Making Old Content worth doing

I believe a lot of time has been put into the raids from each expansion. One way to make a raid worth doing even when its expansion is long past is to make it drop special items or items with effects that are not duplicated through out the rest of the game.

I guess I am talking about a greater over all design on raids over time that makes them valuable years down the road.

Here are a few ideas:
Expansion 10 raids - Drop trophies that can allow higher stats through tribute then anywhere else in the game
Expansion 11 raids - Drops items with minor clicky effects but still stronger then anywhere else in the game.
Expansion 12 raids - Higher over haste items

Make the rest of the loot tributable.

I mean so much goes into these raids and is lost when a new expansion comes out. Who still raids HoT?

Some people want more content, some want less. I just think we have so much going to waste.

Focus Decay and 25 % increases on gear across the board invalidate older expansions sadly.

Quite a shame, I agree.

Another aspect of why more recent raids are underused is that they are not accessible to 1-3 person groups as raids used to be upon aging. I could go in (assuming I bribe enough people to join my group to trigger the instance where necessary) to almost any raid in the instanced era pre-Underfoot and complete them given enough levels. Certain raids are not going to happen in this fashion, as the scripts are too complex, but those are few and far between pre-level 85 content.

Since Underfoot overly-scripted raids are the rule and not the exception.

Remove focus decay entirely. Boom, old content all worth doing again, overnight.

What about that Ebon / Radiant crystal thing? Are there actually any rewards left from that system that anyone ever uses? I do think a little cleanup is in order. I'd say take that whole thing out of the game because it just complicates things, and create an analogous set of quests using the current system (NPCs with Quest Level + above them).

It's one of the few sources of weapon augs at lower levels.

But eventually, the whole thing becomes useless, right? My current character is level 76, and if it's of no use at that level, there's no point even seeing in the numbers of crystals in my inventory. I say they streamline that. Keep the items and the augs and all that -- just make it so it's no longer a set of quests relying on crystals that clutter the inventory screen.

Anyway, just imho. I'm a big fan of clean-ups and stream-lining, so things are easier to understand.

I also think that the XP should be leveled across new and old zones, so that they are approximately equal. Has that been done already? I do see newer loot coming from older zones, like Lower Guk. As a returning player, I am completely confused by the tremendous expansion in geography, and where would be the best place to go for levels. If every place was more or less equal (maybe some can be slightly better than others), there wouldn't be competition for camps like the dragonscale farms, and whatnot.

I'd like every time I log in to camp a different spot. There are so many zones. Groups are hard to find, and other players I ask are also usually returners and confused about where to go.

Well, a fair point from the OP and I totally agree but the practicality is very tricky. What I would suggest is more evolving items from earlier expansions but also quested items that grow in stats and can be followed on in subsequent expansions. For example the Coldain Prayer Shawl TS range went very nicely into HoT but I would like to see the vast amount of quested items from past expansions also receive similar type upgrade paths linked to new expansions which would mean raiding old content could be made slightly worthwhile even if the levels would have to be ramped down like with some monster missions to make it fair - a lvl 100 wizard walks through kael drakkal and owns! To be fair, I just would like to see the huge effort being carried on in some way. C.F.

Phenocryst's Focus
Ring of the Shissar
Black Orb of the Scrykin
Secrets of the Planes
Tome of New Beginnings
Smooth Black Matter Gemstone
The Skull of Den Lord Rakban
Assistant Researcher's Symbol
Signet of the Arcane
Glowing Combine Signet Ring
Shroud of the Dar Brood
Shield of the Otherworld
Pitted Iron Ring

Using DoN as an example, giving a small % based benefit as an AA for completion of progression is a good way to ensure enough people will want to go back and do old events occasionally, and will never be fully obsolete.

WTB removal of 12 man req to open chest in the ganak raid,the raid is now legit soloable, but still takes 12 people to open the chest, lol wut?

/agree

I would not want to see gear upgraded or number of players in raid req removed.

many have been asking for focus decay to be removed for years.

Partially worth doing.

It would only extend back maybe one expansion at most, for nearly all items, simply because of stat inflation.

I can't see a purpose in removing focus decay.

It's one of those things where if they do it odds are most people wont notice, and if they don't we'll still probably not notice or care.

I find it annoying and can't think of how it's reasonable. It works similar to how other games do things like secondary stats where you level up and now you need more to do what you did last level cap. But with EQ it only applies to some classes and unfairly at that.

Some of these suggestions would be good if it were more feasible to put Dev time specifically towards this sort of thing.

With that in mind, the answer has to be to stop or slow down the rate at which old content becomes worthless compared to current content. "Gear reset" type expansions (all of them since TSS or SoF depending on how you count) would have to stop mudflating the top end by 30%+.

Online resources like Allakhazam's can be very helpful to knowing the world geography and the monsters and loot inside said dungeons.

We require tanks to get the most current gear in order to do their jobs at all where most other class types do not. They do their jobs at a slightly diminished capacity, but they still function. Get upgraded spells and an item or two and you're set. The rest is just gravy. How is this different?

All across old zones are NPCs that say "I can't talk right now, I'm waiting for someone very important to arrive." There's several to each zone, all races, everywhere... but for years, they've been useless as far as I know. Always reminds me of the waiting for OP image, those NPCs should be skeletons by now for waiting on that "someone important".

Shrouds could be worked on so it opens up new quests, so selecting a gargoyle shroud gives some available quests in Mistmoore. Re-amped versions, hard 90+ raids that give a universal token reward for HoT and lower raid loots. I mean, the potential is there.

However, I doubt it'll ever happen. There's no money to be had and it wouldn't involve SC in any way I can imagine.

If there is a new shissar-like ssra zone (and if Dzarn ended up working on it) there's probably a chance he'd have pulled in a new quest around the old ring of the shissar or something. Least it's something that's right down his alley lore wise.

There's a difference between necessary and useful. Old raid content is not necessary because EQ is not just a raiding game. The grouping game has to mudflate 25-30% every expansion otherwise people get bored and quit. You see it already with RoF: why am I buying RoF, this expansion is useless no upgrades over VoA, etc. etc. etc. With grouping gear mudflating 25-30% every expansion, raid gear has to inflate the same amount to keep on par, and the result is that old raiding content becomes obsolete because new group content obsoletes it.

Don't mudflate group game - grouping people get bored and quit. Do mudflate group game - old group / raid content become obsolete. This is a zero sum game and the alternative was the days before SoF when group gear was kept so below raid gear that the grouping game was dead and the game was raid only. With the newer expansions, you got the grouping game back, but the raiding game paid for it.

Keeping old raid content useful is another matter and yes, clickies and unique items and AA grants do that just fine. The issue there is that a lot of raids aren't designed to be tackled with fewer people. This is a design problem and one that devs have to be careful of when they design raids. Requiring 12 people to open a chest was cool and all when the raid was current. But come 2-3 years down the line and these scripted limits take their toll.