Should Dragons be bundled with Omens?

Something I have been thinking about recently has been the pain points of the level 70 era.
Currently it is 9 months of Anguish and Demi farming, with occasional bursts of Vishimtar and Deathknell in between.2 Months of those 9 are dedicated to Dragons, an expansion that was beaten 9 days after it launched.

With no AAs, minimal spell collection, only 4 major raids that people bothered to do (sorry Tirranun), and a series of smaller progression events, it does not provide sufficient content for a full two months. Furthermore, the group content seems to be mostly ignored outside of the faction grind to complete your progression AAs, since players already had 3 months to smash through MPG trials, group/raid armor, and RSS.

Possible Benefits:
More content for groupers
more raid content available pre-anguish
Only 3 months of Anguish before Demi

Possible drawbacks:
Distraction from Signet/Epic farming
An extra month of Vishimtar loot
Not enough time in raid schedule for all content

Alternate Compromise solution:
Release Dragons 28 days after Omens launch. Same duration of DoN, and gives time for players to experience Omens by itself for a bit.

Thoughts?

I agree completely, I think it's a fairly widespread opinion that the 70 stretch is a slog and part of it has to do with xpacks like DoN that just doesn't offer that much content or incentives for farming anything.

I like both ideas, could either just combine DoN with OOW for 3 months, or have DoN come out the 28 days later. I kind of like the latter as it at least gives the focus of doing the signets, trials, knocking out a good majority of the epics, then boom bring in the DoN progression and make doing those missions more viable for getting AA's still.

I think shortening the overall OoW - DoN mark from 5 months to 3 months would help a ton with some of the boredom and disinterest we see during this era.

With how the game evolved, yes, DoN should be packaged with OOW either immediately or unlock 2 weeks later. DoN was one of those spring releases which concentrated more on game functionality upgrades rather than content.

It's unfortunate because DoN was a fun expansion on live. It really helped casual players with gear and even raiders benefitted by gearing up alts. Also, quite a few instances/zones were better experience than anything in OOW. However, everyone with a pulse can basically gather a small raid force and clear MPG trials and CoA these days. Almost everyone is max AAed by the time DoN releases. 90% of DoN's content is thrown completely out the window.

There are plat raids, off night alt raids, gear overflow from main raids, that it makes gearing up secondary characters a breeze. Alts of alts have more gear than mains did back in the day. I didn't put all that much effort into my druid (I simply don't have the time to invest into going to weekly plat raids) and he's a combo of DP and AG/FC raid gear and that's current end game on Aradune. It completely trivializes group content and gear. A huge portion of each expansion is now largely ignored by the general population of TLP.

There is plenty of time in the raid schedule for the content.

Literally, once enough people are flagged for Anguish.. there -MIGHT- be 1 or 2 MPG trials still completed. CoA = 1 raid night. Vish/Yar'lir = 1 raid night. That leaves plenty of excess time to cycle through other potential raids.

An extra month of Vish loot isn't that much. For instance, we never got Vish's tank mask to drop the whole time.

Only 3 months of CoA before Demi is more of a drawback than a benefit. More so than bundling DoDH + PoR (because Last blood gear gets a huge upgrade out of the gate in TSS, even without the Serpent seals). You'll be slightly less geared for DPoB, possibly making it more difficult to clear as fast.

If it takes you an entire night to clear COA and another night to clear Yarlir/Vish my goodness you need to make an internal investigation on your guild. COA should take no more than 90 minutes. You should be doing COA + Yarlir/Vish in a single night within 2.5 hours max. That leaves another night of either MPG or Tacvi and those will be short raid nights.

3 months of farming CoA, DoN, and Tacvi/MPG will get you plenty of gear for DPoB.

I was being conservative in placing OoW on one night and DoN on a separate night. It doesn't change the point: "Not enough rime in raid schedule for all content" is not a "Drawback" of combining OoW with DoN.

Yes.

While we're at it, lets talk about combining LDoN with GoD. Having 3 months of PoP and then 2 months of LDoN gives you basically 5 months of PoTime farming, which is just too much. It becomes tedious. After having done it on both Phinigel and Aradune, its just as boring as doing Anguish for 5 months.

PoP/LoY - 3 months
LDoN/GoD - 2 months (no level increase)
OoW/DoN - 3 months
DoDH/PoR - 2 months (no level increase)

Getting to TSS from PoP in 10 months instead of 16 months would save a lot of the population from the level 70 slog. It would make the time stuck at level 70 go from 9 months to 5 months, which would be wonderful. Anyone who has done this stretch knows how painful it can be, and nothing about the content in these eras requires months and months of farming to be able to successfully complete the next eras raids. None of these pairings would invalidate any raids in era. LDoNs would still have meaning even with GoD raids available, for augments. People would still do Demi-plane of Blood if Deathknell was available, if for nothing else but to get 2.5 pages.

A LOT of people quit the game during this time because things really start to stagnate. When TSS came out on Aradune it was like getting a breath of fresh air after barely being able to breathe. The time from PoP to TSS needs to be much faster than it currently is on most TLP servers moving forward.

Profits > Players. Downtime slogs are a way to start getting people bored and ready for a new server that's full of beans.

This assumes people are not just unsubbing and playing another game, and not migrating to a newer TLP server. Lots of people just stop clicking krono and go play WoW classic or another game of their choice. Lowering the amount of time spent in the level 70 era does not effect the people that hop to each new TLP server. By the time you hit the level 70 slog, a new TLP server has already launched, so I am struggling to figure out what exactly it is you are talking about.

Don't struggle too hard

Why would a guild still be doing Tacvi with access to Omens and DoN?

They shouldn't be, which is why a merge of GoD and Omens wouldn't be a good play. But pairing LDoN and GoD would work. LDoN doesn't have nearly enough content to warrant it as a stand alone expansion, most of the raids people do not even bother with.

1. Weapon augs
2. Class only clickies/weapons
3. Cheap supplementary loot
4. BIC
5. Is this a serious question?

LDoN/GoD should be 3 months, but I agree with combining them. 3months allows guilds to farm GoD in era and get their LDoN augs. Most guilds continued to hit tacvi into OOW, with the 3month window that should no longer be necessary and that would be especially good since you would have the DoN raids to do with OOW under this model. GoD, while not having a level increase still has as much or more to do than many expansions with one.

Depending on the guild and their situation how long they can raid each night can change and just because one guild can clear all of that in a single sitting at 2.5 hours doesn't mean that every guild should be expected to do that.

GoD was 2 months on Aradune and it was plenty of time to get everything done. The addition of a few select LDoN raids does not validate adding an extra month to the unlock. Even if you wanted to say that BiC and fully maxing out an LDoN charm aug takes time, these are not things that cannot be completed after the next unlock. Nothing in OoW or DoN replaces BiC or the charm aug. I don't think GoD and LDoN needs to be 3 months.

All they need to do is combine PoP/LDoN Omens/Don and DoDH/PoR. It would help a lot.

3 months is way too long.

Also, why are we combining LDON and GoD? LDoN launches 1 month after PoP, just shorten the PoP/LDoN time.

the level 70 desert is a bad trip for all TLPs. OOW and DON should be out together for sure. Perhaps DODH and POR also together.