EverQuest II: Chaos Descending Expansion Announced

This expansion looks to be the last this game will see
Good going Kander

 

The state of EQ2 definitely isn't just Kander's fault, I think a lot of it falls on whoever owns Daybreak now, they clearly don't care about the games and are just trying to suck all the money out of them before they die. The dev team itself can only do so much.

 

Uhm he does have the "Producer" title so yes, its his responsibility in the end. Just like any other boss in the world it all comes back to him. He has the title because he in the end is supposed to be making all the calls and control development. Its also why he gets a fat pay check, its definitely not for his PR or the way he communicates with his customers.

 

I didn't say that at all? I said it's not just Kander's fault the expansions aren't great. You replace Kander with someone else and it's not going to magically make the expansions good.

 

I'm not saying they are. I'm saying the developers aren't being given the resources they need to make a genuinely good expansion in the short period of time they're given to do it. No matter who is producing it the expansion won't be good because it can't be good, not just because of Kander's bizarre design decisions and terrible PR skills.

Edit: I fully believe whoever owns Daybreak sees it as a temporary thing, run the games out until they stop making money and then dump it. They aren't interested in building a future for these games and Kander is simply a by-product of that. I just feel like pointing him out as the problem is really underselling how big the problem is.

 

I think it's fair to not blame any one person. I also think it's fair to say that if you give a bad manager all the resources in the world it's not going to make them suddenly be a good manager. At best you give them more opportunity to get lucky and skate by.

If I were his boss Kander would have been fired from that position (any position where he was responsible for interacting with the public or overseeing other employees) the day he told customers to not play if they don't like it.

 

A big reason why the game has fallen to where it is today (financially) is exactly because of a company culture that fosters an enables the behavior of people like Kander.

As I've asserted many times, this is the legacy of Georgeson, and Longdale's behavior and attitude toward customers has been no different than his.

The company is being punished by its market for being woefully incompetent.

Things are working as they should, but this company culture is too arrogant to do anything but blame customers and lash out at them for articulating what should be obvious.

 

Again, I could see another expansion being made. I am not sure about the Tax laws in the US but in my country it is possible to offset loses in one part of the consolidation of companies against profits in another. Hence a lose making venture can be sustained for a while via the tax offsets generated.

Accounting and Tax law aside, I agree that the purpose of DBG as a gaming company is not very clear.
Changing the design/development leadership is possible but can you see people lining up at the door to work at DBG on EQ2. Conversely removing/replacing the middle management of a company has a large effect on the culture of a company.

 

DBG will go splat and take its IPs with it. I'm not sure the EverQuest IP is worth enough for anyone to bother selling it off.

...also, I really gotta redo my sig, that's just obnoxious in hindsight.

 

I've gotten flack for repeating this over the years, but Norrath is really not that special. Anyone who played D&D back in the day should be able to see elements from some of the campaign settings in Norrath, especially Forgotten Realms. Some of the mobs are taken right out of the D&D MM. And, though I don't have the original evolution of the game memorized any more, EQ came from a FR clone MUD iirc. There were a lot of D&D based text games in the 90s so that wouldn't be a surprise.

My point is that if someone wanted to and had the tools they could make a similar homebrew setting in maybe a week or two. It would be different enough to not step on anyone's toes, but so similar as to be clearly recognized. I know this because I've done it back in the day and I've seen or helped others do it. This is part of why the writing in EQ2 over the years had annoyed me so much. It should be easy and predictable, but it's like the people doing it both have no real idea where the story is going and fail to communicate with one another about what they've been doing at different points in time.

No, for various reasons I don't think the IP is worth much to anyone aside from maybe someone in the fanbase with cash to burn and I don't expect DBG to ever let the IP go without some shenanigans involved and/or a very bloated price tag attached.

 

A week until SF unlocks | EverQuest 2 Forums
I haven't been banned by him yet, shocker.

Also kander is a completely incompetent developer, gninja throws fits when you don't do encounters as they play out in his mind, caith has zero idea how to balance classes.

This is my experience with the developers after years of beta testing, working channelers/beastlords out with them and having various conversations with them personally about the game over the years.

It got so bad in fatality that we basically just did things just to spite the developers because of the way the game was going, such as one shotting unkillable bosses with crit-mitesue mechanics, with max hp debuffs then calling his personal cell phone to tell him we were exploiting his terrible game. Despite years of posts about gating mobs behind gear with insane checks is not fun (drunder anyone)?

The problem has nothing to do frankly with upper management, sure they have some say in what profits are had to be made and as such what goes into the game to up profits. A perfect example of this is definitely familiars, and the rampant collectors edition pay to win that is shoved down people's throats on servers such as TLE. I by no means think kander does these things to cripple the game in that regard, however his other decisions involving itemization, ascensions, stat bloat, ability consolidation and allocation of resources on projects is terrible, he also has shown nothing but disrespect for players in the past few years and lashes out when criticized on several occasions.

 

Also I laughed.

I'm more of a eq2flames kinda guy, I flame, I don't troll.

In regards to the debate, I have no issue with debating. But she hasn't come up with any counter argument to what I said other than "I expect healers to just be heal bots" which is not what I said in the slightest.

I always liked Feldon, cool guy for his eq2u site which is fantastic.

 

Feldon why do you edit my posts.

 

Unless you're referring to this:

• Don't post anything you wouldn't say to other members face-to-face. The members of this forum are not anonymous names behind a computer screen to curse and berate or to direct hateful, comments towards. A basic level of respect is expected.

The rules don't stand, I would call him a child to his face.

The remainder... ?

Feel free to specifically point to what I "violated", or at least post a reason and don't radarx me.