It's not yet too late to save the live servers ......

Same here! I'm 17 and me and myfriends dig this game- kids will still like it just advertise dammit!

I agree with other things you mentioned but I am not sure about this one. I don't think a new expansion should act like complete reset of the previous expansion(s). If items are to matter, they should matter across time to make them meaningful etc. What makes the epic 1.0/2.0 epic was the fact that it was useful across 2/3 expansions. If you know that you will get epic 2.0 "free" the next expansion why go through the grind? Think about someone who is starting the expansion in the middle of it? Wait 6 month and you can have it for free. I think as times (expansions) goes by it should become easier to get them but not "no effort".

This is another point I am not sure about as well. I don't believe this is a problem in the current expansion. I have tanked T1, T2 and T1 Mythic raids and I have tanked them all under-geared, as much as 120 resolve below requirement. It was not just me who was under-geared, I would guess half of our casual raid alliance was under-geared! Some people are still using T1 heroic gear.
One can argue these are all easy mode raids and thats true but if you are doing T3 or T4 then you are at the top end and should expect to suffer if you loose 3 of your players as they should be very tightly tuned in terms of gear requirement anyway.

It also made it so players returning in the expansion after epics, had to spend up to 1 month to get a weapon that was pretty essential to doing anything beyond basic heroics in that expac. Anything that requires more than perhaps 1 days worth of effort in a previous expac should not be a requirement for the next. This would allow things like heritage quests and such to still be semi useful next expac for a short time.

I'm not saying give everyone full top end gear at the end of each expac. It doesn't have to be a totally equal field at the start of each expac, but the gap between top and bottom should be closed significantly.

You've tanked raids with 120 resolve less than a mob? I'm doubtful. This would mean your taunts/damage are doing 0 to a mob. There is no way you'd keep aggro.

Losing members should cause a brief stall sure, but how long does it take to fully gear up a player now to be ready for T3/T4 content? Assuming you still have normal members who need/want the gear, and that new player is likely on a recruit status with no/limited access to that gear.

The issue is the large disparity between the low end (completed solo timeline) and high end (fully infused T2 heroic or better) geared players.
The insane growth in player power results in content quickly becoming obsolete, or if it needs to be farmed for some rare reward to quickly become extremely boring. It results in less players to play with as they are either much weaker and will slow you down or much stronger so you'll only get dragged along.

The insane growth in player power does make it easier for the devs to 'balance' raid content. It's far easier to count for outgoing dps to double between tiers than it is for only a 10% increase, while making sure you do need the increase for the content to have the intended difficulty. But using that is just lazy design.

It is mechanics such as potency mitigation that make gear upgrades appear to be smaller than they really are. For a healthy game, gear upgrades should appear to be bigger. Easily available things to all players such as buffs and AA should account for a much larger part of a player's power compared to gear than it is now.
If gear is relatively uninportant to player power, it opens up options for gear to look like great upgrades. It allows gear to be interesting, instead of just 50 more potency. And it closes the gap in power between players, allowing everyone to play together.

The size of the numbers does not matter. It's the relative size between the various sources of those numbers which does. And at the moment, it is all gear.

Get rid of ascensions, infusing, potency/combat/stat mitigation, fervor, crit bonus and the mystery healer debuff. Put those stats we have at 100% on diminishing returns so that we are not at 100%. Buff AA's and class buffs. And then make gear drops less common, more interesting and without the grind.

We agree to disagree then I have no issues invalidating even top tier raid gear but I am talking about key" item(s) such as the epic weapons should not invalidated that quickly in the next expansion. It should be weeks of "casual" play and not days to obtain them still.

Sorry I got carried away there! T1 Mytical need 1797 resolve and I have exactly 1707 resolve so I was under by 90 resolve! It wasn't pretty and the mob was bouncing around but I manged to get it back for bulwark calls, kept agro etc. We have only killed 3 mobs in T1 Mythic.

But my general point still stands though, easy mode/casual raids are very forgiving this expansion. Sometimes I felt that some T2 heroic mobs were lot harder than raid mobs!

Wasn't it always the case that top end raids (T3/T4) required top end gear etc so if few people left, you suffered? I never done top end stuff in EQ2 but I assumed all the top end guilds prepared for this eventuality by having more than 24 people in their roaster precisely because it took time to get fresh player to gear up for top end stuff? Or they poached players from casual raid alliance like ours?

Previous to the whole resolve mechanic, you could sub in lesser geared players and make it work, by either protecting them more (Giving them single target wards, keeping ranged), and they'd still be able to contribute semi decently. Now with resolve, if they are 50 short, their dps is cut in half. If 100 resolve short, they are worthless & a liability.

I just find the whole resolve gating mechanic to be silly. HP/DPS checks worked fine in the past, until stats went up 20x the amount in the space of 1 expac.

Does it make the game in any way more fun/engaging to players? Simple answer is no.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like the resolve mechanics either, I think its just lazy design. I prefer the DPS checks, boss enrage timers etc. My general point was that catch up in shouldn't be too easy specially for top end stuff.

After playing a bit on Kaladim I think I'm going to try out one of the regular servers (or possibly Fallen Gate), it's just too grindy for me.

Are there any servers with a decent population that I can help support?

Maj'Dul is the most heavily populated. There are not a lot of people doing low level groups on Live, but you can use mercenaries on Live, which speeds things up.

You don't get past the grindy on live - it just all comes at the end when you think you should be having fun.

i play on skyfire and grinding old content just for the fun and i see people leveling all the time.... i imagine maj dul and hall of fate is the same..

Just to be clear, when I posted my suggestions, it was not to join top end stuff. From what I've read, I didn't get the impression that anyone one else was suggesting that "top end stuff" should be made easy.

The design of CD erred in that it made it tedious and expensive to just join a group, which is pretty basic for an MMO.

If you have all the crafting classes, as my spouse and I do, the process to just be viable in a group is tedious (although not expensive), and is not fun at all.

After having played the original EQ together, it taught us that if a game is not fun, it's time to leave.

I really hope the devs fix it so people who complete the CD signature questline, which is very soloable, are viable in groups, no crafters required (even though we made tons of money due to the crafted gear requirements, I recognize that is bad for the viability of the game).

I've left EQ2 to played Anarchy Online's recently released version of TLE (no doubt copied from EQ2). I will come back to EQ2 in a heartbeat if they ever straighten this out, as evidenced by me still reading this forum.

I think I generally disagree with your points but in a friendly way

You are viable for T1 heroics with MC gear and getting MC gear is easy and cheap. What is tedious is the experimentation process and I hate that with a passion but its not hard at all and anyone can do it. So I think its lot easier to group in this expansion.

There will be geared people out there who may not want to group with a person in MC gear but that's a different issue.

the expense and difficulty in getting a group stems not from anything the developers have or have not done, but from player inflation of the stat requirements.

And because most players get their information about whats required, from other players via the general in game chat system there is no limit to how much or how fast those players 'slide' and 'pad' the stats numbers they believe to be Must Have! to play with them . A good number of the above players are victims of the frantic ,"hurry up! I need plats for this months krono! play style.

Add to this that the parsing programs are grossly over used to track every number in every fight , even those that frankly it's not needed for , you break out the parse if you are loosing over and over or someone is just blatantly not doing their job and is arguing about it, before being kicked .. for not doing their job.
and you get a grinding, fun stopping brick-wall of requirements that are never achievable.. because they are always moving .

Skyfire!!!

Halls of Fate has a decent population, but once again, not too much low end grouping. If you get a mercenary though, it's a non-issue, or even find someone to duo with.

Nothing is more grindy than soloing on a TLE server.

When stats started ranging in the millions, upwards, I stopped paying attention to them. I can't juggle numbers, that large, in my head, unless I'm being paid to do it.

That is my biggest gripe with EQII as it is today. It has become work and not play and I won't pay, to work, unless nothing else is available to me.

So I am subbing, at the moment, on 2 accounts since I'm back on bed rest. But that will end when I'm able to be up and about again.

I'll still play occasionally, because I want to keep my mercs trained and my spells updated. I also like to craft and decorate which don't require me to "keep up with the Jones" in order to accomplish them.

One day, if they go on sale for half price, I might even buy the CD xpac for some of my accounts. Right now, DB is asking a lot of money for xpacs that are more work, than play, so I no longer jump at the chance to buy new xpacs.

I realize that game developers want to add new things, to a game, to keep it fresh and exciting, but making it more complicated isn't the answer. Filling 100 hotkeys, plus those for special classes like beastlord, do not make the game more fun to play.

Having hundreds of stats on characters, mounts, familiars, mercenaries, etc., also don't make the game more fun to play. If I wanted to maintain a spreadsheet I'd go back to work.

Making quest lines, convoluted, doesn't enhance game play. It just makes it confusing and frustrating.

Making crafters have to fight off mobs, while trying to craft, is the pits. It's bad enough having to fight them off when trying to harvest.

And I could go on and on but a lot of my gripes have already been expressed by previous posters. DB has forgotten the main mantra of life: Keep It Simple Stupid. EQII has suffered, greatly, as a result.

HaHA! See, i knew it! Yes, i know there are games out now with amazing, super-realistic graphics...but there is also a trend toward a more Retro style: Minecraft and Roblox come to mind. I have no constructive criticism to offer regarding Heroics or tiers or game mechanics; I don't really group, i'm socially akward and a bit of a lone wolf. I've been playing this wonderful game for almost two years now; i learn new things within it almost every day and i still feel like there is so much more to discover! on that note, i will say that this is the single most complicated, convoluted game i've played in my 38 years...and i LOVE it

You're doing effect and cause. The cause of stat inflation is not the players but the developers, who created the inflated stats. Players have no control over their constantly inflated by developers baseline stats.