Are the dev's doing anything to bring back there old subscriber base?

Yeah that's what people seem to be missing. Pound for pound, even after a mountain of poor decisions in many peoples eyes, EQ2 is STILL the best MMO on the market. The nay-saying can ramp up when there's something better.

If this were 10 years ago I'd absolutely agree with you. Even 7-8 years ago I'd have probably agreed with you. Hell, I'll humor you and say, "Yes, EQ2 is the best MMO." The MMO genre has gone down the crapper. Saying your game is the best turd in the bowl isn't saying much. Maybe Pantheon or Ashes of Creation will be good? I'm not holding my breath. I should probably just retire to the emulator community for good. /shrug

I definitely agree with this. It seems like companies are focusing on trying to make the next fortnite, so they can put in minimal investment for tremendous gain. I get that, but there is something to be said for putting in quality effort for solid gain.

I would posit that EQ2 is still a good game. The playstyle has shifted away from something that traditional players enjoy but the game itself is still good. If it were as bad as the doomsayers suggest then the game would've been dead 7 years ago.

As of right now, the game has 65 active raid guilds, not counting TLE. I don't follow what the player estimations are for TLE but for just raid guilds there are between 1200 and 1600 players, not even accounting for (I'm sure) the much larger casual player base. Has the game dropped in popularity? Sure. Is it dead? Far from it.

Loaded question just guaranteed to bring em' out of the woodwork. Worked too.

DAOC was hideous.

The players are out there, its whether there is anybody out there that wants to take the time and effort to develop a game or spend the money on a game they already like. True we are the "older" players. But we are also the players, that typically have families that are grown and out on their own, more of us may be retired, we typically have more disposable income, and many other reasons why it would be in a companies interest to either develop a game in our genre, like EQ2, or take over an existing IP that we prefer and listen to what we want, what we like, as we have no qualms about paying subscriptions if we are getting a game we enjoy.

I've love to see someone do a vampire game something like Vampire Masquerade. That would be very cool!

There is a new RPG coming out for VtM which is a spiritual sequel to their original iirc.

Yeah, I know I've got it on pre-order! I can't wait for it to come out!

But it would be so cool if there was a vampire MMO!

You know, I still think EQ2 is a wonderful game but at the same time its not the same game I started with its like 42.6% of the game I liked, now and each time they do blanket changes on stats and armor it seems to lose a bit more % in the wrong direction... I know things change, some for better some for worse and I accept that. I didnt ask for many of the changes and was dead set against them, now... thankfully, I no longer have to spend a dime for any of it as I can see just from the prelude there is going to be so much stat bloat and I'm like ugg!...its just not fun anymore.

And a note to whomevers idea it was to put in heroic zones that oneshot you for going in solo instead of balancing so a solo with a merc or a couple of friends could run a bit more difficult content was complete fail, and that person or persons should in my humble opinion go back to whatever school teaches you how to make fun games cause that ain't it. Just doing the same 4ish zones at different difficulty levels for a year is pretty stale.and the ascensions.. really?

You know, what I would really like to see the most is a server with no marketplace, no vet rewards, and old school stats where every stat means something, and above all else... access to battlegrounds.

It wont happen and I wont hold my breath, but maybe Verant will do another MMO? They did a fair job of getting Everquest going.

I still think also EQ2 is the best so far. WOW I didn't even last 2 weeks, couldn't stand it.

In my opinion EQ2 started going down hill about the Maldura expansion. And whoever thought of the Ascension thing should be flogged and sent to bed with no supper.

I also hated all the changes they have made to armor and that over the years, they keep trying to dumb stuff down for people and it just makes things worse.

Some people blame the dumbing down on people like me who can only solo.

O not sure about that I solo exclusively I used to group several years ago with my guildies, but now I'm the only one in my guild and I solo 100% of the time. I used to like it when you actually had to think about things when the loot dropped. Or when you actually had to work to achieve stuff, and not this new system they have now where you have to still work to achieve things but everything is repeatable so you do the same quest over and over and over and over, it was much better when they had quest lines and not the monotonous grinding there is now.

I understand what you're saying but I remember when on this forum there was a big discussion on how soloers were ruining EQ2 and other MMOs. I don't agree with those sentiments. I think there is plenty of room for everybody to play.

I agree with this post 100%. Unfortunately, Verant isn't a company that exists anymore. They became SOE and SOE became Daybreak. The closest thing to Verant is Visionary Realms who are making Pantheon.

Back when this game actually had a decent population all you had to do to start entry level raiding and pretty much any heroic was hitting the level cap, some key aa and mastercrafted gear. How about we drop all familiars/mounts/mercs/10 different adornments/asscensions/what ever nickel and diming crap I forget just for ONE expansion and see what happens.

Honestly people are saying ascensions aren't a big deal to their damage, yet I look up top guilds and everyone has them at a high rank, and I also know that the drop rate's aren't that common so people must be buying them. I also personally know people who have spent a ton of money since they were introduced to be competitive.

Regardless of wether or not this is still the case in terms of power of ascensions, you gotta think about how they were power wise when introduced, how long ago that was, and given the current back and forth of dps; it could come back relatively easy. This is the problem with those who left when it was introduced, and why they don't want to come back, and I don't blame them.

I'm not a fan of familiars, extensive adornment lists, all these flawless buffs, ascensions, tithe, mount adornments, etc. I prefer this game when you have spec choices, and you actually have to respec to defeat encounters, and when it doesn't have rampant stat inflation.

I guess to top off my annoyance is how silly class design is at the moment, when I see that classes aren't really designed in a way to make them useful, or really have a niche it makes the entire game feel boring, like every class is the same with different icons, and some classes are so terrible they don't even exist. This whole adornment system with the assassinate resets for example, or increasing range/radius of fusion, unlimited fae fires, it's just not fun to see a parse be dominated by one button rather than having to press 15-20 and time them around things like time warp. I know this doesn't just pertain to the current expansion, but it's things that have been getting progressively worse in the past 5 years since I quit raiding live at the top WW position.

I quit around AoM raiding hardcore because of the silly things added, for starters rum cellar was a foresight into the rampant PTW DBG was going to add, given a GU was given a price tag, and before that with the fabled DoF/KoS instances, I quickly saw that copy/pasting old raid zones as a guise of content was going to become common. The introduction of grandmasters and ancients also seemed like a cash grab. Ancients could've been a cool concept if they weren't such a low drop rate, and only dropped from raids.

If all of that was dropped, i'd play more live, I reached cap during PoP the last time I even bothered and decided it wasn't worth my time.

For a quick answer to the real question this thread is about, no. Nothing new is being done, you can see the backlash on pretty much every system added in the past 5 years and see that the feedback is ignored, more pay to win is added, and little to no systems are in place to allow old players to hop in and have a playing experience within 20% of someone best in slot from doing heroics.

They will keep doing exactly what they have been doing: the exact opposite of what the community wants them to do.
Here are some examples: [COLOR=var(--text-link)]https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq2/index.php?threads/bonus-infusers-ascension-research-pay-to-win.574793/#post-6398146[/COLOR] note how most didn't consider this an issue at the time rofl

[COLOR=var(--text-link)]https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq2/index.php?threads/battlegrounds.571026/[/COLOR] is what went big and the response was Proving Grounds, which people hated yet had to farm because it offered BIS stuff : [COLOR=var(--text-link)]https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq2/index.php?threads/pg-rewards-please-put-them-back-in-line-or-make-easy-alternatives-this-xpac.582474/#post-6481162[/COLOR]