We've all made so many predictions I know most people will yawn, but I do believe EOTD will be the downfall of this game unless a very quick alternative is devised. -It's necessary to raid beyond a certain level and not just in EOK. A flag from one expansion has never been needed in a follow-up, this is unprecedented -It's long, complicated and difficult. Even at 110 it is not pleasant to do. -More important, no one wants to help. I switched mains and no one in my guild would lift a finger to help me. I see returning players who left long before EOK coming back are trying to do it and they are getting no help. -I talk to the real high end raiding guilds and they tell me flat out not to expect any help. They only want players already flagged. That will choke them off of new players if they don't change their attitude soon, and I don't see it happening. -On top of everything else it requires extensive farming and tradeskilling for the final step, another turn off for players. Daybroke better come up with a workaround fast, because this will be the dividing line for the game. It's really off-putting to see guilds refuse to help players get a flag so vital to the game and so poorly thought out. As God is my witness I never want to do the Scorched Woods partisan mission again.
Sounds like a quality guild. Which one out of curiosity? Since RoS launch, I’ve done EotD on a mostly group geared alt (vast majority of which was mage moloing) and helped a new guildmate who can’t really solo it (Rogue) do some of the harder parts and he got it done. It’s not that bad, especially now with 5 extra levels, and while it wasn’t particularly fun, it wasn’t that difficult. The amount of hyperbole in your post is off the charts. Deep breaths.
Do the parts you can do and ask for help for the parts you cant. And dont be shy about asking in general. There may be others in the same boat.
I've done it twice now since ROS. I have a 3rd time I need to do at a minimum for my 2nd box group (unfortunately a 4th would be require to hit all the supplemental chars I have outside of the main 10), It's not necessarily impossible but it is farily time consuming. I think we'll see it phased out in future expansions but I agree it's a needless timesink. Frankly they need to put in some sort of backflaggin like raid. I.e. do a final group mission that allows a loot for the flag or something to that effect. The way it is now, I do agree it will become a problem.
While I agree that the previous flags being required is "new," it's not like guilds haven't had to go back to progress before. Epics, VT -> PoTime, and other instances. The chain does suck but it's not impossible, hell most classes can molo at 110 with Conflagrant gear... I've done 12 toons, and most recently leveled a heroic chanter, did EoK, RoS, my VP key and Dicho/Relife in two weeks. I have a lot of play time and box, but if you dedicate time it is possible to accomplish a lot.
The end of this game is going to be the easy mode crowd continually wanting easy mode game, and developers either (a) giving in, making those of us wanting a challenge to retire out of boredom or (b) not giving in and the easy mode crowd retires cause they cannot type PHAT LOOTZ PLZ and get full raid gear...
I loathe Trade Skill farming, which recipe has you stuck and are you willing to buy components in the bazaar? A lot of trade skills I found could be increased fairly cheaply through Barter if you are not FTP.
I wouldn't say it's the end of the game but it's certainly a time sink designed specifically to be tedious and time consuming, in which case it likely will frustrate casual players, as well as players playing multiple characters. Many expansions have these and it's an unfortunate effect of developers not finding any other way to slow down the rate at which expansions are finished. EOTD is especially annoying only because they decided to carry it across expansions. Will it turn players off? Sure, but I think anyone who is playing in current content would have been used to time sinks and frustration by now, such that they wouldn't quit the game just because of EOTD. It's the players who never make it to the end game who would quit the game over this, but they'd have quit a long time ago, probably around level 80. I certainly don't agree with the design principles behind content like EOTD. But I don't agree with a lot of what the developers have done. It's their game, in the end.
RoF offered a quick and simple quest, that could teach you alaran, and that didn't ruin anything. Having a quick and simple quest in RoS that gave you EotD1, wouldn't ruin anything either. It would even make sense lore-wise that the Combine that want to employ your services, would offer EotD1 to their fresh recruits, in order to improve their chances. They could just remove the pre-requisites from "methods of sarnak destruction" if they felt lazy about it, and didn't wanted to make a new quest.
Here's how it hurts the game: as newer, returning and casual players make it up to EOK/ROS and look to join a raiding guild, if they can't get help, they are basically stuck either doing EOTD alone (and some of those SW missions are impossible) or they are shut out. Raiding guilds like RoI, MS, Triton, etc., will not be able to recruit new players because the new player doesn't have EOTD, can't get it, and the guild won't bother. So over time it starts to hurt those guilds, unless they change their attitude. And I can see VP being a similar roadblock
If you think players attempting to join these guilds wouldn't find a way to get EOTD done if it meant being accepted - then I have a feeling you are sorely disillusioned at they dynamic of how upper tier raiding guilds function and the potential recruits interested in them. So, if you want to make a respectable argument about it being a tad unfair in the group/family guild game, fine - but don't make such crazy claims otherwise. These types of things will have 0 effect on the top end and their longevity. As stated in your OP, it sounds like maybe you aren't in the right guild if no one is willing to help. Besides, it's likely the next expac will not have any ties to EOTD (just like we've seen in previous progression quest locked advancement) and so this issue is reset. If it means that much then stay current and do content in era.
The massive data breach that happened while SOE still controlled EQ did not kill the game but Essence of the Dragon will. The sky is falling.
Wait... no one wanted to help you, then you saw people wanting help for the SAME thing and you didn't help?... I did this pretty much start to finish with a group geared ranger/druid/shaman, tank merc and 2 healer mercs... As for the tradeskills, all items except the final one is tradeable!!! Then you only need a 170 ish blacksmithing skill to make, buy some ore, make some bits, do the tradeskill in 30 mins. EDIT: You want to join a raiding guild, do the requirements of that raiding guild.... easy enough
Man, just doing the Chardok quests for the Gnome is entertaining enough to make people who haven't done the progression so worth doing. You don't know what you're missing. Past expansions were way more of a chore to do than EOK. I have to ask this sometimes: Do you even like to play EverQuest? It kind of sounds like you don't - especially given the level of hyperbole spouted upon creation of this thread to make your point. This is a social game. Go be social or EQ will continue to be awful to you.
I can see this requirement being a huge pain in the charm slot. I did this pretty much as a two box. I think the problem you are trying point out isn’t the content but the community.
I think the OP is frustrated, and needs encouragement. It is not the most exciting questline ever imagined, or rather, it is fine, with some grrr smurf argh elements here and there. A rating system for quests could be cool, to help devs, or some other metrics than the qualitative feedback spread out. Maybe a system where the individuals scoring (1 to 5 stars) is normalized so that all individuals scores average 3 stars, when aggregating to the overall quest score, grouped by subset of quests. I think this game will die at earliest when the current player base die of old age, hopefully many decades from now , but there are ample chances in the longer timeframe to build up an asset that can attract new players, especially if the community decides it wants to be the most awesome MMO community in existence, and if DB formulates a long term strategy and communicates it. I feel the strategy has been “turn-around and sustainable profitability”, which was right for the time, after TBM. The level increase cost too many resources for RoS to achieve same quality as EoK, while at the same time DB decided to make it a “hard” expansion, like some of the expansions of old times. I feel that an explicit communication about such a choice, saying that every 4th expansion is going to be level increase and “hard”, would serve perception management well. Of course, if it was accidental, then there is nothing to communicate . The execution model has matured a lot, from an outside perspective, which has led to a continous maturation of the codebase, and continous reduction of development-hindering game complexity. AA consolidation and Potion Belt comes to mind as two good examples of very good decision paths, that I believe is leading to an ability to create more AA-type content and start a UI improvement journey respectively, with the available development muscle. It is incremental, Agile (for those who are into Agile Software Development), it creates value (yes it does), so it is quite good. I am not sure if they have 2-week sprints, or something more fluid. I seem to remember that they have dev meeting every thursday, thursdays are good days to end a sprint and start the next one I think the team has learned that a level increase-expansion does not fit into the current yearly cycle, and they will have to invest in code-mechanics over the next 4 years to drive down effort needed to do the next level increase. A lot of the level scaling that has been built into content probably supports this, but I am guessing that either something around the mechanics of class development, or something around the data aquisition of toons performance, could be themes to look into to make level increases more manageable. Making Smart Dummies is an obvious opportunity, I know of at least a certain mage (you all know whom I am thinking of :-D ) would pommel those poor sobs for hours. Why not have them produce performance data for individuals, groups, guilds to use and learn from, with devs sitting behind the sceene, absorbing all the learnings? Oh well, I babble, and I need to go to work. It is thursday, and my project ends a sprint today
