I'd personally like to see a yes or no on this.. Is it being discussed? Is it even on the table? Or are we wasting our time hoping for a fix when it's going to go forward without one?
It isn't progression and unlocking that creates the interest. It is a return to old not for nostalgia, but for the actual experience. People played EQ to live in that world, not to race through the game. Experience wasn't a goal, but a happy consequence of the seemingly endless amount of content to take part in, and that was 10+ years ago. Now there is about 10x more to do, and nobody to do it with. Progression is wildly popular before opening the next expansions, but once the goal becomes to gear up for the next expansion, it is the current EQ playstyle in old zones, which aren't even featuring the old looks, mobs, drops, by the way. That's why we leave. Check the current progressions servers--the only people on are at or near max level. We can't act like everyone is creating a new main on progression/classic (the ones who do are the only ones left, and the servers are pretty empty)--it really would be a vacation server, so make it more worthwhile and fun for us to take a break there. Current EQ is a race through expansions and more than half of players are AFK waiting for the next raid lockout or HA, and they don't play much more than that because it doesn't offer any fun unless you love to solo or socialize with your mercs and boxes. If there is no chance for a real return to the same old models, zones, quests, hp/mana regen rate, mobs pre-hp/AC tweak, then at least have a progression server that touts 1 year locks through PoP (open GoD, LDoN and LoY at the same time), and sit there at least a year, OoW for a year, and then change it to 3 or 6 months once people situated themselves and those who decide to take the race-rout can finally go their way. What is the need to race through for? We can and do that on our servers now. How about a slow enough progression to allow 80% of the players to feel like they can continue, not just the top few guilds. Merge our current servers again--we are due, merge the two progressions, and open up 2 new ones (the normal progression, and the classic/slow locked) and see which continues to field the most active players. If all else fails, you'll merge them anyhow--little to lose with a lot of potential.
The main thing I want is when they announce an expansion what they say is in it, is really in it. Remember ship to ship combat? How about T1 of TDS? where did those raids go? All we got was T2 raids of TDS (T1 raid was probably where your dino raid was).
That's just the problem. We don't need another typical progression race. We need a more permanent option for the old experience that draws thousands at the release. Think of how many players have low levels rotting on the progression servers because logging in is useless as you are the only one on at that level. We can argue and say it won't work forever, but the only precedence we have is p99 which is way slower, and has 1000 players online at any given time--looks like that is successful enough as an . Give a classic-kunark/velious server with at least 1 year locks on each new expansion until OoW. If population dwindles, scrap and merge as normal.
My #1 suggestion has always been to stop abandoning the classic world of EQ. Even at the last SOE live Q&A my question was actually addressed (!) and to my dismay the response was almost a complete lie. It was disheartening. The zones are already there and apparent ghost-towns now, so that potential already exists. I can spew of so many ideas that it would become TL;DR kind of post. A lot of us players are more than willing (beyond the scope of paying to play the game) to contribute even more to keep it going. What I *really* do not want to see is some crappy game with further limited resources and staff, spamming me with ads about pizza and clothes in-game. Okay, the pizza is fine, but I already paid to play and don't care to see t-shirts and thongs on sale.
Didn't they do that before they opened Fippy Darkpaw (TLP) and Vulak`Aerr (TLP) yet here we are again? Honestly its becoming a pattern and with the launch of these latest progression servers my other post already pointed out what happened. Its the competitive nature and people will form guilds to be the server firsts. If it can happen best of luck and hope it works but from what I have seen people will come and have fun their way.
Things you can do quickly to make a huge impact! Remove the XP Nerfs. Remove the HA lockouts. Restore XP Distribution in HA's back to normal. Remove linear progression (and throw that concept on the ash heap of history). I have all but left EQ with my 8 accounts. Give me a reason to come back! For the future: Never release crappy expacs like COTF and TDS again. See ROF for an example of a decent expac.
Open world bosses cause so much drama in every single game I've played that had them. They appear in an expansion, people scream and moan unfairness, they disappear for a few expansions and then make another appears, to people screaming and moaning again. The only way I've seen open-world contended targets work is when they're huge group efforts with not-so-rare spawn times where everyone involved gets credit if they are there to make the tag. Otherwise you have the uber players getting all the benefit, while the casuals and people that play in alternate timezones / 3rd shifters etc getting the shaft. I've boxed 3 toons for many years and never even heard of [Unmentioned 3rd Party Software]. I'll have to check it out, but whatever it is, it isn't a necessity for sure. I'd definitely be open to more content that is group-boxer capable, though (Heroic Adventures have been the favorite part of my return so far).
Holly, Several months ago SOE undertook a major effort to contact us by email and asked us to fill out a very comprehensive survey. You should study the results of that survey, put it under your pillow at night and take that info to heart. I know I spent a fair amount of time answering those questions clearly and with much careful thought. It would also be cool if you would publish a summary of those results for us to see ... you know... the transparency thingy!
Sorry, but I really dont understand why people ask for new progression server. It last something like 4-6 months, then there are new asks for new prog server Again. 1 year after the server was started, people then start to ask for it to be merged with some other server, because of low population, or allow move to/from the server. IMO, those prog servers are really waste of resources.
Honestly I would recommend a whole new survey and be more in-depth, allow other comments. Just be willing to hear the good with probably some extremely harsh comments. And their major effort was not all that many had to directly ask for their names to be added to the list so they could even get it. I have 3 paid accounts and zero received the survey.
I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I hate the Drakkin models with a passion. If they made all models look like that, I would probably stop playing.
They are already getting the detailed comments here. Plus, I am not sure their in-game survey system supports that.
Well this is shocking. I cannot remember there ever being someone at the top of the EQ food chain who actually ate their own dog food. I knew it from meeting people that they didn't play the game, and being a raider it was obvious they had no clue what kind of broken, illogical and stupid experiences they were foisting on us. Is this a sign of hope? I won't get started yet. I am hopeful this means some actual effort will be expended on content and not the same crap with a new name. For the last decade your idea of content has been 5 levels with the same spells with new names. As a retired shaman, I can predict what will come if you raise caps to 110: * A new HP buff, Talisman proc and single target regen and single target focus at 106 * New Malo, slow buff for tanks when hit and pet at 107 * New single target heal and HoT, plus mana convert at 108 * New group regen, multi target malo, ice nuke and dots at 109 * New group focus, group HoT, new dots at 110 Why? Because you've repeated this same bloody pattern since 71-75. Lazy, uninspired and no effort. And when a good new spell slips in you manage to abandon it. Wizards will never see an upgrade to Villification of Havoc, now, will they? I want you to spend more time on quests and zones rather than looking through a thesaurus to find new names to your old spells. Stop revamping old zones and using old models and come up with something new. VoA was the last one to do that, but it was so nasty hard I and many others avoided it. You have to face the reality that WoW has upended your model. It's easy and people can solo to 100 in a week. EQ's player base is getting older, that's a fact. We don't have time for 50 hour camps like Raster any more. Are you going to listen to the few here who say I don't want easy or the many who voted with their feet and left? WoW went from 7 million to 10 million players with one expansion. That's more players than EQ ever had. What did Blizz do right? Learn from it. I can tell you one thing they clearly do right is look at the game as a whole. When an expansion comes out, the whole game is changed. EQ expansions just tack on a gate from an old zone and the new exp is all that matters. The HA nerfs are clearly an indication of that. Not just the CoTF nerf, but remember the giant screwing we got in HoT when VoA came out? HoT was screwed worse than CoTF and people were livid. You have to stop this crap of trying to force player behavior. If I want to level to 105 in Sanctum Somnium, it's my right. I paid my $15 bucks a month, let me go where I want. Nerfs are a deliberate effort to control player behavior and we resent it. Oh where else to fix? - Volume discounts for us boxers. Let us register up to 6 accounts and qualify for a monthly and expansion discount. And on the flip side, if a person earns a suspension on one, all of the other accounts take a vacation, too. - Redesign that darned Guild Lobby. I cannot stand that crowd by the Magus. What a mess. - Redesign the Bazaar. Same reason. - Put a connection from the GL to Baz, once and for all. - Remove player limits on everything below SoD. If I want to 3 box Tacvi, let me go have fun getting revenge from 2005. - Reduce the timers. 5-7 days on epic 1.0 mobs is ridiculous in this day and age. - Revisit the AA ramp. You had to autogrant us all those AA because of the numerous level cap raises and sloppiness with AA. CA/CS are what, 2-4-6-5-5-5-5-5-3-3-3-3-3-5-6-7-8-9-7-8-9-10 or some such nonsense. Smooth out the ramp. - Consider revamping old expansions. If PoP or Velious were redone with level 105 in mind, do you not think that would create some excitement? Make them full blown expansions and second zones, just like the Plane of Hate is hateplaneb and we cannot access a. People who buy the expansion get access while those who don't get the old zones.
The progression servers were very successful for a long time. Fippy and Vulak opened almost exactly 4 years ago. Vulak was very successful until at least May 2013, probably longer (I moved to Fippy at that time.) I have been on Fippy since then and it has been very well populated until just recently, which I believe was caused by Underfoot, which we have been in since July of last year. I personally believe we will see a population spike when HoT opens up in a week or so. So to argue that they are a waste of resources doesn't seem to be supported by the facts.
On BB the mess has moved to PoK. Makes moving through pok a bit of a pain but since most seem to be bound in the lobby and travel via guild portals most of the time it has worked out pretty well for the most part.
IMO, of all the Things happening in expansions for the last 3-4 years, I liked the EW/CC/Kael most. It brought back the good feeling. I would like something to happen there. Let the RoF landing zone Give us dwagons, giants, Dorfs and such and the feeling of how Velious was. About TDS, It is too small, if it was supposed to reflect TBS. The amount of zones are low, and the amount of raids are even worse. Would have been so easy to include new versions of Solteris raids in it. Which would have taken a lot of dissatisfaction away. And put a huge dino raid in T-Rex zone.
MY suggestions for improving EQ: 1. Shore up the weak points in the entire network so DDoS attacks aren't happening every few weeks. 2. Reverse the XP/HA nerfs. They were, in MY opinion, ignorant and short-sighted. 3. Don't EVER tell us what is/should be fun for us again. WE are the only people who should decide what's fun for us. 4. Increase drop rates of spells and armor in TDS raid and group content. 5. Don't promise that an expansion will be "epic" then deliver the smallest and most annoying expansion ever in the history of EQ. Let's face it, the only thing "epic" about TDS is all the nerfs that came with it. 6. Use Beta to actually fix bugs before an expansion goes live. 6a. Push back release date if an expansion isn't at least MOSTLY bug-free. 6b. Address bug reports and fix reported bugs properly and in a timely manner. 7. Never, EVER opt for lore over content. I'd rather have more things to do than have to hail an NPC 20 times and have to try to read the text while 30 other people are doing the same. 7a. If you want people to actually read the lore from NPC's, have it be in a /tell format so that it doesn't get spammed past while 30 other people are hailing too. 8. Boxing is going to happen. Make zones a bit more /autofollow friendly. Places like ToRot and Arx drive boxers nuts. 9. Group content and difficulty should be designed around group gear. If we raiders complain that we find it "too easy", give us a "hard mode" option. Oh, wait. We already have that. We call it raiding. 10. Make the Combat Agility and Combat stability INNATE to characters as they level up. Those AA lines are the most tedious and annoying AA lines EVER. Want a logical and lore appropriate reason for making them innate? "You have fought many battles and have learned better ways to fight. You have learned how to avoid taking as much damage in battle." 11. Don't make mobs hit for over a million when tanks only have 100-200K HP. (slightly exaggerated but, you get the point)
