In the last SoE podcast (# 28) Brenlo mentioned that the SoE summit was coming soon. (If i remember hearing him right it was going to be in March).
So tonight i bought up the subject of the SoE summit in the Eq2 blogger channel. As of this moment no one in the channel has received an invite. I being the pessimist had the idea that none of us would get invited. Why? Well mainly it cost SoE a lot of money to bring people in. And there covering most of their games as well so i picture them bring in more of the high profile community members (like Coyote, or Cyanbane). And i felt that Cyanbane would be someone they’d really want to talk to as in the last 6 month hes gone from really enjoying the game to canceling his account. (Essentially if i was a company and one of my loyal community members was canceling his account I’d want to know why and what i could do to fix it).
Though Stargrace at MMoquests.com or Tipa at West Karana said that Kendricke went last year. Which is true. So i guess there is a chance that one of us blogger in the Eq2 blogger channel might go, but i still kinda feel SoE would concentrate more on people who have expressed that they are leaving or planing to leave one of their games, over those of us who still play the their games.
Since i guessing i probably won’t be invited i do have a small list of thing that should probably be discussed. Most are related to Everquest 2 but they can be take in gernal.
- Lack of heroic content — So in RoK they put Tons and Tons of Solo quest and that fine, over 70 solo quest in each of the zone. But heroic quest wise… There really wasn’t much. Ya some of the solo quest end with a kill this name that you need to be grouped with 1 or 2 other player to kill. And some of the heroic dungeons had 1 or 2 quest attached to them, but that really was it. Which really honestly sucks. I understand that there is more places to go and names to kill at the higher end. But at the end of the day, quest is what this games all about, and the lack of heroic quest just really hurt.
- Heroic vs Solo rewards and leveling — This one is important. When DoF came out there was some solo quest, but the best way to get xp, and to get better loot was to group. When KoS came out again the best way to get Xp and to get better loot was to group. When EoF came out the best way to XP and to get Better loot was to group. RoK come out and blew that out of the water. Tons of people at launch formed groups and with to KC. Were they killed overpowered mobs, that took about 2 or 3 to give 0.1% xp. On top of that the name would normal drop wooden chest. And at the same time people were doing solo quest that take a few mins and were getting 2-4% xp per quest and pretty good items. This was a HUGE fundamental change in how the game was played. And while the initial reaction might of been good, it didn’t last. Because the people who play everquest 2 expect a group based game. Expect that Dungeons will give better XP, and better loot than solo play. And this was not the case at RoK launch. And while it has improved, it not there yet.
I’m going to cut this short here, as i must head off to bed… But at least i got 2 major point down
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They are looking for Community Influencers. If they cart one of us to San Diego, are we going to become cheerleaders for SOE? Well, we already *are*, and people who are not interested in SOE games probably don’t read our blogs, though I am hoping to expand my readership out of the EQ2 “ghetto” by beginning to post on GAX and see how that goes.
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…
They’re not necessarily looking for celebs, and they don’t necessarily only bring people who talk negatively or positively.
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.
Haha well i wouldn’t be disappointed if i wasn’t invited.. i’d be more shocked if i was.
For the record, I’ve attended three Summits.
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.
“was not” should read “was now” in the sentence above describing the new Influencer Summits.
I’ll have to trust to Kendricke’s evaluation of the summits prior to 2007 as I was neither an employee of SOE, or an attendee of any of the summits.
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.