We're On A Roadmap To Nowhere

Since it seems to have been the roadmap thing that caught the most attention yesterday, I'll go with it. It's a nuanced story with potentially worrisome implications and it also has the merit of relating directly to the main MMORPG I play these days, if and when I'm playing any, so it makes sense to give it some air.

Here's the background. Angeliana, the Senior Community Manager for both EverQuest titles, took to the forums over a week ago to clear up some concerns that had been expressed in Discord over the non-appearance of a 2026 Roadmap for either game:

"We have seen some people asking across forums and Discord about the status of a Roadmap for 2026. This is to inform everyone that we have chosen to forgo a roadmap this year. Our reason for this is simple: we would like to knock out the redundancy in posting the same information repeatedly and would much prefer to post articles closer to when things will be occurring, such as events and important news."

She later followed that bald statement with a gloss:

"The sole reason for this decision was the consensus in our forum threads, Discord, and social media post with the roadmap of it being the same things (such as yearly events) every year, so the roadmap was redundant information. We've decided to not post the roadmap and just post the important events and information closer to when they are happening instead of a roadmap. This does not mean the game is going into maintenance mode, or that it is closing down. It simply means we are attempting to remove redundant posts which we were told were unnecessary in years past.

Seasonal events and such can still be found in the in-game event calendar as well."

EverQuest players, who are by far the more sanguine and reasonable of the two tribes, seem largely to have agreed with the decision:

"Honestly, putting a document that was 90% events that happen every year and then trying to convince people that they were "accomplishments" was a bit of a con on the players. It was a good decision to stop doing it."

"I actually think the lack of a public roadmap makes sense when you compare EverQuest to other long‑running franchise"

"Yeah, the roadmap was just an event calendar, which we have in game... we love the new direction!"

Others were more concerned with the presentation of the change than the change itself:

"Redundancy or not it’s not a good look"

Most of that was on the first page of the thread. The other four spin off into minutiae about specific changes people are hoping for or dreading and the whole roadmap issue seems to get forgotten.

Over on the EverQuest II forums,  the temperature, as always, was higher:

"So, the answer to the lack of clear communication is to have less communication. Got it."

"It sounds like they have no clue what they're going to do and couldn't deliver on any promise they may have made."

"Doesn't bode well for the future of EQ2."

The EQII thread grumbles on for ten pages. I stopped reading after three. You can always rely on EQII players to find a way to spin anything into a guarantee the game is either about to go into maintenance mode or close down altogether. EQ players tend to take a longer view.

The kerfuffle went on so long Jenn Chan, Producer of both titles, had to step in and calm everyone down:

"Hey all, we've been reading your concerns with the dropping of a formal public roadmap this year. Just wanted to drop a quick non-fancy non-formal note in here for you all that made it to this page in the threads.

We're planning on putting out two Game Updates this year has we have for many-many years and there is a new expansion slated for the end of the year as has been the tradition. For those of you on Origins servers, Anashti Sul and Dozekar will be getting Rise of Kunark. Additionally, there will be a new Time-Locked Expansion server coming this year as well. This on top of all the numerous things we're regularly updating, improving, and fixing throughout the year.

No one can predict the future, but I can tell you we're expecting to keep putting out new things for you through the year and hopefully for many-many more years in the future."

That's basically a Roadmap without the fancy graphics. Or a Producer's Letter without the endless recaps and back-slapping. She's basically admitting that very, very little changes, year-on-year, in either game. There's a long-established rhythm that rarely varies and everyone who plays knows perfectly well what it is.

So what does the Roadmap do? Well, I guess it's primarily a PR device. It's a nice graphic that gaming sites can use as filler, which at least gets the names of the games out there again. It's also, theoretically, an enticement for people who've never played or who haven't played for a while to see what's coming and maybe decide to join in.

On that basis, it seems like it would generally be worth a day of someone's time to put one together, even if it didn't say anything very new. On the other hand, after a few years, it's going to start looking a bit obvious to everyone that these games just do the same things, year after year, so maybe there are better ways to promote the titles.

The nominal reason for dropping Roadmaps is that players have been complaining Roadmaps don't tell them anything they didn't already know, which is almost certainly true. As a lot of commenters point out, though, what those complainants were hoping for were more relevant, useful Roadmaps that did tell them something, not the complete removal of Roadmaps altogether.

My feeling is that those sorts of Roadmaps aren't possible. The precise, technical gameplay detail people are asking for is not going to be amenable to being locked down months in advance. That's like asking for July's Patch Notes in February. 

As for macro changes and events, there pretty much are none that we don't already know about - two Game Updates and One Expansion per year has been the pattern for a decade now. Every so often there's a major technical development or a big UI switch but those often get delayed so it makes good sense to announce them separately, when they're imminent.

Even if it may be perfectly sensible to stop doing Roadmaps, you do have to wonder why a developer would take the risk once the tradition has been established. Yes, players are going to complain it's more of the same old, same old but it's a fair bet there's going to be a bigger hoohah if the Roadmaps just vanish. Surely the really safe, lazy option would be to keep banging out the old copperplate versions, taking the mild flack for not saying anything new and carrying on?

I have no idea why they didn't do that but I can speculate with the best of them:

• Literally no-one at Darkpaw was keen to do a Roadmap this year so rather than draft someone to do it they decided not to bother.
• They were all so deluded they really believed players would be happy to see the back of Roadmaps.
• Someone looked at how much it cost to produce the Roadmaps and decided axing them could pay for a new coffee-maker.
• Someone realized the games were already in a weird kind of de facto Maintenance Mode, albeit one that includes two big, free updates and a paid expansion a year, and it seemed like a good idea to acknowledge the situation, without actually admitting to it.
• Management knew EG7 was going to make some genuinely major change in 2026 (Could be good, could be bad...) and since there was no way that could be included in a Roadmap, it was either lie about it or don't do one.

Or, more realistically and more depressingly, the Darkpaw team genuinely doesn't know what this year holds and isn't willing to commit to any kind of timetable. We know the games are in more trouble than usual. The last EQ TLE server didn't do all that well and then there was the Heroes Journey, peeling loyal players off and turning them so now they'll most likely never come back. 

As for EQII, it's always a little surprising it keeps going. The players always seem to hate most of the changes that get made, most of which only happen because the devs are desperately trying to come up with ways to keep the game going. Unfortunately, every change seems to drive a few more players away and the population keeps getting smaller and smaller...

I don't read too much into just the abandonment of Roadmaps. The games do both have a really excellent in-game calendar that covers about 75% of what was in the Roadmaps, while the other 25% is mostly the two GUs and the XPack, all of which turn up as regularly as any Holiday Event. No-one who plays the games needs a Roadmap.

On the other hand, abandoning them is undeniably a Bad Look. I really don't see why they wouldn't just do the minimum, knock out the usual, boring, predictable graphic, send out the press release and let it go. I don't think it's a portent of doom per se but it's certainly an odd choice.

I guess now we'll have to wait and see if Jenn Chan carries on with her Producer's Letters. Those are even more redundant than the Roadmaps, much of the time, what with half of everything she says referring to things that have already happened. Logic says if Roadmaps go, Producer's Letters should, too. Common sense, self-preservation and, let's hope, any self-respecting Marketing Department, says the opposite.

Just one, final, unsettling observation. I'm always alert to qualifiers and I noticed immediately just how many Jenn dropped in her supposedly re-assuring statement: "planning", "expecting", "hopefully" and, most chilling of all, "No one can predict the future". 

Maybe not but I suspect she might have had a premonition...

 

 

Notes on AI used in this post.

That ugly second illustration. As opposed to the ugly first illustration. Honestly, they're both pretty horrible. It took me about the same amount of time to find, copy and deface the original 2025 EQII Roadmap as it did to draft a prompt and run four versions at NightCafe, of which the one I used was the first, so the other three don't really factor in, timewise. I just thought surely I could get something better but noooo....

The model I used was Z-Image Turbo and the prompt was "A Roadmap Graphic for the MMORPG EverQuest II for the year 2026, with "CANCELLED" stencilled across it in huge letters. Visual style to resemble an infographic to be used in a slide projection." It did the job - I asked for something dull and boring and that's exactly what I got.

It handled the title perfectly for a change so I guess if I'd specified some headings I could have gotten something that looked a lot more convincing instead of the nonsense it came up with on its own. Then again, maybe that's Koada`Dal or something. I mean, it could be...

 

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.

Coffers, Coffins, Confidence

It's been a while since I did very much in EverQuest II. So much has happened in the first quarter of the year, what with several brand-new mmorpgs, a torrent of free single-player games and the long-awaited third expansion for Guild Wars 2, there's hardly been time. 

Before all that, I'd been playig the game pretty consistently. Through December and into January, after the last expansion, Visions of Vetrovia, arrived, I took three characters to the new level cap of 125 and completed the Tradeskill signature line three times as well. Not necessarily on the same characters.

As my posts about VoV suggested, I was very happy with the way things were going. It felt like a very solid entry in the canon, possibly even a step up - not that I'd had many complaints about any of the recent expansions. I was quite content to carry on playing. I had plans to level up three more characters and I wanted to finish the Adventure Signature line on at least one of them.

The only reasons it never happened were the aforementioned distractions that pulled me away in other directions, since when I've barely been back. I still haven't completed that Adventure questline, something which irks me a little. It's not the first time I've taken a break before getting to the end of the storyline but it's not my usual pattern.

Just because I let my attention drift doesn't mean to say nothing's been happening in Norrath. Very much the opposite, in fact. Virtual life goes on whether you're there to see it or not. 

In mid-January, Daybreak surprised everyone by publishing a detailed roadmap for the entire year. Then they surprised everyone even more by sticking to it.

Yesterday, Head of Studio, Jenn Chan, issued a Producer's Letter filling out some more detail on what EQII players can expect in the second quarter of 2022. Among other things, Jenn gave us the skinny on this month's Game Update 119, EQII's first major post-expansion content drop of the year. 

It's called "Coffers and Coffins", from which I infer... nothing, really. Undead, maybe? Vampires? It looks substantial, with "content for all playstyles", EQII-speak for solo, heroic, raid and tradeskill. There are "new heroic dungeons, new collections, raids and tradeskill content", which is what I just said, except for the pluralization of "dungeons" and "raids". If there really are more than one of each, that will be impressive.

There's an open beta already running so I went over to the beta forums to see what people were saying. I guess I could have made a beta character to go test the new stuff for myself but don't want the full spoiler experience and anyway, if I can't find the time to play the actual game...

There's not a lot of feedback yet. The update only went into beta yesterday. What I can confirm is that the one new dungeon up for testing is called Merchant's Den, that it begins with a quest from Forlorn Gist, the final open-world map in the current expansion, and that to get the quest you'll need to "have completed "Visions of Vetrovia: Vacrul Intentions" or have "VoV Flag: Castle Vacrul Dungeons Unlock".

Since this is the exact same step of the Adventure Signature line that stymied me back at the beginning of the year and which led to me concentrating on tradeskills instead, I'm going to have to get my act together and finish it. I had been entertaining some hopes of using the coming update to gear up before going back to try again but it looks like that's a non-starter.

Although maybe not. Also included in the update is the very hotly antiicipated (At least by me.) Overseer Season Four. The Overseer system, referred to by Jenn Chan, entirely accurately, as a "mini-game", isn't to everyone's taste but I really like it. What's more, I've done really well out of it, too. 

The new season comes with "some much-requested changes" but personally I'd be more than happy to get the same version as Season Three, only with rewards updated to match the current expansion and new level cap. Last year, Overseer rewards allowed me to upgrade pretty much all the gear my Berserker had equipped from the Signature Questline, some of it quite substantially. If that happens again this year maybe I will be able to clear that pesky instance without too much cursing after all.

As well as the update, there's another beta running right now, this one for the promised 64-bit upgrade. I took a look at the forums for that, too, and the feedback there seems very positive, with most commenters mentioning notable improvements in the way the game runs and some even saying it improves the graphics.

Going back to the Producer's Letter and the Roadmap it follows, we are indeed getting yet another special rules server, even though we only had one a few weeks ago. The new one's called Varsoon and it's going to use the now-familiar Time Limited Expansion format, only with the "Free Trade" ruleset, which I think means almost all No Drop flags have been removed and you can buy and sell just about anything. I might have got that wrong but the F.A.Q. that's coming "soon" will no doubt clear it up if I have.

Finally and perhaps most intriguingly of all, the Letter mentions an upcoming "new spin on live events", by which I think Jenn means what we normally call "holidays". She elaborates: "We are happy to announce that Tinkerfest, Scorched Sky Celebration, and Oceansfull Festival will be receiving some new updates, including some heroic dungeon content for each event, as well as new and exciting rewards that can be earned along the way." My emphasis.

When we got a full dungeon instance for this year's Chronoportal event I thoroughly enjoyed it but commented "It does seem like an awful lot of work for something that's only going to be available for two weeks a year." Well, apparently that's how we roll, now. 

A new heroic instance for each of the three summer festivals, presumably including a solo version too, although it's not specifically mentioned, is one heck of an impressive effort. I know I always talk up Daybreak's ability to add content despite having a relatively small team but this is taking it to new levels.

We'll have to wait and see a) if it actually happens and b) if it's any good when it does but on the evidence of the year so far I see no reason to doubt either of those things will turn out to be true. Al I have to do now is find the time to enjoy all this unexpected benifence. It's a nice problem to have.

I Can See Clearly Now: Daybreak's Roadmap To The Future

The evening was wearing away when I finished yesterday's post and I still had dailies to do in Guild Wars 2 but I thought I'd better check my email before I started. Lucky I did. Wilhelm had been in touch, clueing me in to a surprising development at Daybreak Games: a 2022 "Roadmap" for each of the EverQuest titles.

The brief introduction to each of them begins cautiously:

"As an experiment, we're trying something different this year. We're posting our development roadmap for 2022. As far as we know, this is the first time we’ve publicly laid out our major plans like this."

Too right, it is! Getting any information out of DBG ahead of the last possible moment has been a hopeless ask since the transition from Sony Online Entertainement almost exactly seven years ago. Has it really only been that long?

Daybreak aren't at all unusual in playing their cards so closely to their chest. It's actually quite unusual in the mmorpg industry for anyone to go on record earlier than they absolutely have to about pretty much anything. There sometimes seems to be a culture of secrecy about the whole genre that goes far beyond normal, commercial self-protection. And, of course, plans can change.

"Please remember that these are our high-level goals and expected delivery dates and do not list everything we will be doing."

As the occasional caveats woven into the introductions to DBG's plans for the coming year suggest, developers are nervous of being held to account over supposed promises that were really no more than hopes. Mmorpg fans are notoriously unreasonable in their expectations, tenacious as bull terriers once they've buried their teeth in the wrong end of the stick.

Once I'd gotten over the shock of this being something that had happened, I was excited to dig into the detail. I read the EverQuest Roadmap first. It's impressive. It's also concise and compact enough I may as well quote the whole thing and add my comments as we go:

• January: 
  • Community Resource Council Application Relaunch - Your chance to help advise on the future of EverQuest. - I had to google what the "Community Resource Council" was. Or is. I thought it might be a player council like EVE's Council of Stellar Management or WoW's Community Council but it's not, or not exactly. According to ex-Community Rep Dreamweaver on the forums "it's basically a group of players that the devs utilize for specific questions or testing from time to time." As to why recruitment had stalled, I have no idea. Good to hear it's back on track, I guess.
• February:
  • 64-Bit Servers and Clients Release to Live Servers - Not sure what effect this will have on gameplay although I imagine it could help reduce the lag that's plagued both EQ titles for years. I didn't notice much difference when GW2 moved to a 64bit client and EQ always plays very smoothly for me but it seems to be something a lot of people want. Not long to wait before we find out, anyway.
    
• March:
  • 23rd Anniversary - New quests, missions, and a new raid. - EQ Anniversary content is generally either way above my level/gear/ability or far too grindy. Not meant for me, though, is it? I wonder what they have planned for the 25th anniversary in a couple of years' time? That's the big one.
    
  • New Content for Bristlebane's Day
  • New Content for Stomple's Day - Remind me what Stomple's Day is, again?
    
• April:
  • New Classic Achievements - Adding achievements for many original quests in EverQuest's starting cities. - EverQuest has Achievents? Okay, I know it does. I just didn't know anyone cared.
    
• May:
  • New Progression Servers - Rulesets to be announced at a later date. - Yep. We're about due. Look forward to seeing the ruleset but I think I'm probably done with re-starting in a 22 year old game. Make that 23.
    
  • Mercenary Rank Simplification - Simplify mercenaries down to the two ranks primarily in use and remove the quest line requirements for obtaining them. I love my mercs to distraction. They completely revolutionized the game and improved it beyond recognition. Even so, I never really understood all the various grades and qualities. This seems like an eminently sensible move.
    
  • New Tempest Festival Event - Ooh! That sounds exciting! Tell me more!
    
• June:
  • Server Merge - Merging the Phinigel and Miragul servers to Vox. - In come the new servers, out go the old. Business as usual. Don't think I have characters on either of them and if even if I do I'll never play them again.
    
• July:
  • New Scorched Skies Event - New to EQ, maybe. EQII's had it for several years, now. Interesting to see ideas move between the two Norraths like this.
    
  • New Overseer Achievements and Reward Improvements - Now we're talking! That will bring me back. Might even encourage me to buy the expansion. I can do the levels without leaving the guild lobby with some new Overseer quests.
    
• September:
  • Heroic Characters Update - New Heroic Characters will start at level 100. - About fricken' time! And I don't mean to sound ungrateful, because 100 is for sure a lot better than 85, but the level cap is 120 now. I wonder how good the free level 100 gear will be? Will we get yet another free Heroic? Will unused free 85s auto-update to 100s? Also, a lot of effort was spent making 2010's House of Thule expansion into a de facto starting zone for Heroic 85s. Will there be an equivalent for Heroic 100s? If so, let's hope it's somewhere a bit brighter and a lot less gloomy.
    
• October:
  • 2022's Expansion Beta + Preorder - Revolutionary! Confirmation in January that there will be another expansion this year. Now we can't play the "Have we seen the last-ever EQ expansion?" game, like we usually do. So much for tradition!
    
  • New Content for Nights of the Dead
    
• November:
  • Extra Life - Help us raise funds for the Children's Miracle Network. - Always good to see.
    
  • New Content for Feast of Giving - Okay, now you really have got me. "Feast of Giving"? What the heck is that? I guess I don't know EQ as well as I used to.
    
• December:
  • 2022's Expansion Launch - I see we still don't get to find out what it's called until it's nearly here. I guess that would be too radical. Some things will never change.
    
  • New Content for the New Year's Event
• Throughout the Year:
  • Raid Zone Performance Improvements - Don't raid, don't care.
    
  • Class Tuning and Balancing - After 23 years? Really?
    
  • Anti-Cheat Improvements - See previous comment!
    
• Beyond 2022:
  • New UI Engine - I think this is the first I've heard about it. I actually like EQ's UI a lot. It's incredibly flexible and configurable and it's not even that old-fashioned to look at. I hope they don't break it, trying to update it.
    

And there it is. All laid out in a nice, clear list that I've royally roughed up with my bag of fonts and snarky comments. I didn't play much EverQuest in 2021 but I played a lot in 2020 and there's still a lot I find in the old game to enjoy. 

All of this is very encouraging. Plenty of "Steady as she goes" and "More of the same" plus some solid ideas for improvements and nothing much to frighten the horses. I play other mmorpgs whose devs could learn a lot from this roadmap. It's also very encouraging to see the trend towards greater clarity at Daybreak Towers continuing, although god knows it's been a long road to the light at times.

I was going to do EverQuest II's Roadmap as well but I think I'll save it for a separate post. I play a lot more EQII and I'll most likely have more to say about where it's headed. I've had a look at what's coming and there are plenty of talking points.

Whatever I do have to say about it, I promise I'll say it in a less fontastic format. Probably tomorrow. If not, soon.