I hope they are not fully disclosing the real content to beta and testing the real content internally with professional testers. I think allowing people to see the real content early is lame, especially for contested. Putting up a fake but watered down version to look for other mechanics/load issues makes sense. As I've said in other posts you can't rely on beta testers for hardcore functional testing or to fully disclose what they find unless you motivate them to do so. Also bear in mind everyone on beta had Beghn's number one fan to buy all their adornments off of and 100 aas (if they caught the aa buffer). It will take some effort to get to that level on live, especially the good adornments.
Maybe they are moving in the right direction. I realize everything people saw was too easy on beta, but allow me an optimistic view for a moment.
If the AEs are not feasibly avoidable and they hit hard... sub par geared toons will not be able to raid effectively by using jousting to avoid the mobs single biggest ability. Sure there are even more AE immunity abilities, but that requires co-ordination and should not be on timers that allow you to avoid every AE. So could this strategy in effect actually help progression? You must have x resist or you cannot raid (oh what was the snake guy in EQ1 SSRA temple who AE charmed? The Cursed event IIRC). So you must actually get the previous "tier" gear to be able to even attempt the next mob. You can't have a bunch of people with crap resists who make sure to joust (ok on cursed they could joust but it was a long way and dangerous if they failed and you needed real dps). Unfortunately this could still be gated by how easy KoS is to farm and the level of gear available from heroic encounters... I was sad when I saw how easy it was to get my alts raid capable. Did anyone try KOS raids to see if some of those AEs are no longer joustable?
I'm not saying its there yet, but this new tactic of significantly removing the jousting strategy could be headed in the right direction for progression. The big problem here is that they will likely not go to the old EQ1 progression style because it requires too much dedication to succeed and a large portion of their customers want their progression to be easy because they pay their subscription. I'm just hoping it got a bit harder.
I wouldn't say thry put up a fake... but in the last week they cranked up the difficulty and the changes (Beta wide) came so fast and furious that even hard-core beta testers had a hard time keeping up. And there was no final Beta build... the changes of the last, oh, 48 hours or so are going straight to Live.
Check this out. I was right. The difficulty of Freethinker's Hideout and Inner Sanctum(sans-Mayong) is a joke. Emerald Halls 1st floor(barring Tender and Rumbler) are pretty much a joke, 2nd floor and up is hard, but that's about it
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Re: Worried about the difficulty of EoF raids
