I'd like to express my annoyance and frustration as a long-time fan of EQ at the level of standards of content and update releases recently. As a player, customer, subscriber, and advocate, I find the level of testing, quality assurance, and customer support to be deplorable and absolutely unacceptable in the last year or two. I don't need to go into the disaster that we saw with The Broken Expansion, so I'll use a recent example of blatant oversight and lack of diligence to create a fun and engaging experience for players. The release of the epic retelling is a great example of this. I was extremely excited and pleased to hear that new ornaments and titles were being given for the epic retelling. Players have been divided on the concept of new epics, and DBG seemed to have solved the problem by introducing new weapon graphics through a repeat quest that saved on development cycles, but could still give players something to race to finish, giving them the opportunity to be immortalized in the halls of Felwithe, as well as show off their new prize. And then Daybreak happened. And it wasn't just one or two small fixes needed. Titles were bugged, the ornaments weren't being given out, there were no announcements for fair chance across servers, and the level of difficulty spread allowed some players to simply replay their epic request the way they did before, while other classes still aren't finished (I believe berserker is the only one now). After making a fix, it was almost laughable that some of the above was taken care of, only to introduce new, even more ridiculous problems. The introduction of planned yearly content (that we literally have seen coming for 12 months) is now blocking players from completing it. Not to mention that the mage ornament came out as some sort of bixie table or something insane. And lastly, a player who completed their retelling first game-wide is being told that they will have to complete the rest of it in time to be awarded server-first? TLDR: My question to you daybreak is, do you find this acceptable? Is this the level of quality standards you are comfortable with? If so, pack up and move on. If not, what are you going to do about it? There are only so many times you can get away with this before players start talking with their feet, and leave. Players - are you comfortable with this? Do you have similar or dissimilar experiences?
Fair enough, you are not satisfied and have explained precisely why. I play predominantly in groups or box three paid accounts and raid occasionally (one day a week). I am mostly satisfied with EQ after its purchase by DBG's parent. I also believe that a number of changes have been for the better and although DBG has gone to a no-telephone support system, I have had no problems with response times. TBM might be "broken" as you say. I have had no difficulties with the group content and HAs other than to find some of them quite challenging (not a bad development) while some are fairly easy. To some extent, the software development cycle has changed over the years (for a great many software companies) to one where product is released with less-than-optimal testing, relying instead on a user base to find the bugs or problems. Blame Microsoft if you like. Nevertheless, that is the current status of the software industry and I see it in several of the products I use. You are not satisfied. I am. I trust that I've explained briefly why.
3 of the 5 family members who also played EQ unsubbed when TBM released all broken, items with no names, Rank II spells in raid loots, spells from previous expansion dropping, etc. That's 5 accounts in the family that refused to buy new expansions anymore at all. As for myself.. I won't ever preorder. I'll wait and see if a new expansion is broken before purchasing next anymore.
I am very upset with how An Epic Retelling is currently being handled. With limited resources and time bugs and issues are to be expected but to me its how they are handled both in nature and time that matter the most at that point. Fix it reasonably fast in a proper manner and it can be forgiven. Wait to long or handle it poorly and you might have burned your last bridge. For An Epic Retelling the timing for the fixes were reasonable (yes it should have been caught prior but ...) its only the fact that a full patch is required to push that fix live that becomes the issue. As waiting a month paired with customer services "we will not help" you stance means people who figure these out hours, weeks or even a month after the fact might then be allowed to swoop in and steal the server first reward. Which is complete garbage considering they have to means to address that now by verifying actual server firsts and either granting the Mistmoore flag now or granting them the rewards when the patch comes out in July. They have a month to get it right but so far its a repeat of sticking their heads in the sand.
i am not happy with a lot of things in EQ right now. which is one reason that my 6 accounts did NOT buy the broken expansion. and if the next one is only 5 zones, then i wont be buying that one either. i figure that eventually with enough expansions out there to buy i might get my 12-14 zones for my $40. but if they change it to where to dont get all previous expansions when you buy the current one then i just wont be buying expansions anymore. i do still support this game with 6 all-access accounts but no expansions for me and my wife til we get something of quality again i never did the epic retelling so that doesnt bother me that its messed up but i do wish that DBG would start putting some money and resources back in to their flagship game. that way maybe stuff can get properly tested and working like it should be
There is ample blame to be spread around to be sure. From the dev team to the finances to the player base itself. MMO's in general can be a toxic environment with unreasonable demands and expectations. Guilds pray upon other guilds for members with those being left behind leaving the game. The constant one-upmanship in content releases. Raids that have to outdo previous raids. etc etc. Ultimately it can be somewhat self destructive, and maybe the dev team figures enough is enough. They will put out a product that they can afford to produce and make a profit on with the expectation that the loyal players will buy it even if sold to them with the promise of being a work in progress. As for this blow up and conspiracy theory of only those in the know getting a shake at the Epic Retelling race...why is this a surprise?
Given several bugged and broken things in the last year or so, the level of quality of releases and updates is not acceptable to me either.
It's not a surprise about the content being messed up. I don't want to comment on the conspiracy theories, as that leads down a path that would likely be locked. Some disagree, and I respectfully acknowledge their opinions (including one above), but I want to call attention to the fact that many players, including myself, are appalled at what Daybreak has considered acceptable with releasing as of late.
Not to offend, but what does this has to do with the quality & standards of a EQ product? I don't see how someone poaching from a guild, or people being competitive in nature has anything to do with broken game mechanics... Completely off topic, but competition is what drives people to success. This new mentality that people have adopted over the last decade that "everyone should win a trophy who participates" is what is creates a lot of our failures in society; by that definition, winning or getting true, legitimate server firsts would then have no real meaning.
Competition is fine, but unlike sports where there will always be a fresh influx of players, EQ doesn't have that in its favor. Every guild that fails and folds, be it for whatever reasons, tends to lead to a loss of revenue for the game as players on the losing end decide its time to call it quits. No one takes their place. For the most part, the big fish are running out of small fish to devour. Perhaps that is the goal here and that makes EQ more like warfare to attrition than any kind of real competition. To be the last team standing when the lights turn off is going to be what it means to truly win this game. In the mean time, every player who loses the "competition" means there is less money for development and quality control. The retro servers will breath some new life into the game as they really don't have to develop anything new so there is that.
Not to offend, but if you are only being driven to succeed because of competition, then you are doing it wrong. A true drive for success is independent of anyone else's actions. You don't strive to be better than others. You strive for perfection. The mentality that you have to beat others is what creates a lot of failures in society. Competition is often used as a way to measure progress, I'll grant you that. But using it as a driving mechanism leads to mediocre results.
I didn't get to see TBM when it came out but I did shortly after the expansion had been completed. From the point I came into TBM there where countless issues with the spells being wrong, items not working or having the correct stats, broken raid mechanics/ achivments, and tons of other painfully undone things like HEroic Adventurs that couldn't be finished. That being said if I had to choose between getting another expansion like that or not getting one at all I would surely choose to get another like TBM. There wasn't a ton of content but it was mildly challenging and there where a number of ways to devolpe characters. I can say that I'm willing to put up with a slower development cycle extending past launch if DBG is honest about what we are paying for. The word of mouth passing of info related to the Epic Retelling was poorly handled. By the time I heard about it had already been beaten.
Longer development cycles means more time spent on TLP things, not more time spent on the expansion. We saw that last year, and we're seeing it again this year. You don't get the TBM release out of a 12 month dev cycle, you get it out of 3 months of work crammed into 10 months of TLP work.
Only thing that might change that, for the better, is if enough people refuse to buy the next expansion.
I remember when they switched over to the 1 year cycle of expansion releases promising the players this would allow for them to produce bigger better expansions with lots of content. I can't remember a single expansion when that happened after TSS, they progressively got smaller after that.
On the first part agreed no idea what poaching and competitiveness have to do with game mechanics. Now on the off topic part..... The everybody gets a trophy thing hasn't really harmed society at all. Whether it's atta boy medals or a child getting a ribbon for participating in a race I don't see the harm in it. As adults if you equate a participation award with first place you probably have a lot of other problems. And when it comes to EQ it is a game. Hardcore or casual they still charge you the same monthly fee so of course there are going to be a certain amount of participation awards. That being said this is a game we all play and we do have to balance the competitive side for those who are competitive with the just for fun side for those who are not playing the game for that reason. Believe it or not a lot of people don't play EQ to compete with others. Anyone who passes Go is going to collect their 200 dollars just for making their way around the board. Now back to the server first stuff I do think its cool they have competitive server firsts for those that want to do them and I agree not everyone needs to be able to do them or easily do them especially if the win is just a title. From what I have read though the roll out of this seems to have left some people in the dirt unable to complete these quests.
This all should be made into a different subject matter on a different thread; to which I will gladly participate in. I really don't want this current subject matter to get off track because I threw in something slightly off topic because the OP made slight mention of competition.
I can understand a constrained team. But they fail to use the free resource they do have of people reporting bugs in beta and against each patch. It seems like they even steadfastly refuse to accept feedback at times. TBM group armor is a great example of them putting their heads in the sand and refusing to acknowledge there are problems. Here's an example of what looks like a simple cut and paste issue. A type 9 aug missing the tens digit for attack. Common enough mistake that no one would begrudge they made. Here are the level 100 August augs. Notice that Fulcrum appears to be the melee dps template and has 10 attack versus the caster template with 0. Here are the level 105 Resplendent. Now Fulcrum has gone from 10 to 7 and Vengeful from 0 to 14. Here is the resulting mess of level 105 monk boots having 3 less attack than tds t1 boots (t3 highwater are the same as t1 castaway). If the Resplendent Fulcrum was entered as 17 instead of 7, the resulting Crypt-hunters would be on par with TDS (TBM raid items gained 1 attack versus TDS btw). For fun, here is the AC Sturdy template. It also appears to be missing the 10s digit for Resplendent as well. Tanks that go for AC take a huge attack loss with TBM. Melee can somewhat mitigate it by going with the caster template. But the other odd thing is why the AC tank template is more attack than the melee dps template. My guess is that not only did they fat finger the 10s digit, but they also had the attack values for the tank and melee dps templates flip flopped. The flip flop would show an intent to have TBM group gear gain 1 attack versus TDS just as raid gear did.
Oh, oh! The only remark we've ever gotten about the new TBM gear! The stats don't make any sense in order to give you a choice!
