Where is EQ going?

Hello Readers!

Today I wanted to talk about where I think EQ is going. The last 2 expansion have been met with some pretty harsh criticism. Loral over at Mobhunter was giving a thumbs down to the latest release The Buried Sea. Of course, there are many folks out there that don't listen to a word Loral says since he is not an "elite".

Personally, I agree with some of what Loral said. Most of the new missions are LAME LAME LAME. Boring you could say. Or just too hard to beat. SoE in their infinite wisdom decided to cut the expansion in 3 parts. Easy single group, hard single group, and bend you over and smack you around in the face, raiding.

Easy Single Group-YARRR!!
We be the Pirate's with the silly names that make laugh and joke and drink rum! YARRR! I actually really enjoyed the pirates part of TBS, too bad I never find any groups working on the Jonas Skeletal Hand Aug!! All I ever find are other ubers like me farming the bits for their quests... as soon as those people finish, the buried sea will be an unpopulated zone. But I blame this on lack of item rewards... thing is... to attract people to zones, you gotta lure them in.... Personally I would add a Sea Monsters to the buried sea... Something that is utterly destructive... I'd have it patrol the outer rim of the zone and once an hour have it path through the more traveled areas.... I'd also make sure that it makes a bunch of warning before you get surprised by the pwnator!!!

Pirate missions are easy, anyone that thinks katta is too hard but they still want to progress... I suggest doing pirates missions from 65-75... anyone that can get a group quazi group together should cut it... remember pirates are stunnable, mezzable, and humanoid!


Hard Single Group - Katta
Katta.... Katta.... Kattaaaaaaa!!!

This is the opposite of Pirate missions. These missions are long, hard, and difficult. Should be a decent challenge for even the best geared groups. Sadly if you want your TBS rk.2 spells YOU MUST DO KATTA. I've been working on my faction the 'honest' way lately... but unless I bring a pimp group, or really just pray on the weakest katta mission I get OWN'd! I've tried umm a half dozen times now to form up a tank/healer/slower/dps/offtank/ type of pick up group... I can beat "The Great Invasion" or "The Knowledge of Power" quests pretty easy... but sadly so can everyone else and I get the min reward! If I try a mission without my guildies, I'll probably lose... and I assure you it isn't because I suck!

Katta has good rewards though, so I guess the difficulty justifies the rewards... I feel it is still too punishing... and that single group missions so be aim'd at 1 hour to complete... and we need a driving force to push more lvl 75 people into Katta so that grouping is made easier.

Raids- Bend over now please
Only a handful of guilds are making any sort of progress in Solteris... Triality, Township Rebellion, Cestus Dei, Triton, and Momentum have all atleast attempted Sol Raids.... Triality has beat 1-5, TR beat 1-2, and NO ONE ELSE BEAT JACK SHIT* (subject to change if someone else did manage to beat event 1! [t maelin.swampfunk if your guild beat Mayong's Sluts)...

But why would anyone want to do Solteris now? It's full of bugs, crazy hard, and rewards you with focus'less, crappy... 500 hp/mana/endurance generic items. Merloc hasn't even really taken the time to balance the loot from this zone... so why farm it?

If I were the dev team... I'd make all the TBS group zones have a exp modifier... just to attract new players to explore the area... I would add a few scary mobs in each zone... make sure they drop some fat loot... but make the mobs as hard as Solteris crap just to scare the crap out of Joe Casual.... *remember the griffons of EC, or the Hill Giants of WC* Running in fear from scary mobs is fun!

Ok.... so ... now what?

First of all item's need to be fixed: All of the single and raid level "class only" type of items from TSS need a focus and clicky/mod2 added to them.... and this needs to be done within a week...

Second... go through the Solteris raid loot... add about 30 focus effects... improve the weapons by 20% and improve the 2handers another 10% (trust me it needs to be done)....

Once the items in Solteris start looking crazy better and solid... the raiding guilds will start pursuing them. No one wants to work their ass off unless they are going to get a big reward for it.

Third- LFG tool... needs to be reworked... or we need to find a incentive to get pick up groups happening again... right now on all servers the pick up group is a dieing trend. Perhaps it's because the content is too punishing to those on the weak side of the EQ power curve... or perhaps it's because there is only 1 real healing class that can heal TBS stuff.... whatever the reason is... we need to find a way to get more pick up groups going!!!! Randomly meeting new people really makes EQ fun.. soo, without that aspect, I'm not surprised people get burned out and bored!

Next Expansion? coming? YES!

When? who the heck knows... I'd be willing to guess December.... the new bundle pack is great, but I have a feeling we are going to be seeing a later release... all depends on how many new players we pick up with the release of the latest bundle. If we get a big surge of converts to EQ... well, I'd expect a earlier release to milk those saps! (and everyone else!)

Money is the devil of EQ... if the world were perfect... EQ would be free and we'd all be buying expansions to support the game... not the monthly...

Well, that's all for today... I need to spell check and grammar check this crap.... I feel like I rushed!