Letters to the EQ2 Dev Team!

JudithWilliams

MMORPG is happy to announce a new project called, "Dear Devs". Have all your Everquest II questions answered! If you would like to write a letter to the Everquest II developers with the opportunity to receive a reply direct from the developers themselves, please send your letters and questions to adele@mmorpg.com . Please include "Letter to the Devs" in the subject line.

 

 

 

 

 

*Note- All letters will be given careful consideration. Not all letters will receive a reply. Letters will be hand selected and submitted by MMORPG.com to the Everquest II development team. Please continue to watch the site to see if your letter was answered.

Moirae

Wonderful. Maybe we won't have to hear the complaints here much anymore and they'll go where they should. To the devs.

fozzie22

Originally posted by Moirae


Wonderful. Maybe we won't have to hear the complaints here much anymore and they'll go where they should. To the devs.

Do you honestly think they'd submit them? or get a reply if they did..

Bigfoot

Quick, everyone ask them if they'll ever make their game work well with today's technology. :P

 

No, seriously :[

openedge1

 

Originally posted by Bigfoot


Quick, everyone ask them if they'll ever make their game work well with today's technology. :P
 
No, seriously :[

I am on it...my major pet peeve, and I will so be on top of that question.

 

Thanks

 

UPDATE::::

Here is my letter guys...whatcha think?

_____________________________________________

We know the game engine is getting on in age, and that maybe the development of the engine was made for a different type of hardware...but, at this point, many threads on the tech support forums exists about the many shortcomings of the engine with todays latest hardware.

Whether it is the 8800 series video cards, no Dual Core support or even simple things like missing shadows...we as a community would like a final answer on if any of these issues will be addressed.

Myself, like many others I believe would be happy without one or two "content" updates to let you strictly focus on performance instead...can this be done? We would prefer to not hear "We are looking into it" and more of a Yes, we plan to start fixing the engine say within 3 months...or just No, we cannot fix it.

Thank you

fozzie22

I'd expect your reply on the 12th of never

openedge1

Don't worry guys...I know I will not be picked either, I already have relegated the question to someone asking

"Whats the next expansion based on?"

or

"How did you come up with the design of Gorowyn"

In so many words..."Yawn"

I still believe this is the most serious question, and the one THAT NEEDS to be asked.

Later guys

Bigfoot

Well, I sent in my e-mail asking about it.  Maybe if we get enough people to send in enough, they'll reply :P

openedge1

May I ask...how long is this going on?

I also posted this to the tech forums for SOE. Hopefully we will have an influx of this type of letter writing. The tech issue is the single most important problem right now with the game as content is right where it needs to be...

Because we all know, when it comes to content...EQ2 has all beat!

nakuma

my questions and concerns also deal with the unaddressed issues with the 8800 series cards, non-dualcore support, and crappy shadows disappearing. overall horrendous uneven performance. As others Im wondering if this will ever get addressed or should I just cancel now, and forget the game, as I have more than adequate system that is not being utilized by the engine of this game. it makes me wonder as a consumer/customer if they even care about my concerns and are only worried about getting money. if this issue does not in fact get addressed I will have no choice but to up and leave to "greener pastures"such as e.g. AOC which I already pre-ordered. SOE is slowly running out of time, and this engine that Eq2 is not built for the future, at least not our future where dualcores and quadcores now dominate the landscape.

 

there is an old saying "those who do not adapt, die off leaving opportunity for those who can"

openedge1

Originally posted by nakuma


my questions and concerns also deal with the unaddressed issues with the 8800 series cards, non-dualcore support, and crappy shadows disappearing. overall horrendous uneven performance. As others Im wondering if this will ever get addressed or should I just cancel now, and forget the game, as I have more than adequate system that is not being utilized by the engine of this game. it makes me wonder as a consumer/customer if they even care about my concerns and are only worried about getting money. if this issue does not in fact get addressed I will have no choice but to up and leave to "greener pastures"such as e.g. AOC which I already pre-ordered. SOE is slowly running out of time, and this engine that Eq2 is not built for the future, at least not our future where dualcores and quadcores now dominate the landscape.
 
there is an old saying "those who do not adapt, die off leaving opportunity for those who can"

This is good...I hope you emailed that to adele

 

thanks

JudithWilliams

Submissions are still being taken. Thanks to all of you who have written. All letters/questions are welcome as long as they are constructive, nicely written, and not an outright attack or flame.

 

Thanks again:)

nakuma

Originally posted by openedge1


 
Originally posted by nakuma


my questions and concerns also deal with the unaddressed issues with the 8800 series cards, non-dualcore support, and crappy shadows disappearing. overall horrendous uneven performance. As others Im wondering if this will ever get addressed or should I just cancel now, and forget the game, as I have more than adequate system that is not being utilized by the engine of this game. it makes me wonder as a consumer/customer if they even care about my concerns and are only worried about getting money. if this issue does not in fact get addressed I will have no choice but to up and leave to "greener pastures"such as e.g. AOC which I already pre-ordered. SOE is slowly running out of time, and this engine that Eq2 is not built for the future, at least not our future where dualcores and quadcores now dominate the landscape.
 
there is an old saying "those who do not adapt, die off leaving opportunity for those who can"

This is good...I hope you emailed that to adele

 

 

thanks

yeah i emailed adele an extended version.

nakuma

just curious, how many people would accept a few updates that only focus on performance enhancements?? cause i for one would definitely tolerate a few updates which focus only on performance enhancements. so far we have recieved stellar content and feel we can allow for a good 2-3 updates that focus only on upgrading the code to the engine, and optimizing the engine and game in general.

 

so just a simple response to that would be nice,like "yes I would like updates to focus on optimizing the engine and game performance enhancements" and adele if you could relay that to the devs by all means please.

fozzie22

Originally posted by nakuma


just curious, how many people would accept a few updates that only focus on performance enhancements?? cause i for one would definitely tolerate a few updates which focus only on performance enhancements. so far we have recieved stellar content and feel we can allow for a good 2-3 updates that focus only on upgrading the code to the engine, and optimizing the engine and game in general.
 
so just a simple response to that would be nice,like "yes I would like updates to focus on optimizing the engine and game performance enhancements" and adele if you could relay that to the devs by all means please.

I've been saying this since launch..we need the game stablised rather than more instances added to the game,for me at least i would be more than happy to see a couple of bug fix LUs and in the near furture too.

 

Now wether they'll do it is the question becuase i would assume itss a bit easier to make a few new dungeons than actually go looking for fixes to problems that the game has but time will tell.

Druz

I agree, I hope these questions are answered.. EQ2's engine for what it does, is far too demanding than it should be. When the animation of fire makes a powerful graphics card chug.. there is something terribly wrong, and I do not mean with the card



The lighting in the game is NEARLY non existant there are a few lights here and there but nothing special which makes areas look really fake. (spell effects and other lighting effects have no effect on the terrain)



They need to fix it!

quaiky

 

Originally posted by fozzie22


 
Originally posted by nakuma


just curious, how many people would accept a few updates that only focus on performance enhancements?? cause i for one would definitely tolerate a few updates which focus only on performance enhancements. so far we have recieved stellar content and feel we can allow for a good 2-3 updates that focus only on upgrading the code to the engine, and optimizing the engine and game in general.
 
so just a simple response to that would be nice,like "yes I would like updates to focus on optimizing the engine and game performance enhancements" and adele if you could relay that to the devs by all means please.

I've been saying this since launch..we need the game stablised rather than more instances added to the game,for me at least i would be more than happy to see a couple of bug fix LUs and in the near furture too.

 

 

Now wether they'll do it is the question becuase i would assume itss a bit easier to make a few new dungeons than actually go looking for fixes to problems that the game has but time will tell.

i  posted allready before that you won't be able to skip just a few liveupdates for engine changes. a typical mmo dev team after live consists of a few client programmers which are usually just enough for bugfixes, small features, some server programmers, a artist team (sound, graphic), and game designers (people that design content). of these people only the client programers really are qualified to work on a game engine, maybe some of the server ones could help out a bit. but the artists and game designers usually only have basic programming knowledge cause they have tools to work with and scripting languages.

 

so only a small part of the team can work on the engine, but the thing they have to do would be a very big rework of the engine. From all the infos i gathered EQ2 client was released with the target of a geforce 3 as min requirement, that forced them to use cpu for all things that that card could not do in hardware, so the engine is more compareable to the ones of direct x8 games. 

I don't think its easier to add a new dungeon/raid just another part of the dev team works on it, add to it thats the content team is probably the bigger part of a dev team after release (there is usually far more conetnt updates needed than client fixes). this means that these updates will happen a lot more often than huge client updates.

So what they need is more or less a complete engine rewrite, which usually takes months, then needs months of testing so if they decide to do it (and i hope they do it) that is not a thing that we can expect for a normal LU, its much more likely for them to do such things with a new expansion. But even then they should have started work on it allready (or do taht very soon) to be in time to fit it in this novembers expansion.

Also this engine revamp would raise the min requirements for the game which is also something that you better do with a expansion where you can announce it a few months before to give people time to upgrade the old pcs they sometimes still use.

fozzie22

I wasnt asking for a full engine rewrite becuase we know that wont happen,what i and i'm sure many others would like to see is a massive bug fixing programme implimented within the game,thats not to much to ask for surely?

openedge1

Originally posted by fozzie22


I wasnt asking for a full engine rewrite becuase we know that wont happen,what i and i'm sure many others would like to see is a massive bug fixing programme implimented within the game,thats not to much to ask for surely?

Same here. I think people think that is what we are asking for. And the reason for my letter to simply state.."Give us a yes or no if these can even be fixed"

If not...then yea...don't worry about it and move on...give us content til we find another game that likes our hardware...and that we like as much...that or EQ3

Cheers

Druz

The engine itself is simply put, bad.. I don't think anyone is expecting an engine rewrite.. there are just alot of terrible aspects of it that make it look more dated than it should be which screams for some form of update. You wouldn't need to rewrite the engine in order to fix the rediculous strain on a computer for a single fire animation+lighting (for example)

JK-Kanosi

Originally posted by nakuma


just curious, how many people would accept a few updates that only focus on performance enhancements?? cause i for one would definitely tolerate a few updates which focus only on performance enhancements. so far we have recieved stellar content and feel we can allow for a good 2-3 updates that focus only on upgrading the code to the engine, and optimizing the engine and game in general.
 
so just a simple response to that would be nice,like "yes I would like updates to focus on optimizing the engine and game performance enhancements" and adele if you could relay that to the devs by all means please.

I have a pretty good idea on how many people wouldn't care. How many casual gamers do you know that spend the cash needed for a modern computer? Usually, those that have the better systems are the more hardcore gamers (including the hardcore gamer parents and career professionals...they exist). Those who do have these systems will of course say yes. Those who don't have them are probably more casual and haven't came close to participating in all the content.

So my educated guess is that most people wouldn't mind a boost in performance. Especially if after the performance update, casual players were able to switch from high performnce -balanced settings to  whatever the next quality setting is.

JudithWilliams

Just letting you know that the letters do have responses, and even if someone wrote in a similar question, the devs were nice and answered each of you, and we will post each of your letters with the dev responses soon. Some of them are already up now:)

 

Thank you all for your letters:)