Community Relations Management ChangeMar 7th, 2007 at 12:11 PM by Railus

Christina Delzer ("Kytherea") has left her position of EverQuest Community Relations Manager to become the International Community Manager and supervisor of the International Community Relations Representatives for EQII.

Lydia Pope ("Zatozia") will be filling the void, and brings with her eight years of vast experience with EverQuest. From EQLive:


Splendid Journeys

We are shifting things around over here in Community Relations and I wanted to make sure you were all aware of the changes.

My position is changing as are the duties I will have associated with this position. I am now the International Community Manager and I supervise the International Community Relations Representatives for EQII. As I shift over from being the EQ Community Relations Manager to the International Community Manager, Lydia Pope, AKA Zatozia, will be taking over the reins for EQ. Lydia has years of EQ experience and will be a great addition to the EQ team.

This is a fantastic change for the EQ community. Lydia is an extremely creative thinker and has many great ideas to tantalize your creative taste buds. But never fear, I will not be far way, I still have a story to continue for those who were following the adventures of Kaiya.

It has been an honor to work so closely with both the EQ Community and the EQ Development team for the last 2 years. I will miss the community immensely, for you are one of the best communities in the MMO industry from what I have seen, but I leave you in very capable hands.

Good luck, take care and may you have many splendid journeys in Norrath!

Christina Delzer ~ Kytherea (And the hairless war hamster too!)


The Return of the Torturess

First, I want to thank Kytherea for her kind words and wish her well with her new position. I'm sure she's going to miss everyone but Halflings have a habit of sticking around so I'm willing to bet that you'll still see her from time to time!
So who is this Zatozia person anyway? I'm your new Community Relations Manager, also known as you're Torturess in the Shadows! Some of you may already know me from the past and others have already gotten to know me in the present.

I have been with the company since May of 1999; back when it was still Verant Interactive. Over the past 8 years, I have worked in various positions including, Game Master, Senior Game Master, Lead Game Master, Quest and Events Master, and Associate Game Designer for EverQuest. The majority of my work was done on the historical storyline of EverQuest through dynamic events. Also, I worked on the EverQuest Legends server overseeing the dynamic events on Stormhammer.

In addition to working on EverQuest, I have worked with the EverQuest Online Adventures and the EverQuest II Development Teams for over the years helping to coordinate lore between the three games.

Before I joined the gaming world, I was an accountant. I know… Gasp! How did I go from being an accountant to get into this line of work? Good question! Well, I started out in the EverQuest guide program back in beta 1998. I enjoyed the game so much I just knew I wanted to work on it for a living. Thankfully, they said yes when I asked!

In May of 2005, I joined the Community Relations department as Community Manager for PlanetSide and EverQuest Online Adventures. And now present day, I have EverQuest and EverQuest Online Adventures (EQOA).

I am also a firm believer in role-playing in a role-playing game. Over the next couple of weeks you'll start seeing some changes made to the EQPlayers website and on the forums as I make myself comfortable for my return home!

On the forums, you'll see a new section opening called The Torture Chamber. I'll be using that area to start various discussions in which everyone will be invited to participate. For now, I'd like to thank everyone for the welcomes thus far and I look forward to torturing meeting you all on the forums. Can you feel the evil?

Sincerely,

Lydia Pope ~ Zatozia
Community Relations Manager


Zatozia the Torturess in the Shadows

Dark Elf Cleric of Innoruuk

Pronunciation:
Za-to-zia (Eeeevil) the Tor-tur-ess in the Sha-dows (Mistress)
Za-to-zia = Zuh-toe-zsuh
(For zsuh, the zs is similar to zs in zsa, as in Zsa Zsa Gabor darling!)

~ The Birth ~

When Innoruuk, the Prince of Hate, abducted the High Elf King and Queen from city of Takish Hiz, he imprisoned them on the Plane of Hate where he tortured and broke them recreating them according to his own design. The Dark Elves were born and deposited into Nektulos Forest to spread their hatred throughout Norrath.

Innoruuk, not trusting the race he created long ago from peaceful High Elves, decided he needed to create a being that he could be sure that would be full of hatred. He gathered the bones of the many victims off the ground. Needing something to connect the bones, the dark prince pulled several pieces of hair from his own head. Once the bones were connected, he used his fingers to cut flesh from his own body and wrapped it around cold bones. He placed this mold of hatred onto a long table and gathered his priests for a resurrection ceremony.

The Clerics of Innoruuk formed a circle around the table and held one hand over the table. Innoruuk cut a finger off each of the clerics and the blood poured into the body. He then cut a slice into one of his own fingers and watched the blood flow into his new creation. He picked up some torches off the ground and burned this mold with the flames. The flesh attached itself to the bones and formed a layer of skin. After the flesh was complete, The Prince picked up this being and rinsed it off in a pool of blood and placed it back on the table. The Clerics cast the spell resurrection on the body bringing it to life. Innoruuk then cast a chilling spell on it, which froze the skin turned it deep blue.

The being rose up from the table and opened its eyes. Innoruuk placed black plated armor on it and gave it the two torches that he had used to form the skin. With the blood of the Clerics and Innoruuk's blood flowing through the body, this creature would become a superior Cleric of hatred with high resurrection skills to bring back the hated dead. He called this being Zatozia and commanded her to torture all followers who would pledge to ignore his will of hate; those living life with peace in their hearts.

Thus, the Birth of Zatozia the Torturess.

~The Rebirth ~

Many years later, Innoruuk's plans for his torturing creation drastically changed. With the wave of a hand, Innoruuk summoned Zatozia the Torturess to his side. She looked upon her creator and awaited his orders.

"Your work thus far has proven to be quite valuable, my spawn of evil," Innoruuk said as he looked down at his creation. "But the time has come for you to undertake a new path. I have created a portal to transfer you into the past time of this world. Yes, the past. I am not pleased with how the other Gods have managed to progress. You must portal back to the past and torture all those who oppose me. Stop them from progressing at all cost. The other Gods must be weakened by torturing their followers. Do not let their minions travel so freely. Go now!"

Zatozia the Torturess smiled with an evil grin and then walked through the portal to the past.

Tags: EverQuest, News

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Hope 'ON'
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# Mar 14 2007 at 9:50 AM Rating: Good
Bidaum
Scholar
16 posts
Welcome Back; I too have been around since Verant, and I thought things were bad then, LOL! I was part of the mass exodus of players before the server mergers who bailed on EQ for many of the reasons already meantioned by other posters. Cranking out new expansions while existing content needed fixing was a mistake then just as it contiues to be now.

While I was gone, I missed parts of the game; the do-able quests, the tradeskills; so I decided to renew my subscription and try again. I came back just prior to TSS release to find lots of content I had missed was already old to the status quo and no longer worth doing. TSS was released and the race to get to level 75 was on by lots of people. IMHO, frogloks and drakkin as player races have got to be the biggest walking abortions I have ever seen. The same people who thought they were cool must have been the same devlopers who let their cats walk on the keyboards for the Dr. Zeus-eque naming of the GoD content.

With that in mind, imagine my surprise to see a level 32 (THIRTY-TWO) drakkin warrior sitting in PoK wielding epic 1.0 only 2 weeks after TSS was released!!!! The hideous Darren Stephens look-a-like isn't even high enough to get into the zones where the drops happen! (Yeah thats a lot of prepositional phrases, SAH-REE.) Inquiries to my peers revealed a shocking answer: ALL epic 1.0 can be MQ'd. I will never forget the public raids, and wait in lines, and missed dice rolls that I endured to get my 1.0, yet now the weapons are worthless compared to the many trash drops nowadays, and exist only to not have to do a pre-quest to begin the 1.5. Whoever coded the 1.5 quests did a good job; you MUST do certain parts in order of the quest or you can't even loot a drop. Hearing 'MQs for sale' in general chat still feels like a kick to the gut though.

With the exception of the campfires and guild banners porting/area effect benefits, TBS is another case of Too much; Too soon. People are still working on DoN faction, and now they can't get a group because half the zone is trying out the new expansion. TSS gear is equivalent or better than lots of Qvic stuff, and I don't need a key to get it (at least not Tier 1&2.) Plus the race is on to get into CoA, for the epic 2.0 drop; then it will be a race for dreadspire to get the 2.0 epic enchancement augment. I guess gnomes will love TBS, since the gear there is so reminiscent of the powered Clockwork armor. For me, I have too much other stuff to do to bother with TBS.

I miss the days when I could do an ingame petition and a GM would appear to resolve the issue. Now, I am lucky to get an email from one in a couple of days. The Knowledge Base is just like many of the posts here at Allah --- full of old posts containing incorrect or outdated information. Some serious housekeeping needs to be done there, especially with the release of Vista OS. Personally, I only had an issue with a missing directx 9c file, but I keep hearing of others who can't get ingame for one reason or the other.

Anyway, despite all the aggravation, there is still more good content in EQ than the bad experiences. I look forward to seeing some good things happening in the future. As for today, it's Patch Day which mostly means a long downtime, or a longer downtime because the quick fix broke something else and another emergency patch had to be done, LOL!

Want to give me a plesant surprise? Send me an in game email on the Tunare(Eci) server, and I'll know you at least read this post. :D
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# Mar 12 2007 at 3:49 PM Rating: Excellent
__DEL__1594573301271
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546 posts
What has been said here about the frequency of expansions is true but to Sony its a catch22 sort of. They have to cater to speed racers, er raiders, who blow thru content and demand more. And they have to cater to the casual players who want to explore and go fishing or foraging in all the zones, and try out new baking recipes and stuff like that. I have been playing almost every day since Dec 99, and the phenomenen of expansion-abandonment is not new, but its getting worse.

Meaning when the new expansion comes out, the majority of players abandon the previous ones and concentrate in the new one. In some ways this is even promoted by Sony by the game mechanics.
Examples:

TBS: You must do missions in the new zones to get factions and tokens so you can get the new spells or armors. The problem I see here is that its so hard to get to and from back to POK that as soon as the new expansion comes out in october 2007, with its new spells and aa's, That this one will get completely abandoned. Its kind of too bad because several of the zones are quite nice although I hate that Katta Castrum is such an amazing pain to get anywhere in with all its blocked doorways and fallen stones and stuff. What ever happened to Linear cities like north south qeynos, north-east-west freeport, the three neriaks, etc. Why did we have to do the conglomeration mess of KC with all the pain of getting to a vendor, the banker, the merchant for water/foood, and No way to get to POK.

TSS: you must loot components from several TSS zones to assemble the armor pieces which are a TSS quest in themselves. Some of these zones are still used quite frequently. There was some decent planning and coding that went into this expansion and race than went into the froglok race. I rarely rarely see any frogloks anymore. Still, with the new expansion, ppl left this zone and its very hard to LFG here.

POR: very small expansion of practically only a couple zones that most ppl will see. When grouping became dry in Arcstone, the expansion basically got abandoned. After the first few weeks, NOBODY was doing the progression arcstone or N Ro missions. We had to do them all as Guild-only events. Its still a pain to get ppl to do those, although now that my server is doing TOB pickup raids every

DoDh: This is one expansion that has not been totally abandoned yet, and still has some decent rewards, but there was a monster mission craze that swept the servers. Almost everyone loved them and many many ppl played their mains and alts constantly and there were literally hundreds of ppl looking for a MM group. Waiting lines formed to join a group and the LFG-time ppl spent was between 1-5 mins instead of the normal 30-90 minutes. Many ppl were having fun playing classes that previously had a hard time finding groups or difficulty soloing since now they could do something when in between a DoDh mission or progression quest. Many many ppl were just grinding out the AA's that they needed to do the other goals that they wanted. MM's were never a goal unto themselves but a method of reaching a very different goal.
One of the best things of all was that somebody of a lvl that traditionally gets abandoned 98% of the time because of their level differences, was now able to group with all their guild mates, spouses, friends, etc. There was no level or gear distinction that (often falsely) determined who was a good player. There was only pure skill at playing your character on an even battlefield. I met many ppl who were actually very good and skilled players but their main was lvl 55 or 60 and so I had never grouped with them since I was 70. I also found out that some of the ppl, who I previously thought were uber, were in actuality very very ignorant and totally lacking in play skill, cooperation, ability to assist others, strategy, and in plain words, void of common sense. These MM's were great at identifying ppl in this way.

All the monster missions were both collectively and individually nerfed to be more and more difficult and have less and less rewards until now, they are all totally abandoned by ppl other than the Dain one which has a small following. Sony had a fun thing going for the casual players, and then was very efficient at killing it. Of course there were some stupid exploit type actions that some ppl did where one person did the mission while 5 ppl were AFK that needed to be fixed, But for Sony to nerf and re-nerf and re-re-nerf the missions to the point that it killed them off? What is the purpose of that? Sony already had the missions fixed, and that removed the stupid exploiter ppl from doing them. Many ppl got bored with them and would even put "No MM" on their LFG tool. Why did Sony have to go on and kill the missions for the remaining ppl who enjoyed them as a diversion from playing their main toon?

Its now to the point that the missions are so amazingly hard to beat with amazingly small exp reward, that everyone considers it a total waste of time. Everyone would rather just sit in one spot in like Direwind for example and kill the same skeletons, griffons, black roots etc over and over and over and over and over. Thats no fun at all, just pure boring grinding. How is that supposed to be a preferable thing to do to grind out a few aa's in Sony's mind than doing a few mm's in a row?

DON: this expansion also has not been totally abandoned. It has even had some revisiting since ppl got higher levels and now feel they can compete with the guilds that were previous Tacvi and Anguish winners. There was a nice market for the crystals that ppl enjoyed plus the DON GM tradeskill armor is actually still sought after as more ppl get access to Bazu stones and last bloods.
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Hope
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# Mar 08 2007 at 9:54 PM Rating: Decent
__DEL__1592299845186
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305 posts
As a casual player myself, or at least a non-raider, I would like to post my basic aggreement with the last two posts.

I would like to add my viewpoints on 3 separate issues:

1) The over riding marketing scheme of EQ seems to be to reach a target goal of some percent of active accounts - maybe 80%? - to purchase each new expansion. The way EQ has been succeeding has been to get 60% participation and then drive away 20% of the remaining players. In this way EQ can meet its marketing goals of 80% of active accounts owning new expansions.

When DoN came out, I was leader of a guild that was just starting Nobles Causeway. By the way the designer of Nobles Causeway did a FABULOUS job designing this zone. Even today when I run through it I ponder the creativity and artistic genious that went into putting this zone together. It makes me smile.

But DoN was the new expansion, and EQ had to assure that 20% of the EQ population cancelled their accounts. So they dropped the spawn rate of the nameds in NC (and the drop rate of the quest items and muramite runes in their loot tables) so that it was basically a pure xp zone. In 6 months, maybe more, in which we put several hours each and every day, including weekends, we got enough quest drops to partially equip almost 4 toons. So in the time a 54+ member raiding guild could completely equip themselves with Anguish gear, we could equip a bit more than half a group with Nobles Causeway head, feet, arm, and wrist items.

OK so we went to try Grounding the Drake missions and Creator missions, equipped mostly with items that had maybe 65-85 hp each. We got CREAMED. I would read on the boards on how creator mission were dumbing down EQ, and that 15 minutes was the norm for groups to tear through the missions, and that was in complete contrast to our 3 hour and even longer attempts to get our 40 crystals each. Many times, when we did finally succeed (sometimes we just plain failed), the feeling was not "YAY YAY YAY WE *DID* IT.". It was "I am glad we are finally finished I am tired and going to bed.". The old expansion stopped dropping the equipment we needed. And the new expansion was too hard without that equipment.

Shortly thereafter the guild broke up and EQ had successfully driven off enough people so that it could hit its percentage goal for DoN.
--------------------------------------------------------------
The old destroy ... oops nerf ... the old expansions so we can get more people to buy the latest expansion has done incredible damage to EQ. Please replace this marketing strategy with something else. ANYTHING else.
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2) With TSS the level 1-45 game is perfect for new people (except that Stone Hive needs lower aggro radiuses for the mobs there, but thats simple enough to get around by just avoiding Stone Hive, which is what people have done). Furthermore, the level 1-45 content is so good (if you have some help to do the Stone Hive part), and the itemization was done so well (thank you whoever did this!) that toons can grind in G'Mesa up to about level 52 and even to 55. However it seems like the development team just ran out of time and TSS is no place for toons of level 55-70. For example, the level 55 breath spell area is hard work for 3 POR equipped level 70s and a level 55 Drakkin to clear. A group of level 55-60 G'Mesa geared toons would not stand a chance. The mobs have high aggro radiuses, heal themselves completely quite frequently, dispell buffs, run FAST (well some do anyways), and on top of that there are tons of roaming mobs that join battle. Plus the mobs repop so fast (except for the named that drops the level 55 breath spell item) that even if you get the area clear for a short time it is not long until you are overwhelmed with adds in a very short time.

Both Stone Hive and this zone would be completely undoable by full groups of the level of content they seem to be designed for. A TSS equipped group of level 35-40 toons would get creamed in Stone Hive, and a TSS equipped group of level 55-60 toons would get creamed in this camp. This is why these areas are always deserted. And no doubt many people who were new to Everquest have gotten to one of these areas and then said ***** it this game is too hard. Especially with so many top level players urging people that think that Everquest is too hard to migrate to WOW. For the most part people are taking this advice very seriously!

3) The main boards of Everquest are far too harsh on new players. One OP was wondering why bard mana regen was so low, and that it was an impediment to his strategy of charming mobs, which I assume uses mana for each charm. While some of the posts were polite - stating that it would be overpowering to give bards this much power - a lot of them were close to verbal abuse, and seemed to be blaming the OP for rehashing issues that the EQ community had resolved several years ago. My take on the matter is that the OP had no way of knowing that in 2002 this issue had been beaten to death on these very same boards.

The Everquest community has spoken with a united force - if EQ is too hard then quit and start a WOW account. A lot of people have taken that advice, and only a few have returned.

The development team needs to keep enough staff on raider issues to 1) create new content and 2) debug raider issues, especially pathing issues it seems, in existing raid content.

And the development team also needs to tune content appropriately for new players. They have to have somewhere to go to advance their toons. Right now the content is, in a phrase, *too hard*. Especially since the content has to be done mostly solo and duo. The development team has shown much genious in creating Everquest. I hope they are given the resources and time to update the lower level game so that new toons find a path to get from level 1... to level 51... to level 61 with 100 AAs... to level 65 with 250 AAs... and so on and so on.

Right now people entering the game are saying No Way and leaving for WOW or ... well who knows where. I am hoping that this trend is reversed and that the populations of the servers starts to increase again.

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@#$@#@%^!
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# Mar 08 2007 at 6:01 PM Rating: Default
__DEL__1591780143482
*
176 posts
Welcome to Everquest.

The difference between ones that talk about sexx and ones that have sexxx is the ones that talk about it aren't getting any.

MOST of the EQ players don't whine, ***** and complain, they play. You might have to find us playing sometime, otherwise feel free to peruse the message boards.
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Welcome
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# Mar 08 2007 at 3:20 PM Rating: Decent
GOMN
Scholar
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2,600 posts
Welcome


Edited, Aug 1st 2019 4:08am by GOMN
____________________________

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Lack of Training Customer support
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# Mar 08 2007 at 9:27 AM Rating: Decent
Larth
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ZAM Administrator
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1,232 posts
Lack of Training Customer support

I wanted to Buy the New TBS but I could not figure out how to update my Credit card with the new Exeration Date.

I ended up talking on the PC to a custom support (some live text way) and they took my Credit card number and said that I would have to buy a New One year of EQ with the TBS, I said yes. So I get a e-mial back with my info and Credit card number(RED FLAG- I dont want my Credit card info in E-mails) asking me for the numbers off the back of of my Credit Card (RED FLAG) and all my Personal Info (name,address,) (RED FLAG)

Ticked me off. So I find out that I could go to the Sony web site and buy the expasion that way with out the stupid ripoff Custor support wanting to steal my Credit info.


Fix your interface to update Experasions dates.
Train your Employees what NOT TO ASK FOR in e-mials or to put in them (UN SUCURED)
Train your employess what your web process are and direct them to info custumors that if they dont have a clue.
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Hope
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# Mar 08 2007 at 6:31 AM Rating: Decent
__DEL__1592770718876
19 posts
Welcome to the fire instead of the frying pan. With the past few expansions we've seen some wonderful new zones, gear and content. But at what cost to the game? We've also seen patch on top of patch on top of emergency patch.

This is just insulting us. To have more down time after getting a bonus weekend, that for a lot of servers and people did not work right or that people missed because Sony keep it very quite about when it would happen. In fact I had filed a petition asking for there to be a bonus weekend and was told by a "customer-no-service" representative that Sony was not going to issue any bonus experience over the issue so imagine my surprise when I logged in on Monday morning after the emergency patch week and found out that it was going on.

Normally when you get bonuses like that they tell you it will happen a week or so in advance, so folks can take full advantage of it. And for those who did take advantage of it, it was only a 50% bonus instead of double experience as in the past.

I have read a lot of posts that have been put on here, on other sites and at Sony's own site. I agree with a lot of them. The ones I don't agree with are those who seem to have to try to defend Sony's inexcusable actions with the release of expansions. It almost seems that those people who are trying to defend Sony work for Sony. If I worked for Sony I guess that I would try to save face and make excuses about how programming it hard to do, how Sony rushes the development or anything else to try to get people to stop complaining. You want the complaining stopped, then put out a decent product without the glitches!

An analogy that I read compared this product to a car. I'm old enough to remember how crappy American built cars use to be in the 1970' and 80's. If fact the reason so many of the Big 3 manufacturers are in trouble today can be traced back to those days. This gave imports the chance they needed to come in and take the market away from those manufacturers by building a product that was more economical, better build, and a higher caliber of fun to drive. Sony should be particularly taking note of that comparison.

I'm an adult gamer. I work night mostly and so spend most of my time playing during the day. This is my hobby and the way I disconnect from the real life world. I enjoy the friends I've made online and have meet several of them as I travel. The only game I play online has been Everquest. I've played since the beginning and I have 2 accounts (which they should offer discounts for but don't, but that's another topic). I've never seriously considered any of the other online games out there, but now I find myself having to think about it.

Sony has gone from having great customer service and insight, to a "Customer-No-Service" mentality. This patching for an expansion, then having emergency patching, then having to emergency patch the emergency patch has gone past the point of ridiculous to the point that it is insulting everyone involved in the game, from the president of Sony, to the producers, to the developers, but more importantly to the paying customers. It's not just about the downtime. It's more about the poor communications and information that we receive from Sony.

As I said before it effects me hard because I play during the days when they have "less traffic on the servers". We're the ones who do the complaining about it so why doesn't Sony give us the extra bonuses. Let's have the "bonus experience" happen during the middle of the week and during the daytime when you do the patches.

Thanks for letting me rant. I really hope that I don't have go elsewhere and start over to get my dose of non-reality but If Sony doesn't change it's ways from this "it's all about the bottom line" path to "it's all about great customer service" path, then I think a lot of folks like myself are going to start looking.

So you want to help the game and customer service. Then be an advocate for us who play the game and not just a defender of your employer.
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Hope
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# Mar 08 2007 at 3:29 AM Rating: Decent
__DEL__1593361960045
16 posts
Welcome home
I will hope that you can do something to reverse the trend of players leaving EQ.Maybe even change things so tht we get an influx of new players.As we know without new players the game can not survive.
Everquest is the best game on the net and somehow that has to be relayed to the public.Just look at how many loyal players it has.This is not just an on-line game but a community of friends.
Maybe instead of developing new content for high end players you should concentrate on a promotion content that would draw gamers in.
I have played a few other games and most people i talk to have never heard of everquest.
Break out the promotion team to make people aware that everquest is the game to play.
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