If Brad is just here for PR purposes, that's his prerogative. However, he SHOULD be listening because you've got a community whose members have been playing MMOs closing in on two decades now. We don't have answers for the next 300mil+ value-menu MMO. We don't even want that. We don't even have the solutions to implement what we what - but we KNOW what we want. And I'm guessing many players across the spectrum who have never played EverQuest or even heard of this forum would want the same mechanics if they were exposed to them.
We all mostly agree that the genre needs an overall increase in difficulty, risk, player accountability and responsibility for their actions (more community-focused features), a focus on the world AS A world, harder travel, a stiffer death penalty, dungeons that are actually dungeons, a slower game, class design that celebrates uniqueness, and itemization that isn't so laughably formulaic. We ALL agree on these, but we disagree on the extents.
I keep railing home the consequences of one design on another - how a SoW buff is affected by giving players flight paths or a lax death penalty. I want Brad to focus on how every design mechanic in some way affects another, and that he has to build the world and the classes with this in mind, with BOTH in mind on each other.
The time spent typing paragraphs here could be wasted and fall on deaf ears. Maybe. If Brad is smart, then he'll listen. If he's making the game he's claiming, then we're the audience. If it turns out it's a smoke & mirrors ruse and we're slopped up another supersize WoW value meal, then it'll likely plop down the toilet like the shit it is, along with all the other value meals we've been shitserved over the last decade. But I can't say I didn't try: that I didn't describe what I think this game needs at a high level to make it a success FOR US, not for a 300+ million budget game whose real target are the shareholders, executives who are looking for another revenue stream to buy a 3rd yacht, and tiny timmys, soccer mom sallys who want to login to a FB game for an hour in the evening before their favorite sitcom. If that's Brad's goal, he knows he's not getting us, and his endeavors here will likely fail.
I am hopeful. I don't consider this wasted time. Yet.