More Dear Aggro

It's Part Two of my Dear Aggro analysis of Scott Hartsman's letter in advice letter form. With out further ado:

Dear Aggro,

EQII suxors becuz there's no pvp. How can I say "pwned" and laugh and stuff when I kill some computerized mob? I want to gank people because I'm uber.

-PvP Pauly

Dear Pauly,

We certainly don't want to lose such a valued member of the EQII community. EQII is introducing limited PvP in the near future. However, as PvE is the core of EQII gameplay, SOE doesn't want to screw it up. The balancing changes necessary to produce good PvP gameplay will be separate from PvE play. Let's say Ice Comet is found to be too powerful in PvP. In PvE it will still do the same damage, but in PvP it will do 50% less. That's just a hypothetical, obviously. For now you are free to do some "ganking" on the Test server as dueling is live there. Dueling will be live on regular servers prior to the expansion. The expansion will feature group PvP in a specific zone, the Arena.

I must say one thing worries me though: SOE still has yet to implement the infamous combat changes, which are still being tuned. Now they also have to balance solo and group PvP. Scott says they are doing this already. I have to think this will be very time consuming work. The combat changes have taken quite a long time. There also has to be a beta for DoF before release. I'm glad to see SOE doing a thorough job, I just hope they have the resources to pull all this off in time for September.

Scott also mentions that after the Expansion is released they will discuss the possibility of PvP servers. I'm betting that PvP servers are indeed going to happen. Oh and Pauly: you're a noob. Pwned.

-Aggro

Dear Aggro,

Dude, I have this idea for an expansion to Everquest II called Unicorn Slayer. Humanity has entered the ultimate war with the Unicorn horde. You can play as a Human or a Unicorn so there's PvP. Plus, it's in like, space or something so the Unicorns are wearing space suits. Man, I'm so high right now. Anyway, I actually don't know anything about designing games. I just want to help gamers! What do I do?

-Spaceman Spliff

Dear Spaceman,

Well, one way to contribute to the EQII community is to sign up for the Test Server. SOE is now offering a 50% boost to all xp to make those levels fly on by. Also, a character created on Test will not count against your maximum character limit. Personally, I advocate free character copies to test or at least the ability to start a level 20 character if you have a level 50 on the regular servers. If you play on Test make sure to sober up and provide useful feedback and bug reports.

-Aggro

Dear Aggro,

I love money and making money and rolling in money and also money. The guys at Blizzard have more money than me and I'm not happy. I thought my Adventure Pack about vampires would make a lot of money. Everyone loves vampires right? I mean, I've seen Blade II like seven times and Lost Boys rulz! How can I make more money on my next Adventure Pack?

-Smedster

Dear Smedster,

Well, it's simple really. Your first Adventure Pack was limited in terms of level range. So why would people who were outside said level range buy it? You seem to be taking the right route by using scalable dungeons (and rewards - that part's important too) for Splitpaw so people of all levels can enjoy. If you do a good job people will buy it. Let's hope there is enough content that people of all levels will get their money's worth.

Also, I hope you have some more original stuff going on there than simply gnolls in a cave. People who did the Freeport to Qeynos betrayal quest already had to kill five hundred gnolls so they are probably tired of killing gnolls, even if they are new "more vicious ones." If the Splitpaw Saga has some interesting zones and quest events to spice things up then I will overlook my complaint. For now I am keeping an open mind. I see the Splitpaw Saga webpage is up with a video available so check it out here.

-Aggro