Summit Report, Feb 08

[Samanna]

Again this year, SOE invited a variety of players/bloggers/columnists/webmasters who cover or comment on the various SOE titles to participate in a series of discussions about current and potential initiatives.

The EverQuest squad was composed of Kela, Naladini, Zatozia and me. I think there were non-SOE people invited from every game, although weather in Dallas prevented some from participating. I don't have a full list, but noticeably absent was Loral "the voice of the casual player", whose interests, it seems, have changed.

Thursday evening featured a mixer where SOE Community people and summit invitees showed their stuff on one of those console games where someone sings, someone plays guitar, someone plays drums... I don't even know what it was called. I guess I'm getting old. But I did know most of the songs, so I guess a new generation is getting exposed to some good classic music.

Friday morning found us on a whale watching cruise, where the EQ crowd (EQ annoyingly referred to as "E Q One" by SOE) sat around a table discussing forum contests, community features and stuff like that. Btw, Kela's guild raids 7 days a week: even at my most hardcore, I never even logged in 7 days a week.

Friday afternoon was a mixer at the 'beach' of the W hotel, with developers, designers, producers and community people from most or all of the titles (btw, I claim credit for the collective noun, a "release" of developers). As our pre-gathering instructions indicated that we were to focus not on specific classes or even games, but on SOE as a whole, I did not have a list of questions with me. However, I did manage to come up with a few. Note that this was just conversation, not legally binding promises.

Merloc admitted the need to renew powersources from current content, and will likely be addressing that. He visibly shuddered when I asked about new Epics, but explained how labor intensive it was to design 16 Epic quests, but said that it might be possible to create a new class of "epic" augments or items, just without all of the backstory questing.

Nodyin seemed surprised that he was thought well of in general. I explained how much players really do appreciate not only the changes he's made, but the information he posts on why he can or can't do something. When I asked him about AAs that take class abilities in a new direction (like VP back in the day), he implied that some were coming while remaining vague about what or when. He stated that he reads the boards a lot, and that he read every single post on the AA feedback he requested recently, and thanked everyone for their input. When I asked about one of my pet peeves, having to keep a pen and paper checklist of what steps one has and hasn't done in a particular progression arc, he replied that he had just added functionality so that the SoF progression NPC would tell you, when asked, what your first missing task was; so that if you had done steps 1, 2, 3, 6, and 8, it would send you off to get task 4. He said he'd like to see a similar way to check on future and possibly past progression arcs, but that would depend on his workload. Lastly, he wanted me to get the word out to Shamans in particular that when he creates general pet control AAs, he "checks the box" to make them Shaman usable too, but this does not mean that getting stuff like "pet no cast" takes away, in any way, from AA count or development time for AAs designed for us. They're just freebies, to use (or not) as we see fit.

Rytan has taken Vahlar's place as (with Maddoc) an EQ Assistant Lead Designer (which, incidentally, makes Zatozia the EQ Lore Mistress). He predicted lots of instanced group content, with "hard" settings (like DoD) for harder mobs and better loot. He also implied that, similar to Anguish flagging, there would be both grouped and raided components to end zone access, and that those with the group part completed could be "85'd in" to loot a backflag piece. He also expressed a desire to drop the 85% rule to something lower, but was not specific about it. He said that he was not aware of our Slows writeup at http://samanna.net/sham.issues/slows.feb08.shtml , and asked me to send him a link (done). And he said he thought the issue with F8 picking up the Idol had been fixed - lemme know if it's not.

Friday evening found us at Dick's Last Resort, with the obligatory napkin fights. I'm sure people have pictures they'll post. I got to say hi to Gloriana, but not talk very much (that place is LOUD).

Saturday morning after breakfast we had presentations and discussions about upcoming SOE initiatives. We were told that LoN has already exceeded expectations, and were given previews of Free Realms and The Agency. Someone at The Agency must have MI background, since the cover page bore an "SCI" warning. We were sworn to total secrecy about The Agency (only allowed to say how cool it was), so that's all you get about that, except to say that the Agency is being touted as a persistent online shooter, with an FPS-like interface in an MMO-like environment. Free Realms is the game targeted at a younger crowd (and, judging by the oohs and aahs when they showed the puppy animations, females of all ages), and is a really good looking game. There are not really any hard progression milestones, but there are some goals. Everything is initially non-agro, so one could explore everything without killing anything. There will likely be a full suite of parental controls, so that it can be a safe environment for kids. Some of the quests are sort of like mini-games, java applets, and each one is endlessly repeatable.

So, that wraps it up. The trip home was hell, I had been fighting something all weekend, and it finally won out on the flight back, and nothing seemed to go right. In fact, I'm home sick from work today, or else you wouldn't even have this writeup yet.

I guess I should mention that each expansion set of LoN cards has featured the likenesses of some SOE players... That's Naladini on "Disintegrate", Hulkling on "Aged Bo Staff", I'm pretty sure that's Kela on "Ball of Incineration", and that's me on "Forged Throwing Axe". Smile

http://samanna.net/3pix/lon/summitcards1.jpg
http://samanna.net/3pix/lon/summitcards2.jpg

[dindaur]

sounds like you had a great time and it sounds like the devs are coming out with some neat new stuff that im looking forward to

[Hulkling]