I do agree that the goal of the summits have changed, starting with the one held last year in February. The goal is not so much about specific design objectives for a particular game (that would be for a developer driven summit, and would be headed by a dev team seeking the input); but to receive input from people of all ends of the spectrum who seem to represent a portion of our communities as to how we are doing as a company.

Focus group? Not so much, as we aren’t testing ideas per se… but a healthy look behind the curtain, and a hope that with greater understanding out there as to who we are as people and a company will come greater understanding of what we do (really, we aren’t as demonic as people want to suggest).

As to the invites, Cuppy pretty much nailed it. It’s not for a single game, so we can’t go insanely deep on the ranks from any one game, and we are actively trying to shuffle things up so that it’s not always the same four people from a game getting inside access. It’s a mix of people who have been there before and first timers who bring fresh information to the table.

Based on that, I can tell you that the Summits of last year are completely different from the previous summits.

The first Summits were held back after the launch of Gates of Discord in old Everquest. It was heralded as the “Guild Summit” and consisted of some fansite admins, and a whole mess of guild officers from every server. This basic standard continued up through the release of Everquest II.

In June 2005, SOE held the first “Community Summit” for Everquest II (and held one for Everquest at the same time) which coincided with the Las Vegas FanFaire of that year. This Summit consisted of a room filled to the brim with around 2 dozen players and fansite admins who each brought some level of authority on a subject or playstyle to the table. On SOE’s part, they stacked the head of the room with developers, a couple of community management folks, and of course, the producers (at the time, both Scott Hartsman and Bruce Ferguson were in the room).

We spent a day going over issues of game mechanics, bugs, design decisions, and development ideas. In short, it’s what you’d like to think of a summit – basically a room full of relatively knowledgeable players and developers all hashing out ways to make the game itself better.

The follow-up Community Summits in September of ‘05 (San Diego) and then in April of ‘06 (Atlanta FanFaire) continued the tradition of stacking a room full of players and fansite admins, and having them talk directly with developers, producers, and a couple of folks from CM. The discussions revolved around gameplay, mechanics – what works, what doesn’t, and what we’d like to see different.

Then, in Februrary of 2007, SOE changed gears. The San Diego summit of last February was no longer billed as a “Community Summit” but was not an “Influencer Summit”. The room was still filled with around 2 dozen players, but now those players represented all of SOE’s games – Everquest, Everquest II, Star Wars Galaxies all had players present in the room. Instead of developers and producers, the room was now stacked with Community Management, Marketing, and upper management (yes, that means Smed sat in this time around). Several of the fansite admins present weren’t even very avid SOE gamers, but they were considered “influential”.

This was apparently the same basic set up used in Vegas for the August 2007, where the players in attendance weren’t even necessarily playing any SOE games at the time, but they’d been pegged as “influential” by community management or marketing.

I can’t talk much more on the subject, because SOE requires all attendees now to sign fairly lengthy NDA’s before we’re allowed to participate. I do feel at least a bit disappointed that the Summit structure I felt was so productive in years past was abandoned for the new type of “Summit” which effectively felt like more of a dog and pony show or even a focus group style sit down. Questions weren’t really about the game anymore at the last summit I attended, but dealt more with ways in which SOE could better market the game or interact with online media.

It’s a sign of the times, I suppose.

I went to the summit last summer along with a bunch of people whose names I were not familiar with. They only bring about 15-20 people, and it’s spread across ALL SOE games, not just EQ2. So consider that maybe 3-4 people are from the EQ2 community, and they’re not all bloggers. Some are players and active forum members, some are from news/media portals. So, keep in mind that before you get all disappointed that you weren’t invited.

But yeah, I just don’t think we have the celeb status they are looking for. I know part of the secret to being an MMO celeb is to talk about the World of Warcraft. The more you talk about WoW, the more famouser you are. If you approach MMO discussions as relating to WoW in some manner, success is assured — and you may even find yourself a Community Influencer.

For instance: EQ2 is coming out with epic quests.

Now, you or I might make a post comparing the epics of EQ2 to those of EQ1, but that wouldn’t be a CI kind of story.

Sample story outline: In their ‘ever’ ‘quest’ to catch up where Blizzard leads, SOE is finally including Epic loot in their games. Good move, SOE. Blizzard had Epics DAY 1. It’s been like three years and you’re just bringing them NOW? Way to innovate, SOE. Apparently, they are going to require significant questing and grouping to get them, instead of the method the industry has standardized on over the years, which is to earn them in battlegrounds. As such, where Epics are available to the casual player in WoW, they will only be available to people who *group* in EverQuest 2. I guess they don’t want people to get Epics after all. Another winning move from SOE. Now, in today’s WoW news…