Conspiracy Theory

[Gardeltron]

[Jillaani Stormbear]

[Gardeltron]

[Scowls]

[Tugela]

[KB]

[Zaviax]

[KB]

[Kozinad]

My take on EQ's current problems:

Lead Designer comes up with a blueprint for a grand expansion that would take 6 months to do properly. The plan is awesome, well thought out, and would make raiders, casuals, and trade skillers all delighted.

2 months later all the content is released in unfinished form.

Over the next 2 months many of the worst problems are fixed.

Thats 4 months.

But instead of taking 2 more months to perfect the expansion they move on to the next expansion.

In almost every bad thing that happens in EQ I can see slivers of genius poking through. But maintaining and improving a game such as Everquest is hard. When Sony devotes sufficient resources to a problem they tend to come up with very good solutions, and in many cases their solutions are very ingenius and innovative. Thats why they are still around after 7 years with a fairly loyal customer base. I hope that Sony can keep the game stable and enjoyable for years to come. But it will likely be a bumpy road as the code base will continue to get bigger and harder to manage over time. Its just the way large software projects work.

It would be nice if Sony could just make itself a Breast Plate with AC = 1000, HP = 45,000,000, and lots of focus effects to ward off the difficulties of keeping Everquest alive and kicking. Just that in the real world these things just don't exist! Or if they did they would be for some other class...