Yup, I'm actually in WK atm fixing the walls because they ninja put in collision walls in the whole zone when I was told that it was as it was intended before...so I went ahead and 'finished' it, then. -_- Pretty typical, though. -_-
For all of the discussion over whether $40 will be worth it for this expansion... Has anyone stopped to consider the idea that maybe the team has focused on the first tier and the expansion's new features, and that next year they will be soliciting ideas to flesh out the expansion's remaining content from this very player community? Instead of complaining that the content doesn't meet one's standards, why not contribute more to the discussion when the devs feel ready to design additional content?
I'm actually more excited by the extension of VoA content to silver players and being able to get some of my boxes/alts to 95. Pretty damming that the 2 year old free content is more enticing than the $40 shiny new expansion. SoE will earn some bucks out of me still but its a fraction of what they could have had...
People contribute all the time, it still doesnt address that we are getting crap amount of content. You want my money give me something, not 1/4 or 1/3 of it. I dont mind tiered content, rof was ok with 2 full teirs, but half a gd teir? thats not a funny joke.
Yeah, that's nonsense. We were asked if we wanted more levels. Players spoke and wanted to stay at 100 with limited new spells and abilities - that's what we're getting. We were asked if we wanted mudflation and we said no. We were asked if we wanted more dungeon missions a la LDoN and we said yes. This is what we're getting, and we usually get an expansion in November, not scheduled for September. What we didn't ask for was for the team to lose staff the way it did. SOE management should get out of the industry.
This is the first time, since I started in '99, that I didn't buy the expansion or have any plans to. I am glad they aren't raising the cap level etc., but really there is nothing that is making me want to spend $240 for my 6 accounts. I was going to buy it for a few of them, but after the nerfs they are talking about, i'm just done. Seriously, how many times can they change something that's been in the game for years? Just tired of it. I play EQ to BUILD my character, not put time in and see them weaker. I just don't get it. I'll play a bit till my memberships expire, then I think i'm finally done. EQ was the greatest game ever, no question, just not in good hands right now.
Which is funny as we were told we couldn't stay at 95 as there wouldn't be enough to keep us busy or give us further ways to improve our toons (I can't remember the exact words or who said it). Which is exactly what has happened with no level increase this time round. We were asked what we liked about LDoN, I don't remember the asking if we wanted more dungeon missions. We were asked if we wanted more quests, yet we get a lot less this time round. I just hope we get something big for the 15th Anniversary, the 20th expansion at first glance isn't overwhelming and fingers crossed for a level increase next year.
The new mission system is a good idea, the problem is that it has been implemented poorly, very poorly. In LDoN, each mission zone had its own items you could save up and buy. These items were only available by doing missions or the raids and we're wanted by all classes. In CoTF, you can buy items for every slot that you would otherwise have to camp for, including armor. You can also buy them by doing ANY heroic mission. This effectively makes West Karana and Fourth Gate zones pointless unless you are flagging for raids or addicted to achievements. You can just pick an easy "kill 40 mobs" mission that takes roughly 30-45 mins, repeat this 6 times and get your free item. If you are lucky, you will also get one or more names spawn inside the mission and have a chance if picking up more items. It gets even better if you multi-box. If you 3 box, you are effectively getting 1 item for every 2 missions (hour). And if you box a full group, you effectively get 1 item per mission! I actually like West Karana and Fourth Gate zones, but after a week on test, I don't really need to do any more in this first part of the expansion unless I want to finish achievements. It just seems like a lot of hard work with designing these zones has just been wasted by very poor itemization and heroic mission rewards.
This all straight up stinks of top end greed and disconnect between the producers and customers. It feels like the development team is massively under appreciated by management who imo should take a pay cut to employ a few more of the people who actually make this game work. Let's say the lack of attention/dedication/professionalism to this games 20th.. let me repeat 20th yes 20th expansion (which should be a time of celebration, excitement and a renewal) is troublesome on so many levels its hard to succinctly express my disappointment. It's like an unhappy marriage from which you want a divorce, because theres no love there, but you dont want to lose your sense of stability so you do "just enough" to maintain a semblance of a relationship that from outside appearances looks normal. I'm trying to remember the last time I looked at this game and thought to myself "wow they really went above and beyond to do something really nice for us!" or "this is way better than I anticipated!" Instead I feel like im perpetually underwhelmed by the barely-good-enough-to-keep-me-from-cancelling (and still do from time to time) mediocrity. I dont really want to be fence riding about if I will continue to play EQ or not. I'm going to play SOME game, because im a gamer, but why waste my life on something lackluster and obviously not regarded in a very high esteem by the organization who MAKES the bloody thing. You only live once. Right now is the most important time of our lives. Dont put off until tomorrow what you could do today if it means something to you. In short, get in the game SoE. If communication with the playerbase stays piss-poor regarding what we're tossing money at, the hamstringing of your developers continues and/or the alluded-to-full-expansion $40 worth of content doesnt arrive later this year what do you think is going to happen? Stop killing the golden goose!
Deagean: The way my friends and I like to play, we go to a really hard zone and dungeon crawl. This means my group doesn't see much loot because when we defeat PHs, we don't go back to them, we continue deeper in. This system will allow us to play as we prefer and obtain loot at a reasonable rate.
Uhm some players didn't want to go past 100, a lot of them, including myself surely did. They listened to some and the rest of us get to complain about it if we want to because regardless of anyone's opinion, we didn't get what we asked for. Not everyone can be happy about every decision and you don't get to decide which ones we're happy about. Not to mention, I remember there being a poll asking if we wanted more levels or more in depth content, we got neither it seems. Many of us don't care about "mudflation" and listening to the group that are always upset about it gives you the same result as the first problem. Those who don't care about it are going to be upset. Loved LDoN, I also loved the huge amount of rewards and more than anything that it was all level inclusive. This is not. This is only for the highest levels in the game and therefore is nothing like LDoN. They release expansions when they want, and if they would do it in July or December, it matters not one bit to me so I am not sure why this is such a selling point.
For years it was all over the boards to stop doing two expansions per year because they weren't good enough or just seemed like they were throwing too much at the players. Like 3-10 threads a year. Not sure how you missed that.
And just to clarify, I didn't mean "I'm not sure how you missed that" in a rude way. It was more about how often it came up it often was the most commented on thread at the time.
Not taken that way. I didn't frequent the boards then as much as I do now. Mostly only reading the class boards.
It was worse than the classic server threads. They were about as long and back then they weren't consolidated. So every month or three they had a long thread with people arguing about it. As with all things SOE does, they overkilled. The players aked for one more involved expansion a year like the old Kunark and such, and they went and cut the expansions down to once a year and cut all the content too in a lot of areas.
