How will the "Easy Mode" standard affect raiding?

And will the banner work with the raids from the next expansion?

Not for the first 6 months and you will be stuck with the old banner until the new one unlocks at the 6 month mark on a live server and the 1 month mark on a TLP server.

Ahhh so there will be a new banner each year? I missed all that. That seems like an elegant solution to me.

Nope, there is just a single banner just that it you are not able to plant it in open world at all or in a dz until after 6 months (1 month TLP) have passed since the expansion launched. They did this so that it can't be used at the start of an expansion to make it easier but it can be after 6 months to help those that are struggling.

We do? Where is the difficulty setting? I seem to have completely missed it in all these years of playing this game.

There is nothing stopping anyone from completing all content, they just need to have a lot of friends to complete it all. Its what MMORPGs are all about. Some don't want to play with that many people, but that is fine too.

There are no zones anymore that aren't available to anyone and the raids are just a ramped up version of the missions so those who don't raid aren't missing anything, other than missing the frustration when people fail emotes.

Our casual raids have beaten modern content including all achivements. It just would be really nice to have a raid banner rather than a guild banner as we have a mix of many guilds in our force.

The banner being guild specific and not raid specific is likely tied to the ability to use the guild hall portal to transport yourself directly to the banner. It's probably too much of a technical hurdle to make possible multiple guilds each using their own guild portal to teleport to a banner owned by a raid leader who might be in a different guild. You'd also have to be able to deal with the scenario where a single guild has players in multiple raids simultaneously doing different things and each raid has their own raid banner. How does the system decide which banner to send you to?

Now, maybe they could make the banner into a simple buff totem and not a teleport target.

Seems like it would be no different then a fellowship campfire and the click that takes you there. I see it as just adding the needed code and creating a new portal item that is for the raid banner. Just a matter of priorities and what they would need to put off doing in order to make the changes.

Fixed some stuff for you.

There is nothing stopping anyone from doing the progression. EQ is not a solo game.

Afaik, the "massive" in MMO simply refers to the massive world people play in.

There's no reason why it has to involve massive raids. Many MMO don't have raids, many don't even have traditional grouping.

I don't think large 54 man raids in EQ actually contribute much, they tend to result in isolated groups of people who do little more than log into the guild hall, enter an instance and log off.

It becomes increasingly difficult for guilds to fill the ranks when populations decline. Why have these large raids when most guilds can't even yield a full raid.

If that raid zone isn't accessible to regular players, that's a lot investment going to a developer making content for a few guilds.

When a thread comes up asking what the most memorable or fun moment in EQ was, it often starts off with "me and my friend", or "me and my group". Never have a I heard "me and my raid". Raiding is fine, but it's not very memorable anymore in EQ, it's just a loot fest and then people burn out and quit, then the guild collapses and everyone else quits too. I don't think raiding actually contributes much to EQ in its present form.

The most fun MMO I played, did not have raids or traditional groups at all.

I don't get what point you're trying to make? In a thread about an updated banner mechanic being added to the game, you Kramer in with an "I hate raiding" hot take that just shows you don't actual do any raiding in this game. Got it, cool story, but rather irrelevant to the discussion.

No, it is not a solo game, but depending on the server you are on, you can be hard pressed to find a group, hence many people reverting to boxing or using that which shall not be named.

There are those of us that are lucky enough to have a guild that has plenty of solo players to group up with so that we don't have to go to genchat to spam it with LFG, but others, a good deal many, don't have that luxury.

Well, you put something between quotation marks I never said. I don't "hate" raiding, I just don't like it in its current form.

Guilds struggling to yield enough players and raid difficulty has to constantly be tuned down. Instances lock people off from the world, raid guilds lose all connection to the live game or live players who do not see raiding with strangers as an attractive proposition.

It is no wonder raid guilds suffer from attrition. Potential players are left with very little choice, resulting in people server hopping and losing all connection to their home server. Regular player feels no connection to raid guilds nor server hopping players.

Raids don't contribute to the live world of EQ. Few people do raid content, 1-3 guilds per server. Most of these guilds are struggling to yield enough players, which is why raids have to continuously be made easier. Daybreak makes raid content for an increasingly diminishing playerbase which is unsustainable.

I am going guess

1. you where not playing before they did instances for raids.
2. you where and loved the fighting between guilds that happened and the hate of raider by the non raiders back then.

I was playing back then and while the rush of getting to a raid named 1st was fun. Clearing your way to the raid and while getting setup for the raid to have another guild just rush pass you or come in while you where fighting and do something to wipe you so they could kill the raid(common trick was to run in and ae food/water so you healers couldn't cast and while you ran back they killed named). Was not fun at all.

Seems kind of weird that people complain when an item gets an upgrade. In Everquest. Where all people do is chase upgrades.

There's plenty of MMO with open world raids that are conditionally spawned. Inter-guild killing or training is simply avoided by encounter locking.

EQ has completely separated the instanced raiding world from the living world. You're not going to convince a regular player to join a raid guild, when he or she has no connection to these players. Raiders who are often server hopping and just log in to raid and log off.

Daybreak keeps making raids easier to counter raid guild attrition where most guilds can not yield 54 players. This temporarily solves tuning issues, but someone at Daybreak will realise that making content for a small and rapidly dwindling population is not sustainable.

You seem completely out of touch with the current raid scene. Some of your statements are just not accurate right now. More guilds have beaten NoS when compared to several previous expansions. Open raids on several servers have never been more successful than they are right now.

Sometimes, its in the best interest of developers to reinforce a good thing to ensure it stays good. I see this change in that realm. Not some nefarious attempt to save the sinking ship - something you seem to continually promote year over year, yet the boat still is floating.

Raid difficulty has been tuned down so much that 40 people with a pulse can beat most raids. It's not a sign of a healthy raid environment.

Daybreak has an incentive to make raids continuously easier. Several servers are down to 2 active raid guilds, a collapse of any of them would result in many quitting the game.