Why don't people care anymore?

When the so called Senior Producer spend's most of the time on the "other forums" the writing is on the wall plus, SOE isn't giving EQ2 AAA treatment anymore.
Rumbling's from DOV beta is more simplification to game mechanic's.
I enjoyed Rift beta and liked EQ2 much more when Scott was at the helm, plus with the new tech it's not going to take 6 month's too add content to the game.

Woody67 wrote:

But really, what else is there to say? It will have a bunch of quests, probably a major signature questline or two, and probably a few HQs. There will be heroic and raid instances (not sure how many), new factions, new achievements, and basically all the new stuff you'd expect in any expansion. At this point, we've seen it all before, and know what to expect.

Murdo@Guk wrote:

Alpha is not level or time restricted.

I've noticed it as well and like Atan, it is hard as a guild leader to keep people focused on the pluses of the game. Especially when you are having trouble seeing them yourselves.
I agree about rift, it is a good game, but it is, except for the rifts themselves, nothing new or unusual.
I'm sticking with the game through DoV, but I've already told most of my friends that I expect it will be the last expanion for me in Norrath.
It is hard to express what I see as an issue without becoming overly negative and overly critical of things. I feel like we are in follow the leader mode without an individual thought in our collective heads on the direction of the game. I feel like we are doing everything we can to be a copy, when we should be pushing to be an individual.
I feel there are ways they could improve this game, seriously improve it, but I doubt they will be taken, because we are following the leader.
I feel there are ways we could make raids far more dynamic and far more interesting and would completely shatter the concept of raiding as it is in EQ2 today, but it won't happen because we are following the leader (and yes, I have posted ideas on that before)
I feel there are ways we could really improve the itemization in this game without breaking the core game, but I dont' think they will happen because we are followign the leader (and yes, I have posted those as well)
In short, the final things I've seen is, SOE let their numbers get away from them. They let them get too big, let magical items become too commonplace. So now the only choice they have is to allow them to become even more exaggerated and the only way to fix taht would be to reitemize and balance the whole game, and we all know the likely hood of that.

Dasein wrote:

There is actualy quite a bit more to say in regards to game mechanics and itemization, so much so, the old NGE term is being thrown around again.

Atan@Unrest wrote:

You could change the font size in the character window and people would call it the NGE.

Dasein wrote:

While I agree completely, no one I know in beta is excited about buying the expansion and playing it due to the level of change in mechanics and itemizaiton.
I would sum up beta as, "oh hai, we just realized how you're playing our game, and we agree it has problems, please try our new game."

Atan@Unrest wrote:

xD ^.^
Careful, you're going to get people worried. Let them have a couple more weeks of bliss.

At the moment, I don't care because Sony has shown a lack of interest in catering to my playstyle- instead their effort has gone into other projects, which may also be worthy but have no interest for me whatever.

I'll give Velious a chance- about two weeks of a chance. If it doesn't deliver, I'll be thinking hard about finding another game where the producers and developers haven't lost sight of what is fun in MMOs.

Don't get me wrong- I REALLY LIKE EQ2. The problem is, you can only rest on your laurels for so long. I really like the movie Aliens too, but if I had to watch it every night I'd get sick of it. The instances and BGs are old content to me now, and our raid force is sliding into darkness from lack of attendance- going from taking down Vaclaz to running easymodes with alt alt alt raids.

I'll be buying the xpac regardless, but if half the things I've heard are true then I will probably get 10-20 hours of gameplay out of it before quitting altogether

Velious has me seriously looking back to the days of DoF and LU13...
MMO's are dynamic by their very nature, but sometimes the old "tweak as you go" gets a little out of hand. I suspect DoV will be one of those times.
Factor in the anticipation (or perhaps dread might be a better word) of what SOE is going to do with what was possibly the most memorable EQ1 expansion content, and it gets a tad dicey.
Also figure the last couple expansions have been a bit lacking IMHO. Now in all fairness I took a break from the game post-RoK, but when I got back after SF launched I seriously had difficulty believing that TSO and SF were up to the standards of previous expansions.
I think Sony just has a less than stellar track record as of late, and it's starting to show in the playerbase.

My time here is counting down, but I have to say this is the saddest thread I have read on an mmo forum in years.
Up til now, I was giving that to the hacked account thread.
Most of you have put into words what I felt when I cancelled my account.

Negative people spewing all this negative stuff itself is a good part of the problem. I don't care how cheery and happy you are, if you're constantly around folks who are doing nothing but complain it's going to wear on you after a while.
I've taken breaks from EQ2 over the years, and come back. Why? Because the other games, other companies are putting out the past couple years are just utter trash! Complain all you want, but this is about the best game out there still after all these years. Don't like EQ2, then go play some other MMO's and I'm fairly certain you'll complain about alot of stuff in those games too.
let's just knock it off, and enjoy the game for what it is. All games can be fun, and all can suck at times. Some just have more suck, than fun. EQ2 is one of the better, if not one of the best. It's not perfect, but then again NO game is.

Atan@Unrest wrote:

you mean, like, the same term that's come up every expansion? It's the Godwin to any thread about SOE... they're not ... NotSees (not even bothering to type the real word, i know it will be filtered) . But they're going to NGE everything ever! The classes you play won't exist anymore! the sky is falling and nothing will ever be fun again...
Even SWG lived on for YEARS after NGE... it really wasn't as bad as people made it out to be. SWG was a better game after NGE. It was different, and had less options, but it also had a lot less BS and clockblockery...
But that aside... people always scream NGE is coming to eq1... eq2... Vanguard... Anything made by SOE... I'm surprised that it's a day after launch and nobody has said DCUO is set for an NGE yet... And yet it's only ever happeend in one game.
In THIS game, they just change stats and how stats work every 12 months or so... that's as close as we'll probably ever get to NGE...

JoarAddam wrote:

For sure. I actually agree with a previous poster that compaired DoV to lu13, which is a more fair likeness.

Woody67 wrote:

Oh, I get it...the Velious expansion...

Blakkmantis@Everfrost wrote:

Wow...talk about putting one's head in the sand. Without some constructive criticism nothing would improve ever. I think there are some very valid gripes and quite honestly, if I didn't like this game so much I wouldn't utter a word. I like it enough to hope for some improvements to how it's being run currently.
That being said, I never bought the last expansion for my 2nd and 3rd accounts, only my main account. I finally killed off my third account and am considering canceling my second account which is used by my daughter. The reason I would kill off her account is because she doesn't much care to play any more as all her (and my) friends have gone. I don't think I'll buy this expansion either, at least not immediately. I'll wait for a few weeks to see what others have to say. If it's generally positive I'll buy one copy. I really love this game and nothing else has been it's equal for me and I've tried lots of them, but if SOE doesn't much care how can I?

EDIT: Some odd hypertext got in here....

JoarAddam wrote:

I wouldn't make any particularly large wagers on that.

Blakkmantis@Everfrost wrote:

I agree. There are some things I don't like in EQ2, but they are far fewer than the things I don't like in other MMOs -- and more importantly, it has far more of the things I DO like than any other MMO. While some issues may cause me to post vehmently (advertise, dang you, ad...ver...tise!), overall I'm rather content here.
Now, that being said, I'm still not planning on buying Velious until I actually know what I'm buying.

Iskandar wrote:

x2

They need to update the engine. Even WoW is experimenting with DirectX 11. Not even Crysis or Warhead is doing that. So age of game has nothing to do with that. Not saying that EQ2 needs to be redone for DirectX 11, but it should look and run well on a 2.8 GHZ quadcore, 8GB RAM, and a 1GB Videocard, but it will not.
If you get someone with a pretty decent system and they try EQ2 and it runs badly. They won't subscribe. It was fortunate that I had a speedball dual core laptop when I first started EQ2, or I wouldn't have kept with it at all. I can get 100FPS now, but it took a 3.5GHZ CPU to do it and it still only uses one core. Multicore support is very misleading.
Thats been pretty much my only gripe with EQ2. I know people hate hearing comparisons to WoW. But its the fact that both games came out in 2004 that stuffs away all the arguments that EQ2 is old and won't see an upgrade. It probably won't get that upgrade, but not because it isn't possible.
Most of the people I know play this game because of the Housing and Guildhalls. It does have that going for it. If thats something you're not into, I recommend shelving it.
I really wish they would post the specs of the computers they use to show gameplay in promotional videos. At least it would give everyone a guideline one what they'd need to run this game at max tilt.