What is the incentive for returning players?

Yes, this. I would add the caveat that not only returning players, but potential new players should also be accounted for.

Look, we have to face the fact that there is only one real reason to be a part of an MMO community . . . it's for the community. If all someone wanted was the RPG experience, there are quite literally dozens of really good solo RPG's out there. Probably more. The reason you do an MMO is to do it with other people.

We can't continue to put up barriers to that. Telling someone that they need to play a game for a year before they can participate in relevant content is madness.

Again, within current content, I feel the exact opposite. Within current content, your success or lack thereof should be down to the time, effort and skill you bring.

You mean the mythical version or fabled or both?

In the stream you said it will not be required to have epic 2.0 for 99.9% content.

Time and effort are what a lot of folks in these threads are trying to skip.

thanks!

Perhaps, which is why I try to be careful when I talk about things like this. I have no problems with putting in incentive and shortcuts that allow new players to quickly get to the place where the game is happening. This bothers me not at all, nor affects my fun in any negative way.

Once you arrive at the place where the rest of the players are, you should have only parity of opportunity. An equal chance. That is all. What you do with it is your choice.

There are no incentives for returning players. Between the grind, ascension p2w, dwindling player base, and unwillingness to change any of it this late in the expansion I give them the honest advice to play something else.

If I start a new game or return after years away I don't expect to be relevant in a week or two. If that were possible it's doubtful the game would hold my interest long after. Any player that is unwilling to put in a little time up front is a player that needs more instant gratification on a regular basis than this game will be able to provide anyway. You can change the game to cater to these types of players and draw them in but at what cost?

Panda, a new expansion, a level increase, this is a perfect time to start. The epic quest is long, but worth it.

This game has always been pretty friendly to coming back and playing if you'd been out for awhile. I remember being able to level up, get AA's and full instance gear and hop into raid zones with a raid guild within a week of playing a few hours every day with some help. I was interested in coming back upon returning from my break after stormhold and AoM and found I would need to grind for weeks, buy a familiar, and pay large sums of money to research my ascension abilities to be competitive.

I still haven't decided if I want to play live casually as I raid on TLE, however if I still have to go through ridiculous amounts of hoops just to get back to playing i'll just continue playing on TLE.

I would sum up the points raised by some people who may be thinking that the intended purpose of this post was to skip content and/or get back on track within a week or two or just pure laziness. Not once did I mention that in my first post, actually quite the contrary.

What I am alluding to here is that if you put time gated progression (i.e. you have to wait 24 hr to get a scroll and then resume grinding), combine it with lack of variety in content to grind on currently, remove appealing content (such as ethereal items) so that it affects groups availability, you leave little or no incentive for any player to resume and be ready for the upcoming expansion.

I have a lot of personal examples where I came back to near the end of an expansion and by sheer determination and a lot of hard work within weeks I had caught up with most of the content.

I strongly feel the DEVS know that and hence the inclusion of panda quests and items and the fact the next expansion live stream illustrated their move away from grinding like this.
Nobody wants to shy away from the grind but this expansion has taken, what was once fun, grinding and made it a tedious chore.

I think that was pretty clear from my first post.

I agree completely, and the element that you touch on is one that I have learned to put at the forefront - FUN.

Is my experience fun? Can I do the things I want to do with the people I want to do it with? If the answer is no, how long will it take me to get there? When that final answer starts to get up into months long, my incentive to participate drops precipitously. I don't want to have fun a few months down the line, I want to have fun now.

I do understand that effort on my part will be required - should be required - but when at all possible, that effort I need to contribute should also be fun whenever possible.

The bottom line is quite simple: Make the game as fun as possible for as many people as possible as quickly as possible.

Kunark Ascending was the last nail in my EQ2 coffin. I haven't played in months now; I'm only posting because on the first day in months that I thought to log in, the servers are down for yet another maintenance.

You might want to ask yourself why anyone was ever required to have "ground out the expac" in the first place. As a hint, the key word in your post is "ground."

I mean, I don't know why MMO developers can't seem to get it through their heads that "grinding" is boring AF, nor do I get why certain players seem to think that because the developers make such silly mistakes, they should just keep making them.

Lastly, IMO, the entire concept of "competitive" is nonsense, & I've not one whit of sympathy for those who keep using that word in a PvE context. IMO, being "PvE competitive" is precisely what has ruined high-level MMO gaming.

It's interesting how we agree about the merits of "grinding" versus fun, but disagree about competition in PvE gaming. I always had a great time with my guild competing with other guilds to be at the forefront of completing content.

Some of my fondest memories were back in the TSO days, where there was literally in a blow by blow competition to server first kill Varsoon in Palace of Ferzhul. We lost because of a bug in the instance, but it was a great memory. There was chatter in the server general chat for a week about who was getting close to making the kill.

Likewise on a raid level, competing to complete things like Epic 1.0 weapons in VP, Prismatic weapons in the original game, Godking in DoF . . . omg Roehn Theer . . . these were all great memories for me and my friends.

If I have one complaint about the competitive side of the PvE content (and particularly raid content), it's that the realistic ability to compete for that early raid content has become far too restricted. While I do realize that the opportunity is equal for all, I think that realistically there are only one or two guilds per server who are truly, realistically in competition. When I think back to my fondest memories, it was often that there was widespread competition that made it fun.

The more people who can realistically compete, the better. Note that I said compete. I just want to see that opportunity for true competition to grow.

I wish Eq2 would get back to just the basics with its leveling and gear system. Just stick with Adventure and tradeskill leveling. Get back to class stats being more relevant again. get back to basic stats for gear. my opinion the game is getting over complicated with the extra type of xp fluff.. The casual player is looking for fun but not stressful demands on questing timelines. Most of us casual players do not have the time to sink in to all of this.

I would love to see a system that would be designed like some of the old games had where you could choose your play style. Where as if you could have different versions of the same timeline. Example: Casual/Heroic/Epic. Of course the rewards for the timelines would be greater for the harder timelines. Like maybe the stats get better for the item rewarded.

I haven't played on non TLE since a week before KA. Had KA pre-ordered and all but as life would have it stuff happens and couldn't find time for EQ2.

Recently returned figured I would just play TLE till the new expansion drops I had a character waiting for KA so with a level increase I figured I would be able to just skip KA and move to the next expansion when it dropped. Finding out about all the crap I would need to do just to start my journey to 110 is a little depressing and demotivating.

New expansions should be a time to draw in people returning or new players because it symbolizes a breath of fresh air to get with everyone hell it was like that in EQ1 even when new levels dropped. The only thing you needed the old expansions for was leveling if you played in Planes of Power got to 65 you could skip all other expansions and decide to go directly to omens of war and start your journey to 70. There was no oh you gotta go back to Gates of Discord before you can go to omens of war and start leveling.

I'll stick to TLE now no reason to buy the expansion plus watching the stream of the expansion it felt like 50% of the stream was basically just saying buy the expansion and the other 50% was about the expansion itself. I wanna know about the expansions what is to come not just "Hey buy this"

Also leveling weapons....I don't wanna say it but World of Warcraft Legion much?

While I don't disagree with much of what you're saying, I hope you can acknowledge that there is certainly a line that must be drawn when it comes to the concept of player effort versus reward. I suppose the simplest and most beat upon example is that a casual player shouldn't have the expectation that he will have gear equivalent to what a raider would have. He should have the opportunity through the same means that a raider does of getting that gear.

I do think that many casual type players have exactly the right attitude. "I don't need that gear to have fun." At the same time, I would hope that seeing that gear does inspire some casual players to want it, and further that they will then start putting in the effort to acquire it by becoming more dedicated to the game and putting in the time and effort. In that way, everyone wins.

I think this same model should apply across the game. The time, effort and skill you bring to the table should be appropriately rewarded by the system. The goal should never be equality of outcome, it should be equality of opportunity.

Actually, I'm not sure if you caught it, but the Devs definitely said that there were no requirements for the expansion besides being Level 100. Epic 2.0 not required. Ascension 10 not required. I feel like the Devs should be much more interested than they appear to be about getting that message out there, and that we as players should be cheering that message because it is a breath of fresh air.

You and I appear to agree substantially on how an expansion should be viewed, and I think this expansion should excite you. I also agree with many who have said that the communication of the Devs with regard to this expansion has been very mixed and not clear at all. Fortunately, the expansion beta is not under NDA, and those beta players seem likely to start feeding the community at large info in the not too distant future.

As far as leveling weapons perhaps being a nod to WoW, you know what? I don't care where a good or interesting idea comes from. If the idea is good, if it's fun, bring it. If it stinks, let it stink somewhere else.

I did mention that the rewards should match the content chosen.

"Example: Casual/Heroic/Epic. Of course the rewards for the timelines would be greater for the harder timelines. Like maybe the stats get better for the item rewarded."

I like games that have things to do. Replayability is a thing in games. Its why people play MMOs instead of finishing a role playing game and done. Having said that, KA was a bit brutal on my alts. I probably play more than a lot of people but even I had a hard time keeping up.

To date on KA: 5 toons fully ascended, 3 toons fully Epic 2.0, 7 toons KA sig line, WW disco on Asc ear ring and Tome, 3 toons fully PG geared, and 7 toons ethereal cloak/belt/rune.

This took me pretty much all expac. I would like it to be a bit easier in PoP with my alts but I worry that the devs could swing back the other way and I will be left with nothing to do or achieve. If I stuck to 1 toon, my main, I would have run out of stuff months ago. My alts are the only thing that keep me from shelving the game for 6 months waiting on new content.

My point is this: Make PoP a bit more alt friendly without gating everything behind tons of time but do NOT make it too easy or fluffy.