Sony needs to get with the times If this game is going to make it the next 2~5yrs+

You replied to Atan, and I found it interesting.. While I rarely agree with anything Atan says, I agree with him on this one. The server load indicators are definitely not a reliable source of information.

On the old forums, amidst discussions of discrepancies with the Web Vs In_Game population reports (showing different population loads), Rothgar mentioned that the population reports are based on multiple factors, including server hardware. This was elaborated by stating SOE does adjust hardware based on server loads, so server load alone is not enough to indicate server population. In summary, a server with a "Medium" rating can actually have more people than a server with "High" rating due to server hardware variances.

EQ2 servers are definitely NOT all the same.

So, no alien autopsies, no area 51, no conspiracies. Nothing fun like that. Just simple statements by SOE employees.

I've been playing EQ2 since 2006 and I've never felt that I'm "forced to do anything" that's the wonder of this game. Do I raid no I don't because of time not desire. Do I feel left out etc heck no. I am happy with what I do. I can do both solo or group I HAVE a choice I like that. My favorite place is Unrest a group zone. Do you realize how many ppl come back to EQ2? And I highly doubt EQ2 is going to die out. It has variety and a lot of other games don't. Go to GW2 you can play alone and just be part of a mob killing stuff. Not fun.

Your options are there. It takes a standard geared person 30 minutes to get 1 Drop from a solo zone they may be able to use. It takes raiders 4 hours to potentially get 1 piece that they have to fight 24 other people for per night per zone. It takes some people a full MONTH to get 1 piece of raid-gear they want add into that they have 27 slots to fill and it takes some raiders almost a half-year to get something. There are people in my guild who STILL need Plane of War drops and that zone is how old now?

From EQ2Wire: "On August 25, 2011, Game Update 61 arrived, bringing with it the challenging Drunder and the War of Zek which rages inside it."

It is currently Dec 20th 2012 and I still have people bidding DKP on PoW gear, a full 15 MONTHS to get gear. Do you as a Solo player spend almost 1.5 Years getting a single piece of gear?

Do not tell me that it is faster to gear yourself by Raiding, it takes just as long if not longer. Raid gear is better because while a Solo boss may hit for 50K a raid boss will hit for 250K as such raiders need stronger gear to do their jobs. I tire of people who argue Solo players "deserve" Raid quality gear considering they don't raid. Your gear reflects what you do. If they made everything Solo then well... Heroic and Epic boss tags wouldn't exist and I as a player would become bored very fast and most likely quit.

As the person above me said. If you want to solo everything and be awesome like any 'raid' level player... go play Guild Wars 2 and get off our game.

Well, it sounds like SOE is finally getting around to fixing a piss poor system for raid loot. If it takes 15 months to get geared up, the system is broke. So they're trying something new. Give this system a year and a half and see how it works out for everyone.

It's easy to throw around 'absolute' statements. Here, let me try: If you want raiding to be the be all and end all of the game and sole source of top tier gear, go play Everquest and get off our game!

Nobody is suggesting they make everything solo. We're just saying it's nice that now everyone has a shot at the top (or near top) gear. To me that's a much better system than having to buy gear through SLR auctions. The end result is the same, but which one requires more effort from the non-raid players?

Every expac raiders in guilds have to wait months and months for their gear. Thats precisely why there are hundreds of variants on dkp systems out there, to help with long term loot distribution.

It gets more and more obvious the more you post that you just dont know what raiding is like. Learn more before you use rudeness in your argument with Estred and others.

Both of which shouldn't even be in the game.

As I stated in both my posts prior, your reward should equal your challenge. Otherwise why raid/group? And that my friend is a silly question to even ask in a MULTIPLAYER game.

To say there no decline is delusional its happening simple as that,the reasons you set out are solid ones its sad but this is an old game it only going to get worse.

Months I can see. A year and a half? No, that's broke. That's what, three expansions at the rate SOE pushes them out? This is one of the problems that instances were supposed to fix - so guilds wouldn't be tripping over each other for the same content, and they would all be able to progress more quickly. If it's still taking that long for people who are actively playing that content, then the content isn't dropping enough loot, or it's dropping the wrong loot, or some combination of those.

And who's arguing? We're just having a lively discussion here where not everyone holds the same point of view. Astonishing, I know.

@Salty I see where you're coming from - you would have loved (or maybe you did) FF XI when it came to North America. You couldn't do squat without a group. Ok, beastmasters and red mages could slooooowly get by for a while, until you hit the genkai walls.

Today there are many people who enjoy playing in a multiplayer setting without grouping. It may not be your playstyle, but it is becoming more and more common as more people start to play these games. Multiplayer does not require grouping: if it did, the game should be designed where you couldn't leave a city to go into an adventure zone unless you were in a group, and you wouldn't be able to leave one until you returned (or it would 'port' you back if you left the group).


Somewhere along the way I think devs (no game in particular on this) started to get lazy and use loot as the main motivator instead of challenge and fun. There are loads of games people play (many multiplayer) that have no loot at all, or only playing a minor role. They play either because the games are a lot of fun to play, or to beat the challenge of it.

I'm not saying loot is bad, but if it's the only way you can get people to play through your content (ie: by grouping up or running raids), then maybe the content itself is flawed. Tell stories that make people want to group up to see the end of them (Blizzard was very good at this - haven't played in a while, but they probably still are).

Tradeskilling is not hard for me...for some it is hard and for some others it's annoying and too much work.

Why should you get better rewards for doing content in a big group? Does that mean you earned it? I don't think I'm the one who is mad here.

First off, I agree that loot is supposed to be one of many gates to higher content- not the only one. Its often easier to stock databases than to test mob scripts, so you're right, its an easy crutch to fall back on. However in order to get loot (see below), the content has not only to be fun the first time thru, but the 50th and even the 100th. That's hard.

Second, you might have been facetious, but you did use the "you dont like it get out" line, which is one of the more rude argumentative tacks to take, hence my comment about that.

Now on to the middle. Yes months. In every guild, in every expansion, in every game that I've ever been a raider, guild leader, raid leader, raid-alliance leader. Mobs drop loot highly randomly. You have 24 (or 36 or 54 or 72) people who know exactly what loot they want. So 60% or so of the loot that drops gets quickly distributed to the point that 2nd and 23rd alts have it, and meanwhile the raid force is trying very hard to equitably take turns on the remaining loot that the RNG gods have not smiled upon the raid force with. For example, I have never gotten a raid BP from any named mob drop whatsoever from Kunark thru current, and I have raided a bit. Not as much as some, but still, quite a bit. For some it was Toxxulia pants, or an Ashanti charm, or whatever.

There are a dozen threads right now in the tradeskill forum complaining about the RNG when it comes to the goblin, refining or experimentation. Well, those three things can be done on-demand, by one person every two hours at worst. Raiders get to shake any particular loot RNG tree once a week or so. And as others have said, in the case of jewelry, up to half the raid force might want a particular piece (its better with armor). Instancing only helped the situation as it reduced the interval to once a week instead of once-when-you-can-get-the-spawn-away-from-bigger-guild-X.

Loot distribution is hard. It takes effort, cooperation and social bonds to tolerate and keep guilds together. Keeping people happy is hard work. So yes- that is a factor in why raid gear should be a higher reward- because it takes effort of several different flavors to achieve.

Ok, I may be misunderstanding what Estred said. I was under the impression he was talking about people waiting 15 months to get ANY piece of gear (ie: they haven't even started gearing up yet). If you're talking about waiting for one specific piece of gear, then yeah, the RNG gods play a large part in it (really the PRNG gods, but who's counting ) . If he is talking about waiting over a year to get started, then I still say that's nuts.

In fact I was thinking about that after I wrote that post - how I would try to design it and I realized I couldn't put an end time to get a force 'fully' geared - I'd have to go with something like half the force geared fully, the rest half geared. That you can put a reasonable time estimate on (given number of runs). But you just can't call that last piece - unless you put in some sort of 'smart loot' failsafe: which doesn't have to be useful loot every time, just setting a limit to how many useless pieces you can get in a row.

The more accurate scenario would be: you get 4 of your friends to help you move the tabletop. One is supposed to be calling out the "1-2-3 lift!" command, but there's one guy that decides to pick it up first, and the 2nd guy wants to run as fast as possible, trying to drag the rest of the guys with him, just to get the task over with and get to the pizza and beer. Then there's that one guy that is texting his GF on his cellphone when you give the lift command.....

As discussed in the other forum topic...multiplayer DOES NOT mean a social interaction in a game while soloing. Multiplayer is joining together and completing goals together. Whether it'd be questing, dungeoning, raiding, etc. Heck you could go kill a butterfly together and it would be multiplayer, however if you would kill that butterfly solo it becomes single player. This goes way way way way back. Developers know this and have lost it somewhere. As I stated many times...multiplayer games should, at bare minimum, at least entice you to group with minimal soloing if not enforce it. I'll give you a few examples of this ideal from way back.

Your guys definition of multiplayer recently means I could go into an arcade back in the day, pop a quarter or so in Pac-man or any other single player only game, and talk to my friends while playing and have the game be considered multiplayer. I could play any current single player game on my computer (ie Skyrim, Dragon Age) while talking to my friends on ventrilo and have it considered multiplayer. The idea of the arcade games back then was that you pop a few quarters in and select single player and you played SOLO. You and a buddy popped a few quarters in and you selected multiplayer and you played TOGETHER attempting to beat the game or accomplish w/e goal together. Your buddy didn't pop his quarters in, not play and just stand and talk to you after selecting multiplayer lol.

Sorry but that isn't the definition of multiplayer. Afterall we are playing an MMO (MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER ONLINE). I can't help it the developers are numbskulls and listen to the "gimme gimme now" generation of gamers. This isn't what this genre is supposed to be what it currently is. They should just name them ORPG (Online Role Playing Game) if this is the way they want it. But sadly it is defined as multiplayer. As I said though ultimately to appease the solo crowd a little I think you should be able to maybe solo level? But at a very steep leveling curve of it being very difficult and grouping being much easier and more rewarding, EQ1 style imo.

Fact of the matter is, and I've said this in many many threads, if your main goal is to log onto a MULTIPLAYER game and solo...you shouldn't be playing an MMO.

Or the kid that is trying to help and just drops his end of the table and runs off for 15+ mins because mom just called him for dinner telling you to just hold it there until he gets back?

I can see you've moved that tabletop!

I've carried it too many times while dragging the rest along sadly lol. I now have back problems lol.

That 15 months has a few things gating it out that long.

- Plane of War is EndGame content for those 15 months for one thing. A massive oversight on SOE for keeping an old zone current for so long. Skyshrine and CoE both should have been at least as challenging and offered greater rewards. I can understand Skyshrine not doing so because honestly only a few guilds had been in PoW.
- My Guild has been in PoW since it was opened by Moloko Vellocet before Skyshrine came out so we have been there awhile. We recently killed Glokus Windhelm and Eriak/Tagrin haven't been farmed much.
- It is mainly Jewelry that is what takes forever to get. Fighters and Scouts can equip the same gear a "tank" wrist has Reuse Speed on it while a "scout" wrist has Flurry chance. Mages and Priests also share Jewelry loot tables.

So factor in how long it took to get into PoW and reallly we have only been farming it for roughly 8 months now. Still stands that Raiding does not gear you out faster, it just gives you better gear because of how hard it is. Eriak the Fetid is an annoying fight that quite literally luck can screw you at 5% and it has multiple times. Tagrin if you have a paladin in guild can charm you pally and then the Paladin casts "Lay on Hands" which is a 60+ % heal and it works on bosses apparently so the boss just healed from 4% to 70% because of a "random" charm. Also if the paladin has the damage proc on LoH then the boss gets that damage proc and devastates your raid and you wipe having to start the whole 8-20 minute fight all over again.

Smart Loot was attempted back in EoF and it unflinchingly dropped pieces for whichever class in raid had the fewest meaning if you ran Emerald Halls with a brand-new Fury app who had no gear. ALL drops would be Warden/Fury or Fury only thus no other raider could get anything. There also is nothing "smart" about having Solo Fabled gear have mid-high 170's for Greens while Heroic Fabled has high 160's to low 170's for greens since when did the whole Solo > Heroic happen? Part of the difficulty and timesink that every MMO needs to live till the next expansion has been fighting other players for gear even while helping them to even get the gear to drop.

As discussed in the other forum topic, stop making up stupid strawman arguments. NOBODY is arguing that pacman becomes multiplayer if you chat with someone next to you while you play it. This ridiculous argument needs to go away. Playing a single player game with chat is not the same as being in a multiplayer game. I don't have to group with someone to interact with them. I don't have to group with someone to contest a quest mob and have them impact my gameplay. Other people are in the world and can change my experience within it. That's not remotely the same as chatting up a fellow pacman fan at the arcade...

Oh hi again...strawman arguement lol. Please enlighten me as to how people are affecting your world in a solo instance at top end game.

Another strawman. Where did I say people are affecting my world in a solo instance at top end game?