What do you want to see in the next xpac? What mistakes should be avoided?

What I would most like to see? something to build on the "account wide" things which came with loyalty quests every day.

* How many of us have an alt to solo and do all those daily missions with?
* How many of us struggle to find a group not on characters which are "not optimal"
* How many of us end up playing toons which we do not really like just to get groups?
* How many of us end up stuck in a "grind group" even though we have already maxed out that particular character with AA/Adorns/Levels

I propose "Ancestry points" a slider which you can use to push all experience earned into an account-wide pool

5 ancestry points can buy you another AA point - perhaps the only way to surpass the 350 cap?
- note it is far more efficient to level up normally

1 Ancestry point can purchase 10 levels for a green adorn

you can "commune with ancestors" to reduce a green adorn into ancestry points (say 100 levels give you 5)

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So for the most part you level and gear normally but when you get to the stage where you are filling in the last of your AA, getting your green adornment experience it doesn't matter if you prefer doing those few solo instances on your berserker - or your guild wants you on your already maxed out troub - or that pick up grind group really needed a healer (which you are pretty much bored with) and refused to accept your under-geared brigand.

Anyways... that is what I'll like to see - it is annoying seeing all that experience "wasted" when I am trying to farm out some gear for my main character be nice to think those 100 runs of xxxxx instance to get that single upgrade was not 99 runs of wasted time 1 run of upgrade... but 100 runs of upgrades

I would like to see the agnostic dungeons become a little bit harder.

I would also like to see Illusionists have some more power regen capabilities.

Is the name of the new xpac "Bring an Extra Set of Greaves"? and if so Is it gonna scare the **** out of me when I see what the content truly holds?

I would like to see some overland story content and some assorted dropped content like the old missing tome pages. Shinies too cuz which of us hasn't died trying to get that last shiny?
I also used to enjoy the quests to complete a weapon that were dropped from mobs.

Thanks to that Sundered Ground nonsense...I wanna see Moradim and Klik'anon >:/

bigger boxes and packs and sales crates...NEW recipes!!!!

dragons!!!

Heroic type group zones where you can take in a max limit of 3 or 4 players instead of the tradional 6. (harder than adv solo but easier than regular heroics)

Overland contested areas where there are heroic mobs instead of always having to dungeon crawl for heroic content.

Fabled versions of older zones - like Permafrost, RunnyEye, Crushbone, Falling Gate, Stormhold, Wailing Caves, Varsoon's, etc. Call me nostalgic but I love running those zones.

Agnostic zones for levels 95-100 ....or better yet...make them 90-99 and you can't get back in after you hit 100.

Regular herioc zones...easy mode heroic zones and challenge heroic zones.

More event heroics!!!

Keep the zones quick finsih....not necessary easy but quick to finish so for those who only have 30 minutes to an hour to play in an evening you can still go do something in a group.

x2 and x3 raids

I don't mind the quest lines and may be one of the few who enjoy doing them....but can we make it so you don't have to wait to get respawns if someone was there just before you...the respawning of items needed to update quest lines is a royal pain.

Also....with the merger of servers which will mean more people seeking updates...if you add contested mobs for weekly quests like we have in AoM please give them instant respawns so the next person who comes along can get a kill update too. Maybe make it so you can't see the mob for 24 hours after you kill it instead of the current 2 hours.

Increase ultra rare harvestables like spellshards/foundations...IMO the drop rate is beyond "rare"

Get rid of mechanics that require a lot of running around in circles. We've had plenty of the carpal tunnel inducing boss mechanics already.

Recklessness. Just bring back recklessness

What I love most of all about EQ2 is the amount of choice I've always had in whether I wanted to solo or group content, and I'd like to see that continue. I'd like to see lots and lots of overland quests, even ones that don't tie directly into the main story of the current expac, as one of the best things about EQ2 is the questing and all the stories and lore hidden away behind them. More little quests, and small personal stories please.

Also if much of the content has to be instanced I'd love to see the continuation of solo and advanced solo versions of instances as I find that I can really enjoy the story heavy content when I have my own time and pace to read the text and watch the events unfold.

As for group content I would love to see huge overland mobs, massive beasts that would take nearly half the server to take down, but coded in a way that anyone can jump in and help out (hence to keep them from being tagged and downed by the same raids groups or guilds over and over), group and no group. That would give folks a great way to meet new people and even from new groups. I think that would be fun, and quite epic.

Sounds nice, so long as DBG can learn from the past.

Open style encounters of the style you mentioned, would require DBG to implement an effective system to measure participation & contribution, and reward players based on such. Otherwise, we will be back in the PQ days, where people would idle around the RW event for 2 hours, sneak in an auto attack on Narandi, go AFK, and get full credit. SOE did "try" to fix this issue, but they continually struggled to get it right (not break it), all the way until PQs became irrelevant.

Such measurement of participation would need to include a mechanic which recognizes those who may have to devote most of their effort towards healing others who are participating.

It's funny... this reminded me of an EQ1 guild from several years ago. Class officers focused primarily on DPS when parsing events for quite a long while. One day someone started posting heal parses on our web board. Of course those posts provoked even more discussion and debate than the DPS parses, but we saw a noticeable change in rate of tanks surviving.

Then it is fortunate that your response is to someone who plays a healer as their main. That is why I said a system to measure participation and contribution, not just a DPS (or HPS) check.

While outright copy+pasting the systems from other games is not always ideal, I have played a couple of other games where I believe the reward system for special overland FFA encounters was much better designed than EQ2's PQ's. While I am sure EQ2 could have reached a similar standard, they elected to abandon the PQ model. I am unsure if DBG will be interested in subjecting their servers (and clients) to that kind of strain, ever again. If they do, I hope they get the reward balance right.

They did mention awhile back that they were looking into releasing more PQs. I believe this was before DBG bought them out, but if the thought patterns are still unchanged like they said, then we might see more. I agree something like Rift's contribution checker (which includes a 'amount healed' variable basically) would benefit PQs greatly.

If I recall correctly, that "awhile back" was quite a while back, well before the DBG takeover and staff layoffs? While not impossible, I would be quite surprised if the EQ2 team goes back to PQ's, especially when considering all the problems they had with PQ's in the past, along with the workload piled upon the current team if they are going to release something that deserves to be called an expansion.

I would love to see the old armor system back. Where all classes has their own type of armor with their own personal stats. As a druid, I don't need str like back in the old days. And I'm tired of seeing all the characters with the same armor look (though thank goodness for alternate appearance clothing). I do miss showing off the new armor I had just gotten.

Sadly, what you suggest is impossible, unless you're happy playing entirely solo. In which case: why play an MMO at all?

I agree with Koren about every piece of armor and especially cloaks looking the same. I like to collect cloaks but I failed to see the point in AoM since every cloak I seemed to find looked similar. It's not just AoM because ToV was the same with a lot of gear that looked very similar.
I enjoy hunting down mobs for loot just like everyone else that plays these types of games likes to do.
So whats wrong with a little variety and color? The dyeing of gear is a sure fire way to help but why not just have **** that looks different?
And to my comrade in arms Seefar I say to you, I look forward to our next Adventure in Norrath, Wiki? whats a Wiki?

Actually, the last time it was referenced was about four or five months ago I believe; was brought up in a discussion prior to one of the livestreams if I am remembering correctly. Sadly I really suck at digging out old posts and stuff lol.

+1 for this comment, pretty please.

No. it was broken. everytime I see this it's always an SK or a Zerker that seems to want it, and it's always for the 'I want T1 dps while still being a nigh unstoppable tank' glory.

maybe I would be for giving back reckless, if the drawbacks were so harsh that for that massive dps jump you had the life expectancy of a illy trying to tank, but then you would complain it's 'worthless cause we can't tank in it'.

I wish people would learn that it's not a tank's job to put up high dps numbers. it never has been. it never will be. it's the tanks job to absorb damage. making taunts and snaps and such super powerful so the 20 mil dpser can't rip aggro is fine and dandy.

making the tank do 17.5 mil dps so he can hold aggro by damage + taunting is not....nor is it by making him to 26 mil dps in Reckless while still being a supertank.

Or just allow reckless, but only if solo/molo. Those AS instances can be painfully slow without it.