How to make LDoN more popular.

Ok. Change my perception.

The xp is poor. The vendor trash sells for next to nothing. The missions are tedious and grindy. The Aug takes too many wins to max. The loot you buy with the points is almost entirely worthless if you raid at all and since all of these TLPs have AoC, most people raid and have raid gear.

LDoN belongs pre-pop. Maybe even classic if they time gate some of the gear / raids.

At least on regular servers - cool thing about Free Trade ruleset is everything (or nearly) is tradeable from the vendors. So it's possible to turn currency into plat from those too lazy to LDoN while you're maxing charm out on Free Trade.

Raiders are supposed to get the augs, not the gear. While GoD does drop a handful of groupable augs - they're not remotely enough to fill gear, and only marginally better or worse than LDoN ones in the case of those that I care about as a tank. (AC ones are a bit worse for the mostpart)

And the GoD ones add the annoyance of Type 7 or 8 ONLY instead of just buying the type you need.

Also when you add being able to box and then trade the augs to either funnel points from boxes and/or sell in bazaar... seems like a winner overall for me, until OoW comes out and the aug drops finally become a reasonable replacement.

Feel free to start anytime.

One of the cool things about the LLP concept is that you get access to LDoN at Level 20.

You're not making a compelling case that LDoN is good, having to grind type 8 augs for your raid gear to gain 4AC or 8sta in a post PoP world.
http://www.cardplace.com/eq/ldon/list.cgi?view=results

The best way to make LDoN more popular would be to delete all of the LDoN content and replace it with better content.

Seriously, that content is horrible.

The raids are overturned and still somehow not engaging and the group content is a mindless grind with zero RNG to keep it interesting.

Nuke it.

TLPs operate on an accelerated pace but LDoN is stuck in era pacing. This is the problem.

It takes too long to grind out an item, it takes too long to grind out the charm aug, it takes too long to grind out AA in comparison to other options, not nearly enough usable loot drops to be worth a guild's time to raid. Fix these issues and LDoN will be vastly better recieved.

I'd like to add that using the Freetrade ruleset is a poor argument. Very few servers have this rule and are thus in the minority.

1. Most hard-mode LDON loot is amazing tribute fodder.
2. You need to do the LDON's at least once for the Explorer achievement, getting started early can help.
3. Foraging in LDONs is critical for getting 350 in some tradeskills for Artisan's Prize and beyond.

Yes, anything you have to do 300+ times will be grindy.

These are all reasons to do LDoN, but I'd hardly call any of these compelling.
1. Lots of ways to farm tribute which isn't even available yet in LDoN, more of a side bonus if you have the storage space
2. Explorer achievements give a bump to your total score (which is meaningless) and after xxx expacs a +1% run speed.
3. Artisan's Prize is so far away on a TLP in LDoN as to not even exist.

Things being grindy is the most weak argument ever considering how literally everything in EQ prior was nothing more than sitting at a camp and... grinding! At least in LDON you have a set amount of time per run so you know exactly what the max amount of time you're going to take. Sitting at a camp and hoping RNG works in your favor means you can be stuck in limbo for hours upon hours.

The charm aug to max in era obviously is way too much a time investment for the average player, however, its not even that great. Having an extra few AC and HP of a non max vs max charm aug isn't going to make or break the char.

I think my point was that it feels grindy. Lots of other grindy things in EQ don't feel as repetitive. Some epics are quite grindy, BiC is grindy, Tradeskills are grindy, Shawl and Ring in velious are grindy. Aid Grimel, Eron's Jewelery etc. The difference is you get 1 or 2 drops you need, you move on to another zone, grind for a bit, get a drop, move. Make a combine, onto the next step. Doing LDoNs is just sitting in a camp, except you have to keep moving, and the scenery is bland and boring so its more work for the same reward as sitting in LGuk staring at a wall while the puller brings frogs in,

Sounds like an advertisement for communism.

I'm just going to disagree. Sitting at a single camp with no end in sight, not really accomplishing much in pre-AA eras is just peak garbage gameplay. Most of those popular zones are bland pixelated brown caves like seb, chardok, lguk, solo, etc. Unless you're blowing through wads of plat/krono, TS grinds are the single worst thing this game offers. Endless killing of trivial mobs for semi rare components for dozens of hours after you're 200+.

And LDoN is no different. Bland pixelated caves (or blinding white snow), endless killing mobs. But you have to move your character(s) around while you do it instead of sitting in 1 spot. *shrug*

Except ldon graphics are light years away from what you find pre luclin. You're just lying to yourself if you say otherwise.

But let's use some logic. Your main complaint is LDON is... its the same gameplay as everything else? /boggle

I'm saying that LDON is boring, repetitive and unrewarding, so is grinding in Guk or Seb or velks but at least those expacs have other things to do. LDoN is all LDoN is. Not really complaining about it, more of an observation to the person who claimed it was the perspective that was wrong and LDoN is a great expac.

In relation to the next TLPs it could feasibly be adjusted for - yes, it technically is.

This time of year, they're committed to working on Live server content - TLP window is March till June or so. It would have to be something emergency worthy to get any attention ATM.

I guess I know more min-maxers than you - I'm guessing you'd be like my ex-guildie that was still using Anguish augs up until EoK or so though. He did remarkably well, even though he was using augs that were a fraction of what was possible 10 or so expacs later.

The same excuse could be used to say people shouldn't raid yet besides for epics and other weapons until NToV - and a handful of special case clickies, for example - even 27% haste vs. 31-40% haste for melee isn't a huge boon yet, since it's multiplicative with base DPS that 4-13% rift is literally 1-3 DPS in most cases. (Or even a fraction of a % in some cases, poor bards)

I'm sure we all know more than a couple min/maxers or completionists and at least a few who seem to never upgrade their gear, but using Anguish augs in EoK is pretty hilarious, at that point those augs aren't even worth the plat required to swap em to the new gear haha.

This entire 2nd page of this thread is almost all due to the guy who said LDoN was a great expac and its was people's perception that needed to change. Maybe he was just trolling, I don't know, but I don't think any of the examples, even the sum of the examples, of reasons to do LDON makes a case for "great". Grind a handful of LDoNs to drop an aug into each piece of gear you have and go do something else thats fun. If for you thats more LDoNs, great, but for most people its not and until coltongrundy comes back and blows our minds with his perspective change I doubt that is going to change any time soon.