How to lose the hard to lose players of EQ

Ours went from 40-50 online weeknights to 1-2 including me.
‘We used to be the new/returning guild on Rathe, now I don’t even see any chat in the general channel. Though we do still have the 600+ corpses of long lost guildies in the roster. Even the guild leader has gone, can’t even invite or promote anyone anymore.

/usurp the guild.

to use that command you have to be a senior officer and the guild leader has to be gone for over a year time in roster so there can be that roadblock

i have recently let all my paid subs lapse due to the cut and paste quality of the expansions from EOK to current content which is "newish" but not enough imho to justify the previous cut and paste activity

i have no plans to resub any accounts also because {renewed debit card, fresh one day used, only on eq website to sub and it got used without my permission on an ebay type website and in a liquor store in pennslyvania 2 days after resubbing last year} so yeah..

May come to that, but I can still try contacting my old guild leader, but I’m terrified of doing that.

A little late, but seconding this, absolutely. The EXP changes in the 111-115 range were terrible.

Another area that had a similar effect was Darkened Sea (101-105) where all previous expansions were essentially obsoleted (no longer gave any real EXP) to force people into the TDS zones where EXP was normal. Those zones...aren't very good, for the most part. So pretty much everyone just kept doing Gribbles HAs in Dead Hills ad nauseum. Made a lot of people give up on the game.

If it isn't broke, don't fix it.

Gribbles………so many Gribbles. I loved that era. Friday night community raids followed by daily 3 and the Gribbles. I ran so many new/returning players through those.

How to lose the hard to lose players of EQ?

Q: Can we increase grind XP?
Ngreth: We have no plans to encourage grind.

I still can't believe that in the very year that everyone should be coming together to celebrate the magic that is Everquest, DBG are making so many changes that it may well end up being the swansong year instead.

I hope I'm wrong but, for me, the 25th Anniversary year has turned out to be nothing like I expected.

i didnt expect it to be amazing tho, ive found if i keep my hopes low in EQ the result is better .. /forced grin

1. One run through progression doesn't give you enough exp to level up to max.
2. One run through progression doesn't give you max AAs.
3. One run through progression doesn't max out your chase items.
4. One run through progression doesn't give you the currency you need for items / augs etc.

The only way to get all of the above is to run the same content over and over. The game is basically built on the grind mechanism.

If you wanted to eliminate grind you would release an expansion with enough unique content to come out the other side (in maybe 8 months?) with max level, max AAs, max chase items and all items / augs.

I appreciate you may not want everyone to reach max which is fine. But then you should stop creating so much content based on everyone already having it.

if they arent going to encourage grinding, then that means i wont be in the game for extended amounts of time and i wont be considering micro transactions ... im telling you, this company is straight allergic to money. if they can find a way to drive off players they are all about it.

Which makes Ngreth's response, in response to puting group currency on the merc/partisan tasks, about not wanting players to just repeat tasks over and over again absolutely absurd, out of touch, and tone deaf. They're OK with people repeating missions and raids ad nausem to advance our characters, but not merc/partisan tasks?

They LITERALLY put items in the game that force you to sit there and grind mobs to evolve them.

An EQ dev saying that they don't want players repeating their content is beyond mind-boggling. The entire purpose of changing the way we get xp (from grinding to achievements) was to force people to PLAY the content. Saying they don't want players repeating content is beyond unbelieveable.

1. Create content
2. Make quests only valuable one time
3. Nerf grind exp
4. Create personas so they don't benefit from quests
5. Force them into Overseer

Was this the plan? Force people into doing the most smooth brained "content" in game?

They don't want people grinding. They don't want people doing the quests over, you know, the same ones they claimed they wanted everyone to do when nerfed grind exp. So what do they want players doing an entire year? 2 missions and Overseer? GRIND on personas for 10 months? LOL.

I am curious how people will defend this.

Since my first post was deleted...

You CAN repeat the LS merc tasks for xp or AA. I don't know if that was intentional or not, but redoing them gets about 1 and a smidge percent xp, or about 22 AA. So, at least they got something right with this expansion. I don't know about the partisan tasks. The only one that I know that got nerfed was the Gift task in HF, which was giving 35 AA, but now only gives 2.

I can probably stop checking the forums altogether at this point. Over the last few years I was hoping they would see the error of their ways but, like the rest of the world, they seem to be double and triple downing on this path of fail. Unless some new company takes over, the EQ I played for 25 years is officially dead as far as gameplay goes.

We used to grab randoms that were LFG and hunted nameds in dangerous dungeons. There used to be clumps of folks at the zone in to the dungeon of whatever expansion was out, just waiting for camps or spots to open up. That game is a memory in EQlive. You can still get some of that juice from the never ending stream of TLP servers they seem to be able to crank out, but that's just spinning your wheels in old content. EQlive is no longer Everquest in any meaningful way.

How do you level APs without grind?

Thanks, but seems unintentional on their part. As soon as they notice people repeating those quests then they’ll be removed.

Bait and switch. Once sales on the expansions has tapped out they will say oh we didnt mean for that to happen.

Overseer. The most engaging gameplay there is. Click 5 buttons get exp. Log out.

EQ leveling has devolved to candy crush.