so after the shock TBL.. what is playerbase thoughts?

We, I am still grinding away. TBL is still only a thought if the correct stars flash and we do something together. That's ok. I see 2 or 3 of server min max claim finish and done.. but im a good 5 or 6 months away myself.

Thoughts on smoke.. they are ok if find line up non merc group.. it happens once a week or so.. Atm that fine.
EMP grinding is fine but I like options without the progress pinch.. Yes I end up doing it..

What are others thoughts? I have returned ros/droga for AA grinds on off alts. so I cant I enjoy tbl.. praying it grow on me.

I hope whatever the Devs do to re-balance the group game helps more people enjoy the Expac. Smoke really does need to change. This gate is unhealthy for EverQuest, it just is. For those of us that have been able to do all the progression type things and off the raids, we are enjoying the hell out of TBL. It's pretty for EQ - the artists deserve a lot of credit for making EQ look as modern a game as possible. The rewards for completion are fun and worthwhile and are things that should make coming back to TBL something that is needed to do, which is good. For a game whose greatest strength is the sheer amount of content within, making new areas worth returning too for the foreseeable future is solid implementation.

I do have complaints, but I'm inclined to sit back and watch for patches soon on the horizon to see if things change for the better. I wanted to convey positivity - I know, I know - this is the Forums and that's not really what we do here but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

My thoughts are pretty much the same as when I first encountered the content: I enjoy much of it, but think the initial gates that are the smoke trials and fight fire are too early in the expansion and too hard. I also think the end of the expansion, Mearatas, is too easy of a zone and that they should throw in a couple copied zones from PoP that have see-invis / kos mobs with T2 gear.

Not as good as GoD or Underfoot, but the devs are getting old so past their prime and all that..

Confusing!

Progression isn't a straightforward complet a zone and move on!
Loot I'm still confused on, but getting there.

Not even 3 weeks into the expansion. Keep that in mind, not even 3 weeks into a one year release cycle.

1) Experience is too low on mobs - mission exp isn't terrible, not fantastic, due entirely to large chunks of exp on named task mobs, but the actual exp per kill is way too low, is this an oversight or on purpose to try and force people to group more? (punishes solo/molo players)

2) The progression path is dumb, without using someone else to show you how or third party websites, some people would be hopelessly confused about how or why to do things for some of the missions or paths. I get why, the entire thing about the different factions, the palaces and all that, but it is just annoying. (punishes players that don't use outside resources heavily)

3) Missed a chance with some of the solo progression tasks. Key to the Kingdom is a good one, you can actually solo it with the one kill. Enter Mearatas is different, seems like the same kind of task, but then you realize quick you aren't soloing that, so need a group to go kill the same NPC over and over (and hits hard, would hurt on a group geared player I bet). The mix of solo/molo/group requirements to get through progression is probably frustrating to some players. (punishes solo/molo players)

4) Some bad decisions

a) One smoke trial should flag you for the zone, shouldn't require all (punishes solo/molo players)
b) Loot lockouts being account wide are terrible (punishes people with alts)
c) With the rarity of named and the difficulty some of them have, it seems absurd to me that the TS mhubis gear is so much better - named drops should be clearly better IMO, I mean, people only want to kill named for hunter achievement, type 18/19 augs, or chance at mhubis for the TS gear, and since missions are faster to get the mhubis, might as well chain missions, people that don't get to group much are going to have trouble getting any of the gear (punishes solo/molo players)
d) Increasing raid flags needed per tier to 21 for no reason other than to slow us down
e) Putting evolving items on ONE mission only
f) Making the luck augs basically non-existent, extremely low drop rate (0.5%), only from raid trash, evolving items don't evolve in raids, can't even try to farm them except in the last raid of the night (loot lockout from the trash means you can't do so unless you don't raid, can't get a new instance, etc)
g) Every zone should be open by the last one. Really no reason for it other than to be jerks (punishes solo/molo players)
h) No clear guidance on what evolves the evolving things unless you have the info from beta (and why do only some mobs work towards evolving them anyway? why not all tbl mobs?)
i) Raid mhubis giving gear that is only slightly better, means that it has no effective impact, except to annoy min/maxers, due to rarity (good luck dkp guilds!)

Entire expansion seems to be about forcing us to waste more time to do the same things. Gear inflation is bad and seems arbitrary. Gnome Mountain obviating much of the raid gear 3 months in after it is just beaten seems dumb too.

Missions are not bad, but a big problem is almost all of them are annoying in a way that you don't want to keep doing them over and over.

It is hard to separate, how much enjoyment is just doing ANYTHING different from kunark now, having a reason to group with guildies again doing things, etc, and how much actual enjoyment there is. The roadblocks are calculated and arbitrary. I mean, if you have some friends, the progression and most of the achievements and stuff are WAY faster to complete and easier than the last 4-5 expansions. If you don't have friends and guildies then you will get FAR LESS done this expansion than in ANY other.

So while its bad for people to whine about it without trying (it really is easier than most complaining realize if you just try, and it rewards you quickly), it is set up to just be a dead stop to a lot of people with certain play styles, and for no real reason other than to try and mess with boxers or force people to group up.

This is far from my favorite expansion !

YiMin

My biggest and only real issue with the expansion was yepmetoo first one mentioned as well. The XP is just terrible in TBL. As someone with 17.5k AAs, I still need another 6-7K AA I imagine of somewhat important AAs. The main issue boils down to mob HP. I don’t run any parsers but I have a fairly good indicator of mob HP based on my Necros macro. In HS, I can start up first macro, by the 5th spell necro casts mob is down to about 50-60% HP, in TBL a blue con spider in empyr is down to about 80% by the end of the first macro. My estimate is mob hp is roughly twice of HS. Next up, is the xp per kill. A yellow con in HS with half the HP gives me about 85-100% an AA. A blue con in TBL with twice the HP of the HS mob gives me about 60% of an AA. Either one of these issues, the hp per mob or the xp per mob would be tolerable, but combine them both together and someone like me is going to be forced to go back to HS/ST as by my estimates I will AA 3-4 times faster in HS than anywhere TBL has to offer. yepmetoo said this xp rate hurts solo/molo people but the reality is it hurts anyone that needs AAs. You could take the strongest 6 player group in the game and they would still get XP significantly faster in ROS.

As for the tuning of TBL I am totally fine with it. Every night I can pick up any 4 hodge-podge people lfg (in addition to my pal/nec) and complete all the trials except ash. I find wending/trial of 3/amphitheater/cyclone to all be pretty easy and done within 20-40 minutes each. Perfect group makeup is far from needed for these 4 and I am easily able to alt-tab box my necro on all 4 of these. Ash is obviously much more difficult, and actually of all the missions I have done (80% of expansion), ash seems like the hardest group thing in the game at the moment. I think the only way to beat this one with an undergeared group like I often have is going to be to have a ranger that knows what the heck they are doing and is able to keep all the green spawns down. 1 yellow add usually spells death for my pal. The named I can tank fine. The occasional AE is spikey but tolerable. Give me 1 add and every time I eventually get 1 rounded by a strong round from named, add and AE all within 2-3 seconds of each other. I could tank this mission just fine if there were no adds, which I think the ranger tracking the green spawns could accomplish. So far I believe 99% of the groups that complete this are just brute forcing it and tanking any additional adds (I’ve seen named + 3 yellow adds at one point).

This brings me to my next point. This expansion is confusing for no reason whatsoever. I am a returning player that’s been back for about 2.5 months after several years off. I’ve done my fair share of grib grinding so am familiar with /taskt. Someone in my group pointed out the other night they were on timeout for the smoke trials and I told them there is no timeout, they told me to use the EQ button to go to quests > expeditions. I did that, and low and behold I have a >>12<< day lockout on wending ways at the moment (I find this one the easiest so farm it regularly). This is way too confusing, apparently my lockouts have added up on themselves every time I’ve done it? Now technically I have to wait 2 weeks to do it again now that I figured out what was going on? As far as all the other confusing parts of the progression I won’t get into it more as it’s been pretty well covered.

After completing all the smoke trials with various groups, I can honestly say the majority of them are not that bad. This is with a mix of group gear and raid gear, depending on group. I do agree there are a couple of the trials that could be tweaked a bit as they are most likely too difficulty for tier 1 progression missions, but I didn't find the smoke trials to be nearly as bad as some people are saying on the boards.

Most of them do require 3-4+ players, which is what I think is the biggest hurdle for a lot of people. Players aren't used to needing real groups to do group content anymore. They are also a bit more difficult to box than normal, due to various mechanics and such.

I'm hoping when the changes do hit, that they don't completely swing the difficulty in the other direction. I think a few small tweaks in a couple of the trials will suffice.

It's good overall but I'm seriously tried of fighting fires.

I have been a vocal opponent of TBL difficulty but I have kept quiet about the progression, lore, and gateways. Here are my thoughts:

The artwork is BEAUTIFUL. The weapons may be some of the prettiest in the history of EQ. The NPCs are meticulously modeled and animations are top-notch.

Islands in the clouds are fun for about 10 minutes. Once the novelty has worn off, it's a major PITA. Simply navigating the zone means no straight lines. Add to that the broken fall mechanic where if you fall off a ledge and lag *at all*, you die. Your corpse is out in the void and MUST be summoned. This is not just annoying, it's downright silly.

Smoke Trials are too much for a lot of people. I've talked to raiders who have trouble with some of the tasks. Difficulty is too high for being so early in the expac.

Lore is meh. The Efreeti and Djinn "war" feels very out of place - forced for our benefit. The lore is as confusing as the islands in the clouds. When I think faction war, I think Scars of Velious. Giants vs. Dwarves vs Dragons. This made perfect sense to me. Efreeti vs Djinn? Meh. That's like Thurgadin Coldain Dwarves vs. Froststone (Crystal Caverns) Coldain Dwarves.

All in all, I like TBL. I put it a couple notches above my least favorite expansions of all time, GoD and Underfoot. But compared to masterpieces like Omens of War, Empires of Kunark, and Scars of Velious, The Burning Lands falls short for me.

- zone graphics: cool and new - good work, zones are partly very nice (Stratos, Esianti)
- mob graphics: are partly new and nicely done - despite the old graphics engine
- gear/items: beyond the usual, EoK raid level (except for e.g. melee DPS and AC)
- specials: no ancients , luck stat, evolving chase items with upto 2 new Aug18 slots
- zones: inconsistent at least, the real curve from easy to difficult is completely missing
- progression: confusing, inconsistent, stupid lockouts, big hurdles beginning stages, T1 at later stages (WTF?)
- bugs: plenty..., I have not found ANY challenger achievement working, items are partly not made complete (bows can not activate their focus), stratos 200k fall - even if you are at island, pushbacks down the island from mobs/AEs, ports don't work for unflagged but fellowship does (inconsistency)
- intuitiveness: information on stuff is missing (evolving items), logic is missing (T1 -> T2/3 -> T1..)
- difficulty: varies completely out of row, challenging zones, ultrahard missions, hard progression (at 30kAA/L110/RoS T2-TS)
- surprises: present, keeps one at bay

Xpac is for raiders and elite players and people who have the possibility to play for hours nonstop.
Without 3rd-party-help (EQResource/Allah/Forum/Gina/Gameparse) or raid-level-weaponry I doubt that most really are happy to do that Xpac , regardless what is written (taking into account that around 10-20 of some thousand people are writing here - which are the ones who more into the latest stuff).

This Xpac is not for Casuals, Solo, Moloers or the relaxed boxer.
This Xpac is only for raiders, elite players, elite boxers.
This Xpac is stress and work - less fun - if you do missions.
If you are stubborn and want to prove to do it... then this Xpac is yours.

Changes:
- progression curve must be simple - to - hard. No mixup of T1, T2, ultrahard lockouts, the last zone should be the hardest, the entry zone should be like it is named: entry
- paying a game should at least give the opportunity for every kind of player

Solution:
- missions with ultrahard/hard/easy-options (with optional different loot table)
- optional for mission to have more than only 6 people attending - would help to get help from outside
- loot according to the dropped mobs and missions (e.g. no mix of T1 and T2 in T2-Mission)
- if that mixup is present, then rotting things should get distributed - else these are only wasted lootslots

Most important principle:
- every playertype should find something to do and see
- optimizing the game to alliance spells and locking out classes / letting people drag/flag through is not the right way
- this game has been worked toward - solo/molo/box/group/12group/raid and it should reflect that in every expansion - else there should be a clear warning sign on it

Most annyoing mechanics:
- artificial timesinks to only prevent players from moving forward (WAITING time is not PLAYING time!)
- artificial hardness of entry missions do never prevent elite players from moving fast forward - they prevent the rest of the players from joining the fun
- there is the need of extraordinary much money to evolve a character, without extensive work into economics and tradeskilling this expansion is a pita for most (not a factor for me, but I expect this will be it for the most people) - tradeskill should be a second option for the ones who don't get the raid-loot

Feeling:
- everything is only done to get the most money with the least effort - at even feels that after the first couple of zones there is done only some patchwork to get a bit together, so that it looks at least like a bit of an expansion instead of a mid-year-upgrade like Plane of War

Fun:
- you can have fun if you are beyond the darn Trials and can hunt in Empyr, Esianti or Aalishai.

Comparison:
- no match for EoK

With a busy work schedule, this expac is the first in a while where it was purchased, but other than getting the AA, no adventuring is being done. Since it is front loaded with the trials, most of my guildmates teamed up in my absence and got past them, with not much desire to revisit them.

So, I am playing in EoK and other past expacs and have stopped raiding completely. All of this is on me mind you, but this expac really kinda knocked my desire to play down a few notches.I fell behind rapidly in just a few short weeks.

I would not recommend it to anyone who is casual or busy IRL. Its made to keep the more hardcore players happy.

Currently, with the exception of maybe the Ash trial, the difficulty of the other trials is vastly overstated.

This 100%. I'm not sure how people are finding the majority of these trials that difficult. We just finished doing 3 of them with a group geared SK, raid geared beast and a group geared bard box that was really mainly a song bot. We used 3 cleric mercs. These three trials weren't hard with this setup, just long.

Cyclone, which is one we didn't do with our 3 man team, would have been trivial with just one range DPS, but were unable to find one. Ash trial is really the only trial that requires even close to a traditional group to beat.

Meh, speaker's is annoying with 6 mobs at once with no way to cc them. Cyclone is similarly difficult without big dps - 3 yellow cons before the first mob is dead isn't very fun. I haven't tried the ash one, since it is billed as the toughest, I won't bother with it until if/when I can get speaker's and cyclone done.

Please don't confuse difficulty with replayability.This expac definitely catered to those who want to get past the initial gatekeeper right off the bat, and if you were not in that initial push, you might have to wait or just pass. Part of that is because the trials were not super difficult, however they are tedious enough were they won't be content anyone will want to routinely go back to. Especially if there are equal or greater rewards past them.

Once the classes needed to win them all get past them, than you can't blame them for wanting to pursue the rewards that are unlocked. EoK at least allowed the ability to visit most of the zones from day one. TBL is kinda a retread of PoP, so it plays upon that progression theme to a limited extent. Everyone gets that. Its just a bit of a bummer for those who still think they can balance RL and this game, haha! This expac was a bit of a loss of ground in that regard. Not the game's fault. It is what it is. I am sitting on the sidelines of TBL for now.

When do you have to fight 6 mobs at once in Speaker trial?
If you are refering to intial trash mobs, they spawn two at a time. The moment you get the task head in and start killing them. As long as you have average dps, you should be able to easily outpace the spawns.

If you are grabbing the task and then sitting around and buffing before heading in to fight, could easily cause 6 at once.

There was a shock?

I think it is pretty great so far. Some stuff I really like, some stuff not so much.

PROS:

• I like how it ties in with POP without feeling like a simple copy paste of old zones.
• I like the new gear design. It does seem like almost everybody is going to hold out for the t2 raid gear but that will keep raids full for a long time with the drop rate.
• I like the artwork / models.
• I like the evolving items. Its cool to not have every item that is best in slot to be tied to raids. I think most should, but it is nice to have a few that are not.
• I like the push towards grouping again. Most of the stuff people are complaining about can be dealt with via mez, root, stun, etc..

Cons:

• The lack of spells and AA was a bummer. I get the reasoning but it still feels incomplete without more there.
• Only one zone open without progression kinda sucks for people with weird play times. Even worse that the zone is not great to box or kite in. 3 or 4 zones open at the start wouldn't have hurt anybody and it would spread the masses out a bit more.
• While I like the evolving items, them being drops and being rare kind of pushes people away from grouping and more towards boxing (That mission at least) to farm them all. Random drop in all missions or a huge currency cost I think would have pushed people back into grouping and farming all the missions.
• I like the idea of the Smoke missions, but I think they should have been further along in the expansion.

I'm sure there are more examples, but overall I really like TBL.