I hope they listen to Loral and add more spirit mobs. I'm tired of being number two on every casual's hit list.

Five Recommended Improvements to Prophecy of Ro

by Loral on April 30, 2006

The release of Prophecy of Ro is now three months past. Many players focus their attention on the soon-to-come Progression Server. However, while many look to these two interesting glimpses into the future, the Prophecy of Ro lays unfulfilled.

Prophecy of Ro requires improvement. While some areas of this expansion have proved very popular such as Arcstone, the Spirit quests, the relic quests, and the Thurgadin monster missions; these features alone do not justify the cost of the expansion. This article outlines five areas for improvement in Prophecy of Ro.

1. Increase Spirit Mark drops.

The spirit marks, currently dropping only off of named mobs in Arcstone, help non-raiders increase their equipment to reach higher-end content such as the Depths of Darkhollow spell progression missions and the Omens of War Muramite Proving ground trials. Unfortunately, these marks only drop in Arcstone and drop rarely off of rare spawning named beasts. While it would be easy to increase the drop rate, instead SOE should add these drops to named creatures in Elddar, Relic, and Devastation to help bring players to these underused zones.

2. Improve Relic, Devastation, Elddar, and Stronghold of Rage.

Increasing loot rewards is only one factor in improving the usefulness of the Prophecy of Ro static zones. Currently only Arcstone sees a significant number of hunters. Devastation may see occasional groups for the saga skin mission, but with less frequency than Arcstone's spirit hunter missions. All four of these zones need to be improved to make them more huntable and more desirable. Increasing experience rewards, decreasing mob density, increasing random loot rewards, and decreasing mob damage output may help make these zones more desirable to those who purchased Prophecy of Ro.

3. Bridge the required-equipment gap between Dragons of Norrath and the Depths of Darkhollow and Muramite Proving Ground Trials.

There remains a constant wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth when it comes to discussions about the Creator mission in Dragons of Norrath. What these discussions often omit is that players spend a lot of time in content of this style. Creator offers nice rewards for a low investment of time. Rather than complain that creator is too easy, consider that many players want clear, consistent rewards for their time.

4. Scale more content to the level of difficulty and time investment of Creator.

Offer rewards that help single-group-equipped characters improve to the point where they can reasonably face the challenges of high-end spell-progression missions in Depths of Darkhollow, the Skylance missions in Prophecy of Ro, and the Muramite Proving Ground trials in Omens of War. Help bridge the required equipment gap between lower-powered Arcstone and Dragons of Norrath content and the higher-end single group content in Depths of Darkhollow and Prophecy of Ro.

5. Add more Spirit Hunter style missions.

Arcstone added five more "single-group raid" encounters to Everquest along with the Seeker event in Depths of Darkhollow. These events show single-group hunters the style of encounters that high-end raiders have seen for years. These events are fun, challenging, and rewarding. A great many players are able to face them, defeat them, and earn nice rewards for doing so.

Add more events of this nature to Prophecy of Ro. Add a series of legacy creatures to the new Desert of Ro including a Lich to the spectre tower, an ancient ancestor of Lockjaw, an ancient mummy lord, a sand giant lord, and the swashbuckler king of the waterboys. Add in a new quest to reward those willing to face these five new foes.

Prophecy of Ro has the potential to pull players out of instanced single-group content and back into large static zones. As it stands, however, Prophecy of Ro needs improvement in order to match the excellent content found in older expansions such as Depths of Darkhollow and Omens of War. With these five improvements discussed above, Prophecy of Ro could become one of the greatest of Everquest expansions.

Loral Ciriclight
30 April 2006
loral@loralciriclight.com

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Comment Posted by: Winner on April 30, 2006 09:31 PM

Lets go back to talking about the Progression Server instead of the expansion of the month. Look at the bright side, it'll take at least 2 years for the new server to catch up to where current day eq is. Who knows, maybe all the bugs will be fixed by then.

Comment Posted by: ezez on May 1, 2006 04:31 AM

Maybe you'll take a more cynical eye to the trash press releases and revolutionary game features the marketing staff puts out in the future.

Prophecy of Ro is a joke. There's a faction of EQ loyalists who actually love it (and to be honest Loral, I'm quite surpised you're not rabidly defending this insult of an expansion)

All new ways to revolutionize combat! Control spheres of influence! Use traps and auras, interact with destructable objects. What a complete joke.

Features aside, everything has thus far been a let down. Arcstone was certainly a neat concept, but I'm concerned it works only on the merit that it's the only zone of its kind - release four or five of them at once and you'll likely see a repeat of DoDH missions simply in uninstanced zones.

Let's talk about the theater of blood - I'm one of the people this zone is designed for, people not in hardcore raid guilds but with enough gear to take 2 groups to the zone and get armor. zZz zZz zZz - We've done it, we've spent hours clearing it. This zone is *nothing* like plane of fear nor does it bring back those memories. It's an absolute bore that out of 100 members in my guild only 9 people have completed key. Bravo!

What a joke.

Comment Posted by: Armarant on May 1, 2006 05:37 AM

I personally think por would make a bigger splash if they did the following

1. Make some more instanced zones that take advantage of the new descructible envrioment stuff. create instances where you need to destroy stuff (flags, doors, walls, trebuchts). perhaps even repair stuff?..

2. create more auras.. I have only seen the aura around Arcstone two maybe three times and that was not enough in my opinion. and create more distinction as to weather or not the aura is good or bad for you also let the aura effect a greater range. as it is now the aura storm could pass over you and disappear before you even use a spell.

3. Rework Elddar forest, half the time I have been there I have not seen anyone. I think the mobs hit just a little too hard. while some of them should be hard hitters. there are some mobs there that undercons.

4. more horses please.. please put more horses in the Ruins of Takish hiz.. perhaps even putting a occasional horse or two in the deserts of ro.

Comment Posted by: Simkine on May 1, 2006 09:18 AM

Why would they add or fix PoR when they could just take these requests and put them into the next expansion. In order words, don't hold your breath for free or upgraded content.

My biggest regret was that I bought DoDh for three accounts. That was a waste of money. I quit a month after and it's no surprise to me that PoR is a disaster. DoDh was a disaster. Whoever designs these zones needs to be fired. Yes, there were some good things but the overall expansion ends up being a waste of dollars and time invested.

I'm undecided on returning for the Progression server because I doubt I would be in any way involved in the actual progression. So, I'd just be playing catch up with zones unlocking faster than I can gear/quest in the previous one.

I am waiting on more details of the next expansion as well. If they make the new 1-75 zones interesting and rewarding, I may start a new toon that way instead. Things like appropriate gear progression and spell availabilty will be important though.

EQ was and is still a fun game but SOE really drops the ball repeatly. You can either rail against them or just go with the flow and enjoy what they give you. My EQ break was much needed but they might yet suck me back in. This time however, I will be in with my eyes open.

Comment Posted by: ezez on May 1, 2006 02:40 PM

I too made the mistake of getting 3 accounts DoDH.

Fortunately for SoE, only one account bought PoR (and that's all that will buy it.) For that matter, since they won't offer the $99 a year fee, I closed out my two extra accounts. Best decision I made as I realized I really didn't need to be multi-boxing anymore.

Ironically, the game is more enjoyable not multi-boxing as I had been doing - but hell if you can find stuff to do outside of your guild.

What bothers me is the focus of the dev team is purely on the progression server in terms of their public contact. Past issues? Unresolved bugs? Sorry, the developers are brain storming the progression server.

SoE's biggest mistake has been and continues to be its neglect of its 'current' (depending on if this was now or 4 years ago) core membership - they neglect it in pursuit of another group of players that are a minority as their core bleeds off.

I won't be pre-ordering the next expansion either after this mess, it'll be the first time I sit it out and wait before buying.

Comment Posted by: concerned1 on May 2, 2006 05:02 AM

you people are all wrong. the eq development team accomplished exactly what they wanted to do. they raised the bar for the elite. all that monster mission, shrouds, war horse,metal boar, spirit cloak , instant zone missions, is all crap. its smoke and mirriors to get casual or new players to buy the expansions so the eq devs can fund high end raid encounters and make high end raid gear . thats what they spend the most effort into. they are making content for themselves (becuase the devs themselves are in uber guilds).this is also why expansions arent finished when they are sold. when people run out and buy the expansions then they have more money to put into finishing the expansion. hence forth all the patches. does this work? no! if it did then eq would have millions of customers rather then 400k or less.

Comment Posted by: Wiggles on May 2, 2006 07:51 AM

That doesn't make a lot of sense. The problem with most expansions is the high end content is either unfished or not properly tuned. If the devs were only focused on high end raids because they love the phat lewtz so much, why is this the case?

Let's take a look at high end raids. This is a fairly accurate recording of progression although some guilds do no participate in it.

GoD - 122 of 233 guilds beat GoD (161 made it to Tacvi) all because of the level increase to 70
OoW - 23/235 beat OoW (123 cleared to Mata)
DoN - 90/235 guilds recorded beat DoN
DoDH - 7/235 beat DoDh
PoR - 0/235 beat PoR. 3 have beat Sullon, only 26 have beat the first raid.

DoDH had around 1/400th of the EQ population even come close to beating it. 7 out of 235 recorded guilds beat the expansion. Now a lot of people getting those phat drops. This was a failed expansion by any measure.

Hardly anyone has made a dint in PoR raids and how long has it been out? Another failed expansion. Well, it won't matter because the next expansion will be released and everyone will drop it in favor of the bigger carrot.

You can see the steady decline of completion. Many of the top end players really don't have the desire like they did during Luclin/PoP. #1 reason people still play EQ - "All the time invested in my character". Not that it's fun to raid these zones, but they can't let go and start over in another game. That's why I wonder just how much Vanguard will really impact EQ. These people just won't let go of 5-7 years of playing a single game.

Comment Posted by: concerned1 on May 2, 2006 10:34 AM

yeah exactly, trying to keep people elite. making it were fewer can get to " the top". why make it like that? what and who is to benefit?
i notice alot of people still talk about eq like it is a force to be reckon with in the gamming world. the people talking like this seem to be the ones still caught up in it. i just cant understand this. times have changed.the market has changed. eq subscriptions cant compete with other games. remember when WoW came out alot of people online were saying it didnt have a chance against eq. well look at it now. subscriptions in the millions.i think vanguard is gonna be BIG.i have played some of the current beta and all i can say is get ready. eq cant even dream of those numbers. what do you think is more likely to happen? eq getting millions of subscribers or dieing in a couple of years?

Comment Posted by: Quesci on May 2, 2006 02:17 PM

"GoD - 122 of 233 guilds beat GoD (161 made it to Tacvi) all because of the level increase to 70"

Presumably, the level increase in the next expansion will allow the majority of those 235 guilds to beat targets in OoW, DoN, DoDh, and PoR that were previously unattainable, just as happened with Tacvi.

Comment Posted by: Wiggles on May 2, 2006 02:54 PM

Well, isn't that just top notch thinking by SOE. Increase the level cap so you can finish 2 year old content. Perhaps people want, and should be able to, complete the expansion as it was intended when it was bought?

Comment Posted by: Armarant on May 2, 2006 05:48 PM

wiggles wrote:Well, isn't that just top notch thinking by SOE. Increase the level cap so you can finish 2 year old content. Perhaps people want, and should be able to, complete the expansion as it was intended when it was bought?

---

and yet I wouldnt doubt that your one of the people who say that soloers should be happy with 4 year old content.. *whistles and walks off*

Comment Posted by: Wiggles on May 2, 2006 06:52 PM

No, I'm one of the people who thinks EQ should be a raid focused game because it has shown it can really have some interesting events. They've shown time and again this isn't a soloers game and I accept that. Shrouds and MM make baby jebus cry.

However, when they can't even properly implement the raids, people have to question what exactly was the point. What was the point? Empty zones, impossible to beat raids, and whatever else Loral piped up about. Shameful, really.

DoN was alright, although I'm no fan of farming Creator, I certainly enjoyed finishing all the event/missions there and being able to augment my gear. DoDH and PoR are two big whiffs though by any account.

Comment Posted by: Scrubble on May 2, 2006 07:27 PM

Wow! i actually like DoDh and PoR. No clue what the problem is from above posters..hah! it seems like one of them is annoyed that the raiding content is too hard? that is fine, but i would ask, too hard for who? only reason im not at high end por is playtime, thats all. The actual events ain't too hard, they are challenging, and we get each event we come ot eventually and have a blast doing it.

No clue on PoR/DoDh being worth the money etc..but for raiding, i think EQ is spot on. So what if mayong only dropped by 7? it is damn highend raid, ill get him one day and be happy beating him.

Comment Posted by: Utziel on May 2, 2006 08:35 PM

I think they should get rid of Raiding alltogether and let the raiders go on to other games that are comming out. Casuals are the majority anyway!

Comment Posted by: Phrank on May 2, 2006 10:12 PM

Naw leave raiding in the game. We hear all the time how it is so fun, then just remove any xp / loot rewards from it. If it is so damn fun then the raiders will continue to do it even though it provides no reward to them.

Lets see their feelings if that was to happen, they would scream louder about that then they whine about solo / casual players.

Comment Posted by: Utziel on May 2, 2006 11:55 PM

I like your Idea better lets go with that> LOL

Comment Posted by: bonkers on May 3, 2006 09:20 AM

"seems like one of them is annoyed that the raiding content is too hard? that is fine, but i would ask, too hard for who?"

Well, looking at the numbers, I'd say too hard for 80% of the EQ paying customer base. The 20% that do use it must thank the 80% who help fund it for them.

Most expansions contain a very larger percentage of raid content and lately, fewer and fewer people are bothering with it. Either because it's too hard or they just don't care. SOE needs to figure out what is their goal.

Comment Posted by: Madmax on May 3, 2006 03:49 PM

I disagree. Since mergers took place the nice friendly atosmpheir on my server has hit the seweres. It is almost unheard of to get a group and traveling to arcstone as a single is a non start. Often you can sit in arcstone and see 15 people in zone, shout lfg and nothing. I have often traveled to watch and there are 3 groups of 5. Peeps refuse to let most in. If you want to help alot of us make some stuff for solo, like the LDON was suppose to have but failed to have.

Comment Posted by: Horzek on May 3, 2006 05:36 PM

I dont know how every one else feels but I for one am very tired of zones that require navigating paths that are way high up in the air. The slightest bit of lag and a nasty corpse run or back to the guild lobby for a stone. Man but I hate all that only being able to navigate a zone by flying.

I am not really too pleased with much of the DoDH expansion. The graphics are nice but the game play for me has proved to be very undesirable. The mobs hit like trains from the highest end fights and See invis mobs are all over the place.

I really liked the DoN expansion though. I had a lot of fun there, we killed a lot of the dragons and we even managed to finally take down the end mob. The only thing I regretted about DoN was that I didnt buy it for a while because I wanted to see if it was any good.

PoR has not really gotten hold of me either. Once again zones are not easily accessable and I sure dont like the runnining on paths 1 meter wide and 500 meters above the ground. The whole idea that a mob can knock you off the platform and into oblivion ( which is a great game, maybe it was good I got sent there ) just gets tiring.

lately when I think about EQ I find myself letting out a sigh and thinking to myself that there is one more PITA flagging process to go through and again I am well and truly tired of all the zone flagging. It kills guilds and puts expansions on the back of the raid guilds who must over and over again run back flagging just to keep a supply of fresh blood coming in.

Is there no way to do an expansion that does not require flagging? Can we not just get an expansion that we can all play and hopefully enjoy? I dont mind the zones being tough but I am so tired of the flagging processes.

Comment Posted by: Glormane on May 4, 2006 09:55 AM

I see lots of posts on how bad POR/DoD were but nothing to say how it should be put right. Such negativity means that you are not here to help put things right and/or are considering leaving the game.

DoD group drops offered non raiders extremely good armour upgrades from instanced drops (IMO).

The slipgear aug offered an alternative to folks not wanting to back track through LDON stuff.

The overarching mask quest offered a very good Mask that in my opinion hard enough to be a challenge, and not excessively difficult as to be a frustration.

PoR, I have no problems traversing the zones, in arcstone there are a number of see invises, but theres a great big mountain range in the middle that if you hug you can get around the zone without much trouble.

The various quests offering, augs, rings and the fantastic cloak upgrade.

My main niggles on DoD are that the upgrades somewhat trivialised some raiding content I am still active with and that instanced drops were better than open content zones.

With PoR there seems to be a lot of drops from the instanced spell missions that have a load of hit points but little ac.

Heres my combined requests for changes for both PoR and DoD.

1. Provide other camps for Belfast Faction and Gnomish Clockwork bolts/Mechanotablests. These are needed to make the POR uber type 12 augs but once a pharmer or dedicated guild get there, its locked for weeks.
2. The itemisation in Dreadspire keep is awful, please add some drops that balances RvR.
3. In Arcstone the drop rate of the spirit marks is not only too rare but certain more desirable marks are all concentrated in one camp. Up the chance of a drop and make all mark dropping named able to drop any mark, the chest/legs being the rarest (but hopefully not as rare as now).
4. The PoR instanced missions now lock so that people cannot be swapped in to loot the win at the end. I understand why this was done, however some of the drops from the mission are too class specialised and again, the gear required to do the missions exceeds some of the drops. RvR is out of whack here again.

Comment Posted by: Armarant on May 4, 2006 05:05 PM

glormane wrote:My main niggles on DoD are that the upgrades somewhat trivialised some raiding content I am still active with and that instanced drops were better than open content zones.

Even kunark/velious raiding items were eventually trivialized by expansions. cant expect content to be the best forever.

Comment Posted by: Armarant on May 4, 2006 05:09 PM

Glormane Wrote:1. Provide other camps for Belfast Faction and Gnomish Clockwork bolts/Mechanotablests. These are needed to make the POR uber type 12 augs but once a pharmer or dedicated guild get there, its locked for weeks.
--
I beleive all the clockworks in the zone can drop Bolts/Tablets just need to not care about takeing the small faction hit. and I think there is even a instance with clockworks you can kill in for these peices.

Glormane Wrote: 4. The PoR instanced missions now lock so that people cannot be swapped in to loot the win at the end. I understand why this was done, however some of the drops from the mission are too class specialised and again, the gear required to do the missions exceeds some of the drops. RvR is out of whack here again.
--
I would be happy if perhaps they could relook at the loot from instances and make some of the loots attuneable. because right now there are some loots from instances that would not be touched because it wouldnt be a upgrade for the people doing the mission.

Comment Posted by: gabby on May 5, 2006 04:03 AM

ezez,

Mark me down as another who was disappointed SOE discontinued their special $99 annual fee. What really bothered me about that whole thing was the fact that they had promised to automatically renew accounts at the same price when the deal was offered last year. In other words, I signed up a number of accounts not only for the reduced rate but also for a price guarantee that SOE now refuses to honor.

The extra $50 per account isn't going to break me, but it was another disappointment piled upon many others and in the end it was reason enough for me to allow all my accounts to expire and leave the game. I've tried to post about this on EQ Forums, but have found that I can't log in any more - I suspect this is because my accounts are now inactive.

Surprisingly, I haven't missed EQ all that much over the past month or so. Obviously, I still enjoy reading about the state of the game but I doubt I'll ever play it again. SOE has been pretty nearsighted about this - they had in me a casual weekend multiboxer who consumed very few resources yet was willing to commit to annual renewals of 3 accounts. No more.

Comment Posted by: concerned1 on May 6, 2006 02:52 AM

have you seen that soe is trying to buy out vanguard from microsoft now? guess they started getting afraid of the competition....

Comment Posted by: JMC on May 6, 2006 07:32 AM

Actually If You read The Vanguard forums,its the other way arounsd Sigil approached them.

Comment Posted by: Wolfkinder on May 6, 2006 01:15 PM

Regarding Vanguard. I had posted in another thread here that I was unsure of Vanguard's ability to be popular. Having went to the site again, and then learning Microsoft was going to publish, since that thread has closed and it was brought up here, I wanted to say that as a game it does look like it has legs. Microsoft publishing it would have made it transition from not well known to having Microsoft muscle behind it, the same as Blizzard did for WoW.

However, with this new information, it's a moot point. From what I read, anyone with the station access, which did go up btw, will be able to play this game. So, those curious should be able to purchase it, give it a shot with station access, and if they enjoy it a lot more than EQ, just switch their subscription plan.

Unless SoE tinkers with the inner workings of the game, all those Vanguard fans now have an easier transition to look forward too, or even the chance to play both games. Heck, I might even give it a try (not really, I'm still pretty consumed by EQ right now). It does look like a sweet game though graphically. Maybe I will try it.....ack, like I have any time now:) But for those looking forward to this title, I hope this represents good news.

If you're an SOE hater, recognize that Microsoft is even more likely to interfere with the direction and production of a game than SOE. It sounds like one of the reasons Sigil is moving is they want to find a home where they can create the game THEY want to create without too much interference from management types. I wish them good luck in this. Good MMOs being produced only raises the bar for everyone, and I like a high bar:)

Comment Posted by: Simkine on May 6, 2006 04:15 PM

I get the feeling that MS probably was pressuring them to make it xbox 360 compatible. I can't see any way else they could interfere since it's already a Windows platform game. Possibly another pressure point could of been release time. MS would want it out regardless if its ready and Sigil probably is willing to wait another year to fix it up.

Sigil bought themselves out then was left with not much choice but to find another publisher.

Comment Posted by: Skuz on May 9, 2006 02:21 AM

"Comment Posted by: Wiggles on May 2, 2006 07:51 AM

Let's take a look at high end raids. This is a fairly accurate recording of progression although some guilds do no participate in it.

Well, that was trying to say what? That guilds across a server are geared differently, raid more often than some, work harder at beating new content than others?

Had you posted that last year the numbers might have looked very similar but the expansion names would be earlier, the hardest working, best geared, guilds would still be beating content before the others caught up, eventually with new levels & new aa less well geared (read not done as much farming of loot mobs) & less well aa'd guilds will beat content, right now there are many family style & social raiding guilds breaking into anguish & halfway or more through DoN.

Your numbers would only show a glaring problem if all guilds were geared the same & raided as often!

Unless you are suggesing it takes TOO long for guilds of differing qualities to break content, which would lend itself to raising levels & introducing AA's on a more frequent cycle....but that's a whole other argument isn't it?

Comment Posted by: Wiggles on May 9, 2006 07:23 AM

It was saying serveral things:

- Fewer people are finishing content as it was intended
- Fewer people are even bothering to try
- Expansions are being released too fast

If the vast majority of the playerbase can't complete the expansions goals, there is a problem. In fact, the majority of the raiding guilds, which is only around 15-20% of the population, can't be bothered to beat them either. That really says something.

If the solution to the problem is "Wait 2 years until we release 4 other expansions you have to buy to trivialize that expansion" well, I think that is pathetic design and a slap in the face to everyone who paid for it.

I think the last three expansions have caused a marked drop in subscriptions and it's a direct result of SOE's release schedule. The bar is always raised higher with less time to catch your breath (i.e. flag and gear everyone). With people giving up and leaving and no fresh blood to take it's place, EQ's numbers have to be dropping rapidly.

The new expansion coming with it's proposed 1-70 content is an obvious attempt to address this. It's a good one too. I hope it ushers in a new era. But it will need to be a good year before the next expansion to give people a chance to catch up.

Comment Posted by: Skuz on May 9, 2006 07:14 PM

Comment Posted by: Wiggles on May 9, 2006 07:23 AM

It was saying serveral things:

- Fewer people are finishing content as it was intended
- Fewer people are even bothering to try
- Expansions are being released too fast

[[all of those are simply your perceptions and the opinions of a vocal minority, the only people who could give definite numeric responses to those views are SoE, neither you or I can argue on that]]

"If the vast majority of the playerbase can't complete the expansions goals, there is a problem. In fact, the majority of the raiding guilds, which is only around 15-20% of the population, can't be bothered to beat them either. That really says something."

[[Well I think the problem you have is with defining who an expansions content is aimed at.

Each of the recent expansions has been developing the "content for all" philosophy.

When you say that the majority of the playerbase should be able to complete ALL an expansions goals (prior to the release of the next ?) simply is totally unrealistic, the majority of the EQ playerbase has been shown by SoE to be comprised "mostly" of casual players, so by your definitions an expansion would only have content beatable by casual geared, casual aa'd players & totally ignore the minority playerbase of hardcore max aa'd raiding people, so are you saying therefore that the minority should be satisfied with with what the majority wants?

In order to cater to ALL of it's customers SoE has since the furore that went with PoP release (which was almost exclusively an expansion tailored to raiding) that the largest part of the content HAS been beatable by everyone, DoDH made a huge leap by actually furnishing players with gear they would need to succeed,OoW & DoDH had ONE flag required zone for the high end raiders, every other zone was open (albeit in OoW with one or two level required zones)

That tells me SoE does care about it's playerbase, the largest part of the last 3 expansions has been tailored to players of all styles, with one locked zone with hard encounters designed to challenge the hardcore.

Seems to me you got exactly what you want bar one thing....endzone raiding for all? like i said before totally unrealistic, to try & design a zone & encounters that are challenging for hardcore, raid-geared players which is also beatable by casuals is simply impossible, the power gap in terms of gear and AA is too high, & it's there for a reason, the more you put in, the more you get out, why should a casual 1 hour a day gamer get the same out of his character as a 4 hour a day raider?

As long as both are provided with entertainment & character progression opportunities they are both being valued as customers.]]

[[ PoP was the "crunch" for a lot of players, it bolted the doors shut in their face, if you weren't in a top end raid guild then, you were not going to see the "majority" of the expansion untill several expansions later, some of that was adressed by the "access per level" that was implimented later on, kunark & velious & luclin each only had one or two locked zones, PoP was a lot different & I don't think it will be repeated to the same degree again, GoD was far less "locked" than PoP & OoW, DoDH have gone back to the one "locked" zone again ]]

[[ "give people a chance to catch up", says exactly what is goin on in your mindset...it's envy, you want to have a level playing-field whereby casuals can rub shoulders with ubers & not feel inferior? You want to hold back the development of some players so that the rest can catch up to them? How is that fair? Get in touch with why you play, do you play to have fun? To socialise with the friends you have made? OR....is it to compete? If you are a casual gamer trying to "compete" with a hardcore gamer then you may as well read "Don Quixote" & dream the impossible dream, be happy & progressive with your character & enjoy the "bulk" of each expansions content, but don't be so arrogant as to think you should have the right to impinge upon others will for development & improvement in order to satisfy yours!]]

Comment Posted by: Keisa on May 10, 2006 10:13 AM

Wiggles said: "If the vast majority of the playerbase can't complete the expansions goals, there is a problem. In fact, the majority of the raiding guilds, which is only around 15-20% of the population, can't be bothered to beat them either. That really says something."

You say, "the glass is half empty," I say, "the glass is half full." One of the benefits of playing a MMO is never running out of new and interesting things to do. In fact, we often hear from the people that have completed top end suff complaining about how bored they are. If 90% of the people who played the game completed every expansion before the next one was released, attritiion in the game would be a lot more significant than it is today.

As it is, for the majority of us, there is always something to look forward to in the game. There's a better piece of gear or a boss mob we haven't whipped yet or a place we haven't gone. That makes the game worth playing.

I don't know about you, but I find the games that are designed to target the lowest common denomenator too easy to play and certainly not entertaining.

Keisa

Comment Posted by: sigh on May 11, 2006 10:35 AM

the fact that there is virtually zero activity on this site anymore, tells me a whole lot about the state of the game, this site used to be jumping, both in comments, and articles. same with virtually all the sites i used to visit.

Comment Posted by: N on May 11, 2006 10:53 AM

it's summer

Comment Posted by: yea on May 11, 2006 12:56 PM

"it's summer"

now thats the right way to rationalize =)

Comment Posted by: sunshadow on May 11, 2006 09:49 PM

The problems with PoR (just to get back on topic) the biggest problem is about only about 10% of the active player base bought it. Why because there is little there to attract the casual player. So the big problems PoR has is 1) grouping is mandatory to do anything pretty much and 2)it is targetted at 65+. Casual player group when thay can and solo when they can't, since it is not worth the effort to solo any of these mobs, casuals aren't getting into it because it is of little use to them as individuals, few people buy on the basis of "if everyone else buys this then I will get benifits".

What SOE don't realise is people cannot solo there then your strong solo classes are less inclined to buy. If they don't buy, then when a group does form it is likely to contain 1 or 2 people without the expansion so the group heads elsewhere.

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on May 14, 2006 07:45 PM

I second the comment about the lack of activity throughout what I usually read about EQ. It looks a bit early to be because of summer or is it?

There's probably not enough people around to care to even be bothered to post. Or people have given up trying or have their contacts and don't post publicly anymore. No matter what the reason behind it sure doesn't create the buzz to bind people to the game. I'm not saying that the game is dead because I don't really care if it is or not but the PRs guys and gals out there better wet their shirts to make people actually care about what happens around EQ if they intend to sell the future expansions. If noone cares, few will buy I'd assume.

Then again if someone like a dev would be in a position to be overly dismissive, hostile or cynical about the players, that's the kind of harm he could do to the community.

Comment Posted by: Hemdell on May 14, 2006 08:08 PM

One of the reasons that Ive read one other boards and is a big one for me is that no one listens anymore. I mean really....they havent even fixed the Stedfast Servant they broke a month err so ago and all we hear is "We are aware of it". The lack of feedback and from what i see refusal to fix the basics is what turns people off.

Comment Posted by: Loral on May 14, 2006 08:36 PM

I am in the process of moving and getting married so my days have become a bit full recently. I plan to keep up an article every two weeks but it has been tough recently. Sorry for the lack of activity. I am sure I will have more after E3. I'm not going but I imagine we'll hear some interesting things.

Comment Posted by: Wolfkinder on May 15, 2006 12:38 PM

All I know is a lot of energy is going into the progression server right now. If you do the Dev track, most of the comments revolve around progression server and the hype about it. I think with no news about the next expansion yet, and so much talk about progression, it has kinda made things quiet.

An interesting side note (about Progression) and, no, I prolly won't have time to play it. But apparently they're fixing (or trying to) the boats. Also, they're planning to revamp Plane of Mischief to its original, which they then plan on moving to all live servers (at least as of the last thread I had followed recently).

This brings up the question: Will the progression server perhaps actually contribute to fixing some issues in the Live game now? While, obviously, most of those things are likely to be older content, I'm just curious. People have complained about Mischief forever -- now suddenly it's getting changed. People have complained about the boats (not me) and now at least on Progression server it may be fixed.

I wouldn't be surprised if with all this energy going back to old code with fresh minds that maybe some things that were thought impossible or not worth doing may suddenly get some attention. Now if Progression server only made them revisit Luclin models:)
--Wolfkinder

Comment Posted by: Wolfkinder on May 15, 2006 12:40 PM

And congratulations on the Wedding, Loral!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
--Wolfkinder:)

Comment Posted by: concerned1 on May 15, 2006 01:56 PM

i'm still surprised when i see people lash out at others about negative talk about eq. it's like these people are in denial about the fact that eq subscriber numbers, expansion sale numbers, and core game packs continue to decline. what isnt surprising is if you are able to look up the peoples profile they tend to be in "uber" guilds and be "super geared". are they so caught up in a fake virtual world that they can not see the reality? or do they choose to ignore the truth becuase it hurts ? when eq servers are shutdown and the data deleted i look foward to reading some of these message boards to see what some of these people who have based their lives around the pursuit of being "uber" on ever quest are feeling. knowing that the precious gear they have spent countless hours to obtain is gone forever. wonder what it will be like....

Comment Posted by: Wolfkinder on May 15, 2006 02:28 PM

If they enjoyed their time in game, it is time well spent. Nothing lasts forever. I don't think anybody thinks EQ will be around 50 years from now, but I doubt it's closing shop anytime soon. And if it does, well, hopefully most will move on to the next best thing and remember their time in EQ fondly for what it was, a pasttime, a hobby, maybe even an alternate lifestyle for some.

We all die too. But I try not to spend all my time thinking about that either. A game. It's a game. A fun one, at least for me. And for those super uber people who devote 8 hours or more a day playing it, what would they have accomplished if not playing it? Maybe spent 8 hours a day playing something else? I don't know. Maybe fixed a house or worked longer hours at a job or whatever Type A personalities do. They like what they do or they wouldn't do it. And I think it's great that this game can cater to them and to a casual like myself. And I'm sure when the game ends, anyone still playing will be upset, whether casual or uber. But the sense of accomplishment when you do something well, good, fun, at least for me that stays with me forever. I suspect it does with the ubers too, although I can't speak for them:) All the good memories you make in game, whether casual or uber, isn't that what we're all left with in the end, from any experience?

All games end. All things end. But it's not ending today:)
--Wolfkinder
Personally, I give EQ another 5 years at least. It may be down to one server by then or they may just flip everyone's accounts over to EQ3. But I seriously doubt it's shutting shop up tomorrow. Too much money still here!

Comment Posted by: Armarant on May 15, 2006 09:29 PM

Concerned1 wrote:i'm still surprised when i see people lash out at others about negative talk about eq. it's like these people are in denial about the fact that eq subscriber numbers, expansion sale numbers, and core game packs continue to decline.

..
I have no problem with your talking negatively about EQ.. as long as you do it from the comfort of the world of warcraft forums please. I dont play EQ to constantly hear why every other game is superior after a while it gets annoying.

if you want to do constructive criticism I am all for that but I am tired of the EQ is a sinking ship bail as fast as you can people.

Comment Posted by: oldeqplayer on May 16, 2006 08:58 AM

Oh noes ... don't fix the boats. That's a huge part of the original EQ experience. Nothing like spending the whole evening crashing to desktop when zoning into the port. Only to eventually log on and find yourself back on the boat traveling to the next port. Oh the joy.

While thier at it they need to fix the zonein from Qeynos Hills to Western Karanas so the guy who takes 5 mins to zone and goes AFK can block anyone else from zoning into the Karanas for the next hour.

Oh and lets not forget they will need to break Alchemy for the first year and insist that it is working just fine.

Oh the memories. Oh yes the orginal EQ experience how I miss it.

Comment Posted by: Keisa on May 16, 2006 09:19 AM

Concerned1 said: "i'm still surprised when i see people lash out at others about negative talk about eq. it's like these people are in denial about the fact that eq subscriber numbers, expansion sale numbers, and core game packs continue to decline. what isnt surprising is if you are able to look up the peoples profile they tend to be in "uber" guilds and be "super geared". are they so caught up in a fake virtual world that they can not see the reality? or do they choose to ignore the truth becuase it hurts ? when eq servers are shutdown and the data deleted i look foward to reading some of these message boards to see what some of these people who have based their lives around the pursuit of being "uber" on ever quest are feeling. knowing that the precious gear they have spent countless hours to obtain is gone forever. wonder what it will be like...."

It doesn't take a rocked scientist to see that EQ subscriptions are on the decline. So, you stated the obvious.

I guess what I don't understand are the people that, when the game is no longer fun for them, continue to sit around and gripe and complain about it. There seems something self defeating in that. When I quit playing a game, I leave their websites and never look back. When I do think about the game, I remember the good times I had (assuming there were good times).

Keisa

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