New EQII Producer Announced
 

Our friends at ZAM earlier discovered that Alan Crosby had left SOE. About an hour later word from SOE made it official...

Wherever Alan is going, EQ2Interface wish him the best! We also welcome David Georgeson to the EverQuest II Community. You can read more about David over at ZAM.

Wow, that was pretty abrupt and unexpected. This was either dropped all of a sudden (either by him or SOE) or he's one heck of an actor at not letting his decision to leave slip. (Edit: Interesting... looks like Georgeson has been at SOE 3 months -- since February. I wonder if this has been planned since then?)

Fan Faire won't be quite the same without the jolly Halfling to Emm Cee things.

I have to say good riddance. Everything promised by Alan came either extremely late, poorly implemented, or hasn't come at all. Think about what was promised during Fan Faire.

Also the quarterly update cycle is a complete fail. Scott Hartsman was able to pull off on average about ten LUs(GUs) a year that came on time and worked. Crosby gives us four updates that aren't even in comparison to the updates given with Scott in Producer role.

Extremely monotonously buggy updates, lack of content in updates, lack of non redundant content in expansions, server performace failures/stuck at zoning/general server lag, PvP changes flopped, and exploits still unfixed after months (think battlegrounds). I feel as if the quality of the EverQuest franchise has been compromised to no return with Alan at the helm. Does anyone else see the fault?

I never though I'd say this again since Alan took over for Bruce, but...is there any possible way this new guy can be worse?

I say just put Rothgar in charge. He might not have the experience, but he sure as hell is competant to get the job done, and get it done right.

ROFL, Don't hold back Drago, tells how you really feel:P

Sorry, but it's the truth. I mean we've had like what, three producers since launch? Scott, who was awesome in my opinion. Bruce who was /afk. And then we had Alan who somehow managed to make EQ2's developement slow down to almost a halt; releasing what was it, one decent/mediocre expansion and an adventure pack sized expansion (that came late in February, not November like the previous four expansions) as well as significantly reduced the frequency of update cycles that has ultimately resulted in epic failure? Remember when huge exploits were fixed on the dot?

Wasn't Shader 3.0, Halas, and a whole lot of goodies suppose to come with the expansion? What the hecks???

Georgeson though. He's been with SoE for a few months as a developer. I believe I read somewhere saying he was a producer for games like Gaia and Tribes 2, right? Chances are SoE hired him as EQ2 producer just temporarily because he's the only one qualified with all that past experience and they need someone right now.

We'll definitely see how this turns out, hopefully Smed has fixed the problem with this last yes-man Producer and we might see some positive progress to EQ2 as a game.

I liked Alan Crosby as a CM -- I think that was the job he was best at. I was kind of surprised when he was tapped to take the senior producer role (it didn't seem the right kind of job for him).

With that said, I do have to defend the quarterly update cycle somewhat -- the amount of 'free' content released in each is far more than you'd get in one of the old monthly GUs. The main issue I have with them is that any art-asset fix has to wait for the GU to be pushed (which means 3 months instead of ~1 month), but from what I've heard that is something they are looking to change. Yeah some of what we got with it so far wasn't that great (one was just a two-month "bug fixer" that didn't fix many bugs) but that doesn't mean the 3 month cycle as a whole is bad. This next GU promises to be pretty huge, although some of it (Halas) will be stuff that should have came last GU.

I do agree on exploit fixes. It really bugs me when things do not get fixed and people just continue to willfully exploit. But don't get me started on my opinion of battlegrounds...

With him as SP the quality of the game has gone down. EQ2 is in the worse shape it has ever been in with him as lead. The expansion content in SF is a complete joke, especially for have like 3-4 full months more of developement time. We're paying to beta a released expansion product, I feel like I'm playing Age of Conan again. TSO was alright content/fun factor wise..mediocre at best I would rate it above DoF and SF, but below the rest. SF does have one of the best raid encounters in game. The Theer raid is amazing, one of the best in the game, but still...there's only a joke of 3 raid encounters total. I mean come on we paid full price for an expansion that doesn't even have zones that were suppose to be put in at launch, but then they say they will release a bunch of new zones per update. UHH YEAH, zones that were suppose to be in at expansion launch.

Only thing good that comes to mind that came out of Crosby is the fact that he allowed raid zones to have difficulty levels. This brings raids to nearly all players, especially casual guilds.

Other than that /fail.

EQ2 is our game and I want it to continue to be great. I've read the recent interviews with Dave and he doesn't seem to be a yes man. He seems to be innovative and less emotionally attached to what HE wants. I like that he has stated that he wants the game to be FUN for EVERYONE, these words are important, and that they shouldn't be trying to be another WoW. Even if his changes might possibly hurt my gameplay style, at least I know he has the right mindset. I also like how he adds those questions to each feature. The who, what, where, why, how attitude is brilliant.

Confirming drago has officially reached bitter vet status. :D

Indeed, hehe.

Haahahaa!. I don't think so! It's just, people are like "Alan is the best since sliced bread", but imho he has driven EQ2 in the ground. Maybe his goal was to actually get me to agree with the majority of the EQ2Flames populice, because that's exactly what is happening and it's making me nuts. Help me help myself, I'm turning into an EQ2Flames flunky.

Without the /ragequitlife.

Ugh, I'd rather not get into talking about flames... there's a bubbling pot of Drama best left with a tight lid.

And yeah, I can't see why folks would think Brenlo was the best thing since sliced bread. But I do think SF is a better expansion that you give credit for -- I like it far more than TSO. The art in it is some of the best in EQ2 yet; yeah it could have been bigger and there's certainly some bugginess and issues that should have been worked out in Beta but weren't, but overall I enjoy it much more than TSO. For one thing, it's nice to be able to raid without every mob having a one-person raid wipe condition, and normal mode/hard mode allows folks to clear much more of a zone then they might otherwise and significantly expands the variety of difficulty while answering one of the big complaints about TSO in having to clear lots of junk to get to the high end named. Itemization is a bit sketchy tho, for sure.

As long as the UI don't have a real OO scripting language the game is /fail. Other wise I agree just to make you all happy.

Where is my cookie?

munch munch munch ... sorry, what? :o

You guys should come play EVE Online, we're all bitter there and the UI is horrible and cannot be modded at all. :D

Ohhhh. Well I have heard EVE has some good PvP, but I'm into more twitch base games when it comes down to it. There's nothing more satisfying than killing another player when he is the one who attempts to gank you. It's much worse when he's 5 levels higher than you.

I completely agree on the good riddance statement for all the same reasons. The SOE team for EQ2 has lacked leadership since Scott left. It has been muddling along like a ship without a captain for too long now.

And while it might seem an odd choice Rothgar is probably the best choice to put in the SP role at this time. He has the technical background to understand what is needed and what can be done and the communication and customer skills to communicate with the players. And that is what it is going to take to turn the EQ2 franchise back into something good with more accolades than bitterness from the community.

Given that Georgeson is coming from the console world and knows nothing about EQ2 I think he is set up for failure before he begins unless he is working 24x7 to catch up because he has a huge curve to traverse before he can think about being effective. I mean no disrespect to the man, I dont know him but it seems an injustice to put him in that position IMO.

Good f'ing riddance, Alan. You screwed up EQ1 by doing jack and something that whymes with "sit", and you screwed up EQ2 by doing the same thing. You'd be perfect to take over Silirrion's old position as lead dev of Anarchy Online.