When will T4 be released.

Less posting, more working on T4 AA's in your laboratory!!!!

I wish there was no eqresource or rasper type people in beta's, its been a trend since about SoD.. Brand new content is released and chewed threw in weeks if not days because no one has to figure anything out they just go read the guide.

To a point perhaps, but those people do mad amounts of testing to get the content working. It's the fast release of it, but as seen, everyone wants the info NOW!!!
But with the achievement system in place now, I think we'd be at a better place to skip the guides for a week or so, you DO get the npc's and structure needed to work progression through that without having a step by step guide.

I dont mind having the guides. I don't use them as I like to figure things out for myself. The benefit of the guides are that it saves me from Achievement anxiety, which is whenever I get an achievement for a quest when someone asks "Where did you find" or "How did you get by the", I can just point them to the guide and they leave me alone. Just because someone posts a shortcut doesnt mean everyone has to use them. I'd rather keep the population in the game high and not make the lazy people quit because let's face it, there are a lot of lazy people.

The people that write those guides do, do a lot of testing and you cant knock them for that.. and there is lazy people so the guides arnt all bad.. I just wish they waited 3-4 weeks to release them so there was accutally a bit of a race to figure things out before its all handed too you.

Im sure the devs wouldn't mind if the guides didn't appear for awhile after release, people might make uses of the content for more then a week.

The same could be said about the guilds who "test" all the raids and then beat them day 1.

Although I agree with the entitled thing, to be fair, most games don't use player made maps. The company makes the maps for the players.

You all don't have zone maps for T4 yet? Oh. You want maps where all the quest npc's, named, and quest drops are. Silly druid.

It would be better in my opinion to adopt what other games have used and just have the maps ready made for game release and have a fog of war over the area until you go there to open it up if you want people to explore.

Or SOE could actually provide the maps themselves, they do after all know the layout already and they were the ones who introduced in game maps in the first place.

sure sure, but do we have to figure out HoF beta/release date ourselves too?
Come on , give us a date , you know you want to!

... Or players could actually think about where they are, giving themselves landmarks to use as relative markers for traveling around.

"Look! Those wizard spires are huuuuge! ... Wait, does this mean we're at the wrong end of the Dreadlands?"

If they did that, there would be this whole cry of unfairness of the uber guilds who were in beta HOARDING knowledge. It's sad how spoiled players have become with sites like EQR / Allas =P

EQR and raspers are the ones doing the dmg.. allaz has always just been a description of the task and where to get it, all user posted info. Not someone who gathered up all the information put it into neat little packages with how to step by step instructions.. Also no one at allaz/zam has ever had access to a beta to gather all the information to release on day one of an expansion.. allaz usualy takes about a month after release to have all the info.. atleast before they could just copy all the data from EQR..

I would really like SoE to issue a gag order to anyone who participates in a beta, so they CANNOT release ALL of the expansion info they gathered during beta.. and im not just talkin about an NDA, it needs to go a step further so legal action can be taken..

To touch on your point about uber guilds hording info.. I think RoF/SoF was one of the first beta's the devs accutally gave discriptions of the tasks on the forums.. In the past the uber guilds had to figure all there information out on there own, with out EQR or allaz.. that's what makes them uber

Wrong. Alla always has access to Beta, and even gets sneak peak video and images before other sites are allowed to. Alla had some basic guides and named spawn info before RoF even released. Some of their info was posted before EQRes had info up.

I find it funny, I get tells from people all the time saying they won't do content until there is guides. You want these people to just quit EQ? The reality is the majority of players today have very limited time to play. They use guides to get the most out of their limited play time. They can pre plan their gaming sessions by looking over progression checklists on a guide website. They can plan their gear path by looking up what nameds drop which pieces of gear, again, to maximize their play time. Guides have been released before or along with games since the days of the Nintendo Entertainment System.

So the uber guilds are uber because of walkthroughs for group content? /boggle

Edit: Most importantly out of all this, no one is forcing you to use guides and/or walkthroughs. No one is forcing you to look up which gear pieces have the best stats for your class. No one is forcing you to see the best augs and what NPC's drop them. If you like to camp random nameds for weeks to find out what they drop, no one is stopping you!

Yea, I know, I was there =P. My former guild was one of the first 5 to clear OoW, and in the first to clear DoDH. It was fun and exciting walking into a raid with no knowledge of what was coming, it was always "Welps guys, you know the basics of how to raid, do your best and lets see what happens!" That said, like Rorce said, it's not for everyone. Lots of players don't have that kind of free time anymore to spend weeks wiping on an encounter because we can't figure out what's going on, I sure as hell don't anymore.

I've grown to appreciate sites like EQR for that reason, I don't have time to dedicate 5-7 hours a night for raids anymore. It's better for us to check online strats and develop a strat that works for us in the best way.

You got really defensive in that post rorce.. I commend you for what you do, its a lot of work, and there are a lot of people who really depend on guides to help them through everquest.. You right guides have been around for along time and they wont be going anywhere.

I think you miss read the last line u quoted.. I said that in the past the "uber" guilds had to figure it out on there own.. even in beta's the devs didn't post as much details on quest lines as they did for the most recent expansion. They are 'uber" because they figure it out with out guides not with guides.. you know they quested in everquest..

To me it kind of seams like a slap in the face to the devs to have people chew threw their content in a matter of days because there are guides. I think that's a part of the reason we have seen a decline in content, it dosent matter how much they produce we chew threw it at the same rate. So they stagger content and give us the same amount they would anyways but this way it lasts longer.

How long do you think content would last with out guides? would it add an extra month? 2-3 maybe? I personaly would really like to see, but I wont hold my breath I expect a guide to be droped day one of T4.

gear drops, named spells, and quest outlines imo is a lot different then a hand held step by step guide. EQR picked up where raspers left off, rasper created the mold your just following the footsteps. I believe that if SoE really wanted there to be guides and all the things you provide they would have it built into game. If you don't see how the guides hurt the game, I think you have other priorities in mind.

I don't believe it would last any longer than it does now. I remember seeing Tier 4 HoT the 2nd night of release. Myself and a couple friends were the first ones in MC and SS on my server. We didn't use guides, we hadn't played but a few hours of beta so really didn't know what to expect. Content is getting easier and easier, that is why people are beating it faster. Old EverQuest used to be very challenging, it used to require huge time sinks. That's just not the case any more (and it's a good thing - with so many other MMO's being "easy mode" now, it's what most people have come to expect).

They would have built it into the game, like they build maps for the players huh? If you want the content to last you 3 months, then don't look at walkthroughs, and only do 1 or 2 quests a day. If you get stuck on a quest and want to spend hours trying to figure out what to do, you most certainly can do it your way. The guides are for those who want them. Perhaps that's another reason they aren't "built into the game".

the fact that they don't make maps dose say something dosent it?

I respect the work you do Rorce, its deifnetly needed. Its just my opinion that the guides shouldn't be released as early as they are.

Nothing stopping you from reading them. Entitled much ? do you feel guides put lesser players on an even playing field with your 16 hrs of EQ every day while they can only play an hr or 2 ? Do you know how ignorant you're coming off as ? Guides do not effect you if you do not read them stop caring what other players do with the time they spend in the game its not your time its not your money they're spending to play.