Laurion's Song: Only 2 Missions and 8 Raids

I have ZERO idea where this "group players don't do missions" nonsense came from.

I can only speak for Drinal, but in the first 3 or 4 months of an expansion, I see EVERYONE doing missions...raiders, group players...even the "log in once a week" players. Even at this time of year, I still see people trying to get into current and previous expansion missions. And I don't mean people wanting to pay THAT GUY (you know who I'm talking about) to run missions for them in exchange for krono. I mean people just wanting to run the missions.

My guildmates and I are all non-raiders. When a new expansion launches, we try to get missions on farm status as fast as possible in order to gear up. Then we focus on the achievements. We TRY to get them all ourselves, with no outside help, but some have mechanics that just aren't doable when you box multiple characters (Mean Streets comes to mind). We hate having to get outside help to do something, but we're always grateful when someone (usually from a raiding guild) gives us a hand. We always return the favor when they have people/alts that need to get the missions and achievements done.

Once we have the missions down, we'll run as many of them them as we can, every night that we can...even the sucky ones...for gear and currency. Eventually, yeah, we'll start to lose interest in them...but always after our main toons are nearly completely geared up and we've gotten several type 5 augs. Basically, we run the missions until we don't need to anymore.

My biggest fear is we will get the more difficult missions that folks needed to get help with and not the ones that are more farmable.

I am also hoping we see a 50% reduction (at least) in mission timers. I say at least a 50% reduction because if someone only has a few hours to log in they might have been able to do 4 separate missions but not 2 and wait 3 hours for another 2.

So the issue of how this will impact gearing up is there.

I have a full set of 5s and I can only do one mission. If you are on BB you may have seen me giving away TA for One Door every weekend morning and the chest loot. I have at least 12 (gotta be more) level 120 toons and they have all the trinkets from the chests. That is what sucks about one mission getting trinkets and one getting armor. I spent a lot of time at Arly in PC.

The missions ARE to hard for groupers. The raid mechanics need to be tossed. Just give us the kill so many then spawn a named.

They're not necessarily HARD...they're tiresome, and (in the case of missions like Spirit Fades) take WAY too long to do for people that likely have limited play time. They've also started making them very unfriendly to boxers, unless you're using 3rd party cheat software. I'm OK with the group missions giving a taste of the raid version, but to basically include every single mechanic, in the same quantities, from the raid is just nauseating and turns people off from doing them.

They SHOULD be tougher than just "kill X mobs, kill big boss", but what they've been doing in the last couple of expansions is too much. I really don't care if they're tuned down to the point where raiders just streamroll through them in a couple of minutes; the gap between top end group gear and raid gear is so obscenely vast that they would have to make every mission basically unplayable for group geared players in order to placate the raiders. Raiders have raids...leave the group missions to the group players.

And yes...bless Arly. I put him on my Christmas card list.

There needs to be a 0 lockout timer on these missions. This is the only game that I've seen with a cooldown on missions, outside of mobile games that want you to buy from the shop. It's so asinine to lockout people out of missions for 6 hours. The player pool is small enough, and then they restrict that even further.

Farmable?

Have to realize EQ EQ before this TBL-NoS trend.
farmable things were like Loping planes worgs, dsh farm, katta shisshar.
Quests, benefits everyone, solo/molo/groupers

Missions only benefit boxers/ end game groupers/raiders
5 years later, trying to get the xp solo, same issues as 80-125.

Your not solving anything with missions/raids. When it comes to catchup newplayer/returner.

A level 113 isn't doing griklor mission by themselves for the xp. They probably not even in TBL either. They like 2 to 3 expansions behind which is bad. Shoot a 120 newplayer most likely can't even do girklor mission solo. They can't because solo, need 3 players.

This video: GINA, box, with a boxing program, with geared toons, up to date toons.
Newplayer doesn't have any of that, they'd get stomped because they molo, even at 120.

Negates the effectiveness of missions.

Hence the older EQ got it right.
Quests, not missions.
killing worgs in loping planes, interested? You get some nice items once you have better faction. Just from killing worgs farming the quest.

Also, MMORPG isn't just about killing stuff.
There is a roleplaying aspect, this game seems to have driven off a majority of the roleplayers, which is bad because this is an MMORPG game.
Stuff like new fishing system, new vehicles, like a ship
Fun activities anyone can do,

Not sure what your point is. Never ever said missions solve returning or new player issues. Missions are farmable you farm them for gear.

I think your post was better as a stand a lone post and not in response to me because I don't get it.

I get why theres a lockout.

I'd have had a cloak and full crafted t3 visible armor for my main box group in 1 sitting (thanks bridge and door for being bridge and door) and probably spending another day doing the much less box friendly ones with someone else for 5's, 7's,and the one weapon they forget to implement a rare-drop variant for.


I hope that if theres actually only 2, one is Zlandicar / Shei / Door, and one can be the more involved kind, and its not 2 of the "this is stuffed deep behind progression and also annoying as hell" variety.

And also a return to ores vs facets (at least for group content, its different in raids where you likely arent auto-trashing every non-augment facet because they are almost guaranteed to be worthless). The otherworldly system can jump off a tall bridge into shallow water. Full of rocks and other sharp bits. On the surface of the sun. With sharks and stuff.

The one available mission in LS is of annoying as hell kind.

They need to make shrouds. Everyone can enjoy, anyone can participate in.
https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=5537

Laurion Song, storytelling, dream world. So shrouds is perfect.

Lockout because people would breeze through it. Whose likely to get all the casual group missions day 1? raiders. day 2 they'll have everything maxed from those group missions if there is no timer.

Just like their raids. T3 raids, raiders would destroy tier 1,2, and 3 day 1 if they had all the raids open.

They center missions around raiders. They make raids easy for raiders. Everything they have been doing past 5 years year after year basically raiders raiders raiders.

Roleplaying? None.
Catchingup/newplayers/returners? None.

OMM missions benefits everyone. Boomerang brawl benefits everyone. MM/shroud missions/quests/activities benefit everyone.

You don't have to be a 125 70 or more out of 94+ heroic AA, fully geared, good group, etc. to be progressing when there is a MM, just 1 or 2 or catchup content 1 or 2. Activites 1 or 2.

Only good thing from UF was Boomerang Brawl. They've been using the UF scheme ever since but they only use the bad things. Raiders raiders raiders.
Raiders, get rid of that boomerang brawl.

Boomerang Brawl was THE thing to do as a casual during UF.

I'm ok with 8 new raids if they brought another from one of the greats and tune it up for 125. There were a lot of banger raids over the decades and odds are those are better than brand new raid anyway, Triune God tune up to max level, maybe add an extra mechanic or two or three

Right? For anniversary they should bring back a few of the older, harder raids. Things people didn't beat right away. For Mearatas, they wouldn't even need to scale it up much! Just add new loot. Plus the new versions could be flag-free so everyone could give em a try.

Of course then the complaint would be that not EVERYONE could beat the events the very first run...

Sad on raid count (not 9+).
Actually fine on mission count. Less rinding to earn my type 5 augs. The past 2 expansions there has been no reason other than type 5's to chain do group missions.

Yeah I am glad you said it because I did not want to. Oh and btw my whole take is from a boxers point of view btw. So Yeah it is to hard for this old man, because I dont do what you were talking about.

Maybe the missing missions will be added for anniversary?

Tell us you don't know anything about business without telling us you don't know anything about business. As a raider who also does a ton of group content while raiding 3-4 nights a week I think the lack of group missions is a terrible idea and perpetuating some divide between group and raid players is just a foolish endeavor that leads to less players overall, less content, less revenue and hastens the eventual end of the game.

I'm a group player. I spend about 70 percent of my time doing missions bc I find them fun and rewarding.

Only 2 group missions is unfortunate. I'd rather any other aspect of the expansion be cut.

Anniversary content should not be replacing normal expansion content. There need to be Anniversary tasks/missions, preferably staying with us for entire year (GMM comes to mind).

Regarding missions, I'm surprised people consider 1 - 2, or even 4 missions to be acceptable group content for 12 months. We used to have more missions and we used to also have Heroic Adventures. Past few years it's only 4 missions for groupers. Seriously?

If raids were slashed from 9 to 4, there would be riots.

Group content has 2 missions? Crickets.

If expansions get any smaller they might as well just call them anniversay content & officially declare EQ as being in maintenance mode.

The amount of annual expansion content we are getting has almost decreased to the size of a content patch for some mainstream MMORPG's that they get 3 or 4 times a year.

8 Raids and 2 missions in an annual expansion is miserly in the extreme, it's a piss-take, the devs are doing their best but they are not being given the resources to even make adequately sized expansions any more.

It's a bad joke how expensive the editions with extras are.

It's like paying 30 bucks for a tiny slither of burger & then the restaurant asking you for an addtion 200 bucks to give it a bun, lettuce, mayo, tomatoes, onions, cheese & sauce & if you want bacon as a perk that's another 40 bucks.

If EQ was the meat in the above burger someone just took a bite out of it for "reasons" & put it back in expecting you to still pay the same for it.

Maybe next year they just chuck the burger out altogether & let you buy a bunch of themed extras each year at various tiers.

Very well said buddy! I too am very disappointed. I pre-ordered the expansion 3 times for my main accounts including one friends and family (horribly named by the way!) and 2 standard editions so I will use the tradeable token from the FNF version to cover a 4th account. They need to hire more people, get a better organizational structure and stop avoiding having interaction with the community especially from management.

One community manager that posts here, in Discord and social media with the very limited info is very frustrating and not helpful most of the time. Not to mention all the copy and paste of previous articles that were not well written or poorly worded in the first place. She has a thankless job and management isn't supporting her or the devs/coders/art team well either and it's way past time that was changed.

Without EQ there is no Daybreak and the CEO of Daybreak & EG7 needs to realize that and address it, Jen and whoever else is in management needs to as well. Any other company would either work on doing better and correctiing these issues or they'd be out of business.