I am glad they have not listened to any of the warnings or threats that if this or that is done or not done the game will die. The fact is it is not dead due to how they have adapted.
So your answer is is buying a heroic and hoping a high level power levels you and you think thats an acceptable gameplay loop? I don't think it's acceptable to tell a new person to drop $60 and be useless and hope a high level takes pity on you. Also, what server are you on?
let me quote you again .. your the one who wants them to up the heroics to 110/115 so people can buy them . so whats your complaint again ? it isnt with me .. cause i was just replying to what you were asking for .. your the one saying its a crueling task to go from 1 - 120 , however people do not have to do that they can buy a Heroic at lvl 100 ( which you don't mind them doing, if you want them to up the heroics) if it bothers you people buying heroics then why ask they be bumped up to 110/115 when there is no reason to .. . if you buy a heroic @100 , its not that daunting of a task to go from 100 to 115 within a day ( few hours really) .. . I havent bought a heroic in a long time , ive gotten the free ones or the ones that come with the F&F or premium edition .. so Ive been using those which are 85 heroics and that is still not that daunting of a task .. and I don't hope a high lvl PL's me .. I can PL myself .. what I said is that If im being lazy i'll ask for a PL and pay a krono or 2 for it .. it helps daybreak it helps the player pay for a sub .. I will not pay the people sitting in pok spamming general all day long offering a PL and wanting 1 -2 krono per hour .. and I dont buy krono .. I earn them in game so , but whether i earn them in game or buy them from daybreak it all comes from daybreak eventually so in turn it helps the game and the player .. I'm on Bertox server.. originally Im from Mith Mar .. and yes ive been playing and supporting this game since 99 ..
Correct. So people can buy there way to a somewhat useful character. If I am a 120 character, a 115 heroic can actually contribute in a group. They can find groups in relevant content. 100 heroics are useless garbage in a group. If a named has an ae, they die. They die to ramp, they die if a mob ripostes them. It's a terrible learning experience. What would people buying heroics bother me? I have one issue (that we are talking about now). The one issue is how truly awful being a new player in this game is and trying to catch up. I dont care what you do. Your personal ability is irrelevant to this discussion. MY personal ability also doesnt matter (so you dont get your feelings hurt). I reiterated YOUR advice to new people to find a high level to level them and asked you if that was an acceptable gameplay loop?
lets be honest , how many new actual NEW people come to play this game .. im not talking people who stopped playin back in 02 and comes back im talking brand new players .. I bet its a very very small percentage .. EQ does NO advertising what-so-ever .. they dont have any expansion in brick and mortar stores anymore its all digital so tell me how do brand new players hear about EQ besides from friends or relatives who have or is still playing this game .. 100 heroics are not garbage. be thankful DBG upgraded from the 85's .. there are groups out there and guilds who will help and im not talking PLing them im talking making an alt or heaven forbid they buy a 100 heroic to group with said "NEW" player ... even though we all know he/she isn't really new and prolly has a few alts he can box .. will it be tough at times, sure .. will said new player have a group every time they log in to play possibly not .. but there are tools they can use .. it also depends on how much time said new person is willing to play and during the times they play .. tools for a New Player : LFG tool - new player can utilize the LFG tool ( im not saying it will be perfect but its there) Guild - New player can join a guild ( guilds can be a vast resource for finding groupies) General - General channel can be of some use for New players ask in general if anyone is looking to gorup if not start one yourself . ie lvl 100 LFM in Shards starting group LF DPS,tank, healer etc..( new person is F2P you say) ---> New Player - New player chat channel .. if F2P can use this channel to help find groupies .. Forumquest- said New player can come to these forums and request help or asking for groupies on there specific server and the times he is willing to play. if people are having problems finding groups EVER NEVER . then its a them problem not a game problem .. now im not saying the game doesn't have its issues with grouping or the player base it is a very old game. also said person can box an additional toon so he/she could have more help IT DOESN'T cost them anything to add 1 extra F2P toon then they will have 2 toons and 2 mercs you'd be suprised what you can accomplish with that.. now im not saying person has to box all the time but during the times when say they really cant find a group then its another option .. heck they might find they actually like it .. dont have to worry about wasting time LFG cause we all know it takes time to form a PUG . sharing LOOT .. dealing with STUPID people who wind (sp) up getting you killed .. Servers - this is a big one -Picking a server that has a high population preferably during the times he/she plays EQ . IF said person is really brand new I would suggest they play on a TLP plenty of people to group and it introduces them to the game . without the OMG i have 120 lvls to catch up and 50k AA's i need .. EQ has adapted throughout the years players need to adapt as well .. this is an OLD game and there is only so much they (DBG) can do .. server merges would help .. is EQ perfect NO .. is it for everyone NO ..
This is copium. The game by most definitions is dead. Can you still play it? Are the servers still on? Sure and if your definition of a game not being dead is that you can still play it then sure it is not dead, however live EQ is a hollow husk of what it once used to be. It was the pinical of not only MMOs but of the gaming industry. EQ died because it didn't take care of its minority populations. Role players, tradeskillers, PVPers, Solo players, explorers and other playstyles were one by one neglected out of existence. The only population that gets content anymore are endgame raiders and frankly almost every other MMO does endgame raiding better than EQ which reflects the state live EQ is in today. EQs current design makes the game inaccessible to new players, doesn't support replayability, and is not sustainable. The devs treat the game not as a long term project but a game with a impending inevitable death. TLPs are the only real lifeblood EQ has at the moment. The yearly TLP launch has more hype than the yearly xpac and on launch TLP servers are THE most popular servers every year. That to me really speaks volumes. Classic EQ to this day even with its myriad of issues is more popular than live EQ by orders of magnitude. Classic EQ is probably the most popular and most played EQ expansion. TLPs not only bring back returning players but they sometimes even bring new players. I am always surprised every year how many people claim its the first time they have ever played EQ when grouping on a TLP. So yes the game died because of how poorly they adapted. Classic EQ is not even a great game by todays standards but it is vastly superior to live EQ by the objective metrics.
In the last decade, Daybreak spent a disproporionate amount of money on new raiding content and high-end content. It alienated everyone but raiders. Secrets of Faydwer was the last expansion where I felt developers were still in touch with casual players. I did the Underfoot beta and it was clear developers had no clue how casuals played the game, Underfoot was completely mismanaged, completely overtuned for groupers, and little to no regard was made to the qualms expressed by casuals in beta, the few that participated. Daybreak turned EQ into a game that had a social fabric, to one where everyone is focused on gear, AA, and power. Where people box to get ahead, where all sense of wonder and adventure is missing. A game that leads to burnout and guild implosions. High-end raiders were never used to be the main EQ demographic . Most people burn out on high-end raiding. There were very few players who actually cared to raid new content and almost all casuals left EQ. Raiding populations also can't replace casuals. They are much smaller and guild reliant. When high-end raid guilds leave or break up, it takes every player down with them. If you raid, you become loyal to your guild, not the game. Once the guild leaves, or changes games, players also tend to leave or change games. Raiding also can't bring in much money for Daybreak. Let's say there's still 30 active raid guilds left, with 60 people in those guids, so 1,800 active raiders that sub and buy expansions. That's barely enough to pay 2 developers. The money that is sustaining Daybreak is clearly not coming from raiding but from TLP. EQ was mismanaged. EQ focused more and more on a small slice of the EQ high-end raid population. A rapidly declining population that doesn't actually grow and tends to leave the game the moment the guild implodes. Raiding also absorbed a disporportionate amount of EQ developer time. The reason we don't have a new UI, or better engine, or ever had another TSS expansion, is because a disproportionate amount of developer time was spent on raids. The little new content there was for casual players, like OMM where having high-end gear was not a requirement to do the content, were axed or nerfed to the ground. Pushing more casuals out of the game. So yes, Daybreak might have a budget that is closer to an indie developers than a big developer. But they also spent almost all their money on a small declining hardcore raiding demographic, alienating most EQ players and casual who aren't coming back.
To be honest, the only times that people regularly used it were when there were expansions built around having to do group instanced content that required a group to do (LDoN, DoN), and then again when Monster Missions were all the rage which again required a group to do. Outside of those instances, the LFG tool was never really used. It was honestly introduced too late in the game, and the majority of the playerbase had already established how they would find groups without it. Additionally, post-Monster Mission era the quality of PUGs dropped significantly. People got to the point where a lot of them just did not want to group with unknowns, and just stuck with friends and guildies. Add that to the fact that the average EQ player is in their 30s or 40s, and you have the playerbase that others have spoke of with a limited amount of playtime. 1. It is not realistically possible. Darkpaw has no way of knowing who is going to do what when. 2. Again, it is not really possible. The LFG tool cannot predict or determine when the group will get enough people to do whatever they are going to do. You might have 3 dps, a healer, and a support, but if what your intending to do requires a tank then you are waiting until you get a tank. The game has no way to know if that will be in 1 minute or 90 minutes. You setting a time for the group to form doesn't mean that you will have the classes needed to do the content. What do you do when you only get wizards and rogues. Also, if you really wanted to give a time that you plan to form, then use the note section. In the last 10 years Daybreak has spent more money on the group game than Sony did the entire time they owned it. The Devs spend far more time now on the group game than they did in the first 12~ years of the game's life. I know it is hard for TLP server players to hear, but there are more players who play and subscribe on live servers than there are on TLP servers. There are some people who do both. But there are a lot more live servers than there are TLP servers, and the live servers require you to actually purchase the newest content. The majority of what you are talking about was regarding how EQ was in the first 10 years, rather than how it is being ran currently.
A person who buys a 115 heroic would infinitely more worthless garbage in a group than even someone who had bought a 100 heroic. At least the 100 heroic a group of 120s is not going to expect them to do well. The 115 just lies and screws the whole group over by not knowing anything about their class. The 100 heroic is so that they can spend about 10-15 levels learning their class and then the last 5 getting used to doing the current content. People are not being told to find a group of 120s to PL them. They are told to go find people their level and learn their damn class. Because not knowing how to play both the game and their class, is what prevents people from asking to do more content or getting into a better guild. You don't like that the majority of EQ players want someone competent in their high level group, that's fine. But don't act like everyone should want people who don't know how to do anything in them. Also, a 120 group is not going to be inviting a 115 to do content with them unless someone in that group already personally knows that 115, at which point they would have likely also been willing to group with that person at 100 and help them learn the class and level up faster.
Completely false. Antonica (content lvl 1-60) Odus (content lvl 1-60) Faydwer (content lvl 1-60) Kunark (content lvl 1-60) Velious (content lvl 1-60) Luclin (content lvl 1-60) PoP (content lvl 45-65) LDON (content lvl 30-65) Ykesha (content lvl 35-65) OOW (content lvl 40-70) DoN (content lvl 40-70) DoD (content lvl 40-70) TSS (content lvl 1-75) All of these expansions had content for almost any level. This stopped after TSS. The last 10 years has been nothing but high-end content that is only accessible with high-end gear. TSS was the last expansion where casuals got content that wasn't catered to the high-end. Anyone who wasn't high-end, had no reason to continue in EQ or buy the content. In fact, the only content where high-end gear was not required, were OMM missions, that were nerfed to the ground after complaints from...high-end players. EQ has lost all its casual players for a reason. And that reason is the change towards content exclusively targeting high-end players. After TSS, the last casual friendly expansion, came expansions like Underfoot, where only a handful of casual were invited and 99% of beta testers were raiders. I will always remember the Underfoot beta, where a single mob in cooling chambers could 1 round a fully group geared tank. I pointed this out so many times in threads, and was 100% flat out ignored because developers were too busy with raids. When Underfoot went live, tons of complaints started from casual players that the content was impossible. Developers spent 4 months debating if the content should be retuned, by then any casual players had already left. Even during TSS, developers in charge of gear no longer understood casual players. Finally, after I pointed out that it was easier to group Anguish to get a far superior weapon, than to actually tank Ashengate mobs, did they adjust weapon ratios for groupers and casuals. EQ shifted completely to the high-end and decimated their casual playerbase. The gear requirements, undermining of the social fabric by boxing, the overtuned group content, the complete focus on expansions with high-end content after TSS,
You seem to be confusing high end with high level. There is exactly zero reason that any content lower than the current level should ever be added to EQ again. With the exception of holiday/anniversary content, there is still more content for levels 1-75 than there is for any level range higher than that. EQ hasn't lost its casual players. They just don't play where you play. If you think that TSS was the last expansion that was aimed at casual players, then you didn't actually play in group content in TBS or SoF. Those expansions did a ton for casual players, especially SoF. SoD was also another great expansion for casual players. From what you say, it really thinks that you think high end means high level and that casual means low level. That is not the meaning of either.
Thankfully you were not in charge when Daybreak decided to launch TLP. News Flash: It is not those 20 raid guilds left in EQ doing high-end content, that are keeping EQ alive, it is TLP. The few raid guilds left are often struggling to even get more than 50 people to show up anymore. Do the math and you'll realise all the subs combined of raid guilds on regular servers can't even pay 1 developer. Most people have no desire to spend 4 hours raiding every night. There is a disproportionate amount of development spent on content that a tiny fraction of the userbase uses, high-end content that burns people out and leads to guild collapses. This has alienated casuals and most have left for good. And if you somehow don't think there is something wrong with this model of ever increasing levels, gear, high-end content and power. Explain to me why the MMO genre has basically died off. What this model does is create massive power gaps between players. It makes grouping difficult, it leads to player burnout, it leads to players who are alien to the game and only care about statistics of their gear. You can see this when raid guilds collapse, and almost every member leaves the game. Players are not connected to your game, but only care about stats. What is keeping EQ alive is TLP. Just like WoW Classic. But no one knows for how long. Rehashing old content only works for so long.
You confuse them wanting to keep the people who only want to play the first 4-5 expansions with extra difficulty paying with the TLP servers keeping EQ alive. Also, you again are confusing high level with high end, they are different things. There are far more players who play level 100+ group content than do raids or play on the TLP servers. Not sure where you get the idea that raid guilds are hard up for players. The top raid guilds on a server have no issue fielding full raid. Now when you get further from the top, then they might have problems, but that has always been the case, especially since there are no longer low- and mid-tier raid guilds anymore. The best that the non-bleeding edge raid guilds do is pull from the open raid channels and the guilds that take part in those for recruits. I think that you don't know what it is like on most live servers, because that isn't the case. I really hate to break it to you, but there still are casual raid groups and guilds. They raid 2-4 nights a week for a few hours, and do whatever the rest of the week. You also have this mistaken idea that the only people who play on live raid, which just is not true. Most people don't raid and are not doing the current expansion's content. You talk like someone who hasn't actually played the current game since before Sony spun off SOE. EQ is going to be 24 years old in March. WoW is going to be 19 yo later this year; WoW has around 4.6 million subscribers with only 1/3 of them playing WoW Classic, hardly WoW classic supporting the game. EQ is a more niche title than WoW, but statistically it is reasonable to expect that a similar ratio can be found in EQ subscribers with only 1/3 of them playing on the TLP servers, especially considering how those servers are distributed. The casuals who were leaving EQ and never came back did it back when WoW launched, not anytime in the past 15+ years. The casual player is doing just fine in EQ. The casual player doesn't care about min/maxing. They also have no problem grouping with raiders, though most of the time the reason raiders don't group with groupers has more to do with the fact that they are grouping with their guildies and fellow raiders that they have bonds with rather than some random player on the server they at best might have seen talking in general sometime. If EQ stopped adding level 120 and higher content then the game would be dead in less than a year or two as the majority of the playerbase would leave. The TLP servers would not be viable on just their own players. TSS was done to streamline the level up process from 1-75, because the 1-60 has so many different zones that the players could all be playing but never find each other.
Yes, because they had realized before the created TSS that they had too much content for those level ranges. They decided that because of how much content for the 1-70 crowd, there were people playing and trying to group up that could not find people to group with because they were spread out over 4 to 7 to 10 expansions worth of content. They made TSS and allowed all races to set it as their home city in hopes of focusing the playerbase to that content, especially for new players. The next expansion in the year would be TBS and then 8 months later SoF was the last two expansions that were released in the same year. For levels 76+ there are progressively fewer zones worth of content the higher you go. To the present day at which point you tend to have maybe 8-10 static zones for each 5 level range, while in the 1-75 range there are usually 4-6 times that for any similar level spread.
Using these numbers and assuming min priced expansions and buying nothing else in marketplace and having 0 boxes is actually around 3-4 full time (would increase with WFH if they ditch their office space overheads) CotF was 75-100 and TBM 75-105 which is as much as like half of these spreads listed TBM even had raids that covered its level spread Shame they gave up on the HA system because it could have forever carried a 75-max level spread on content while being casual friendly with its intended tuning of 2 player + 2 merc minimums
People that havent played live for a decade are new customers. The only reason you think 100 heroics arent garbage is because you are so used to the garbage we usually get, that it seems like a gift. 100 heroics are trash at helping new players get into the game. You've typed a lot of words to say "yes i think the current system is fine" which, so be it, thats your opinion, however flawed. Holy fallacy batman. Why is the 115 lying to get into a group? Why are the 120s not able to see they are a heroic? Why is the 100 leaching fine but the 115 leaching not fine? Stop making up things. People are being told, in basically every thread about new players leveling to get to like 90+ and find a high level, including this very thread.
Everybody already knows the Raiders suck. Any Raiders’ supporters are low lifes or office types trying to be tough.
People that have ever played EQ before are not new customers, even if they have not played in 20 years. They still know the basics of the game. I don't think that level 100 Heroic characters are not garbage, because I actually play the game rather than just whine about it on here. A level 100 HC can quite readily play in the level 100+ content, they cut out 15 levels and keep the HC in range of being able to xp with max level characters. HC are also not intended to help new players get into the game. They are intended to allow players to cut out a significant amount of the grind. Ideally, what happens is that a new player goes through the tutorial a few times to find which class(es) they might be interested in, and then after buy one of the HC options and level up from there learning how the class works at present before they start into the newest content. No fallacy, lies by omission. You cannot tell by looking at a character that they are a heroic character, all you can see is that they are a level 115 character. So the level 120s see a level 115 character and expect them to have the knowledge, skills, and capabilities of a player who has leveled to 115. The player lies by either omission or by saying that they know what they are doing, even though they have never played. With regards to the level 100 character on the other hand, the level 120 players have considerably lower expectations of what that character is going to be able to do. With the level 100 player, the 120s are going to be going to content that is lower than what they normally do to get the level 100 up to speed. While the 115 player they would feel fine jumping into normal content even though the player is not at all capable of holding their own weight and can cause problems for the group to where they fail and die when they shouldn't. Also, it will end up with the 115 player not getting groups in the long term, as people will flag them as being a low quality player. The level 120s know that the level 100 is leaching and they have explicitly decided to assist them to get them up to snuff. With the 115 character, the level 120s have no way of knowing that they are anything other a normal level 115. That is the difference. The reason why actually true new players are being told to level to 90+ because that is the best way to actually learn one's class. However, that is not the only thing suggested in this thread another has been to get a HC either an 85 or 100 one, and level up from there. The current HC options give the player enough time to learn the basics of the class and how to play it in the current game without them jumping straight into the newest content where players expect the person doing that content to know what they are doing. Except that was never how it worked. The HAs only gave out rewards through 100 or 105, and as was seen when they increased the level cap, the HAs would have only gotten harder as the level range on the mobs in them increased but for the exact same rewards. It also made it impossible for people to go back and do the content with less than what was required originally to beat it. They stated from the start that they had zero intention of adding rewards for higher levels in the content. The HA system was never intended to be turned around 2 player + 2 merc minimums. That is just a wives tale that has spread because of one set of HAs that could be done like that, but none of the others could unless you were over geared for it. Also for the majority of actual casuals at the time of CotF and TBM, 2 players + 2 merc were not viable ways to do all but the simplest of the HAs. So thinking that players at 120 would be doing any of that content now when it would be just as difficult as current content is laughable.
Ive noticed that if you are trying to start a group and you are the only one in it its very hard to find more people. But if you already have a semi working group that has a camp it becomes much easier to fill it out. I sometimes 2 box then drop the alt when I get more players. People like groups that they can join and immediately start killing. They dont much like groups where they have to wait to fill up and maybe it goes and maybe not.
