The Roadmap Goes Ever On

Ooh! Look! A roadmap! I like roadmaps.

And apparently so does everyone else. We're getting this one because "Last year's "experiment" was so well received".

I suspect "astonished" was closer to most people's reaction at the time, when the inaugural EverQuest II Roadmap appeared on 19 January 2022. I was sufficiently taken with the whole concept, I managed to post two thousand words about it, albeit many of them cut and pasted from the document itself.

I wrapped the whole thing up by saying "Let's hope the players appreciate it". Looks like they did, which is pretty close to a miracle in itself, given the general tenor of the EQII community these days.

In last year's post, I went through the whole thing almost line by line. I'm not planning on doing that again. For one thing I don't have the enthusiasm for it, what with the novelty value having worn off, but for another a quick scan through the details suggests a focus on more renovation, less innovation this time around, which gives me less to talk about.

That's in no way a criticism. EQII is a live service game and this roadmap firmly endorses that model. The team clearly have a handle on what works for the game and its core audience. Almost everything in the schedule involves building on the strong foundation they've already established. 

As I suggested, quite mildly, earlier, the installed base for EQII can be highly critical and hard to please, something it has in common with the equivalent demographic in many long-running mmorpgs. In the last year or so, however, I have begun to detect at least some small cracks in the wall of opposition to anything new. 

Time and attrition have boiled off most of the uncommitted along with many of those who really can't stomach change. I wouldn't say those who remain were more easy-going or open-minded about the direction the game is headed but I do sense less hostility in the conversation. Apparently telling people your plans ahead of time and then sticking to them does build trust. Who'd have guessed?

So, FV! What's the plan?

It's always a bit presumptive to allocate successful policy to a single person but Jenn Chan's appointment as Head of Studio does seem to mark something of a watershed. Compared to just about every one of her predecessors, including figureheads and spokespeople as well as actual Studio leads, she comes across as more straightforward, less tricksy. She has a knack of putting things in terms that sound both friendly and authoritative, which is more than many people in similar positions seem to be able to manage.

All in all, as a player, I get the feeling of a ship in reasonably safe hands, sailing in fairly calm waters. Or, I guess, since this is a roadmap we're talking about, not a navigational chart, a competent driver on a well-maintained highway. Compared to almost any era of EQII's history, from the rocky launch and subsequent Hail Mary pass that saved it, through the imperial decline of the later Smedley administration (Speaking of the devil...) to the frankly terrifying Columbus Nova sleigh-ride, this feels like coming out of the storm into safe harbor at last.

Cue the whole thing falling apart in six weeks time...

Enough preamble. What's in the roadmap that's worth a closer look?

Well, I was taken by the use of the repeated phrases "New updates" and "New large updates" as used to describe the various holiday events. Most of the old favorites get the basic version, which I imagine means some different rewards for the existing quests, new things to buy from the vendors, probably some new crafting books. 

The focus, as last year, seems to be on building the summer into a major festival season. Last year saw Oceanfest, Scorched Sky and Tinkerfest stitched together under the banner of Summer Jubilee. This year sees the process continued and consolidated, with all three events receiving "large updates", something that last year included not just fresh quests but new dungeons and instances. 

Sometimes I wonder if they give us too much... Nah, just kidding!

The Jubilee is clearly intended as a permanent replacement for the old summer Ethereal event, which suits me very well. I never really bothered with that, group-focused as it tended to be. A much-expanded suite of holiday events would seem to have a much wider appeal across the whole playerbase than one purely aimed at the endgame elite, although just how broad a church the EQII playerbase might be nowadays is another question altogether. All in all, though, it looks like a solid use of resources.

Presumably much of that necessarily limited resource (Albeit, perhaps, not quite as limited as it would have been a few years back.) will be directed towards the two numbered Game Updates (122 and 123) and the annual expansion, a very substantial amount of brand-new content for a game of EQII's vintage. 

It's revealing - and reassuring -  that the existence of yet another expansion is now so much to be expected it can simply be mentioned in the same terms as every other recurring, annual event. A sea-change from just a couple of years back, when speculation flourished over whether each expansion would be the last.

There's a lot in the roadmap about various unlocks and server mergers for the TLE subculture, none of which need concern us here. Of slightly more interest is the addition of yet another new, special rules server in April, this one using a PvP ruleset. EQII maintains a highly vocal, if not necessarily all that numerous, advocacy for PvP but almost no iteration of the playstyle yet tried seems to suit enough would-be players to stick. The advantage of catering to the PvP crowd by way of the TLE system would seem to be the format's inbuilt obsolescence, meaning the server doesn't necessarily have to hold a crowd for the long term to be considered a success.

Mark it in your calendar, Zel. Retraining course in May.

There's one planned, systemic change to the game this year that could prove significant. In May there's an updating of the AI used by mercenaries to assist and heal players: "Mercenaries will more reliably heal and resurrect their companions, and generally react faster, with higher tier mercenaries gaining increased reaction time over their common brethren." 

At the purely solo level I play, I haven't noticed any major issues with my mercenaries but I have been aware of some undertow of complaint for a while now. I certainly wouldn't trust mine on anything much harder than a boss in a solo instance and even then it's sometimes a close call. 

What I'd really like to see addressed, though, is the placement of the merc. Mine has a suicidal urge to stand in front of anything I'm fighting, taking every AE full in the face. Even if I put him on Passive and play like a proper tank, turning the mob, he has a terrible habit of shuffling round to stand next to me. Coupled with his seeming unwillingness to heal himself until the last moment, I've died more from my merc not healing himself than from his not healing me. If they fix that I'll be delighted.

There's more in the full roadmap but I think that covers the most salient points for now. If I've missed anything major, entirely likely given the limited attention I was paying as I flipped between the various sections, please let me know. I'd hate to be blindsided by something I should have seen coming down the road.