A suggestion list to DBG to generate long term excitement in their game

In terms of player retention I think beyond a few weird design choices that are hard to avoid making but a bit slow to be corrected I think they're doing the best they can with the budget they have.

• New content at regular intervals (twice a year)
• A good mixture of easy/medium/hard content (TBL was too hard, GMM re-balanced it)
• Partial re-use of existing content (I wish we had more tbh)
• Steady march of mudflation to increase our characters
• Steady changes of balance / new abilities over time (necro DoT revamp is way overdue)

In terms of encouraging new players, there is almost nothing they can do to encourage most new gamers to pick up EQ1/EQ2 and that won't require a huge investment in resources. They would need a huge amount of capital and release EQ3 (Or EQNext/Landmark/whatever), which probably isn't in the cards with DBG.

I've been saying this to my buddies for years, I think it would be great to instance/quest some old world stuff at the current max!

Probably one of those things that is easier said than done, but it is high time that dbg steals eq2 tech and zone copies everything and makes it possible to utilize the entire game world in a more diverse method.

Let's not change any more old zones, graphics, races, or content for any reason besides repair. What's been done is bad enough.

We're playing a 20 year old game on purpose.

I imagine the desire to attract new players and the refusal to update outdated graphics and mechanics are irreconcilable differences and one side will have to give ground in order for the other to be successful.

I'm not playing EQ (again) for the outdated graphics. I'm playing it because even with its flaws no game has matched its depth and breadth of experience for me, and that's a feeling I can still get out of it. If they want to make quality of life improvements to the game, I am all for them.

+1

I would like more AA. They are more important to me than a lot of new zones. The AA count of TBL was way too low for me. Again, EoK is the best expansion in the last decade or more, for me.


IMO,The core of the fun of EQ is the game engine: the way characters, mobs, and the world interact. Current graphics are adequate and sufficient to support this, so in a world with scarce resources and complex stakeholder picture, new gfx engine is very low on the priority scale.

Levelling servers, even if it was only one, and as a temporary experiment, would be a very interresting learning experiment: is it possible to nurture the returnee experience by gathering them on one server, before they go out to the different servers?

If you've been playing on TLP you'd know that for a large chunk of the population they're functionally acting like "seasons" in other games; yeah individual servers may be flashes in the pan, but the overall ecosystem of TLPs is more sustainable than if you just look at one year's server. The big guilds on Phinny have their roots in the Fippy era, most guilds on Coirnav, Agnarr, and now Selo's and Mangler each have their roots in the most-recent or next-most-recent TLP as well. It's drawing in an d retaining a ton of players and making EQ more exciting long term than it had been before this modern TLP era.

I have no idea if y'all see players come to live after doing TLP (my personal plan after Phinny runs its course), but on the whole TLP is a good thing for EQ and I never understand the anti-TLP crew that thinks if they didn't exist live would be getting a magical 30 zones per expansion. Expansions have been small for a loooong time, even some of them in earlier eras.

I think cross server grouping if implemented properly could have a better overall impact on people stuck with lfg but I think having distinct servers dedicated to leveling would be significantly easier to implement and if they are a failure they could just merge them with other live servers. My thought process is by having servers with only select level ranges it merges all of these players into one place.

The hope would be that this makes grouping easier and by default levels should naturally be easier as well. If this works players could progress to 105 on these leveling servers before finding a final home and be in current content increasing the high end base population to provide more groups. Two of the biggest complaints we see from new and returning players is lack of groups at the low and mid level range and difficulty in leveling. Having so many live servers with these players spread out seems like a design flaw that should be fixed and could be done via something like dedicated level servers.

For me personally I would have zero use for these servers but I really want to see this game especially on the live side flourish for many years into the future and to do so we need more people at the top which means more active causal and raid guilds, more expansion sales, and more subs hopefully as more people will see value in using prestige gear and J mercs to survive current content.

I don't think distinct servers for leveling would be a good idea. I think that would just cause more fracture in the player base besides the fact that we already have the TLP servers for that. People can level up on TLP then move on to Live servers can't they?

Another fact is that new servers tend to lose the adherence to an informal Play Nice policy that we are still lucky enough to enjoy the majority of time on Live servers.

TLP is great, a really good idea, well implemented, and core for EQ as a business.

The concept is that there is a server for returning players who want to play on live, with a free transfer off the server, for example at lvl 95, with xp locked at 95 + autogrant as well. I see your point about not splitting the player base, not sure if it is feasible to design the setup to handle the issue you mention.

I personally would not want the TLP servers to be the basis for players leveling and moving to live specifically because of the mindset of the community there and the fact that old school play nice policies have been abandoned.

As I stated in another thread these servers would ideally have no bazaar, gear no trade, disable the ability to trade and increase the xp rate to promote players to get on, group, level and get to 105 so they can pick a live server where they can call home.

The fact is the low and mid level game on live is already fractured so bringing these players together to race to end game wont fracture communities but rather bring them closer together.

- A bazaar filter feature for collection items you don't have.
- Maybe go back to HA/LDoN style missions with currency to give people something to do and groups.
- A cross server instance for groups would be cool but probably not feasible sadly.
- Improve mercs somehow or maybe allow people to have 2 out at once(Not everyone is capable of boxing).
- Bring back more new class/race combos like Froglok beastlords, iksar berserker, etc (alot of work having to add the new races to items I know)
- Maybe bring back the RoF quested style class weps with cool procs or clickies and our promised Candyland zone we never got to give people something to do.

I'm torn on this, depends on how it is done. HoT was great old zones with an update which didn't effect the originals, RoF I found the velious revamps boring far quicker than I did the other zones in the expansion, maybe cause I've been there and done that so often.

Legacy time, I would rather they kept the old zone and allowed parallel entry to the revamped zones.They put so much work into the revamps I would like to see them stick around a bit longer, but ONLY if the original zone is still available.

Been playing this game every year this century.

I think they have done a relatively good job of generating long term excitement in this game. Like someone said earlier, we are choosing to play a 20 year old game.

I'm talking kinda like omm missions, but you play your character instead of some avatar. All with updated loots and such.

I have been playing since the last century and I agree.

I started this thread, and i've been playing since March 17th, 1999.
I am not posting this because i hate the game or think it is bad, i posted to see if the devs can do something new to generate actual viable excitement into it.

I stand firm that the best expansions are the ones that go from 1-level cap, and even moreso when they introduce a new race or to a lesser degree class.

In my opinion, we have plenty of classes, but races could and should be something they use.
Yes, it takes a load of work to do armor skins and whatnot. So be it. Do it.

I understand that eq1 and 2 are different games, and the lore isn't directly tied together, but so what.

Introduce the Fae, Ratonga, Sarnak. I left the freeblood and the arakyn off because they are brutally horrible. Almost as bad as the walking emo drakkiin.

So what you say is that you want a new race instead of a new expansion, because thats what a race do cost with the present amount of devs working on EQ, and already overburdened.

I really don't understand how a new race or two is supposed to be the panacea that revitalizes a 20 year old game.