Somehow seems fitting even though it is for a different game.
I think I was part of the -110% Tad because I feel like Ut now. Can agree that there are great ideas, but no faith at all that the devs will be able to implement the things they are suggesting. There are too many NDAs part of the game mechanics that are supposed to pull the features they wish to accomplish together. Too similar to other games where they give big talks about overlying mechanics, but have strict NDAs on the smaller parts, or just not knowing. Have no faith they will be able to do it. In my previous posts I have stated several times that marketing is what decides gameplay now, not developers themselves. To have key devs now directly state that marketing decides the major parts of the game is just.... The game is literally being made by surveys. Majority rules. And the majority of todays MMO audience have never tried EQ. So EQs underlying game mechanics, that have been removed in later games, will not show up in EQ:N. Especially considering it seemed from the class panels and such that they had not played EQ, but rather had their mmo experience from other games.
The dev nearly screaming "I refuse to let my guild fall apart if my healer left". What kind of guild was that anyways? Was it at the very, very late stages of the games lifecycle with empty servers? Then that is something that is bound to happen. But If not, open up reqruitment. We need a healer, apply with us. If your guild has good enough reputation, people will.
Each guild decides how to invite players, which again affects how much they can do. To take the example of my EQ guild, which was not top end, but we had a reputation of being good players and often would get invited to raids by the top guilds on the server just by the guild tag alone. To maintain that reputation, the application process was a minimum of 1 month app period, and if even 2 people did not want you in by that time, you were out. If 1 person disliked you, you could get another month extension, but that was it. You needed over 60 or 70% of the active players to vouch for you along with two sponsors who could only sponsor one at a time, and preferably wait a bit after they had done it before doing it again. So generally people applied and said hello on the forums, started joining up for groups and perhaps invited to raids (no loot) and then got sponsors if someone in the guild liked the applicant enough. Personal character was far more important than the gear or abilities. The guild did fall apart with EQ2 and WoW coming out, but it was not due to lack of any one class, but rather to sustain the numbers required to raid (72 was it not?). The policies required to join were never laxed, which was the guilds personal choice. Do not think I ever once heard the discussion of "RAGE! Wish I could switch my class so we can get heals!". While we still raided, at worst we sent out an invite to someone from other guilds we knew and joined forces for a bit if we required one special class for something. Or people logged on alts.
I dunno. EQ:N has many things going for it, it just seems to be desgined for everyone but old EQ players. From my experience since EQ (tried nearly every MMO since then), features have been added to make everything "faster". Faster combat, grouping, guild searches, buying, travel, recovery from death, everyhing. Only thing that has slowed down in MMOs past EQ is the chat and the communities that formed with it, which is what I associated with the mmo part.
Hope Tad is right and they release EQ3 a few years later. Or at least a special ruleset server. Guess the good part is that I have no problem waiting another year for this. Not pressing F5 on any mmo site to look for news.
Also, the post that said that they were making EQ3, but scrapped it in favor for what they showed now made me sad.
Sigh.