Curious where EQ2 is going.

They can't give details far ahead of an expansion, because it all depends on how much of the stuff gets coded and art and animation and in-game. If they put out a big announcement now about what was gonna be in the November expansion, and failed to include everything that was in the announcement, people would be excoriating DBG in these forums.

New stuff for summer, expansion towards the end of the year. That's as specific as it gets right now.

Please quote my entire post for context...
There is also a huge difference between all the details, a general frame work or sketch.. and absolutely nothing.

Soup with little fish.

Not only a (para)phrase used in a good book, but something I've actually heard said when I was a kid in base housing.

I like more than broth. Broth alone is only so exciting. Broth might imply that there's going to be fish in my soup at some point, but I can only sip in disappointment at so many bowls of broth with little or no fish of questionable quality before I decide I don't want to eat at this table any more. I'd rather sit at another table where they not only put the fish they promised in their soup, they tell me up front what I can expect in regards to the amount, type, and quality of fish.






I've long since grown tired of the poor apologetics from the people who seem dedicated to defending bad actions at all costs and without or against reason.

My impression is that the OP is simply looking for candor.

Now, before I start messing with bubbles, I would encourage him in that the game has a lot of content. Go out there, explore, kill stuff and have fun. Lots to do.

Now, around two or three years ago, the was a transition into a different game design that has fundamentally changed a lot of things.

Short story version: the old game is not the same as the new game. The new game is a relatively small annual content release that is heavy on grind mechanics to incentivize cash shop sales, especially gambling boxes. For all intents and purposes, more recent expansions are a pay to win design.

But as I said, there is a ton of older content that will keep you busy, exploring and having fun. When you get to the newer releases, you can decide then if you like the content.

Now, on to bubbles....

Mermut and others are 100% in the right in expecting credible and substantive information about what this company intends to sell them.

It is not about knowing exactly what's going to be in the expansion. It's about knowing what they are actually planning on selling to people.

DBG has a serious trust problem with a significant number of current and former customers at the moment because their more recent sales and marketing practices have been less than honorable.

We all understand the staff is small and the resources to produce big expansions is just not there any more. We get it.

What is not ok, is leading people to believe they are getting one thing, and then finding out after they paid for it, that they got something else, or nothing at all that was hyped, promoted, or marketed up to that point.

That is bait and switch selling. That is not ok.

I believe all Mermut and others want is candor and an honest presentation of information that will allow them to make informed decisions about how they spend their money, and this includes information about any further game design changes in the works.

In other words, no more unpleasant suprises.

I'm sorry, but many people feel they've been hoodwinked, and DBG does not enjoy much trust with many of us.

Messages composed of (1) All we can tell you is we are working on cool stuff - trust us! And (2) buy more famaliar crates.....is not going to cut it any more.

People are suspicious and they have every right to be.

Hopefully this year, the team can make improvements in how they handle stuff like this. I think people will give them the benefit of the doubt if the do, but, if they don't, I suspect a lot if folks left in the game are going to finally get fed up.

P.S. Sorry for any typos....phone.

A dev tried to reassure people the game isn’t going anywhere and of course there are people who complain that the dev can’t give information? Running with the continuity of this thread, you really should be thankful the game is still around.

Not really. People have already forgotten about the promised class balance and ability consolidating that was supposed to come with PoP, then delayed and ultimately droppped completely.. Its like it the promises was never made and we all just moved along.

Welcome to 1984! Err... EQ2!

Well dunno, Halls of Fate looks active to me and i just subbed 4 accounts and bought the expansion for all 4 accounts.
Should help a little i think.

Now i don't exactly know what went wrong with EQ2 the past couple years (other than messing arround with the item stats), but i wouldn't blame the devs too much for it, they simply have to do what the lead/CEO/Publisher or so wants.

However, even with its flaws, EQ2 & EQ1 are still one of the better mmos out there, i seriously can't stand the mass production of modern mmos with super fast action-based combat systems like Black Desert Online and such anymore. We have enough of thoose on the market already and all get boring and "extremly" easy way too quick.

Whatever happens to EQ2 in the future, there is maype hope, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen may be the next big thing for us.
We will see i guess.

Atm. i will just enjoy EQ2 for as long it will last or until Pantheon gets released

Are you still playing your warden ?

I stopped right after Altar Of Malice and the idea of grinding ascencion and deity XP was so unattractive that i simply stopped to play my 6-7 lvl 100? among which a very seasoned warden that had achieved almost anything a non hard core raider could.

I see the last couple of years as a total disaster :
- From what i read :

- they broke most healer classes and made healing irrelvant, they simply made again an error that they already made : HPS rose way more than people HP pools.
- they moved heavilty toward pay to win, the station cash has been there a long time and P2win had been there : like heroic toons or vitality potions but i was far from being compulsory, i never got issues leveling any main fast and i could easily level alt without abusing the mechanics, anyway alts always beneficited from being spoiled kids with free good stuff and plats.
- they tried to enforce people to play a single main, all the best players i knew had a main but several co-mains that were for sure weaker but also capable of running any kind of heroic content or to step in some easy raid content. Allowing people to play Play alts is a very sure way to prevent burnout.
- they added new godlike abilities that nobody asked for and that were very unbalanced. A game like Eq2 can never be very balanced, but some sort of fairness is a necessity.

The result is total population collapse, the player base like 0% of what it was 3 years ago, most servers have been merged.

It may be not too late to save Eq2, but very sharp changes have to be implemented.

- First and foremost allow people to come back, since 2007 i took many time long breaks but i was always able to be back in the fray after a couple of weeks. Catching up was fun i restarted as a weakling but soon i would be able to deal with most of the content and to be a valid partner for anyone. This is no more the case.

- Consolidate the mechanics, they are not complex since we are dealing with just basic formulae but they are complicated by exhaustivity. What is the point in having 100 parameters and 20 runes to just output a dps amount or a survavibility measure ? For sure it is fun to tune your toon, too balance your stats or too chose the special effect you want, but the more is not always the better in that field. In my opinion during Velious or even till AOM the complexity was right even if the much lower complexity we got on the TLE server (RoK, SO) was actually enough for the game to be fun. Even in RoK getting my crit chance, my casting speed, recovery speed fine was entertaining.

- Balance the classes so that it' s not night and day if you replace Mr Guardian by Miss Sk or Drui puppy by Bear shammy.

Currently it is very hard to achieve, an easy fix would be a massive reset on gear but also ascenssion and deity but that would infuriate lot of people.

A short term possibility would be to open 2 long term TLE with slow progression, low xp rates and higher difficulty (similar to vanilla but with modern goodies like potency, cb etc .. it actually mean tougher mobs--

Not at all the case. You're picking your information out of posts by a small but vocal minority of players and repeating their complaints without actually playing the game to test any of this out yourself. To counter some of your points:

Healers are broken - They aren't. Healing is certainly not in an ideal place right now, but healers are still very much needed for non-solo content, and we're working on systems changes that will help bring them more into balance.

Pay to win - While small amounts of power can be purchased in certain areas, the vast majority of player power is acquired through regular gameplay mechanics, and you'll find players that have spent a lot of time in the game will be far more powerful than someone who has made a bunch of purchases, but spent little time playing.

Enforced a single main - Due to the number and complexity of new systems, it has become more difficult to get alts up to the same power as a main character. That has been the natural result of adding systems with continuous power gain to the game, and has nothing to do with us "enforcing" that play style. In fact, this expansion we've included a number of changes that allow alts to gear up and power up more quickly (with account-wide currencies and the like), specifically to combat this problem. I can't say that this is the easiest alts have ever had it, but they're certainly not in a bad place right now, and that's a trend we'd like to continue.

Unbalanced abilities - Two points in this one: first off, it's disingenuous to say that "nobody asked for them". Every year we add new content and systems to the game to keep it fresh and interesting - nobody explicitly "asks" for this content, yet it is both expected and generally well received. As to your comments about ascensions being unbalanced, I'm not sure where you picked that up. If you play the game, you will find that any player of any class has access to all of the ascension abilities, so if some abilities are deemed better than others, anyone may switch to using those. There is no class favoritism here.

Population collapse - Again you seem to be getting your information from other posters who are making up numbers. Our population has not collapsed in recent years, and statements like "it's 0% of what it was" are overly dramatic.

We should open a TLE with slow progression and modern goodies - The Fallen Gate server (open for ~6 months now) is exactly what you described. If you're interested in that type of server, you should check it out.


I appreciate that you feel invested in the game, and I'm always willing to take feedback on it, but I would ask that you actually try playing it before continuing with your numerous threads about its state. You've posted quite a bit of misinformation that you've gathered on the forums, which will only serve to confuse other players returning to the forums, perpetuating the cycle.

Please no more servers unless its a temporary event server like RtT but with the rules published right before the opening of the server enforced and not changed and anybody using a bug either deleted and forced to start over or expelled from the server.

I have talked to many people on AB and most love the systems that were already in game that could be updated and added to, such as research assistants, tradeskill missions from Mara, etc. Now granted most of these are roleplayers or crafters/decorators, maybe we do not demand as much new shiny stuff but rather updates and additions to what we have.

We would like to see more items available to obtain through quests or collections, things from LoN that could be purchased without the lottery packs, Vhalens Band, Good Humor Guy, etc, these add life to our events and festivals. Overland items where we could spawn something to use with our roleplay like the stein in the Mara bar.

The gambling goblin is in game update the cost of the ticket and the coin amounts won to current standards like 1 p per ticket and extrapolate from there and get a fix in place so the ones we purchase for our halls can be seen, its been more than 2 years now. Put the gaming goblin with the tickets you can use for items back in, people love that.

For the God's sake, somebody listen to Kaitheel, he gets us, he knows what we like and what we don't.

*gets off the soapbox*

As I told the OP earlier, there are hundreds of hours of content that can be played through. Don't rush to be "endgame", this is an MMORPG there is no "endgame" until the servers are turned off and the lights shut out for the last time. Enjoy the journey and do it your way. Don't give in and change what you want to do because another player said you are not spec'd right or anything else. Its your journey, your money, and the fun factor can only be decided by you. You have 14 years worth of content, updates, and expansions to work through. Make alts and try new things, start your journey in a new spot, switch it up and you may find a class/race you like better or an area you like to start in better. There are multitudes of possibilities, try them all.

I stand by my first post, however.

I get my information from more than one source, including my own experience.

And anyone who says there hasn't been a noticeable drop in population - some servers affected more than others - is at best uninformed or disingenuous. I don't need to read forum complaint posts to see it. I can look around in game at places there should be other players, and places there have been other players - and there are much fewer, or none, now.

PQ's aren't getting completed, due to lack of numbers. Groups aren't getting filled, due to lack of numbers.

I agree with you 100 percent. The reason people come here to give feedback is because of their own and that of their friends experiences while playing the game. It isn't based on some thing imaginary. If their experiences don't always positively reflect on the current state of the game, that doesn't make them any less relevant.

I also think that most people are intelligent enough to realize that actually playing the game will give you the most honest impression of it, in addition to and beyond what you read on the forums. Having said that, all feedback from both happy and discontented players is relevant.

Note that Enlsih is not myfirst language, and my spell checker is broken curently ;-(

You get a solid point here, i remember several time coming back and finding that indeed it was fun and that the negativity was vastly exagerated. The reason why i finally never restarted playing any of my main (including the mystic which apparently performs ok and can anyway become a defler) is probably because Storms got merged. It' s not that i cannot play with foreigners, in 99 i was playing with mostly german on the informal euro Eq 1 server, and on the TLE i played with people from anywhere in Europe and some from North america or Australia. The problem with a merger is about your reputation, about a community being broken and the trauma of your name being changed.

Some competent and well equiped players wrote that they could play but that they were feeling very much like half a group member, this made the idea of struggling to catch back as a poorly equiped healbot un-attractive.The fact that my necro (once moderatly equiped) ran most AoM solo heroic missions so much faster than my warden (she could bypass all the scripts) played also a big role. I have never been very much interested in dps classes, Tanks, healers or support CC classes --even if this role has been almost removed -- are the archetypes i enjoy playing. My necro was always the last toon i leveled, and even if she quite often outputed decent numbers (at least relatively to her gear) i always felt much less involved than when playing my tank or my healers.

Being a healer and having solo runs taking twice longer was acceptable as long as we were really a master piece in groups, but what is the point if you don' t even shine in groups.

Note also, that the healer role was already under challenge due to figher survavibility (temp immunites rotation, mitigation) i never truly accepted that except again really hard content -- raid, last tier heroic content -- we were just here to heal the group (assuming a well geared tank).

Likewise i never really accepted either that the tank gear had so much impact and mine much less. A good healer can hardly keep alive a weak (bad play or bad equiment or aas it' s all the same even if badplay is indeed less important) tank, but a crap healer will have no problem with a decent tank. I even happened to heal the same player in the same context while its gear went from crap to decent, it started as very challenging --indeed i was fun -- encounter with me using all my death prevent or emergnecy heals and even smetime srezzing him while boss pawned a dps; and ended as a boring (afk not heal needed) strolling in the park.

From the many posts i read it seems that to get the (in)famous ascending abilites you need a lot of Asc. xp and from what i got to level fast you need asc. vitality and so potion to refill your asc. vitality -- i m not very sure of the exact way it works -- In any case 95% of the posts had been consistently saying that to level your asc classes in a reasonnably short time you had to use SC items,

I have to say that the idea of shared currencies is very good, the veteran xp too. But it seems that this does not apply to Asc XP or deity XP. Again from what i read keeping alts in touch or at least keeping alts able to switch became very time demanding, and people who commented about that were often competent players far from being profesionnal complainers.

I give you the point on the first statement, indeed it is your job to design new mechanics; and a lot of the work has been very nice along those many years.
But keep in mind that the IWIN button is not a good idea, that progression should be smooth, that discontinuity is not a good idea since it split the community. As example mythical were a huge discontinuity but it was raid content and raid achievment. It was a very good move to give them to anyone able to deal with VD3 -- which was quite tough in a PUG when SO got released -- Critical mitigation was another discontinity, replacing it with crit chace was a good (but late) move beause it replace a discontinuity byt somethign smoother.

Sorry it was a typo, i wanted to write 20%.

May be but i m like a cat getting out water, Stormhold stopped in SO, i would gladly have played till Altar of malice, even if warden only shone druing AOM and the expansion before we never actually sucked, sure inquisitor were in extreme demand during Velious but i nevergot any problem grouping or anyone informed telling m that we could do this or that content with a druid healing.

Oh well may be you will convince me to undust my dear toons, getting act , finding a decent custom UI, tuning my interface and hot key should only take a few hours .. may be soon when i get time ;-)

Note that my comments intend to be constructive, we are not in a zero sum game, if we get a better content we get more players, more money to fund game improvement, fixes and contents, more engineers and deisgners. It is a virtuous cycle.

I am tired of reading the constant negativity posted by players who quit months and/or years ago. Why the heck should I listen to the views of people who no longer have a personal involvement with the game? Other than looking for some personal 15 seconds of fame why are they here?

Yes, but she has never been my main. However, I come at the game from a different perspective I think than you, as the entire game has never been about the "end game" for me since I came here in 2004. I practically never group anymore and never set foot in a herioc or raid in PoM as yet (outside of the tradeskill zones).

Are you suggesting that only people who have stopped playing the game make critical posts?

If thats really the truth, that the population has not been cut by a large percentage the last couple of years, why has Holly threaten to shut down Census if players started looking into actual population numbers? Why is it that EQ2 the only title DBG has where no one is allowed to know the actual population numbers?

Want "proof" of my claim? Look no further. Its here & here

If Feldon is indeed not telling the truth, perhaps a developer can confirm here that I am allowed to create such a thing and we wont risk losing as site that has 30,000 lookups a day. (eq2u)

Not a problem - it's been easy enough to follow along. This is a long post, but it has some important points I wanted to respond to; my forum posting time is limited, so please excuse the brevity of my responses.

That is often the nature of forums and game feedback. Players who are enjoying the game are often too busy playing it to post, while those that are upset come to the forums to give feedback. This often makes things looks disproportionately negative. I've actually had a lot of positive interaction with people lately, both her and on our Discord channel, and if you're still interested in playing, I definitely encourage you to seek out people who are having fun with the game.

You bring up some good points here, and we agree that healing is in a difficult place right now. There's another lengthy thread discussing the issue, in which I pointed out that we're working behind the scenes to address it. Unfortunately I cannot give in-depth details about what we're working on, but once we have something to show you can be sure we'll post more information about it. There is no quick fix for the current situation, and we don't want to add in a temporary band-aid, so we're looking into some ideas that should get healing into a fun, useful, and sustainable state.

Ascension exp does have limits implemented that prevent you from maxing your levels out immediately, but many of the restrictions on it have been lowered, and there are a number of options in the PoP quest lines that ease the process greatly. Note that ascension abilities are not at all required for soloing; they get some use in heroic content, and are especially required in raids. If gearing up to do raid content, it is generally accepted that you are putting a substantial amount of time into the game to acquire the correct gear, infusions, adornments, deity points, etc, and that maxing out several ascension classes will be a trivial part of that process.

You are correct that switching to a new alt can be a bit of a process, especially from a raid perspective, as there are a number of systems that raiders need to attend to and not all of them are shared across the account. We went to great lengths to implement those systems in such a way that players would be able to switch over to alt characters without having to rebuild from scratch. That said, we don't want to entirely remove the process of building up an alt - making this too easy would be akin to simply allowing players to switch freely between classes, which isn't something we want to do or promote.

We don't post numbers, so anything you've seen posted is just estimation. Most of our server populations are still quite healthy, though Stormhold is obviously in flux, and AB is currently suffering from fragmented playtimes.

I am hoping Fallen Gate continues running well past the point Stormhold made it to. We've learned a lot since then, and have had time to build tools that allow us to iterate more quickly on TLE servers, so we can put more total work into them. Much of my initial time working on SH itemization was spent building a tool that allows me to quickly edit items on a massive scale so that I can spend more of my time on adjusting the loot tables themselves, as well as tweaking effects, set bonuses, and the like. Given the short and set schedule of expansion releases, I don't always have as much time as I'd like to smooth everything over, but I'm doing my best to keep itemization interesting and progressive.

I appreciate your candor. As I said before, I'm always happy to take feedback, and I read most everything posted here and in the TLE forum, even if I don't have time to reply to all of it. I typically do not write such lengthy replies, but you brought up a number of points from the perspective of a returning player that I wanted to address, both for your benefit, and for any other returning (or current) players that come to the forums.

EQ2 is not perfect, but it's an incredibly fun game, which is pretty amazing considering its age. Being such a mature game, with such a wide variety of content, many different players are going to have opinions about which aspects of it they'd like us to focus on. We can't promise to address them all; sometimes we have to focus on bugfixing instead of new content creation, or class balance versus raid difficulty. What I can promise is that every one of the developers on the team are passionate about the game, and we're all committed to continue improving it wherever we can.

Edited for grammar and typos!