Holiday Producer’s Letter

Merry Frostfell, Norrath!

The team is about to fly off to their families, great food and probably a hangover after the new year. Before we go however, we wanted to leave you all with one more update with some really good stuff in it. Here are the goodies, broken down by feature:

Dungeon Finder

• We are adding Contested Dungeons to the Dungeon Finder feature from levels 20 to 89. (Level 90 contested dungeons are *not* being added to DF because of itemization concerns.) You should see a lot more dungeons available to you now at the various levels of play.
• (The following update is occurring on Wednesday, December 21, 2011) We're increasing the rewards for using the Dungeon Finder system. We're adding a daily quest you can get that pays out after you play with a Dungeon Finder group for 30 minutes or more. The mystery crates are the same type of crates offered as rewards in the Dungeon Maker marketplace category, so the rewards found there are great stuff!

Dungeon MAKER

• We are buffing the Adventurers in Dungeon Maker so they have more power (they currently run out too quickly). We have other new updates beyond this coming in the new year as well but this immediate change helps make Dungeon Maker instances a lot more fun over the holidays.
• We're adding more Effect Objects into the Dungeon Maker category in the Marketplace (very useful things for builders that want their spawners to be more unique).
• Many pure builders have asked for spawners, decorations and maps to also be available for Station Cash (not only for Dungeon Marks). So we're adding "either or" prices to the Dungeon Maker category of items. You can purchase those types of items (spawners, decorations, and maps) for SC or for Dungeon Marks. NOTE: Power items, like the mystery crates and glass swords are *not* purchaseable with SC. You have to earn those items by collecting Dungeon Marks.
• You are now able to build and publish three dungeons instead of only one.
• And of course, even though it's currently only on the Test server, you will be able to play your own characters in Dungeon Maker instances soon - you'll no longer be constrained to Adventurers only!

General Improvements

• In response to popular demand, we're replacing the five-star rating system (for housing and dungeons) with a "Like" system instead. The ratings for each house will be converted from a star-rating to a percentage score based on how many players played your dungeon and "Liked" it. Example: A 90% rating would indicated that 90% of the players that played your dungeon liked it. You can choose to Like (or not) in each of the ratings categories for each dungeon/house.
• Additionally, to help players understand rankings categories a bit better, the categories in Dungeon Maker are being renamed "Action" and "Style."
• The default leaderboard shown for dungeons is now "Highest Ranked (Style)." We're changing this from "Recently Published" so that players that casually try the first dungeon on the list don't get such a random result on their first experience into the feature.

And one final note: We have heard from several players that they don't realize that the "Dungeon Maker" category in the marketplace can be used to purchase rewards for ANY of your current characters. It's unfortunate but true that some players thought the DM rewards were only to buff up their Adventurers instead of their actual characters. This is not the case. Those items are for your real characters...enjoy!

We here on the EQII dev team hope you all enjoy your holidays, have a very happy New Year and we're looking forward to returning so we can keep working on the best MMO on the planet.

See ya then!