Enough is enough

During this expansion I had the time, money and dedication but the most important part was missing: a good MMORPG.

I play this game since age 5-6 and before that I played EQOA. When I was young only allowed to play half an hour a day, that half hour was very important to me as I absolutely loved this half hour I got to play (sometimes my parents would take me to a restaurant and I would be very grumpy because I would miss my half hour of EQ2). I have faced every stage there is in this game, being blocked by a language barrier since English is my third language, being a noob and a fool, being an average heroic dungeon runner, being a small time raider, being a Battleground beginner, solid player and eventually a BG God (deal with it I 1v24 u). I have been a solid raider too, especially during this expansion. Every time I think of these amazing times I feel sad, mainly because I know that I will never experience a similar gaming experience.

This game started becoming slightly pay to win even before the expansion dropped. I was one of the first to start complaining about the pay to win or more properly phrased "pay to be relevant" concept. Back then it wasn't taken seriously even though the warning was fair. Now this game is dying at a rapid speed because of the insane greed and denial. I remember talking to developer Kander about the ascension progression and he simply answered that you can just obtain it, when I proved him wrong he would ignore me (I gave him a really hard time muhaha!).

Content lately has been very weak. The only encounters that were not joke during this expansion were all T3 and T4 (aside from the early panic mechanic). Progression died as soon as there were abilities hitting for extreme amounts (dumbfires etc, I remember the granite protector being absolutely broken etc. etc.). Ever since it was about which guild had the most players with decent tithe and high level ascension abilities.

Not only those points have been horrid but also a very massive and endgame changing one: Proving Grounds. While a big community of people asked for renewed Battlegrounds developer Caith started working on a way to modernize them. This failed and let to the start of Proving Grounds, a PvE variant to PvP, wait, isn't that just PvE? Yes, but now it is PvE vs PvE... not that raid progression and contest is any different PvE from that.......
PG's have been a mind numbing grind of broken content, I did not enjoy them for more than 1 second of the estimated of 50-100 hours I played them. I feel very ashamed of pushing myself to do it as well as grinding tithe which is being handed out and insane rates.

I gave up on this game. The development team might do their best with the funds they have, yet it does not come to rescue of this game. The masterpiece called EQ2 is like a car with an engine that barely runs that is trying to move forward with a very small amount of gas. The gas is running out. So is EQ2.

My goal of this thread is to give the development team (heck, maybe even those who invest) a final warning. At this rate the game will be truly dead in a year. Only tens of players on every server would buy the expansion if it would be like how KA became after 3 months in.

It really does sadden me to say goodbye to such a great part of my amused times.
/emote tries not to shed one tear because he is too cool to cry of course

Goodbye Norrath.

/wave ...can we haz ur stuffs?

Sorry but some of us still enjoy it. As for time left, we shall see. Most companies do not hire if a game is dying. We got an awesome new Community Relations person, great new incentives coming to Isle of Refuge, new xpac coming likely november, and who knows what else. There has been numerous positive signs over the past month or two, which have totally brightened my outlook. I will still continue to suggest and hope for a buff to the 2.0 alt bauble, to forego the more trivial time sink aspects associated with old quests from old expansions, and making them account wide rather then server bound. Other then that one final hurdle, i am extremely happy.

We'll see you in November. Even if you are truly leaving, we know you will be back for exp14. People float around, try other games, and ultimately realize this game has too much to offer, and blows most of them away in both content and community.

How much severe head trauma did they have to go through before reaching that realization?

It's hard to put the rational above the emotional with something like this.

My favorite version of D&D is still 2nd Edition even though I know other versions of the rules are better. I spent most of the 90s and early 00s playing and running those rules with some great people and those experiences are deeply ingrained into me and my expectations. A part of me still thinks 2nd Edition is the bestest table top experience ever even though I know other rule sets like d20, HERO, and GURPs offered so much more. In the same way a part of me will always be stuck in EQ2 even though it's not only not that good of a game compared to others on the market in many ways, it's not even the best version of Norrath.

It's hard sometimes to not get sucked in to that nostalgia and run on feelings and attachment making decisions without really evaluating them properly. The only reason I'm here now is because of that attachment. I want the devs to surprise me and redeem themselves. They're not going to get any money out of me at this point until they earn it, though, and that can be a lot harder to do than it sounds. At least at first...

The business model if the game has changed. And for some peeps, that's just fine. Gaming companies do make money with grind and p2w game designs, which is also fine.

Many of of us didn't sign up for this kind of game, and we are attached to what the game was and not wanting to accept what it now is.

Appeals to DBG are not going to change their business plan. So, while sometimes difficult, it is helpful to remember a key decision making rule hammered home in any introductory economics class: ignore sunk costs.

Actually, I suspect that if the current game design and revenue model fails, DBG is not going to flip back to the old one, they are just going to shut it down. If they can generate a profit, they will keep things as they are now: limited on content, heavy on grind, cash shop driven.

If the game is not providing the utility you want, stop buying it and move on. If you're ok with it - great, you're the customer they want, so carry on.

I've been playing this game off and on since launch and I have heard all this many times before. I stopped playing in 2012 because of a new job but came back recently just for nostalgia. Never say never.... you will be back.

I took many long breaks before, however, with this game model I will not come back.

This current model of "pay to win" or "pay to be relevant" is completely devoid of personal integrity. The crew that still runs this game should be ashamed of themselves for letting the game get to the point it is, and they should also realize that a huge group of people are only finishing out this expac to see if next expac will be any different before we also quit. I literally have enough Krono to get me to November, and I am not buying a single second of game time into next expac unless they change it.

Why else do you think they require you to pre-order the next expansion before you can beta test it? Because they know that most people won't buy it if they beta test it first. Some people are just stubborn and bought the expansion because they were hoping it would be better than ToT, and then used in game currency to continue their sub through the expansion.

My question to the people who keep coming to these forums to defend it by saying "I still enjoy it, stop complaining, you'll be back" blah blah blah.. Do you enjoy it more or less now that it has become pay to win? Is complaining about the pay to win affecting how much you enjoy the game? If the Dev crew listens to the crowd that hates it, and they remove the pay to win aspect, is that going to ruin your game play? If you answered no to any of these questions, stop replying to these posts of people giving their customer feedback/complaints to the company that they have paid money to for a product that they no longer appreciate. You're just damaging the game you love by defending the way they are currently running it.

I think it's fair to point out that the devs probably have little to no say in what is happening in this game. At least not in the big picture. The impression I have is that CN is telling DBG what to do. DBG is telling the devs of each game what to do. The devs are struggling to do their job with limited resources and directives they may not even agree with from a management that doesn't seem to fully understand what it's doing much of the time. I might be way off on that, but it's what I've gathered from various sources over time. It's easy for us to point at the red names and yell, but sometimes they're just cogs in the machine as well. For that reason I try not to call out the devs or staff themselves unless one of them specifically does something worth calling them out on. I know what it's like to be stuck in a crap job and have to do things I disagree with. Of course, I also know what it's like to bail on that job and move on asap...

I could literally think of HUNDREDS of worse jobs than working on a team of developers for video games .

I suppose that depends on the situation and how much self respect you have

What i miss the most is the heyday of EQ1.

Corpseruns in Guk in Vanilla, When Kunark was released, Velious, even when we worked together against the gods in Planes of Power.

Those were the days!

having self respect and calling someone elses job "crap" are two very different things my friend. Some might say thats having.....no respect?

You have very poor reading comprehension skills if that is all you took away from what I said.

I never even got as far as Maldura besides on beta.
But I am concerned about the idea that have to have the epic weapon quest 2 for the next expansion.
I have only ever gotten the first one on one character and that was on the race to Trakanon.
I know , I know plenty other people got the second one that forced non crafters to do something they don't like to do " craft "
But I also heard of plenty of people that did not get the second upgrade
This might be a problem for the population for the next expansion I see another decrease of people.



Just as moving Stormhold onto AB is a slap into the face of people that spend real money to buy things they can get for free on any other server.
Let alone that people that play on a TLS do so because they wanted to get back into the more simple times'
or they wanted to learn how to play the game right because they came in later.
I know of many people that rather deleted their toons when go on a regular server .
We have another TLS " Fallengate" but after playing on Stormhold for 2 years we were hoping to be able to play there again after we were done getting up to level 50 and doing all those HQ.
If you have to merge Stormhold with any server just lock it up till we catch up with Fallengate and merge us into that server.
If EQ2 is still around .

I don't know what game the OP is playing, but I'm having a blast with all the new stuff!

Did you know... instead of grinding PG's you can also do factory work, it will be as challenging and you will also get paid!

...Although that's not completely fair. Sometimes I think we don't take the unhappy people seriously enough. I was like this on my first crash and burn from EQ2. Norrath is my first love in mmo's. But judging by what you said, you haven't seriously tried to play other games. I'd suggest a few, but it's probably breaking the forum rules or something. So I'll just get to the point:

• That your guild values your character's stats (including tithe, Asc, etc) is == to your guild caring whether you are level 100 or not. It's just leveling with another name. Done. C'est fini. (Of the languages I speak, I'm most proud of my French pronunciation, that's HARD, man!)
• MMO games that go on for years and years always make a choice: either it's gear-driven, or some complex leveling driven. In another game with (ahem) halflings featuring prominently, the "leveling" is part of a Legendary weapon which you work on and gather materials for, and gather currencies so you can buy more stuff for it..... In the end, gear becomes throw-away-next-expac, and people get tired of that. So these complex mechanisms have been devised to keep us amused and make it feel like progress. You don't need to love it, but appreciate the innovation. It's not that easy to keep people amused for decades.
• PvP versus PvE competition: If you were looking for full PvP, you might have chosen a bad game for that. One of the first divergences between EQ and WoW (the "grandfathers" of mmo's) is that PvP was more limited here. Personally I can't be happier with the PvE competition option. But I won't play games that flag you involuntarily for PvP, which tells you all you need to know about how much time I spent in the battlegrounds. I share your concern though, that maybe PG isn't as big a hit as it could be. Elsewhere I'll possibly post about what I wish we'd have for the PVE-competition Proving Grounds. Still new to it, but I'm worried because the scoreboard looks empty when I click it. I hope they don't give up on it though, it's a new idea, give it time to catch on.

I think there are many things that are hollow shells of what they were once conceived to be in EQ2. Dungeon Maker, Fabled versions, Dungeon Finder random grouping, I won't list them all, too painful. These are the ghosts of ideas that didn't work out and they haven't thought of how to make them good yet. Even if you leave, ok, at least appreciate the effort. How would you fix these things? Give it some thought and suggest fixes that might work.

You may have a good time in other games, but if Norrath is the first game you played and really loved, it will probably never be something you can forget. Next time you find a problem, don't say anything until you have a solution you think will work. Present the solution. See what happens. It takes courage to do that. More than facing a 1v24, or at least equal courage.

This made me laugh. Thanks. I do appreciate humor especially if it's warped.

Did you know there are more things to do in EQ 2 than grind PG's?

I think it's very important for customers to provide feedback on their experiences with a product - positive or negative.

Positive feedback lets them know what they're doing right, and I'm sure makes them feel pretty good.

Critical feedback, whether it's from a new customer that the game just didn't grab, or a long term customer who is no longer satisfied, lets them know what they could do better. Or what the community thinks they are flat out doing wrong. And they need to hear it to gain and retain, customers.

It's great when folks come back after extended breaks (that they took for whatever reason) and can enjoy the game.

It'd be even better if they could do so without attacking fellow players and realize that feedback is necessary for the success of the product they claim to support.