SmokeJumper has assured players in a thread “Where did my adventure go?!” that not only does EQ2 have a long-term plan besides the standard game updates and expansions, but that much will be revealed soon. If you have taken for granted that next year’s expansion will be Velious Part 2, raising the level cap to 100, you may want to read on!
Watch this space. I’ll be posting stuff soon to describe this year’s slate. Probably next week sometime, maybe the week after. We’re going to be doing some VERY cool stuff this year and I think you’ll start to see more and more of the kinds of things you mention here.
We’re already one of the best. Now it’s time to get unique.
and:
We’ll be posting next year’s slate of coming attractions soon.
Considering the extremely tight leash that Marketing and PR have kept the EQ2 team on in the recent past, it just seems unlikely that all the permissions have been acquired to tell us what’s coming more than a few months out. We’ve never gotten information that far in advance (except Fan Faire), so consider us skeptical.
Players have been posting some great feedback. SmokeJumper took the time to respond to some of it:
“Class distinction is turning to mud.” – Notso
We actually agree with that. We have lots of great ideas about how the classes could be changed to make them a lot more fun to play, but I freely admit that we feel like the players playing currently wouldn’t really care for a shakeup of their classes like that. Maybe it’s something we should have a round robin about at Fan Faire and talk about publicly so we get fan reaction in real time. It’s a gigantic fundamental change for the game because it touches the heart of each and every player that built their character to be the way it is for good reasons. Definitely do-able (although it’s a large job), but we need to hear strong support from players before we’d make a move like this.
Okay. It’s been a while since we talked about this internally. I’ll bring it up with the team soon and discuss. Thanks for the prodding.
“AA is the new level. EQ1 got this way and that is when I left. I wish they would do away with one or the other.” – Notso
This is probably something EQ Next might consider, but removing levels from EQII is an even more fundamnetal change and unlikely to ever occur. Conversely, just using levels instead of AA doesn’t really have the same effect. For example, because only AA were raised in DoV, you never outlevel any of the content. There may come a time when the loot you gain somewhat trivalizes early content, but you never grey-out or green-out previous content. In that way, AA raises are nicely attractive.
Certainly, level 100 beckons to us all, but not yet, and not for a while.
“To max AA’s as soon as possible you need to turn off exp and do every quest you can find while leveling up (ed: thus removing any possible alternate exploration path for any alts thereafter.)” – Notso
Another good point. We’ve talked around this point a lot, but I haven’t heard it phrased exactly that way. I scribbled down a note for discussion. It’s certainly rehashing old ground, but things change. We’ll see. Thanks.
More as we have it…
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