Two months later, I decided to move on. I personally needed something different, but I largely felt EQ2 was vastly improved because of Publish 19.

Here’s why.

The first, and most overt, change is the Class system. As outlined previously, the EQ2 team at SOE replaced the previous archetype/sub-class sytem (coincidentally coming to Age of Conan, which I think is going to be an issue) with a straight class-based one like World of Warcraft and Everquest 1 before it.

This is about where the similarities end though.

EQ2 was already a fairly content complete game. The team has spent the last fifteen months constantly adding new zones, new quests, two Adventure Packs and twoExpansions. I would say EQ2 has, during this time, probably received more content per active subscription account than any other MMORPG out there. Others have taken longer to release such goodies.

So when the new class system went in, it included a great deal of new content to add to what was already there. The result is much more than just a simple linear romp through levels with the occasional choice. Here, I outline why.

Skills

Each class, once chosen at level 19, started on a path of new skills and abilities that was already pretty impressive. Every new level grants at least one or two new skills or upgrades. Every four levels, a dialog is presented wherein the player chooses a base statistic they want to modify. Every ten levels, they choose an existing skill to upgrade to its maximum level (Master II). And that's just the automatically-presented choices.

Each skill can be upgraded from its default Apprentice I to a maximum of Master II, from Apprentice I, II, III, IV to Adept I, II, III to Master I, II (Apprentice IV is a fairly rare crafting combine, and because I’ve achieved it, I wonder if Adept IV is in the game too).

This, however, is not a straight skill progression. While each is better than the prior, players don't need to buy them in any order. In addition to being able to choose a skill to max out every ten levels (starting at level 14), a player can upgrade a skill from Apprentice I to Master I. Players do so by acquiring, as drops or from other players, skill scrolls.

Players can buy their first upgrade (Apprentice II) from a Class Trainer, but they're getting what they pay for: a very small upgrade for a very small amount of money. Most players will either choose to shop for an immediate upgrade to Adept I, hope someone in their guild gets a scroll or hope to get lucky with a drop. Or they may be a Sage and attempt to craft the tough Adept III.

As of Publish 19 though, now every combat class has a whole new slew of abilities to unlock, learn and upgrade. And the classes are pretty diverse, playing differently, feeling differently.  

Classes

The previous Character Advancement system required first a base class choice, and then a sub-choice. For example, someone who landed on the Isle of Refuge would choose to be a Mage, Fighter, Cleric or Scout. When they reached level 9, they would be presented, through quest, three different sub-class choices (ie, the Mage could choose Enchanter, Sorcerer or Summoner. Then when they reached level 19, they were again presented with a choice, this time between two options (ie, the Sorcerer could become a Wizard or Warlock). This was their final class choice, the role they wished to be forever more.

Unfortunately, this also meant that to experience variants on the theme, players had to progress through the same base class and first sub-class numerous times. This was, in a word, not that fun, and the foundation of my concern with the system proposed in Age of Conan.

For one, this entailed playing with the exact same abilities for either 9 or 19 levels. That progression does not happen overnight. For another though, the newbie content was just not that diverse. While each starting town within either Qeynos or Freeport was bracketed by a newbie adventure zone, the content in each zone quickly went from new to repeated.

So for players to experience new classes to play from level 20 and beyond, they had to repeat either some or a lot of the same content they had already seen.

No more.

Under the new system, the classes themselves are very diverse. Each does play differently, and the differences become apparent even by Level 2.

Further, the new newbie content progression has also been changed such that Good players start in Queens Colony while Evil ones start in Outpost of the Overload (both iterations on the old Isle of Refuge). This immediate separation comes with quests and stories unique to each place. And further, it is possible to leave this island almost immediately upon arrival.

Finally, advancement rates have been upgraded. I do not know how fast someone could level up in EQ2 now, but it is far faster than it was in beta.

As a result, rolling a new character to try out new abilities is now not only far less painful, but much more fulfilling. Experimentation has been brought to EQ2 for a lot more people.

(note: this does not apply to Artisans, who still make sub-class choices at 9 and 19).

Crafting

Crafting has also been changed. While the overhaul is not complete, the core goal (also as previously disclosed), was to remove the sub-combines system.

Until Pub 19, every item crafted not only required raw ingredients; it required a series of sub-combines to create new ingredients ultimately combined for the final product.

While nice in theory, the actual implementation annoyed many players. One's crafting skills, like gathering skills and combat skills, go up through use. This increase is two-fold: one part is the crafting skill itself and the other is Tradeskill XP, a separate XP track from Combat XP (and now, Alternate Advancement XP). Like Combat XP, increasing one's Tradeskill XP eventually allows them to "level up", which in turn lets them buy and learn new Recipes. Each Recipe one can craft is color-coded to indicate just how much XP and Skill increase they could expect upon the successful creation of something. For example, a Yellow-colored recipe was risky to attempt but paid out well in XP. White was optimal for both. Blue is lower still, and Gray, at the low end of the scale, did not reward any XP or Skill increase at all. And it was in the Gray scale that lied the problem.

The sub-combines required to craft higher-order items invariably Grayed-out rather quickly. The theory, of course, is that the higher level crafters would seek out lower level crafters and work out a business arrangement whereby the lower crafters could XP/Skill up by crafting the sub-combines that would still reward them, and then sell those sub-combines to the higher level player who could continue skill-upping by just making the final combines.

Unfortunately for the system, players didn't follow that rule. Rather, they did what was typical of MMORPGers everyone and strove for self-sufficiency. I often wonder why this surprised some.

Eventually, the EQ2 team saw this, and after what I'm sure was some hand-wringing, decided a change was needed, a change that would allow the players an easier time at what they were going to do anyway.

So the entire crafting system is being slowly changed such that every Recipe will require just a single combine at the moment of creation. Players will still need to gather the necessary resources, either by harvesting them from the land, looting them from mobs/NPCs or buying them from the Auction House. Further, the crafting system that was in place, the one that included reactive button mashing and proactive decision making, is still there to be used and enjoyed.

The result is the removal of what is largely considered busy work. The change is ongoing, but the EQ2 team wisely chose to focus first on the Scholar>Sage Artisan sub-choices first. With the influx of new skills with the new class system comes a need to upgrade them. With that need comes a need to get Skill Scrolls. So Scholars/Sages were equipped to deliver first.

Some veterans who already had maxxed out the system, and those who strongly believed such activities should be left to a relative minority of players, didn't like the changes. But it's better for the game at large because it lowers the barrier of entry to a compelling feature everyone should have a shot at trying.

Players are going to give up anyway. Crafting is nothing but a money sink unless you somehow turn a profit. And like all games with any sort of player-directed economy, the only real way to turn a profit is to craft something people want and then go through the motions of selling it.

That social end of commerce requires a lot of attention, a lot of dedication, and is ultimately what keeps such activities to a relatively small percentage of the playerbase. People only need to look as far as the easiest crafting system in the genre (WoW) to see that even lowering the bar to an almost non-existent level doesn't guarantee the entire playerbase will be crafting all the time.

Therefore, I'm all for making the crafting process more approachable. The economy will balance out anyway, because of the demands of commerce.

Content

Finally, a word on content.

Much of the robust system of content delivery within EQ2 already existed. Quests are around every corner. Almost every NPC has a story to tell, a lot have quests, but quests can also be received by clicking on placards, picking up items from chests, sometimes even just walking into a room. A few months back, the EQ2 team mentioned they had in excess of 2,000 quests in the game. I believe them.

There is the entire gamut of quests and rewards. Some are the usual Kill X to collect Y type stuff. Others though are:

• Access Quests. When done, these reward access to a special zone or area which could have even more quests, or just reward in good loot.
• Heritage Quests. These will start characters down a long path with a final result being a recognizable item from Everquest 1.
• Collection Quests. These are all about finding items throughout the world of Norrath. Most times these items are found by clicking on special glowing sprite-like lights on the ground in indoor and outdoor zones.
• Knowledge Quests. These involve collecting specific items from specific enemy Races, resulting in increased effectiveness when fighting them.
• City Tasks. These were fairly typical quests, but their rewards were more for Guild XP rather than just personal Combat XP.
• Far Seas Trading Company. These are categorized by the zone in which they are granted, as noted in the suffix code of the quest title (ie, #ANT0724 for Antonica). They are begun by reading a scroll one loots from a chest a mob or NPC drops. The story behind it, according to the NPCs, was that these were requests made of others who, well, obviously failed if a monster was found with the request in their belly. The quests are typical Kill/Collect quest, and require a fairly straightforward turn-in for money. But I still found it interesting that a quest about hunting mobs for a Trading Company was granted through such a method. Here’s a good list.
• Work Requests. These are granted by Artisan representative to aspiring Crafters who'd like to skill up and make money through quests.

All of these are linked to a highly interactive world. Both WoW and EQ2 seemed to be striving for such in this generation of MMORPGs, where so many plants, rocks, mineral deposits, sticks, and so on were interactive. In WoW, you needed skill to even notice such elements were interactive. In EQ2, you can interact with all of them, though are unable to actually gather anything from them unless the appropriate skill level has been achieved. But the result is the same: a world of things to click beyond just the next mob to kill.

Of course Pub 19 has brought much new content, as will future updates. The system for offering new content is based on a robust interactive world, a platform I imagine includes some relatively-easy-to-use content creation tools for content developers on the team. This was always one of their promises: a world that, unlike EQ1, was built for such scalability.

Conclusion

EQ2 was always a grand endeavor, with a lot of innovative features, things other games have, but to a lesser degree. Unfortunately, a lot of the coolness was locked behind an arduous learning curve, something that alienated the casual MMORPGs SOE had hoped to attract with it.

I can't blame them for thinking the way they did in early development when such decisions were made. The genre was different back then. It was smaller, for one; with limited appeal because of how much harder the games were to get into then. So if one was looking at the genre then, what they saw as needing improvement was fairly predictable.

Unfortunately, it also turned out to be somewhat wrong.

WoW changed a lot of people's impressions about what it truly takes to make a casual MMORPG. EQ2 was easier and more approachable than EQ1, but it was WoW that defined what level of ease was required to grow the genre. I have said before that without WoW (and to a lesser degree, Guild Wars), I do not think the genre would have doubled in popularity in 2005. Prior, many pundits assumed incremental growth was all that was possible. Without these new contenders with their different viewpoints, I'd agree.

Nowadays, things are different. WoW brought a lot of people into the genre, but it also pulled a lot of people from other MMORPGs. How many people were pulled is almost impossible to measure, but that's not the point. The point is that WoW, with a game that was not entirely unlike EQ1 except for its lowering of the barriers for entry and play, succeeded in doing the two things SOE hoped EQ2 would do: pull in new players, and give existing genre veterans something new to the enjoy.

EQ2 succeeded too, after a fashion, but probably far below expectations. As such, Publish 19 was conceived and delivered in a bid to change that.

Will this result in EQ2 giving WoW a run for its money? Probably not. WoW is a force of nature now, at a level almost nobody can compete with. They've got a global reach I don't think any other MMORPG publisher can touch. They've also got money far beyond what others probably have. And finally, they have already achieved massive success. They'll continue to grow for a bit, eventually plateau, and then shrink of course. But in their wake will have been started a new process by which MMORPGs are considered.

But EQ2 is also different enough from WoW to appeal to a different player. As big as WoW is, there’s always room for other titles in this genre, because the number of people interested in playing a massively-multiplayer online experience exceeds the ones who want to play a fantasy-themed massively-multiplayer online role-playing one.

Others may want to echo WoW's success with a similar formula, but that'll require even more money and more reach. Unless Big Oil or GE starting making games, I'm really not sure who can possibly trump WoW at a Diku-inspired EQ1-like game.

So what remains is a strive for uniqueness, hopefully through innovation.

This is the future for EQ2 in my opinion, a game already fairly different for anyone who has played both to any fair degree, and now has gotten even to get into and experience.

WoW

WoW instancing is handled by group or raid. It's your own boutique content, designed and balanced (in theory) for the group or raid that goes there.

This actually solves a few long-standing issues with public-zone content in old EQ1:

• People holding rooms
• Stealthing to bosses to kill them

Nobody but the intended group is in that zone, so only an jerk already in that group can mess things up.

EQ2

EQ2 instancing, meanwhile, seems to be just about population load (adventure packs notwithstanding). This doesn't really solve anything except, well, load balancing issues.

• People can still stealth to bosses other groups are legitimately trying to adventure to.
• Zones can still be overcrowded, particularly the heavily-corridor-based ones.

It does some some issues: Trains are not much of an issue, encounters are locked, and corpses and chests still linked to the people who got them. I just think it could do more.

Players do not enter a zone like Stormhold looking for a group. They enter with one, having been formed in various different channels most likely while they were in public outdoor spaces. Teen levels and beyond adventure zones take just enough time to get to most are not likely to just wander in and hope to find a group.

As such, everyone else not in their group is either a minor nuisance, or a major hassle.

I know some will disagree. Maybe to them this idea of public-space dungeoneering can still work itself out if people are patient and kind. But I don't think so.

I think people fixated on personally-focused adventures and achievements want to be in the business of adventuring and achieving, whether alone or with a group they specifically joined. Other people just get in the way of this. They make the adventuring messy. They do the stuff that compelled the sort of developments in instantiation even the first Everquest integrated so long ago (in the Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion).

This is a problem currently because of the server merges. While a good idea, it exposed the issues, yet again, of public-space dungeons.

Either the issue will subside as some people out-level others who need to go there, or the EQ2 team develops some technology solutions. Until then though, it's somewhat annoying.

WoW is one of the most culturally relevant MMORPGs out there right now due mostly to its appeal both globally and in individual markets. As such, the support data collection and reporting gets is more broad, and more covered.

But even lesser-played games like Everquest 2 provide some interesting insights into players and their preferences. It's just a question of finding out who's collecting that data. For EQ2, one such place is eq2census. And it's interesting to look at this data at a time when the servers are merging.

Like the data at Warcraft Realms, EQ2 Census data can be used to understand a number of interesting things. Conducting a small number of searches, I built the following Excel spreadsheet:

eq2census Data and Charts

Within, you'll find three tabs. The below graphs and thoughts were a result of this data.

Population

Beginning this week, 34 EQ2 servers were being reduced to 24, with 20 lower population servers being combined. The process has gotten off to a rocky start, but each merge will go smoother as they learn things from the prior one.

The two charts below show the data collected pre-merge and my own simple calculations of what will be the case post merge.

Seems pretty straight forward. The result will be eight servers with a total population in excess of the most popular server of Antonia Bayle. Unfortunately, the completion of the first and second merge has also exposed some stability issues that occur when servers reach a certain population level. For as long as these playability issues remain, almost every server that has been merged could experience the same issues.

Population by Level

This chart is interesting. The general trend, as expected, matches those in other level-based experiences. However, unlike WoW, there are many more people in the low levels than those at level 60. As discussed often, hitting level 60 is much easier than hitting the level cap in almost all other MMORPGs (Guild Wars excluded).

This is something I consider a driver to their success insofar the game is so easy to level up in, the casual/diversional gamer isn't specifically focused on it. As such, there's less compulsion to grind just to have any sense of advancement in a game like there is in older titles.

EQ2 does show a rising spike at the level 60 mark. But for a game that has been out a few weeks longer than WoW, it is interesting to see that those in the early game are still much more numerous than those in the late one. There's a lot of content to experience in both games. To see "all" of the game seems to just take longer in EQ2.

Conclusion

The impending merging of these servers could potentially introduce stability and playability issues for a large percentage of the EQ2 playerbase in the coming weeks. However, given that the majority of the population is still within the early and mid-game levels, the goal of these merges could also be fulfilled very well. Simply having more people around can be motivation to stick around (a reverse on the stated implication that less people will drive people to boredom and cancellation faster), and with these merges, that could be achieved.

I'm seeing some interesting parallels.

Race Popularity

First, Race popularity:

What I find interesting here though is the split between Good and Evil, and how it corrolates in some ways to WoW.

For a long time, it has been accepted as common knowledge that the Alliance races in WoW (Dwarf, Human, Gnome and Night Elf) account for a large population than those of the Horde (Troll, Orc, Undead and Tauren). On some servers, the balance is closer to 60/40, but on others, the difference is more pronounced.

Of the 16 races in EQ2 though, the breakdown is as follows:

• 29% play a Good race.
• 24% play an Evil race.
• 47% play a Neutral race, or one that can choose between Good and Evil.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, to be sure. But the population imbalance in WoW has been partly attributed to the "ugliness" of the Horde races (and some consider this opinion validated by the new Horde race for the expansion being Blood Elves). It's hard to look at an unappealing character for the long stretches of time these games require one do so, as goes the opinion.

However, unlike WoW, players in EQ2 have more latitude about choosing a Race independent of faction, with over 30% of the races being able to play in both cities. Does this freedom contribute to the imbalance across all Races? Does it result in Qeynos and that region being more populated than Freeportt? Impossible to say without tracking zone populations by Race for a long time.

But based purely on subjective conjecture, I don't consider it a surprise that Iksar's, Ogres, Frogloks, and Trolls are among the least-played races. These races are interesting, and all have compeling backstories. But that lore is often less important to someone who really doesn't want to look at that character model for hours a day.  

Class Popularity

Finally, class popularity. Simple enough: Paladin is most played and Brigand the least.

Similar to the points raised in the Race Popularity section above, a larger number of Evil-only Classes appear on the right side of the scale than on the left, seeming to indicate as much a preference for Good/Neutral Classes as there seems to be for Good/Neutral Races.  

Comparisons and Wishes

EQ2 and WoW are both built upon an established system of Classes, Levels, Experience, Items, quest-based motivators, and time investment. The details of both games indicate some interesting similarities and differences. I was most intrigued by the similarity in how Good Races and Classes are more popular than Evil ones, and the difference of population per level between the two games.

But mostly what intrigues me is what is possible with such large samples of data. Reviewing this sort of quantitative data can provide some fascinating insights into the motivations of players.

This is just a small, and arguably inconsequential comparison though. This sort of data would need to be available for many different titles that features many similar elements. To get insights across the genre on a more meta level, I'd want to get similar data for these titles at least (pulled from this list based on title age, options available to players, and what their choices mean):

• Auto Assault
• Dark Age of Camelot
• Dungeons and Dragons Online
• Everquest 1
• Final Fantasy XI
• Guild Wars
• Horizons
• Lineage 2
• Ryzomn
• Shadowbane
• Star Wars Galaxies
• Vanguard

There would be no real purpose to gathering this data other than to fulfill academic curiosity.

Conclusion

Good and Evil, conventional beauty or otherwise, there's enough players enjoy all of these options to prevent any premature conversation about prioritization. All "beautiful race" games would be boring. The cultural breadth within these virtual worlds is one area that makes them so unique.

But the data from both EQ2 and WoW compel some questions about motivation and interest, and I am really beginning to wonder if there's a common theme among these titles.

Basically, I underestimated their willingness and ability to change.

It's easy to guess why such fundamental rethinks have been applied to what were established titles and operational doctrine. Some, of course, immediately point to WoW and GW, two games that both achieved worldwide subscriptions that far exceed the combined total of all subscriptions SOE has reported across all of their games. The immediate implication here is that this was a "wake up call" to SOE. I'm sure this had a big impact on their thinking, but I don't think it was only this.

There's another factor here to consider. SOE was on top of the genre at a time when the genre was fairly niche. EQ1 was the king of all Western MMOGs during a time when people compared it to two, maybe three, other MMORPGs. This began to change with the launch of Dark Age of Camelot, and did so more as new titles went live. But the growth was slow enough for most to assume that the rate of growth for the genre was going to be forever a slow and steady incline with a relative trickling in of new players.

2005 proved everyone wrong. WoW and, later, GW not only appealed to existing genre veterans, but through strong brands, large global reaches, and innovative tweaks to long-standing game play concepts, attracted a very large number of gamers who had been avoiding MMORPGs altogether. Everything about these games is faster: faster game play, faster advancement, faster acquisition, faster more involved combat. And, most importantly, the games were content rich right away.

All of these elements are expected in other genres, but MMORPGs had largely stuck to the more plodding nature of combat-by-the-numbers (with some exceptions of course, particularly City of Heroes which is often overlooked because it wasn't the smash hit it I think it should have been).

Was SOE caught off guard? Yes, but only because a lot of people were caught off guard, from gamers to pundits to folks doing the actual work. With the launch of GW, there seemed to be a clear delineation between developers who were making games for veterans, and those making games for gamers.

For example, EQ2 was billed as a casual gamer's haven, a place for those who didn't like the arduous time requirements of EQ1. Yet, it took WoW to actually show what sort of time requirements the general gamer (not the nightly Raider or Battlegrounder) wanted to put up with.

In the end, I don't really blame them for not being able to make EQ2 the casual game they promised. This wasn't because of a lack of skill or talent. Rather, it was due to a misunderstanding of what "casual" really needed to be. There's two ways to deliver "casual":

• For veterans of the genre: Make a game lighter in requirements than previous games.
• For folks new to the genre: Make a game with requirements analog to other genres.

What SOE delivered was for #1. How the genre grew in 2005 is #2. Without the newer entrants into the genre, I don't imagine it would have grown by so many players in such a short period of time. The genre probably would have continued to grow at a steady, but slow, pace. But the new entrants are here, have redefined the rules, and I think the most direct result is things like the changes to SWG and EQ2.

And I say it's all good. That they have the willingness to learn from their misunderstandings and spend serious time and money to change things is a testament to their continued interest in providing these experiences to players. Other companies have cut and run long since.

I just hope they continue learning from recent events as well.

Last night, the patch went live.

No reason to copy/paste the entire patch notes. If you're interested or playing EQ2, chances are you know about them. If you're not playing, most of the changes won't mean much to you. For those interested though, here's the real short form:

• New Character Progression- The biggest change, and the foundation of my excitement for EQ2, is that now players choose their character class at character creation (rather than having to wait until level 20). The scope of what has been changed is significant. All classes now start gaining their class specific abilities, and can even begin to see by level 6 or 7, just what their class is about. Better still, level 6 or 7 is an hour or so of work, faster with each reroll. Class experimentation has finally come to EQ2!
• New Newbie Zones- No longer do both Evil and Good characters start in the same zone. Evil goes to 'Outpost of the Overlord' and Good go to 'Queens Colony'. The geography is the same, but the quests, NPCs, and general tones are very different.
• No more Boat Tutorial- On the downside, the boat tutorial has been removed for technical reasons. I do so wish they positioned that removal differently though. A year later, the world is populated enough that new characters enter a thriving NPC and player market already. They're no longer castaways.
• Intro- This isn't new I guess, but it is new to me: The intro cinematric (just some sketches of book pages) tells a compelling story. It's fairly longish and wordy, but it sets the stage nicely. Oddly though, it implies players have a choice between Good and Evil, yet isn't presented until players have already made that choice. The decision tree for new characters looks like this:
1. Choose race- Some races can only be Good or Evil while others can be both. There's a battery of new race-specific quests one can start once they've landed in their host city (after they leave their respective Newbie Isle).
2. Choose alignment- Irrelevant for those who chose a Race that could only be one, but the decision here drives the next selection, and ultimately upon which island the player lands.
3. Choose class- There are 16 classes to choose from, but each side has 8 that are unique to them (ie, Necromancers are Evil while Conjurors are good).
4. Choose appearance- Basically the same as ever, except, and newish to me, the "Alternate Character Models" can have their appearances adjusted as well. These models are the previously-integrated SOGA models. In general, I prefer this more stylized approach than the default models that launched with the game.
5. Choose name and server.
6. Watch intro cinematic.
7. So as you can see, the Intro is implying a choice that not only was made earlier, but drives too much to have those choices changed. I would recommend they move the Intro to display just prior to the Character Selection Screen (which comes right after the EQ2 logo).
• No more Citizenship Quest- I actually liked these, but it makes sense that they were removed. Since the choice of one's city is made when an alignment is chosen during Creation, players were already going to become citizens of that city anyway. There just was never a way for someone to change their mind until late into their teen levels (when they can do the Betrayal quest series, which will be getting a revamp down the road), so there was no reason to make players go through this quest just to confirm what was already preordained.
• Crafting Changes- While I never got much into Crafting, there were also significant changes to the Crafting process. Eldaec over at F13 provided this brief description: "Essentially, there will be no subcombines, recipes use all the resources that the subcombines would have done before, some other recipes changed". UD_Delt in that same thread also provided this link, which captures all developer comments and dissects them for relevance. Most of this means nothing to me except to further signify the scope of change in this patch.
• New Content- The usual battery of new and fixed content. It is odd for me to be excited by EQ2. I was fairly certain I'd never again play it once I made the choice to go with WoW instead. I knew I'd quit WoW someday of course (it happens). I just didn't think EQ2 was all that fun for how I like to play.

Basically, I underestimated SOE's ability to respond to challenges. But that's for another topic.

Basically, I take what the letter states at face value. This is, for me, a first.

First, I'm copy/pasting the letter on the off chance the link doesn't, or no longer, works. Skip past it if you've read it.

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.

We're going to do this in a way that is meant to have the least interruption or negative impact on those who are affected.

The Plan

From now until the launch of Kingdom of Sky and PvP, here is what we plan to do:

1) On Thursday 2/2/06, we will be temporarily opening the Character Transfer Service to all users free of charge.

During this period, normal operation of the EQ2 Character Transfer service will be suspended and all characters can opt to move elsewhere once.

If you've been debating joining friends on a different server, you can take advantage of this opportunity no matter which server you're coming from.

This is to let people who don't mind leaving their guilds (or are not in a guild), and can pack up all of their shared bank belongings, choose any destination server they prefer, except for Antonia Bayle.

For the free transfer period, Antonia Bayle will be removed as a transfer destination. It's already the most full server that we have, and we unfortunately can't risk a situation where that server would become overloaded.

2) At the same time, Update #19 will be going live. During the downtime for this update, we will be doing some database maintenance to prepare for the server moves.

One thing that we will be doing is removing placeholder characters who are under level 5, have less than 1 gold, and have not been played in more than 60 days.

If you have characters that you wish to keep that are under level 5 and have less than 1 gold, please make sure to log them in at least once before Thursday 2/2/06 if you want to keep them.

3) From there, this is the schedule of daily moves:

• On Monday, 2/6/2006, Faydark will move into Befallen
• On Tuesday, 2/7/2006, Innothule will move into Crushbone
• On Wednesday, 2/8/2006, Steamfont will move into Oasis
• On Thursday, 2/9/2006, Oggok will move into Blackburrow
• On Friday, 2/10/2006, Neriak will move into Kithicor
• On Monday, 2/13/2006, Lavastorm will move into Nektulos
• On Tuesday, 2/14/2006, Grobb will move into Everfrost
• On Wednesday, 2/15/2006, Highkeep will move into Butcherblock
• On Thursday, 2/16/2006, Toxxulia will move into Guk
• On Friday, 2/17/2006, Shadowhaven will move into The Bazaar

Throughout the process, we plan on using some of this time to augment all of the worlds and their databases with new hardware to ensure they're even better positioned to handle the growth EQ2 sees week to week.

4) On the weekend of Friday 2/17 through Sunday 2/19, as a part of the pre-launch event leading up to the release of Kingdom of Sky, Bonus Experience Weekend will be returning on top of the existing live event that will be occurring in many of the overland zones. If you missed out on helping build the Griffon Towers, you won't want to miss this weekend.

5) On Monday, 2/20/2006 after everyone has had at least one weekend to decide if they enjoy their destination server, the Character Transfer service will once again begin charging for the transfer service and will again be available for transfers to Antonia Bayle.

6) On Tuesday, 2/21/2006, Kingdom of Sky will be coming to all servers and five PvP servers will be launching as well:

• Two in the US (One will be Station Exchange Enabled and the other will not),
• One in the EU-English language launcher,
• One in the French launcher,
• One in the German launcher.

EverQuest II will then be a game with 31 worlds across our global locations.

The Effects

Moving characters and guilds around has traditionally had effects such as names needing to be changed as a part of the process. The idea is to make the move as transparent as possible. That's not to say that there won't be a few visible effects.

Here are some of the details of what people can expect as a part of these moves.

For those characters who do not choose to move early via the Character Transfer Service and are moved automatically on their moving day, some may be automatically renamed (with one or more 'x's appended to their name) in the case that their name is already taken by an older character. If that occurs, the renamed character will be able to use the /rename command once to choose a new name for themselves.

For guilds who are moved, the same thing may occur with the guild name, though is much less likely. For those guilds who are renamed as a result of the automatic moves, a guild leader can use the /guild rename command to rename their guild once.

Characters who move across servers will retain memories of their item discoveries from their old servers, just like they do today. No one will lose records of discoveries.

Characters who move and have items up for offline sale on the brokers will need to re-list their items on their new servers.

Characters who wait for the automatic move day will have their settings and posessions migrated with them, including UI settings, in-game mail, stored notes for Friends and Ignore lists, recipe filters, macros, socials, guilds, and shared banks.

The day that Shadowhaven moves, all listed auctions will be reset and listing fees refunded. Items will be returned to the game.

In Closing

I understand that this move will be seen as a controversial one, especially so given that we're not doing this for the reasons games have done it in the past.

Hopefully the above steps that we are taking clearly communicate that we have every intention of ensuring that there is as little disruption to your game experience as possible. We ask that you view this move in the same way that we do: a short term disruption followed by a much longer term period of continued growth and server community health.

Your game is our passion. We wouldn't want to do anything that we felt was hurting either you or it. As always, you have our thanks for playing EverQuest II. - Scott Hartsman Senior Producer, EverQuest II

Ok, so there it is. Server combines that take 20 of the 36 servers and turn them into ten. This sort of announcement is typically a gateway of the short path to "OMGzorz!1! The game iz hemoragging players!!!". 

But I'm not so sure.

First, Background

Like most level-based MMORPGs that grow over time, EQ2 suffers from inevitable player spread. As stated in the letter, the world of EQ2 has almost doubled in size in the year it's been live. While this doubling happened at a faster pace than most other games, this doubling is not uncommon to the genre in general. Basically, game worlds always grow.

Unfortunately, the per-server population generally does not keep pace with this growth. Games that double the size of their playable game world do not also double the number of characters played on that server. It may actually be technically possible for companies to do this. But, I've sat through many queues in WoW, and seen many instances go up in CoH and EQ2 too, and seen fun-crushing lag in countless others.

These experiences have lead me to believe that a server's population will surpass critical mass relatively early in its life, and then it'll decline into a sustainable plateau of concurrency. That decline may be as a result of technical issues, or as a result of players deciding technical issues exist in the face of denials to the contrary. Whatever the cause though, I feel this is a bit of Crowd Wisdom in action. Non-specialists not in-the-know decide what the proper population needs to be for a server.

Yet, there's a clear downside here. The "proper" density of population as directed by players is based on their own resource needs. They need just enough people to achieve their goals in games all about individual achievement. Even though EQ2 attempts to integrate more "meta"-like pursuits like Guild and City levels, ultimately, the amount of people that are needed to achieve these goals is probably somewhere well south of what the server can support.

Another complication is the general level of the players in the game. Characters grow up. Either others keep up or the people they used to group with will outgrow them. So the average level continues to migrate upward over the life of that server. Those who come late, and those who roll unsupported/untwinked alts, are left with empty newbie and early-level zones, hoping the game allows them to solo effectively. It happens in all games of this style, though some handle it better than others (in old EQ1, players used newbie zones for global trade, in WoW, trade is actually conducted and crafting well-supported in newbie cities, and EQ2 uses the one major social center per faction to support players at all levels).

Finally, the new content problem. New zones come with new quests come with new compulsions to explore outward and onward. What of the old content though? What of the new players who haven't yet gone through the old zones in order to get to the new ones? There is no easy answer to that question. Anything short of zone redesigns (as happens in EQ1 to a fair degree) will eventually marginalize those old zones into little more than curiosities, memory-inducers of times gone by while people find new adventure in newer players.

All of this results in empty zones, whether they are newbie zones or just old zones. Empty zones are a problem for MMORPGs because they give newcomers the impression of a "dead" world. People need to see other people in order to think a world vibrant. They need to achievements of others to compel them onto their own. They need to feel like there's other people out there with which to group, share stories, buy from and sell to. Otherwise, what's the point of this game over another? Game features will only take a player so far. Without other people to share them with, even the most ardent soloer gets bored.

Even if there's a zillion people on a server, it's very easy to think there's no one around. This can and probably has resulted in a lot of cancellations in a lot of games. It's why games with lots of people have an easier time attracting lots more people. Lots of people like to be around lots of other people, even if they do so only to complain about them.

Now, the News

The problem SOE seems to want to solve is the perception of low population servers. Maybe it's because the people on these servers are all higher level. Maybe it's because these servers actually are lower population. Regardless, it's obviously a problem or they wouldn't be trying to fix it.

Of course, this event is not happening by itself.

The first of the server transfers comes mere days after the launch of Publish 19. Like so many other EQ2 patches I've read about in the past year, this one contains a number of far-reaching changes. Most notably, the entire system for creating characters has changed. As noted in that link, players no longer chose a base and sub class. They now choose their archetype at creation, ala old EQ1 or even WoW.

Further, players who choose Evil no longer start on the Isle of Refuge. In fact, it's not even the Isle of Refuge anymore. The island is now split into two facets: Queens Colony for those who chose Good and Outpost of the Overlord for those who chose Evil. While the geography is the same, the contents, look, and feel are not. And, in both cases, players are not kicked off of these islands to seek citizenry with their eventual host cities. They are citizens when they land on the island after the opening intro (which currently no longer includes the boat sequence).

The impact of this change is fairly easy to see. Everything one did from levels 1-19 in the current Live EQ2 is different. This should have the direct and immediate results of:

1. Compelling alts.
2. Dragging in new players.

I've only been back in EQ2 for about a month, on and off, but have already seen a slight upswing in new player activity. I attribute some of this to WoW's expansion being some indeterminate period of time off yet. But there's also other factors, like news about SOE traveling various circles covering the changes they've made to SWG, those to PS, and those to EQ2.

Players are curious, and even it's not like leaving a game to check out another has any sort of relevance like it used to. Back in the olden days, you stuck to a game or wrote long flowery exit statements and secretly stayed on anyway. Nowadays there's just too many titles to ignore for those with even the minimum curiosity.

I don't think it's impossible to expect new players to come for EQ2 and for veterans to roll alts. As of Publish 19, it is going to be much easier to determine if you like a class, because they're all very different from Level 1 on up. Instead of having to wait until the mid-20s, possibly a month of work or maybe a few weeks, now players can test out a bunch of different classes more quickly, and better yet, within new content they haven't seen yet.

In theory, this should result in a more active newbie and early-level game.

I personally don't think that, by itself, the newbie changes in Pub 19 would have "saved" the 20 servers from being continually underpopulated. There were too many new servers for players to choose from, raising their chances of landing on a perceptually empty one. This may have been offset by a collective succumbing to Alt-itis across the veteran players on that server, but I wouldn't want to have bet on that.

Therefore, I think Publish 19 and these server merges coming at the same time is auspicious and positive. Nobody likes to combine servers. Nobody wants to admit their game didn't do as well as they had hoped or thought. And nobody wants to try and argue what success really is to a playerbase that likes to measure it purely by the number of advertised subscriptions alone.

But here again we bear witness to a company truly making real and concerted efforts to right past wrongs. These are not minor changes SOE has been making to their games. These amount to fundamental rethinks of core concepts and systems, a sort of subtle apology and corrective action without being called that. Basically, they seem to have come through their prior success and the niave complacency that inevitably follows with a new understanding of what has gone and changed around them.

They have a lot of damage control to do in some of their recent endeavors, and the traditional issues that plague them continue to do so. But they do not seem willing to roll over, to go quietly into that dark night, to become an also-ran in a genre they once ruled. They have much more work to do, including how they handle changes in their other games. But I give them kudos for making the tough decisions.

I'm not really sure how many people are going to play PvP in a game called "Everquest", particularly if they continue with the idea of having XP debt on a PvP loss. If I had to bet, I'd say that's the first idea they'd drop. Fights are quick, and death too unpredictable to add sting to defeat.

But a lot can change in a year.

No greater example of that statement exists than the New Game Experience for SWG. But while some might consider a wholesale redesign of a game surprising and new, I've long felt this is just SOE's modus operandi. The NGE is unique only in its depth of change. That it happened at all is just par for the course.

Quite simply, SOE treats their games like the fluid experiences they should be in a genre that requires people justify a new purchase every single month.

For anyone who's played EQ1, the game is very different now than it was in the pre-Luclin days. Integrated maps, no h*ll levels, instancing, alternate methods of experience, a centralized bazaar/auction house, new classes, new races, etc. PS has seen not so much wholesale redesign as a real broadening of weapons and methods within the game, from Core gear to mechs. Even before the NGE, SWG had a major combat upgrade, the integration of a completely different game engine for space, player cities, vehicles, and class redesigns.

EQ2 has seen it's share of big changes as well. I have not seen them though, but it's an upcoming change that's pulling me in. As reported on the EQ2 forums in mid-December, the class system in EQ2 is changing. This is old news though, so here's just the Cliff's Notes version:

• Old: Players choose one of four base classes, then choose one of three sub-classes at level 10, and then choose one of three sub-classes again at level 20.
• New: Coming Live Update 19, everyone chooses their ending class at character creation.

Old

Oft discussed already, I'll simply say that I'm very happy to see this change. The old system was a cool idea, but this genre has a long history of players building towards a goal already defined. Having been burned so much in the past by gimp classes or classes that don't play as promised, players have becoming conditioned to researching their options before they launch the game. Or, they'll make a decision about a class within the first bracket of levels. Nobody wants to wait until they've invested 100 play hours in a class before they realize it isn't for them. This happens, but players do all they can to prevent it anyway.

The old system sounded better than it was implemented in my opinion. At level 9 and 19, players would receive quests to gain education about what their sub-class options were. However, most of these quests did nothing to actually educate the player into how the class played. They were scripted to promote the role a player would play in a roleplay environment, not the much more useful role they'd play in combat alone and in a group. As such, even with the quests in place, players still had to research the sub-class choices on websites and forums anyway, defeating the purpose of the quests.

The quests would be a good idea if this genre was young. But it's not. Players nowadays create alts all the time to specifically explore other class options. They want to try on different roles. Unfortunately, the way the old system was set up, if someone like magic, they'd need to play the same base Mage class upwards of six times to experience every end-class possibility, all of which are pretty different from eachother. That's doing the same level 1-19 content six times, or three times if they switch between Freeport and Qeynos.

Further, no matter what base class one chose, players began on the Isle of Refuge, the single place for all newbies to go. That place, while cool, can get old right quick. It never changes. I launched the Trial of the Isle free 14-day download last week, and played through it performing almost exactly same actions I did in November 2004.

Finally, the pace of character advancement worked against this system too. The game had nowhere near the pace of leveling that WoW, yet all MMORPGs share the trait of characters growing into their full ability set. It simply took longer to grow a character to evaluate their playstyle than it did in WoW, by an order of magnitude.

So players had to repeat the Isle of Refuge for each character, repeat the 1-30ish game just to unlock the full potential of an end class, do so in a game that required more grouping earlier, and take longer doing it.

This has been the case, and has been my concern, since beta. Some of it, notably the pace of advancement and the soloability, have already been changed for the better. Now they're pushing even more changes to both promote class discovery earlier, and with new content to reduce overall repetition.

New

This new system, currently on the Test Server, lets people make their end choice at the beginning, much like almost every other large MMORPG. It may be less creative, but it speaks to the realities of play.

Players choose their new class right away. This, of course, requires a completely new system for awarding spells and abilities. Insights are already emerging from the Test Server as to what new spells are being awarded and when (ie, Necromancer and Conjuror). The changes look positive, specifically because even at the first level, players will see marked differences between classes.

Remaining Concern: Class Quantity

EQ2 has many classes. I would debate the merit of the quantity, specifically when so many share abilities. I much preferred WoW's (and now SWG's) clear dilineation of abilities. It's easier to understand, easier to assign individual people specific roles in events, and easier to balance. Also, having so many classes always results in some classes being played even less than others because the players are spread over so many options. Case in point:

• EQ2: This graph at EQ2 Census provides insights into what classes are most played. While this graph is only a one week period, the overall trend is apparent through the search routines one can run on the main page. Basically, across the playerbase, the number of people playing a Conjuror is almost six times as many people playing a Coercer, with a downward slope across 24 classes. The end result is much like pre-NGE SWG: some classes are played so much that changes made to them affect the most paying subscriber. Therefore, those are the classes that typically get the most attention from a development and support standpoint. It's a shame for those who want to play something interesting, but whatever is broken for their class will remain broken for a longer period of time.
• WoW: This graph at Warcraft Realms highlights a similar slope between most-played and least-played classes. However, even setting aside the many more accounts WoW has over EQ2, there are simply less classes to manage. Blizzard has been slowly revamping each class over time, and it's taking them a long while to do it. But their goal is the same within a much less complex array of options.

The challenges this presents are born out on the Class Forums. Every class board in every game ever made has its share of whiners and forum rats, people who want something right the heck now!! But the mood of a forum as a total is also very telling of the class. It takes only a little reading in each place to see whether the forum posters are generally happy or not with their chosen class. I wouldn't recommend people make decisions solely based on forum posts because the type of players who post on game forums are a bit more hardcore than not. But they can provide some insights.

I doubt this will ever change. Except for the NGE in SWG, I have never seen the wholesale removal of a long-established class in an MMORPG. And even the NGE was more of a redeployment of abilities across new professions than the removal of them (in most cases) because the game wasn't built on classes anyway, but rather skill trees (and while Bio-Engineering, Doctor Crafting, and Creature Handling were removing, we know at least Creature Handling will be making a return).

So basically, an EQ2 Coercer in February will probably be an EQ2 Coerce in 2009.

This makes it hard for players to decide what to roll. So many classes sharing at least some abilities. I personally will be making my decisions based on personal enjoyment and the number of people playing a class because either their quantity proves out the viability of a class or it proves out the support it gets. Not coming to the game at launch, I have no problem leaning on the expertise of the veterans already there, letting their collective wisdom guide my hand.

I've played unsupported broken classes before with the hope they'll get fixed someday. I have learned my lesson well and good. I either find it fun right now, or I will continue looking for a class that is fun right now. If that means moving on to another game, well, I've done that too.

I have a deep respect for the people who make these games. But I also have a deep respect for time and resources. No game development can progress as fast as the player, so it's up to me to manage my own expectations.

As such, while I could be playing the 14-day free trial of EQ2, I'm not going to bother. The only game I'll have time to experience is the part getting the most changes with the next publish. That publish (Live Update 19) is already on the Test Servers, so within a few weeks it'll be on the live servers. Given my continued enjoyment of SWG, and the 30-day account reactivation they rewarded to old PS account holders, I am in no rush.

I do, however, have high hopes for this go around in EQ2. Unlike last time, when the easier/diversionary nature of WoW pulled me to Azeroth, I'm looking for a combination of that casualness but within an environment with more breadth and depth to the world. SWG has this, but the game is still very much a train wreck with some very good playable areas rather than a stable and complete environment. EQ2 is not as broad as SWG, but far more so than WoW. That it works well and that people I know to be as critical of these games as myself enjoy it gives me hope there's something there to like.

And who knows, maybe I'll even continue my Qeynosian Cartography program, even though I, quite ironically, just cleared my hard drive of the 14 other zones I had already had log data for.