I think it's horseshit that there are only 4 missions, which makes this far and away not the best expansion in years. Grinding 4 missions over and over and over for currency is god awful and a piss poor design choice.
RoS because I liked VP. Every expansion should have a final zone with epic mobs that is a step up in difficulty, is hard to get into and hard to survive in and gives cool rewards for succeeding.
Is this sarcasm? VP was an absolute joke. Talendor may have been the easiest end game boss I have ever experienced. It was below difficulty of the T1 raids. They may as well just given us the chest to distribute the loot. It was just a matter of wasting 10 minutes of a person's time to get to a chest.
Correct. I heard Talendor was a joke and that's a shame. The end-game boss in every expansion should be as challenging as Mearatas was before it was nerfed.
might be higher on my list if the pathing was better. its the same buggy mob pathing from years ago. And where the hell is lord bob ? just add in the all the old vel zones with no quests just higher lvl mobs to exp on
I agree, I think RoS was the best (group) expansion in recent years and am not a fan of ToV. I know I'm in the minority though in that I enjoy fairly linear progression paths and more challenging group content. Pre-nerf Atrocious was some of the most fun I've had in an expansion in years, although I can recognize that it was way too difficult for generally acceptable group content. I think the biggest issue with it was that End of Empire and Talendor's difficulty needed to be swapped for a more gradual difficulty increase throughout. I'm not quite sure what the solution is, but I still would like to see some more challenging content in the group game for those that want to do a bit more than the average grouper. Maybe this could be in the form of special achievements, even if it's just for a cosmetic item or no reward at all other than the satisfaction of beating difficult content and completionism. ToV has nothing in the group game I would consider difficult for the above average player so it was personally kind of a let down. I will give the dev team props though on making an expansion that was more accessible to everyone which was needed for the community after the extremely gated TBL content. There are some great new models too! Whatever King Tormax has been doing these last few years has been working for him. He's never looked so good!
XP from mobs is absolutely ridiculous Having to kill 100k mobs to go from level 111 to 112 is insane. I get that the devs needed to do something to slow people down since there is basically nothing new for people to look forward to, no new AAs, no new spells, etc, but making it effectively impossible to level from simply killing mobs is not the way to do it. People have lives, we don't have the option to spend 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week, mindlessly grinding like we may have been able to do 10 or 20 years ago.
I actually love the mechanic of the XP being on the achievements. Finish the expansion's worth of tasks and you'll be 114, and probably halfway to 115. Do some collections for normal XP and help folks out with their tasks and you're 115 easily without having to grind anything.
I don’t know with this game being 20 years old, there’s a good portion of this player base that’s now retired and have nothing but free time. I do agree with your premise though it can be a difficult mountain to climb. From other posts, I see some short sightedness in regards to achievement xp and mob xp, it’s great to be rewarded for completion but it makes it so one activity feels meaningless.
My only gripe with the expansion is that Tier 1 loot is a downgrade from TBL Tradeskilled and GMM gear until about level 114, possibly 113 for some pieces. I looted a T1 ring which has less stats than the GMM ring at level 112 (all stats btw) Same with a T1 gloves (and yes I took the powersource and augs out to check). T1 should have been 111 req At 115 may as well just go for T2 & tradeskilled
I doubt many human players have endless supply of free time. EQ is not a modern MMO, and the player base does not want it to be. Exp should primarly given by killing mobs - trying to force people to do progression with a carrot isn't going to work.
Do any players of any species have an "endless supply of free time"? A quibble, to be sure, but EQ has in one way or another been a grind game since launch. When I started in October of 2000 some players already called it EverGrind. I personally think the large time required to level in ToV has to be by design, or at least in part. Otherwise the burn through time on the expansion for non-elite players would be very short. Having said that, the experience from ToV quests is pretty good and offers an alternative to grinding.
Not a fan of this expansion either at the moment, not that I expect that to changing. Wish they had picked zones which hadn't been revamped before. EW feels small. Got excited when I saw Ry'Gorr Mines, thinking it was a new zone, but alas it is the other half of Crystal Caverns. Expansion feels very lacking at the moment. Old spells better than new ones, AAs just upgrades of previous ones. I don't see Velious keeping my interest for too long, especially as some of the zones give me a headache. Lighting is garbage! Also how can ToFS move entrances from Iceclad to EW? I expect to be done with ToV by the New Year. So the only reason after that to go back will be for raids. Favourite from recent expansions has to be TBL. Yes is was a rough one at the start and could proberbly still use tuning down a bit for groupers, but all of the zones were interesting and felt fresh, the missions were fun and had lots of replayability. Soon as I'm done with progression in ToV I'll be back in TBL, still have some evolving to do.
I actually thing it is a smart way to do things. You in no way HAVE to do progression but if you do you get a decent exp reward. In an expansion without forced progression it actually works well as far as I am concerned. And it makes sense because for those who do not have a lot of time they can get a lot of their leveling done just doing missions. But I get not everyone likes that idea.
lol.. always the same EQ..did quite a break now... reading that casuals have around 50% chance of doing it... no real boxing material if not maxed out? Missions again as hard as TBL and RoS? And btw. thanks for the positive AND negative opinions - at least the usual fake news and overpositive mindset do not lead into buying again mindlessly the expansion for all toons. I like having pros AND cons. I am heavy fan of progression but if the missions are as hard as TBL and RoF then its again wasted money and the xp reward is hot air in the wind. How far do you get when leaving out the missions? Any chance on 115 without wasting half of the lifetime in EQ with mindless grinding if the missions are too hard again? So compared to TBL difficulty in missions what would the casual player say to this expansion? Again only possible with much grouping? Boxerfriendly? Raidonly progression? And how are the afk botters? Again everything full of that disease? The beta was quite a slap in da face... Worth a try again for XMas holidays or better spent the rest of Xmas snowboarding...?
