Its obvious that Merloc played a caster class when he was a player in EQ. Its also obvious that he stopped playing EQ right around the time Gates of Discord (GoD) ended and Omens of War (OoW) started. I say this because all the items he tries to design have mod2 stats that would fit nicely in GoD's end zone Tacvi.
What is mod2? Mod2 is strikethrough (ST),shielding (S), spellshielding (SS), dotshielding(DotS), accuracy (acc), combateffects (ce), Stun Resist (SR), and Avoidance (avoid).
Merloc designs items with less mod2 stats than you would find in Demi-plane, Deathknell, or heck even Anguish... In TSS we saw the start of this trend, and MANY players all complained that, while the items have nice AC, HP, and Mana vlues, the TBS items totally sucked when you looked at the mod2 stats.
Another issue with Merloc's "item vision" is the complete lack of focus items on most of his itemization.
For example here is a belt that dropped from event one (Sisters) in Solteris last night:
At first look you'd think its a pretty darn good belt, right? 60 ac, 500 hp and mana... and then what? 5% shield? pfft, +3 damage shield? +3 regen +3 mana? WTF!!!! When you beat down the first boss of Solteris you expect to get a belt that either a) has a focus that means something or b) have enough mod2 stats to make it superior to the previous expansions.
All classes have to plan their gear carefully to keep all of their focus/mod stats up-to-snuff. With the way merloc is designing items, I have NO urge to want to beat this "super hard" raid content. And I'm as hardcore as raiders come! Not enough reward for the massive risks, for sure
YOU CAN'T SLAP A TON OF HP ON AN ITEM AND CALL IT GREAT, YOU CAN CALL IT CRAP THOUGH!
Another example of crap here:
Seriously, why is this a priest limited item? Makes no sense at all? Is it to help out those poor priests with their avoidance? CRAP! CRAP! CRAP!
Here we see the same pattern, big AC/HP/mana... itty bitty mod2.. NO FOCUS! This crap is not going to fly well when you are telling your high end raiders, "Greater Risk for Great Reward" when infact it should be read "Ridiculusly hard for utter crap loot". Tell me, when you play EverQuest, do you play it to work your way up to the good loot? If so, stop raiding before TSS and you'll be happier in the long run.
FIRE MERLOC!
Why do I say fire him? Because apparently the guy is soooo busy that he can't get the items from TBS to look half way decent, and he is SOOO busy that he couldn't get the items from TSS to be anywhere near what they should be. But, its amazing, if he is too busy to fix items, THEN WTF IS HE DOING AS AN ITEM DESIGNER? I know I could personally kick the crap out of Merloc item design, but that's mainly because I've been helping the item designers keep stuff good for the last 6 years. What I think is Merloc is incompetant, he doesn't know how to design items for the high end of EverQuest, he doesn't understand 90% of class mechanics, and he seems to be too busy doing nothing around SoE.... it's utter bullshit.
I mean, maybe I'd be ok with Merloc if he atleast did a good job on the single group/casual itemization. But HE SUCKED AT THAT TOO!
I've had enough, Merloc's waste of itemization is ruining EverQuest... and thats why I say: FIRE MERLOC!!
Here is my challenge to Mr.Item's... make some worthy changes to the focus effects of TSS and TBS, stop relying on HP and AC to act as your reward... players care more about focus and mod2 stats than they care about HP and AC... (except tanks... they really care more)...if he can't do these things enough to satisfy the community, THEN REMOVE HIM. Remove him before he personally ruins EQ. Itemization is the life blood of EverQuest... no matter how much fun the content is, no one will do it without a big reward at the end.
This rant was brought to you by the letters F and U.....Merloc.
10 comments:
Soon /nods
This is the best post on your board! 100% true in every way shape and form!
Its about time some1 had the balls to step up for the community and be honest with the Devs at SoE.
Merloc needs to be REMOVED from ALL itemization and a new Dev needs to be TRUSTED with the VERY important role of item management.
Items and gear ARE....ARE.....ARE the life blood of EQ.
Why this noob was given the role was a huge mistake.
TY Swamp!
Now I am kinda scared.
They are going to over-react on this topic, start tossing out items with insane stats/foci and mod(2).
I guess anything would be better then what Merloc put out there now.
Itemisation has sucked so bad these past few expansions. Keep the good work coming Swamp!
But Apps need gear too =P
seriously though, the imagination used on the items is downright unoriginal at best.
Merloc is the SoE cookie cutter item carbon copy generator machine.
Don't you know that all the mod2 are going to be on the energeian armor? Sheesh. ;)
/sarcastic
"I know I could personally kick the crap out of Merloc item design, but that's mainly because I've been helping the item designers keep stuff good for the last 6 years. "
Were you doing that while warping all over the place you MQ using piece of shit?
ahh I see we have a hero of the people here.... this, my readers is what we call, a chicken shit. Posting an Anonymous slander is one of the lowest forms of online attack.
Here is what I say to such a challenge... since I'm such a "mq user" then please post some evidence. But since thats impossible without the aid of flash or some photo editing... I gracefully will hand our chicken shit a noob cookie. Enjoy!
I don't think the "I get around" video on the flame swampfunk thread counts as video evidence...
I'm liking your site sir. Keep up the good work and I like how you even give rangers some respect in your blogs ;).
I'm liking your site sir. Keep up the good work and I like how you even give rangers some respect in your blogs ;).
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