Bastion of the Tranquil is a sadistic grind.

100+ grey quests to even start it, and then hours upon hours of grinding the same boring grey quest 30 times for 2k faction apiece. This is the first time I've held serious ill will towards a game dev in quite some time.

Its 2017. MMOs have evolved beyond this. I didn't pay for KA to be sold 8 year old content that takes longer than the main KA questline.

Ugh, faction grinding. I'll trade you Paineel for grinding up two factions in the Hole. >.<

(Not sure which is worse, but I'd happily trade for a while just to be killing different things. )

Don't do them grey. Chrono down and enjoy the questline. Yes not current but you haven't done it so have fun with it. I've been working backwards slowly over the last year completing all the quests chronoed for different xpacs I skipped lots of quests in. They are fun still. And you can solo all the content and make it as hard as you choose just by gear choice.

I think you've totally missed the point. Mentoring down to do them won't make them any more enjoyable or any less "grey" for the OP and everyone else complaining about this sort of thing. They want to do new, current content, not forced to do old content from years ago.

Yeah the grind is insane. If you're still doing the 30 (90) quests, have a conjurer help out by parking at Kerra Isle. Cuts each quest cycle time by several minutes of would-be flight time.

There really isn't much to help the OP or others though. If they don't enjoy it don't do it is basically the only option. Especially for an epic. People have to accept than an epic quest by its very nature and the type of story being told is going to be all over the game thats 12-13 years old now.

Personally I'm not enjoying the Akashic step so I stopped looking for it and went back to my other pursuits in game that are more productive and useful for my time spent in game. I'm also trying to work on getting DBG to talk to players more and communicate better which may alleviate some of the issue if they talked about these things.

Good luck. I hope you succeed. Lost causes are the only causes worth fighting for, you fight for the lost causes even harder than the others...

The requirements for this epic 2.0 are baffling to me. Why make it so obtuse and tedious?

Having hidden items that the community needs to work together to find=good
Having some of those items hidden behind faction/old quests so that a HUGE portion of the population can not see them unless they do EVERY old quest just in case = the worst decision you could possibly make.

DB is not making MORE money from me by doing this. It's not like it benefits them. I play this game every day. I do repetitive stuff every day. I have fun running shrouded temple multiple times a week. My point is, there is NO POINT in making me do old quest lines. It doesn't keep me in the game any more than I would already be here.

All it does is pull me away from my friends in the game so that instead of having fun with them, I'm doing old content that yields no rewards for me other than a small piece of an update.

Giving away awesome rewards for each step of the epic is also a great idea. Love that. But if wiki didn't exist, I would NEVER see these cool items. Why were these quests left in the hands of a few people willing to do every quest and touch every single item in the game?

Should have been more based on current content. It's very frustrating and the opposite of fun.

From what I've seen, the other epics were a lot more fun at least for the first and second step (minus the faction they also had to do). I helped a scout enter a totally unique area cathedral of bone. I helped a priest spawn a group of monsters out in the moors. I helped a guardian spawn a monster in thalumbra. These are the types of interesting ideas that make an epic fun.

Doing the whole sundered frontier questline to open a faction grind? Seriously? Doing a TON of the great divide and cobalt scar questline to get a dialogue option to open up? Are you kidding me?

Anyway, these are real concerns towards the future of fun in everquest. Please make better decisions in the future on making these quests exciting and cooperative.

Couldnt agree more. Its like they are trolling us

I will second the suggestion to mentor down. I did it partway through the scout faction and timeline requirements and it made it s lot easier. Sometimes having everything be aggro is a benefit.

Then maybe they should have done the old content when it was current.

Everybody complaining about having to go back and do quests in older areas made the decision to skip those same quests earlier. Maybe they thought the quests weren't relevant. Well, now they are. That's the risk you run when you decide to skip things; it may turn out later that you need them.

Except that this is a very narrow minded approach for an old MMO which assumes from day 1 most customers are playing the same character for each expac. Not likely. What if you played every expac except the one you need faction on? Seems very arbitrary.

I just did my epic 1.0 mentored down, not happy about it but fair enough seemed reasonable, just about all of it was through current content of that expac. Didn't have to be a max level crafter or do really old faction grind.

They are really depleting the customer base for new players joining or old players coming back with these time sinks to the point where it seems intentional.

I didn't skip the quest line, but having to do 90 quests (because the quest is really three quests) that give you little to no reward other than faction is ridiculous. I have a full time job and life, playing EQ for a few hours at night a few days a week is supposed to be how I have fun and relax. Knowing that my future contains this quest for the next several weeks, months, etc.... that doesn't make me want to log in, it makes me want to play something else. Mentoring down isn't helpful, because I am already max level, and you don't get ascension xp for mentoring. Yeah you get some tithe, but it is like 56 per kill.. not even worth mentoring for.

If the faction was at least something that was green-yellow mobs at 100, I wouldn't mind as much. I could work on my ascension while running it. I could get friends to want to go with me since they would get xp and maybe some gear for an alt.. but this is dumb.

Epic 1.0 required no faction on my mage. It required one faction on my templar, and it was faction for the zone where the quest started. I HAVE 50k faction with both of the current factions in KA. Got it through doing normal stuff that helped me out. Key quests, crafting, etc.

Devs shouldn't have punished those who are on new characters who used their 100 boost to make a new main. It's like they're saying they're sad that people skip to higher levels. Or like they're saying thank you to those who have kept their main current since day one.

Either way, it frustrates everyone who isn't the same main they have had since early in the game's inception who also did every quest and faction. Why would they make something intentionally frustrating? Making it obscure or difficult is one thing. Intentionally tedious/anger inducing is something else entirely.

COOL!! So you've invented time travel so that players who started the game after some of the grinds were obsolete for a few YEARS can go back and do it while it's current?

You're gonna be rich!

It baffles me how anyone can say it is "old content" if you've never done it!

If you've never done something then it is by definition new to you

Why not just enjoy the ride?

I'm not suggesting the fact that new content requires the completion of old content is a good thing.

If we use the logic of "Old content" then we should never visit any of our national treasures such as the monuments in Washington, D.C. because they are "Old content".

Does that really make sense to anyone?

I'm just saying - it's new to you, enjoy it.

If the faction aspect of it didn't exist, then I would mind it a lot less. However, it would still put me in old zones that my guild mates are not running anymore, and that is my biggest issue with the epic 2.0.

The content may be new to the toon, but it's not always new to the player.

Many of the folks chasing the epic have played for years and done the quests on other toons; even mentoring down to 15 levels below the mob still results in one-shotting them due to the increased stats and the fact that the mentoring system doesn't keep up with them. So while mentoring can help by making things aggro to you and easier to round up, it's not going to make the quests fun if you've done them many times over. Heck, even if you are doing them for the first time, they culminate in a faction grind, which is not fun to do many times over.

So for many, it is old content in two ways: It is literally years old, and it has been done before on other toons (often multiple times). And right now, the epic chase is the only new quest in town, so while it is not required for many, it is something new to do. But when that something new is actually something old, grumbles can result.

I've played multiple characters.. and many of them did most of the timelines.
Assuming that everybody power levels/rushes all but their first toon is as incorrect as assuming everybody does all quests on all toons.

Not necessarily true.....many of us no longer play the toons we were playing back in those older xpacs. My current main is 2 years old...there was no reason to do that old content so I didn't...and why would I?...it had no relevance to anything I did during the last two years. Now I'm either forced to grind out all this old content or go back to my former toon.