Is the next expac pay 2 win, cause I'm spent

Some people like to play to achieve something in the game (which is the entire point of playing a game, to beat it eventually, not to get beaten by it and never finish it). I am one of those and that thing that some might call a meme does not make sense to me.

grats, im super proud of you. thanks for being a fan and looking into me. being the all knowing person you are, certainly you knew that if most of your raid is comprised of a different guild name, they get the credit. so, for instance, if i own my own, smaller, casual friendly, no hassle type guild, comprised of mostly crafters and soloers, and raided with another guild, that would not be publicly identifiable to someone like you. But then again, as i said, i am not into epeen measuring like some are. I only raid and group with friendly players. My comments are more of a general scope, and not directed at you, but if you wish to take them that way, that is your choice. I am simply not interested.

lucus hasn't been my main for over a year now, predating ascension, try looking at my raid main Alfrid.

i have 2 GMs by now and 4 GM scrolls in my bags waiting, i have a couple of adepts scribed and the rest journeyman level at present.

the whole purpose of the time it takes to research is to try to upset players like you into paying for upgrades when you can be patient and upgrade them via research and scrolls you've bought off the broker or made yourself with the drops.

i say again, paying for ascension upgrades with real money is 'advance faster' not ptw.

pay to win is where they offer to sell you items you can't obtain through gameplay and leaves ftp at a disadvatage, pay to advance faster mechanics is the cost of a game lacking a 'subscription to play model'

gripe all you like but don't claim the game is something it isn't out of spite.

Oh wow. Another thread where people try to claim what is, or is not, P2W...

Arguing the semantics of an internet slang acronym achieves little more than getting side tracked.

What matters, is that for a long time, EQ2 had no real means to advance the capacity of your character with a credit card. When "RMT" was introduced it was repeatedly declared it would only ever be cosmetic fluff.

The promise was broken the day ability research was added. They tried to mask it with dropped potions and cheaper prices, but the potions are history and the prices got ramped up.

Now, even more powerful and important abilities, that are significant factors of a players DPS potential, are securely behind a line that requires absurd luck, or paying, or waiting for years, to obtain.

With the changes to ability progression next expansion, the "incentives" to pay extra become more significant. The gap between equally skilled players, where the only difference is unmitigated use of a credit card, will be tremendous.

This is not the game some people signed up to play. And if these people want to express concern, they are entitled to.

Whether or not some random person on the internet believes the above is P2W or not, is beside the point.

The mobs don't always die... and when the mobs don't die, it's normally for one of a few reasons:
1) the script wasn't followed and you hit a fail condition
2) the mob did more damage than you were able to mitigate/heal through
3) YOU DIDNT DO ENOUGH DPS

So yes, if the mob dies and you had fun, great, nobody cares about DPS.... but wait! The more DPS you do, the faster you can kill ****, the more **** you can kill, the more loot you get. The more loot you get, the even more DPS you do, the faster you can kill ****, the more **** you can kill, the more loot you get. A group or raid that does twice as much DPS as you, is going do two zones in the time it would take you to do one. Guess who's gonna progress faster?

Long story short, DPS matters, and if you're not keeping track of it you're stupid.

That's OK since it was meant for just one "special" person.

even if someone buys their ascensions, they have longer then normal cooldowns, as in you can't use them every fight, someone who can't parse out of a paper bag without ascensions who bought their ascensions will not progress faster then someone that can parse worth a damn without ascensions who only goes the free route.

lets not forget in a raid setting you will have a mix of people that have and haven't spent money on ascensions in raid fighting mobs, really the only time ascensions could make a difference is when you are so close to a progression kill and you manage perhaps to get the mob down under 5% where maybe enough bought ascensions might push the mob to being dead where you may have failed if you still had free ascensions.

but that's so improbable and hard to prove is it really worth griping about?

the only time people had a legit gripe about ascensions was with the T4 in arcanna'se where while people who held back and didn't buy ascensions couldn't pull that mob and people who did could immediately try pulls on it with 4 glacial freezes at GM back when only GM tier deleveled the mob.

At best this is a terrible example; unless not even reaching terribad level was the point of the post.
First, the answers are all No.

https://www.iaaf.org/disciplines/road-running/marathon
"The longest running race on the Olympic programme, the marathon covers 26 miles 385 yards (42.195km). A road race, at major events it has historically finished inside the main stadium, although there have been city centre finishes at several recent international championships."

And because a Marathon has a set start, finish line, and rules.
https://www.iaaf.org/about-iaaf/documents/rules-regulations

EverQuest 2 has a set start, the second your new character hits the environment. But no set finish line. With no gender separation. There are no EQ2 gold, silver, or bronze medals.

There is little to no equivalence between a Marathon and EverQuest 2 game play.

And definitely no pre-race and post-race blood, urine, and other samples.



Fastest Marathon (42.195km)- 2:00:25 Eliud Kipchoge
"Did you know
It was quickly discovered that USA's Fred Lorz, who crossed the line first at the 1904 Olympics, had cheated by flagging down a car and riding 11 miles as a passenger. He was disqualified and the victory was awarded to his compatriot Thomas Hicks, who (narrowly) survived the rigours of a race run in temperatures reaching 32 degrees Celsius thanks to a combination of brandy and strychnine."

Fastest Olympic Race Walking (20km) - 1:16:36 Yusuke Suzuki
Fastest Olympic Race Walking (50km) - 3:32:33 Yohann Diniz

Indeed. It is about people who are constantly nagging for some advantages.
And most importantly it is for those people who never tried to be in shoes of developers or in shoes of management.
Thanks for opportunity to promote my example one more time!
I find the last request on this list very funny.

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Some nice people decided to organize a marathon for as many people as possible. A long run, 42 kilometers, you know.
The next day after announcement there come some reactions:
"I like you idea very much and I am going to participate in your marathon, but you know..."
1. throughout last year I already did 35 marathons, so can I just run the last mile instead of doing all 42 kilometers to save me from boring?
2. I hate to run, but I like to walk, can I walk 42 kilometers and yet be one of the firsts?
3. It is boring to run 42 kilometers, there's no fun in it, but the final 100 meter seems to me very funny especially if I'm one of the firsts at finish. What can you do for me, you don't want to lose me, don't you? If you start losing people you'll have no one, don't you know?
4. I have only 15 minutes for your marathon, you must be crazy if you say that I can't participate in your marathon.
5. Are you going to sell bottle of waters for participants along the way? What is it? P2W event?

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Ah, well, let me use your ways against you. Some people know that they have no clue what they are doing as they know that the best raid guild of Isle of Refuge has not killed Vhaksiz yet. Did I hurt some people so badly that they have to make "indirect" comments to me? From the times on HoF I remember this one zerker, definitely not you of course, who was always pulling a lot of mobs with the ranged tank ethereal while afterwards parse bragging and abusing the mechanics of a poor item.

It is amusing how you are making a counter-argument for your own argument. Looking at your list of ascension upgrades I can see most being journeyman which really isn't hard. Passing the adept, master and grandmaster tiers are hard. I have ran countless zones this expansion and only seen very few grandmaster scrolls drop, all of these were in raid (mostly expert raid).
24 is very few in my opinion, as it has to be divided over 24+ players. I also notice that you are not going etherealist. Etherealist is a lot harder to get upgrades for as it is the best ascension class for dpsing (all good dps, or any dps aiming player, wants etherealist, which means that the estimated of 6 ascension gm scrolls are divided over 12+ players).
Meanwhile there are players that got everything GM from the day on they reached level 10 ascension. Looking at your progress, it will probably take a year to have everything GM, which is when this expansion's content should be finished for 9 months already.

There is a ma

You have 1 grandmaster ascension, You have 1 master ascension and the rest are apprentice and journeyman. Your max hits versus other peoples max hits are very weak, For instance I have grandmaster ethershadow which hits for 60bil + on a regular basis
Your max hit is 5.5 billion Which leads me to believe you don't use triggers or cast your grandmaster ascensions during a fervor proc.
It may not feel like pay to win for you, because I dont think you're actually seeing your hits versus other peoples hits..
Every Etherealist Ascension abillity can easily hit for 30b + grandmastered. Geomancer is very very very weak.

Why are you comparing someone who can't parse without ascensions and someone who can parse without ascensions. A person who buys ascensions doesnt magically get worse at playing their character. A player who buys ascensions will parse better than they would parse without buying ascensions, period.

a) yes you have a mix of people who have and havent, and the raid/group that has a higher mix of people who spent $$$ to buy ascensions will do better than the raid/group that has a lower mix of people who spent $$$ to buy ascensions.
b) you're wrong, it's much more substantial than that. even if your group/raid only does 5% increased DPS as a result of the purchased ascension, it can make a HUGE difference. Think about any encounter with adds, for example. EQ2 has many encounters where if you don't kill the adds in time, they blow up and wipe your raid, 5% extra dps can make the difference between wiping at 90% to killing. Also many encounters where the named is immune while the adds are up, 5% extra dps can make the difference between killing the named in 5min vs being stuck in an infinite loop of fighting adds without getting any damage on the named (and eventually wiping to enrage timer).

I know this from years of raiding experience and tracking DPS, very minor boosts and tweaks are often the difference between wiping all night on a mob and killing it.

Over and over and over we go with the p2w stuff. Why does anyone make a company or business? Surely it can't be to make money, and pay their employees a living wage. They must make it to hand out everything for free, and spend money from their own pockets to make sure all their clients have everything they want to keep them happy little campers.

People have jobs, why don't they work for free, so others can get the benefit of what they do for free. We certainly should not have to go thru life, paying for things we need or want. Iphones for everyone!

Seriously though, companies are not only there to make a profit, but they have to pay their employees and their bills. Then they use said profits to make things better or make better things people want or need. I would love a Jaguar, I can't afford it, so it should be given to me for free, not fair the rich guy over there gets one and I can't have one.

You get what you pay for in this life and the game is no different. Do I agree that they have to charge for every little thing, no. But I know how the economy works, and I know people have to work for a living to put food on the table still, and to pay for the things they need and want.

There are ways in the game for most things on the marketplace you can earn plat and have someone else buy the things you need and gift them to you. I know people who haven't paid a dime to sub their account in years and years, since the Krono came out. Far be it for anyone to go work for something, either in real life, or in game. My neighbor has a 13 year old son, he goes to a bunch of different apartments every week, and empties trash for the elderly neighbors, for tips, he uses those tips to pay for his 2 games every month. Just a thought.

And we don't know how much DBG makes, and what their expenditures are, and how much of the profits goes to investors. But no one in their right mind, would make any business, they did not expect to be profitable. Profit is not the work of the devil.

They have more then enough money, They had one of the biggest games of all time on steam, H1Z1 King of the kill, with over 7 million copies sold, and over 2 million copies sold on just survive, they made enough money to move DC Universe onto the playstation network Which means that game is profiting really well. For reference, If you have a shooting game. And every other gun takes 3 shots to kill someone, but suddenly you're able to buy a gun off of the marketplace which is able to 1 shot everybody and it automaticly aims for you, would you consider that fair and understanding how the game works and just being apart of the economy? There is a difference between needing to make money to pay your employees and Devestating your games reputation because there are people out there that genuinely have no idea how this game works that will outparse you because they buy every single grandmaster ascension and you just cant keep up.

It is only devastated in the minds of those people who wishes to see it devastated.
Look for devastated MMO somewhere else. There's plenty of dead MMO's for analysis.

I dont think someone who plays on the fallengate server should basicly have any word in this, Because you dont have ascension on that server.

You should just ignore the guy, he has been a broken record since he started posting here.

OMGTHEDEVSGOTTAMAKEMONEYSOMEHOW!

Here's a hint for everyone, if you refuse to buy the things in the cash shop that you think are garbage or a rip-off, the company will stop putting those things in the cash shop. They get away with it because you let them.

You were talking about company reputation which you think is devastated.
EQ2 and DBG are doing fine and success of Fallen Gate server proves that.