How to have more than 70% of your content utilized.

That is just human nature, players play where they get the best rewards, be it gear, exp or both. Expansions have typically only had 1 or 2 end zones and that is where most of the players stay, Had they had more end zones with similar rewards players would use more content.

I was actually sad to see we had 2 tier 1 zones, especially as we only had 8 zones, overlap content is usually under used.

What in the devil do you call CoTF and TDS? Even the *supplementary* content you label LDoN as is better than both of those combined.

Also, if, they came out with LDoN expansion next they would still be able to kill in CoTF and TDS.... Not that they would really want to if they installed a successful LDoN expansion.

Having options has nothing to do with an expansions success. What does playing in RoF and CoTF have to do with how good or bad TDS is? Who would review or rate an expantion based on what is happening to old expansions? Is playing in TDS good or bad?

Here is another thought TDS success or failure has nothing to do with the exp nerf.

that is the problem the devs want to avoid. they do not want to spend time building content that goes largely unused.

I think it is a mistake to release expansions with multiple tiers anymore. It is wasteful as most of the middle goes unused.

here is another issue with how they have released content like TDS, SoF, SoD, UF, HoT, VoA ect.

people skip damn near all of the content wasting dev time creating content that goes unused. then worse people complain there is not enough content. well geez if you skip through it all you are only shooting yourself in the foot.

Having a T2 in TDS is definitely a waste. Gear is a mediocre upgrade and no trade. No reason to go there for the rewards. Now, if they'd actually make the top tier challenging, the mid tier could be the place for most people. But with TDS T3 being fairly easy content, there's no reason for anyone to not be targeting the best group loot.

^ Exactly..raiding guilds are also a good example.
Racing for a good spot on some weird who did beat what first lists, and then wondering why it's farming for 10 months per year. When i will look back in some years, i'm sure the reason i come up with why Eq was stopped is: too much rushing, impossible to keep this player base happy.
Eq worked as long as it was an alternate reality, all mmorpgs can exist only if they aim for that again instead of boring farming that happens for whatever reason.

By most standards CotF and TDS haven't been "full" expansions due to SoE cutbacks and that's the largest problem. But no, if they released ldon2 for level 105 the last two expansions aren't sufficient. PoP was huge, expansions now are not. The exp nerf just rammed that point home in a misguided and desperate attempt to jam everyone together and it's been pretty much universally hated by the playerbase, from the most elite of Raiders to the most casual of casuals.

I disagree immensely. Having options makes the most possible number of players with the most diverse play times, styles, skill and commitment as satisfied as is possible. It's what keeps Everquest a large, immersive and diverse world.

When content is aimed largely at one specific segment of the population as LDON was, it'll fail pretty spectacularly without an alternative for those the content is not targeted for. Do you honestly think LDON would have been a success if exp in PoP was drastically reduced along with a level cap increase? Having it as an *option* was good. Having it be *required* and the only really viable option like it would be now would be awful.

Yes and you are more than likely never going to get something better than CoTF and TDS again, as far as man hours worked to develop. Not going to see more dev time invested im sure. So what do you do? You have to be smarter with what time you have. Which means making content that is used by the majority of the playerbase.

What segment was LDoN aimed at? If you say anything about raiding i will slap you... lol we know raiding was bad.

LDoN was for level 20-65 group play

I believe PoP was 46-65

If they come up with LDoN 2.0 the other options will be TDS/CoTF.

I have said it before LDoN was a success because LDoN was a success (Grouping wise).

Judging an expansion based on what else is out there is pretty weird. The exp nerf really isnt a TDS feature. it was a change to older content. I think you are so hung up on the exp nerf stuff. will it matter what comes out next with this exp nerf?

ROF xp was only better because of the power increase you got from TDS. The issue is trash in TDS have upwards of 7m hp and trash in ROF have 1-2m. So your kill rate in ROF is WAY higher.

yes i know. the exp changes make sense. TDS success or failure should have little baring on what happens to RoF.

They inflated HP too much in TDS without giving players any real power increase. They did this on purpose to lower the xp rate it was intentional.

Well i heard the HP increase was so necros could have a purpose?

LDON was a success because it catered to one niche of the playerbase, and a niche that had a bit of a tougher time with the prior major expansion being more focused on raiding, flagging and linear progression. That's fine for some expansions, but not when CotF was probably the most grouper friendly expansion since LDON itself.

I could care less about the exp nerf personally - it's only worth mentioning in that it's an attempt to force everyone into the same content, which is what the LDON model does. That only worked with a viable alternative, which right now depending on your opinion of TDS we might not even have.

I care about the world staying big. Jamming everyone into instances with hubs and making all content be kill or collect x or y is not fun to a huge segment of the playerbase. And when something isn't fun it gets done the minimal # of times (or 0) and then never again.

And let's be clear I'm attempting to judge the expansion's success, not my own opinion of it. I didn't care for LDON, but saw its necessity to a big segment of the population at the time. It's called context. For its time it was important. That doesn't mean it needs to be the sole focus of an entire expansion ever again. You think people running the same theme and mission type in LDON over, and over, and over just like they did with Gribble are "experiencing" all the content? Not likely.

The HP really isn't the problem. It's easy for them to tune the mobs with more exp to compensate for a slower kill rate. The problem I've seen is having "quest" mobs mixed in every where. They also tend to have even more hp than the standard zone mobs and respawn faster, requiring you to kill a higher percentage of low exp mobs to keep an area clean. I get the feeling they did some math on expected group dps, mob hp and a target exp rate. What they did not do was look at mob density and placement as a factor. Or, actually play test the exp rate in a fully populated zone to see the real numbers versus what the math told them.

And when that happens, its time to decide if its worth GIVING them your money, because that is exactly what you are doing, giving it away, not purchasing a quality product. Someone out there will have another MMO out, and by the looks of it now, maybe it won't be EQN. They make plenty of money, even off this game today. If they would stop throwing it at developing new games and keep EQ money in EQ it would be fine. There are more than enough players to support this game with quality expansions.

If people are buying TDS, where is the notion of failure coming from? If the "worth" of the expansion is based on whether they exp there or not, something is wrong with the risk vs reward of the expansion.

I played EQ at release (when it was hard) and played for a few years until I just decided to get off the treadmill and start a company. Well, I recently decided to revisit Norrath after being away for a decade and this time bring my nephews who are now teens. They love the game. But, it's been very frustrating in a number of areas...

1. The defiant gear has pretty much trivialized all the low-level content. There's no loot in Lower Guk that surpasses gear available in bazaar for pennies... and that's the case with all the dungeons we went through.
2. There are a plethora of quest givers who send players out on complicated quests that result in rewards that are worthless. The quests were put in place to give players an upgrade to their Runic Carver or Forest Loops... not so relevant now.
3. Defiant gear has a ghetto appearance... it's ugly and not every inspiring. I realize that extra money can be paid to give the ability to wear cosmetic gear but come'on. If I don't go to the 'company store' for each character, I have a McToon.
4. 'Native' cities are irrelevant. My nephews wanted to play ogres and dwarves and wanted their choice of race to make a difference. Kaladim, Freeport (what a mess), Qeynos, pretty much all the native cities are abandoned and empty because they're irrelevant. CR is the Wal-Mart of cities where everything is there and easy to get. It was depressing taking them to see the old home cities with nobody there except NPC vendors selling things that nobody needs.
5. The loot tables have way too many items for things that are tied to quests and trade skills that are irrelevant.
6. Trade skills are utterly pointless. My nephews keep making swords and armor and bows that are complete crap and they get very disappointed.

The bottom line -- At release, Verant/SOE was all about immersion and they were actually kind of strict with the players regarding naming conventions and anything else that would destroy that immersion. What has been done to EQ over the past decade is like building a huge freeway through a city and putting Wal-Marts every few miles to get players through the low-level content as quickly and easily as possible. It's silly to do that then ask "why isn't anyone visiting my pub three miles from the freeway?" The pub is not convenient to visit and, even if someone DID go to the pub, they'd find stale beer, broken tables, and stinky bathrooms -- not a gratifying experience. Somewhere along the line, overall control of the big picture was lost.

Along with the lower-level content not being relevant any more, the main reason that the world is empty is simple -- there aren't enough players.

The good news is that this is all fixable and EQ could end up being very popular while increasing profits.

1. EQ is a fun game. It was fun in 1999, it's still fun.
2. The graphics are old, yes. BUT, EQ can be played on an out-of-the-box family computer. Those silly pay-two-win apps make enough money to run Super Bowl ads with no real graphics. The potential market for EQ is enormous worldwide. It just needs some advertising to increase awareness.

My suggestions -- get back to the immersive roots that made EQ so fun in the early days.

1. Re-itemize the zones and get rid of 'defiant' gear. Risk/reward needs to be rebalanced such that killing Najena yields a greater reward than killing an_orc_centurion. EQ has always been about loot and risk/reward.
2. Start all characters in their home cities according to their race and create incentives to make native city faction important. Let a dwarf be a dwarf again.
3. Slow down xp gain so that players don't out-level the content and they can experience a wider variety of content while increasing in levels.
4. Simplify the drops so that drops tied to obsolete quests are removed.
5. Remove obsolete quest givers.
6. Personal pet peeve -- FIX FREEPORT. A city that requires a dozen signs to tell players how to get from one side to the other is FUBAR.
7. Allow for cosmetic gear WITHOUT having to go through the immersion-killing process of going to the store or at least have that one purchase open up the feature for the account.
8. Get rid of F2P. Change to a subscription of $5 a month and make VIP-status $10/month (or less if prorated for longer-term purchases)
9. Give existing players the option of clicking a "double xp" button for alts that lasts until they reach the level of their highest character on the account. That way it's still relatively easy to level up an alt.

Once EverQuest is a coherent game again and cleaned up at the lower levels, do some advertising. Leverage the term "EverCrack"... there's a reason it got that nickname. Generate a new player base who has never even heard of EverQuest and leverage the fact that EQs graphics can run on low-end machines. The content is already there. You just have to make it relevant again. The game needs to be revamped to bring in new players while keeping the existing players content in the interim.

What he said above is the real reason that LDoN was so successful, not because it was such a great ideal, but because most casual players really had a hard time handling a huge section of the previous expansions. For the average raider LDoN was very boring, because it offered very little reward and it was so easy. I remember doing a LDoN with a bard tanking, and we did not do any CC just ran from room to room and killed everything at once it did not matter how many mobs we aggroed. Then later that same day a friend invited me to his group and when I charmed a mob, they almost had a heart attack, and asked me to stop charming

I agree completely. And having to clear quest mobs around named spawns is just wrong. Mark quest mobs as such, reduce their hp and where possible keep them away from named spawns. Or put more of the questing in instances and replace quest mobs with regular ones.

Had to get a fix of Ldon by creating some new chars. was a blast =) though the running to the instances was annoying not having porter/bard speed.