Mix it up a bit for new expansions

It would be intelligent to first read the whole discussion before making pointless and boastful comments.

It is not only about me getting duped, it is that most customers do get duped. You can find a few reasons here. Another reason is that buying a new expansion does not offer doable content for players with weaker PCs like on, but not only, FTP accounts. Or that two account slots do get locked after a subscription does end. Or that buying items from the marketplace do turn out being crap, having the wrong size, being bugged, etc. No return policy, corrections and bugfixes there since ever. There are many dirty tricks that do get used on the customers.

Also, instead of having a completely modular market system, parts do get braided into other parts to create necessities, like the two account slots that do first get unlocked when paying for a subscription and that later do get locked after the subscription does end. DBG does not inform the customers before the purchase, that this will happen and they never did anything to remove that well known player problem. No reply, just silence.

Another and already mentioned necessity is that when buying an expansion, it does only offer doable content when also buying a subscription and there is still no guarantee that that will then fit. Again, there is no notice to the customer that new expansions do also require a subscription. It is like buying a car (expansion) and then noticing that it has no motor (AllAccess) build in. It does force the player to either buy a subscription (forced upselling) or to ditch the expansion.

Why do new expansions not get locked for FTP accounts or a note with a list of requirements being added, that new expansions do require AllAccess, a certain PC level and which type of gear or unbuffed HP ?

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The amount of players that want a locked server like that are small compared to the rest of the TLP population.

Live zones only have a handful of quests and those only give large amounts of XP on the first completion, not to mention those old zones also have quests.

EQ is not in maintenance mode, if it was we wouldn't have gotten the 64 bit conversion, direct x 11 upgrade, the new UI, or the new expansion with new features. Just because the expansions remain small doesn't mean that the game is in maintenance mode which is when they do no new work on the game.


And no players at the max level can't really live with an unneeded catchup expansion because they are not going to continue to play for a year or longer with nothing new to do.

It is content that helps players catch up.

So much wrong here.
Maintenance mode means no new content at all. It means just maintaining the servers.

We had the discussion about the maintenance mode so often now. It had received the 64 bit upgrade, the upcoming Dx 11 update and all the other stuff for maintaining it "alive". The game would be dead quickly without all those necessary changes and no further expansions. Financially it does mean that the game has a fixed and very limited budget which can only be exceeded for very important reasons that are absolutely needed. 7-zone expansions are within that budget and also the minimum to maintain the game. The servers are the game.

Until they stop updating the game it won't be in maintenance mode, the point of maintenance mode is to do no work until the product shuts down.

I wouldn't call it maintenance mode, but I would call it zombie mode - the only thing being done with EQ is to secure its future (64-bit, ui new engine, DX11) and to keep the current players buying expansions (generate income) and every year its another round of copy-pasta spells & abilities.

Where is the class development & class balance? They left the building years ago, all these get is lip-service.

Other than some bug-squashing & future-proofing EQ with an annual tiny expansion release to keep generating cash it is stagnant - so no, not maintenance mode, but it's getting pretty damn close to it.

At least that's how it looks to me, from a class perspective. There are some good system improvements like Dragon Hoard, Tradeskill depot, and the upcoming Personas feature has me genuinely excited, but the game needs some class development like a man dying of starvation & thirst needs a sandwich & a drink.

The roadblock of class development (and, lol, balance) is the lag situation, until lag is meaningfully & significantly improved then class development can't even get started, there would be little point.

Sorry I prefer facts.

Who is getting duped? By this point if folks can't tell if their PC can do EQ they have a whole other problem.

DBs not doing anything underhanded or dubious. And you get this IS a subscription based game right? Sort of makes sense doing current content works a lot better with a sub.

They are not pointless, they're informative, and are in no way boastful. You not understanding the game doesn't make it so.

First, in your link to suggesting a loyalty discount, you're the only who thinks that way. LoL all your "reasons" why you're being duped have been debunked.

Second. You do not NEED all access to play in new/current expansions. And expansions do not require a sub to get either. You are proof of that. You bought NoS without having a sub. Another claim debunked.

And being FTP and buying and expansion doesn't "force" you to do anything. You're still able to play in it and beat it even, the same way everyone else does (get a group).

The question is: what is this "Something" that needs to be added for new/returning players in the new expansion.

And the 1 answer that has been given 10 times has been on repeat by you and Uber. That's it. The 30 other people replying in the thread have vetoed the idea. You don't need "extra" zones in the current expansion when zones for those level ranges already exist. Every expansion jump and every zone that increases in power expects you to be geared from the one before it.

You're not going to find a level 100 zone that's going to let you grind in it with gear from HoT. There isn't a single zone or expansion (TSS included) that does that in the game.

Every level range (it goes in increments of 5), expects you to be geared from the segment prior.

TSS expected you to be geared from Prophecy of Ro before jumping into the 65-75 level zones
Buried Sea, while not going up in level, had the mobs tuned harder, expecting you to be geared from TSS before trying to tackle that content.
SoF expected you to have gear from TBS before trying their content
SoD expected you to be geared from SoF
Underfoot keeps the same level requirement of SoD, but is tuned harder, expecting you to be geared from SoD

The list goes on. Starts from Original + Kunark and continues on into NoS. That's the way the game works. That's how MMO's work.

In the event that they did add extra 100-120 zones into the new expansion for catch-up (once you hit level 100, you're technically "caught up"), it's not like the gear you get in that 100 zone is going to outshine the gear from the other level 100 zones.

You go into a 110 zone in the new expansion, it's difficulty is going to be on par with RoS, and the rewards are going to be on par with RoS.

So why do we need to make more of the exact same things if they're not truly going to benefit nor help catch up? The only thing you're doing is saving 5 minutes of travel time by staying in the new expansions content as opposed to traveling to other expansions zones.

Thats why a "catch up" expansion is pointless and a waste of resources and time

Catch up expansion - defunct idea
Catch up systems - we've had a lot of them over time but there are some gaps which are apparent because most of the methods fade off or are not maintained effectively.

AA Autogrant is a catch up system still viable & working because of the way that it works, it is "self-sustaining" not requiring additional Dev time.

Heroic Character Upgrades are a bad catch up system because they do require addition dev time to create the class templates for them whenever a new set of 16 templates is required - apparently the devs did/do not keep records of the beta templates they manufactured each year to reference back to them.

Mercs - Not a self-sustaining system due to tuning, some eras have massively weaker mercs than others.

TLP - well, luck of the draw depending on this as a catch up mechanic, bit of pot luck if any active guild will make it all the way to live, some servers have better chances than others but all the same, still a huge time investment for a player of around 5 years to consider this a catch up mechanic.

What eq needs is a self-sustaining design for a catch up mechanic, these tend to be more costly to develop but pay off in being low or no maintenance once completed.
Done the way I've suggested in the past a "Side-kick" system achieves that.

However - I think Darkpaw doesn't want to actively seek new players for EQ, it wants returning former players to join EQ TLP at best.
I do not think Darkpaw want to invest in making EQ attractive to new players, they sort of want them for EQ2 but are probably happy to wait & go for them in EQ3.

That would not be maintenance mode because maintain does mean to keep something alive by care and to increase it's lifespan. Updates and expansions are part of the maintenance. As Skuz mentioned, the game is also in some kind of zombie state which can be used as an analogy. Somewhere between growth and death.

Maintenance mode does also mean zero growth which we can see in symptoms like repetitive 7-zone expansions, limited budget, no new employees, and zero advertise outside of the EQ bubble. Maybe it is not to 100% in maintenance mode, even that this is the plan of EG7 by limiting the budget, but at least to 90%. The 10% that do add some growth into the game are devoted players and devoted devs.

They are both MMORPGS and They are both over 25 years old. They have both delt with similar issues its a very good comparison to see what works and what doesn't. Jagex solved the live vs classic issue by creating Runescape 3 (modernized Runescape) and Leaving Old School Runescape (classic Runescape) as a stand alone game. However Jagex was able to update broken systems something that EQ has failed to do so far so I don't think this is an option for them. WoW tried the stat quish method essentially just bringing people back to a lower level and making all the content assessable to lower levels. EQ has done nothing and it shows

TLPs and their rulesets are literally content for lower level players and it brought back a huge population for the game. Live EQ just is not a game worth investing in anymore. The live community is not giving back to the company as much as they are putting in. The TLP community shows a lot of hype and promise and are very active and have had some big recent wins. This has all been done with considerably less effort than what it take to create and xpac. The live community has been disappointed with their product for almost 5 years now. It just makes sense to bring the QoL of live to the earlier parts of the game and focus on adding raid/abilities/content to earlier expansions. Like think how massive a new classic era raid with modern raid mechanics and new itemization would hype up the next TLP announcement.

Daybreak not doing anything underhanded or dubious ? EQ got promoted as a FTP game in 2012:

If players with FTP accounts and level 115/116 PCs cannot kill anything in latest content (lvl 120 cap), that is a lie.

Most nonsense post in this thread so far. It would be a waste of time to reply any further to it. Your forum mission is clearly trolling.

https://massivelyop.com/2021/04/23/...mean-when-we-talk-about-mmo-maintenance-mode/

No, maintenance mode means nothing is being developed or fixed for the game anymore but you can still play it.

That doesn't mean that they are similar games with similar playstyles or player bases.