New Expansion - Odus in February

Waruri wrote:

And how is that any different from any other level based MMO in wich the levelcap gets raised every expansion (WoW, LOTRO as example).
They want your current gear to become useless, as it means you need to grind for new stuff... means you spend more time in the game, means you continue paying your subscription fee.
Welcome to your current day wack-a-mole themepark MMO. You either like it or hate it.
Jer

I'm thinking the expansion is going to be a bit better than most ppl think. Those two overland zones could be gigantic in size. Moors was one overland zone and it was huge. I think they could have put way more quests and stuff into it but overall in landmass it was pretty darn big. As far as not having anything to do all summer or nothing to look forward too, well I'm looking forward to the new zones that will be coming into the game between now and expansion. Those zones plus whatever quests come with them will be far and away enough to keep me busy. Not to mention the new mentoring thing. It will be nice to be able to take some of my lesser AA'd toons out into the old zones and finish up some quests or run some of those old dungeons I didn't get a chance to hang out in.
The hole, if they keep to the old version at all, is probably going to be gigantic. If it is indeed twice the size of SOS that should be enough to keep ppl busy for a long while in and of itself. The twelve instances are I think going to be fantastic with the new way they will be implementing the dungeons. It will mean not having to wait around for the perfect group when your short on time and when you do get the group you want you'll be rewarded for your efforts on a harder difficulty. I loved it when they did that in splitpaw. I know its not going to work exactly like that but it was nice to have the option there. Raid zones, don't know much about em yet but I hope they will be awsome. Tradeskills? I run one lvl 80 carpenter. I'm dying to see what that is going to have to offer. Plus all theTS faction writs. Prolly gonna start a toon on frostfang. The island I think that New Halas will be on. Probably tons to do there as well. So seriously folks. Its not a big loss waiting and it won't be a big loss for an expansion. I'd rather them get it done right at a pace is good for that. February is not too long to wait. Look at wow, those poor saps had to wait forever for their first and second expansions. And if its cause we're not getting Halas that has everyone upset, I would hope that that would be the one after next. Don't really care what the next one after Odus is, but the one after that should be Veliouse and the one after that a return to POP. Just my 2cp. I think that would be fitting. End the game content with Plane of Time. Then again, there will prolly be another 10 expansions hehe. I just know that I don't think this one will be that bad.

Jerokane@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Yea....no. Making current armor useless is the dumbest thing they could think of as it completly undermines player effort and progression.
People still upgraded their gear in previous expansions without this armor decay bs. I went from wearing full EoF fabled to gearing up in RoK fabled, and am now gearing up in TSO fabled.
If their current idea is announced as 100% unchanged from what it is currently stated to be, then there will literally be no reason for anyone to play until February as all the gear people are trying to get right now at this moment will just be worthless anyways by then.
If such a model continues, come next expansion with a level increase....it will just be more efficient to use a once month pay plan and quit the moment it is announced and then wait for its release. I'm sure this isnt the kind of behavior the developers would want to promote.

Morghus wrote:

I don't say that I disagree with you. As you have a point.
All I am saying is that this seems to be the trendt in most themepark MMO's these days.
Or have you people forgotten what happened in WoW when TBC launched? Fully Epic geared lvl60's yawdropping when they noticed that the very first lvl61 green gear drop / reward was already better then their current lvl60 full epic gear. Gear they worked for for over a year lol.
Altho, I think Turbine takes a better approach with LOTRO. Bit the same as how SOE indeed used to do it with the earlier expacs... in wich your top gear lasted at least a couple levels towards the new cap.
Jer

Morghus wrote:

Just as worthless for anyone to gear progress in general in a MMO where there are going to be level caps. At least until the doors of development close.

I don't quite understand the logic of the idea presented by several people now regarding the February release...that it will allow Sentinel's Fate to avoid coming out at the end of the year "with all those other games." The logic on November release is pretty clear--to take advantage of the Christmas season so that players would ask for the expansion as a Christmas gift. February is a time when the reality of how much you spent at Christmas is settling in, as the credit card bills from December are rolling in. Usually, people freak out and try to spend LESS money at that point.
I really don't think this is the reasoning. As I think about it, I become more and more convinced that it is a budget issue. Sony in general is in trouble right now. PS3 isn't selling as fast as other platforms. PSP is behind Nintendo DS and got a redesign at E3...and now the critics are crying foul over the price tag attached to that redesign, so it seems likely that for the same reason as the PS3, it will have a hard time competing. Sales are down in their other electronics departments due to the economic slowdown. So Sony starts tightening its belt. I am guessing that there have been personnel cuts on the staffs of the various SOE games--not the big names that you know, but the underlings who work for them and make their work more efficient. (I am a teacher, and it is a well-known fact that at a school, for instance, the secretaries do more work than the administrators and make them look good). I postulate that they realized with a reduced staff they simply weren't going to be able to release a full expansion on the old schedule.
There is pretty much no way to prove my theory, any more than there is a way to prove the other, as Sony is not likely to comment on internal decsion making. But I think I am probably pretty close to the mark.

Lightstrider wrote:

I'm going to have to agree with you almost 100%. I work retail dealing with electronics, and Sonys products dont move near as fast as some others. Part of this is thier price tag. Yes they are a great brand but were in a recesion atm and people are buying cheap. As far as PS3/PSP goes, Nintendo is annhilating them and has been for 3 years and imo it comes back again to the price tag. When PS2 came out at what? $299.99 (its been a long time, so i forget) I bought one but i was young ans stupid. In the long run, though, I got my 300 dollars worth because it had some pretty good games. The PS3 debuted at 500 dollars and Im sorry, but that is just not in most peoples price range for a gaming system. Also, it doesnt offer NEAR the variety that the PS2 offered; there isnt one game I can think of that I would buy that system for atm. So yes, they dropped the price a little bit but snuck in the fact that they took out the chip that made it backwards compatible, thus making it to where you could no longer play your old PS2 games on it so that only pissed people off more. Oh and dont even get me started on PSP's and the amount of dust they collect!

IMO Sony as a whole needs to take a look at the big picture or thier going to fall. I think everything you said above is correct, but we have also seen the loss of quite a few "core" developers over the years, the lore developers in general, and I think that may have set them back a bit as well. Feburary was a hard pill to swallow when they announced it but in all reality it might be a good move. Yes, some people have more free time during the end months but most do not. You have family gatherings, vacations, and all other sorts of events happening. I know for me personally, November (again, I work in retail) and December are HELL on me and to try and squeeze in all new EQ2 in that time is rough to do so Februray will be perfect...well Janurary would be perfect but I will deal lol. As far as getting EQ2 as Christmas gifts, I doubt that will have any effect on thier sales. You can barely even find it in stores; which is part of the problem with our in-game population....ADVERTISE and people will buy...beleive me, I see complete junk sell everyday just because it is in an Advertisement paper (not even on SALE!)!

kela wrote:

Wow, Im surprised at that. I could clear the top floor of SoS with a decent PUG in a few hours hopping from named to named.
I am also surprised that people think having HUGE zones is a good thing. Umm, lag, lag and well more lag. Ill bet we lag out in those huge zones for at least 3 months after release.
I am even more surprised that yall don’t remember SoS when it was released, every named , ever room was camped by a different group the majority of time for the first few months at least. Even past that named camp'n was a problem for a while. So you level from 70% from 60-70, so least say from 60-67 ONLY in SoS after release with the rampant camping in that zone =/ you got my respect I usually gave up after 30 minutes looking for a camp and went to the other zones KoS had.

To Quote Kiara:
"no, money and resources have not been pulled from EQII. If you had listened to what the Sr. Producer of the game said, you would recall that the delay is to allow some focus on tweaking and making the current live game more robust, as well as to allow some shift in design philosophy in the upcoming expansion."

Im sure that Kiara is correct as it was stated, "resources have not been pulled from EQII"
But knowing something of the enterprise level software lifecycle that is probably a bit misleading. EQ2 may not have "pulled resources" but I have no doubt that there are "new" resources that are working with the eq2 code that my not be a knowledgeable as those he/she replaced. I have no doubt that a resource left the EQ2 dev group for another opportunity and that the EQ2 staff "May" have not replaced that resource yet, "May" not even plan to replace that resource. Really there is no way to know past the content they push with the updates before Odus. If we see alot of balance issues, bug, defects being addressed we know that the Dev team has been hard at work, if we see Odus launched and we are still in the same boat, state of EQ2 then we know there was alot of smoke being blown.
EQ makes a ton of money for SoE. If you consider that every 3-4 months we pay for a full scale retail non MMO game (14$ x4 = 56$ which is just about any game in my local best buy). I believe that the EQ2 staff does want to do the best for the game over all, but then again management is not usually the most knowledgeable experts in the "Fun Factor" of MMO gaming.

If everything I have is going to be rendered useless in Feburary then there is no point in playing the next 8 months. Why should I grind out shard gear on my alts knowing it will be useless soon? Better off to just /cancel until the expansion comes out.

the reason for equipment progression should be to find better gear not becouse your old gear becomes useless. i have no problem to drop my lvl 80 fabled for a better piece of lvl 82 legendary , but it sounds like they want me to drop it for same or even lower quality gear just while it becomes weaker and weaker with every lvl i get.

Thunndar316 wrote:

To be fair your gear does not become useless the day of launch. Your gear becomes useless as you out level it, least in theory. Really be honest, if you gain 5-10 levels, fighting 83-93 level mobs, do you not need level 85-90 gear? What is the use of grinding top tier gear for the content currently out there, soon to be grey'd out or rendered useless by 85+ boss mobs? Well the simplest answer is that with top gear going into a new expansion you have the ability to run the harder and/or higher level zones.
I really cant see how someone expects to do well in top content when they are wearing 10th level gear /boggle. I dont have top gear on my 80s and you know what I am ok with that. But if I dont chase the top gear I have to expect it to take longer to get to run some of the content, instances, raids, quests, whatever as a hard core raider that has spent 50 hours a week grinding the best gear.
You can run through the content on god mode in 1 month and run out of stuff to do or you can play the game at your own speed and see the content you are paying for(before its grey/green), totally your choice.
Now I agree, shards are not fun (probably why I dont have the gear) to grind so for a casual player(10 hours a week maybe) having the ability to work up gear in the next expansion is going to be a good thing. I can bypass shards and play alts

Xaax wrote:

Well the problem I see will be with the Less Than Level Cap tiers really. Due to different itemization schemes being applied through the Pre-level-cap game you may well end up keeping that gear you got in Tim Deep newbie space until you're 40.

Xaax wrote:

It seems a lot of people keep trying to claim that velious melted lol. I seem to have to keep reminding everyone that not all of velious was ice, that the beaches of cobalt scar, where the othmir lived had sand and rock terain, which shows that beneith the ice there was land. Sure 500 years passed and there was a shattering, but as we all can see the shattering mostly only effected the old continent of antonica splitting it up into several islands. Heres a pic of Cobalt Scar. See? Not all ice.