Lack of official communication lately / TLP instancing taking away from the next expac?

Return to Velious, only $110. 2 zones. GD, and Velks. No loot at all, only the "pride" of being level 110.

Given the responsiveness to acknowledging and correcting errors with latest expansion and focus on tangents unrelated to live, the question the OP is asking isn't too early, or inappropriate.

Its will DBG provide enough resources to have a future expansion late this year? Not what is the content going to be, how many zones etc, but is there a goal with a deadline that a future expansion will be in the works?

Its a simple question, that quite frankly should be answered. If its ignored, it answers itself, quite negatively.

Ruven

I think expecting a Level cap increase would be the most horrible request one could even make if you expect any type of substantial content. I honestly hope they don't even touch the idea till they can figure out how to release content that is sufficient without even worrying about 5 new levels. And what? Level cap increases just trivialize old content and waste resources like taking a week or two to name spells.

New content with improved player power (gear, AA, a couple spells, etc) trivializes old content as well regardless of level increases. An expansion without increased player power will leave people without things to look forward to and work on. New content also needs new challenges. If you have too many expansions without a level bump, you break the con system because a yellow con in Arx will not be the same as a yellow con in TDS +2. Although they have already broken it to an extent with weak con and high hp variants. With several player abilities having hard caps on what level of mob they can work on, you can't just make new content all red cons to up mob power without also breaking several classes.

I do agree they need to learn to release sufficient quality content. They should also stop with the nonsense spell naming. Go back to some of the original names in the lines and just add numbers. Stop creating 5 items with different names that differ in +/- 1 HME (yay crap group drops in TBM) that all go in the same slot. They need to realize their limits with the current staff and stop doing the fluffy stuff and concentrate on the actual interaction with all new content.

Roll it back to 100. Reduce mobs accordingly.

They cant' release enough content. (I'm not sure how, adding a new raid script in an existing zone should be easy - I understand art assets for new zones is expensive).
The content they do release is broken, and a good chunk of retuning keeps happening to fix events, then re-fix events after they change core game mechanics randomly.

I actually kind of think of it the other way around. I've never seen a larger group of whining crybabies that throw tantrums about every little thing than what we have on the TLPs. My brain just couldn't handle those forums anymore so one day I just upped and stopped browsing or even posting on them. Anyone who actively browses the TLP forums on a daily basis could contribute so much more to this games well being than their drama and tears.

Ultimately the Phinigel server will get almost all of the attention because that server attracts the loudest whiners of all the servers. When is the last time you saw RoI pitch a fit because an X-pac sucked? I've never seen Qulas on here throwing a fit. How often have you seen TLs guild leader on the forums complaining about something? How often have you seen members of the top TLP guilds on the forums complaining and how often have you seen members of the top live guilds complaining about something?

Of course I am not saying their complaints are a good thing and we should complain more. The TLP players need to be babied and feel like their mommy and daddy care about them the mostest and that they are all that matters (most TLPers say stuff like 'No one cares about live EQ' when the total population of RF, LJ, Phinigel and P99 are probably 1/4 what is on live).

It's not that the devs don't care about us, it's that they know we don't need to be babied and told everything is going to be ok on a daily basis like they do. Think of it from Roshen's perspective. Who would YOU like more? The people whom you barely even have to moderate because they act mature or the people you have to constantly moderate, delete posts, hand out bans, lock threads and tell them to behave?

The industry as a whole has been going through a period "old school." Not surprised that DayBroken is trying to cash in.

I'm starting to think Holly is banned from posting about EQ since that "casuals should not be allowed to kill dragons" comment caused such an uproar.

While I agree the TLP forum is a cesspool of complaints, pixel drama and stupidity (reflects a lot of the behavior on the servers themselves, really), I think you're in denial a bit about the population difference. When was the last time outside of raids you saw more than 40 or 50 people in any zone on live servers? Maybe Drinal is the exception, but I honestly can't remember. House of Thule, maybe? It's hard to blame people too given the shoddiness of CotF+.

Things I took from playing on RF:

-live populations feel minuscule in comparison. Perhaps it's just because the TLP grp is consolidated to a couple of servers instead of a dozen, but still....
-open world everything and no PnP or enforcement of anything at all encourage ridiculous behavior. I hadn't been trained/kill stolen/threatened playing EQ in like a decade....took about a week on TLP and happened plenty often.
-krono have a serious serious effect on these severs, much more so than how they affect live
-DBG has no care at all for the sustainability of any of these servers

And wait, weren't you the one who got drawn up in the LJ rotation drama and posted some silly manifesto on your guide page because....drama reasons? Talk about ridiculous mommy/daddy situations......Viva la Revolucion?

I wasn't the poster of the manifesto and it wasn't posted on my website, I supported it though. All I posted is links to logs/recordings, videos of trains, screenshots of trains/insults and any other wrong doing to try and shine light on those who were purposely ruining the enjoyment of others. I was foolish to think my actions would do anything but embarrass myself. I'll admit it was childish of me to do but I felt compelled to do something after witnessing how poorly people were being treated. I didn't want to sit by as over half the server was being bullied. It was a giant horrible mess of immaturity and I was sucked right into it like a moth to the flame.

And Drinal isn't the exception, there's far to many zones on live for people to be that packed together. We get quite a few that visit decay/life in TBM - about 20 - 30 during peak hours. (on FV)

Even if each TBM zone had 10 people on every server at once, we have 4x more live servers than we do TLP servers. There are at least 3-5k active (unique) people on FV throughout the week, I would say Fvs population alone trumps Lockjaw and leaves tons left over. FV has at least 320 traders running at all times too, if you add in traders that's a huge boost to each server's population. P99 has extremely low population, capping at about 1600 during peak hours, round that up to 2k and FV's population would cover both P99 and LJ easily.

Then you have Phinigel which would most likely be the same population as three live servers combined. Then Ragefire would probably be the same population as two live servers combined. (maybe even 1 according to eqresources population tracker it seems about on par with what Xegony pulls in)

Purely estimation but that would be 6 servers worth of people (in comparison to live) on the TLPs.

So you're right I was a bit off, they got about half the population as live servers or an insty bitsy bit less.

Big of you to own up to it.

Regarding TLP population also....the one thing we aren't referring to is overall time. A lot of the people left on live have been EQ players a long time. Why else continue to play a 17 yo game? Then on the flip side, a huge part of the TLP population are fickle, needy types that quit long ago and are back temporarily until their server progresses to an expansion they don't personally care for, then they'll be gone all over again. I'd figure to avoid that DBG will just keep releasing TLP's, while the existing servers promptly die off around luclin, LDON, gates, etc. I mean, look how fast people jumped ship to Phinny. And each "new" server generates traffic, krono sales and something they can market with minimal resources required.

Each new TLP caters to popular demands like a monkey's paw granting wishes.

I definitely agree with ya there, TLPs they can recycle endlessly and bring back hundreds of new people each time that had no idea TLPs were even a thing. I've met many people who didn't even know about The Combine, Fippy or Vulak and just heard about TLPs for the first time with Rage/LJ. Ultimately with some creative marketing strategies they can bring back a new set of people each time. Considering EQ was at like 300k in its prime.

Someone needs to start a pool to see how long until we get a TLP that mirrors what Al'kabor was (locked at PoP).

It's too close to what people want, there needs to be a catch. Like all raid bosses are a one month spawn, quadruple death penalty, or a random item gets deleted from you each time you die.

Only boxers can play there.

That'll go over well.

Was that a reference to...


If so, a Like (and a free Frogurt) for you, good sir.

I said they needed an Al'Kabor server in some thread just the other day. It's honestly the smart thing to do. I'm guessing they shredded all the code for it though and so any effort to recreate it would fail miserably

Slightly off topic, does anyone have a link to the video (I believe it was a video) where they promised a fully functioning polished product in TBM ?