SOE does not want raiders. - Page 2

Ruckus · 03-10-2008, 11:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheEasternking

so what does EQ2 offer for a long term player without raiding ?
crafting ?
questing ?
heroic content ?
you think this is enough to keep people playing eq2 for 4years?
the only reason people have played eq2 for so long is b/cos the "end game" content was good enough to keep you coming back for more.
now its not good enough, and people have left and will continue to leave in droves, soe broke the mold with Rok, i hope there happy with all the casuals who pay for single accounts on a per month basis and leave / come back continually. cos there doing there level best to make the multiple account holders, pay quarterly / half a year subs, to cancel and never come back.

Crafting: thanks to being bored in between raiding up and downs, I have 5 crafters (with one being my trinkering-raiding swashy) to 80 and their epic quests done.

Questing: I have ~1800+ quests done on my main toon, including 50,000 faction with all 5 faction givers in Qeynos.

Heroic content: I have every piece of gear that I would need as a raider from these zones.

I have (in the past 3+years) purchased 1 year subs, as well as 6-month and 3-month subs. And due to "stuff" that has happened in the past 18 hours, I really wish I didn't JUST buy a 3-month sub. I'm here still because of my loyalty to friendships and hopes of getting back to where we were at in our raiding level that we had just a few weeks ago.

Phrogg · 03-10-2008, 11:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Laxx

I am convinced of this. We are the loudest, most vocal, most critical pain in the asses for them. Less then one percent of the population and probally 95% of the complaints. Casuals generally do not complain because they do not know any better. Now before you casuals go off the deep and start flaming me hear me out. Take a look at most of the posts on this board from the class sections to the general and zone sections. It is all about raid mobs and hit rates and class balance. A casual would not even notice this and they are better off for it.

Ask ANY buisness owner and they will tell you its the conisuer that they could live without. From the food buisness to the computer buisness its the most knowledgeable that give the largest headaches. A casual diner will not really notice nor complain the difference between medium rare and medium. Nor would a entry level pc person notice 30 fps vrs 32 fps.

SOE has been shoving LON down our throats because of the ease of administration and larger money pool. Sad to say but I personally know someone who has spent over 1k in lon cards. That equates to what 75 months of subscription ?

I think they are driving the raiders away on purpose to alleviate a ton of their headaches. Without us they do not really need to add or fix much of anything except some spelling errors in quest lines.

And its working. Raiders do not really care about the game anymore. Take a look at the nexona thread as well as a ton of others. Last expansion no one would have uttered a word of guild strats as early as this especially since the encounters are constantly changing these days. WW 1st does not mean shit. The encounters are shit. No one cares.

Good job sony you are getting your point across. You simply do not care anymore.

sounds like someone is butt hurt cuz said guild cannot get thru the first wing of VP

Laxx · 03-10-2008, 11:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Caswydian

Do you have subscriber demographics to back this up? I know many crafters who've been playing since release who have multiple accounts and have never raided, or raid very little.

Further, based on what the OP stated, why would any MMO company want to cater to raiders? If you're over at FunCom or BioWare or Turbine or NCSoft or where ever, and are looking to build your next MMO, why would you put in raid content?

Well as in eq1 if you do it right ( before they started the instancing frenzy) The raiding community actually drove the player base. Tigole legacy of steel and FoH ect created a buzz about the game and community. See the casuals and raiders used to hang in the same zones alot of the time. Take Kael for example the casuals would be in kael farming the kael armor and the raiders would be trying aow and KT. Imagine sitting there in your group when you see a 500 foot tall orange monster ( aow) decimate the zone. People would be in awe and start having conversations about it in chat and ooc. This example goes onto PoP and so on. Casualy would exp in tactics ect and see raid guilds of 60 plus people zone in and spawn this HUGE mob it would create a buzz. Now guilds were not limited to 24 people so actually getting into one of these guilds and participating was alot more of a possibility.

Player reputation and networking made a diffrence. Now for the most part in eq2 no one can tell wether a guild even exists anymore let alone what is going on in the world outside of their own instance. But this is not a eq1 vrs eq2 thread and sorry I deviated from that.

To simplify eq2 is built from low end to top not the other way around and that is why you have the lack of care and desire to fix things.

In other games the raiding population is alot larger and can support this. In eq2 soe painted themselfs into a corner.

Niber · 03-10-2008, 11:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheEasternking

instead of answing my questions with more questions, how about you tell me what games can offer to keep players playing for years other than raiding ?

No company banks on catering to high-playtime consumers for years. The new ideology is to follow the WoW-model, mass appeal and a constant influx of casual players that will play slower than the content cycles. When all else fails, launch something new, rinse and repeat.

kyros · 03-10-2008, 11:59 AM

i want raiders.

preferably good looking ones.
with boobs.

Meta · 03-10-2008, 12:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheEasternking

instead of answing my questions with more questions, how about you tell me what games can offer to keep players playing for years other than raiding ?

Just look at EQ1. It's the ultra hardcore top-end that keeps that game alive.

I wonder if there's something to be said for the hardcore community keeping the casual community going? I mean, the rich hardcore players are the at least a large amount of the ones who are buying the shit that the casuals are farming/crafting - be it for their main or their army of alts. The hardcore players are usually, because of the hours they put into raiding, lazier and more likely to buy stuff which is easy, but boring to obtain.

Ok I'm losing my train of thought here... But for example, every week, someone on Splitpaw benefits from my laziness by selling me the following:

Approx 1000 ferrite arrows
Approx 40-50 smoldering dust
Various bits and bobs, collections, armour, spells etc for whichever alts I'm currently working on

I feel like I'm missing something. I spend a lot on *stuff* anyway. I could level up a WW for my arrow demand, and I could actually offer my skills and make some ad3's for the dusts, but I'm fucking lazy, so I just spend money instead.

Illuminator · 03-10-2008, 12:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phrogg

sounds like someone is butt hurt cuz said guild cannot get thru the first wing of VP

In the old console days as I remembered them, the ability to complete the most popular games wasn't restricted to a starkly tapered-off elite. Because if all else failed we plugged in Game Genie and had our fun, devs be damned.

Kall · 03-10-2008, 12:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Illuminator

In the old console days as I remembered them, the ability to complete the most popular games wasn't restricted to a starkly tapered-off elite. Because if all else failed we plugged in Game Genie and had our fun, devs be damned.

Actually it kind of was.

Why do you think they made Nintendo games so fucking hard? Spelunker, Ghostbusters, Ghosts 'n Goblins , etc.

If you were able to beat one of these games you had fucking skills. It was something worth bragging about. Now, it's a rarity if you can't beat a game on Xbox or PS3.

HardcoreCasual · 03-10-2008, 12:10 PM

I've been playing for 4 years. I don't raid.
I'd love it if all raid content was removed and all the raiders went someplace else.

I don't think I'd see that big a dent in my server's population, and the bonus would be getting rid of all the bad apples. (Not that all raiders are bad, but all the twats are raiders.)

Snark · 03-10-2008, 12:12 PM

Beyond all prejudice and speculation, it SERIOUSLY seems like SOE is trying to make raiding contested this expansion as LEAST fun as possible.