Kendricke, our EQII Site Manager, recently attended the SOE Community Summit in San Diego. For many, these summits remain a mystery. Today, we have his comprehensive report on what he saw and did and what it means to the evolution of the game.

As most of you are probably aware that SOE held a Community Summit in San Diego recently. And this event was very different from previous Summits. What most of you might not know is what that really means. What is a Summit? How does one get picked? What exactly goes on? How does a Summit affect you? Does a Summit really matter?

What exactly is a "Summit"?
The idea of a Community Summit has its roots in the grand EverQuest "Guild Summit" of June, 2004, when SOE invited dozens of representatives from across every EverQuest server to participate in a day of direct discussion with the developers at their San Diego headquarters. At the time, John Smedley explained that "[t]his is a long term effort to improve the game for everyone - The Casual Gamer, The Dedicated Raiding Guilds, and everyone in between.... We plan to continue the great communication on our boards and with more of these summits down the road."

That first Summit was a heady affair, massive in scope and included so many attendees that the discussions had to be broken down into groups and sub-groups who each got to speak with a handful of developers and coders at a time. Though a lot of good ideas were exchanged, there's no arguing that the first Guild Summit was enormous.

In June of 2005, SOE held another round of Summits at the Las Vegas FanFaire. Unlike the previous year's event, this Summit was directed toward smaller groups of attendees who were representing a wider range of playstyles. It was the first year that EverQuest 2 had an official presence at a Summit, and the communications actually resulted in several features making it to live gameplay. This was followed by the San Diego Summit in September of that same year, and by the Atlanta Summit in April 2006.

These Summits all concentrated on gameplay issues, typically revolving around specific problems dealing with gameplay, raiding, grouping, tradeskills, questing, guilds, and various class-specific concerns.

In short, this was nothing like the Summit we just attended.

Who Goes To These Things, Anyway?
The first inkling I had that this Summit was truly different (other than a few advance hints from Brenlo or Grimwell) was in meeting a few of the old EverQuest invitees on the way to the hotel and discovering that both had been moderated heavily on the EQ forums, and one was actually banned at the time of his invitation. Upon meeting more of the attendees later that evening in the hotel lobby, I learned that many of the players had actually cancelled accounts at one point and had only recently returned, and at least two of the attendees barely played any SOE games at all. This was indeed not a traditional Summit.

As always, SOE invited players from all over the spectrum to participate. There were angry players and some fairly pleased players. However, unlike previous Summits, the number of "negative" players seemed to outnumber the generally positive players. At least one player the first night loudly proclaimed that his goal was to make SOE regret every inviting him.

Ok, So Does Anything Actually Get Done?
For the most part, Summits are part networking dinner party and part brainstorming session. Oh sure, there's lots of drinks and friendly glad-handing going on outside of the event itself, but during the Summit, it's all business. This Summit felt that way more so than previous iterations.

For one thing, the amount of SOE employees in the conference room seemed to outnumber the amount of invitees. All levels of the company were represented, from John Smedley and Russel Shanks, all the way down to interns. Everyone seemed very interested to hear the ideas the players had on all levels of marketing and communications.

Now, as I've mentioned, this was not a traditional Summit. If you're waiting to hear about game breaking issues or whether or not any grand revelations about the future of EverQuest 2 were announced during the Summit, you're going to be disappointed. Anything that was mentioned was mentioned outside of the Summit's boundaries, and most of that was held to either an official ink-on-paper NDA, or an unofficial "keep this under your hat" style private sharing at one of the various events surrounding the Summit proper.

What was discussed was how SOE can better interact with fansites, and even how SOE can make it easier for regular players to start up fansites. The possibility of a Fansite Resources site was discussed, and ideas were put forth on how such a site might make it easier on existing fansites to get information out to the masses. Ways in which SOE could help start-up sites to get going were also discussed at some length.

The discussions also honed in on general SOE strengths and weaknesses, both real and perceived. Areas such as Customer Service received a lot of attention, with a great many questions revolving around the new petition system, response times, and quality of CSR responses. On a couple of occasions, ideas were mentioned that seemed to stop time. Around the room, you could feel the gears begin the whir, and you could almost hear the collection of jaws dropping open at some of the most deceptively simple ideas being suggested. These were the times when you realized the expense just may have been worth it for SOE.

What was apparent was that SOE was looking for ideas on ways to get the word out. Everything from traditional advertising media down to outside-box suggestions were brought up. It was basically 8 hours of think-tank style brainstorming, only loosely moderated and guided.

Only 8 hours?
The real action at any Summit takes place outside of the Summit itself, however. Sidebar conversations between players and developers are going on all over throughout the event. It doesn't' stop there, either. Till the wee hours of every morning, I was in constant conversations with developers, executives, other fansite admins, community managers, and oh yeah - players. After all, there's nothing like a heated, yet civil discussion at 2 in the morning that involves a handful of players and developers all talking about itemization to get your mind really moving, right?

While many of these sidebar conversations end up falling under the auspices of "keep this under your hat" or "gotta keep this off the record", a lot really gets accomplished. The developers truly love the game, and love talking about it. They also love hearing about it: be it good and bad. Some of the best discussions I witnessed Summit involved some pretty negative critiques. Surprisingly, the devs just ate it up, though. They'd ask a few pointed questions, ask for some specific examples, clarify a few details, then come right back around with an explanation or a suggestion.

A lot of the changes which make it to the game are direct results of player generated suggestions (the developers still read every "/feedback", by the way). Most of the devs and even the executives are pretty avid gamers - John Smedley himself loves Battlefield 2. (Remember that the next time some random guy in BF2 headshots you and then taunts you about it - that could be Smed!). Even after grueling 10-12 hour workdays, many of the developers admit to playing games for hours on end at home.

That's an important bit there, because the developers that attended this Summit weren't there "officially". They weren't being paid to show up, and they weren't required to be there. I'm sure the lure of free beer helped a bit, but realistically, I think it's fair to say the real reason the developers came was to speak with the players about the games they work on. They were there to hear first hand complaints and suggestions. And hear complaints and suggestions they did.

That, more than anything that takes place in the conference rooms - that is the essence of what a Community Summit really is in my mind.

The Tour
Now, everything I've covered so far was pretty general. There were several events over the course of the event that included open bars, several great meals, a 3 hour tour on sailing yacht around the harbor, and at least one drunken bar crawl through downtown San Diego which I think involved several developers and a couple of EverQuest 2 players. There were some amazing conversations during all of that, but unfortunately most of it is restricted for reprinting.

What that leaves out is "The Tour". After all, we were in San Diego, right? We might as well take a look around the corporate campus of SOE's home studios, right?

Obviously, we were able to see the basics. We got to see where the developers sit. We were able to see the compatibility lab. We were able to wander in to see the GM's at work. That's right - there are GM's in San Diego. They were even working on a Saturday.

Even though a great part of this part trip was covered by a signed Non-Disclosure Agreement, we're able to share some of what we saw, at least from a general perspective.

We were able to see several of the new titles that SOE will be releasing in the future. Though I can't comment on specifics regarding the titles, I can certainly say that the general tone of each of the games is a radical departure from anything SOE has released to date.

Another item we were given an advance look at was the newly redesigned Launchpad, or "LP2" as it was continually referred to. I was very impressed with some of the features for tracking friends throughout the Station network (and the privacy options already thought up to prevent just that), but what was most innovative was the matchmaking system (I jokingly referred to this as "eqHarmony"). All punch lines aside, this one tool has the ability to affect quite a bit regarding the way players of SOE games meet people online.

It's fairly automatic, and is able to use quite a bit about the games you play and your general activity levels online to determine what types of players you might want to meet. Start the search and within seconds, you're looking over the profile of another SOE gamer who you have quite a bit in common with, complete with a percentage score which tabulates the results into a neat little summary. Will it alter the way all of humanity games online? Probably not. But it just might help me find a new friend online that happens to play about the same times as I do in the same games as I do that I might not have met otherwise.

And really, that seemed to be a theme throughout the presentations: finding new ways to meet new friends. Online, we do it every night through games like EverQuest 2. We might find them by accident while looking for a pick up group, or after joining a new guild. What SOE seems to be attempting to do is find ways to make those meetings less accidental. They seem to want to find ways to put more controls into the hands of the players, and more empowerment in the way we actually choose to play our games.

As for me? I met up with some old friends I'd looked forward to seeing again, and made a few new friends as well. Though I exhausted myself to the point of illness, I wouldn't have traded the experience for anything else. I'm looking forward to the Las Vegas FanFaire in August, and find myself excited and reinvigorated by some of the ideas that SOE is working on right now.

It's going to be a fun year.