If you didn't guess from my point of view and the guilds we play to raid (thats 270+ guilded characters on multiple accounts). So we just playing for 2 days a week at the moment, we can do it in one day, but we split it into 2 to keep us entertained a little more.
Makes me smile, as if something like this can be a. decided by Holly b. would be possible within a few day. Welcome to relality, things do not work like that here.
There is a lot of dislike for the now biweekly content releases (mainly recycled content). Most of your players have been around the block a few times and know when these events are due. There was discontent last year when sets of quests were split to meet the weekly updates. Our most important anniversary is coming up on 16th March, yes there is a lot of anniversary content, but please instead of releasing it over months, release it all on 16th March, leave it all in longer and let the players decide what order they want to complete it, some of us have been playing this game so long we have done the older stuff multi times, give us all something new to do on the anniversary of EQ rather than wait a couple of months when it no longer feels like the anniversary. My favourite anniversary set is 13th, but I also enjoyed last years missions which could be completed in different ways, which had the replay value, a few more this year and I get my bag! Other event times have been neglected, Halloween, Frostfell & New Year. When I first started playing Halloween events were a fantastic, East Karana, Rathe Mountains, North Ro, I still have my rewards from these events. I'd love to see something like these return to EQ. It would be great if the Santug Stocking quest could be continued later this year to bring the reward up to date. Add in something July/August time (maybe Hardcore Heritage zone & raid) and you have quarterly new content updates. The calendar Prathun was talking about would be great for when the old events come back, but you don't need to break the up into small fragments or make a sing and dance about them. One last thing, the in game alert system....can we get the dates they are active added, pretty please. *edit* Forgot something.....the scavenger hunts bring out some new ones, don't put them on test, they were one of the greatest quests in EverQuest and really brought the communities together to try and solve them. Plenty of expansion now without a scavenger hunt in them.
I would say 6-12 month progression rate, not player vote....Regardless, either way should allow a player the option to Deny the progression and stay in their current expansion rather than being forced to progress (leveling etc) and then whenever they feel theyre ready to move on they can simply open up a window and unlock the next
Would like to see more in between options from grouper to raider. Instances which require 12 or 24 people, or raids which scale with your raid force size. It's nice to win 54 man raids when the force is there, its frustrating to try to find things to do when only 36 people show up.
Whatever the ruleset, if they ever do another progression server, they absolutely need to do something about the dead zone in the middle of the expansions. Dragons of Norrath and Prophecy of Ro both had no levels and no AAs, and Depths had no levels and relatively few AAs. They were all fun, and had good tasks and raiding and were directed at where the population was at that time, but at or near max level during that time was not enjoyable (Underfoot has been like that now as well (been there for 7 months or so), but more due to the fact that there was a bug preventing the completion of the expansion and it's just plain hard)
Thank you Lenowill, You put a lot of what I was feeling but just couldn't articulate in this post. Sometimes we just love what we love, it can be very difficult to explain why. Holly, I just wanted to add my thanks to your continued presence in this thread. We of Norrath can't be the easiest people to work for/with. We are a stubborn group that love this world sometimes a bit too passionately. Everquest is a world to many of us before it is a game. Jexabel of Morden Rasp
In general, when it comes to time-locked or vote-locked progression servers, I feel like a lot of the "dead time" problem could be streamlined by making so that all expansions of a particular intended level cap release together or in a fast-unlock style of progression (e.g. based on server-first kills) once that max level is available. For instance, I would see little to no harm in making it so that PoP, Ykesha, and LDoN all unlock simultaneously (and pass by their eras of prime relevance simultaneously), but then requiring that all of them be "beaten" before a vote to unlock GoD can be called. GoD should have an initial period of becoming available while the level cap is still 65, and then instantly unlock OoW (and max level of 70) for everyone on the server the moment that the first guild beats Tacvi (it's pretty lore-appropriate from a storyline perspective anyway, since the two expansions funnel right into one another, and the upped max level would help follow-on guilds not get discouraged by GoD being fairly brutal when attempted on-tier and at-level, compared to most expacks). Once OoW is unlocked, the server-first Anguish win should unlock DoN and DoDh for the entire server. The server-first Demiplane win should then unlock PoR immediately, with DoN serving as a geographically nearby side story in which to gear up. TSS and TBS could then open up in a smooth, time-locked type of progression, perhaps with Mayong automatically darkening the sun two real-life months after TSS starts, irrelevant of where anyone is in TSS progression at the time. (Not rushing TSS/TBS too hard should be a good thing, since it forms a good point for new characters to be rolled and for players who were waiting for drakkin to get into the game.) SoF would be its own release block, but that's fine since it's a fairly expansive potpourri of content in its own right. SoD and UF could follow a similar unlock cycle to TSS and TBS, with HoT then releasing immediately when the server-first UF win happens. The rest after that point would probably do fine as their own release blocks. I'm less sure what to recommend for Kunark/Velious/Luclin, but I would tend to suggest that giving each of those eras an appropriately long time to exist as its own thing is fine. The cap remains 60, but the world's dynamics and the scaling of gear still change quite a bit between each of them.
I started back in Nov 99, quit shortly after Legacy of Ykesha and came back about 2 years ago. I was playing EQ2 hardcore since its release, but grew bored of the game and how easy it was... plus the fact you can buy raid gear in EQ2 pissed me off to no end. Some things I think we need in this game to help it out... more events with the holidays. In EQ2, it seems like they add new quests, items every year, but the holiday events here are pretty stagnant. Why not have a competition and allow people to design zones for certain quests, or reuse old zones populated with new mobs, etc for the events. Make the holiday/anniversary events fun, make them something people look forward to, with useful items or even just fun goofy illusion items...nothing game changing with that. I'm not into the whole progression server thing... I remember all too well playing a magician back in the old days where you would have to kill a mob, go and camp and med for 5 mins... go kill another mob or so, then repeat. Those days were fun back in the time, but as I'm older now I have far less patience to return to that style of play, but to each their own. I don't mind the dailies at all, but they should be updated or changed like the ones in tainted West Karana... hell, you can even have them expanded where you have to go to different zones up to RoF. RoF is a nice expansion, but most zones sit empty right now, which is pretty sad. New character models would be fun, maybe even make them SC sell able to unlock. Different mercs would be cool as well. A bard merc, or a paladin merc would be nice. A new race/class combo would be nice as well... I liked the conjuror class in EQ2, shouldn't be too hard to do something like that in this game. When you released heroic toons, you should have put more quests and information for people in the starting zone. I knew of many people that were totally lost in this game after buying a heroic toon. You should probably update them to 90 as well, since you added 5 levels to the level cap. One last thing, please lower the recast time on the PoK brick portal thing. PoK should be the central hub and we should have the ability to port back there every hour or so, it's not game changing, just more convenient.
I have to agree with this post. All that anniv Things should come at once, except for the latest Things. So ALL is releases 16th marts and the new Things come from 15 april ending at around beginning of july., The thing is that it gives the impression there is much mroe than there really is. And if it was all released at same time, except for the newest, it would ease the amount of people there is in the zones, example Castle mistmoore, nagafen lair and such. It would also be so that people dont risk to be on vacation in the 14 days that a particular set of anniv Things are up, and give them better odds of getting the Things. A lot of people go on some kind of vacation in spring/early summer.
I would also rather have ALL the anniversary content at once. No need to put out bi-weekly "content." On another note, When you say "Weekly Content" It truly implies new. We say content and we mean new content. There is enough content in EQ. The biggest decisions about content are "when should we activate EventA and EventB?" When it should be, "Ok we're releasing previous year's content, let's work on the expansion or produce actual new content." Oh, I might be asking for content since The Darkened Sea was so small.
I have been playing since 1999 myself. With only a few hiatus's, pretty much the whole span of that time till now. The thing that got me going in the game is the adventure and the exploration. Brand new world with exciting places and people to visit. The social aspect was great, even with the wankers who would 'ks' mobs out from under you. Sure it sucked but it also made you try harder the next time. When the raids kicked in more and more, especially around the time of PoP, it was full throttle from there for raiding. Overall though, we seem to have lost our direction and focus on what we need as players. I know resources became limited and ideas became stagnant. But, we as the player base, need to be re-invigorated once again. Here is a short list I would like to see happen: 1: More interactive dynamic content that shapes our world. I am talking real time events which could change the way we view factions etc. (High resource factor but high enjoyment if the risk vs. reward is there) You could also condense zones down a little. The zones that don't get used as much, by creating some man-made or natural disaster........Here is an idea. How about creating an expansion and call it 'Everquest - Cataclysm' where some of the old world zones get reshaped because of some event. 2: Instead of creating new items, especially armor for the next expansion, why not create Epic Armor or evolving armor that is tier based. Especially if we continue to have tier based expansions. Or you could base them off progression for both Group and Raid. So all you need to do is make one armor template for each class and evolve it. Create armor items that have unique abilities to the classes. 3: Improve the graphics in the game to include those zones that I mentioned in Point 1: Everquest-Cataclysm. 4: Risk vs Reward has to be high on the list for quests and events. I am not saying that it isn't now but it's become too cookie cutter now. Make it special and unique. 5: Improve the Game UI. It's clunky, horrible and not very imaginative. Enlist the help of people who are still developing/maintaining custom UI's right now. I am sure they would love for a chance to make their creation live on in our world. 6: Please for the love of all us Tradeskillers, make it so we can TS our Class Specific Focus from the Raid-Group Chest's to our tradeskill chest item's. There has to be a way to allow this to happen easily. Hell, even make it so that its another slot on Tradeskill Chests and it's a quested item. That would work also. 7: Lastly, bring back the fun to EQ. Right now you have 21 pages of ideas to work with. I am sure there will be another 20 after my post here. We are a dedicated group of gamers who have been playing this game on and off for almost 16 years now. we don't mind spending our time and money in a product that is enjoyable to play and experience. If you would incorporate some of these ideas I am sure you will see people flock back to this game. But you must also make sure you scream it to the Heavens that Everquest is Alive and You Are Listening!
Castle Mistmoore & Nagafen's Lair are not part of the anniversary events, they are Hardcore Heritage. I don't understand your reasoning for the new stuff coming later, those that have done previous anniversary events should have something to do on 16th March that they haven't done before. 16th March is the most important date in the EQ calendar, it should be celebrated with new things.
This is a great idea. Quite a lot of people are asking for new hot zones in this thread. I recall well when most of the hot zones were in Serpent's Spines and people were fed up and wanting those to change and here we are again. So, why not do what you've already done in EWK? Redesign Franklin Teek to have 5-10 options per hot zone level request, and he randoms them every day. So, for example, if a player says "Level 60" to Teek, on any given day Teek could assign a task in one of the following zones: BoT, Sunderock Springs, WoS, HoH, Drunder, Sleeper's Tomb, The Steppes, Vergalid, etc etc. This way, you guys never have to "change hot zones again", unless you're simply adding on new levels as we continue to level past 105.
Or let each level range have 2 or 3 that you can do like a checklist. Have one stay the standard kill x mobs, have one be collect such and such items, and have the third be kill soandso, named mob of x zone
Another pipe deam i know: Make EQ run on the Forgelight Engine, would be nice to get a newish 64 bit engine for this game. They have done some nice things with the old engine and added some good features over the year, but it would add another 10 years to EQ if they could get it running on a modern engine.
You should do an AMA ("I am a") on reddit, http://www.reddit.com/r/everquest , and give folks that can't attend a live conferencing session a chance to give input, ask questions, etc. even folks that perhaps played EQ years ago and don't keep up with it right now, reddit gives a lot of those folks a chance to stumble upon the conversation, and perhaps get back in the game.
What Yinla (and Guado) on this page alone have stated is true. I think the 'weekly content' or 'biweekly' or even 'monthly' content ideas are things thought up by the Developers but not necessarily something that us players need. There are easier ways to get to the same place. As others are requesting, release all the missions at one time and just keep them up a week longer (that's what used to happen, each year they were released together and then 1 week added for each year EQ was around). We (the players) are not the ones asking for content this "fast". We want new content sure, but on a schedule that makes sense and the current design for EQ does not in many of our eyes.
