. EQ2X members are not allowed to view the ‘regular’ forums at all. They don’t have access. Players with a paid EQ2 subscription have access to both. This entire us verses them that I feel goes on between EQ2 and EQ2X (enforced by Sony, not the players) is just odd.

In any case, there you have it. Now, lets get back to playing games!

Safe travels.

A good question was asked to me yesterday in the comments of my ‘Goodbye EQ2’ post.

“Could you try to find it in your heart to figure out what it would require to get you BACK into EQ2? The reason for me asking is that I got that question from my wife, who still plays. I quit… months ago.”

What would it take for me to start playing again? Well. Some definite changes would have to take place. I’m not saying that all of these would have to happen, but enough so that my opinion of the game and those making the decisions changed.

1. Large and In Charge – I want to know beyond a doubt that the people working on the game and making the decisions actually care about whether or not the game is going to succeed or fail. That they are openly communicating with their player base, and taking players consideration into account. I want to know exactly how they are getting the idea that “most of” the player base wants or does not want a particular thing. I want to see constant progress and a real attempt at improvements. If those creating the game don’t care about it on a very personal level, why would anyone else.

2. Pricing – I don’t mind that EQ2 has a market but I’m not going to blow $25 on any one thing when I already pay a monthly fee and expansion fees. Entice players to spend more by offering lower prices. $55 to rename a guild? $65 for a Vampire Package? I understand that games may not be making what they should be profit wise, but high prices alienate your loyal consumers. If everything in the store was 1/3rd of the price it normally is on top of my subscription fee, I would be much happier.

3. Us vs. Them – The separation of the EQ2X servers and EQ2 servers has to go.

4. Not everything has to be a marketplace item – Almost every single announcement of anything going on in the last few months has revolved around the marketplace. The neatest looking gear, the coolest house items, they are all marketplace items. This point actually goes along with my first point. It doesn’t feel like anyone cares about the game any more they only care about creating things for the marketplace.

5. Learning from their mistakes – I want to see proof that when something goes wrong, or doesn’t work out the company LEARNS from this and improves upon it and makes it better. This one is a little harder to prove, I know. Lets take expansions for example. Lets look at world of warcraft (I know, bad example but it’s what I have to work with here). Personally I felt BC was a poor expansion. I didn’t enjoy the quests or the dungeons. Then came Wrath, which I loved even though there were things that could be improved upon. Then came Cataclysm which I loved even more. With each expansion I felt that Blizzard was actually learning from their mistakes of the previous expansion. I could see a clear line of “oh, this didn’t really work out too well, lets make it better”. I want that very badly for EQ2.

Those are my major issues. I don’t see any of them changing any time soon but I would LOVE to see it happen. I don’t hate EQ2. I don’t hate Sony. I feel sad and upset over where the game has gone direction wise but I don’t think that it’s anything more than the game just not being “for me” any more. I played it for 6 years and enjoyed it for countless hours. I have over 1,150 blog posts alone dedicated towards the game. I understand that times change, that games change, but there has got to be a balance of bringing in new money and players vs. losing all of your old ones. Veteran players are not supposed to be sacrificed for new changes.