And Firiona Vie...I think that is the Dark Elf Shadow Knight in me! P.S. I'd like to see more of the mechanics in last years anniversary missions, Elegist was doing.
Because I'm on vacation and have too much free time... Here's some of the reasons why I personally play (or things I enjoy in) EQ: 1) Social Aspect - I chose an MMO rather than a single player game for a reason. I enjoy playing both with people I've known for a long time and meeting new people. At this point I generally stick to groups within my guild, mostly because I have no desire to run through TDS progression for the 9th time in a pickup group. Back when CotF HAs were big, I had a lot of fun in PuGs. That speaks both to their repeatability, their popularity, and how relatively easy they are. TDS progression is not difficult, but it's definitely a step up for HAs. 2) Raiding - I love raiding in Everquest; I'm not sure there's anything quite like it anywhere else. Having 54 people all trying to win an event is awesome. I'm currently in a mid-tier guild; we beat CotF in August and haven't beaten any TDS events thus far. I actually really enjoy going back to old (meaning CotF T1) events, because DPS parsing is one of my favorite parts of raiding. Unfortunately, I know a lot of people aren't into that, as they've been farming them for over a year. I personally really dislike the longer raids that popped up in CotF T2, however. I know a lot of it is our lackluster DPS, but Burnout and ToR just seemed unnecessarily long to me, especially when the long parts weren't challenging. I'd much prefer a Neriak 1 or a WK 2 to long-winded events, and I wouldn't discount having a variety of parseable mobs (both short and long fights). On top of that, I think it's very important to have a range of raid difficulties. In a mid tier guild, half the raid force or more is playing at a very low percentage of their potential. We can't beat the same raids that guilds with a large portion of their raid force playing at their potential. At the same time, they should have something more than easy-mode raids designed for mid-tier guilds. This is why the tier system existed, and TDS kinda tried to shove us both into some middle ground. If resources are limited, throw in some really simple raids for mid-tier guilds. There's nothing wrong with a few tank n' spanks. This is a huge part of what I do in EQ, so I do hope more raids (with a greater variety of difficulty) might be created in the future. 3) Mini-raiding - With how little content there is in TDS, this has actually become most of what I do outside of raids. I've gone back through Anguish a few times (which is, IMO, the most awesome zone in existence), run through a bunch of SoD raids for spells and my raid robe, and done a few CToV raids. The key as far as pickup raids go is for them to have simple mechanics and no flagging requirements. CToV alone has a lot of raid content, and it's awesome to do (btw... some of those dragons are great for parsing ). I'd really like to see some of the older raid zones brought up to current level standards. This not only gives mid tier guilds that can't beat any/much of TDS something to do, but it also opens the door for pickup raids. 4a) Questing - I really like doing quests and missions, and even achievements. I completed Challenger of the Darkened Sea (all quests+missions+conquest achs) in the end of December. Running through progression once or twice is fun for me. I wish it wasn't quite so "kill x mobs, hail x times," but it was still enjoyable. I do think making tying the quests into progression made them more of a chore, however. I rushed through content unnecessarily quickly in order to get flagged for Arx, which made it less fun. I think my favorite quests in the last few expansions by far were the Thuliasaur mercenary quests. They were actually fun; they were little quests, each with its own story. Whoever did those quests got it right, they were just really enjoyable. And the Aug at the end was a nice bonus . I went back through most of the TDS progression stuff once or twice more, but the third time through it was getting kinda tedious. I understand resource limitations, but I do enjoy a larger amount and a wider variety of content. The 3rd Arx mission is a good example; it was an actually interesting mission rather than another kill quest. I've run that mission maybe 20-30 times with different groups of people because it's a lot more fun than the other missions. 4b) Difficulty - The other thing I enjoy is a bit more difficult - but optional - content. I really liked the Conquest achievements this expansion; I needed an actually decent group to get them done. Other than that though, Arx quests, prior to the release of the third mission, were more tedious than difficult. I personally think an end zone should live up to that title; it should have content that makes it truly feel epic. Instead, we got a bunch of kill tasks where they may or may not update upon killing. There isn't much of an epic feeling about killing tons of mobs, and the boss mobs in most of the missions were really weak. I much prefer interesting missions with mechanics beyond killing lots of mobs. There's nothing wrong with some missions being like that, but the only different mission in the expansion seemed to be Arx 3. 4c) Character progression - I like making my character more powerful. I think this increase in power has been lacking somewhat. The parrot aug was a nice reward, and the trophy was alright. However, I do feel like my character ends up stagnating a bit. I wish there were more rewards for doing all these quests, for both raiders and groupers. A nice click, or some specialized trophies, or whatever would be good. I'm perfectly happy with long quest chains to get these items (if the resources exist to make them), but right now they just don't exist. I'd also ask that risk vs. reward makes sense; don't make huge quests for tiny upgrades and don't give huge upgrades for tiny quests (/looks at CotF ). The other thing I really dislike is when you decrease our character power. In CotF there were too many nerfs IMO. Most had a semi-justifiable reason, but a lot of us went backwards rather than forwards. It does take some of the fun out of a progression game to go backwards more than forwards. If something is clearly, blatantly broken, fix it, but try to do so as sparingly as possible. 5) Alts - I enjoy alts, to an extent. I have a 105 Enchanter, and then a few other alts scattered around at various levels. I enjoy running through old content, doing old quests, and experiencing old challenges again. I also enjoy the facets of different classes; it's fun to play around with them. I think Heroic Characters were pretty cool in this area; I don't have the motivation to PL low level characters. My only wish in this area is that the XP nerf would be removed. So that kinda went from what I enjoy to what I want... Woops.
My 24 cp 1) Everquest is a world in itself with its own laws of physics, one of those is the law of experience. Killing a mob of a certain relative level provides me a given benefit. That law should remain relatively constant throughout the world, Yes the zone experience modifier is worthwhile to account for the hazard of hunting in dungeons with roamers and etc. but violating that law to push me into new content is counterproductive and erodes the framework of the game 2) Currency exchange (possibly only down or otherwise limited) I realize that it's foolish to expect that I can do House of Thule quests for TDS rewards, but if I'm doing CotF HA's I should be able to convert them to HoT currency to use for HoT level rewards (spells, etc) 3) Connect the armor series - create a recipe that allows top tier group / raid from last expansion to be converted into new expansion tier 1. The old expansions armor will often either rot or be tributed (if that is even an option) otherwise. 4) The "world" is big enough. I personally do no feel we need a new continent / zones / etc, we need better use of the geography we have. HA / LDON / instances / (Ferrott vs. Ferrott the Dream) etc. Others may disagree 5) Dynamic spawns. It's been forever but I believe Kithicor forest used to be an absolute nightmare during the "night" hours. 6) Enough of Lanys and Firiona, focus on other deities as mentioned in previous comments 7) Loyalty and Veteran should interconnect in some fashion, and while Veteran seems to function off how long an account has been all access, a factor should be how old an account is as well. My account is old but not subscribed for a few years and while I don't expect full veteran rewards, I do think some middle ground should be reachable. 8) Arguably, revamp the tutorial, take it back to racially relevant starting lands instead of being a revolting prisoner, support the racial lore of the game. Mercenaries make low level groups non existent anyway. 9) Potion of Basic stats - I know at end game you max all stats anyway but if I can drink a potion and change my gender and race I should be able to drink something and modify my distribution of starting points. 10) Clean up and thoroughly document each classes AA tree. Apply a consistent growth model. 1 point for rk. 1, 3 for rank 2, 5 for rank 3 or whatever, but make it consistent. Provide numbers not "greater chance" or "more often", use 2% or 5% or etc 11) Fix Autofollow - dunno how the boxing programs have it fixed, but if a Mercenary can autofollow, a boxed character should too. 12) In game parser viewable - Pay gamparse some development money and integrate it into the system 13) Remove requirements for party size on old zones based on level. I.e. if you're 5 levels above the max level for that expansion, the original "must have 6 players to enter" rules no longer apply 14) Research and have a discussion on the world of boxing. Topics could include how to structure pricing so that people can strike a balance between All Access and Free to Play, The potential profitability of opening a "no transfer off" bot friendly server. It may not be what all players want, but I believe there are players who want to have that conversation. 15) Reach out to, connect with and "sticky" the respective "Heroic Character" guides for each class. Incorporate their guidance into the layout 16) Connect with the 3rd parties that have provided invaluable information, Allakhazam (yes I'm that old), Magelo, etc. and highlight those resources on your own forums / pages / etc. 17) Connect the in-game email to the account email - at least send a notification type email 18) Mobile apps for trader / buyer / guild chat / tradeskill maybe? etc. You can't hunt with it, but some game functions outside the game. And allow one character to be a buyer and trader simultaneously. 19) Website marketplace - let me see stuff that I can buy when I can't login 20) Player studio - other armor types, suggestion feed, etc 21) Fix illusions and mounts. Any bi-pedal illusion should be able to ride a mount. 22) Instead of a "new" TLP server, consider the following structure. Group expansions into blocks and create block servers. i.e. one server would go through Classic to... Velios (or some other expansion) and is locked with those. When a player has reached max level they may choose to (or potentially guild could vote to) transfer (free) to the next "block" that would be through Planes (or whatever). Transfers would be allowed upwards but not downwards, be free, and not allowed to standard servers unless they are transferring from the "final" server. 23) Connect EQ to marketing opportunities: I would pay (dearly) for a quality 3D statue of my character and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I would love to own a cast metal keychain of my epic (Necro wasn't one of the 4 done with... Omens I think?)... I'm sure there are other ideas in the community but the "feedback / suggestion" channel doesn't seem very visible / transparent. The sense heading forum could be a place for this... 24) Review past events that no longer exist: Best of the Best, the discord server, the BFG quest... I've played this game intermittently since 2000. I built my first home computer just to play it and am now in the IT industry due partly to this game. I played when it wasn't a game that you could "play" for an hour or two, it was an alternate reality you joined. You arranged your sleep schedule on the weekend because your guild was doing sky, there was a guild phone tree for cleric epic drops in... Skyfire i think.., maps were printed and put in binders, notes were scrabbled about quests in binders, a poorly timed death could cost you hours just to get to the corpse. I'm grateful for the mercenaries (I'm really looking forward to an enchanter / shaman one eventually), grateful for the HA's, I can now play in quick short sessions and still feel like I've accomplished something. I'm grateful I could take advantage of the Heroic Character and at least retain being relevant and not buried behind months of grind to do anything current. I love this game because it's not simple, it's different from other MMORPGs in the same way chess is different than checkers. Everyone knows the moves and they're not that hard, but EQ makes you think, research, learn, practice and even then it still has oddities you won't know until you get wrong. You have to do your homework to understand which order to cast the spells, you have to research to know that setting group roles will prevent the cleric merc from following your puller across the camp, you have to hunt down what is available to add to your toolbelt (clickies & etc). To get the full value out of your character is a fascinating challenge.
I haven't read more than 10% of the previous posts but hopefully these aren't too repetitive I play mainly on progression (Fippy) currently, though I have lots of toons on various servers. I play a lot, but I don't raid - lots of alts, boxes, multiple guild banks just to hold tradeskill materials. In various EQ lives I have been a hardcore tradeskiller, but as such it has always upset me that tradeskill achievements get locked behind raid content. On KB my lv20 mage tailor was the goto guy for PotC quest items, with a vl50 alt cleric for smithing PoP went live and he was immediately shut out behind raid progression as well as levels / AAs I did eventually raid on the cleric, but in any ways I felt betrayed. Shawl 2.0 - bah - the top item was locked behind raid progression Shawl 3.0 -- yeah screwed again I think this is the one part of EQ over the 11 of 16 years I have had at least 1 active subscription that has annoyed me the most. When progression went live on Fippy/Vulak, we also had eqplayers working - it was a great tool for the community and needs to be fixed and improved. Magelo shouldn't need to exist. If necessary use a 3rd party to help with a secure API that eqplayers would then draw data from, and then make the API available to others. So I play on progression - pls fix the the bugs that currently hinder what we might expect in-era. Also think about enabling quality of life game features earlier, such as offline trading, clicks from bags. There is money to be made in enabling many of these, and most wouldn't affect gameplay.
Holly, the main problem with the game is that the devs don't play it. You are an exception and an aberration. I'll give you an example. I work in the tech media. I visited SOE in San Diego to get a briefing on the launch of Omens. You remember what that time was like. WoW had sucked the player base dry. Whole guilds left. GoD was an unmitigated disaster. People were quitting in frustration and Woody Hearn of /GU Comics had called for a boycott of Omens because SOE was shoveling out another expansion rather than fixing the mess that was GoD. Woody had some pull and there was a mass cancellation of Omens pre-orders. So SOE delayed the launch of Omens and had that big meeting of players from all over the country at the SD HQ. So it was a rather desperate time. I met with the OOW producer, and cannot for the life of me remember his name. As we were talking another guy joined us, a dev. I remember he said he'd come up with that swirling light trail that led you through the Bazaar to find a trader. The two started talking and the producer said he'd been relaxing with a level 22 shaman and hanging with friends in SolA. My first thought was 'what the hell are you doing playing a lowbie?' My main, a cleric, was level 65. I asked him why he wasn't playing the game at the high end after all the pain they'd inflicted on people with GoD and got some and bull story about being too busy. Lucky for you Omens was a great release anyway. This is what I mean. Your creative people need to play the darned game. I was a member of a top 10 guild before quitting. Beta testing TDS was what drove me away. It was a broken POS one month before launch and there we were getting clobbered against 8 unslowable level 105 mobs while a Sony dev watched us. If you had raiders on the dev team they'd know 8 unslowable mobs would be murder even to a RoI/Triton/Township-level guild. Do you know what Microsoft means when they talk about "eating their own dog food?" If not, learn it, and adopt it.
I'm mystified by the posts talking about chanties being "taken out of the game" because some stuff resists mez, they have no dps etc. etc. Last I looked (and I have a chanty) - there's a whole arsenal of really great things Chanties have at their disposal that make them probably the best solo class in the grp game. 1) My mez has broke - I've only got pac, stuns, roots and if all else fails my runes and stasis to fall back on 2) My pet isn't as good as a mage's pet - well yes sorta - shiny bob (the standard pet) isn't as good, although they seem to have toughened it up this expansion. My charm pet, quadding for 9/10k isn't too shoddy though, especially when I've geared it up with mage pet toys and armour. 3) My DPS sucks - well I guess sitting behind my charm pet, with chromahaze and Illusions of grandeur running I can just about manage 700k nukes 4) I am missing heals though, unless I'm forced to use a healer merc, instead of a DPS merc sat behind my really shoddy DPS. This is a clear failing in the Chanty class...
Some remarks from my side: 1. Currency exchange is something EQ2 already have. I would like to have it here also. And if it is only 100:1 it would be better than nothing. I actually worked for the money and cannot do anything with it. Or at least create some consumable food and drink you can buy for it, or invis potions etc. Then the money would make some sense in the end. 2. A new long time quest like e.g. Epic, or BIC. I know this was stated a billion times and it was said a billion times you cannot do it because of resources. But still, take a look at the BiC quest, people still tried to complete it years after it came out. Quests are too fast done nowadays 3. Expansions like PoP with a wide spread access system and where you actually have to find out where to go and what to do next, not an achievement window telling you step by step what to do next, make it a secret to find out what to do, give some hints inside the achievement window, like the Seer in PoP gave you some. An expansion where you can start at different points with differents raids, so not all people have to go through the same zone at the same time, figthing over the same mob. As I posted before PoP is a good example. I had an self created excel file for the whole flagging in PoP, same as for BiC and the Epic.
I'm an alt-o-holic. The first step is admitting it. I play to experience the evolution of classes through content. For example, playing a Paladin or Wizard at level 100 is very different than playing them at level 65. Earning new types of abilities as you level up and incorporating them into your class strategy is what makes this journey fun. In contrast, most abilities in EQ do exactly the same thing as a previous ability, they just have a different name with an increased effect or level cap. So calling it "new" is a misnomer, particularly when enemy power increases faster than the player power does and the 'new' abilities are effectively downgrades. I also like mass killing. Pulling large sections of, or sometimes entire zones at once. Assaulting these huge trains with unlimited target abilities in a high-risk maneuver that results in either big rewards, or an epic wipe... well, that's about as fun as this game gets.
That was not fun for those who were getting experience the correct way or those trying to camp in those zones. My toon was leading the server in AA points until headshot was introduced. Mass killing is what completely unbalanced classes and needed to be corrected asap not five or six years after. The developer who who thought up those abilities should have been fired for his shortsightedness.
I do play for an interesting virtual world, where it's easy to make & keep friends or hang around with the same peoples often. So basically all i care about is that this world stays interesting enough for me and them to enjoy. I absolutely do not care about things like exact class balance, gear & chase items, how fast i can kill something, collecting achievements. I have single player games that do these parts much better. My wish would be that most effort is put into interesting design, atmosphere, dungeons and in general places that a party of friends can have fun in. Also enough raids to make raiding guilds happy, almost all of my friends are Raiders. And for this community i would have the wish that it becomes less selfish with claims what they want in game, so the Devs can focus on important things.
My 2 cents, get the test update that forced test players to buy expansions or let characters rot removed. That alone mercilessly murdered at least 1 guild and hundreds of boxes. Second, i cant speak for others, but i preferred the game when 5,000 was a big number. 100's are easier to look at then 248,263 and what not. If theres a way to bring EQ back to the realm of simplicity, i vote let it be done
I want the game to stay solvent. Advertise the game! And, update it. EQ is by far the best fantasy MMO still. All it needs is to be modernized.
We need to get rid of the quest journal and clickable keywords etc heh... Bring the adventure back to EQ, This point and click its become is taunting
A proper done progression server should not be overlooked. Anyone that labels these players as a vocal minority is simply a fool. Just do it right and snatch back the old player base that left or plays now in secret places. That is easy money to be made. When TDS was being advertised on Facebook back in September and October, the comments were all about classic EQ, with maybe five or six folk actually discussing the new expansion. Truth is a lot of people are loyal to Everquest, but just have no desire to play in the game that is offered today. Other that, more content and no more xp nerfs. No penalizing players for not wanting to level in the newest expansion. It's a wide world, and we need the option to go where we want, and not feel pressured in hanging out in the same 5 or 6 zones.
Well, others wants them. No one forces anyone to do them. But for the people who like to do them there should be one.
I can't disagree more. Have you tried any old school quests lately? They are so obscure and hazy for what you have to do next that you basically have to go online to find the answers.
I like the longer quests too. BiC (still not completed) and Epics were decent challenges. Give me those anytime over kill 10 mobs, get reward. Good doggy, have a biscuit.
I never actually played the early EQ so i dont know many of them, but one of my favorite things to do when im just screwing is run around places like Qeynos and try to find all those "hidden" quests, and i refuse to use alla for them. Its fun, and the sense of adventure is great
