Dear Sony–<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This is one of your longtime fans.\u00a0 I play only one of your games, but it is your flagship product, EverQuest.\u00a0 Well, it should be your flagship product, but quite frankly it is feeling a bit neglected, and that is the reason for my letter today.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I’d like to offer my condolences (or whatever is appropriate) for the suffering you’re going through right now thanks to the malevolent hackers who led you to taking down your entire gaming network.\u00a0 That makes me sad, and not just because I haven’t been able to play EQ for over a week now.\u00a0 There are millions of people who are suffering as I am, wanting to play whatever their favorite SOE game is but cannot.\u00a0 When the attack’s effects are finally mitigated, when the security holes are patched, when the games finally come back online, you’re going to have some other problems to deal with.\u00a0 I am sure one or two of my EQ friends will vanish into the ether, but for you there will be a lot<\/em> of former SOE game players who will not return.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Not all hope is lost, however.\u00a0 I have heard rumors you’re offering everybody a free month.\u00a0 That will be costly, but it will help keep a few folks around.\u00a0 I am sure you’re also lining up gifts and bonus experience times and other such things to please the folks who do, in fact, choose to return to your games.\u00a0 To this end, I have a few ideas.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I will confess, my ideas are biased.\u00a0 They are all about EverQuest.\u00a0 The simple fact is that you have, in my opinion and I believe the opinions of quite a few others, neglected this game, the game which, as I see it, launched an entire industry of games.\u00a0 Something like<\/em> EQ was inevitable, I suppose, but it was specifically EverQuest that made the online gaming revolution happen.\u00a0 World of Warcraft and its clones and pretty much every online game out there owes their success to EverQuest.\u00a0 Sure, WoW probably would have happened anyway, but the folks at Blizzard–no few probably former EverQuest players–learned from your<\/em><\/strong> mistakes and successes.\u00a0 They took the best elements of EQ and a few other games, added their own little spice and called it good, and in short order it was very popular.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You’re aware of this last part, I know.\u00a0 WoW competes against a few of your games.\u00a0 EverQuest may never reach the popularity it once had, much less overtake WoW, but that doesn’t mean it can’t gain a little ground.\u00a0 Devote some more resources to your flagship, and great things will happen.\u00a0 EverQuest is a dozen years old, and in the gaming world it is showing its age.\u00a0 Give it a makeover.\u00a0 World of Warcraft’s biggest selling point over EverQuest is, sad as it may be, eye candy.\u00a0 Yes, I know, that means creating a new graphics engine, and that’s rough.\u00a0 However, there’s a lot of play-for-free WoW clones out there who have amazing graphics.\u00a0 If they can do it and then let people in without a cover charge, surely you guys can do that and better.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Going deeper into this, there’s a few improvements I’d like to see.\u00a0 I’d like to have greater ability to customize my appearance.\u00a0 You’ve got ways to change the looks of our weapons and shields, and we can change our character’s looks to some degree, but we want more.\u00a0 There’s a lot of ways appearances could be refined to be more individualistic.\u00a0 You could also make more worn bits visible.\u00a0 If I put on a powerful necklace or ring, I want people to see that necklace or ring.\u00a0 I also want to be able to change the looks of the existing visible pieces beyond changing their color.\u00a0 I want to choose from different styles so that when my wood elf bard meets another wood elf bard, people can tell us apart just by the appearance of our armor.\u00a0 For that matter, I would prefer armor styles be different from one level of armor to the next.\u00a0 I have a screenshot of when my bard was level 15 and had just completed her first armor quest and guess what?\u00a0 Except for color, the armor looks exactly the same as what she wears now at level 90.\u00a0 Yuck.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The guild hall is overdue for an overhaul.\u00a0 There’s doors upstairs which can’t be opened.\u00a0 Put some big rooms up there.\u00a0 Maybe a big dining room and some sleeping quarters.\u00a0 It won’t affect game play, but would be cool.\u00a0 Put a yard in, attached to a new door in the back.\u00a0 Put dummy targets in the yard for characters to practice their damaging skills (spell or melee) on.\u00a0 You have other damageable objects in the game, after all.\u00a0 Maybe even put a small arena in the yard for when guildies want to duel.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This brings me to another long-overdue improvement:\u00a0 Zones and zoning.\u00a0 I’d like to see windows in the aforementioned upper floors which look out over the Plane of Knowledge and can see people running around it.\u00a0 I hate to put it this way because when I think it, it sounds whiny, but:\u00a0 Other<\/em> games have seamless zoning.\u00a0 Free<\/em> games have seamless zoning.\u00a0 Surely EverQuest can do better.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Now let’s look to the future a little.\u00a0 There’s going to be another expansion, or so I’ve heard, and I have a couple of ideas for it.\u00a0 The first is:\u00a0 No new levels.\u00a0 Don’t raise the cap again.\u00a0 Doing that every-other-expansion is tiring enough.\u00a0 Second, while you’re adding new AA’s, add a few new group and raid leadership abilities.\u00a0 There’s more than a few folks who at least have the group stuff maxed out plus 8.99 points towards the hopeful day when something new is added.\u00a0 And finally, here’s a unique idea:\u00a0 Aim for lower levels in a different sort of way.\u00a0 You did shrouding in an earlier expansion, but the shrouded classes were weak imitations of the real thing.\u00a0 Make a zone or maybe a few instances where our class isn’t changed, but we are (while in these special zones) reduced to, say, level 50.\u00a0 Our gear gets appropriately weaker, we can only use lesser spells or songs, etc.\u00a0 Don’t make us weak imitations of our class, just reduce our abilities and gear to that level and keep our class the same.\u00a0 It’ll be a challenge for us.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I know, I know.\u00a0 All of the above would be one hell of a lot of work.\u00a0 You’d have to spend quite a bit to make any of it happen.\u00a0 But I feel it would be worth it.\u00a0 Done right, not only would you retain more players but you might actually attract new ones.\u00a0 Market the hell out of EverQuest with a couple of these changes as highlights, and you’ll draw a crowd.\u00a0 Do it because, in my opinion, it’s worth it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sincerely,<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Shakatma Dulcinea, the Golden Bard, Officer of Circle of Prophets, Minstrel of the 90th Level<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Sony– This is one of your longtime fans.\u00a0 I play only one of your games, but it is your flagship product, EverQuest.\u00a0 Well, it should be your flagship product, but quite frankly it is feeling a bit neglected, and that is the reason for my letter today. 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