Shattered Overture Beta Opens soon!

As Priority noted, the TLE players you are bringing up would have nothing to do with any new expansions or content for L1-124. I'm aware that TLE exists and are paying customers - though not nearly to the extent that the high end whales are, I would wager. Not much need to drop $1k+ every time a new crate, merc familiar drop for TLE - But I know more than one person on live happy to do at least 500 each time.

I'm sure they could keep servers running with just TLE and zero new content, but I doubt the game would actually persist all that long.

(Edit

That said, my point was clearly that the request for new expansions to add low level content would be wasting their time. People who pay to play low level content mostly dont do it on live, and arent playing new content. People who want new content are playing at the high end.

I fully understand TLE will not get new content. I am willing to bet you will get some of them to come to live for a time if you offered new content at lower levels. And like my point of earlier, it's about 50/50 on my server of lower and max level characters. If you take amd drop a new expansion like when they bringing in the Fae. Lower level, new characters, and new zones, the expansion would fly out the door better than the current one's do. They have their crates that sell very well, but how many lower levels also buy some of those crates. They don't have to be max level to use them. They get more benefits at max, but any level can get usable rewards.

Either way, Daybreak has their path they are set on and are unlikely to change. But my point was the 1-124 crowd isn't insignificant money wise. They do pay their way, some on the marketplace, some with subscriptions. TLE players are a good chunk who probably don't buy the new expansion unless they have a good enough benefit for the TLE players. Free to play users might buy the expansion if they could get benefits for their play style.

Only thinking the end game players matter is not a profitable decision. All play styles is what is keeping this game floating.

Final Fantasy XI has been in maintenance mode for years. They still have a die hard base and actually, I think they have more servers than EQ2 has. On my server there are listed around 76 max levels players today at 9 PM Eastern. I know there are days and times there are probably more but honestly, 76 people lost wouldn't break this game...

AB and test would be an exception to this because the kind of players on those servers is very different from the 3 main servers + thurgadin. (IOR is also its own separate category for reasons)
Thurgadin had 8 guilds that have cleared the first 2 raid zones.
Skyfire has 7
Maj has 12
HOF has 9
(I choose clearing the first 2 raid zones a cut off, cause I'm too lazy to look at every guild but seems like most of those guilds are still active where most of the ones that didn't clear those don't have recent new kills).

A lot of guilds have been raiding short, some players raid multiple guilds, so let's say 18 unique players per a guild. That puts us between 126 and 216 unique raiders per a server. That's without accounting for the large section of players that only do solo content or only do heroic content. Of course not all of them will be online at the same time as you, but its still a lot of players. It's way more than 76 people lost.

The problem with low level content for live servers is there is no point. I get there's a small selection of players who keep toons at lower levels and don't level them, but if you are wanting to see more content, let your toon gain levels and there is so much to do. It would take a really long time to do all of it. For the people that want to continue to do low level content, they already gave a solution by making TLE servers.
The problem is even if they wanted to add content to the lower levels on live, what level would they put it at? It would only be for the even smaller portion of players with lower level toons that want to stay low level that are also at whatever level they pick for the content.
[As a side note, lower level players already do get some new free content each year out of the updates to live events, because they make a lot of that stuff accessible regardless of level, including some new dungeons.]

in what world do "most" players want to hang out in low level zones and never experience the full game?

Is there even sufficient number of players on the live server that are between 1-124 that constitute as a population? You may see a handful every now and then who either are people who play extremely casually, are just passing through, or power levelling with their own bots/armies/friends - hardly a populace and doubt they ever contribute to the game's profit margin.

All the action on liver servers is at max level, with raiders spending money to tweak out their toons as much as possible and that is precisely where the development of the game is targeted at. If low level content was of any real benefit to the company, you won't be here asking for more level content.

TLE was specifically designed to capture the low level population, as the content there was/is still fun to play because it belonged to a different generation of game development where "fun" was a thing back then. That is the reason they don't extend TLE beyond the golden age of EQ2, knowing well that people will be put off with development changes that ruined the game post TSO.

The only reason you would engage with low level content on live server is to go after achievements which - was a massive missed opportunity - apart from points and some odd appearance item, becomes tedious very fast.

By the way, just looked at the new 470 neck on beta.

Boggles my mind thinking whether there is a live human being behind itemisation or there is an AI controlled bot executing commands like "/screw player now".

If this isn't a slap in the face of people who worked hard to get their contested neck then not sure what is.

I don't understand the reasons for discontent. This new neck of event insts is only level 125. If the DB policy has not changed, then in the new addon the level of players will be raised to 130. Both the old neck and this new neck will become just a pumpkin after a week of play....

There a number of reasons. Let me explain:

1. The amount of time/effort required to get the current contested neck should have made the neck close to the best in slot item to the end of the expansion at least. Had it not been for the late addition of the weekly, people still would have chased after the no-trade shinies that were on a very low drop rate.
2. The new neck on the surface requires much lesser work with some if not a lot of the updates coming from the solo zone and is a straight upgrade to the contested neck - surely this is a niggling point for those who put in the hard work of getting it and then needing to replace it almost a month after getting it. Conversely, this update for those who could not/cannot get the neck before this update arrives will see this a great move as you are getting a superior item with relatively less amount of work.
3. Keeping in mind what you said about level increase in the next expansion being to 130 and this neck becoming redundant along with the contested one then there are few points to note: Why add a best in slot item this late in the expansion for only to it become redundant with increase in resolve/level within 1-2 months before the next expansion beta kicks in? Let's say that it does not become redundant straight away and we still keep using it like the 390 upgraded is still being used, then why not simply offer an upgrade to the contested neck instead, with resolve and base stats going up to 470? They can keep the update relevant by giving upgrades in other slots or side upgrades.

We get it that there is a complete reset of gear each expansion so players can catch up. But resetting supposedly best in slot item (that were deliberately kept on a long grind) whilst the next expansion is still a few months away makes little sense.

I don't think a new neck can be assembled quickly. The probability of a stone falling from the final mob is 100%, but the RIGHT stone is 5%, two necessary stones are 0.05 * 0.05 = 0.00025, three are 0.05 *.0.05 * 0.05 = 0.000125 and so on. For 20 of the necessary stones, you will need go to this instant for a lot of years

Is this true? Someone posted they seem to have smart loot on stone...

Smart loot was only the first few stones, then 8 absolutely identical stones already used. Thrown. Perhaps this error will be fixed, but now there is NO smart loot




and so already 8 times, so either a smart loot error, or these stones are NOT at all in the solo instance, but there are in the heroic one.

It is not correct. Unless it changes - or already has been - I got 17 of the updates from the solo, 3 require the heroic.

There were no duplicates. The math they pulled out of their.. well, the math they posted, *would* be close to accurate if it were calculating the odds that you were to get the same stone every time, rather than the odds of getting a stone you need every time. (Which would start at 100% and reduce each time you took away one of the stones you needed, but the math is much more complex than what they posted to actually calculate)

It was the bottom two on the right and the bottom one on the left, IIRC, that require the heroic zone. And you can even see in Saladdin's message that it clearly states it isnt an issue of getting duplicates (because you can't even consume the shard if you have all the solo ones, it wont let you) - it specifically tells you that you have all the ones you can get from this version and need to get the other.