The issue of which zones permit bind affinity and which do not is a legitimate one. Whether that issue rises to a level of dissatisfaction with game play is a personal matter. The OP found it not to his liking and expressed that here. So be it (although it would be interesting to read an update on his experience with fellowships). People make game play suggestions on these boards all the time. Some do so by saying that they are quitting over a perceived problem with the game. Some do not. DBG is in the business to make money, so they will listen and decide what is important. They will listen because feedback is a part of being a for profit company. Listening and doing . . . entirely different matters. To those who mention travel as being part of the game, let me only say that Verant, Sony and DBG have progressively made travel easier over the 17 years of this game. The long boat rides and dead time are gone. The Nexus is empty. PoK travel stones changed the nature of travel dramatically. Fellowships continued the process. Deciding on which zones permit binding is another one There is always a balance. Who is to say that DBG isn't looking at the precise issue of which zones to permit binding and how that decision correlates with hot zones? Maybe the OP has them thinking about it. If so, that was likely his intention. Personally, I do not bother with the current hot zones. I do not have a porter character, nor do I wish to level one for that purpose. I often box three characters and run a DH HA when I have limited time or no one to do TBM or TDS. I appreciate having the ability to bind in Dead Hills. Travel for the sake of time sink doesn't make a lot of sense to me with the game now. It did when it first came out for a host of reasons. Given that the progression in the game has been to reduce travel time, then as long as bypassing content is not an issue, I would agree with the OP that having a HZ with a nearby binding point make a lot of sense.
To the OP: please do not let the jerks in this thread get you down. Despite the average age of EQ players likely falling between 30 and 60, most of the responses attacking you, your play style, and your ideas seem to show that the emotional age of these posters is around 15. I used the old HZs until I out-leveled them, using binds just like you mention, and I strongly believe that I would not have continued playing the EQ if they had not been there. Despite the old folks telling you that you should have to grind just because they did, you and I and other posters in this thread all know that we have better things to do. From what I've seen (and heard) of the new hot zones, they are not at all what they used to be and certainly aren't as efficient for exp. For many players, they have turned out to be a wild goose chase, as the players have died trying to get to remote zones and then can't find any mobs to kill. DBG knows that this game needs new players and that is why they try to make it easier to start (or return) by offering Heroic Toons and by adding exp boosts like the dailies. So I also agree with your assertion that DBG might be interested in your experiences. Thank you for sharing.
I still can't for the life of me figure why they don't just make it 20 mobs for the quest, but any mob in the zone. So people can set up camp wherever they want, and finish the quest. Tat
This is exactly why hot zones are important and need to be easily accessible: Nobody goes back and helps new people (and who wants to? nobody wants to pay for reruns). If the game wants to keep new players, it needs to be easier for them to catch up to the rest of us.
Well I hope you atleast had some fun, 6 boxing sounds even more intense than I like to play. Good post. I don't necessarily agree, but I don't think what you are asking for would adversely affect my time, so I don't see why not.
His 6 accounts leaving the game just caused EQ to be cancelled. Dang it! Lol ok no it didn't. 6 subscriptions is $15 x 6 = $90 a month. $90 x 12 months = $1080 a year. 6 expansions bought per year is average of $600. So, DBG just lost $1690 a year by losing him as a customer. Seeing as DBG's parent company is worth billions, I doubt they are worried about $1690 dollars. But, honestly, here's the kicker. There is NO game available out there that even comes close to giving you the EQ experience. Either he truly kicks his EQ habbit or he will be back. trust me when I say I wish there was an EQ clone, but there are none. DBG owns us. >.<
I'm always amazed how you people think you can piss on other people and not wonder why the population is as bad as it is.
I am not sure what exactly can be labeled the EQ experience, certainly not everything is a positive. Just a crap load of bad games out there now and not just MMOs. As for ownership; With that realization the best thing a person can do is get out and fast. Run not walk away, being in that position is bad on more levels than I like to think about. Didnt miss the game for ten years and dont need it now. Do enjoy it mostly but then I know what to avoid.
Your totally wrong in thinking this way. I had 12 accounts and stopped paying over 2 years ago. Using up my kronos i had then. I purchased 8 COTF expansions and that just before i left them alone. If everyone did what this OP did, you would not have the backing to fund the game anymore. That parent company isn't about to pour more money in an old game, if it cant support the servers it rents. Its up to the DBG to self manage first then develop new games. EQ will be on the chopping block one day, for now its safe. We are already down to a small team. Smart business would worry about losing a 2000 customer and any possible leads this person has.
And do you actually think he's the only person who left for this or similar reasons? People also said no one leaves because of nerfs, yet my guild has gaping holes from people doing just this. It's especially bad when they mess with a class's core abilities. The bottom line is DBG isn't listening, so people keep leaving. It's not just $1690/year. It's $1690 per year PER PERSON. Yes, I think that makes a sizable dent. It doesn't matter how much the parent company is worth. They're not gong to hang onto an albatross forever.
They must be coming to KOI because I just had 7 apps come in the last 3 days. I don't see people leaving, so maybe its a server issue or even a guild issue rather than a trivial issue such as bind points or other minuscule stuff such as nerfs.
Correlation does not equal causality. Your guild may have lost certain characters but that doesn't mean that those people are no longer playing EQ on another character in another guild or even on another server. It also doesn't mean those people have actually stopped paying on their account. I have known lots of people over the years who migrated to different classes for a variety of reasons, nerfs being one of them. Come to find out, they had characters in several different guilds, some on the same server some on other servers, that no one in their current guild ever knew about. Perhaps some of the people in your guild did actually quit (for a time), but I'd wager they'll likely be back at some point in the near future. Just not necessarily on the same character(s) that you'll recognize.
There is a finite number of Everquest gamers Here's the reality of the situation. Everquest has a finite pool of gamers that will ever play on a Live server for a long period of time. There are those that will come and go here and there, but the so called "Everquest Fans" that will be here for years are a limited number of gamers. It's not the graphics, combat, nor content It has nothing to do with the graphics, the combat, or the content. It has everything to do with the game design, and I'm NOT saying that is a bad thing. It's just the truth. Here's why The fact that the game has 105 levels and over 10,000 AAs to obtain per character isn't the barrier that keeps people from coming to and staying on Everquest's live servers. No. That's the easy part. Heroic characters went a long way to making it even easier. It's the gear. Every character has 21 item slots, and each of those items have at least 2 augment slots. You can't exactly just go hit up solo or group content to get the gear that you need. That gear is just minimum in value. The gear that you start with as a heroic character literally is just a starter set that the average Everquest Fan would laugh at having on their main character. The game's content is tuned for raid geared characters, and the thing is that IT SHOULD BE. Why? Because 95% or MORE of the gamers that play Everquest on Live servers are raid geared. The average Everquest gamer has been playing their main character for the past decade or more. If you tune the game's content to group based gear and augments, you will have a game that is completely boring to the mass majority of the gamers that play here. So, what can DBG do to encourage NEW gamers and RETURNING gamers to play AND STAY? Nothing. There is no way to do it with out alienating their core customers that have been hear the past decade or more. Only the community can help do that by bringing new and returning gamers in to their fold and helping them by bringing them in to their guilds and taking them on raids that they are not geared to be on in the first place. And, that presents a problem. Why? Because the average Everquest gamer has been through the tough times, been beaten up by the game, and generally just toughed it out for the long run to get where they are. They don't want to see anybody get anything easier than they did. The mere mention of someone being helped to get gear they didn't earn starts flame wars in Everquest circles. You will walk up hill both ways in the snow, and YOU WILL LOVE IT!!!! Or get out! Right? Yeah. That leaves us with the reality that Everquest does have a finite pool of gamers There is X number of gamers that have played Everquest religiously for the past decade or more. That number will go down over time as people burn out or leave for other reasons. The point is there is no one replacing the core Everquest gamer. Not yesterday. Not today. Not tomorrow. I know of at least one friend of mine that has played Everquest for the past decade, and raided all the time. Everquest was his life outside of working. He worked, and he played Everquest. He was just like you and me. Average EQ gamer. Every expansion for the past four expansions pushed him closer to leaving. The Broken Mirror was the final straw. He refused to buy it, and he retired his character. You know what MMORPG he plays now? None. Everquest was his game. Everquest is special in that there IS NO CLONE. When you make mistakes that can push a person that is a complete Everquest Addict to quit playing MMORPGs completely, something is REALLY wrong. TL;DR version... Everquest has a finite number of gamers. When they are gone, there is no replacements.
I do not agree with your core premise, the number may fall into a niche category but it is far from finite as there are new players in particular on TLPs (look at what happened last year) but bad decisions, cash grabs, and rushed work run most off to service that toxic crowd that somehow is preferred by DBG since they drive the krono/DBG store market. In contrast the good decisions made explains why though slowly fading it is not dead yet. This game dying off was and is a decision, by the players as a majority and the company. I think the addicts and the greedy will in the end get the results they deserve if not sought. The rest of us will just move on to other things when it does.
Correlation may not equal causality but it does weaken any countering theories and must be served. I can personally attest that as much as we loved the game that round of nerfs under Furor's goading is the final cause we left for ten years. In other games that followed during those years we talked to former other EQ players (it was a big club) and it was almost universally the same reasons, the boring grind, sudden nerfs to loved classes, and an increasingly toxic community and company. People have not changed in that regard they want a game to be run well. So for us, not being unique in any real way, this correlation indeed was causality. We continue on now but barely. One good game and that will not be the case given the present conditions.
Just to point out here, the "gear gap" between raid gear and group gear got significantly smaller in TBM. You can absolutely go hit up solo and group content in TBM and walk away with phat lewtz. TDS t3 Highwater/nonvisibles was on par with RoF T2/T3 raid stuff, maybe t1 cotf for the highwater. Properly aug'd TBM group gear is on par with TDS Raid for HP or Mana (one or the other, not both) and far, far better in heroic stats. The only place it comes up short is in focus effects, where only certain slots will matter for certain classes. With a properly spec'd set of TBM group gear, you can push 1000 in a heroic stat with 400-500 in all the others. Or you can hit 800-900 in a heroic stat, 400+ in all others, and be at almost the same HP as a full TDS raid toon. I liked this change, and while I am not a huge fan of the TBM group content (aside from enslaver, damsel, and lady, which were all fun), the gear is amazing. It's still a far cry from the raid lewtz, but it's not surpassed by raid drops from 3 expansions ago. All the other stuff you said is sorta true, sorta not. I see new players, returning players, and in/out players all the time. I don't think there's much Daybreak can change to make them stay or go because of something game related - they will either like it, or they won't. What *does* make people stay around EQ is the community. MMO's are about having fun with your pals. This guy left because he had no friends and felt it necessary to 6boxjerk himself for an hour a day to get XP. If he'd had some pals around, he'd have less toons to move around (lol), would have switched to HA's and finished them before the 6hour task timer was up (haha?) or simply wouldn't have cared about binding somewhere because he was having too much fun with his pals (yes!). People who leave are going to leave regardless of what Daybreak does. They will cry about nerfs, they will cry about content, they will cry about <insert most recent daybreak affront to humanity here>. The only thing that's kept people around for 16 years is to have a friend's shoulder to cry those tears on, because Verant has certainly never given any f*****; they even named a zone "The Ocean of Tears" just to prove it. The only exception to everything I just ranted about would be if another expac was released as buggy as TBM was. That could very well tank EQ's core playerbase, and hence the people keeping new people around, beyond recompense. My 2 copper pieces
