I have been a loyal sub since EQ2's inception and have experienced every other Expansion (including the initial 'adventure packs') and I don't ever recall such a lacklustre reaction - population-wise - to an expansion, especially only a few weeks after the release. The first couple of days everyone was working on their Solo Sig Line and then it seems they all vanished into thin air after getting their Cloaks. It is quite hard trying to get a group going for those Heroic zones - very few seem interested and the Obol drop rates are rare to say the least even from regular mobs. There is a very depressing feeling about this whole expansion. I really do feel quite nostalgic for the old days. I hope the developers fine tune these heroic zones and give us a reason to group, whether Obol related or better loot or anything - cause right now the expansion is a 'dead zone.'
When you get better gear from solo zones or collections than you do from heroic (except the occasional essence/obol that's still too rare), then people run those zones instead.
We need another server merge. SoE needs to heavily consider it. Subscription rate in general is down, especially with many new MMO contenders in the past two years.
What the game needs is a decent heroic progression again with decent and maybe even unique and rare drops to chase after. And not just cruddy cookie cutter rare loot, properly different and unique with imaginative procs.
My major issue with the expansion is the lack of experience from mobs and quests. The fact is a person who came into CoE already level 92 and has completed all zones up to SS; can't even get past level 93 once completing all solo quests in EJ and OP. IMO once OP has been "completed" we should be 95 or very close too. It seems impossible to get a group at level 93/94 in CoE unless you go back to SS to grind; unacceptable. The expansion you are providing should allow a solo player to get to 95 without the need to backtrack old content and grind.
Yeah, they did that somewhat in Skyshrine with the myth weaps. It has to be something that holds up though and not just nerfed after being chased like the myths were. I liked the Dozekar heads thing and the boxes you could get from those giving 4 or so slots a chance at easy mode raid gear level stuff. I don't blame the solo itemization as I think it was done well and is fine. There just isn't any real draw to the heroic content. They're nice zones, but I haven't found any reason to run them other than shot at a .5 cb adorn upgrades. That's not enough to get people to group.
I got to just under 94 just doing the solo questline. I did not, however, use a merc. Mercs sap xp (unlike other players) so using one of those will reduce the xp even further.
You can get from 92 to 95 in SS running in a group + xp pots in 2 to 5 hours max depending on play style and speed of pulls etc.
While I'm known to be a hater for solo questing in general, I do have to agree that this game grossly under-rewards the player for time invested in solo questing. The xp and coin amounts should be tippled at a minimum. More unique charge used items should be handed out (think like the instances, but useable if not in raid), and just more equip-able items. I can first hand say my son doesn't play eq2 anymore mainly cause of how unrewarding solo questing is, and how slow progress is from time spent doing it as compared to all the other games he plays. XP matters so little in this game, there is little reason not to hand out more of it on quest turn ins.
I got more XP doing the silly Frostfell quests on a level 92 than I do in COE - you are right they need to increase the XP -- XP is better in every other part of the game but WL and COE.
Meh, most of the new games are ready for the crapper and have a holding attention span of 5 min. 1) TSW - Went B2P and they're dying out 2) WoW - Destroyed character progression 3) GW2 - NOTHING like the first. Insane money sinks - especially from REAL LIFE money 4) SWTOR - We all know what kind of disaster that turned out to be.... 5) Tera online - More like Terable asian, mind-numbing grind online 6) Rift - Vanilla - good game, still one of my favs. Storm Legion Xpan - mostly grindly garbage and horrific money sinks. People will be back here as most, if not 98%, of what's out there is just garbage. I'm no fanboi whatsoever, just make observations as I've been playing a loooong time and just notice the trends and what's going on. I'd sooner sit here and play this game, more indepth to everything here, than some of these new 5 sec sparkly games that are just that - fluff.
My guild is still on a lot but right now they're all doing Frostfell and other such things. Lots of crafting. They WERE doing the questline though and if you were on my server you would have seen them, and now you wouldn't. By the way, I got to 94 on the solo questline, mainly going without a merc. Took my time, did every quest I could find whether I needed to do it for the main questline or not. I killed lots of stuff, often killed stuff I didn't really have to kill, but did it just having fun. Got to 95 revisiting interesting zones and doing writs to help my guild get to 95. No big deal. Had fun the whole way. People offered to PL me and I turned them down. I'm glad I did. If you approach a GAME as a JOB you have to do whether you like it or not, it will always be tedious as long as you spend any time at all playing. Not sure why you would say the Obol drop rates are low. I'm getting a steady stream just from tromping around killing stuff. I agree it would be nice if I could get my guild more interested in heroic content. But after going through several casual guilds looking for one which did heroic content a lot I've stopped looking as it's extremely disruptive towards building friendships. The old group or die approach of EQ1 was lousy and I would not play a game like that now. The attitude of more serious guilds that EQ2 was more important then job or family just won't do. When someone suggests I call in sick so as to do a raid in the middle of the day I turn them down FAST. If they don't like it tough. There are things more important then a freaking game.
Soooo true...I have been able to finally get to 280 aa just from the icy dungeon (hard) rather than running repeatable, annoying quests in WL. I hate repeating quests unless it actually gives you xp you can notice.
