More CONTENT not more ZONES.

EQ2 is great. (Cross Realms and Empty zones)
it has 500 great zones.
480 of which are basically empty.

The game does not need more zones. especially more empty zones.
Please design future expansions and additions to include new content in old zones.

the game needs to find a way to bring life into the old zones, not just another boring zone added to the list.
New does not equal fresh. new just means.. well, you painted fear rott another color. its still fearrott 2.0.
thats just a mild example, not the case every time. the point still remains.

Please find ways to increaes content, but avoid adding new zones.

in my humble opinion.

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all that being said, Cross real servers is desperately needed in eq2.
Blizzard did this with wow. all level 1 to 80 zones in wow were very very low population.
cross reals solved the issue. now you can go into any lvl 1 5 10 15 20 30 40 60 80 zone, and your almost gaurenteed to come across 5-6 other players.
its perfect. not too over flowing, not dead and useless and barren wasteland ghost town of video game prohpecy end times of doom.

as it feels, eq2 FEELS dead.
when your game FEELS dead, people wander away and do not return.
fix the population, or lose the remaining few you have.
imo drop what ever you are doing, what ever new zone that will be on the list of empty next month...
and invest in cross realm tech if you wan to retain customers.
it will make your game feel alive again, as opposed to 480 dead zones.

Cross reals will do this. open new instances of a zone, and allow people from multipul servers to at least populate the same zone at first. even if it takes more time to allow them to group and chat.

Allow an option to talk to the PRIEST of DISCORD. if you talk to him, you will flag yourself for pvp for one week at a time. (imo it should be 30 days at a time) but bluebies would be too scared to try it.

that way nagafen can be intigrated into the cross realms mix.
it would also give bluebies a option for a little more excitement at thier discression.

WOW cross server realms are a lot more restrictive then you think, for one you can only group with another player that is not native to your server if they are on your faction, realm to realm sharing is based on population of that realm (capital cities and heavily populated areas are not shared), the auction houses (brokers) are not shared, you access only your realm's auction house, trading is restricted much as it is within raids, dungeons, or battlegrounds. They only match like realms, PVE to PVE and PVP to PVP, there is no PVE to PVP cross realms. If you cross from an area that is shared to one that is not, the group is not disbanded, you just can't see your group members that are on the other server until you move back to a realm that is shared. The complete realm is not shared only specific areas within the realm. Since PVP and PVE realms are not shared there then there is absolutely no need for a Priest of Discord, they can stay in EQ1

the general acceptance of this feature is pretty much on par with the screams of anguish when SOE reduced the plat drops - not going over very well. Well maybe it is worse then that

Lets just stick with the new zones, they are a lot more interesting and building on the EQ2 lore

Giving the dungeon finder cross-realm abilities would be very nice. I was playing WoW when they introduced that feature, and it made getting groups a LOT quicker. Of course that DF actually let you choose your role (tank, heals, dps) and didn't form a group with missing tanks or healers.

to the OP

Please be specific other than saying Empty zones

What do you mean by empty zones.
Are you claiming they are so big they feel Empty?
What are these Specific zones that don't have quest lines in them? (Every zone in this game as atleast 4 quest hubs)
How does the game feel dead? Are you not finding groups? Is it because the local towns don't have enough players in them to make you think the game isnt populated? Is your guild or guild hall empty?

Talk to a priest of discord to flag for pvp??
Did you know you can go into 3 pvp instances called Battlegrounds. Click the shining winged thing in your home city to zone into this cross server pvp instance
There is also a PVP server , it is Nagafen. If you dont wish to level up the pvp way you can just transfer on when you feel uber enough. Then when you feel you can't take it no more, transfer off. I am guessing this is why you want a flag me pvp only when I want to scenario.

so if you want a cross server mix do battlegrounds. Other than that, you would taint nagafen with pve players who didnt earn their levels or gear but just had it handed to them via PVE

also what server are you on? the heavy servers are Freeport and Antonia Bayle, medium is Crushbone and Nagafen(pvp), light is everfrost and unrest...the rest are pretty empty from what I hear

Easy test is do a short DM dungeon "Play as Self" with merc, then do the same dungeon without merc. Check xp at end.

Cross realm destroys community. WoW didnt have much to start with, so it didnt feel so bad.

EQ2 feels dead because of all the conveniences that WoW-immigrants yelled for. You got so many of them, that nobody needs to interact with each other.

The servers have people. They feel dead because none of them need to interact with you.

And we told you so. Years and years ago. Every time.

Pretty good ideas, I think.

They are redoing some old zones, they plan to do more, but probably not on the scale you are thinking of.
Cross server dungeon finder would be good for lower levels I think.

I do hate it that some amazing zones are "wasted" at this point. There is a ton of great instances in TSO and SF. If those scaled up to 95 somehow with some rewards, it would add a TON of fun content back to the buffet....

Well, they are doing the redo of old zones and have been for a while. A long long time ago they put in a new instance of Nektropos Castle, that was before scaling content so it doesn't scale. They also added a new version of Runnyeye a really long while ago. The TSO scaling dungeons off old zones (Lavastorm, Everfrost and Commonlands). They have added some more scaling ones more recently in Sinking Sands and then the Fabled Dungeon in Clefts of Rujark and have a couple more of the Fabled dungeons incoming in KOS. They obviously want us to go back into the old zones too (I believe that is what they said actually when the fabled dungeons were announced).

As for cross server, while I'd never ever use it, I suppose a cross server dungeon finder would help those people who can't seem to find groups the normal way. Cross server overland zones seems.unnecessary.

I leveled almost every class over 60-70 in wow. I have 5 or 6 max levels and 2 or 3 with decent pvp gear.
the cross realms never felt 1% restrictive to me in any way.
there was zero thinking involved in my part as a gamer.

I entered the zone i wanted to work on for exp. I passed other people that were my level. it was that simple.
i was able to group with anyone i saw, talk to anyone i saw, do dungeons with anyone i saw.
the only restriction i ever found was tradeing cross servers. of course that was disabled.

as to the community.
the community returns what you bring it it.
the community will always have its idiotic little children who speak before they think.
but if you approach even those idiots with a nice attitude, 9 times out of 10 the conversation is decent.
humans are humans, regardless of community size.
it could be argued that smaller communities lead to better people, because in fact a percentage of players cares about their repuation. but basically it comes down to this, anyone wise enough to care, cares regardlessly, anyone foolish enough to not care, does not care.

nagafen has a small population. the server is still full of emotional sissies who complain about everything. even when they win.
they all appear like idiots in the chat. but if you plya with them and show a little respect, they are usually decent.
most kids cry when they die and brag when they win.

sony doesnt have the man power to redo old zones. that would be wonderful.

i will not buy a list of 1 new zone with some number of dungeons.
i will buy content that adds to what i already have. like classes or mercs or something.

as of late, the new expansions have been horrible.
a 10% visual increase is not the remedy.

i no longer consider +2 zones and +x lvl new content.
i no longer want grind a new set of gear for my character.
i spent 10 years doing that boring rinse and repeat. im done with that.

I would enjoy a max lvl of gear if I knew it was going to be the best for a year.
I will no longer farm grind for gear that gets replaced every 6-9 months or faster.
i will not be paying for any content that makes me do so.

I will highly consider buying content that adds things for all my characters to do. besides ++ lvl refarm gear.

Thread titles like this scare me because it can plant a seed in the mind of the designers. One of my favorite things about expansions or large game updates is the introduction of new zones. Exploring new areas is great and althought Eidlon jungle looked really cool I did not like the idea of recycling old zone formats. Recycling old zones for contested/instanced content is just not fun. It's like getting a bike for Christmas and then for your birthday it gets re painted and you have a new bike! Content is designed to be progressed though and the addition of chrono mage allowing you to de level and go though the old content is a nice feature but adding new zones and environments with all new and creative ideas is what sells the game and keeps the players.

Well said, Glassjaw. Also, trying to solve problems by making zones available across different servers zones will do absolutely nothing for the localised servers. We didn't even get added to the cross-server BGs. The result is that BGs are now dead over here, since the biggest problems with battlegrounds never got solved until it was too late.

did you even see the last expanion? it was pretty under par.
so boring. already completely empty, empty. useless.

we spend a few hours there to level. then almost never go back.
useless content.
when was the last time you were in Eleon jungle for more than 30 minutes?
besides when you were leveling or harvesting.

I'm not going to sit here and say the last expansion was the best ever, but it sounds to me like you have unrealistic expectation or are just done with the progression based model of a game.

When was the last time anyone spent any more time in overland zones than was necessary to level? Last time I remember was when I was leveling a toon back in mid-2006 and there were 6-man Asian bot groups farming goblins in DoF for whatever it was they were farming them for. It is content that served it's purpose. Kind of like 100+ zones in EQ1 and 90% of zones in EQ2 have for most of the folks playing (The exception being those that choose not to level out of them for personal reasons)

You may be tired of grinding a new set of gear every content release. I'd bet most of those playing at max level would leave without something new to chase.

I really don't think what everyone is saying is going to work. This happens in all games, as the game gets older players level up the game gets old and all that is added is high end content and higher level caps. For new players coming to the game seems like to far to go. And changing the old zones isn't the answer either. Look at what EQ1 did changed some of the starter zones and still nobody is in them. The Old time players hated the effect. As far as what ever WoW is doing is the wrong direction, people are complaining that WoW made the games to easy. I hear a lot of people talking about the time in EQ1 back in 1999, 2000, when it was a struggle to lvl and you had to mix with other players to get anywhere, I think that has been most of the games problems anymore no real challenge to them. Heck I can lvl from 1 to max lvl in EQ2 with no grouping. That's way to easy. And with Sony bringing in the Station cash thing heck you don't even have to do a trade skill, I think they need to listen less to the players that want easier content and more raiding and go back to creating starter zones and content where you really need each other. Bring into the old content new drops and quest reward. Heck most of the drops and quest rewards are so weak that what you start with can last till way to late in the game. And the housing leaderboards need to be cleared, Why go through all the work and still cant get past those that got in early and got all there friends to vote for the house or mansion.

The lack of groups and the feeling of the game being dead is more of a lack of incentivized heroic content than it is lack of population. Though I think for a large portion of the raiding population is hanging by a thread after the downsizing. Heroic content for the last year wasn't rewarding enough or the zones were too frustrating (new sleeper's tomb, alluring embrace) so people just sit around their guild halls until raid time. Once you've done a zone a few times there has to be reward enough to bother re-running it.

Some zones that did it well: Old Sleeper's Tomb, Elements of War, Tower of Tactics (kinda), Siren's Grotto (hm). They had either raid apprentice materials, very good mounts, brokerable loot, unique drops with drop rates that were just right. More zones set up like those and the game would feel more alive because the population would be out adventuring in them.

Op's post is contradictory and not realistic. Chains of Eternity wasn't enough of a change for you, but you don't want new zones at all? And expansions keep the lights on. If you think they're just going to spend all their developer time trying to get people to go back to zones they've already burnt out on good luck. They're already accommodating that to some point with the fabled zones and those have been met with lukewarm response.

I don't, but many people here care about the story. It's difficult to advance a story without adding new zones to explore.

One thing I do agree with is overland zones have been under-utilized since DoV. Once again it's a matter of incentives. There has to be something drawing you there. One and done quest lines aren't enough even if they're marathon ones like in CoE. If you want to drive activity in the overland zones with story content it would need to have series' of one-time events like you see in Guild Wars 2. That requires far more developer resources than SOE is willing to throw at an eight year old game.

The last overland zones that were well populated were Great Divide and Eastern Wastes.. You had the public quests bringing the community together every hour. You had daily faction quests with four different factions. There were heroic quests with worthwhile rewards, a signature quest line with worthwhile rewards, flying mount quests, etc. One thing it was missing was contested mobs that had a loot table worth killing them for.

The CoE and Skyshrine overlands had nothing to keep people out there past the initial quests. With Withered Lands there wasn't any reward at all for questing out there. You could easily skip the zone entirely. A couple of the heroic contested had useful drops, but that was it. Too bad too because that was a great looking zone.

A lot of great things were said/shown at SOE Live for this coming xpac and I like the direction that Kander has been leading the game. I'm just worried they've handcuffed the team that's left too much to live up to all that was previewed.

How has Station Cash affected the viability of crafting?

Im not sure what the OP is asking for.. Do you want lvl 95 quests in EL for 10 bear cubs? Or.. are you asking that game updates are only for low level content?

Mostly sounds like he wants EQ2 devs to impliment something he saw in WoW and to also jump back on the (failed) train of zoneless (or as most players view it contentless) expansions. SOE already tried that with Age of Discovery and while quite a few people break down and buy it, it had to be the most complained about expansion this game has ever seen. People felt a bit ripped off just getting features (some of which they would never use) and absolutely no new actual content (zones and such).


** and just to jump in about the post about not having to craft because of SC...

How the heck does SC make crafting unneeded?

Sure some of the furniture looks nice enough...but houses are huge & furnishing a house really needs some of the things made by carpenters. There is absolutely zero armor, weapons or jewerly on SC that have any affect on your abilities. There are some potions, I'd guess most people don't buy those. I know I haven't even used the ones I got for free yet. Even if everyone did, you can't buy poisons & such so alchemists are still needed. You could buy all the the spells a sage can make with SC, but even then my sage still makes money. You can't buy ammo, so woodworkers & weapons smiths still get that if people want good ammo.

Station Cash was the biggest hit against players in any MMO. They aren't microtransactions. They're MACROtransactions.

Chains of Eternity offered more of the same content and left out a lot of interesting features. So its the same game with different colored Feerott or Somborn Village but once you've seen it a few dozen times its old hat.

For carpenters and armorers it definitely has. You want that neat bedroom set with a nice oak finnish? Don't go to your local carpenter. Whip out your wallet and give Smedley your Smedbucks. Want that unique sword with cool particle effects? Don't run to your nearest raid zone or weaponsmith. Whip out that wallet and give SOE more of your Smedbucks.