These are great questions, and I am going to just be blunt. The "timeline" is 100% fluid and depends on how the current changes are received, the feedback from you, our players and how the overall balance of things are changed. This isn't something we plan on pushing out and forgetting about. If the effects of these changes require multiple changes between say now and October due to feedback and balance, than we will absolutely be making adjustments.
When you say the new raid will support pick up raiding, is that going to be the same level of pick up raid that could handle ages end x2? Because that was supposed to be puggable and I found that nearly impossible with a stacked raid force in x4 gear because of the DPS check. I'm fine with having to do strat, make me move, make me click people, whatever but don't stop me with a DPS check if it's going to be something puggable And I know it could be said that if I wanted to seriously raid I should make sure we have what we need but I play this game to have fun. I raid lead for others to have fun and darn it I will make sure they get to run the classes they love. IF that means I have 5 tanks and three troubadors, and no dirges so be it. We will dance just as hard as anyone else to try to take these bosses down, but let us play the game our way. I'm sorry if my tone is abrupt here but I really don't want to buy an adventure pack with a raid zone geared towards casual players if it's not actually going to be something my casual raid guild can do.
So you are saying that my lvl 98 Paly with normal non raid gear will be able to do the Solo Advanced Rum Cellar? Sorry but I don't believe you. AoM isn't and wasn't designed for the casual and mid level player, and Rum Cellar won't be either. Rarity of mentioned drops will be worse than the new rare havestables. I hope you prove me wrong sadly at the moment my EQ2 playing days are coming to an end. G.
You could solve a lot of problems by getting 2 levels. The cap isn't going any where for a while so it likely a lot of stuff will get added for level 100 from now on.
The AoM content difficulty was just fine until they dumbed it down and made the mobs easy mode. Now by your own admission the joke expansion AoM was "light on content". You basically overcharged the players for the broken, poorly fleshed out lag filled mess that was AoM, and now you expect us to pay for content that should be free of charge. No way in hell will I pay you Daybreak people one cent for this rum ripoff. You should be fixing every thing you broke with AoM and that includes the terrible lag you don't seem willing or able to fix. That's not even mentioning the shaft that Daybreak is giving to the players support wise. Pathetic.
Compared to last year, where we had a vast amount of content to keep us entertained for the full duration of the year until Altar of Malice was released, what is your plan to keep those players that do not fall into your target audience for this DLC? Wing 3 of ToV and Deathtoll both appeared during spring and summer and lasted all throughout the entirety of that expansion, are we getting anything like this before this supposed "Fall" update you have in store, or will we die of boredom killing everything that's already been killed and lose interest in this game before this "Fall" update gets released? I'm interested in knowing because all those content updates we've had in the past is what's kept me playing this game for so long and now i feel like i won't have anything else to do in this game for the rest of the year since i don't fit into your target audience.
They've done several things to help with lag, my performance has gotten better even before my server got switched to the new database and there is more on the way. I'm really starting to suspect people are calling FPS drops, freezes and hitching 'lag' when that is in fact a user end problem.
I'm going to assume you aren't a casual player. Mind you assuming means I'm making a moron out of myself but I bet you were in great gear last expac and blazed right into raid content for this one right? That's awesome! There is nothing wrong with being hardercore and I really feel for you feeling that you don't have more game left to play. Now on the other hand i'm in a guild where we were dabbling in the temple of Veeshan towards the end of last expac and getting stuck on the fire/ice dragons. (Which I hated because there was no good way to know about the distance porting thing unless someone told you what to do) So this expac I ran my tank, and circle jerk through the zones I can do, Highhold which for some reason wasn't that bad and the two dino zones. Do this for a bout 4-6 weeks. Regimes change and now I'm running my healer in raid(again) but we're still farming the same zones because for one we have a lot of people to gear, and for two zones like Ossuary Fountain has a crazy awesome dps check and pretty much requires one of the few classes with the ability to nearly constantly silence the 2nd to last boss or else he gets a crazy buff. At this time we're killing 1 raid boss twice a week. Raid constantly getting flattened by the Dino zone trash which hits harder than any other trash in the other raid zones. But we kill it all hoping to get cloaks and belts. Start doing more of the content, get another couple bosses down. I'm at the point now where I can do ossuary fountains with a group if I stack it right in my guild. we're clearing dino, we're killing 2 names in high hold and we're getting one pirate down. I'm not out of expansion yet. The only thing the content being harder does? Is make it so I likely won't see the whole expansion -again-. Is it my fault for not being a serious enough player? Maybe. But I get just as tired of doing the same first bosses over and over again. It's nice to think they are adding something that would be different down at the end of the game I am playing for a change. Usually the content added to the game is like Death Toll, or Drunder, or other zones like that where it's meant to be challenging for the higher end raider type. I can honestly say I wouldn't buy an adventure pack if it was like Death Toll, I'd never see it but I would hope they would do something like that for those that want that type of thing.
Funny because that's the same song and dance Daybreak keeps spouting off. Most of us know exactly what the difference between FPS drops, freezes, hitching, and lag. Especially when you look up and others are experiencing the same thing.
The game has many factors for performance problems but I want to know why the forums are still hard to connect to and I know my way around a PC and Networks and only this website am I having hard time connecting to an getting updates here and only thing could be DDOS still is still going on. Anyone connecting to the forums with no problems at all?
The difference here is that all they had to do in the past expansion is to either tweak that content that was difficult for casuals after a certain timeframe so that everyone could have seen that content, but they never did. But the content was still there to be tackled. With this DLC, all i'm seeing is that they're making content for casual players, which is totally fine, but Kander's letter states they're neglecting the progression players for 5-6 months which hasn't happened in a serious amount of time in EQ2. So I'm asking to be sure if this is the case or not, 'cuz otherwise I'm gonna get seriously bored with this game with nothing challenging to do for that timeframe.
Like I said I definitely feel for you guys on the progression side it's just unfortunate that it seems like they have to neglect one of the demographics at all times ;\ there is such a wide gap between the play styles let alone the crafters being left out of new content again :\ (I dont' like crafting it scares me btw crafting tables kill people -.- I remember I will never forget nor forgive you woodworking station!)
I would like to know one thing: What is the plan for future bundling? In the past all previous expansions were bundled together if you bought the latest one. People would be on equal footing when they bought the latest. With these DLC's is it going to be the same premise? If I take a break from EQ2, come back in a year, if I buy the latest DLC for that year, will I get this years DLC's bundled into it without extra cost? When do you mark it so that a DLC is merged into the main fold? In 3 years time we could have 9 DLC's each $15 to $30 each. There maybe price adjustments, but it would be better if they simply had a time limit on such, it would help newer players.
And yet you charged us a full price for an expansion that you now admit was subpar and your fix it to put this out and charge us $15.00 more? Are you nuts? Not a chance, I'll give up raiding if my raid guild demands that it's member buy this. I'll wait for the next expansion and if it is only $15.00 then I might purchase both. I guess my monthly dues and the money I spent on AoM was enough to get a good product, I need to now pay additional money to get what I should have gotten in the expansion?
Hah! Pugging a raid ..... pugging a 6 man group is pretty much impossible on the dead server I played on. There's really no reason to buy this DLC even if I thought it would be money well spent (which I don't). Like the poster above the whole AoM mess just boggles the mind, I mean casual content coming out now? Green Adornments coming out now? Why didn't you just fix it in the first place. I'm not going to threaten to quit, I already did.
Yes, I did. Around the 15 minute mark they were talking about that they were thinking of unbundling features to suit peoples play styles and not having premium/standard packages. They did not address if it would include previous content, nor did they say what they will do after a protracted amount of time after the the DLC release. So, no they didn't answer the question in the video.
If you are going to pitch a hissy fit, and go off and rage quit, So be it... As for me, I have put this to some more thought. Daybreak bought EQ2 from SOE and along with it any lingering bugs and other issues associated with the game. So Daybreak has a few mountains to climb before seeing brighter days with their investment. I know I have had my moments when I griped about the way things are going, even going so far as to stick my foot in my mouth at least once. But given it some more thought, it seems they are doing the best the can with what they have. So I am not going to quit or rage quit, because that would not be helpful. Instead I will renew my All-Access subscription. I will also buy these campaigns, and whereas some my not believe it to a fair price, it does go to support EQ2 and allows Daybreak to generate more content in the future. Having seen the Rum Celllar Campaign Preview video, it looks like a fair price for the content they are putting out, well, at least to me.
I wonder, if a tiny one-zone dlc is 15$, how much the next "larger campain, with an overland zone, raids, quests, signature lines" will cost. Over 50$?
/shrug my performance has gotten much better. What I do keep noticing is people saying they are 'lagging' when people in the same group aren't which means the source of lag isn't the server, but something in between the user and just before the servers. It could be the NIC, it could be the ISP, it could be the relays, or something else entirely but its almost certainly not the servers. Or, like I suggested, its not really lag at all.
