So, Worth coming back at all

One of the things I liked about WoW was the ability to come back to a new expansion and not feel as if you are behind. Current raiders have an edge as far as not needing to upgrade gear as they level through the new expansion and can kill things quicker. Returning players start getting geared up as they advance in their quest/leveling and you don't notice the difference until it's time to run heroics dungeons and raids. Even then, they have LFR (Looking For Raid) options that you can join if you are not quite up to running Normal raids. Coming back to this expansion was difficult for me since I was pretty much starting over as a "new" player and not having done ToT, behind on diety pts, etc. I'm slowly catching back up and starting to feel like I'm making some sort of headway.

That's they key!
And what if you have randomly 10 to 150m DPS in average PUG (pre epic 2.0 time)? will you clean up zone in reasonably fast pace?
And sure as hell I LOVE to meet person who was doing with 10k Pot Pre Epic - 300M in heroics

its got much easier nowadays because of chance superior fragment to drop so DD not uncommon

Depends on the server. AB is really lacking on the pugs.

I ws thinking those potions were SC items, not playing currently so i m confused ...

What the hell is RESOLVE?

well it's normal for me that u need to work a bit to catch up. "a bit" may vary

u can still do good groups and expert zones with low tithe and good gear.

now Don't hope to reach the level of potency of some older non stopper players. some toons with a gear a bit better than mine manage to get 10k more potency than me as well as more HP and crit bonus. and it's not really possible to catch up.

but as long as u can play and don't require all tht to do anything it's ok.

and if u like to tank .. it's of course the hardest class to get if you're behind .
But sometimes it's frustrating because you're doing your best to catch up but you know the lack of deity point coz u stopped for a while is what's keeping you so far behind. But if u accept that for now it's all good

When he said "pot" he was talking about potency. The goal for most classes is 20k+ pot/potency.

Resolve is a gating stat. Say Kunark mob A has 240 resolve stat (a scout with Expose Weakness can cast on it to check this #). If you have 200 resolve, then you will do 40% less damage to the mob, and that mob will do 40% more damage to you. Every class got a new group buff that boosts group/raid resolve, and the buff does not persist through death, so if you are in a group that barely meets resolve check and someone dies, suddenly everyone is taking more damage and doing less damage.

Tier 1 heroics require 190 resolve, tier 2 heroics 240, challenge mode heroic 290, expert heroic 388.

I think at this point, you'll be spending the next 4 months trying to catch up, and at that point the next epac will be just around the corner.

Since Legion hit, WoW and EQ2 are pretty similar in progress. I would go as far as to say EQ2 is easier for solo and casual player since in WoW you absolutely must run several group zones to advance your story and unlock some key progression points while in EQ2 you just have to run Advanced Solos. WoW also gear checks you in LFR/Heroics, as well as it removed LFG matching for some of more relevant zones. Currently, you are looking at a week+ before you are able to LFR even if you are a hardcore who plays 10+ hours a day (simply due to quest timers on your class board required to unlock your class weapons). If you are coming back and shooting to LFR/Raid or to run content that is currently relevant, you are looking at over a month of pretty heavy playtime.

Thank you everyone for your honest feedback.

Given where the game is at, and the time until expansion, and based upon everyone's assessment, I've opted to finally give WOW raiding a serious try instead.

I'll check back in in EQ2 land at the next expansion and see how yellow the pool water is.

Way to keep the game going guys!!! Lets run everyone off who is thinking about playing the game. I have been having a lot of fun in the new expansion. There is a lot to do but if all you do is rush to the end then cry because you're bored and want more, then why keep crying when they give us more things to do, so what if it's older content... maybe you should have ran it before rushing to end game. All I see on the forums are the vocal minority who are going to make sure they run everyone out of the game because they can't get their way this second. Quit whining so much and actually play the game.

"Is it worth coming back to this game?"

I'm in the same boat, except I was gone for nine years. SO MUCH CONTENT I wanted to explore, but it's incredibly boring to have no choice but to solo. The game's population is all but gone completely, as I am very nearly always alone in most zones. It's extremely difficult to find other people to group with, as they're all on the agnostic dungeon grind to skip to 100 so they can start the Ascension grind. I really, really wanted to come back and love this game again, but the absolute pay to win mechanics, the utter destruction of the broker function due to old exploits and the pay for plat krono scheme, the oceans of fantastic, but completely empty content... I'm not going to be here long unless something changes drastically. I can't spend a year trying to get my Ascension up to the level where I'm permitted to be relevant. I don't think this game has that long.

I've read people calling other people 'whiners' for not 'getting what they want right now'. I see that sentiment a lot from people in the general chat channels. I don't think they understand that real life involves a lot more time commitment for adults with stable jobs, children and so on. Without paying some perverse amount to advance the clock on Ascension it takes like a year, and that whole time you're grinding out the exact same tiny handful of instances to creep a single tick along on a treadmill designed to force you to pay to advance out of exasperation. The game's mechanics are a shambles, the introduction of superinflated attributes and the ability to inflict billions of dps makes the entire game that existed before this awful, awful expansion completely superfluous. It's a sad, sad thing to see done to what was always a special experience before.

Atan has given a lot to the raiding community over the years, and he deserved honest feedback. The feedback would have been totally different for someone looking to do casual solo or group play, but for for someone that wants to jump into high end raiding there are some serious concerns. Especially if he had planned to start up another raid guild, because his recruiting would be impacted by these factors.

Yes

exactly.
why lie ? people aren't stupid, they'll realise it's not all green.

I came back, worked hard, caught up to some people but I know I won't be le to catch up. As I would have been able during the old RoK.

and if you're a raider, and worse, if you're HC .. it's a big drawback.

DBG decided to give big advantages to people who stayed in the game, now they accept the fact that new players will be less happy to start orto come back

This is what I find interesting. You have people here complaining about the grind, the tithe system, the difficulty keeping keeping alts on par, gated raiding, etc. .. and then say they're going to play WoW. Enjoy the grind for Artifact Power, the difficulty keeping alts on par, gear scoring (and the effective requirement to raid, even if it's through the LFR system), etc. Want a group? Better hit that magic ilevel number, have x number of legendaries and y amount of AP, or talk to the hand.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

I guess the current state of MMO gaming is that it has to allow soloing at least to cap with minimal deaths (because that is upsetting) so EQ2 is no different there. I suppose the main difference is the character progression once at cap. Grinding those AAs. Ascension. Etc. It is all a bit bolt-on after bolt-on.

I'm just not sure what the point of it all is though however as most gear can be acquired for cash. I think the game essentially died for me when they introduced guild halls and there was no more hanging around QH or EFP in gear you could only have acquired by raiding top tier content only accessible to top tier players. I still remember seeing my first flying carpet from the Sinking Sands expac and that wasn't even a raid!

Bottom line I suppose the game is worth a couple of months for nostalgia but the offline community has disappeared.

What is most upsetting to realise it that it just doesn't really matter now either.

But all you did was encourage him to go back to (and pay) a game that is inferior in so many ways: I tried raiding there a few years ago and it's so childish. Plus half their subscriptions (no, you can't play free there beyond level 20) are from gold farmers. READ CAREFULLY: If you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Folks abandon this game based on hearsay in forums and gaming sites. There are quite a few (some may be paid) who go around doing this. Who knows?

Yes, EQ2 has a lot of issues these days. The Columbus Nova wonks have no idea how an online game is supposed to work: they want a profit NOW, at future expense. I almost wish that Sony had divested its online games to whatever gaming company was interested, though I heard that it was a poor choice too. And yes, I've been at times discouraged. Have tried so many other games; NONE of them live up to their hype. Most of them (nearly all) are severely biased towards pay-to-win, and few if any have ever had a community like this game has had. Sadly, the community here has fragmented.

I just started the TLE server, what has been so controversial and what "big modifications" are they planning? My friends and I joined because we liked that most of the modern cheese stuff was gone (ie loyalty vendors, fast ports to anywhere, Chronomages, the map quest cheats, etc...) and the Epic mobs were back, exp being a bit slower (though not as slow as I would like), content being tougher than live, but unfortunately not as hard as it was.

So far we find it "acceptable" to play, but if they make it easier, then it will kill the game for us. Fact is, I would have loved to see Corpse retrievals again, hard penalties, pain painstakingly tough mobs at all levels, weight restrictions, the old stat system, etc... as there are no difficult "progression" mmos anymore.

My words were "KA has been hugely controversial . . ." I was referring to the latest expansion, not TLE.