Letter from Hartsman.

[schild]

Shiznitz sent this to me. Lots of info inside.

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.
Let me say that again:
Our existing players are our number one concern. Providing a good game experience for you is infinitely more important to us than anything else, including what this move will undoubtedly prompt outsiders to say. In time that will pass, and we'll all still be here playing and working on an EQ2 that has server communities that are much better prepared for the bright future in store for them.
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 (adventure or tradeskill level) 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

[Lt.Dan]

The good guy in me thinks this is a good thing and shouldn't overly affect Bat Country (unless we screw up choosing which server to move to, which isn't outside the realm of possibilities).

The cynic in me expects more than a few problems...giving mmogtards over a week to find a way to greif other players - yeeesh, what are they thinking.

[tazelbain]

Assuming it doesn't break everything, it sounds like a great thing.  They should do the free move thing once a quarter.

I plan on trying the new demo.  Are you guys still going to move to PvP server?

[Sky]

Fuck. I hate crowding. I was just thinking the other day, "Wouldn't it be nice if there were four other tards fighting over this quest spawn?"

What's BC going to do?

[Modern Angel]

Competition is good. Even if the reasons are disingenuous (and who am I to say) that's still a good move. EQ2 gets it.

[Cheddar]

Fuck. I hate crowding. I was just thinking the other day, "Wouldn't it be nice if there were four other tards fighting over this quest spawn?"

What's BC going to do?

My plan is to go with the flow (IE, as the head representative for BC you are assured that BC will stay at, errr, Oasis).  As I stated before I will not be moving to a PvP server.  One thing that I would recommend to the EQ2 devs is to extend the free character transfer for a week, not one weekend.  I think this is a good idea;  hopefully the server transfers were done strategically and not with coin flips (IE, Steamfont has subpar evil representation, and was hopefully chosen to integrate with a server with a larger evil base).  Hartman has proven time and again to view the overall picture and push the proper changes that fits best with the growth of EQ2;  I trust his judgement.

[Soukyan]

I say we just ride the wave and settle in Oasis with Bat Country.

[schild]

I say we just ride the wave and settle in Oasis with Bat Country.

I'd be ok with that. Other than, well, who knows what evils lurk on Oasis.

[Cheddar]

I say we just ride the wave and settle in Oasis with Bat Country.

I'd be ok with that. Other than, well, who knows what evils lurk on Oasis.

Obviously you won't. [/cheapshot]

[shiznitz]

I would argue that you move to a server unaffected by the consolidation if possible. I am in Permafrost and it has good people (even if FoH is there.)

[tazelbain]

You guys switched to evil?

It does seem that EQ2 is more receptive to players than old EQ; I am still leery of giving them my money.  But they do seem better than SWG.  Why are they so different if its the same company? 

Also they are allowing SOEbay servers to move to normal servers?

[Cheddar]

You guys switched to evil?

Yes and no.  On a non-PvP server alignment is not such a big deal (BC has a 50/50 split currenly), it only effects starting city and what classes you can be.

It does seem that EQ2 is more receptive to players than old EQ; I am still leery of giving them my money.  But they do seem better than SWG.  Why are they so different if its the same company? 

Same company, different directors.  Its just like any corporate or military organization; your mid level execs make all the difference as it pertains to their area.

Also they are allowing SOEbay servers to move to normal servers?

No.

[Modern Angel]

I'd also say that they're a little nicer because the head to head with WoW didn't go quite as they expected.

[Cheddar]

I'd also say that they're a little nicer because the head to head with WoW didn't go quite as they expected.

This is a faulty statement.

[El Gallo]

Are you saying that SoE expected to be utterly obliterated by Blizzard or that said obliteration is not a cause of SoE's apparant abandonment of its longstanding "beat your customers with a rusty bicycle chain every chance you get" policy?  If the former, I think they expected a better than a 1:20+ ratio of EQ2 subs to WoW subs.  If the latter, I disagree with what you said.

[Modern Angel]

I'm saying that they treated their customers like shit and they still kept coming back for more shit sandwiches because EQ1 was the only game in town. SOE figures that said customers are coming back for shit sandwiches because they made a good game instead of the fact that there's no real competition.  Enter EQ2. They figure that there are going to be enough transfers to keep them a fairly big time success instead of just another also ran. They were wrong.

I didn't play EQ2 at launch but the general concensus that I've always seen was that it was way bad then and that it's an almost completely different game now. It's going to be an even MORE different game post 2/2/06.

Now I can't make any sort of judgment call as to whether or not SOE knew that WoW was going to beat the dog shit out of them at launch. I  just don't think they did this apparent 180 on customer relations and design philosophy without the pounding their subscription base has taken from WoW.

[Venkman]

I don't see how server combines help undercrowding though.

I also don't see how two different players can be co-discovers of the same item, as implied.

Otherwise, it's easy to take this cynically or at face value. I will be taking it at face value because this partially offsets the need for the extra hardware for the new PvP+ servers.

Since I wasn't on Steamfont yet anyway, I'm not married to it :)

I didn't play EQ2 at launch but the general concensus that I've always seen was that it was way bad then and that it's an almost completely different game now

It wasn't a bad game. It just missed the mark on a few key issues (not unlike SWG in a way, except of course, what marks were missed). WoW drew in a zillion new people and consistently hit new territories for even larger growth while also appealing to those who wanted to play the same game in 1/4 of the time and who thought Blizzard was going to treat them differently from SOE.

[NiX]

One thing that I would recommend to the EQ2 devs is to extend the free character transfer for a week, not one weekend.

One weekend? I could be missing something, but I think the char transfer system is open from the 2nd to the 19th for anyone that wants to transfer. But, like I said, I could be missing something in what Hartsman said.

[Cheddar]

One thing that I would recommend to the EQ2 devs is to extend the free character transfer for a week, not one weekend.

One weekend? I could be missing something, but I think the char transfer system is open from the 2nd to the 19th for anyone that wants to transfer. But, like I said, I could be missing something in what Hartsman said.

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

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.

50% of the servers will receive one weekend to see how they like their new home.  Thats the same weekend as bonus XP and live events.  Just sayin'.

[Trippy]

I'm saying that they treated their customers like shit and they still kept coming back for more shit sandwiches because EQ1 was the only game in town. SOE figures that said customers are coming back for shit sandwiches because they made a good game instead of the fact that there's no real competition.  Enter EQ2. They figure that there are going to be enough transfers to keep them a fairly big time success instead of just another also ran. They were wrong.

I didn't play EQ2 at launch but the general concensus that I've always seen was that it was way bad then and that it's an almost completely different game now. It's going to be an even MORE different game post 2/2/06.

Now I can't make any sort of judgment call as to whether or not SOE knew that WoW was going to beat the dog shit out of them at launch. I  just don't think they did this apparent 180 on customer relations and design philosophy without the pounding their subscription base has taken from WoW.

You are talking about two different things here, customer relations and gameplay design. On the customer relations side EQ2 has always been better than WoW, even before WoW built up its huge numbers. You just had to compare the two companies very early responses to extended downtimes shortly after their respective launches. For EQ2 it was an immediate "We apologize, everybody's accounts have been credited and everybody will level faster for a period of time". For WoW it was an delayed "Whatever".

On the gameplay side EQ2 initial design was just crap -- they were far more interested in fixing all the problems they perceived from EQ rather than making the game actually fun to play -- and unfortunately for SOE they didn't admit that to themselves until very late in the beta cycle. They also pushed up the release of EQ2 to before that of WoW even though they had entered Beta later than WoW and the game was clearly less polished than WoW. The Beta "buzz" around WoW clearly was much bigger and better than that of EQ2 -- i.e. WoW was fun and EQ2 was not -- and SOE decided to gamble and rush the release rather than continue fixing the problems with the game during Beta.

The early release schedule meant that they had to make significant gameplay changes right before release before they could be tested properly (e.g. the archetype "base" skills/spells got changed significantly with far less overlap between the classes within each archetype) and they have continued to make significant gameplay changes with every major update. It's nice that they've admitted the original design sucked and have been working feverishly to fix things and actually put some fun into the game but unfortunately for them WoW was more fun right from the start.

[Modern Angel]

I don't neccessarily see their customer relations as being completely divorced from their design philosophy, though. I can make a comparison with what's going on in WoW: Tigole and the designers think the stuff they're cranking out is the bee's knees. At least a small percentage of the player base is in an uproar; my own personal hunch is that there are more people irritated than just the standard forum whiners but I have nothing hard to base that on so I won't dwell on it. MMOG designers don't switch around their design directions because they wake up one morning and realize their games aren't fun. People have always had to tell them it's not fun.

The best way to tell someone that what they're shovelling isn't fun is to simply not buy it which is exactly what happened. I think that's a good thing because EQ2 is a really solid game at this moment that seems to have learned a few lessons as a direct result of Blizzard giving them an asswhipping on the market.

[Margalis]

The EQ2 people seem to have a strong grasp on what the player base thinks of their game - which is rare. In all sorts of development (all business really) it's easy to get lost in a maze of details and totally lose the pulse of the product. The way you saw in SWG where everyone would complain about something and the devs would say (literally) "according to our spreadsheet calculations Commando weapons are working as designed!"

So I give them kudos for that.

[Cheddar]

I don't neccessarily see their customer relations as being completely divorced from their design philosophy, though. I can make a comparison with what's going on in WoW: Tigole and the designers think the stuff they're cranking out is the bee's knees. At least a small percentage of the player base is in an uproar; my own personal hunch is that there are more people irritated than just the standard forum whiners but I have nothing hard to base that on so I won't dwell on it. MMOG designers don't switch around their design directions because they wake up one morning and realize their games aren't fun. People have always had to tell them it's not fun.

The best way to tell someone that what they're shovelling isn't fun is to simply not buy it which is exactly what happened. I think that's a good thing because EQ2 is a really solid game at this moment that seems to have learned a few lessons as a direct result of Blizzard giving them an asswhipping on the market.

Moles lack Avatars.

[Modern Angel]

Ah, but if I were the mole wouldn't I stand a better chance ofmelting hearts with a nifty animated gif?

I'm not saying I'm the mole. I'm saying that Gamestop has great prices and a knowledgable staff.

[Cheddar]

Ah, but if I were the mole wouldn't I stand a better chance ofmelting hearts with a nifty animated gif?

I'm not saying I'm the mole. I'm saying that Gamestop has great prices and a knowledgable staff.

If EQ2 is so great then why are you not playing with us?  MEH.

[jpark]

Competition is good. Even if the reasons are disingenuous (and who am I to say) that's still a good move. EQ2 gets it.

Maybe.  However, let me offer this brilliant insight:

With revenues in decline EQ2 must now face getting fixed costs under control:  reducing the number of servers it is going to maintain is one step toward achieving this goal.

[jpark]

On the gameplay side EQ2 initial design was just crap -- they were far more interested in fixing all the problems they perceived from EQ rather than making the game actually fun to play -- and unfortunately for SOE they didn't admit that to themselves until very late in the beta cycle.

Quoted for emphasis.  EQ2 is truely a technician's masterpiece 

Maybe that will change.  I understood from Hartsman that even if they decided to revamp the racial avatars to something more along the lines of EQ but with more polygons - any change would be too costly in terms of the sheer labour required to adjust all the gear appearances, so such an initiative is a long way off if ever. 

Put another way, they can only tweak this game so much before looking down the barrel of another massive investment.

[Modern Angel]

I'm playing on Crushbone?

[Cheddar]

Competition is good. Even if the reasons are disingenuous (and who am I to say) that's still a good move. EQ2 gets it.

Maybe.  However, let me offer this brilliant insight:

With revenues in decline EQ2 must now face getting fixed costs under control:  reducing the number of servers it is going to maintain is one step toward achieving this goal.

Pardon my ignorance, but doesnt more people in one area = more server strain = more hardware support required? 

[Venkman]

Still less default servers though, since less worlds to mirror. We also can't forget the new PvP servers the hardware from the combined servers may be getting repurposed to support.

I understood from Hartsman that even if they decided to revamp the racial avatars to something more along the lines of EQ but with more polygons - .

Yea. I doubt we'd have SOGA models with the SOGA division making a game for a new market in the Far East. That's no small undertaking.

I don't neccessarily see their customer relations as being completely divorced from their design philosophy, though

I think their CSR is a separate function from their dev teams, crossing all games. Not sure. But their "design philosophy" is definitely specific to each team. The difference between old-style SOE thinking (pre-all-these-required-rethinks) and other companies though is that sometimes those other companies can tell if something was fun purely from playing the game themselves. It's hard to do that, of course, but that just separates those that can from those than cannot. Some rely more on their testers than others. That can slow down decision-making, can be seen as a lack of confidence, and is totally impacted by the testers you got (like, it surprises me not at all that EQ2 launched as it did since the earliest testers, those who helped shape the foundation, were EQ1 Legends $39.99/mo subscribers... hardest of hardcores designing a casual game?)

Ivory tower complacency is something else altogether, something that's going away in some ways (and struggling to hang on in others ;) ).

[UD_Delt]

Not sure how I feel about this. Lately Grobb had become quite a nice place to live. Our farmers/botters had all mostly been banned, our resident uber-guild left the game complete with drama (guild leader swiped the entire guild bank: 820p+). There have been good pick-up groups for all my alts from level 23-38. The market has been decent if not a little sparse but seeing as I have my own crafters it was ok.

Hopefully we're not being merged back into a cess-pool...

[shiznitz]

(guild leader swiped the entire guild bank: 820p+).

Damn I love MMOGs. IGE is selling 3p for $115. That 820p has a "street value" of $30,000. Assuming IGE pays a 30% discount, then the guild leader just bought himself a nice car.

[Soukyan]

(guild leader swiped the entire guild bank: 820p+).

Damn I love MMOGs. IGE is selling 3p for $115. That 820p has a "street value" of $30,000. Assuming IGE pays a 30% discount, then the guild leader just bought himself a nice car.

And THAT, folks, is how you beat, reach the end, complete, finish, <insert descriptive completion word here> an MMOG.

[UD_Delt]

(guild leader swiped the entire guild bank: 820p+).

Damn I love MMOGs. IGE is selling 3p for $115. That 820p has a "street value" of $30,000. Assuming IGE pays a 30% discount, then the guild leader just bought himself a nice car.

And THAT, folks, is how you beat, reach the end, complete, finish, <insert descriptive completion word here> an MMOG.

That number seems a little inflated. Not sure if  IGE sells at a (huge) premium over SOEbay but on station exchange I think it's around $5/platinum which puts his haul at around $4100. Still not a bad pay day. Just check out the Grobb boards on the official forums if you want to watch the train wreck complete with threats of lawsuits and all.

[Yegolev]

Pardon my ignorance, but doesnt more people in one area = more server strain = more hardware support required? 

Datacenter costs are mostly from maintenance contracts.  My company, for example, has a standing 50% discount on IBM server hardware purchases; this is because we lay out tremendous cash for 24/7 service for all these machines.  There is also the backup solution and associated maintenance, plus more $$$ for the service to send tape copies offsite.  Also you have things like backup generators and fire suppression and whatnot.  Then you have to pay some joker to sit in the room all night in case he needs to hit a reset button.