I have said many times so far that I have utter contempt for the fade/fling/pull changes. I want to stress that the contempt is for the decision and the changes and not the people behind them, even if I have said the changes almost make me really only interested in playing for my friends/guild now. That is a reflection of my opinion on the changes, not the people behind them. So to balance out my ceaseless ranting about the changes, how about the good things? What have I forgotten? Off the top of my head: 1.) Find was implemented years ago and was extremely functional from day one. 2.) Mass raid invite was added. Thanks! 3.) Raid members added with /raidinvite are no longer flagged as group leaders, removing the "Maximum number of raid group leaders has been met!" insanity that I'm sure many raid leaders hated. Thanks 1000x for fixing that. 4.) Chat channels used to not reconnect when lost until zoning. This was fixed. 5.) After years of saying it would be extremely difficult to do it, the massive changes were made to allow larger bags, and I can't imagine the scope of the changes required to make it happen. 6.) Major upgrade to the mapping system in the game to explore how to get from zone to zone and such. 7.) As a bard, things like Dissonant Chord (which I hope gets upgraded to affect up to 110, it was introduced at level 100 and affected up to 105), Lure of the Siren's Song, flings and such are very fun and useful utilities I love. I will keep comments about the nerfs out of this. I just absolutely adored the addition of these abilities. 8.) The clicky thing. Seriously, I did not expect that. While I may despise many aspects of the patch, the clicky thing is a very surprising change I did not expect. I don't know what I think of it exactly, but it couldn't have been very trivial I'd imagine. 9.) Not having to manually loot your items when you die. I know some miss the down time it caused but it was more a pain than a challenge in my opinion. 10.) The extended target window. 11.) At some point /target range was increased, thanks! /tar range used to be so short someone asking for a cure on a raid would be out of my range to /tar them but be in range to cast on them. I don't know when this was upped, but I appreciate it. 12.) After it was clear the task system was annoying and broken for raids, it was abandoned for raiding and used only for group missions. Thanks, it was annoying having someone LD being counted as level zero, locking any from being added or removed from raid tasks. The DZ system was the way to go. 13.) Player housing was implemented. 14.) Guild banners were implemented. 15.) The 15 minute rule that bounced people that tried to take a banner without an expedition invite was removed. 16.) The quest system was changed to allow sorting by zone. 17.) Class suggestions were added to loot. Yes I'm sure they aren't perfect, but for people not as on top of things as others when it comes to loot, it helps them. 18.) The lore tab on some items has been utilized for important information, such as where to go for armor creation or spell redemption. Edit: 19.) Svann pointed out the addition of /melody, and I'll add to that it was great feedback was taken about missed notes breaking /melody, and changes were added to make beneficial songs not "fizzle" to keep the command useful. Edit: 20.) I thought of another one, feedback was listened to albeit it took some time for TDS to make sure devastating emotes get called out. I'm not sure if the viral silence is called out for others on Numicia (it might be), but overall from the raids I've seen this promise has mostly been kept. Note it *is not* to kick people from raid/guild, but to identify them and help them fix their mistakes, and sit them as a last or temporary resort. I'm sure there are many others. What other positive changes some may love happened over the years? I can think of a lot of good things to say too. I'm sure some changes went in right under my nose.
With so many good things, it's like the fling change is just a drop in the bucket. Let's leave it in forever. The devs need to focus on other things. Forever.
Nope, I checked the stats in the secret area of your magelo and your happiness quota was met ages ago. You exceeded safe joy limits in Argin Hiz. You're already grinning past your ears. Any further joy and you come dangerously close to losing your head. We don't need scrykins in here. The devs and I are looking out for your wellbeing.
Sigh... it destroyed my edit because the time window expired. It didn't have to delete the text without my ability to copy it! 21.) Emblems were discontinued, ending an annoying aspect of visible gear that punished upgrading unless hording new loot. 22.) Foci on items were normalized to certain slots, making upgrading much less of a headache. 23.) Money was added to raid event chests to mitigate guild costs. 24.) The cost of things like augment removers was lowered considerably, and armor costs aren't as outrageous as they once were. TDS raid gear does require an item to be in place of lower tier armor that doesn't even exist, but I suspect that was an oversight (more lower tier raids were planned I was told). 25.) For a time weapon drop rates on raids were ridiculous. It was worst in The Serpent's Spine. I think my guild saw less than 6-7 1HS drops from Ashengate/Frostcrypt our whole farm. Since then, loot distribution was improved to make sure weapons always drop and while sometimes it may rot that is much better than having TSS weapon drop rates leading up to the first TBS event... with a rather scary five minute timer for the first part. 26.) Raid currency (and group currency) was added, with vendors to buy loot. This allows people that really want certain items to get them no matter what if they are persistent, and unlucky drop rates aren't quite as disappointing due to this. I'm sure there are more! Again I do not mean this to act like none of the other feedback matters; I share many of the complaints. This is just about acknowledging the nice changes over the years. 27.) In the past, red /con mobs used to be three levels above the player. This meant that at maximum level, some red mobs were mezzable! At some point this was changed so that at max level, red mobs are always 4+ levels above and hence unmezzable, so there is no guesswork.
For really old school players, especially druids: Can now have both snare and root on a mob at the same time! Believe it or not, you couldn't do that back in the day.
Ah good point, and that reminds me of another one: Removing the restriction on run speed buffs indoors.
Well that and druid/ranger roots would break themselves due to the dmg applied when the root sticks. Took them quite a while to believe us that it just....didn't.....work.
Clicking items from bags without equipping them is probably my favorite change of all. Not having to have your spellbook open to med a close second.
I enjoyed the change that made all mounts trigger the same speed as mount. But the real bonus for me was when they adopted the cast time, as well (which let me, as a knight, still have instant cast mounts of any variety). I liked that they dropped instance requirements down for many events (still lots of room for improvement, but some steps are better than nothing at all). Foraging from mounts is nice! Fellowships (not as good as when they were first implemented but, again, something is better than nothing at all). Guild bank UI - needs to be expanded and further pushed to personal banks, but again (theme here) something is better than nothing. Tradeskill only (and collection only, etc.) bags. Awesome! It hasn't kept up with the times in that they originally were far larger than the then-new regular bags, and haven't gone up with the normal bags. This is a good concept. Certain quests dropping an amount of items proportional to the number of members in your group that have the quest . . . very, very welcome change.
In-bag clickies and the auto-combine option in the TS window. Fantastic stuff there. I also like the multiple efforts that have happened over the years as well as the most recent patch to keep our AA windows clean by consolidating lines and such. Without that, the AAs would be even more difficult for folks to decipher.
For me, the travel changes, especially from PoP, but the Luclin and LDoN ones too. And from the Guild Hall, though I can see why some people don't like that. Heck, the day when I realized "Hey, I can actually get to Erudin without spending all day running, probably dying half a dozen times?" was somewhat mind-expanding. Or when I realized I could actually /get/ to Thurgadin (you know, back when a newbie might have actually found Coldain Velium weapons interesting...)
I am super happy with here my Monk is right now. The changes to Bonus Weapon Damage along with the +damage passives for all melee classes were VERY welcome and was in a big part the reason why I came back to EQ. Bravo Daybreak, along with the upcoming expansion and several other great additions as of late I think you've brought a lot of life back into the game!
The usable screen size change and third person view (that worked). Went from peaking at the game though what amounted to hole in the fence to being able to actually see whats going on around the char and customize the UI. The best reason to avoid P99 for a long while. I had to think of something that wasn't in the buff/nerf cycle which I don't think counts at all.
While I agree 3rd person view is far superior, I do miss the immersion of first person perspective. It sort of forced you to be a better player and pay attention to not just what you saw, but what you heard as well. As everyone was "handicapped" from it, it was not so debilitating at the time. Again, it was a good move to 3rd person.
