Producer's Letter: Darkness Dawns on July 30 [UPDATE - Launch Date July 23]

tbh I think it was from the mail polls, although I never follow them too closely, also most say that DoF was one of the best expacs. so I would assume the devs though "lots of people liked DoF, so lets do something with that"

I think it's a sign of things to come and they're just keeping it simple by starting from the beginning. For the next few summers, they can get older dungeons caught up on scaling. Eventually, you could pick any dungeon in the world to play at cap.

yea, not that I would mind at all, the past few weeks or so I have been bored and when I am bored I decide to clean up some achievements, ran all the old zones that I could solo, quite fun, wouldn't mind them at cap at all

Exactly that. We wanted to start at expansion 1 instead of some other point in the life-cycle of the game. If these go over well, we may do another DoF dungeon or move onto KoS.

Generally speaking, the power level of creatures in a dungeon is fairly arbitrary and based on what is needed at the time. There isn't any particular lore reason why Cazic Thule has creatures that are weaker than Sebilis. They just released at different points, when there were differing content/level needs. We modify the lore when we change the population in a zone, so if the Djinn were to take over Clefts we'd have some lore for why that happened. We do have revamps like this from time to time, where the population in an area gets renamed and there is a new story being told in the area.

It does seem pretty random to not start with the older zones and jump forward into DoF right away. What does this mean for that revamped raid version of Sol's Eye? Are we going to see it anytime soon?

I get what you are saying, but DoF? Say EoF, then KoS and there will be great interest, in my opinion.

How about Stormhold or Fallen Gate? I'd go for KoS too.

Stormhold would be amazing as either an instance, scaled up or both.

To me, re-creating a ton of old zones just makes it seem like the devs are completely out of ideas. This does not get me excited at all. Quite the opposite.

I agree. I've always loved Stormhold from day one.

If that's all they did, you could certainly make a case for that.

a bigger Stormhold maybe, nowadays you can have toons that are way to big for the zone

There's a Zone Art team, and it takes X amount (a big number) of time to create totally new zones/dungeons from the ground up.

Then there's the Design team who are able, in a matter of weeks, to take an existing zone and swap out monsters and add bosses and loot. This work can be done without interrupting the Zone Art folks who are usually booked like a year in advance.

They can disable growth mods in zones.

I'm down with that but I want to get past that door near the front that is sealed!

I love this concept and definitely give it two thumbs up.

What I would also love to see though is the raid and high level zones throughout the entirety of Norrath to also have solo player access. Naturally I wouldn't expect the drops and rewards to be of the heroic and raid variety. It would just enable a lot of people to see the zones and experience areas that the developers have invested so much effort into.

I have a multitude of alts between 90 and 95 and I don't think I'm alone in saying I will never see a raid zone and probably never be able to go into the high level heroic zones as my lifestyle doesn't permit it. I would so much love to see those zones and to experience their impact on the lore of Norrath etc.

I've loved the opportunity as I've leveled to be able to use the chronomage to go back to all the lower level instances and experience them but of course that ability is never going to be there for the "at level" zones.
Do you ever think this would be a possibility?

Kinda iffy atm about the new updated DoF zones, last bite at the DoF redux didn't go over very well. However with that said I'll withhold judgment until I see them on beta/live.

As for the rest of the updates templates and the avatar upgrades should be useful if implemented correctly...but we have had issues in the past.

However, with all this good news comes the bad, during Scars of the Awakened Beta we were advised that for the most part our KoS trees for our AA were not going to be touched as part of that character revamp and would wait for the next GU...as none is listed in this letter to the community may we infer that the KoS tree revamp is again being pushed back? Simple question.

this is a very good point and question. we have been expecting a KoS tree revamp for quite some time and it has been delayed more than once if i am right.

This sounds like a really good time for the developers to finally allow a way for us to re-set our adventure classes that we've been asking for; for years. I have five level 95 crafters that are low level adventurers that need their classes changed since I started them to create crafters to support my other characters years ago. If I had the flexibility to change them I might actually adventure with them and spend more time adventuring than crafting and decorating. And for those of you that will say delete the character and start over, that's not happening, I and many others that are in the same situation as me have spent years building up their crafting expertise on these alts.

On another note, with all the requests I've seen in various posts about bringing back the starter isles and since the free to play model has been in effect for a while now, I would love to see them start a new quest series for the lower levels. I literally have one level 92 character and find she's always behind with every game update. Also leveling other alts by running the same old content is a total bore since no one else is in these zones anymore. Every time I see a new game update with yet another level 90+ zone, I know it will be years before I will see it if ever. I know this is just my play style and doesn't apply for the majority of the player base but keep in mind, there are new players starting every day and not everyone has been playing this for the last nine years waiting for the new GU every two months salivating over new higher level content. I'm thinking that Smokejumpers proposal two years ago for a level 90 character token was a good idea then and is even a better idea now.

There are 4 different places to start leveling your characters. Why do we need to add more? You complain that the zones are empty, but bringing back starter isles is supposed to somehow help this? At the same time, you're also proposing a level 90 token be considered.

As far as your crafters go, just make all new characters. It's so easy to level up tradeskillers. They're very disposable these days and you can buy all you need for adventuring off other crafters on the broker. There is no expertise to build up as they are all essentially the same, performing the same function, hitting 6 buttons while standing at a station. If leveling your adventurer is so important, go do it and stop holding yourself back with these self-imposed barriers.