Norrath is heating up with GU 115: Reignite the Flames!

He said there are 4 new adventure quests & a new collection quest. Those are likely to be solo-able. As far as new content for lower levels? A game this age tends to be end game focused. I can't fault them for focusing on their largest market segment.

But unless you are progression guild, almost no one is grouping in lower level zones (unless it is CD for the Runes)...seems like it would be a waste of time and resources to try and offer lower level content.

I have a ton of lower level alts scattered across 90 levels, but I rarely see anyone when I'm out and about on them.

Are they? How did you come to this assumption? Seeing as all of the new content is heroic/raid?

From playing around on beta, if there is "a" new collection quest (singular) then it's the one you get by killing all the heroic bosses. So no, that's not soloable. Maybe the first boss or two if you're a beast, but the rest you'll need to group for.

I get people's reactions, I mean I barely play solo content myself, but BoL has virtually zero, and what it has got is just repeatable missions. I'm all for new heroic and raid stuff, I mean, that is what I will play, but I feel for the people who just play solo stuff, because my god this year must have been boring for you.

I don't see why anything new needs to be added sub-level120 as a toon not 120 has tons of stuff already to do....

If you solo and want something new to do, there is a whole bunch of prior expac heroics you can do with your level 120 gear, even prior expac raid content. It should be brand new to you because you only soloed those expacs.

Heroic content makes the MMO go 'round. If you haven't done group content before, sounds like this would be a great time to take the plunge and open up a huge portion of the game. Be a Hero.

As someone who has played since beta, hasn't done a Heroic dungeon in a decade and has never raided outside of the odd PUG raid, I can only say some people posting in this thread seem to have very short and selective memories. It's completely inaccurate to characterize the majority of content as being aimed at non-casual players.

Take the last GU, the one that introduced Diaku Corral. That was almost wholly directed at casual players. I soloed that a bunch of times and got upgrades for several characters. It was fun and accessible and profitable for me as a casual, solo player.

Yes, it was aimed at max-level characters, but as has been mentioned EQII already has an absolute boatload of sub-cap content. How anyone playing characters below the current level cap can be short of new-to-them content to enjoy beggars belief. If Darkpaw feel they'd like to add to that lower-level content then I'll be delighted to wake up some of my lower-level characters to enjoy it but it can hardly be considered a priority given the immense amount of things to do that have accrued over the past fifteen years.

The upcoming update won't be of any great use or interest to me but I recognize it is literally impossible to provide content in every update that meets the needs of all players. I had my turn last update and I was very happy with it. Now it's time for me to sit this one out. My turn will come around again.

Meanwhile, every one of EQII's ridiculous number of holiday events comes with content for all levels and we'll soon be looking at this year's panda quests and then the pre-expansion event cycle. This is just one GU and it happens to be aimed at Heroic and Raid players. I hope they enjoy it. There will be plenty for the rest of us in due course.

There always has been. There always is. Let's hope there always will be.

I think what the real complaint is about, is that the game update is lopsided. For a GU, it would be nice if it were more well-rounded. Considering that we only get about 3 GU's a year (outside of expansion releases), it's the only new content during expansion gaps. Having GUs offer a little something for everyone would probably be more well-received.

Since you so obviously lack the ability to read Dreamweaver's post...I will copy / paste it here for you

".....As Norrath heats up around you and the flames of War are reignited, You'll find yourselves taking on 4 new adventure quests and a new collection quest!....."

"....The two raid dungeons: Fabled Plane of War and Solusek's Eye and a new Heroic Dungeon tied to Solusek's Eye as well!....."

I dunno...sounds like 4 solo quests to me, 2 raid dungeons & a Heroic Dungeon.

Maybe Dreamweaver will clarify?

No need for that, I wasn't being insulting and neither should you.

You are still making an assumption. Nothing in what you have copied and pasted there mentions the word solo, and none of the content I have seen on beta is solo. There is a collection quest INSIDE the heroic instance. I have only so far found the quest at the entrance of that zone, which is to kill bosses inside the zone. So that won't be solo either.

The only other quests I've seen are weeklies. I don't understand where solo quests would fit into a GU with no solo content. I'll be happy to be wrong, I enjoy blowing through a solo quest as much as the next person. But I don't think I am.

I think there should have been a PQ in Lavastorm for casual players to join in.

Copy paste Dragon Attack from 2019 but make the PQ mob Nagafen.

Nagafen PQ would drop potions, research/training reducers, and one ultra rare chase item (e.g. Nagafen familiar - stats match Season 7 Fabled familiar but with a unique proc).

Looks cool. Guess I'll get to it, when I get to it.

Not sure how this expansion (or the game over the last 5 years) is not super solo/casual friendly.

1. You have all the solo zones to do (daily/weeklies)
2. Overland quests/nameds
3. PQs
4. Achievement based rewards that give you the best potency bardings unless you have access to the celestial ones -- all solo
5. Diaku solo - curb stomped heroics in loot so there is that.

Since casual/solo play does not require any stat boosts, you have plenty of gear here to max casual play with all of the above.

Now lets look at raider stuff:

1. Heroics -- for geared players normal zones are just like solos, challenge/expert zones are now like normal version of the zones. The only reason you want to run them now is for ethereal coins and no other reason whatsoever. The only zone that really is designed for like 1-2% of the game population is challenge Diaku -- specifically the last boss before the nerfs.
2. Raids -- one man bot army can clear challenge raids

Now if you look at this breakdown, can any solo/casual player really think that raiders have it any better? There really isn't much for the raiders to do at this stage except get new raid zones and some challenge to feel the rush of an achievement.

So you say Heroics are now like solo-well you must be playing a different Heroic than me. My sister and i have tried to do heroics with both our healing mercs and did not work. The problem i see is that to do Heroics is you need heroic armor and you cant get that armor without doing heroics so kinda like viscous circle. My friend was told she could not join in Heroic group because she did not have enough resolve or potency but how was she suppose to get more with out someone to help her? So no for the solo players like me, heroic dungeons are not solo able or even duo. I agree with most of the post here, solo content should be added to new zone.

What has happened with scaleable content? This would fix the issue.

The heroics are meant to be done with solo instance attainable gear. If you haven't bothered to do those zones to get most of that gear and at least plat infuse your gear, you're probably not ready for heroics.

That said, that's not a difficult requirement to meet considering you have 13 solo instances to run every 1.5 hours for that gear+infuser fragments+whatever red runes/masters you manage to get that can then be sold for infusing.

Don't expect to just be handed gear, but stop thinking it's some super difficult grind to simply get into doing heroic zones.

Also, trying to duo heroic zones with less than solo level armor is silly.

I would be curious to know which demographic actually spends the most money on this game. GW2 makes it's greatest amount of money from expansions and cosmetics, and is still one of the highest rated MMORPGs to date.

It seems only the expansions here always include fun stuff aimed at the casual players (usually only the premium+ versions at high prices), so yes, while there are old zones for solo content pre-level 120, the GU's have little for non-raiders/heroics. The guilds that are actually active seem to be mainly raid oriented with impossible standards for people still learning the game years later. It's sort of a snooze-fest for us doing decades old content - alone.

With little to pull me in as a casual player, I find myself gravitating towards other games - although I do like the housing/decorating in EQ2. At first I played 8-12 hours a day, then 4-6, then pop in only to do the overseers, now every few days maybe, or the live events that are decorating oriented. Don't get me wrong - I'm happy for the people who are able to participate in the the GU's - they need content too, but give us casuals some as well XD

My friends have all moved on to other games saying it's impossible as a new player to catch up here in a reasonable amount of time. This is probably because of the complexity (which I personally like, but it does get a little crazy) - a spiderweb of 'must do this in order to do that, in order to do the 16 other things required' to do the one thing you need to progress.

Now in order to laugh with my friends in discord, I'm playing PSO2 - it's either that or playing in silence in an empty channel. I think we are all waiting for Brad McQuaid's final game to release, you know, the one that will have millions of players all eager to play thousands of hours... I sure wish EQ Next hadn't been cancelled, they would have had me for life <3

Honestly that's a good question. Level scaling has become very popular in MMOs and we know EQ2 has the tech to do it because live events use it. I'm not sure why they're avoiding level scaling on non-event content, I would assume because it's difficult to balance but it seems like it would be worth the effort to make content more accessible. Being able to hop straight into PoP or whatever would probably bring a lot of players back that feel like they've been left behind.

Of course that's probably way more work than I think it would be.

Because GW2 actually sells good cosmetics. EQ2's cosmetic marketplace has barely been touched compared to other MMOs. I'd assume EQ2 is making most of their money from raiders based on the intrusive P2W that keeps popping up every expansion, that stuff only matters to raiders.

I don't really understand why EQ2 continues to monetize itself this way when other MMOs have veered hard towards making money from cosmetics. I guess it's working for them though...

I doubt EQ2 can make adequate revenue off of cosmetics. They would need to commit to the tempo of Fortnite or Valorant; basically, a new skin every day with consistent purchasing by enough players.

Moorgard (former EQ2/Vanguard Dev, now Head of Narrative at WoW) said Vanguard (F2P) went into decline as soon as people stopped buying crates. He said crates are a viable revenue model for games with a smaller player base (outsized revenue pie).

Azaliil and Moorgard recognize that more games are moving into the Battle Pass/Season Pass revenue model. Could EQ2 adopt a Battle Pass model (players have to pay extra for high quality Game Updates)?

I'm guessing it's hard to balance content with the amount of stat bloat that's occurred. When you have 120 level players that can have tens or even hundreds of thousands difference in potency, hp regen, health, resistances over 1 million, players hitting for damage in the billions, and on, and on... *shrug* at some point, there was probably a decision made that the cost/benefit ratio for trying to stay on top of it just wasn't there.

I've been playing for 14 years now, so not new to game, and have always played solo, so what good is this new update to me? You really need to think of the solo people, and the people who don't need to be max level as soon as the expansion comes out. I've tried a heroic or two, but always end up dead time after time, so please think about the other half of your members.

Lock gear to work only in the expansion it came from, scaling complete

A rehash of old zones? *sigh*...