It may be the end for me in EQ2

The really only bad time sinks that have been placed in the game now is the crazy requirements for epic 2.0. I will most likely only run this on one toon because one alt was a mule turned night raider that did no faction quests from old content, stuff that's been irrelevant for 2 plus years and one toon isn't a max level tradeskiller and has no ts line complete. Lack of thought process on this one. Why must my crafter be level 100 for an adventurer charm. You actually take away from the actual crafters in the game. Epic 2.0 pre-reqs is the now real time sink.

I must admit the idea of doing all these trivial timesinks is rather off putting. I think I meet most of the requirements on one character but all of my others have done practically none of them. The idea of doing almost all the solo timelines from Kunark 1.0 onwards on multiple characters to raise factions seems horrible. If we compare epic 1.0 requirements vs epic 2.0 requirements it seems epic 2.0 is excessive, especially since so much is greyed out content.

Epic 2.0 has so many requirements because the reward will not be an ordinary item. The first few quest rewards have shown some very good T2 raid items (stats). Leveling tradeskill might take 6 hours, timelines take about 2 hours each. Eventually it will take less than 24 hours to complete all requirements (if you are ascension level 5).

I keep reading this and may be I'm just terribad at grinding but levelling from 0-100 tradeskill takes me a lot longer than 6 hours.Wiki also says to be able to harvest the metal node for the last cloak quest requires a 500 gathering skill. Not so easy for an epic toon.

The timelines are taking an awful lot longer than two hours as well.The KA sig line is a tedious beast and takes a few days with noteable time sinks of waiting for NPCs to spawn, random clicky spawns and the language collection. 2 hours for that is a gross underestimation.

I just want to get on, run dungeons and have fun. I haven't been able to do any of these things with my new main yet and it's incredibly frustrating.

And yet, how long will it take people to reach ascension lvl 5? Just a few hours? *laughs derisively* We all know it will takes weeks or longer to get it all done. It should be a long quest for an epic item... but lets be really honest here. How long will this epic item last? When the raid earned gear from last expansion was replaced (at a Dev's advice) with TS gear? Do you REALLY think that epic 2.0 will last past next expansion? IF there is another expansion? How long did our epics last in EQ... or EQ2? Will they really last longer now? I fear not...

Devs stated that they will be BiS for the next expansion, maybe even two.

No offense, but a lot of things have been promised by them and for many different reasons they didn't turn out as they were promising or even hoped by the players. Not placing blame, just saying that the track record leaves enough room for doubt.

I imagine they'll last until Epic Repercussions 2.0.

Epic will be best in slot for 2 expansions just because it'll take people that long to get through all the time sinks

(seriously though, if they're requiring Ascension lvl 10 to complete it that's a minimum 3-month stand down from the point the toon finishes the KA sig line and starts grinding scrolls. Figure in a realistic number of missed scrolls and people will easily be working on these well into next year for their alts).

If it was actually difficult it would be one thing; but it is not difficult - it is a tedious time sink. With the stat inflation anything done outside OF dies when you look at it. Even the City Quest that "Scaled" to your level is a joke. Now go back and do the Otter quest or grind faction in SF and you really don't even have to look at them; once again, not difficult - tedious time sink. I would have no issue making it hard because of the rewards but there is a difference from hard to tedious time sinks to cover lack of content.

The very fact that there's a 5 page thread on this subject already should be Warning bells .

Yeah, I agree with you.

BUT for players like stuff like the new sig line felt the same way. Welcome to my life!

Ok, so I am not someone who posts or mixes in with debate issues on the forums. Im one of the people who would normally walk away and never make a peep. but .. I have been playing this game since 99 EQ1, I started eq2 the week it was released, I have raised kids, retired from work after 30 years, basically I have lived my life, all the while EQ has been in the background. I have had family and friends come and go from the game, I have seen many things I Hated about this game, and many things I Have Loved. I have supported this game financially, I have paid for many accounts (family and friends) for years, for one reason or another, for the past 2 years I have sustained 7 accounts, in the hopes that family and friends would return. last x pac , alot of them did, and it was great. It was never EVER, So oppressively difficult for a player to take some time off and come back and catch up in a reasonable amount of time, with help from friends... Im telling you all this to say, Ive closed 6 of the accounts I was HAPPILY paying for.. I'm not even sure if im going to continue playing. I completed all the Sig content yes, Adventure and Crafting, and I can play in teir 1 heroic, but damn it was a lot of work to get to the Bottom of this x-pac. And getting to play with my alts, forget it.. DBG has artificially added so many time sinks, and tedious, unnecessary content, its just not fun for me. No new player, and NO player returning from a significant absence should play this game. To tell people that it isn't Oppressively difficult to do what this x-pac is requiring is just dis-honest. My guild is nearly a ghost-town now, I know for a fact people are leaving this game Because of this x-pac. Rant over..
as a suggestion to help us casuals .. its simple, turn on the summer ethereal event, and leave it on....at least then those of us who wasn't able to do it then, can work on getting our ethereals and not feel completely left out...I need someone to explain to me how that hurts anyone, ... it is absolutely clear that KA was tuned with the ethereal in mind.. the only people who want it to stay the way it is , are those that already are top tier, and feel they have earned something that no one else deserves..it is a ridiculous attitude for a game that is supposed to be us the players working together to defeat the content, its not pvp..

I was sort of with you up until this point. I'm a casual player. I don't have any of the ethereal things. I do just fine. Why, as a casual, do you need these items that are meant for raiding?

Because without them in the Heroic zones, the fights are too long. Like most of the discussions here, its a matter of point of view. Players do not "need" them to complete a dungeon, but players need to be willing to spend average 60 - 90 min in a dungeon. If thats not a problem consider this, the loot drops are Horrendous, to get upgrades how many of those are you going to slog through. And if thats not a problem and all you have is time to slog through these dungeons, you are then subject to really long cool down times for the dungeons. I dont know, I really enjoyed the last couple of x-pacs, I liked the timing and the pace. the only reason I made my suggestion is because I see it as a way to speed up at least some of the slog, and btw, I would still like to know, how it hurts the game? Why does it matter if more people have the same item that many already have. Also I am not suggesting the player base be given them, just simply allow them to earn them like everyone else. How does it benefit the game to exclude arbitrarily many of your players. You said the runes were meant for raiders? they weren't obtained in raid zones.

Right on!
"Meant for raiding". Where is he even pulling that from? Last i checked my Ethereal bow procs in heroics too?

Buy a krono and buy handcrafted gear, do the questline, and run zones and you can easily be caught up with 4 days played. I have 7 days played and lvl 5 asenscion, 3 mythical pieces, 253 resolve, etc. not on the top end but easy to do heroics on my inq.

A player should never have to resort to buying items with real money if he is a subscriber. If the economy or content is that unbalanced, then the game is broke or purposely cash grabbing and might as well be like the other crap f2p games.

Then come up with new content to beat that through hard work, can be obtained. Don't send players back to dead zones that are worthless. IT basically turned this game into monkeys pulling a lever 500x for a piece of candy. If I wanted that, I would play WoW. The problem is 2 fold in this game. The busy work for many of this xpac and epic 2.0 is boring and stupid. Rehashing old content with faction grinding is someone being a lazy developer. Put that on top of how readily the ethereal event handed out required items for raiding and heroics, then remove it from game requiring banking on extremely rare drops or buying kronos to pay for them, has broken the this game in many ways. Of course the few elite minded folk will defend this system, they assume everyone was playing last summer. There has to be a system in place that allows reasonable progression if work is put it in. Combine these 2 issues and I definitely feel where you are coming from (and many others do as well).

Sure they should, they just should be playing on Stormhold where not a single one of the issues that you've raised is a factor; TLE is particularly accessible, and the content fresh, if the player is actually new to the game.