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EverQuest II: Producer's letter
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
There's a new Producer's Letter available on the EverQuest II official website. Below, we have provided you with the opening of the letter, but there is far more information available at the link below. If you are a player of this game, or just have an interest, I strongly advise giving this at least a quick read.
Thanks to all of you, EverQuest II is growing. We've been attracting more and more people over the past months. That's one of the big factors that went into our decision to spend time improving the progression for new characters. We've been getting a lot of feedback on it, improving it as we go, and we look forward to it going live this week as a part of Update 19! There's another topic we've been listening on that I wanted to talk about today. Server growth, and the perception of the size of the worlds. In reality most of our 36 US, Europe, and Asia EQ2 servers currently house the same number of people as your average server from any MMO. Because of the size of our game world, some of the worlds feel less full than they should for them be ideal, fun places to play. When we first started out, EQ2 had 369 total zones or instances of zones. The game has since expanded to having over 600 of them, just about doubling the playable space. On some worlds, it can seem like there are fewer people to make friends and group with, fewer opportunities to bump into others. Nothing makes a world feel more alive than other people. When you don't run into enough other people, folks who otherwise love the game are more likely to drift away. It's no secret. It's a problem that's been discussed on a few of the server forums, and it's one that we've been spending quite a bit of time thinking about as well. Over the next few weeks, we're going to do something that might seem counterintuitive on the surface for a growing game, and combine a few of our existing servers reinvesting in the ones that remain. Some people who don't play EQ2 will have bad things to say about this move. Yes, this is a controversial decision, but our primary concern has to be making sure that the worlds are all healthy, fun places to play for the people who enjoy playing EQ2. |
Read the rest of the letter, here.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
It's about time they consolidated their servers. Now they just need to remove zone instancing (Like Commonlands for example) and the game will be fine.
Hurry up with those PvP servers! I need something to play...
Joined - July 2004
Im glad that there doing this because there were a bunch of heavy servers, and a bunch of empty servers, but very little medium.
I think this will mak the game healthier, and im glad Kithicor is getting a bost from nerik, becuase Kithicor has taknen a big population drop.
The new EQ2, better than ever befor !
don't click this link...
They can claim growth all they want.
I don't believe them.
Either way, for those who play and enjoy the game. Good luck with it.
I've been playing EQ2 since the beginning (and WoW and EQ1 as well), and I feel that EQ2 does seem to have grown a bit. More accurately. it had dipped and now seems to have recovered some. Either way, my server feels pretty healthy to me and I can always find folks to hang around with if thats what I want to do. I do pretty well solo as well, so there is rarely too much pressure.
One thing I give a lot of credit to both EQ2 and WoW for is that they've done a very good job of giving casual people and soloers a great atmosphere and fun stuff to do that doesnt require max server populations.
These consolidations sound like a good idea if population on those servers allows for it.
It's funny that a game that says the number of player are growing, have to consolidate servers.
Usually you do that only if the number is decreasing.
But it s SoE we are talking about so anything goes.
Hehehe, only SOE can pull this off:
"Yup, yup, we're growing, population is good we swear but uh... we're going to merge servers because everything looks empty. But don't worry, we're still growing
"
It's almost as if they don't even care anymore if their insulting our intelligence, they just assume we're going to buy whatever crap they spew out. Oh well, at least it's worth a good laugh.
All that being said, it's deffanitely a good move. On my last EQ2 stint, even the AB server I'd been on from the start was looking sparce. Sure you'd see people moving around doing this and that but it was all very minimal, certainly not even close to when EQ2 first came out or even the following 6 months. Good move in my oppinion.
As for getting rid of subclasses, I'm split on the decision. I really liked the gradually moving into a class, it made you feel really involved and did alot for immersion, I know many people are sad to see this go. Will it affect the way the game plays ? Very little I'd imagine, but it's at the sacrific of EQ2's uniqueness which at this point is pretty much done gone either way.
About the only entertainment I get out of SOE now days is seeing what they do with their games, why actually play them when you can just sit back and watch the SOE's drama ridden game development process go at it.
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The game is definitely growing. There have been so many new zones added since launch that it was inevitable that servers would need to be merged. On the Butcherblock server there are plenty of people around so I am a bit concerned over how crowded it is going to get with a merger.
All in all, I think this is a great move even considering the negative view some would have over the mere fact that there is a server merge (as evidenced from some of the comments above).
To be honest we don't have the numbers to imply if the are actually growing or not. I play on one of the heaver pop servers and i been seeing lots of new ppl. So i have concluded that the heavy pop servers are growing while the low pop are shrinking. So that can mean:
A) More ppl leave the lower pop server and the game is infact loosing subscribers OR...
Both can be correct and implied with the only info we have which wa stated above.
1. The number of zones have increased dramatically since launch so now you've got people spread out over a wider area.
2. Most people join servers with high pops, therefore, as people leave the lower pop servers and new people join the high/med pop servers the population gap between low and med/high pop servers become more and more extreme.
3. Peak concurrency, usually, drops over time. When a game is new you might have 40% of the playerbase on at any given time, as time goes on it drops to 20, 15, or 10%.
Doesn't make sense that people claim this is doom and gloom. The hardware from the servers being merged is being added into all the servers to make them more able to handle their tasks. Essentially, it's like taking the population cap from 4k to 5k or whatever the servers are capped at.
As someone who has been playing EQ2 for quite some time I can say without a doubt there are more people joining this game than leaving.
Until you cancel your subscription, you are only helping to continue the cycle of mediocrity.