Better Expansions plz

First off, yes you can have my stuff... but I'm willing to give 0% effort in getting it to you.

I'll start by being blunt. If the next expansion is as bad as TBL I'll find something else to do with my time over wasting money on a game that steals my time only to sell it back to me for money and mind numbing time sinks.

There has been a shift in the development of EQ that seems to be more like a game made for very very dim people over a game where the phrase, "Your in our world now" seems to have any consideration in it's development.

I liked EoK, it was not perfect but I felt the dev team was headed in a good direction. I found it a bit sad that so few zones could be covered considering you already had them fully working and tested in the original EQ. Bump mobs levels up and update loot was all that really needed to be done and you could have covered every zone in Kunark.

What I have noticed is there is a growing obsession with historically stupid ideas becoming not only common place but further more, force fed to the players by making them important.

1) Collectibles: Fun idea for some I'm sure, until you started locking important pieces of gear or "character progression" behind it. A child would struggle to find picking up a shiny object and clicking it "fun." So how did this come to be? Well I have an idea of hat happened...

Somewhere someone thought up a new time sink and collectibles were born. Completing these collections gave stupid self progression check boxes but at first seemed to only give a minor amount of AA... Then it started becoming important for a player to do... So now I have to run around searching the world for collectibles, no thanks.

2) Tasks: So much time seems to be spent on creating tasks either in the static world or in instances that the rest of the game suffers. I call most of these tasks "getting to know the zone" tasks. basically the zones are so uninteresting players are now forced to do basic things like walk around a zone for updates. To make it less obvious than the heartless collections time sinks, these other tasks will often force us to do some some killing of mobs in that area...

3) Trials: I love the idea of trials and have even created many in my own head years ago, but in TBL the trials are not only far too hard for casuals they are also required to be done, trials also restrict players from entering other zones. So many months into the expansion I can walk through literally empty zones past the trials... I can't get people flagged because the trials don't work well with under geared players, so now I'm playing an MMO alone... and I'm not even in an instance... Amazing job guys.

4) Theft of my time: This happens in a couple ways for me personally. First is the nerf before an expansion on my DPS, this has happened to others over the years but then you guys "give" that power back but after we exp the next expansions aa's... Sooo, I'm robbed of my time so that I can re spend more time to be where I was before...

5) Tradeskills: Not everyone wants to do TS and further more not do all of them. To keep in line with horrible time sink ideas someone figured if they place an overpowered aug at the end of the rainbow you can turn TS from something interesting into a painful time sink. Instead of making TS worth doing because it's worth doing for you and your class it's now just a enormous boring quest for an aug. I won't finish because I honestly feel sorry for everyone that links them because I know it was painful and for the vast majority it was not fun nor interesting on any level... their happy to be past the chore, not happy they achieved something challenging and hard.

In TBL there is new chase loot, but it requires a few things to be done in order to get it full power... Not a bad idea until you start requiring "personal progression" in older expansions. Requiring hunter is fine... it's not fun having to go back and knock out a few named you might be missing but that's not my issue. The issue is you requiring me to kill all the named in PoP... after I already did this.

I like most have played EQ for a long time, I raided PoP and PoP didn't have instances. Out side of just killing named on my own time you can bet I got a lot of named kills from raids. Suddenly I have to re-kill all of these named, all of them, every single one... and there are a lot. This is another mindless time sink and it's done by stealing my past time spent in the game. Now I/we must sit in zones that my DS can kill the bosses of to wait for sometimes weeks to kill these named, no thanks.

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What I feel like has happened in EQ is so much time is spend creating and over developing bad ideas that the game has lost all direction. It seems most guilds in TBL that raid are loosing players left and right because even raids are poorly made. PoF raid has time be one of the longest boring raids I have done in all of EQ, remember yo have to kill a mini boss and clear for nothing just to get there. We have multiple balance events that are so tight that burning can wipe you thus it's a slow motion auto attack brain rot event.

I messed around on a TLP server and 20 years ago these guys were making incredibly better expansions than Devs can achieve today. All your time seems spent making silly collections, recording dumb progression, tasks... instances and tons of talking from NPC's that no one reads to the pint where you now click on key words to get the next phrase or get the mission.

There is no exploration in EQ because it's a forced task in a tiny zone that you have no reason to visit outside of this forced progression. I can exp anywhere in old EQ and I never have to think "I'm wasting my time wondering around because I'm not wondering around doing a set list of progression." Zones are dead once you complete the silly tasks because they are poorly made. I have great memories of Kunark, Norrath and Velious and I never had to do any "progression." I can't tell you the last zone you guys made I cared about.

TLP servers get flooded because people like that game... EverQuest is no longer that game. EverQuest has become a mindless and obvious time sink where good ideas can hardly be enjoyed.

As of right now:

Stratos = 1 player in zone, Me...

PoSmoke = 1 player in zone, Me...

Realms of Ash = 6 toons in zone, Me... and I asked on OOC, 1 other person playing 5 toons.. So 2 people.

AAlishai = 2 players in zone, Me and a druid.

I don't think I'm flagged for one of the other zones because it was not required to be in order to beat the expansion in raids, so I have the game beat and I think there is a zone I won't even bother finishing "progression" for if I can help it...

I'm falling behind because ever time I try and finish a time sink, er .. I mean progression, my brain tells me that doing this is a waste of time, even when playing a game that is by definition a waste of time.

While I very much appreciate the time, thought, and perspective that you shared Avery, I personally only agree with some of it.

Collectibles: I agree, it is a nightmare that upgrading the TBL evolving chase loot requires ALL of the collectibles since CoTF. You can’t even get partial credit. The shoulders are super nice but the time investment is incredible. To me, the problem comes down to the collectibles locked in Heroic Adventures. I’ve had to run dozens of TBM HAs in order to get just one set of the collection items for “An Ounce of Fetid Flesh.” While I generally believe in the RNG, I suggest that every HA that drops collectibles has 1 of each collectible on the NPCs in the zone (so a full clear of the zone guarantees one set).

Tasks: I agree that the tasks aren’t particularly exciting, but I’m not really sure what the alternative would be. I personally prefer missions over tasks and heroic adventures. Thankfully, TBL has tons of missions (relatively to ROS’s 4) which I’ve absolutely loved. They also had a good mixture of flavor Brass Palace vs. Smoke Trials vs. Strange Magic.

Trials: This was one of my favorite parts of TBL. While I loathe Wending Ways, I do very much appreciate that they have different trials for different group makeups. You only need one trial every 2.5 days and you don’t even need the trials once you’ve done Strange Magic.

Theft of my Time: Not sure what you mean here. If your complaint is simply that you don’t like nerfs, then I can’t help you here.

Tradeskills: The Artisan’s Prize and Crestra’s Earrings are two of the best things implemented the last few expansions. While Crestra’s earring was replaced way too quickly, I think the Artisan’s Prize is the perfect example of creating an actual worthwhile reward for players who have invested time into tradeskilling. I don’t even like tradeskilling, but I absolutely completed the artisan’s prize.

TBL Evolving Chase Loot: I liked the concept of utilizing old content (that can be solo’d) to get best in slot, raid quality items. I agree that it is lame that the achievement system was put into place AFTER all of us had done POP, so it is required to go back and re-do these. But I do think they got it right requiring EOK/ROS progression for the ring evolve and EOK-RoS-TBL achievements for the other parts of the Gloves/Shoulders/Boots. I think the best implementation would have been to allow someone to evolve the gear in stages based on partial completion (for example, 1 evolution on shoulders per full set of any expansion collectibles), but they can refine for future expansions.

You just complained about just about everything that makes up EverQuest except killing mobs. If you want just mindless killing of mobs... well, maybe you need to play a different game.

Collectibles... they're not that hard to get. I didn't have them done on 3 of my characters. I went back and got them done in 3 weeks.

Tasks... quests have been part of the game since the beginning of the game.

Trials... You can do Strange Magic and never do the trials if you want to. You just need to get to the zone for the lamp to work a single time. Guild banner, fellowship, etc. And yes, the casual player CAN do the trials.

Theft of your time... what?

Tradeskills... No one says you have to do them.

Chase items... No one says you have to do them. There are rings. There are shoulders. There are boots. And there are hands.

TBL is a pretty good expansion imo.

As for zone populations, not sure what server you're on but that's not what I see on Bristlebane. Though people have certainly been more in GMM since it was just released. They're getting the tasks (UH OH!), collectibles (Oh dear), evolving those chase items (Oh my), and getting Hunter done in there right now.

There is nowhere near as much money being put into developing expansions these days, and that's a function of the game obviously not bringing in the kind of revenue it did in the Kunark/Velious era. You can't expect something on the scale of Velious with the resources the current staff has available.

A lot of your points though come down to certain things you don't personally enjoy, like collectibles. I'm not trying to patronize, but if you don't enjoy doing those things, then don't. I'm not a fan of collectibles, nor of tradeskills. My playtime is limited, so I spend it on more interesting and productive tasks. I'm pretty sure those with a lot more time to play, who are likely max-AA, etc., are happy to have whatever additional content they can, even if it is rather boring in nature. It's still something to do in EQ.

Also, love or hate the PoF raid, you do not need to clear the entire zone to get to the Guardian.

How is the last expansion any dumber than all the others? The game has always been a boring grind.

As I get older I find that so often people are un able to read and understand ideas that they don't immediately agree with.

The feedback is fine as I didn't post thinking there would be none, my post was to the Devs not me trying to tell others what is good about the game or bad about the game for them.

Almost any post made that focuses on criticisms of EQ are met with other people giving their criticisms of that criti... ci...ms... I even said some people can enjoy things like collectibles but of course that seems to be unreadable by those looking to complain.

The game is comprised of only a few things, collectibles, raids, hunter and zones are a huge part of what the expansions are. There is more than these things but these topics have slowly become huge parts to every expansion and they suck, for most people. You can pretend I'm speaking for most people by disagreeing with my points but reality simply does not care about opinion and the live servers are almost dead in new zones.

I remember when TBL came out, within 2 months it was dead. People couldn't get past the trials to the rest of the expansion so they got the rot gear from named in the starter zone and went back to old expansions that are far better for most players. I made it clear trials are not bad but rather how they were implemented into the expansion was poorly done, completely glossed over to complain about me pointing it out.

These are all my position on the game, just my input. It's fine if you disagree but to pretend I said things I didn't only leaves me rolling my eyes.

It's fine, you're right and I'm wrong. Enjoy less players playing only a few months into these great new expansions. Reality > your opinion. The numbers simply don't lie and I'm not challenging reality with my feelings, I'm pointing out that the numbers of players half way into a new expansion should be much higher than 2 people in 4 zones outside of myself.

I was under the impression I pointed that out. Should I re type the whole thing>

I honestly agree with most of what was originally posted as well. The utilization of expansion zones is dramatically less than prior expansions and the zones feel like a ghost town. It is true that GMM is the exception and will potentially have the long term affect of allowing players to gear and progress to post smoke zones. The expansion was fundamentally flawed in the front loaded difficulty and consequently casual players have avoided it or given up. Challenging content is great but when it serves as a barrier to 80% of the content, it’s poorly designed. There have been expansions that had both challenging content and casual content that allowed everyone to participate without feeling they wasted their money on the expansion.

OoW did MPG trials and that was about as good as it can get imo. It only blocked 1 zone, RSS and it was an end zone that was stuffed with players and there were no collectibles, not missions, no instances and tasks in it that I remember.

When zones become a task only zone people do the tasks and leave. This as you described is poor zone design. The reason EoK Frontier mountains is has more people in it than the entire TBL expansion is because there are several camps that make sense and while tasks and collectibles are there you can just enjoy the zone.

I'd very much like to see zones like Velks where you can be in half the zone with 8ish groups before you get into the "crawl" part of the zone where you can fit another 4-6 groups. Camps are such an after thought because mobs standing together exist now as part of a task not to make the zone feel alive or challenging.

But the only solution to EQ being crappy is to not play EQ. Or at least play it on p99 or something that at least limits the crapness to a previous era that wasn't as bad.

Just one Lower Guk, Karnors, Sebilis, SolB, Velks. Those were FUN zones!! That's what EQ was, going to dungeons and camping named like the Ghoul Lord, Frenzied Ghoul etc.. Full groups in an camp, with areas that they pulled from. It was so exciting, seeing a Frenzied ghoul spawn and getting all excited that it might have a FBSS!!!! Camping Ghoulbane till 4 in the morning.

Now it seems like too much work. I just want to kill things and camp loot, like EQ was for the first several expansions. A fw quests, like epics etc are awesome, but locking zones and all these mind numbing quests, not thanks. I'll take hunting the Ancient Cyclops!!!! Just give us some fun exp zones that have camps with named. I would be happy for even ONE good dungeon, like Lower Guk or Sebilis. Over a bunch of zones no one will ever use.

My thoughts are to let the Dev team know they can do less work so they can focus on easy but more fulfilling things in EQ.

When they released OS as a "revamp" a while back that place was STUFFED. People loved it... It's really simple stuff. make a zone interesting, easy at first and progressively harder with a payoff for the effort to dig deep.

That's my opinion of a good zone. All they did was update loot and up the mobs levels... Took a week at best.

Nice to see there are others that share my thoughts on the topic. Now we kill named not because we camp them for what we need but rather to complete a forced progression.

I'm really not with you at all on "mobs standing together" making a zone feel alive or challenging. I also don't understand the perspective of mobs and maps equalling content. The part you describe enjoying about Frontier Mountains is just a level-scaled East Commonlands to me. That's not good fun design, that's just filler. Some amount of filler is appropriate when building a world, as the setting for actual content and story, but it isn't itself content.

Back to the OP: I don't credit the TBL whining, ever. No one I've heard of actually going at the expansion has failed to progress. Smoke trials aren't PoJ trials easy where you can doodle through with no plan, but neither are they Anashti-Enslaver or Fall of Bayle tough where even a well executed plan doesn't mean success if you're not good enough. Over and over, if people haven't succeeded the story that comes with it is "I zoned into Stratos to buy spells, heard someone somewhere got beat up once so this sucks and I'm staying in FM. #general WTB taskadds/muhbises." Anyone who doesn't sit around whining about the hardness of an expansion they haven't played is making BANK

But surely the devs already know this. How can you play p99 and do L Guk or Sol B or whatever with a real group of real people, and then play modern EQ and think it is the same? I think the devs know what they did to this game, but it wasn't their decision.

If the game works for you then I'm not here to tell you otherwise. I don't feel I need to change minds here and my goal is not to talk you or others into agreeing with me. This was simply my view of EQ and why is has seen a sharp decline of players in TBL.

When I started writing this thread I thought I should look in the zones and see if I'm not out of touch. So with no plan I ran through the zones as I posted and there were 2 people in 4 of the zones in the new Xpac... Right now I'd bet you can log into most starting cities and mid level zones on the TLP servers that opened recently and see more people in starter zones than the entire new expansion.

My point is old EQ seems to have MUCH more draw for players than the new direction of EQ. If you disagree, fine, you got your way, collections and mindless progression plague most the new expansions. Makes you wonder if the reason so many zones are empty is because they left to be level 1 noobs in old eq... kinda like I described.

Again, not here to talk you into agreeing with me, just giving my position on the direction of EQ. When EoK came out i liked it quite a bit, not perfect but it was much better for me. I loved Droga and FM very much... I would have loved to of seen Nurga be in the mix. I was hoping to get Warskils woods, EJ, KC, COM amd OS because they are amazing zones, but oh well.

You mentioned how my idea of a zone is a "filler" zone like East common lands, that's perfectly ok to think that but... FM has more players in it than all of TBL combined and it's 3 expansions back, so maybe there is something to it is all I'm sayin.

Everyone who is ANYone is in Gnome Mountain right now!

1) Collectibles: This is optional. You don't need to grind collectibles to evolve chase loot, unless you really really want to. Some people love that stuff, some hate it. It's optional, so I don't really see the problem here. Don't you get large heirloom bags for completing sets? I thought you did...

2) tasks: I'm not really a fan of the solo static zone tasks, maybe I would be if I read the dialogue. They aren't optional though, so I can see how this is problematic. Other games do this too, however, so don't be surprised if your next game has mandatory tasks that you don't like. It's actually a pretty common thing to have in an MMORPG.

3) trials: This is where I disagree the most. Trials, missions, and HA's like the ones in GMM are pretty cool. They can be hard. Sometimes we get killed running past all those jerks on the way to tables in Remodeling. But there's a reward at the end, and a sense of accomplishment. I'm not a fan of having so many locked zones, but I do like the trials and missions.

4) theft of time: I'm not happy when I get nerfed either. I hate it. I wish daybreak would at least give us reasons for the nerfs, but they never do. You get +1 for this OP.

5) Tradeskills: It's optional, and it's very rewarding. I think of it as another way to increase the strength of my character. But there are many ways to do this, and this one is optional. No problems here.

Your final score is 1/5 sir. You should have just made a thread about getting nerfed and left TBL out of the thread.

EQ has always been about killing things for loot mixed with a little exploration. When I play a game I do so for entertainment. I don’t care about difficulty - but don’t want to feel like I’m cow being herded through a tunnel.

Thee number 1 thing the vast majority of people hate about expansions is exactly what you WANT to happen to EQ.

That makes your post a VAST VAST VAST VAST minority on a scale of geometric levels.

Your struggling with collectables does this make you the child ?

See ?

Do you know of a single MMO being developed or out right now, that does not have tasks ?
Why do you complain about doing quest's when its literally IN the games name Everquest is beyond me.

I am a casual. I went in and did every single trial with none raid geared mains. Was it hard? Yep and we still got threw as more an more people started to post threads on how to easily beat this one and that one.

Again. Casual player here. Went threw with grp geared mains. So just because you cant box something does not mean its broken. Sorry not sorry.

Does DBG force you to login to their products ? Or is it by choice? IF its by choice. Then the only one who is stealing any of your time is you.

I been playing just as long. And yes Pop started out with out instances. But it got instanced while it was current content.

If your guild is losing players its 9/10 times probably entirely due to poor leadership. If you are in a leadership position I see why people would flee your guild.

This is 100% absolutely wrong. In order to enter certain zones you in fact had to do some progression.

Kunark : Old Seb required a key, Veeshan's Peak required a key,
Velious : Sleepers Tomb, Skyshrine.

You say you played back then. You clearly have not. Otherwise you would absolutely remember keying for these zones.

This is no surprise. You literally posted this in the afternoon on a Week day when the vast majority of people are working and not in game.

Can you be any more deliberately miss leading then you are ? (Rhetorical question. No you can not be. I've done as best I can to prove the straw man arguement you are trying to make it out to be wrong based off of my own memory which admittedly can be wrong but not as wrong as you.)

Long story short. You clearly don't like EQ anymore. You blame EQ as you say "Time stealing" from you.

Why login ? Why even login the forums ? Just to cry ? That speak's volumns about you and not the game.

Easy fix. Don't play. Don't let the door hitcha where the good lord splitcha.

Stop stealing your own time. buh bye.