Your point of view is the epitomy of elitism and seeped in arrogance. Its remarkable that someone can still hold on to the belief that the old marathon race was an indicator of a guilds skill and talent rather than the simple ability to field as near to the same 54 person roster for as long as possible with the goal of being able to attempt raids with a full raid. If you happened to be in a very talent laden guild with the ability to flag very efficiently it was an insurmountable advantage that there was no chance guilds that did not raid every 4.5 days at any hour could overcome. Additionally, what you're romanticizing when it comes to the old VIP system of dev raid participation was without a doubt the worst part of how beta used to get done. There was a massive advantage to getting to do a dev raid back when flagging in beta still existed and not everyone was invited to the big kids table. One of the worst examples was EOK. Back in beta the Lceanium raid was broken for a while and the only way for a guild to progress that wasn't granted free flags from a dev was to beat the Droga raid over and over and over just to get to T2. Meanwhile some guilds were given flags all the way up to T3. You think the race was fair? Get real. If your guild happened to do the Queen raid or the Vault raid and learned the secrets it was a massive advantage. There was no way to know that the Queen would fly away at 5% unless you did it in beta or had a friend from another guild warn you. There was no way, whatsoever, that you would know that all your mana users had to be between 30 and 70% mana or whatever or more adds would spawn on Vault unless someone told you before hand. Sorry no, those were not the best of times. From my point of view, today we have as close to a level playing field as you could hope for, which leads to a dramatic narrowing of the gap between the top guilds. I applaud all the decisions that brought us to this point: Increased beta participation for anyone who pre-orders = great. Removal of the old flagging system = great. Efforts to involve many guilds from all tiers of raid forces = great. Sharing of each raids information and timelines by devs = great. Your analogy about Christmas gifts is absurd. You don't want a mostly well conceived gift that everyone can enjoy; you want a broken gift that doesn't work unless you know the secret password that only a handful of guilds are given and the others have to learn the hard way.
You can always choose to make the raids harder by self imposed limits. 1 - Run the raids on lower level/under geared alts ... level 100? 105? 110 ? 2 - Limit the number of players to 24 , 30, or 36 players.
3 - Play in a guild that doesn't participate in beta, and discover the mechanics at your own pace. Seriously though, the "race-duration" says very little about the quality and difficulty of the raids. And thats OK!
You don't have to agree with me man but man what a spin. There was no VIP outside of maybe 15+ years ago where only like 8 guilds that got selected to test raids and everyone else was SoL. No one said anything about handing one guild or two guilds advantages over everyone else. The idea is to keep it as fair as possible but keep as much raid info hidden to the masses. We get it, you like the 40 yard sprint. You like having every detail spoon fed to you before hand. You like having the consequence and risk free beta practice arena to master the events rather than that happening on the fly on live. You need to accept that lots don't. Its not elitist that some want a marathon back, they don't like a pure sprint when they game they played for decades was a marathon. Its not elitist to want to not know everything about every raid before the expansion is launched. Some folks truly enjoyed learning and beating stuff on the fly, on live, when it had actual risk and consequences to it. They don't find it fun to mind numbingly practice every little detail for every single raid on beta consequence and risk free. To then just repeat months later. People like different things. The game doesn't have to stay set or cater to just one side but we have to acknowledge there have been some major changes. Some folks like gymnastics where every little detail is known before hand and its about executing what you know, as best you can, after 500 prior test runs in a practice gym. Other folks like football where you practice stuff a bunch as well but in real time you have to adapt to experiencing that game for the first time ever as its playing out with actual risk and consequences for choices made in that game. Neither side is more right than the other but only one side showed expecting one thing and had that thrown out the window on a whim for the other.
You do realize that the top guilds have been sharing what they learn about raids on beta for a long time meaning even if they didn’t test it directly with a dev they either got information from guilds that did or sent members along to observe. There have been a select number of guilds that can get information on all the raids for a long time and recent changes to open up raiding on beta have just leveled the playing field. While raids are not always as hard as they have been at times more guilds have a chance to spend time on beta learning them which just levels the playing field for the player created race.
Actually, the idea is to have the raids tested as thoroughly as absolutely possible. I don't think the devs cares about the race at all. The race is just something a subset of raiders invented for themselves. If the devs wanted a race, they would add an online leaderboard like they did for the original Combine TLP-server. If the raiders wants a race, then they need to adapt to the testing strategy, that the devs have decided is optimal for a smooth launch. Not the other way around...
They used to be hard, but then they were nerfed in beta because some people complained. An entire phase was removed from Close the Gate (which, admittedly, didn't really feel like it belonged). It's important (and very hard from a game design point of view) to balance the difficulty so that top guilds can be challenged, but lower power raiding teams (like open raids) can actually beat the content. I personally think tier 3 will provide a good challenge for open raid teams, but expect the top guilds to easily beat them on opening day.
Arrogance to think everyone's skill is on the same page. You want 1 percenters to be the only one to viably do things, what about the others who aren't? You want harder equip gear from 2 expansions back and use older spells. I remember Mearatas raids in TBL killing some guilds. We have open raids on our server and those vs our guild Core are night and day as far as ability. They can put in all kinds of emotes etc but guess what...we'll figure them out and how to avoid / negate them too. Ability vs Inability. recruit more people that can't follow instructions...Problem solved.
I will bite. Why would a gaming company whose income model is mostly based on subscriptions not want people paying a subscription to play their game?
That is an absolutely great question, but it's currently ongoing from what I hear. I am super interested to see what expansion sales look like come November, especially on the non-raider side of the EQ population.
There really needs to be a ROFL button, to go along with Like on the forums for ridiculous statements like this.
This lol BRB spending 10 months farming raids , probably 300 hours invested all so you can get full raid gear and build up DKP to immediately get full raid gear again BRB complain things are easy when you just spent 10 months and 300 hours so it would be easier
You are so wrong, scroll to page 15,, barely 80 thousand people play this game. Keep pushing people out and see how empty servers will be EG7-Investor-Presentation-Dec-2020-Acquires-Daybreak-Games.pdf (enadglobal7.com)
Imo raids should be accessable by all guilds who can field a capable force, achevements should be hard, if people really cared about the "race" track what guilds clear all the cheeses first. Achevements generally take guilds out of their comfort zones of learned strats either in beta or live and well designed ones truely can put players to the test
While that's not what I was talking about, a few of the raids actually would work very well as group missions scaled down. They only have so much time and budget to make things though, so I understand why they couldn't do more.
Yeah, seeing them struggle to deliver spells and AAs this past cycle was a real eye opener and lowered the expectations. TBL stands out as such an anomaly now compared to the last 3 expansions, especially looking at the achievement tab. I just see a lot of folks burned out from raiding and wishing they had more mission designed content.
If you want to make raids harder have the events more random. Instead of memorizing dance steps, there should be more reacting to unexpected events.
