Haliken

A rather negative view of the summit. Don't waste your time reading if you don't agree with me after the first couple lines.

- Add scripting to shut off empty instances of Plane of Time
[ Doesn't apply to 9X% of the EQ population ]
- Raid messages of the day
[ Not important, this is purely a convenience thing ]
- Improving how we handle beta and the testing process
[ They already do fine... not sure why this is a big deal ]
- Increase the number of debuffs allowed on the MOBs
[ Manage debuffs, etc. better people. 30 slots means you have to think about what you want cast on the baddie, in heavy raid conditions ]
- Increase buffs on players through AAs
[ Another management condition, 15 is enough. Just use what you absolutely need. ]
- Note field on raid window
[ Not important, this is purely a convenience thing ]
- Improved consent & drag for raid, group and guild
[ Not important, this is purely a convenience thing ]
- Improve corpse drag radius
[ An annoyance, not something truly game-breaking, but it wouldn't hurt to have it fixed ]
- Make charms not no-drop
[ Not important, slightly messes with the game economy ]
- Guild and individual rewards for guild beta testing
[ Not important, load of BS. You wanna beta so you can see it first? that's your reward; you got to do it first ]
- Work on large To Do list....I know this one is a little random
[ The things on this "To Do" list are probably more important than the stuff previously mentioned ]

- Plane of Time instancing and other issues
[ Doesn't apply to 9X% of the EQ population ]
- Back flaggings solutions to help with High-end guild atrophy
[ High-end guild atrophy is a fact of life. You get far in the game and you either stop, or you keep going because you enjoy the game itself ]
- Improved raid and guild functionality
[ These things work fine, don't mess with something that works ]
- Auto loot all for your corpse
[ Not important, this is purely a convenience thing ]
- Improvements to Raid XP
[ Raiders shouldn't get exp. You either go hunt for experience, or you raid ]
- Review the Epic 2.0 quests
[ Review quests that don't exist (aren't out of beta) yet? why?! ]
- No more alien NPCs ;-) (focusing more on familiar Norrathians themes)
[ Not important, this is a waste of time and matter of personal taste ]
- Solo LDoN-stype instances or similiar content
[ Bad idea. Instancing = no competition = why the hell are you playing a MMOG if you want content you don't have to compete for? ]
- Issues with item augmenetations
[ You have to decide really carefully where you wanna stick your augment. If you screw up, you screw up. Don't give idiots an easy way out ]
- Possible enhancements to Guild Wars
[ Not important, this would mildly improve the fun for like 5% of the EQ population ]

I'm glad they talked about EQ in such a setting, but their "most important" topics are all convenience related and really couldn't matter less.

I can more or less react to Blarz paragraph by paragraph because he brought up many issues not mentioned in the letter by SOE:
- Warriors still cannot hold aggro
[ They hold agro fine and beat the suck out of knights tanking-wise. You have no idea what you're talking about ]
- No word on any zone fixes
[ Although I agree with you fundamentally, this should all get cleaned up over time. It's mostly collision issues which the coder who works on collision issues is working hard to correct/improve ]
- Have you seen the new /petition
[ New petition system is obnoxious, no improvement there. I don't care about your personal trouble you've experienced ]
- How about the massive amounts of LAG since Sony giving away POK
[ That's a case by case problem, I personally don't have any lag issues in PoK. Don't assume a problem is caused by something that you have no clue about. There really wasn't a big influx of new people to PoK because it was opened up to everyone; the lag issues "some" people are experience are a glitch in the system that they haven't worked out ]
- This one I love how about the IDLE TIME OUT?
[ This is a problem with your ISP or your computer. My current /played session (which I just alt-tabbed to EQ and checked) is 2 days, 18 hours, 42 minutes, and 8 seconds. I clearly don't have an idle time out issue ]
- How about placing a tech or two into chat
[ Eh, wouldn't hurt, but I'd rather they spend their money on people who don't have tech problems ]
- How about actually taking a couple of months to actually FIX in-game problems instead of trying to milk more money out of us to buy an expansion
[ Maybe they can milk you, you cow, but personally I WANTED to buy the next expansion. I'd gladly pay $30 just to get a higher level cap ]
- Oh yeah how about the poor MACINTOSH players who got ripped off?
[ You're hearing about something that just got major attention for no reason. It doesn't concern you so don't waste your time mentioning it ]
- What does Sony actually do with the information they get from /bug, /report, /feedback commands?
[ Uh, they either read it or ignore it. Pretty dang simple. I feedbacked day after day asking them to add something similar to the "token" system for selling packs in the bazaar and they added one. I wouldn't dare take personal credit for it, but I'll be damned if I didn't get what I want ]
- Why doesn't Sony have a toll free number for tech support or their customer service?
[ Tacky that they don't have one, if a law doesn't require them to have one though, it's their choice whether or not to have one. You pay them a monthly fee for their game, not for their tech support ]
- Why don't they make personalizing your UI more easy for any player?
[ It's already freaking easy. Go to eqinterface.com. Each person shouldn't be trying to code their own UI, and WYSIWYG editors just pump out garbage compared to the clean crisp work that can be done with notepad + photoshop ]
- When are they actually going to have a patch that actually works?
[ I've experienced plenty of them in the past 5 years ]
- There are many many more things I could bring up here
[ Please don't ]

What I believe to be important to change with EQ? Other than finishing up the new engine and squaring away the collision issues, I just wanna see more AA, more levels, and more spells. The rest is the gooey goodness of EQ that I already know and love. Give me an expansion every 6 months and you've got a customer for life.

Enok