Hey, DBG. I last played during Kunark.... the first time. Was excited to hear about the Luclin expansion, as it was one of my favorite places in EQ1, so I came back in October in preparation. I wanted to get caught up, so I did every signature quest from every expansion. Did all the solo stuff, and later came back for the group/raid zones. Got 3 characters to 110, another 6 to at least 90. During this time, I plowed through the content. I attributed the ease to possibly having more AA than was originally intended. So even though I was appropriate level in appropriate gear, I was able to look past certain things. But now being caught up, and a new expansion opens, I thought I might experience things "as intended." Nope. Same $&!%, but worse! Solo mobs pose no threat. Die in 5 seconds and my health never ticks past 90%. I get level 120 after 2 hours. Why even both with levels at this point if you're essentially just going to auto grant them for breathing? 100-110 was bad enough. 4 hours of questing and you get 10 levels? Ok..... but this is just stupid. So anyway, I'm doing all the quests along the way, picking up the gear, and I get to the solo instances. I do the first one and think, okay, maybe that was just a one time thing, but nope, I go to the next in the quest line and it's worse! 3-5 minutes to kill a single mob, and 10 minutes for named, and I have 40+ mobs I have to kill. Great. There goes 4 ours of my life. Once again, on mobs that pose no threat. My health doesn't drop, my power barely drops, and I'm just mindlessly spamming my plethora of damage abilities, which there are way too many of. (Ascension abilities? Really? Who thought we needed more buttons to mash? And why is my Rogue nuking? #ididntsignupforthis) Is this how the game is intended to be played? If you're confident in your product, make a fresh 120 character, suit them up in the same quest gear that you're giving out (resolve 150-155), and record yourself going into a solo instance and completing it. Post this video as an advertisement so people can see what to expect. I want to see a Dev spamming abilities for 10 minutes on a boss that never threatens them in any single way. For bonus points, include a cam on the Dev's face, so we can see just how excited they are. At this point, I just macro my best damage abilities into one hotkey, that I quickly tap while I watch TV. This game f@#$ing sucks now. I'm gonna use up my current subscription of the month just to finish the few remaining quests I have on this half-expansion, and I'm out for good this time. Fool me once...
Run a level 20 through each zone in BoL without dying more than a dozen times. Then let me know how you did it. Tradeskill is where the hard content is at. You should try it.
As with most things DBG does with game design these days: cash shop. Get to 120 in a blink, but.....spell research will improve your qol.
Let me see I have this correct? You haven't played in years and you want to hop in game and have instant parity with max level characters coming fresh out of the latest expansion and 2-3 yrs worth of ascension skills?
Why not, you can do more at max level, still do the content at lower levels as well, and not die 20 times trying to do some tradeskill timeline.
