Hello, my friends! It seems as though my letter that was posted last Friday has had the desired effect. What I tried to say was ‘Hey, we appreciate your feedback’, and ‘we’re not going to release the additional changes to fighters while we continue to evaluate your feedback and continue to make any necessary changes”. And it has indeed caused a significant increase in feedback, so thank you very much. Now we need to parse all the data that you’ve presented, and continue that process.

So, what is our goal on EQII? It really is two-fold. One is to provide Tanks an opportunity to have more control over their own destiny, rather than requiring others in a group to channel hate to them, by dealing directly with the aggro. Secondly, we’re trying to make them slightly more versatile in a group setting that has multiple tanks, by allowing them change their stance and do something a little different, without significantly impinging on the roles of others. It comes down to allowing the Fighters to be more versatile, and consequently give them a higher level of desirability in groups.

It may surprise some of you, but we don’t sit around discussing the best way to break any specific class. Sure, we tease you about working on Beastlords, or deleting the healing classes, but that’s just good natured ribbing. What we do, on a rather frequent basis, is to look at the way that things are working out in the game, and try to make adjustments to it that will make game play more fun for more people. Game balance itself is a very funny thing, as I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a game that is properly and consistently balanced across all classes. And the fun part for us is to see all of the innovative and previously unexpected ways that people play. As many folks that have been on EQII from the beginning, I can assure you that we’re constantly amazed to see what we call “emergent gameplay” in the biz, which is just a fancy way of saying “huh, I never thought they’d do that!”. But our ideal really is that every class is equal, in different ways. (Go ahead, make sense of that statement, I dare you!) Each class needs to have something they can do that’s fun, and important in a group. At the same time, and often in direct conflict to that goal, each class needs to be able to solo effectively. Finding the balance between those two goals is what we do, over and over. Every time we add some new item, boss, combat effect, spell, whatever change there happens to be, we end up having to look at balance again, as the landscape is constantly changing. And as developers, it hurts our pride to have one single class combination that is clearly better than another. For every min/maxer out there, there’s an equally passionate developer saying “I can fix that!”, or so it seems. We’re trying to balance each class in relation to all of the others, rather than off by themselves. Sure, it would be easier to do each alone, but the fact is that in an MMO, you play with other people, and we really want to encourage that. We have solo content, and we’ll continue to work on it, but there is an extra payoff of fun when you share your time in game with others. So, we want to move forward with our intention to make each class meaningful and useful in a group, with a unique play style that doesn’t get duplicated too much by any other class.

We do feel as though the direction we are heading for the fighters will be good for the game in the long run. We also recognize that the concept needs to be thoroughly tested by many folks, so we can optimize the way it affects gameplay, and even then not everyone will be ardent supporters. I can assure you that we’re trying to make the game more fun as a whole, not less. And when we’re done with this pass on the Tanks, we’ll move on to the next class, looking to make additional tweaks, to ensure that there isn’t a class or play style the feels as though they are being neglected, and that the game remains fun for all.

I’ll continue to say it….thanks for all the feedback. All of us appreciate it. See you in EverQuest II !

Bruce “Froech” Ferguson, Senior Producer