Better Expansions plz

You are going on 5 months in this expansion. You could literally 1 day the progression. There will never be enough time invested into EQ that will keep people occupied in 1 expansion for an entire year. You do not even get that with WoW, which has a much higher population.

People are in the zones, because that is what they need to do being as the servers are newer than TBL is. TLP is an entire reset on your characters, new expansions are a few new additions and that is it. Comparing the 2 is an impossible apples to oranges comparison.

For my guild experience I have never seen so many people on this late into an expansion. The Evolving items and aug farms did quite a lot to keep people playing.

Perfectly fine to not like it, your arguments for that are fairly flawed though.

It feels weird to me that you use the word "mindless" to describe questing through progression in your process of advocating for EQ design to facilitate grinding on a dozen static spawns in an open zone for weeks at a time.

Well, those trials were to get into the raid zone (Anguish); RSS was only ever level-locked.

Generally speaking I agree with your original post, but I'll take what I can get since I have not successfully been hooked into any other game I've tried (biggest drawback for me in most of the others is that they aren't designed as immersive first-person play . . . I cannot play third person for more than an hour or so before becoming bored).

My biggest frustration with the game is when the task system started around the Omens era. I much prefer the tasks/quests that are free-form that you have to take notes/remember, etc. - I don't care much for in-game sequential checklists as it takes away from some of the sense of discovery/exploration.

I'll help you understand what I said.

1) Everything in EQ is optional, even logging in... but I raid in a great guild, Triton, and it is expected that we have the best gear and chase loot is locked behind collectibles. If this becomes a trend this is a huge issue as collectibles are no longer optional. When collectibles got you 10 aa or a bag, sure... but when it's gear that is better than raid gear, not the case. So, +1 for me and 0 for you.

2) I'm aware instances are a thing in MMORPG's and there are good times to use instances and bad times. EQ uses it in bad ways more than good ways IMO. Opinion so 0 for me 0 for you.

3) Trials are great, like I suggested they are in my OP. How they were done in TBL was horrible as the only way it would have been worse is to force people to do them before they can enter the expansion as a whole. +1 for me +0 for you.

4) Nerfs are bad but sometimes needed. I understand that people figure out ways to make their powers overpowered in ways that the Devs might not have anticipated. What I have issue with is when they remove that power after years of it being there only to give it right back to you after you again AA your toon in the new expansion. Stagnation would have been a much better option as now my time is stolen. I also talked about making players re kill named in PoP for chase loot that in my case I did something like 16 years ago... theft of my time. +1 for me +1 for you

5) Again TS has been turned into one of the biggest quests in EQ history for an aug. TS have almost no value for players outside of that aug. Most my TS are 300 but my brain won't allow me to spend eons to get 350 for an aug that has no place being at the end of TS. It's a gimmick to give meaning to a dead part of EQ. If TS were used by people to make items for their character better or because THEY made the no drop TS item for themselves, sure. So have Rangers make their own bow and arrows because it's worth it with fetching, Rogues make poison and so on... have some overlap on TS but make it worth it. No aug needed to make TS have meaning. +1 for me + 0 for you

+4 for me and +1 for you.

Enjoy.

Funny how you post a rant... then get mad because people post differing opinions. LOL.

You call it mindless..

Yet you complain nobody can so it..

Then further complain nobody's in the zones ..

Your post is clearly a troll ain't it.. don't lie lmao don't lie..

First it's not a rant and second I'm not upset about anything. I started my post with saying you can have my stuff because the EQ community has a lot of predictable haters always looking to sound tough, like what you're pretending to be right now.

My comments are 100% legitimate.

LOL btw...

I actually have no idea what you just said.

You also have no clue what trolling is.

Another wanabe tough guy on the internet.

Your entire post is you pretending to know me by building up straw men and burning them down. In fact I don't think you have an ability to understand what you read before you comment.

There are so many problems with your post the though of responding to each of your comments makes me feel lazy.

Seriously, 2 people on in the middle of the day in the new expansion while the TLP servers have more active players in most zones in the game does not help your case.

I'm aware tasks are in most MMO's, my point wasn't to get rid of tasks, how did you even come to your moronic conclusion that I did?

I have played since Feb 1, 2001... Soooo, I guess you lose there too... not that you have the brain power to accept that.

Yes, I know zones in the past had keying, the difference is TBL has it to get past the first zone... Do I really need to point out how many zones you could go to in Velious and Kurnark without ever getting a key? Did you even play back then.... cleary not..., /rolls eyes.

I didn't say my guild was loosing people nor did I say I was an office. People seem far less interested in logging in compared to past expansion is all. You make your own conclusions so you can argue with yourself it seems.

I beat all the trials and I did it boxing and not boxing... again you beat yourself up by claiming I can't do what you can.

Ok I'm just going to stop because you're clearly clueless and all I'm doing is correcting your fictitious versions of what I said. This is EQ forms, you are the norm... always looking to put down others because its the only way you can feel good about yourself.

Bye.

Let us make this easy.

What is your mains name and on which server are you playing on ?

Every single thing I've seen.. from friends across virtually every server flat out state their guildies are always online.. due entirely to the rare farming or farming xp for r ares or farming type 18s for the rares..

Perhaps you play on a server that I have zero contacts on it's possible but not plausible if were talking TBL expansion blue servers.

So again I say let us make this very simple. What server do you TBL on ?

He said he is in Triton, which is on Povar.

I do not believe what he said, however, about Triton expecting best in slot items for everything (paraphrasing). I do not know of any guild that would kick a long time member for not having shoes with 11k HP on them and instead only having shoes with 9k HP on them. And if a guild would kick a member for that, then that is a guild that no one should want to he in regardless of success.

Being a former triton member myself, I do know they do not expect that from their members. Unless things have changed.

A better explanation of this situation might be that they are attempting to app. And if a class is closed an your trying to get into Triton.. You app under a superstar status app process.
1. You BEST have BIS items and augs ..
2. Max AA ..
3. Be able to play as well or better then the Best player in class in guild

Those are 3 key things to app as a raider to Triton when their class is closed these 3 are baseline. I know because I apped under that status an made it in ..

Considering I was a member of Triton, and I never have seen this person's name when I was in Triton.. Unless under another name.. I'm leaning twords they apped and hate the superstar status app process because they are failing it.

TBL has been about as fun as any expansion in recent memory. Challenging here and there, lots to do and work on, new stuff to acquire and work on ( evolvers ), raids are fun for the most part ( F clearing all this trash though for augs! ) =)

Superstar status, BiS to app? pass. No offense to anyone but if your not interested in the player behind the gear, I got nothing for you. It shouldn't take a good recruiter / class leader 10 mins to know if an app is skilled and worth taking a look at, BiS or not. If your weeding people out by Magelo alone your gonna miss some good ones.

You are absolutely right, I remember this point being brought up over tradeskills and the original Blessed Coldain Prayer Shawl; probably the most fondly memorable quest in the entire history of EQ. Within an expansion or two everyone got over it, you probably will too.

This has always been a major problem in the game, but, also nothing new. If you liked old school EQ as well as you say, then in order to make it like "old school" There would be a quest mob that could be killed by one group, with a 5 day respawn timer. Then the L33T guild on each server could perma-camp it and block 95pct of the players from seeing 95pct of the expansion. That's if you went old school. That's what happened in PoP, on every server... True we lost a good chunk of people during and in the following 2 years of PoP(the level spread was strong then.) I do not believe most of the losses were due to this.

Years later they repeated this mistake multiple times with DoDH. Truly sad, the most beautiful and well done zone in all of EQ, ninety-nine percent of the players never saw(DSK/Demi.) I don't think it was as damaging as the raid progression strategy of that expansion though. Zi-Thuli wiped out most of the low and mid-tier raiding guilds. Not because it was to hard of course. In hind-sight I look back on it as sadistic justice. For the first time in EQ history, every tank, caster and melee got to experience what it felt like to be a cleric or a press-gang druid on EQ raids. As sad and damaging to the game as it was, looking back, their reaction was hilarious.

Zi-Thuli required 90percent of the raid to sit at the zone in to Demi-Plane waiting for a couple of people to spawn each of the phases of Zi-Thuli. This could take a couple of hours to do. While everyone stuck at zone in fell asleep at the computer/pulled the plug/ex-ed out; while waiting on the snared pullers to split every mob from the zone in up the spire. This is the closest the game has ever come to showing what every raid looked like for the priest classes, as they hid behind a wall and chain-cast one spell for SIX YEARS... You won't see anyone waxing nostalgic about that. Most guilds never made it past that either. Wimps.

You actually answered your own question here, not that it will solve the problem. Each server has only so many "dedicated" players. Many are min-maxer/efficient to a fault types. These few dozen players are the driving force behind most of their server's progression. This OCD-Min/Maxer thing made them skip the trivial stuff in the past. Now however, like you said:

Those "driving force" players are busy in old expansions, doing the stuff they skipped before. I have helped half a dozen of your own guildees with some of it. But I gotta take care of my own people first.
These guys are having to play two or three times as much, and capable of devoting much less time helping all the people they normally help. Maybe this is where you come in?

TBL has bee one of the better expansion of the last few years. But I do feel 2 mistakes were made.

1. Locking ever zone - this is something I hope we never have again, locking end zones fine, all please no.
2. To hard initially, this has been adressed, but I feel some of the AEs are still a bit OTT but that is just me. I get the impression a lot of players are stiill working off the initial difficulties and not what it is now.

Other than that, this expansion has been pretty good. The evolving items, type 18 augs and hunters are keeping the guild interested in playing even on non raid nights. It is nice to see the guild pulling together creating raids and all getting hunter done together. Even better to see non guild members in the raid getting credit for hunter kills, improving the community we already had, helping each other to help themselves.

Personally this is the only expansion I have had 3 max level chars and 2 a level behind, and those 3 max level chars are on the same account. I am playing this expansion more than I have any since House of Thule.

Seems an odd hill to choose to die on but eh. He has an authentic (albeit out of date) magelo profile showing him in Triton.

https://eq.magelo.com/profile/2080909

Avory, with respect, I disagree with most of what you said.

If I had to create list of expansion recommendations it'd be:
1. The current dev/designer team, as it stands, can't effectually support the monstrosity that is EQ while producing the kind of content it deserves. DBG needs to hire 2 more solid designers.

2. Re-use more old zones if it gets us more content. There's a lot of great zones out there that many EQ players haven't really seen, and many more haven't seen in years (or decades).

3. Power progression in expansions should be very obvious and was done properly in EoK/RoS: 2+ easy zones at the start that are unlocked to everyone, soloable/moloable and give decent loot, followed by 2+ medium-difficulty zones that expect a duo+ at least, followed by 2+ higher-difficulty dungeons that require a solid trio and 1+ really tough zones at the end that reward players for putting together a coherent group.

4. I wouldn't mind seeing collectibles go away. After the evolving achievement I don't care about them and I have so many trophies now it's silly.

Sounds good, and oddly I talked about most of that in my OP.

Its expected we put the effort in for the best gear, it is not a requirement.... like I said.

It's everyone suddenly can't read so they can make arguments based on clear misunderstanding. I have the chase loot, just never finished the "quest" (lol) part of it and I'm not kicked from my guild... But they sure would like it if I and all others did them. It's expected, not required.

Why do I need to tell you my toons name, guild and server, what does that do to prove my clear opinion as stated as an opinion in my OP?

You guys are wanting to prove me wrong but you can't because we're talking about opinions. The difference is I made it clear these are my opinions and you are pretending your opinion is absolute fact for one reason and one reason only, you want to feel better than others. Yeah, you're not...

This is why I hate posting here, EQ has it's own crew of useless fanbois and fanbois have never made anything in the history of the world better.

I mention I can't even understand your post to me and you come back all like, "Let *us* help you..." Dude, almost half the people hear agree with me or agree on some level... with my clearly stated opinions.

Let me help you, you're a walking talking point of fanboyism.