Producer's Letter: Coming Right Up!

dude, do you even play outside of roleplaying and decorating guild halls?
it can't be at any level because groups are near non-existent pre 90, and I could safely bet the only groups 90s get in are SS grinding groups.

Edit:
(and this means real groups, not a "group" for stormhold that consists of 3 20s and than a 95 doing room pulls)

Everquest was not hard? I dont know what game you have played, but it surely wasnt EQ1. Yes, it took ages to get things done and to level, but it was also very hard to get forward. Most classes couldnt solo at all (Warrior, bards, rogues, clerics etc.). These classes were dependet on groups. Without a group you wouldnt progress and without progress there was no going forward. While at the beginning it was easy for those classes to go toe to toe against even con mobs, at lvl 25-30 it started becoming impossible. A lvl 30 warrior wasnt going to solo a hill giant. That my friend, is hard. Not only took it ages to level, many classes were dependent on others help, which made the game a true mmorpg. I played a Druid and i had the luck of being the kiting king. I could take on even con mobs and kite them for ages untill they died. But sometimes, if i wasnt taking enough care, the mob would get in melee range and one shot me. That was always a challenge on my druid, in the end i could even kill lodizal and other dragons, while other classes never got that privilige.

Dont let me go into raiding, the countless corpse recoverys in plane of fear, hate and air sometimes took a whole day. Sometimes people didnt get their corpse on the same day so the guild and their friends had to organize a corpse recovery for the next day, most people showed up again to help. This, my friend, was a real mmorpg. The people without corpses actually had a sleepless night and hoped for the best on the next day.

Some dungeons were impossible to solo, you had to out level the content to actually be able to step a foot solo in that dungeon. For a long time soloing wasnt possible in most dungeons untill you either had the best gear in tier and/or the right class/level.

Eq2 was never as hard as EQ1 but definitely much harder than it is now.

SoE has trivialized the game too much which leads to the downfall of the game. Things were different a few years ago.

When i made a new character, my first aim was to get as many AAs as possible. So we went throu all the dungeons, did all the major quests and killed all the overland nameds who gave AA.

Getting AAs was the highest priority. When i went throu Antonica as a lvl 15 and find a named that ive never seen before, i informed my guild. You know what? Everyone came to antonica to group up, sometimes even higher lvl people mentoring down, because we were desperate for AAs. It was a real hunt for nameds. This filled all overland zones and dungeons with life. It wasnt easy getting AAs.

Nowdays its too easy to max out with all the potions, dungeon crawling mixed with powerleveling.

The last thing i bother nowdays, when making a new char, is AAs. I will get all of them in no time, if not now, then at a later point.

Theres pretty much no reason to go throu stormhold etc and that is a real shame. Whether these heroic chars will fix the current problems or not, i dont know. What i know is, that they dont fix the root of the problem. SoE should concentrate on the root of the problems instead of temporary fixes.

The mere fact that there are very successful MMO's just as easy or easier completely torpedoes this.

You seem to have access to data that i dont have. Which other mmorpgs are successfull nowdays besides WoW and in what way could you compare those games to EQ2 with its very unqiue system?

Personally very excited about the new expansions. Looking forward to the channeler and the heroic stuff. Thanks!

Check out other games and the lack of updates etc

I have some issues with doe of course. But not info given out. Yet

Very good point Cloud and true.

Everyone I know who has left the game completely, has left for the reasons you have listed. They love this game and would come back but SoE failes at acknowledging her lovers. A big company will fail every time. Bottomline replaces passion.

I hope that the new insta-player will do/accomplish all that they say. I do think it will breathe new life into the end game and the Vets that play there, for a time.

Here is to hoping they do not chop up any ~ of what is left ~ of the grand journey to get there.

I would disagree mostly. The groups are there in lower levels. We run at level alt gorups in older content all the time. But its just guild groups. The main difference is that if we lack a player or 2...we can use merc (or 2) and still keep a good group going without having to look for or deal with an unknown player...or thier attidude.

Agreed 100%. For 2 1/2 years, the Lead Designer turned his back on what made EQ2 great and was copying other games instead. Even though that person is no longer working on EQ2, we are still paying the price for all the "dumbing down" he rammed through.

It's too late to go back and fix the old content to be challenging again, but I did post my suggestions on what could be done to increase interest in this old content -- multiply the XP from heritage quests by 500%, increase the difficulty of old dungeon bosses, and put level 90 tokens on ALL bosses from level 20-80 so that at level 90, equipment and adornment can be purchased.

Say you don't like the content. Say you think the stories aren't as deep as they used to be. But please don't say that solo gameplay is being "neglected".

When you are being nostalgic for "the old days", don't forget that from launch til Skyshrine, if you were a Solo player, there was no more content after you finished the Quests. If you were a solo player and tried to visit the group dungeons in Kingdom of Sky, Kunark, SF, and TSO, or the raid zones like Veeshan's Peak, you founs a big red sign that said "No solo players allowed". You could not do any of the "group" or "raid" content in EQ2 from 2004-2011 by yourself.

Fast forward to Skyshrine, Chains of Eternity, and Siren's Grotto, and they were all designed so that the SOLO player gets to experience the entire game, all the zones, all the enemies. So let's be realistic here. The only way for SOE to further increase the Solo content in EQ2 is to just give up on group and raid content and make everything Solo only. And that goes against everything that made EQ2 what it is!

I will agree 1000% that Tradeskilling is a shadow of what it was under Domino. I didn't love everything we got (removing pristine bonus? ), but she added tons of great quests.

Tot

I am fairly recent in play time for EQ2. But umm...MMO's are a business. They require new blood willing to get in and explore. I think a lot of vets that still play probably welcome new blood even if the lowbie content is made easier. After experiencing several other MMO's over the years (dating back to EQ in 2001) I can tell you to keep a game going you need fresh blood in. This means bringing in a younger crowd. It also means making older content easier so when leveling multiple toons you can get through the three million tons of stuff.

His initials wouldn't happen to be "SJ," would they? :-/

Brilliant! Completely agree, though I don't think it's too late to save the old content, although that was made challenging for the devs by the near-complete lack of documentation of the old stuff...I'm sorry, I'm aware of what crunches are, but if you've got anywhere from an 8 to an 18-hour day, you still take 8 to 18 minutes, say, at the end of the day and make .txt copies of the files you worked on, and send them to your immediate supervisor and/or print them out. That way, there's a RECORD of what was done, if (when) something goes FUBAR. There was no excuse for malicious spaghetti-code ("You can't get rid of me! You'll never clear out the crap code I made without me!" "We'll take our chances. 'Bye." /boot), but if you're dealing with software of any sort, records need to be kept somehow. :-/

I like the soloing opportunities, because I'm a soloer (largely because a lot of the "new blood" is of the power-leveler/raider variety and PUGs are pretty disastrous nowadays; the only ones I'll willingly group with now are either people I know from channels, forums, RL, etc., or guild members, and even that can be problematic...at least I'm not looking to somehow strangle them by the end of the ordeal--er, series of encounters); again, if we get to "play OUR way!1!!" then being a soloer is my way, and we don't deserve a lot of the hate we get. On the other hand, I'm a little leery of EQ3's making everyone somewhat self-sufficient, just in case "your dedicated healer didn't log in tonight, you can still go out." Wow...are they really anticipating so few new customers to the new game that you won't be able to find a decent replacement? :-/

Argh! Yes!! Well do I long for the days when we got the pristine bonus ("But, but, but, the Sages level up faster! Make it stop! Waahhh!"), but I will admit, the tradeskill quest lines are great (and I miss Domino something fierce...)! I just wish they'd continue the "freebie rares as quest rewards" into at least the feysteel Tier... X-P

Uwk

Biggest problem with that is you're not 'experiencing' the content when you chrono down, especially that far. You're DESTROYING it. Maybe some people enjoy content that is that easy. I find I enjoy doing the content at level when there might be some modicum of challenge far more then doing it when I'm chronoed down so far I'm accidently 1-shotting boss mobs.

Rich Waters.

Exactly. It's so easy as to be boring. When you can pull entire rooms with no risk of death, there is no challenge. And the answer is not "Real Mentoring". The answer is putting tons of XP and level 90 rewards in level 20-80 content, and then cranking up the difficulty on some bosses/named in this old content so it still takes more than 2 seconds to die.

I'd also like to see some of the Legendary/Fabled gear at the lower levels be less restricting for F2P/Silver players. I can understand not granting access to those items in the higher levels to encourage players to subscribe or buy/get unlockers, but at the lower levels you tend to out-level most of the gear/abilities that is locked that way anyways.

I tend to agree, but really it's -almost- no difference than without mentoring (almost). and by that I mean the way the game has gone over the years purely has favored soloers. solo gear for a level 40 nowadays = top end raid gear for a level 50 years ago. boosting the stats without boosting the content just makes any and just about all the lowbie content just train shows. I could later in the day find some links to support this for those that weren't there years ago if need be (although the links would be much lower, like teens)

Actually, I'd say I 'experience' more content when I chrono down to it than I ever did when I grouped it at level. Except for times I group only with a few friends, no group I have ever dungeon-crawled or quested with has ever taken the time to look around, to read the info, or to listen to the NPCs/mobs. It is always click-through as fast as possible, and any forced dialog pauses are time to review strategy. Soloing these dungeons as a massively over-powered, mentored-down high-lvl, I can take my time and actually experience the dungeon.

Absolutely yes. The most recent time I did a PUG, not too long ago, it started out with one of my youngest alts and another Priest-type in the teen levels, apparently on the same quest. We were doing okay, not great, but okay, when the suggestion of adding another player was made (a relation to the first player joined). This one was a berserker with a mount, which neither of us healer-types had, so he'd continually outrun his healers (often while pulling everything in an area), not bother to stop to loot anything (presuming, I guess, since I was the leader, I'd automatically set up everything for proper looting; heck, I don't even know how to do that any more these days), and would go off into areas that neither of our original pair needed. When a high-level raider came along and insisted to be let in, I finally let him after helping to fight off a rather enthusiastic horde, welcomed him aboard, then left the group and continued soloing, figuring they'd be just as happy without me. :-/

I'm presuming the berserker had done the questline before, but I guarantee that if he hadn't, there would be no way he would've learned much of anything other than slay, go on, repeat. Yawn. It's like the difference between, I don't know, someone shoveling food in his face to get the body to work, and someone actually appreciating a good meal. :-/

Uwk

I find it totally amusing to hear people complain about this and in the next sentence claim they don't group with outsiders and have no plans to in the future. Personally, if you're not grouping with others IMO you are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Not every group is a good one, but I'll take a group of live people over slogging through a soloing wasteland even if I'm outparsing Conjurors and WIzards on a Troubador in SS. no one died, everyone got exxp and loot. That's all that mattered and the under-performing toons got some tips. People can't get any better soloing with no one to give advice.

Now it's everyone's right to play with themselves only if they wish, but if you do you're not really in a position to have an opinion on grouping.

paying for expansion packs makes no sense to me since the game went free to play.