I know Return to PoP is probably next, LDON Request for after

Yeah, this is what I was talking about. I hope they don't rehash the lore. Make LDoN as LDoN or don't make it, is my view.

LDoN was my favorite expasnion everytime i was LFG i got one within 5 minutes or so was great. I still do ldon's for currency (on fv)

What you are saying is logical, and I agree there are less resources available. You gave a arbitrary of 1/2 or 1/3rd the resources ... I would mention that we aren't getting even 1/10th the content or quality.

We are getting the same weapon skins with small tweaks made. The same zones with yet again ... small tweaks made. The exact same formula for progression / character development over and over and over.

Not to mention EQ brings in more profit to DPG than any other title they work on. Yet we are getting screwed compared to other games.

When the Dev's came out with TBL ... which didnt have tons of zones ... I was satisfied because at least it was new. At least they didn't reuse someone else idea and add a shiny surface... calling it good.

With 1/2 or 1/3rd the inputs, DPG is producing 1/20th ( being nice here ) in output.

It is not a viable business model to bleed a dwindling customer base dry. New Subs is the only way to save Everquest. Daybreak is going to have to invest heavily into EQ or it will die.

I don't think I will renew my 6 subs after this round. This expansion really showed me how bad the future looks for EQ.

I think they should do a LDoN 2.0, BUT cut out all the LDoN code and unique UI and remake the original instanced missions and new new ones using modern code, the alt-currency tab, quest window, etc.

Simplify and streamline it, for less maintenance in the future.

The developers could easily do a modification of both styles- nostalgia and new. It is not hard to (sticking to LDON) have old zones Everfrost for example be remade with a some ancient evil has caused the ground to break and a new area to erupt from the ground.

New zone next to old rehash nostalgia zone with a mixture of LDON rehash + new LDON dungeon as the players fight to find out why Halas is now gone and this new spire exists in its place.

Yes, the game and the "lore" (if you can really still call it that) is very lacking and being forced to do it through progression is not the way. A more organic way to trip over the lore or ignore the lore as in the past was a better way.

I got to be honest, I don't know 90% of the lore and care about less than 1% of the lore. I dont read through any of the progression I am forced into, I hit the little blue word and wait for the next one to pop up. I play EQ because I enjoy the game, not for the story, and yes, the nostalgia helps, but mainly, I like to kill stuff.

Grinding kills puts me in my happy place and dungeon dives like LDONs are my Christmas. Tons of joy to be had with piles of death left in my wake...

(PS. Santa, have those things I just slaughtered drop me some loot. And i dont mean a snake or wolf or bat dropping platinum.)

At the peak which was before the release of TSoV, SOE had about 200 people only working on EQ within the Verant Interactive studio. Many of them were GM/Guides and hardware supervisors which has been reduced to a minimum today. TRoK and TSoV got developed nearly simultaneously. Today 29 people (15% of 200) do work on EQ and the TLP server projects. Some of those do work on EQ II too. TSoV had 21 zones, developed in 225 days (62%) of a year based on the release dates.

The Scars of Velious:
100/62= factor 1,61
21 zones * 1,61 = 34 zones in a year / 200 = 0,17 zones per head (staff)

Night of Shadows:
7 zones in a year / 29 = 0,24 zones per head (staff)

When you subtract the many GM/Guides and hardware supervisors (theoretically 58) during TSoV
it would be pretty even 0,24 zones per head (staff). The team today is just to small to produce bigger expansions. We should not forget that in big expansions like TRoK and TSoL about 1/3 of the zones were nearly empty of players so they were overproduced and not integrated good enough but the same thing does happen with about every expansion on Antonius Bayle as the player base is much smaller today. From 7 zones only 2 or 3 do get used constantly with a low to medium population. The players do pick the easiest zones to grind experience and do ignore the others. Server merges and a better zone difficulty balance are needed. More rewarding loot (including cash loot) for harder zones should also help.

they need to add more xp reward to mob kills imho and to the tasks/missions on the part 2 expansions.. the xp gain from ToV and ToL is good enough but CoV and now NoS is not acceptable especially for how difficult the content is and by difficult im talking about mobs hitting for astronomical numbers and have huge HP pools ..

some of us dont have the resources to box 6 or 8 toons (2 outside group contributing to the dps) so it takes a min sometimes 2 to kill mobs . and named your looking at 3 to 5 min a kill .. and thats if they dont wipe the floor with us . Im talking about the average group player not people who RAID .. so if your a raider and group content is easy pls do not contribute your opinion .

grinding should give us better experience for those that like to grind. I myself can go either way , but sense mob exp is low i prefer the exp gains from tasks and missions. I would like to grind AA's though ..

I cannot get exp gains from tasks/missions in CoV or NoS (Nos im speculating as im not there , but what im reading on these boards not so much). im holding off on buying the new expansion for a few reasons first and foremost I wait till after holidays till they get the bugs worked out. second to see from these boards if the new expansion is worth it .. I will buy the basic next year for my main only because of the TS depot ,but for my other 15 accounts not sure ..this may be one expansion I skip till next year on all but my main ..

You describe two very big design flaws:

• Mobs in new expansions are way to strong/difficult and it can be very hard to set a foot into tose expansions. It does alienate customers who bought but cannot use them properly.
• Mobs do reward way to less experience and maybe also cash loot. There are xp bonuses everywhere at the cost of cash drops.

It does lock out casual players and FTP accounts. No casual or FTP player who is sane does buy such expansions. They might buy them once but not anymore then. Such expansions do foster multiboxing and professional well equipped farmers and are not fun. This problem does exist since TDS I think, maybe even earlier.

it is unlikely that a larger expansion would happen for this game considering they have not changed much of the aspects for players who are ftp even though that would help this 24 year old game last longer

I just ran into this point tonight as a player in a mix of group and raid armor. Jumped into the new expansion with only my main, I simply can't afford expansions and subs for all 3 of my accounts. Took on a quest in one of the T1 zones to get my feet wet. The kills were taking up to 5 minutes each and a concentrated effort to stay alive. Then I pulled a mob that had named-like HP but looked like a normal trash mob. It took almost a half hour to kill it. The sheer level of difference in HP on those was absolutely mind blowing considering they looked similar and frequented the same field in roughly equal numbers.

Not expecting the game to be solo friendly but stuff like that is downright spiteful to those of us that do sometimes solo.

Guessing it was a skeleton? They’re definitely bugged, extra 0 in there somewhere.

They could redo Legend of Ykesha and actually make it larger then the original expansion.

The zone count would match perfectly for a remake but will it get accepted by the players ?? The most are already tired of remakes. Starting with EoK there were six expansion remakes in a series so far and TBL is heavily inspired by the Plane of Air/Sky and PoP.

LoY was not a popular expansipn back in the days and the design of some zone parts is often poor and lacking details. Zero vegetation in the whole expansion, only dark and ugly rocks and a bad layout for Gulf of Gunthak. It seems to be unfinished and got pushed for a quick release inbetween two other good expansions (PoP, LDoN). Maybe just because of money greed as the expansion does not make any sense so close (4 months) after the release of the favoured PoP. LoY was an expansion mostly for alts and casual 2-hour players that were lacking behind.

• Crypt of Nadox
• Dulak's Harbor
• Gulf of Gunthak
• Hate's Fury, The Scorned Maiden
• Torgiran Mines

Bonus zones that got released later:

• Caverns of Exile (Solusek C)
• Halls of Betrayal (Chardok B)
• Veksar

I actually like the continuation of places we visited years ago if they are going to add something new i rather it be abilities and mechanics.

Ditto. I love seeing places later in the lore. I'm especially biased for NoS since I started in Shar Vahl, but I like it in general, as long as they don't use the exact same zone names. NoS is creative about it, but I think RoF or whatever that added a subtitle for each 'rehashed' zone worked well.