I spend a lot of time wondering what’s going on in the minds of EQ2 producers. They are beings of awesome power, but frequently indecipherable motives. But what if a common player could get a taste of that power, just for one day? What wonders might be wrought upon the world?
There’s a limit to what you can get done in a day, even with the might of the EQ2 Dev team behind you, so I’m going to limit myself to what I think would be reasonably quick jobs that someone could do in a day or less.
1. Fix Heritage Quest rewards.
This should be a pretty quick one, seeing as there’s really not that many items to worry about. Heritage quest rewards are supposed to be amongst the best gear for their level, but the older ones have fallen behind further with each update. Not only that, but stat-simplification has rendered some of them utterly useless other than as furniture.
Take the Dwarven Ringmail Tunic. This is the lowest level HQ, and gives a quite nice chainmail top, with strength and stamina. However, strength is entirely useless to any chainwearing class now, who want either wisdom or agility. That’s not putting our best foot forward for new players on their first HQ. So, I’d go through all the rewards and make sure that their stats make sense under the new regime, increasing their power where appropriate, to at least bring them in to line with modern Legendary gear.
For extra credit, make sure that the level 20 Qeynos and Freeport class armour quests, and the Blood Iron class-set recipes from Deathfist are also suitable for their intended classes. Currently they are frequently not.
2. Restore Removed Quests
At some point in the first year, as my memory serves, a large number of quests were removed from Qeynos and Freeport. These were high quality content, complete with voice-overs. Apparently players were “confused” by having so many options. Pffft. Any that would work correctly out of the box should just be turned back on. The NPCs are still hanging around for the most part anyway. Some might require a little bit of tweaking to work with the current zone populations. We’ve got a day. Get done what you can, going for the easy ones first. Update any item rewards if needed, or maybe see if the crafting team have any spare furniture items that could be used for that purpose. Change the level of the quest if necessary, or if it would fill a gap somewhere.
There have been a great number of quests removed elsewhere for often impenetrable reasons, which I’d also like back, but restoring the city ones would be my priority. Bring them back with a triumphant fanfare, as for most people they would be all new content.
3. Turn the Isles of Refuge back on
Same as the previous entry. No good reason why they needed to be removed. Give ’em a polish if they need it. I’ve ranted enough about this in the past, and won’t bore you with it again!
If we could get just two of those tasks accomplished, I’d consider that a good day’s work, and I think the lower end game would be much stronger for it
The Coming of the Cloakbearer, by Maltheas Shadowsqueak.
From the Crafting Channel!
I thought I’d ask the good folks of the crafting channel what they would do with a few hours dev time.
4. Mara Housing
Doesn’t have to be fancy. One of the Qeynos inn room type instances would do for now, but we’d love to see player housing on the Isle of Mara. Failing that, maybe the entrances to the prestige homes that are currently only found in Qeynos and Freeport could be put there. An actual Mara style house would be fantastic, but would take longer than we have here.
5. Collectables filter
Currently, when searching for collectables on the broker, any that you no longer need are greyed out. It would be very nice to be able to tick a box to have them not appear at all.
I kept the list deliberately short, as we only have one day, after all, and I might do another post in the same vein soon. What small change or fix would you do, if you had just a few hours of dev time to play with?
Like I said, I’d delete EQ2X, then I’d get rid of the marketplace and make all those items obtainable in game somehow, like crafting recipes or something.
EQ2 actually DOES confuse me, at least from the standpoint of “things to do”. It never struck me as linear, but rather it’s kind of a pseudo sandbox: a world with only a dismissive wave of a noble’s hand in the direction where you’re supposed to go, and a vague notion of what you’re working towards. I’m not knocking it, because there’s just a WHOLE LOT TO DO in EQ2, and a lot of ways to go about doing it.
To that end, I’d love to see them just stop releasing expansions and do what you suggest: give the whole game a workover. EQ2 always seemed to me to be a game that was slightly out of focus, and I think SOE needs to go back and figure out what niche they want the game to occupt.
I’d certainly agree they could do with adding more guidance as to your options, though they have done that to some extent. I’d prefer that by far than that things be removed. Ironically, many of the quests that were removed in Qeynos and Freeport served as an excellent way of directing players to other areas they might not have otherwise visited. I think of quests like Eldarr Grove’s “Pelle’s Manuscript”, which was extremely amusing with great voice work, and guided players to the South Qeynos mage tower, and Oakmyst Forest.
I think about all the things I usually end up going through with new players, and I wonder why it isn’t just stated clearly in the game itself somewhere. Rather than dumbing the game down, as has sometimes seemed the trend, it’s far better to try to raise the player up, and usually all it would take is a few tips and signposts.
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