I think it's sad that I started a VahShir Beastlord, he's now level 45 and I've never been back to Shar Vahl even once. Wouldn't it make sense to bring characters "home" for a richer character development experience? Maybe a tradeskilling bonus when at home. Or familial quest lines that develop reputation / fame / legend. Guild oriented quest lines and tasks rather than random NPC's handing out dis-jointed storyline quests and tasks. Also, instead of continuing to develop expansion after expansion, why not put time and effort into developing the games namesake? - QUESTS. Sell access to new quest lines - fun - robust - quest lines. Solo, Molo, Group, Raid. Make the solo reward as good as the raid reward, just make it much longer. Why is it fair that a raid can get epic piece after epic piece and it takes just a few hours but a solo player could play years and never have an opportunity for an epic piece of gear. Not asking for it to be easy, but it should be possible. People are coming back to this game, give them NEW features, not just new expansions and they will continue coming back. And, they will stay.
You are an adventurer, leave home and stay away for years. Get old and return home at the end with stories for the little ones. Living in your mom's basement doesn't make for a "richer character development experience". Your second idea would be the death of this game, so pass on that.
Nowadays when the purchase of an expansion gives access to all the previous expansions, there is nothing to stop the devs from making quests that takes you all over the world. Right now most quests seems to focus solely on fixing rather "local" problems. This a side effect of the "geographic level-curve", as the devs rarely want to sprinkle high level mobs in low-level zones. It could be done, and it would make the quests feel more world-spanning, and the world more connected. As for the idea of separately sold quest-lines, I would have to pass on that. I don't think "the whales" should have any advantage in the game.
Did you start in Shar Vahl and do the newb armor quests? You're level 45 which is close to epic quest territory at level 51 and that is in Shar Vahl
Raid gear, unless it is content you out-leveled, requires a coordinated group effort to obtain. If you want to obtain the most powerful items in the game all alone, they created the FV server to serve that niche. You can obtain epic gear as fast or slow as your ability to obtain platinum and/or Krono. If you require that same gear and you want to play for it all alone on any server, you just have to wait long enough for the level cap to trivialize the content. They also made rare raid-level items that drop in era. Just kill enough mobs and you will find them. I am in no way judging how someone chooses to obtain the best gear, I am just saying they kind of already made possible what you describe. However, making the most powerful items obtainable with mere time sinks does not sound like a fun game.
I agree that putting high level mobs in lower level zones isn't wise, but they could do instances in older zones or even add a zone off a zone ala Jaggedpine Forest. I just think a quest storyline that involved the character's home town, race and original class masters would be cool. Expansions sell for money - a lot of money - if you buy collectors versions, so I'm not suggesting a new benefit to whales anymore than a new expac is. I'm also not suggesting that they never do another expansion... I'm just saying that maybe instead of an expansion, they could do a focused quest expansion that would justify the time and effort that it would take to really put some new effort into quest lines and that would involve older zones and with instances that could be tuned to level. Loot could grow with level and again, they could be setup for solo, molo , group and raid. Lastly, thanks for taking the time to have a discussion instead of being a condescending **** like the 1st response.
What stops you from going back there? I am a high elf. I visit Felwithe once or twice a year for the past 20 years for nostalgia. No other reason. The game doesn't have to provide you a reason to go. You can provide it yourself. This sounds like a person issue and not a game issue.
I've been on 100's of raids and our coordinated efforts still only take a few hours to net raid loot. I'm saying that a solo, molo or group player should have an opportunity to get raid gear in era, via a quest system. For example: Raid quest = normal raid quest as it is now. Solo quest involves several more steps. I don't like huge time sinks either, but I'd be willing to put in 30 hours for an excellent piece of raid gear doing several additional steps. And I could potentially be a much better and more deserving player than many "raiders" that hang out in raids and think they're great players.
Nothing *stops* me from going there... But nothing draws me back there either other than the music in Greater Faydark occasionally when I'm feeling nostalgic. I'm not saying its a game issue, but in what way would it *hurt* the game to be creative with new quests and your own character lore? Are you seriously telling me that there's zero appeal to you in re-invigorating the original zones that we started in?
Have you played The Burning Lands expansion? They implemented this idea with 4 armor items there and then added an earring in the next expansion Torment of Velious.
I think it would be fun with questlines that was connected to my hometown too, but I think the devs want to spend time/effort on quests all races could follow, it the same reason we don't get epics anymore. They have done entire expansions that connected to old world zones with scalable instances, It was called ldon, and I liked it. We even had expansions that visited specific hometowns and their history: SoD and CotF comes to mind. We got Qeynos in its infancy, Field of Bone and its ancient devasting war, and the political games of Neriak. I wouldn't mind more of that someday in the future. As a froglok, I would love to kick the smelly trolls out and retake my hometown! But right now I rather want to explore new places.
There are plenty of pieces of epic raid gear you can solo. They just may not seem as epic to you by the time you can solo them. To get this epic raid gear while it is current takes far more than a couple of hours. You first need a raid force of semi-competent people who have put at least some time into learning how to play their toons decently and developed enough that they aren't falling over to the first AE in a raid. Lets way underestimate here and say it takes 1 week. Now the raid force needs to learn to play together and raid. Learn enough about other classes and who should do what (no, generally the pet should not be the one tanking) that they look competent. Lets again way underestimate and say that all takes 1 week. Ignoring all other aspects of raiding and learning events and things, we are already at 2 weeks/person starting from scratch. Since raids are designed with 54 players in mind, that's over 2 years of time and they have not gotten a single piece of raid loot yet.
Not true, at all. Artisan's Prize RoS earring ToV earring epics (OK, some classes need drops which aren't easily gotten without a group or two to help, but that's the exception) Zueria Slide, when it was current Some of the trophies and rewards when they were current. And the achievements which rewarded them were certainly not raid/large-force dependent. Some of the anniversary quests/other holiday quest rewards are pretty good, too. There is plenty out there for the solo/molo/2-3 boxer to get, many of which are, if not BiS, pretty close.
I think that there is a perfectly valid reason to go back to Shar Val so long as you are a keen tradeskill fanatic, there are a series of tradeskill based quests which definitely become worth doing when you are working on filling out your recipe book for the Artisan Prize's progression but are probably worth doing way earlier if you want some interesting gear choices. i.e. - > Luclin Tradeskill Quests <
They have been reinvigorating expansions from past years. EOK and ROS are based off of Kunark, TOV and COV off of Velious. Rumor is next expansion might revisit Lublin, we shall see. You also mentioned in one of your replies that instead of an expansion, they should do your idea of a hometown lore quest. Whicb I, along with many, would be 100% against. As far as your condescending final comment (are you seriously telling me) about appeal, if it is the game sure. But not at the expense of far more important and critical things like lag, new expansion content, workable and doable raids, etc. And yes, I am seriously telling you that.
I would be down for a progressive line of quests in home cities that reward you with fame in the form of cool titles. However, my sense is that the dev team does not have the time nor the resources to really do something like that and make it cool.
I really enjoyed the EQ2 Racial Heritage quests (only did Ogre & Troll) they were surprisingly good. I'd be up for something like those in EQ.
Yet another "Here is my non sensible idea that will bring new people back into this game, I am a financial genius!" No, you are wrong. What keeps people playing this game is new content and expansions (and TLP.) I'm trying to imagine this ridiculous scenario of someone saying "Oh, I haven't played Everquest in ten years but there is a new quest in Qeynos! I'm going to resub!" and then my head starts to hurt.
All the old quests are still there if you want to go do them. Its not like they were removed from the game. They just made it all in Cresent Reach to help bring in new players with one starting city on the F2P model and it did. Thousands of them. But if your a paid account you can choose your starting city if one is fanatical about it and start from there. Not an option for F2P or Silver to do that. They did try racial tradeskills via "cultural armor" This link has some posts further down with links to older stuff and is really good reading https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/cultural-armor.200236/ And when anniversary rolls around many of those quests have you romping thru the older zones for various rewards. I think overall the game has moved away from "racial" stuff and is more all encompassing. Like there are only 2 tradeskills left that are not open to all classes. Whereas the model they implemented (F2P - one starting city) brought in millions, I don't think reverting back to the old way even with new quests to enrich your class would have much appeal.
