Terror of Luclin

Even if they were a cut and paste of the zones I don't think many people mind. But the lacking amount of content where there are one off quests, class specific quests, epic level quests and such for an expansion is what I think people really miss in the latest expansions. They sort of did the epic level quests with Crestra's Earring, and Earring of Rallos Zek. But They need more that don't follow along the progression and even require item's quests, or flags from previous content. I find those the funnest. Prayer shawl of the Duke was a sick throwback. I wish they did more things like that.

I think the reality of most of the "modern" expansions being so small is starting to cause the patience of most players to wear a little thin. A "smaller" expansion every so often isn't so bad, but when we have had a string of them in succession it makes everyone question what real value they are getting out of their subscription and expansion purchases.

I was hoping ToL would be a little larger in scope than CoV/ToV but the pattern seems to be to build something approaching one expansion over two years now. EoK/RoS = Kunark revisit, ToV/CoV = Velious revisit if those 4 expansions had instead been just 2 with their combined content they would still have been considerably smaller than the original expansions they were set in.
ToL is likely to be followed by another Luclin revisit if it holds to that pattern and that combined with ToL will again approach one expansion's worth of content, at least for most veterans.

This is a function of the far smaller dev team we have now (in spite of 6 new devs the overall dev team size is not even half of what it was), most of us hope that the game can rebuild in terms of both quality, content and player numbers but even if it does this is likely to be a process that takes years.

And size/scope of expansions doesn't even touch on the other issue of player class stagnation.

Here's hoping next year's expansion is bigger, but I am not expecting much, if there has been one truly consistent trend in my relationship to EQ it has been one of continually having to adjust my expectations downwards. Every year it feels like a bit less was put in the game and a bit more couldn't make it in, a death by a thousand cuts,
64-bit could be a shot-in-the-arm, maybe.

I'm encouraged by the additions to the staff and the 64 bit client announcement myself. That's good news and it does provide a pathway to many future changes for the better. Of course, it all does take time but these investments would not likely be made if management was not serious about taking care of their investment and growing it.

Really? Pfizer spent 30+ million on an animal research lab and then tore it down the year after it was built.
Bayer spent over 50 million on a Baycal api factory and tore it down less than a year later.
Don't confuse spending money to look good with commitment from 300million dollar companies that employ a hand full of people they pay as little to as possible to work for them.

The actions of two pharmaceutical corporations are not relevant to my comment although I understand what you were driving at there.

To suggest big pharma throws away large amounts of money in the way you mentioned to look good or that the same is done by the far smaller company running EverQuest is silly. I'm sorry. There are plenty of less expensive and more effective ways to look good to consumers. This falls into conspiracy theory territory as far as I am concerned.

They are improving the game and yet people still find ways to look at that negatively and downplay it. That's unfortunate.

I'm hoping with the addition on Naylie as the seasonal quest/event dev that we see new content added throughout the year. I have high hopes for next years anniversary.

We already know there is something new for this years Frostfell, I cant remember the last time there was a new Frostfell quest. Not forgetting we had a couple of new (fixed) quests for Halloween.

A new pocket zone every couple months, even if it is a basic revamp of an old zone with just updated mob levels, would go a long way to keeping people interested in the game between expansion launches. Throw in a couple items that are valuable at least as clickies, some slightly upgraded group gear and a couple type 5 augs with some minimally better stats than the standard ones and you're golden. HH Seb is a really good blueprint of how to do this well, and if you want to throw in a relatively basic, but difficult raid in there, all the better.

That doesn't sound like a simple task and the time would be better spent on things for a new expansion.

HH Seb took quite a bit of work (from what I recall was stated on the forums).

I could see content with very small missions like Refurbished Puppet (Theater of the Tranquil), Hobby Horse (Bristlebane Day Plane of Knowledge), or Ring of the Ancients (Southern Ro, Anniversary Shrink) instances.