kyros

dude without rok, there wouldn't BE past level 70. it IS a problem with rok. please, don't be that shortsighted.

Caswydian

That's certainly a valid complaint, but I'd say it extends well beyond the borders of EQ2. The fantasy MMO industry right now is trying to figure out how to appeal to all types of playstyles. Your criticism is equally applicable to WoW and even Vanguard. The MMO industry cannot yet figure out how to make games that will have content which appeals to soloers with limited playtimes and the hardcore raiders. They cannot figure out how to have progressive itemization without rendering older items worthless while making new items desirable. These are very real issues, but not issues limited to EQ2 or SOE.

Caswydian

The problem is with the arrow mechanics, however. That RoK introduced T8 doesn't mean RoK is the cause of the issue. What needs to be fixed is the arrow mechanics, and those mechanics were still broken regardless if RoK were released or not, RoK just made the issue more obvious.

kyros

they were working fine until they got to t8. they had just "fixed" ammo not long ago. rok introduced more levels, and brought to light whatever "complex" issue there is with another tier of ammo. ammo was fine, broken arrow mechanics is a direct result of rok launch.

congratulations, your argument fails.

Flight

1. i) The LoN team lead the player base to believe we are getting great new loot items.


ii) The EQ2 devs deliver, while the EQ1 devs refuse to put stats on the items this time around.


iii) Most of the EQ1 LoN players believe right now, that this is a bug and are waiting for the effects to be patched in.


iv) EQ1 devs posts as above that he doesn't want these kind of stats on EQ1 items.


v) LoN staff have still not acknowledged or commented on this issue, to the player base.




2. They've just appointed Froech as Lead Producer on EQ2. Froech was the Lead Producer during development and launch and is largely responsible for the abortion that the game was at launch. He got demoted, but has, in between dodging all the dogs the SoE staff take to work, in the past two years learned the skills it will take to continue the massive progress Scott made.



3. This is all in the same week we had the 50 players being transferred from test fiasco; moved with massive amounts of ill gotten loot and in game cash, while their guild was artificially given level 60.



4. Without any customer communication whatsoever, zero management of expectation or preparation, Sony hook up with an RMT company.



5. Add to that they have just lost the only competent and respected person they had left in the industry (no offense to the rest of their staff - they do a great job in spite of massive mismanagement) in Scott.


Theres also a constant trickle of people claiming to have inside info that things are going wrong big time.


Lets underline, in case you missed it, this is all just in the last few days. If you are a Euro LoN player you know all about the ongoing total lack of communication about the status of non-US players.

keldo

RoK could have been better, but its hardly worse than EoF. Only thing that saved EoF is lower level content isn't evaluated as toughly as top end content.

Quests in EoF were boring and worthless with no real reward other than AA xp. Loping was a terrible zone with all the green trash. Kaladim, Catacombs and Castle were all underutilized worthless dungeons with no real loot other than a couple of standout items, only after SoD was released nearly a year after EoF release did these dungeons see frequent use. All the group instances were boring, had few useful items, and had no challenge at all. Unrest which was released way after launch was the only halfway decent zone and it was still annoying and boring. The raid instances were fairly decent, but there was still only 4 of them, and they are hardly better than RoKs.

I agree that finished product EoF with SoD, Unrest, TTR, was a fairly decent expansion. Give RoK that amount of time and you will see the same results. At launch, I'd say RoK has the edge by a large margin.

Flight

The MMO industry is in the stunted state that it is because it refuses to get out of its own ass and recruit competent people from outside of their own incestuous relationships. They need to start looking outside the industry for Project Managers, QA and Management.

They do this because they are insecure and their middle management are aware of not only their staffs level of competence, but their own as well.

kyros

The fact is, Cas, that no matter how you spin it, combat mechanics related to your "just fine" RoK are not functioning properly.

You can put the blame on combat mechanics all you want, but without the RoK content (or in the case of arrows, lack of content) the system was working. It is a flaw of the expansion if it does not address issues of mechanics that do not work with its content. Period.

We have seen many combat revamps with expansions to address similar issues, so there is no excuse for ignoring mechanics that just aren't working this time around. That's laziness. That's miscommunication. Spin it how you want. Spin it until you get dizzy and fall down. It won't change the facts.

Scayre

EoF was an expansion that was widely hailed as a success. Unfortunately the same can't be said about RoK. I concur with the sentiments expressed above that SOE seems to have no coherent vision as to what sort of game they wish to make. It makes me wonder if upper management isn't constantly trying to change the direction of this game depending on which way the profit wind is blowing.

__________________
80 Swashbuckler
80 Paladin

Flight

That sounds about spot on to me. There will certainly be more of it with Froech as Lead Producer.

Don't forget what a clusterfuck the development of EQ2 was, prior to launch. They changed their 'vision' for the game so many times, in the end it was a joke that ended with many of their lead people getting fired and moved over, because they were so unhappy with elements of game design that they refused to go with it.


Maybe I'm being unfair to Froech, but he was Lead Producer through that and through launch.