What do you think should be in next expantion?....

Even with a level increase mythical and fabled epic weapons will be hard to put away. I suspect next tier mastercrafted will have a set bonus, but be worse then t1 shard gear. Adept 3's of the current are often barely better then masters of the last tier. These add up to faster leveling for those who have already worked on thier gear and spells this expansion, in the next expansion.
By the way, I jknow folks who powerleveled to 80 who are better then where I perceive average for thier class being, some of them much better. There is always room at the top.

Llyren@Kithicor wrote:

I am curious how they will upgrade mythicals. Most likely the new "mythicals" will have to embed the unique effects from current mythical (which raid force would willingly drop raid wide COB or POTM ? ).
Or another approach would be the typical SOE way: "nerf to make room" (tm)
Nerf epics to the level of mastercrafted, nerf mythicals to the level of current epics, and then you can put new shiny mythicals equivalent to current ones ...

Loolee wrote:

It won't mean absolutely nothing, because having it will still give you an advantage... when I say even playing field, I mean that some poor newbie who doesn't have the oppertunity to raid or do shard runs at 80, or whatever it is you do (yes, I am said newbie) won't be so incredibly disadvantaged when they hit 90 that they can't make any progress because nobody will take them to content without the old level 80 gear.
Nothing kills a game harder than having no new blood.. and nobody wants to play a game where they are told they can't level to cap and then gear up, they have to spend ages in old content that nobody is doing to be able to do the current stuff.
A gear reset means that the stuff we get between 80 and 90 is totally sufficiant to do the starting heroic content at 90. Heroic gear from level 80 may well give people an advantage in leveling, but will have be replaced to do the 90 stuff... Raiding gear might even last into the 90 Heroic stuff and perhaps even raids, but under no circumstances should it be required. Nothing, under any circumstances, should be balanced around that gear. If you have it, you can have an advantage, but someone without it should be totally capable of doing the content.
I don't begrudge you having an advantage, so perhaps I worded it wrong... I don't want to see a situation like the one I saw in WoW after BC was released and epics were replaced within two levels. But without some kind of gear reset, new players find they can never catch up, and new players are lifeblood of the game.

Faenril@Nagafen wrote:

In a dev chat hosted by ZAM on March 23rd, I asked the question :
Emlar: During beta, it was said equipment would get their bonuses diminished when player would reach 10 lvls more than equipment level. Is it still scheduled for next expansion ?

• Fyreflyte: We're still working on that system, though it doesn;t work in the way described here.
• Fyreflyte: I don't have a lot of information to give you about it right now, but we do want to allow room for you to continue to improve your equipment (which was becoming a problem for certain effects like crit).

Nexelau@Najena wrote:

What on earth would make you think they have ever NOT done this with a level cap increase in EQ2?
Its not a "gear reset", its called logical and well thought out gear progression.

I would actually prefer an expansion that adds little content but fixes current classes unused abilities, AA lines. Aswell as correcting some itemization issues, such as increasing 2-hander damage.
If they add new things I would like an extension of older zones or zones added to older zones. Like TSO did. The world is already quite massive. If they do a new landmass I just hope they make it far more interesting.

Orthureon wrote:

That's what LUs are doing. Expansion add lot of content and add new mechanics (blessings / miracles or critt mitigation or new levels or new AA tree...)

Faenril@Nagafen wrote:

yeah but a lvl 80 full master with vp gear was a lot better than someone with legendary gear.
Gear is not obsolete. I still have many vp gear coz I stopped raiding But I still can do many things. Only problem is with big AEs.
plus it's sometimes better to use M1 of the previous tiers than AD3 of the new tier (usually almost same damage but with less mana) so good geared players will be better and it's normal

I just hope, whatever they do, it doesn't suck as bad as TSO! Kunark was an expansion masterpiece. I had to take a year off due to personal reasons and had already taken 2 characters to 80 and one to mid-70's, before I had to leave. I came back recently to find that ALL my friends in the game had left, most because they couldn't get into the whole shard thing in TSO, and various other reasons. I didn't understand it .. when I had left, I was in a growing and excited guild who were still very excited about the game. I come back and year later and the guild is DEAD!!
So then I started playing TSO. First thing I noticed is that it is frickin UGLY!! God, I see SOE has gone back to their "mud brown rocks" zone design again. I thought they had made a commitment to more color. Again, Kunark zones had reflected a new beauty to EQ2 zone designs, but now we revert back to the glorified "Zek" look. WTF?
I like the cannon blast over the cliff, that was cool, and the original solo quest line kept me entertained for a couple of days. Then I started asking around about the "shard" stuff ... and found out that a bunch of new terms had hit EQ2 .... like DD. I had always assumed DD was ... well ... "direct damage" .. as opposed to DoT, ya know ... but no, now it stands for Daily Double. So now the goal is not to clear dungeons and do quests, or kill the bosses and hope for great loot drops .... no ... now the goal is to do the same dungeons over and over and over again to get "shards" .... get enough "shards" and you can buy gear.
So why have all my guild left? Why have other guilds that I knew well folded or completely merged? Well, first off, the solo quest line gets blase and rather meaningless. The Tradeskill quests are rather boring and silly.... lets get 6 tradeskillers together and go build something ..... over and over and over again!
And there is the biggest thing about this expansion .... its "designed" to be repetitious. Daily Doubles just mean doing a dungeon repetatively day after day after day to get enough shards for the next tier of gear ....
Solo'ists are totally screwed. Most solo quests are just giving cash and nothing good from the equipment side, and the quest line is really uninspired, expecially when compared to the brilliance of Kunark.
Oh! you can solo for shards ..... one per day!!! LOL WTF!! .... so let me work this out .... tier 2 shard dealers sell their items for roughly 30 shards each ..... so a soloist can get his tier 2 gear ... IF he is willing to solo every ... single .... bloody .... day ... for 7 (seven!!!) freaking months!!!!! holy crap, Santa Claus!!!
So ugly, dumb, uninspired, and repetative. I'm joining my friends, suspending my account again .. and I'll check in on that next upcoming expansion and hope it doesn't suck as back as TSO!!

Nervaaz wrote:

And there are plenty of us that though RoK was horrible. Nothing divided the community like RoK, there was no reason for people to group and level up. You were stuck grinding solo quests over and over until you hit 80. The itemisation was really skewed are guilds still struggling through the raid content. At least TSO gave you the choise of playing with your friends and working as a team.

ODUS.

Level cap increase to 90?...oh dear god, no!! I am all for a level cap increase but not as drastic as 10 levels, 5 would be more than sufficient. The reason I say this is when you have a level cap increase that high some people that have been groupping and raiding together get seperated by the grind. Some (alot of those being vet eq1 players that just go back into grind mode and tune out content) reach that level cap very fast, whereas others take weeks even months to hit the new cap. The casual raiders get swallowed by this. Having a smaller level cap increase, while increasing the ease of the old content for those that hit it, does not make the new content unreachable by those that don't. The way that resists and avoidance work in game, jumping 10 levels makes the old content laughable, seperates old friends from being able to group and raid together, and puts the entire game into a mad rush of people "having" to hit the new cap. I would say it would be different if the 'greyed out' level spread was increased so people would not have to mentor to help out their old friends, but I don't see that happening.
And as far as content...
Velious
Please, please, PLEASE bring back my favorite expansion from eq1. With the new translucent ice effects put in you have the possibility of making some beautiful zones. I like the instance heavy things from TSO because you don't have the "walkover" effect of contested zones, but making a centrailzed place to get to these zones would increase the sense of server community that was lost when everyone started hiding in their guildhalls. Inclusion of more solo instances would be a plus also, with the content of those zones designed for each archetype so the healers have a chance at doing something solo that doesn't bore them to death. Include more x2 and x3 raid zones similar to the lavastorm content and x4 zones that follow a distinct linear progression, each zone opening up the next. The same progression that I suggested for x4 in group zones, so you know the general skill and equipment level of the pickup group your forming without having to bang your head on the keyboard.
As far as tradeskills, never really got into it that much except for where it was required. Don't force me to do it , but allow the ones that do it additional ways to enjoy the game. The traskill instances were neat, without the pure repitition that was needed to finish em. A way of combining tradeskill level and combat level would be fun, having the reward work for both. As an example, gathering the items and smithing out a special set of armor to kill the final mob that is your combat level, or a simple as having to kill same combat level mobs to get the drops to create something.
Just please take some time with next expansion is all I ask, don't rush something out there that will be full of bugs, boring, or overly frustrating.

what I'd like to see is ... spell creation or spell optimisation.

Being able to create new spells/CA depending your class or adding effect to some of your spells. it would cost SP, money and the spell would use more mana to be cast.
like I would like my bruiser to add a Kb effect on his off stance. He became a KB master and now has a chance to KB the enemy everytime he hits.
the fighter revamp they were supposed to give us improved .
new armor looks
improved mythical
a nice lore
nice dongeons.
dongeons/instances for lvl 80 to 90. not like RoK where you had to be 80 to group. But not like KoS where all you could do was groupng. And not just instances like TSO.
So a good portion of solo, group and instances. With goals to group. mre xp, good group quests but easy to do in group (think that not all the people in the group are at the same point, so if one needs 1h to do his quest at one end of the dongeon and another on the other end, plus the tank needs to kill one named that pops every two days so he has to go somewhere else, usually people must follow the tank :s and so you need 5 different groups to finish the first quest which was the easiest of all and you only got 5 gp ... woot no way !!!)
raids with good progression X2 X3 and X4

and so on

I know this prolly won't be popular but, a mmo i played a few years ago had a zone where it was possible to recieve a plague virus that was contagious and reduced alot your abilities until a certain quest was completed for antidotes to cure it. If it was'nt cured, one could waltz around the world and pass it on to anyone who got in a certain radius of them. It was hilarious to see the chat channels light up when some lowbie got it and gave it to a high lvl.

Laserfoot wrote:

I think I was in that game. I also remember people not being very happy with it.
I think EQ2 tried a plague a few months later and it wasn't any more fun then. Realistic yes. Fun no. Sorry but plagues just don't have a lot of entertainment value.
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As far as the level cap. After all the work I've put into getting geared out, and considering how little my bruiser brings to raids (hence making it harder to get into said raids), I'd just as soon they didn't raise the level cap. Add more zones. Add more VARIETY. Don't force people into one style of playing. Don't make it so people can only go to a half dozen dungeons and fewer outdoor zones or are forced into one or two play styles once they hit cap. Make some outdoor zones which are TRULY challanging. Make some solo dungeons which will test the mettle of the player.
If they raise the level cap then the only zones people will be playing will be the handful of new zones they provide and probably not all of them (since some would be be for low 80s, just like level 80s don't spend a lot of time in many of the RoK zones aimed at low 70s). There won't be a lot of variety and they won't be able to do a decent job of supporting many play styles.
So instead keep the level cap where it is, add several new zones supporting a variety of play styles; and maybe revamp some of the older zones to make them interesting to go back to.
This is of course assuming I'm still playing. If I'm not I don't care what they do.
If they want to do something right they could also give raids a reason to bring a bruiser because right now it sure ain't dps, buffs, or tanking. For most raid zones there's nothing a bruiser can do that another class can't do better. At least if the dps classes have their act together. I don't expect it to happen, but that's what I'd like to see.
Oh. And I consider RoK their best expansion of all. None better. Don't let a few people who didn't like it give the impression that everyone didn't like it. I loved it.
As for Velius I hope not. Seeing nothing but snow snow snow for a year would get really tiresome.
Odus might be cool.

Laserfoot wrote:

We've already had one plaque, not looking for another.
I don't care where the next expansion is set. I'd prefer Velious, but I don't feel there is enough resources and debth in the development team to pull that expansion off. I'd rather see no Velious than a half baked one.
I expect the next expansion to actually have some meaningful heroic/epic progression series. Like Claymore, SoD, Wurmslayer, Mark of the Awakened, Prismatic, Peacock series, etc.
I expect them to weave that progression series into whatever instances / contested dungeons we get.
Most of all, I expect there to be a equally rewarding and viable path from level 81 to 90 doing EITHER solo or heroic content.
To be clear, I expect them to learn from past mistakes as well as return meaningful rewards earned via significant time invested and rewarding sub-quests.

Brickfist wrote:

Desert of Flames had the biggest increase, 20% from 50 to 60. Since then they've got smaller, and from 80 to 90 will only be 12.5%, so it wouldn't make much sense to make it even smaller.

What do I think they should put in the next expansion ... ? Well, as the level cap goes up every other expansion by 10, I'd hope that they take the opportunity to throw some "unique" qualities towards each of the classes. Something to make each one appealing, and not so easily tossed aside. 10 new levels worth of CA's; nobody says they all have to be upgrades of old abilities.
And a few fixes for PvP.

Would prefer they cancel the next expansion and dedicate some time instead on fixing a couple of problems with the current mess that we have. Class problems that haven't been dealt with in years... Hi fellow Troubs (wave) and Conjurors, and Necros, and Wardens, and Defilers, and................. Maybe a little class balancing? Just a thought.
But alas, that will never happen. A new expansion will bring in a ton of money, just apparently not enough to hire a couple more devs and maybe a few customer service reps ( not to be confused with Customer Relations who we never hear from ).
Oh well, guess your ideas are as good as we can hope for.

What do I hope to see:
Enough top-tier solo content to get 80% of new max level / AAs (assuming you started at the cap).
Enough top-tier group content to get 80% of new max level / AAs (assuming you started at the cap).
This way the player can almsot hit the cap doing their prefered playing style. For the last 20% they can do old content or the new reapetable solo / group content or use the content designed for a different playstyle.

In the test forum someone posted some pics about GU52. Don't know but ice, giants (the art of them)... remindes me on Velious in EQ1.