"...they will not change their decision..."

above should read "even if it wasn't tuned from its original" (edit function never works right for me on these boards).

I am strongly in favor of releasing GoD and OOW together.

GoD was not tuned correctly, GoD offered very little to groupers, and GoD caused the largest drop in population in EQ.

The increased level cap of OOW will offer a buffer to more casual players so they too, can enjoy the release of both GoD and OOW.

OOW will offer a breath of fresh air for groupers, they will be able to progress from Dranik's Scar all the way to RSS without the frustration and drop in populaton GoD caused.

Do not underestimate how many people disliked GoD, GoD combined with WoW resulted in a population drop that EQ has never recovered from.

WoW was developed by people from guilds that left EQ due to the frustration with GoD. GoD was an incredibly buggy and badly tuned expansion that I don't wish on anyone without a level cap increase in the form of OOW.

This has been my suggestion the whole time; bundle LDON and GOD.. it actually makes sense unlike doing oow+god which just means everyone will skip GoD, outside racing for first kill. Guys please reconsider this.

We're far more powerful than we were then and GoD was nerfed to hell. I'd suggest more people will leave from boredom with 12 weeks of LDoN.

Well that really sucks. What a terrible decision.

DBG is just the worst, isn't it? God they suck.

Release GOD with POP then give us 6 months of PoP/Loy/LDON/GOD hell make it 9months Gives us all something to do before OOW!! D B G proving that being good a company is not something they wish to be!

I promise I'm not trying to sound condescending or demeaning when I ask this, but have you tried playing through GoD in era since 2004-5ish? What I mean is all the facts you said above is accurate, the reasons people can argue about but we will never know.

When GoD was released it was tuned for level 70, not 65, and buggy. Groups of level 65 stood almost no chance and it wasn't worth it for groups to go there. EQ did lose a good chunk of it's population then. The reason it lost them doesn't matter because it happened during GoD.

Now this is why I ask if you've played it since back then. It HAS been retuned for level 65. There has been bug fixes to the content. On Fippy, we got to play it in era and it was a blast. If you wait until level 70 then players could just steamroll the content like when they were level 60 in Kunark doing Vox/Naggy instances. Since even Fippy's era of GoD the changes to players power has increased which will make it even easier than then.

Obviously, I am for separating them. I was the one that put it on the DBC issue tracker and I tried to remove my personal bias from it. I tried to just state the facts and make comparisons on the most recent data I had which was Fippy's. Phinigel will spend more time in PoP than Fippy did before Gates releases. That combined with full instances will let players be better geared than anytime before taking on Gates content in era. I am concerned with the bundling of them will mean people just skip over GoD. I missed Quarm, but did player farm GoD or just mostly skip it and go from pop to oow?

Another thing which honestly concerns me far more is Daybreak's stated reasons and concerns, which mirror some of yours. The problem is they are completely inaccurate compared to the experiences of those who have progressed through GoD in era on Fippy. The part that concerns me is the perception this gives off. The perception appears to be either they aren't knowledge about the current state of older expansions of EQ. Which they've admitted the original coders aren't there anymore and the code is a mess. That's perfectly understandable, but the problem is many many people with personal experience of GoD in it's current state has explained how and why those reasons are inaccurate. The other perception is they are being dishonest about their reasons.

When the perceptions are either "We don't know the older parts of the game that well but we've made our decision and aren't going to listen to your feedback." or "We've already made our decision based on something, but we're going to make up a different reason to justify it to you." I don't like either of those scenarios.

And yes some people are being very liberal about using "all" and "everyone" when talking about this. I think this is because if you look at the people in agreement it gives that look.

Imagine the guilds of Fippy TL, Fippy Citizen, FI, OGC, AoS, EoE as individual people. (yes I know many of those are made up of many of the same people) Now lock them in a room with a jar of acid with a key at the bottom of it sitting on a table. The key in the jar will unlock the door to get out of the room. Poison gas is being pumped into the room and will kill them in 10 minutes if they can't escape. All they got to do is agree on how to get the key and who to unlock the door. 10 minutes later the key would still be in the jar and they would all be dead. Yet almost as a whole I believe all of the above have agreed they shouldn't be bundled together.

I am a big proponent of them doing something to get the servers through the level 70 expansions more rapidly. I'm convinced that over a year at level 70, with half those expansions giving no new aa's even and boring group content and very hard raid content, is what really ultimately killed Fippy's population. That said, I hope they will consider shortening rather than bundling. A month is plenty for DoN or PoR. Maybe do something like:

OoW 2 months
DoN 1 month
DoDh 2 months
PoR 1 month
Tss 3 months (huge expansion that has a lot to do for everyone at all play styles)
TBS 1 month

Even this might be rough for the player base in DoDH and PoR. These expansions were way more difficult to get through on Fippy for most guilds than Gates was. But I think knowing that we'd be moving on to Tss in 3 months from the start of DoDH would help.

Doubt they would do something like this though, based on the bundling decision.

What is worse then the decision (which is terrible) is the lack of communication. I am not expecting a PR spokesperson from DBG but a one sentence canned response? "Sorry not sorry." It's almost as if they have a bet going to see how crappy they can treat their customers without consequence. I came back to EQ after a 10+ year hiatus, and this will be my last hurrah. It's sad to see DBG pushing people away from an already dying game. Are we crazy for wanting content to be released along the original timeline of 3 months?

I did everything from KT flags in Tipt, to Ikkinz group trials, to farming M'Sha, to getting Tacvi flags in Txevu. I know GoD well enough.

That's right.

I don't think these zones are a blast for group players. There is no viable group progression in GoD. Casual players in group gear will, for the most part, not get through Tipt trials to access Ikkinz trials.

The amount of zones available to groupers in GoD is abysmal. KT, Ikkinz, Uqua, Txevu, Tacvi, .. all of those are exclusive zones for raiders... even Qvic is a zone that will be permacamped for the M'Sha, groupers will not be given any opportunity to play in there.

Compare that to OOW where every zone except one (CoA) is available to groupers. And unlike in GoD, those OOW zones are far far better balanced.

If they are bundled, people will skip GoD for the most part, and I think that's a good thing. There might be some guilds farming Qvic, but most time will be spent in OOW.

OOW is an expansion that is very well balanced, it is kind to both groupers and raiders. (I do think the Dranik Loyalist faction needed for armor is a bit much, but it's still much better than GoD)

This forum has always been a tiny fractional opinion of mostly dedicated players, usually people in high-end raiding guilds. Drop a regular group player in an Ikkinz trial and most would quit EQ.

3 months of GoD does not hurt the casual/slow play or family guild population. This is the group most likely to want to skip the content anyways. I believe, many if not most of these players will be happy to carry on with LDoN and prior stuff during 3 months of GoD.

What bundling GoD with OoW clearly does is remove it as a reasonable piece of in-era accomplishment. Someone did the math in another thread, that even with the instancing and such a combined GoD & OoW is just too much content. Due to the level increase and gear inflation... very little of GoD would be done in era of this combined era as guilds would be logically focusing on OoW raids far more.

Past progression server experience is far more important than the 2004 live experience. I personally hated OoW when it was new and it was a major factor in me taking a long leave from EQ. I would now concede that it is one of the better expacs overall. Time, perspective and giving it another chance allowed me to see it this way. GoD I still think has horrible names and too much instancy linear progression upper tier focus (I prefer open world sandbox) but that is just my personal view, and maybe getting to play in it standing alone on Phinny will make me a fan.

There really is no point to continue playing on these round of TLP's as a raider with the combining of expansions. The only benefit to these changes are to non-raiders. If the goal is to drive away the raiders to only be left with the groupers then achievement unlocked. The krono cash grab is now more apparent then ever. These servers where never meant to progress beyond the planes of power. This is a complete slap in the face for all the raiders who wanted to see content in era that have never done it. For those advocating this as a good idea simply have never played any of the content after planes of power. There is not enough group content to keep you playing no matter how many expansions get combined. Nice to know we just wasted a year of time raiding only to be gutted on content when the raid game starts to get good.

Personal opinion, but I feel skipping over any content expansion is terrible. Especially when that expansion adds not only new AA's, but an entire new class.

Which server did you do GoD on was it Fippy or Vulak and what tuning/balance issues did you see there and what was your guild's gear composition like? Reason I ask is I didn't see these problems when we did it.

Ikkinz I don' remember being too difficult, but I suppose if you dropped random group players in their it would be a headache much as if you grabbed a random group to go in blind to an MPG trial

It seems like the the only real issue is that of group oriented players not finding any content in GoD. By bundling them this allows group players to skip GoD, but it also causes those that raid to skip GoD almost completely also.

This current solution solves the group people's concerns of nothing to do by taking away from those that primarily enjoy the raid game. This doesn't really fix a problem if it creates another. If group oriented players wish to skip GoD and raiders don't want GoD and OoW bundled together wouldn't a much better solution be to separate GoD and OoW's release, and then release GoD 3 months earlier by bundling it with Ldon? Nothing would change for people who focus on group content and those who want to wait until OoW releases to do GoD wouldn't be affected by this change and it would allow those who wish to experience GoD before OoW to be able to.

This would also allow people to work on GoD AA's since Ldon doesn't release any new ones and it would give people time to level up Beserkers and be ready to work on their Epic 1.5/2.0 when OoW releases.

Not true. I ran through the tipt trials in many casual geared pickup groups with on alts on Fippy. No one had problems as long as the group class makeup was halfway decent.

There were casual/group players all the time in zones like Kodtaz and Qvic on the last progression servers. Many of the casual guilds farmed qvic goats. In OoW, zones like RSS and even MPG are as difficult now as anything in the group content of Gates.

Exactly this is how I feel.
Personally I've been waiting and preparing for the day I can play a zerker on phinny with my guild and friends.

From my perspective, it is one thing to catch up 3 expansions worth of AA's and level 65. Quite another to catch up to level 70 and 4 expansions.
Of course it is possible, but it's an extra mountain to climb.

Couple that with the very high possibility that the majority of content will get skipped in Gates, and this pattern is likely to be repeated throughout the course of Phinny and I've totally lost all confidence in this product and the team calling the shots.

Kyel made some very good points above.

Not that anyone will give a damn but I'll no longer be playing if this farcical decision is followed through.

I doubt I'm alone in that feeling.

You aren't, I unsubscribed months ago in part over this. Zero confidence in DBG's ability to address player concerns any more.

I am envisioning the dev team responding to this the way Sheldon on big bang theory responds to sarcasm. I suspect you just added one to their "Players want GoD Bundled" tally.

LDoN is almost useless after GoD releases. It should be released 30 days after PoP as it was on Fippy.

And to be clear why the population dropped on Fippy was the votes. People kept denying GoD to screw the raiding guilds. Casuals are paranoid of GoD. But GoD was revamped and is now a great expac for TLP's.

Machen is correct, the devs that are presently at DBG were not around early in EQ days and have no clue about TLP's. Have they made one decision in regards to TLP's that has been correct yet?

Plenty of augs to farm in GoD, many of which will still be used well past that expansion whether you're a heavy raider or not.