Smedley speaks on the future of MMO's

What I like about the game is no matter what your play style is you can play. Those of you who want to group and raid do so. I, personally, play solo. Why? A number of reasons. The biggest one being I suffer from anxiety attacks and, therefore, I can't handle being in groups. Not even virtual ones. Therefore I solo. If being able to solo is taken out of the game I will have to find another game to play. Which would greatly sadden me because I really love this game. Remember everyone has a different way of playing and that doesn't make your play style the only one that should be available just because you prefer grouping and raiding.

I'm going to disagree with this analogy....mainly because there is a fine line between extreme difficult/tedium and challenge/fun. Over time I've seen so many long time players express the "suck it up" attitude because back the day they had to do xyz to get to where they are and they think every new player should experience it too....for example..the crafting system in the beginnning...I've seen folks asking for that to be returned because they enjoyed the aspect of crafting mats for other crafters in order to complete their crafted item...well...let me say I for one quit crafting and never picked it up again until they took away that tedium....IMO what a few think is fun and challenging is "not" for others. Same as that boat ride....heck...I remember times not even having the 10s to take that boat....it was nothing short of frustrating....back in the day travel around the lands was a time sink....people do not like time sinks and that's the bottom line....even now people dislike the flying between islands in ToV and AoM. There are countless things that have been improved to help with tedium/time sinks....and for that I thank the devs.

Plus I believe if we want EQ2 to survive in it's current state we need to come together as a community and quit all the bickering. Show the powers that we want our game to stay the way it is and play the game. Invite friends and family to play and let them know it doesn't matter if they can only play hour or eight hours just give it a chance and see if they like it. We either come together and the game, will likely, survive or we seperate into bickering groups and it will die.

Well there are cases where something really is unkillable/unnecessary. 99.9% of those times its in the raid zones content that 5% of the player base even experiences. Now here is something that the "time sink" people need to consider since you clearly don't understand what is happening at the moment. The content due to being made easier become trivial in a matter of weeks due to gear. DPS eventually takes over. Don't believe me? Ask anyone about PK and how rough it was before the AE block + 28mil dps check to totally avoid the strat all together. The reason they can't make new strats is because everyone goes and complains about it being to hard so it has to be brought down so 90% of the players can kill it almost effortlessly. Now when you do that the content that was supposed to last you months and months becomes a matter of weeks. You sacrifice your player base due to the game being "beaten" too fast and they are sitting on their hands because there is nothing new for them to do. People put in the time to develop cast orders, do the math to maximize their stats for dps, and spend hours tweaking aa to make it how they think they need it. Allowing everyone else to obtain this information without putting in the same amount of time to make their character good enough to be killing "tougher" content is where it becomes obvious that people want to jump in and be handed what others spend years learning. So that should be our fault??! Be angry all you want about us saying it needs to stay challenging but you don't walk into a job somewhere and demand the pay of a 10 year employee do you? Its extremely easy to copy and paste from players to skip years of learning so that alone you should be thankful for, its insulting to know that, the challenge to any game is not on your list of must haves. Why do you even play if you don't want that? Bragging rights for not earning something?

There is only 1 guild ...yes...1....that has beat all the raid content in AoM.....we are 6 months into this xpac!!...how is that too fast???

alot of people arent happy with how the game has changed and is changing. Why should we support something like that? There is a divide because this used to be a game that everyone could enjoy for alot less. I wouldnt dare recommend something I dont like myself to my friends and family. In fact every time I recommend eq2 to my friends they play for a week at the most and quit. What kind of retention is that?

You are talking like we need to force the acceptance of this game upon ourselves as is without asking for it to change. The motto used to be "free to play your way" but its obviously not the case. So we should be able to use these forums as a place to at the least neutrally discuss what we feel is wrong with it. People are always idealistically divided, and eq2 in the past has been a bastion for both hardcore and casual players. Its up to us to express our feelings and its up to them to extract the right things from those discussions to implement into gameplay. Just pretending to like this game and be free promoters for DBG wouldnt save this game.

This buzz phrase is almost always taken out of context. It doesn't mean that you can mould the game into something of your specific choosing. It doesn't mean that you should be able to play every aspect of the game without progressing. It was introduced when they dumped the mandatory monthly subscription and moved to the F2P/Silver/Gold system of playing. It refers to the fact that you had a choice of how to pay to play the game or not pay at all.


People keep using it nowadays to justify various other aspects of the game when it has no bearing on them.

Fair enough, but this still is a place for discussion, and feedback on the current state of the game. If they werent trying to listen to the people left playing this game when they advertise so little whats the point of having a forum?

Those changes may seem logical and harmless for a PvE server but that's not the case when it came to the PvP servers. Those were some of the many PvE changes that should of never made its way to the PvP servers that helped destroy them.

this is more of a consequence of them not backing up code or earlier versions of eq2. If they had some foresight this would of been possible. It was barely possible with p99, they had to scour the internet and find older clients to make the code viable, and even then its not 100% true to its classic predecessor.

This just isn't a valid measure of the point in discussion. The last raid mob (or sometimes the last few) in a tier in EQ2 has always been magnitudes of difficulty way beyond anything else. It has always been an artificially created block designed to only allow the elitist of the elite to beat it until they release the next tier and nerf it. Just because only 1 beat the last doesn't mean that the vast majority of the rest aren't beating their heads against a rock they have absolutely no hope of breaking and weren't meant to.

the last few mobs have been recreations of previous raid encounters, just gated by stat requirements. I dont know about AoM but I suspect the same is still going on.

I'm not asking you to anything if you don't want the game to continue. If you are that unhappy quit. If your friends are quitting after a few days then, obviously, they are looking for a game that one can rush through to the end. This one of the best games on t he market. Bar none but it 's not f or everyone. We are supposed to be a community of gamers so it's time to come together. Last thing. None of us like everything about EQ2. That is normal for any game. I've heard the same complaint from players of WoW. But, overall, most of us like the the way the game now.

But, they do seem to be listening to people. Maybe not at the rate that many people would like, but expectations have always been high on that end. They incorporate the stuff they can, they fix the stuff they can and they respond when they can.

the problem is most is a lot smaller than what most used to be when kunark or TSO came out. And alot of people that play this game dislike what is going on with it, but have strong ties with friends so they still play. Like I said its a murky situation. I had some very close friends in the game and still do. I want to like and play this game again, but every time I log on its like a used car salesman shoveling trinkets in my face.

Then quit if you are so unhappy.

Id much rather express myself about how I feel towards my ex favorite game. I played eq2 since release, and eq since velious on and off. I would rather not play now and voice my opinions and see if I can make the change I would like in the game. I am sorry if that irritates you or hurts your feelings.

some people have been playing the everquest series for over a decade and have invested hundreds if not thousands of hours into it. Its hard for people like that to just quit something that they used to deeply enjoy, so I hope you can understand.

Do you even look at the progression site? The only reason the AoM and PP zone were not cleared sooner was because of an insane dps check that clearly nobody was able to make it through. So in reality your 6 month window is quite a bit off. The number 5-15 guilds usually clear everything except the last 3-4 of the most difficult until they gear the entire raid in all the best possible pieces they can get. So that being the case do you honestly think 5-6 months is good enough for a years worth of content?

We are supposed to support your solo community but when anyone else bring up their opinion this your response? You and others like you are the reason the game is folding. Not sure why you even post in the forums when groups give you anxiety attacks. Everyone has the right to their opinions. So maybe you should look for attention else where.

Yes....when only 1 guild has beat the raid content after 6 months then yes....it is good enough...you can't make raid content last an entire year for one or two groups of 24-30 hardcore players...if you did what happens to all the rest of the players/raiders?

BTW..yes I look at the progression site..that is why I know only 1 guild has beat the current content.