Tuco's guide to mid-year live player retention: Streamline the HH process so you can produce them cheaply. There's no need for new spell/gear drops, just re-use whatever you used in the most recent expansion. I don't care if I'm murdering a butterfly that just so happens to have the same stats and abilities as an orc in current year expansion. Easier said than done I'm sure. Create ~6 of these a year exploring some of the least used or most nostalgic zones. Create a new hunter achievement for each HH zone. Create a new type 7/8 aug that starts out OK, but improves based on how many new HH hunter achievements you get, ending up as being much better than the dozen type 7/8 augs that get kicked out each expansion. Within a 2-3 years, it should be on the order of Artisan Prize aug. Make them accessible for only one month each year. Don't let them have miserable spawn rates + easy mobs. HH Seb was a bit annoying because it could only feed a few solid groups. Make a few of the mobs require a solid group to take on to motivate players to socialize. I don't know how common my situation is, but a HH Karnor's Castle (or whatever) that gives me a bunch of garbage gear I don't need isn't a compelling reason to re-subscribe. An evolving augment would be perfect motivation, combined with exploring all the crazy zones I've not been to in a long time or didn't explore that thoroughly yet. http://www.eqmaps.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/World-2019-04-17-GMM.png
They are dungeons by their structural design. Tight quarters, high mob density, alot buildings, rooms, caves, tunnels, stairs, etc. Basically they are mixed dungeons with an outdoor part. Crushbone is definetly more outdoor than indoor but don't get fooled by the sky textures. Btw I forgot to list Veksar which is placed in Kunark but got released during the LoY phase. Would be another great zone for HH ! However it was not that popular in the past if I remember right. I think they do just not fit to modern zone requirements. To small, to tight, bad pathing and train danger, not enough named mobs. HHP ? What about North Freeport ? I heard that the banksters there do drop ph@t l3wtz.
To be honest I'd rather they spent the time on the next expansion than on Hardcore Heritage and Legecy zones. I'm sure more would appreciate an extra zone in the expansion that a revamped zone in the summer.
I think the next HH zone, will be a zone we haven't revisited in a later era. So that will disqualify: all the old man mckenzie dungeons. all the zones we revisited in SoD, HoT, RoF, CotF, EoK, RoS, ToV, CoV. all the zones that had received a revamp. It will probably be an older zone though.
It seems unlikely at this point that they have the manpower to commit to major projects that don't bring in any obvious revenue.
Storymode Unrest. Make it an instanced crawl where you are led step by step, horror by horror. One of my favorite things toodling around on EQ2. I loved how creepy that zone was and it has potential to be better and more dangerous at max level.
I agree with you, at least this year, let's see how much extra content they can put into an expansion when they don't have a bunch of other stuff on their plate.
There is a restaurant in my town that has been struggling. They have resorted to culling their menu options. Every time I go into the establishment, there are fewer items for me to choose from. Every culled item seems to help them prevent waste, lowers the amount of inventory required, and allows for fewer staff. Unfortunately, it also reduces the amount of people that want to go eat there. This is a similar problem with Everquest. I understand they have limited resources, but they cannot use that excuse indefinitely. In order to engage people and make them want to play (and pay) they need to come up with a way to bridge the June-December gap in content that they can keep current without it taking them an undo amount of time.
Well if they goin order it should be something in Velious for HCH zone wise..y choice would be tower of frozen shadow for that.. due to the many names and difficulty per floor as well as another keying frenzy. Woooohooooo!
