I will give some more information to help with the topic. I currently play on the Cazic server during late night PST of 10pm or later for about 2-3 hours. I began boxing during the VOA due to lack of groups and difficulty of named. Due to the VOA difficulty and lack of aa/spells added, I waited to purchase the ROF expansion for 3 weeks which put me behind. Currently, I am progressing through tier 1 at the crystal caverns tasks. I am just encountering fewer and fewer players as I get farther and farther away from SL. I basically only see a few boxed groups progressing and a few tracker classes looking for named. Am I missing something here or is it I am just behind progression wise and will encounter more players in tier 2?
Think of Shard's Landing as the new Dragonscale Hills. It will most likely stay the most populated zone out of the RoF expansion. I'm on Cazic and am usually mucking around, so feel free to look for me. I've slacked off lately doing some of the progression tasks waiting on some real life friends to get on, but they haven't been logging on. We might be able to get some things done some time if you want.
Since there's no real reason to do anything in RoF, you won't see a large population. Nothing is locked = no reason to do the content. T2 current expansion is basically T4 of the previous. You'll see a return of players when T3 is released.
Sure, if you only require the first group mission for each T2 zone. Be UF all over again if you require group missions like The Queen's Decree and Heart of the Oak to zone into T3. I'm kind of guessing they won't require T2 progression though.
At first i was really excited about ROF since SL is such a fantastic zone with good camps all over the place. Then as i progressed through the rest of t1 and into t2 i quickly came to the conclusion that the other zones in rof are just horrible. Out of t1 only SL is good, rest of the zones are garbage. Awful camps at almost every zone. Don't even get me started on crystal caverns. In tier2 xorbb is the only place people go to and the rest of the t2 zones are ghost towns. I got all my t1 gear in SL and i have no desire to even gear up with t2 gear as it's such a small upgrade overall. In short, i lost my motivation to continue with any type of progression in the group game. All i do when i log on each night is just play my lowbie alts, or create more alts..
Heart of the Oak was very tough, really I found the easiest way to do it was 2 tanks and 2 healers =(
Plenty of good camps in Grelleth. During double exp weekends you couldn't find a single mob in the place uncamped. The zone pop isn't near that high when you don't have a high visibility event going on, but it's not like those camps magically disappear just because the bonus exp does.
We had that problem ever since we hit T3 HOT progression, all upper HOT, all of VOA so far has been empty for us too. Still a ton of people in HOT T1-T2 and most others are in Shards Landing
I have no guess what they'll do, but, I will say I'm tired of not ever being able to finish an expansion ( I missed HoT) till the next one. I can't stand that some group missions are so hard that a vast majority of people skip them completely. And when I do get some sort of progress done, they give it away the next expac. Like VoA language. I want to get Paragon for RoF, but its becoming abundantly clear it will not happen. I know it's only Feb1, but those that are able to do it, don't do it again. And the rest are content to slaughter 10000 Orcs for an achievement. It might be incorrect to say, but, I see only raiders and their alts getting it Done with any kind of consistency. So if the new zones are locked behind the 2nd missions, I have no reason to continue, I will feel like I am not getting my value.
Wouldn't say anyone, because that would be false. But, the second group mission in at least 4 zones are very difficult (they're toned down raids) and I only know of raiders that finished them. I'm not saying there aren't non raiders that have done them. I just don't know of any. And as with past expansions, people will do the hard ones once and never want to go back without major incentive. If even then. And the exp is silly good from them, but also from the partisan quests as well. Those are quite doable.
There are several missions (specifically in T2) that are stupid easy and give good rewards when you take into account time invested, chest loot, and guaranteed spell drop (which are often Lv. 100 motes). However, then you come to the "raid copy" missions, which often enough are harder than the raid itself. Not always the case, and they aren't ALL insane, but it is enough to bang your head against the wall. It's really stupid when the only feasible way to reliably beat some missions is to take advantage of the "adds only spawn once" mechanic. I think part of the reason EXP is so easy to get in ROF is to make up for the fact you will die 999 times doing mission X. I do think some of the T2 missions will exclude some from "completing" RoF and it isn't necessarily because they aren't good players. One can only hope that T3 is the saving grace for this expansion. On a sidebar- if anyone beat Grelleth 2 without anyone dying or evacing at any point- major props.
Kinda feeling this way myself. I like RoF and have enjoyed the content I've done, but for perhaps the first time in 8+ years playing EQ, I really have no goals in the game. Sure there's stuff I'd like to do, but nothing that really makes me want to log on. I think the choice to unlock everything was a mistake. This isn't 1999 where simply getting the levels and an occasional piece of gear was enough of a challenge. Endaar
You play EQ from 10:00pm Pacific time for 2-3 hours, and complain that T2 zones in RoF are empty? Here is a concept: log on during prime time American hours. Then come back and ask if RoF is empty or not. Heck I would imagine that Everquest as a whole is empty from 1:00am to 4:00am Eastern time. It has zero to do with the expansion, and everything to do with the play time.
What class are you, what server are you on, and are you terrible at EverQuest? I could use a kill partner.
The OP mentioned they're on Cazic which actually has at least 1 if not 2+ Pacific time (raiding) guilds. There should be a higher population there than one might see elsewhere. But that also may be why, because those guilds are raiding and are in instances except for off days.
They tried that before, it was called Underfoot and it was an even bigger ghost town then ROF is. The reason you dont see anyone in ROF is the lack of people who bought ROF. With F2P players being able to wear many of the ROF items there was little, to no incentive to upgrade from VOA. Aside from the obvious power jump being lvl 100, most of the gear the lvl 95 can buy in Bazaar if the same or close to the same as the gear they would wear buy ROF and gaining access to the lvl 98+ gear. Only SOE knows its sales numbers, but if ROF sales were low, they might consider a $20 sale or putting ROF in Market place for 4300 SC and seeing how sales go for a week, even a 3 day weekend. Again I dont believe locked zones would increase traffic in flagging zones, I think the overall lack of warmbodies in ROf is purely lower sales then past expansions.
