So I really like some the new things RoF brought. Lvl increase, agro meter, more for missions, offline trader - all awsome improvements. It's only been a few days that I've been playing - but haven't found a goal to work towards yet. Please correct me if I'm missing something..... Zones: No progression required - wide open Armor: Minor improvement over T4 VoA. So, for my chars in T4 group or raid gear - no real need to upgrade. Language/Faction: I haven't seen spells/quests/zones/aa's locked behind this. Special Quest Items: I'd love to find a long quest items (aug/prayer shawl/etc) - but haven't found anything worth working on. The fear shard aug is there - but super easy to get now. In short, I feel sort of bleh about the expansion. Do the quests - but you don't really have to. Work some faction - but it's not really needed to much. Please tell me I'm missing something. If there's no pita element to EQ - I'm sort of don't care about logging in other to raid.
RoF is VoA redone fixing most of the huge mistakes made in VoA. Language fixed, Raid progression fixed, and especially Group content difficulty fixed. Basically instead of a new expansion targeted for level 100 we got a do over of level 95 content along with five free levels. If you reversed order of release for VoA and RoF with RoF come first them things would make allot more sense.
Except, you know, the storyline. But who really cares about that in video games anyway? I just want stats and numbers! *sarcasm* Yeah the quests etc seem to have no locks, all open. Basically just a 'do what you want' expac. The gear isn't that bad though. T1 is kinda.....iffy. The primaries are on par with, if not a tiny bit better than, T4 VoA group. The secondaries, heal amount/spell dmg etc etc, is actually generally lower. But then again when you compare the difficulty of attainment of T4 VoA gear to RoF T1 gear.... VoA T4 requires quite a bit of effort/camping (the armor required a lot until the 100 lang groundspawn task in Shard's), whereas T1 RoF is "zone in, kill one relatively easy con mob, oh look 7 non-vis pieces just dropped lol". Taking that into account, the stat comparisons kinda make sense. T2 is a clear upgrade, by a decent amount I may add. I'd say it's about 1/4th of the way between T2 and T3 VoA raid gear. Maybe. That scaling is also about right. Spell gems I was kinda saddened about. I was hoping they'd return to the HoT method. 1 per named, and like 3-5% chance off trash, scaled to level. But it works the same way VoA's spells did . The trash dropped gear, however, made up for it. I missed the days of all/all usable gear having a low (if you can call RoF's trash gear drop rates "low") drop rates off any mob you kill. No reliance upon named to spawn and your ability to kill them.
First few minutes of the movie, pizza delivery guy shows up and she has no money. Storyline done, if you keep watching it's for other reasons. First few days of the expansion, all information on the lore of the expansion is known. Storyline done, if you keep playing it's for other reasons. Firiona Vie got captured by Iksars so I went and killed Frogs in Sebilis. I had fun killing the frogs, please fill me in on the lore of killing frogs, it will entertain me for 5 minutes to know why I was killing them, while actually killing the frogs in Sebilis entertained me for hundreds of hours.
I typically ignore storylines in MMOs. I play MMOs to relax, and do something not associated with my job. My apologies to those who spend time coming up with the storyline, but I just don't read it.
The point? Well that depends. For a raider, you just paid 40 dollars to renew your annual dues to your raid guild. For a casual player who raids once in a while, you paid a total of 80 dollars to achieve what a member of an elite guild paid only 40 dollars to do. For someone who expected things fixed/balancing etc, you just paid 40 dollars for what should have been free. For most everyone else, it is a little bit more of what we are used to with the implied promise of more to come. I don't think SoE can lose really. If you liked the release than mission accomplished. If you don't like it, they still got your money.
try looking in your achievements windows at the rewards, and find the ones yo uwant, and work for those. there are many augs, armor (for groupers) large chunks of xp, and new and improved self trophies to get. so much better than stupid guild trophies from individuals' tasks. cmon ppl you dont want to work toward 20hdex adn 5riposte?? hell ther are 2 trophies like that...i wanna know if the tribute benefits of the 2 will stack if you suck at soloing or finding groups, go do collections, nice aug at the end of those, some gear for doing each zone, and you get xp/aas for each set . Work for titles if yo ulike titles, by killing your favorite/unfavorite races, etc. There's plenty of reason to do the quests if you look at the rewards. the main thing is here there are more and better carrots for each set of quests, and finally rewards for smaller sets of quests too, there jsut isnt a REQUIREMENT to do them. who wants to lay a game wehre you cant work on the things you value most bc the game decided you HAD to do this this this and this first? (like in VoA) plenty of fun, xp, titles, items, power upgrades etc available, you just gotta look for it rather than ask the game to tell you what to do.
RoF seems like the first half of an expansion. Next expansion I expect (not requesting, just my forecast) No level cap increase. Harder raids/missions/names with better loot (T3/T4) Only a few new spells/AA's, but more interesting ones. So far, sounds like Underfoot to me... More revamped zones, Probably Luclin. Revamped Ssra Temple? Vex Thal? Maybe with Kunark. The Iksar and Shissar are the old worshippers of Cazic Thule, lots of story opportunity there... and Sebilis is long overdue for love. Veeshan's Peak? and a few new ones. Bottom line, fewer people (even counting boxes) are playing EQ; so the fixed costs of developing an expansion is spread among fewer people, so the cost-per-person goes up.
Fixed the huge mistakes ? lol. Is your ideal expansion something with nothing to work towards? You seem to hate * any * required progression.
It is my belief that the RoF launched last week is the first two-thirds of an expansion, with another third coming mid-expansion cycle.
Language requirement people just rejected it. I'm not entirely sure why the rejection was so intense but it was. Raid flagging in VoA was simply bad it rewarded guild for high RA and punished guilds with lower ones. The above is the exact opposite of what actual purpose of raid flagging is that being to slow people down. In VoA's case it slightly sped up those moving the fastest while slowing down those moving slower as compared to past systems. Group content was simply over tuned in a misguided effort to force players to group players that were able to use certain combinations of classes and merc while completing HoT content were completely shut down by VoA content. The fix's maybe extreme and more then I personally would have preferred but the problems with VoA were extreme. It's best to look at RoF from starting point of someone who is level 91 in T4 HoT gear and simply pretend VoA never happened.
Raid flagging *always* hurt people with low raid attendance. I can't accept that as a valid point. Language was better than HoT flagging, imo. All zones unlocked, only needed a little language for some spells ( unless you were a dru/wiz for ports ). Language was otherwise only needed if you wanted to go straight to T4 gear, and not progress, which if you worked on the hunter achieves zone by zone for bags, you'd get the pieces in order most likely anyways ( or come close ). VoA ( even at T4 ) offered a wide range of difficulty for nameds. Some T4 nameds were easy. Some were hard. I see nothing wrong with offering a varying degree of difficulty.
There was nothing wrong with the language implementation when it first came out.Killing it this expansion made me sad.
Other than new raids, it seems like there's not much point to me. I bought it on 7 accounts and haven't felt like logging in after playing it for two days. I've been doing Assassin's Creed III instead.
Well while I enjoyed VoA, RoF to me is just plain more fun to play. I do play however for the story and actually read the quests and enjoy the hidden humor in some of them (try opening the same barrel or crate for Shard's Landing partisan task more than twice.) There is progression in the expansion but instead of locked zones it is locked gear upgrades. The RoF achievements added in and of itself (al-self) should answer the OP question. Thanks devs for making this one of the most enjoyable releases to me since PoP!
