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New EQ Producer Introduces Himself

Posted by Zonk on from the first-day-jitters dept.

The new producer for Everquest Live, Craig Knapp, has put up an introductory letter to the community on the official site. He discusses his expectations going into the job, and mentions some of the issues he'll be addressing going forward. From the letter: "First, we'll be instancing the Plane of Time to alleviate the bottle neck that many of you may face as a result of higher populations. Second, at the request of the players, we're going to combine the servers that have established a voluntary rotation system for raid targets. The Rathe and Karana will now be combined. The communities on The Rathe and Karana servers have put forth an extraordinary amount of time and energy to create their rotational systems and we want to do what we can to support these players and their chosen play style. As a result of this change, Bertoxxulous and Tholuxe Paells will be combined."

20 comments

  1. What's with the shard names? by ThreeE · · Score: 1

    Throw me a pew? Why not use something more, a, well, ...

    1. Re:What's with the shard names? by jwilloug · · Score: 2, Informative

      I found them a useful window into the EQ lore, personally. Xev and Tholuxe, for instance, are minor deities (the gods of luck and capitalism, respectively) who have never appeared in game, but I found them intriguing enough to work into my rogue's personal pantheon. I probably never would have heard of them if not for the server names, indeed Tholuxe may well have been created simply because they needed a new server and were out of gods.

  2. Explanation for a non-EQ player? by cgenman · · Score: 1

    Would someone mind cluing in a non Everquest player to the specific terminologies used in the article? Specifically...

    What exactly is the Plane of Time, and why would it cause bottlenecks?

    What are voluntary raid target rotations, and how does this effect the way people play EQ?

    Is this person the new producer for EQ1, or the new producer for the EQ series?

    --
    The ______ Agenda
    1. Re:Explanation for a non-EQ player? by porksoda · · Score: 5, Informative

      I gave up my Evercrack addiction about 4 years ago so I guess my knowledge isn't terribly up-to-date, but I think I can answer your questions:

      1) The Plane of Time is (probably) the high-level zone that most high-level guilds would like to loot and pillage aka raid. Here's a sample of what you run into there. Bottlenecks are caused by having too many guilds all vying for the same zone to raid at the same time, hence

      2) raid target rotations were implemented. They're kind of like sign-up sheets for the running machine at the gym, AFAIK.

      3) I don't know.

    2. Re:Explanation for a non-EQ player? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Plane of Time is the end level content from a two year old expansion. It is a place many guilds can upgrade their equipment/gear easily.

      On Povar for example, their are about 10 guilds who raid Plane of Time.

      Their tiers of mobs that grow in difficulty as you advance through the zone. The further you advance in the zone, the longer it takes the mobs to respawn.

      The last mob, Quarm, takes about a week to respawn.

      So, these 10 guilds get together, and instead of fighting/racing for the right to kill the mobs, they instead, take turns killing them - rotation.

      Plane of Time changing to a fully instanced zone, (it's partially instanced, but we won't get into that right now), will allow all 10 guilds to gain loot 10 times as fast.

      As far as I know, the new producer is just for EQ1.

      I've just come back to Povar after a 9 month hiatus. I don't know the current situation of rotations on Povar since the server mergers, but I hope it helps you get the idea.

    3. Re:Explanation for a non-EQ player? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      The last mob, Quarm, takes about a week to respawn.

      So, these 10 guilds get together, and instead of fighting/racing for the right to kill the mobs, they instead, take turns killing them - rotation.

      Ah, thank you so much for reminding me why I quit EQ. That's not fun; it's incredibly boring *work* for a tiny reward.

    4. Re:Explanation for a non-EQ player? by Datamonstar · · Score: 1

      BUt you feel L33t once you get it. Not like those other MMO's out there were 90% of the population is running around carrying the ultimatewswordofpower!

      --
      The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
    5. Re:Explanation for a non-EQ player? by Chris_Jefferson · · Score: 1

      Could someone who plays EQ (or all these other types of games) possibly explain to me why waiting for respawn is such a problem? Is there really a good reason for not just respawning things more often? Is it just to annoy players?

      --
      Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
    6. Re:Explanation for a non-EQ player? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      To make it rarer. (IE, no, not really.)

      In The Real World, some resources are just rare. Not everyone can have a shower curtain made of gold. To try and duplicate that in the game, certain monsters (and therefore the items they drop when killed) respawn slowly.

      So if a give monster drops The Sword of Pwning and only respawns once a week, that means that there can only be one Sword of Pwning in the game for each week it's been out.

      "Hardcore" players love this, because it makes them much more special to have a Sword of Pwning if there are only one hundred in existance in the game out of say five thousand players.

      Is it a good reason? Does it just annoy (most) players? Someone else will have to answer that. My personal opinion is that it isn't really a good reason and just annoys most players. But the reason is simply an enforced rarity, which makes them more valuable.

      (The other option some games use is a monster that spawns every 10 minutes but only has a 0.01% chance of dropping some really rare item.)

    7. Re:Explanation for a non-EQ player? by ezzzD55J · · Score: 1

      ultimatewswordofpower or.. sword of realultimatepower?

    8. Re:Explanation for a non-EQ player? by cgenman · · Score: 1

      Why not go carnival style, and let you trade in 10 True Swords of Pwning for one Ultimate Sword of Pwning? Or build an Ultimate Sword of Pwning from 5 Divine Chewy Nugat Centers, 3 Pieces of Holy AINA Ore (AINA Is Not Admantium), and one leather binding strap of God's retribution?

      Sure, comparitively it's quite repetitive, but making a monster stay dead for a week? Unless that is an ultimate pile-on monster that takes 24 hours of constant attacks to kill, (which is cool too), it shouldn't stay dead for too long. Otherwise, there's nothing to do...

      --
      The ______ Agenda
  3. Perhaps I'm missing something... by C0rinthian · · Score: 2, Insightful

    but if two servers have established their rotation, wouldn't merging them completely FUBAR that organization? I don't know about anyone else, but I'd be pretty upset to suddenly have twice as many guilds raiding the same zone.

    1. Re:Perhaps I'm missing something... by JExtine · · Score: 4, Informative

      Sounds like they instanced the zone in which the guilds were rotating their raids. If you are not familiar with the idea of instanced zones, it means that basically all the guilds can go and raid at the same time in their own private version of the zone. It's an increasingly popular way to do dungeons/zones in MMORPGS these days...

    2. Re:Perhaps I'm missing something... by Dachannien · · Score: 3, Informative

      The alternative is merging a server that has a self-imposed rotation policy with one that doesn't have such a policy. The chaos resulting from that situation far outweighs that required to fit the guilds from two servers onto one list. Besides, the reason for the merges in the first place is a sharply-declining population, so the assumption being made here is that (especially with instancing) on the merged server, it'll result in a full, but not necessarily overburdened, rotation list.

    3. Re:Perhaps I'm missing something... by C0rinthian · · Score: 1

      If they are instancing the zones, then why does it matter if they had established rotation policies?

      (I play WoW, so I'm quite familiar with instanced zones)

    4. Re:Perhaps I'm missing something... by JExtine · · Score: 2, Informative

      Well, his annoucment just mentioned them instancing the Planes of Time, so it seems like the rotation policy would still be needed for other raid bosses. Since the policies are enforced by the comunity, it'ld make sense to merge the two together rather than with servers that don't have any sort of policy.

    5. Re:Perhaps I'm missing something... by guru42101 · · Score: 1

      Probably cause 2 servers who have spent alot of effort in organizing their raids to benifit everyone will work well together in making allocations for each other.

      As apposed to merging them w/ a FCFS server that would probably not give a rats arse about the rotation.

  4. Rathe, Karana, Bertoxxulous? by Mr_Silver · · Score: 2, Funny
    The communities on The Rathe and Karana servers have put forth an extraordinary amount of time and energy to create their rotational systems and we want to do what we can to support these players and their chosen play style. As a result of this change, Bertoxxulous and Tholuxe Paells will be combined.

    You know you're getting old and not "with it" when you read that three times and realise that you haven't the faintest idea what he's talking about.

    Now if you'll excuse me, I have my comfy slippers on and a pipe to smoke ...

    --
    Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
  5. Another way to see this announcement.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Another way to see this announcement is, Sony is upset players are still enjoying two year old content, and feel that if they can hurry them along to the current expansions. This seems like an easy way to sell some of the more recent expansions if they haven't been doing so well, being out of reach of many players.