Lol. I remember a few non-raiders (I'm not suggesting previous poster is a non-raider or a fan of exclusive raid content that almost destroyed EQ - I don't know or care) suggesting raids service too few players, raiding was easy, etc, Bixies (for example) is not easy and we are talking about T1 content besides. Check out the RoF Guild Progression list. 31 guilds have beaten T4, not farmed it and geared up in it rewarding it's members, just beaten it. Only 56 guilds out of the 81 listed as bona fide progression raid guilds beating T1. IMO with 80 progression guilds I'd hope for (and SOE very well may not agree) a bell curve something like 20 with T4 done and farmed 40 with a mixture of T2 and T3 done and farmed with some of those making some progress in T4 - no absolute need to linger in that content when the next expansion arrives. 20 beating at least T1 rewarding them with better than group gear given their commitment to do more than just group content RoF is not substantially undertuned given what I believe are reasonable stay in business and do right by all raiders expectations. I don't expect CotF to be much different. 11 having completed T1A and only 29 out of 81 guilds completing the first raid thus far.
Depends on what people's definition of challenge and accomplishment is. If people define proper raiding as something that has to eat up vast amounts of time in terms of flagging/keying, learning events and then slogging through a script that could last hours per event in a dedicated zone full of scripted events than its doubtful the game will reverse course to go back in that direction. The whole MMO genre in general doesn't cater to that. It might be reasonable to suggest that there was actually some strong push back from the general non-gaming public that investing 40-60-80 hours or more into a game was generally speaking socially unacceptable and a general detriment to society in line with being addicted to meth or smack. There was bad press about it. Something had to give. Plus, most of us grew up and got busy. My personal preference are raids that are still a challenge, but over and done with quickly, win or lose. The challenging of raiding should not be how long you can hold off your responsibilities in life or even personal hygiene doing the busy work involved in how raiding used to be just to get some pixilated looted. The current way that raiding is done seems to be an acknowledgement to that and in some ways it makes raiding look artificially easy. Mostly because all the time sinks are cut out of having to flag 60-70 people or farm some key JUST to progress to the next event. It doesn't matter if that event dies in 5 minutes if it took you 2 months just to key for it and thus people look fondly back upon that "challenge". Anyway, if there is any shark jumping, it is just mainly due to trying to find a way to out-fox guilds like ROI. From that angle, its is pretty fair to say that the game devs have given up on making anything that will do that. It would be like trying to make the SATs be a challenge for geniuses. The end result would be hardly anyone would go to college.
I cant think of any video game where i would ever accept this. I wouldnt accept it in 90% of most things in my life ( cant think of any off the top of my head but I'm sure there are a few so I gave myself 10% leeway.) When I asked friends who play mmos but dont play eq if they play any games that have done what eq is doing they looked at me like an idiot. Is there a precedent for this in other games? Iirc eq2 did like mini expansions right? The difference with rof was the fact there were at least 2 entire tiers and had at least some semblance of wholeness, this expansion is only half a tier at launch and feels so incomplete. Ugh I'm so annoyed, im one of those whiny gloom and doom guys now.
pfft. I can't imagine any episodic video game where I'd even hesitate to do this. I pay in advance for services not yet rendered all of the time. When I asked my sons what they thought about it, they told me that in playing WoW people took on faith that there would be some free content/feature updates and that $40 expansions would have sufficient content to justify buying them. Usually WoW expansions were twice as much money for 1/2 of the content of the initial release. Oh, they also reminded me that in WoW if you ran out of content too bad. Your issue was not Blizard's emergency - they released new content when they choose to release it. Not some every 3-4 months like EQ. $40 a year. Less than a dollar a week is too expensive unless everything is delivered upfront? Hahahahahaha!!!!! Well sir or madam, I recommend waiting until T4 is released to buy so you can have things your way. It's not required that you purchase anything. If its not worth it to you or you don't like the terms don't buy it. That's the same deal offered by all episodic/expansion games. Tyvm. Ya know, the ugly weapons for the last few years (I prefer the elegant designs of new player weapons), OMG - it's soul sapping. I'm surprised everyone doesn't just up and quit!
SOE's new expansion model is penny wise but dollar foolish. I'm sure the executives at SOE happily accept the new expansion model driving people away from the game as long as the cost savings is larger; which I assume is the case. However, over time it will be harder and harder to get people back to the game, which is basically how EQ is sustained. People come and go from the game all of the time, but when they go without a good reason to come back, they won't. Wrong. WoW expansions are $40 at launch. WoW expansions are also basically full size at launch. You get $40 worth of expansion at WoW expansion launches. You don't get $40 worth of expansion at EQ expansion launches. I find it funny that someone with your political views is shilling for the poor consumer practices of a corporation. What SOE is doing with EQ expansions is not in line with industry norms. ------------- PS: Stop it with the walled off zones. If you're going to make only 4 launch zones, making 2 of the zones merely launching points for HA's is kind of crap.
People cry every time there's a nerf People cry when another class is strong, blaming their own shortcomings with their own class on that other class being "OP". People cry every time they don't get big stats. People cry about inflation in stats. People cry every time they focus on raiders. People cry every time they focus on groupers or soloers. People cry when they change EQ graphics. People cry when they recycle old zones or fail to update graphics. People cry when they ignore the lore. People cry when they make you sit through dialogue or story-lines. People cry when they don't add 7000000 new AAs. People cry when they add too many AA to grind. People cry when it's challenging. People cry when it's easy. This could go on and on but you catch my drift. People will cry about everything. When people post on these forums, it's almost indefinitely about something they are upset about. Never about how pleased they are with the game or decisions that have been made. so you only see the negative. The outspoken few. I don't think there's any real new influx of naysayers and doomsayers. No more than in the past. Everyone has differing opinions on what should happen in this game (the devs included) and everyone has their personal conspiracy theories as to why the devs took the opposite path when and if they do. Doesn't mean the game is going to die, doesn't even mean the community thinks it's going to die. It just means people cry too much. Way way too much. And, most importantly, refuse to acknowledge playstyles and opinions outside of their own.
So, Rainbowdash, is it possible, according to your definition above, for a player to actually have a legitimate complaint about a change that is put by the developers? Are all complaints just unfounded whining, in your book? What could constitute a legitimate complaint?
This is incorrect. A majority of the "top level" content is released through out the expansion cycle. WoW is all about gated content and a controlled release system. That has been their SOP for a while.
That's an easy one. Lack of merchantability - the product fails to deliver in any way on its basic function. The toaster in the box can not toast bread. False advertising - people did not have any idea what they were buying. CotF's content was described accurately before purchase. People knew it was some now and some later. Classes participated in Beta and knew in many cases what new abilities and tirmmed abilities where going to be before purchase. Yet you see players who you know participated in beta, knew exactly what was coming, buy and THEN complain. Your 1/4 pound hamburger (pre-cooked weight) does not have 1/2 pound of beef in it. Excuse my, but when you knowingly buy, get what you knew you were getting, its unreasonable to protest about what you bought. And Kamea - my sons say there were expansions that cost twice as much ($40) as the initial release ($20) of WoW and had half of the content of the initial release. Further they confirm Blizard unlike SOE today did not provide additional tiers as content updates every 3-4 months. You took on faith that there would be further content updates as you ran out of content and usually they did, but they parceled it out when they wanted to. If you know me and know my "political" views you know I'm obsessive about rules. Rules apply to customers as well as publishers. One can complain MMoRPG publishers get away with conduct that would not be tolerated in any other part of the software industry. Perhaps, but so do their customers. I'm happy with what I'm getting and was last expansion too <= paid and still here. I see no reason to try to bully SOE into providing more, which they would obviously have provided if they could have in the first place. Thanks for the epic ornaments, Nagafen, hardcore heritage, and multiple tiers of content since I first bought RoF SOE. You guys are sooo cash and I really mean it. SOE delivered.
Oh everyone's complaints are legitimate, in some way shape or form. Even if whatever you're complaining about is just your opinion, it's still a legitimate complaint to you and you'll always find people that agree. I'm just saying it's impossible to please everyone. The devs do one thing, people complain, the devs then do the opposite, other (different) people complain. They try to find a balance but that's a rather difficult thing to do, more so now than it would have been back during EQ's "prime". My major point being, though, that I don't believe there's any new influx of negativity as of late than there has been the last few years.
I love this game although I miss getting groups just to play for fun. Most players are so wrapped up with..I have to beat this tier, I have to level fast so that I can play with everyone else, and so few actually take the time to stop and talk to those not in their guild or group. The LoDN expansion was my favorite for that reason. I miss that part of the game. I am not planning on buying the new expansion.
