Slowly but surely I am losing more and more ambition to even log on regularly in this expansion. Last expansions delayed release tested me more then ever but once my mains advancement stalled I found enough to keep my interest through my newly rolled alts advancements. This expansions delayed half tier release is all but destroying my motivation to log in. I've always been the type of player to get on every day/night for several hours a week. I have several max level toons with thousands of aa and almost as many over level 95. Once I found out it was a delayed release expansion I was bummed out, but it got five times worse when I found it it was a half tier that was released. The lure of HAs lost their luster quickly. Copy/paste rinse/repeat achievements held my interest about as long. The expansions that were released in full allowed me several months to get my mains through it at my own pace and then go back through it on my alts repeating the steps my mains took. The delayed release expansions force me to repeat on my alts what I just did on my mains a few weeks ago. Which is very redundant. This is not a rant but a plea to stop this delayed release business. I know delayed release is not a new thing. It's been done before. For me its totally different at this stage of the game. I don't know. Maybe it's time for a break from EQ. Which by the way I haven't done for over 6 years. Am I alone?
Expansion-capped progression guild or a self-imposed challenge would be my recommendations. If you have a friend who would be interested in duoing through it with you, there's still considerable fun to be had doing a self-imposed no defiant + crappy tiers of mercs only (A2 or less) slow-paced leveling progression through older zones. My EQ gaming partner wanted to make a ranger alt a while back, but didn't want to power level it up, so I rolled a rogue and we embarked on a self-imposed challenge like that described above, with a druid main on hand for porting convenience, rezing, and level-appropriate buffs as needed (generally we weren't using powerleveling-grade buffs, but rather stuff a druid around our level would actually be able to give us). We started with Befallen, Blackburrow, and Kurn's and moved our way up from there, eventually passing through Crystal Caverns (my first time ever leveling through that zone) and doing a few LDoNs later on as well. The characters are levels 52 and 53 now, and it's been quite a fun ride. He was interested in seeing more of how the game used to play, and I was interested in figuring out Make Poison and playing the role of the invisible forward scout in dungeon crawling. It turned out to be a good match. You could also consider a challenge in which you refuse to lose dropped loot (or at least, a large subset of possible dropped loot, e.g. no defiant) and force yourself to use tradeskills to make your own set of equipment entirely, by crafting it USING the new character(s) in question. (Obviously making a character who is somewhat gear-dependent is preferable in that scenario - possibly a monk or berserker, or even a rogue if you don't mind weaving in Make Poison.) If doing the latter, I would at least allow yourself some minor platinum twinking (just giving money to the character to start tskilling with), unless you find farming for platinum on a low level character sufficiently fun to want to disallow that (personally I find farming for plat boring, so I tend to allow that much of an out for the sake of keeping the pace brisk enough for it to be enjoyable).
I just hope there is some new stuff to do over the Christmas/New Year period. Winter is always my high playtime and when I get most if not all progression done. Unfortunately this year I've already finished it.
WTB Tower of Frozen Shadows back if nothing else for the holiday season! ------ New content would be ideal though!
This release model is very boring, and sucks. It's killed any semblance of a raid progression race on the top end. And on the group side, everything is done super fast. It also seems to put the dev team into a permanent crunch time so they listen to even less feedback than normal. The EQ team, size and personality wise is not cut out to deal with the redundant work loads of beta testing 3-4 releases a year.
I have only purchased the expansion for one of my 6 accounts(mage for the pet aa) . I don't really think I'm missing anything. The merc aa/gear turned our to be next to nothing for power improvements. All new zones are is a small change of scenery. I don't play every day, so I am still enjoying RoF/SoF. This may be the first expansion I just skip over. I have more fun twinking up characters, then I do playing the game. They never could recreate some of the classic zones like : guk, sebilis, karnors sol b etc.. Too bad, those kept people busy for several expansions,
Almost no one in my guild is doing much in the new expansion. I think a combination of no level increase plus the focus on mercs has resulted in not much excitement. For me, the most fun expansion in recent memory was House of Thule.
I too think House of Thule was the most fun expansion in recent memory. I love the combination of it being a full release expansion as well as the lock tiered mission based progression.
Tiers, armor sets, locked zones, cookie cutter gear...people used to hang out in those old dungeons because they all had different and unique loot.
lol so in the past when you haded the year of stuff at once to due in the fall do what you do then when you get done earily.
It is going to be real interesting to see how each release is.... if there are not new aa's and not anything exciting other than 3-4 zones similar to the first release i could see a lot of people quiting with no reason to play after a week or two into the expansion.... Things like the shawl aug in t3 rof .... class weapons in t4 ...MM/sol B revamps helped bridge the gaps last year.... hopefully they will have something in store for us... i know next release will hopefully be soon... then anniversary and plane of war should hopefully be interesting... Since the release of this expansion a majority of people were able to beat the content fairly quick and obtain everything they wanted.... and have been sitting around waiting .... and will continue to wait for the next release
There is nothing to do in CotF not because it's staggered but because of the size of the chunk that we got. It's simply too small. Some people wanted a new LDoN (I still don't understand why), and they got a similar amount of content here. But LDoN was a satellite to PoP. Everybody was still playing in PoP, and LDoN added more stuff to do, but it was not the only stuff to do. And rewards from LDoN mattered: those augs were well worth the time. Not so with CotF. There is no 'main' expansion that still holds everybody's focus. And the 'rewards' from CotF are in the LOLWUT category. It's a half-baked quarter of an expansion. I still maintain faith in the staggered release model, but it needs to be done a LOT better than this.
I like the delayed release system. I do wish we were told dates and quantities of zones/raids/AAs though.
There is a love/hate relationship with locked zones, and I don't think we're going to see that style of progression ever again.
Broza, you are not alone. I log onto EQ these days to help others, farm old (-er) content, fill in time with old unfinished quests or flags. I have 4 toons that are pretty much max aa, done with progression and all that stuff. I refuse to do hunter in cotf - its inane and insane. running missions 60 times trying for a name. and I have to do it 4 times ( my toons are all on same account). I completed the tear of alaris on all 4 toons, that's how insane I am, yet this expansion has me wanting to find another game. now my biggest quest is to have 100 million plat banked. talk about boring. I have 60 million donated to guild tribute. I join general chat and try to find people who need something or some help, I offer up assistance farming epic pieces. I have factioned my toons to be able to any epic drop I find and hand them out (free) to people who seek them. but actually play eq in cotf? why? I would rather go to work than play EQ - and I haven't felt that way since November 1999 when I first logged in.
Which is a disappointment, the progression missions gave everyone a reason to group. Also gave you a feeling of accomplishment when you could go somewhere new, something the achievements sadly don't do. House of Thule was the last expansion I really enjoyed.
I completely agree Axxius...... in comparison even the number of hero missions were chopped in half... also made very simple.... practically boss only fights.... RoF at least had some long missions ... at least with those and augs in those it gave ya something to do while being annoying haha I would agree progression missions and flagging are something I think is a must to be put back into the game... it helps guilds end game and non end game work together to get their maybes flagged and into these zones where they can get greater exp and rewards..... to be honest now all guilds just need one person that can request the raids... thus the reason its all beaten day 1.... I honestly wouldn't hate seeing raids require X amount of people to have certain group content done to be able to be flagged for the raid.... harder yes... but will make these mini release last more than a week
Also there has been a real lack in fun items to chase in this expansion so far minus the bonus aa abilities..... i imagine they will be added with releases for augs and stuff based on beating all the content ect. Even in RoF you got a nice reward from the collection completion... but as previously stated its a small chunk 1/2 of what the RoF release had so hopefully they will be added eventually
