Gundin

I first played EQ2 on release for about 18 months before job commitments forced me to quit, but while I was there EQ2 was enjoyable full of regular exp groups and questing at all levels.

In September 2007 I briefly came back for month, though quite a bit quieter there was still groups around and quests being done, unfortunately I was dragged away again due to work.

April 2008 I returned and found a waste land, most level channels were dead, there was virtually no exp groups going let alone lower teir instance groups, night after night the LFG window was blank, noone grouping or questing, I actually had a peroid of soloing of 3.5 hours where nothing was said in any level channel or the server community channel at peak times.

It all adds up to there is no new customers to EQ2, the entire populace of at least my server are lvl 80 who sometimes box twinked alts only logging in to raid or do open instances.

I think I saw someone say that at this time EQ2 is at about 18-20% of its player base at release, now from my experience which is quite extensive in business managment at this point you would be bending over backwards to please any remaining customers so they feel listened too and wanted because the best advertisement to attract new custom is from word of mouth from a happy customer and after reading some recent comments from SoE customer service rep's SoE clearly don't care about current or new customers which is my view somewhere high up in SoE the decision has been taken to wrap EQ2 as a investment or current project and just keep it running untill the profit turns into loss and then the switch gets flipped to off.

Lamil

just roll on naggy.

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Orochan

Ya naggy is full of people from all levels tbh.

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Slippery

Really it is what is going to happen over time, and it is just going to get worse and worse the more the level cap gets raised.

quasigenx

It won't get worse; they will just keep upping the xp rate.

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feldon30

From 69-80, there are 400 quests to be completed in Kunark. They are almost all linked which means they cannot be completed out-of-order. They added quest sharing and not 1 year later they broke the feature by putting in all these linked quests. The quests are given by different NPCs in different zones on a very narrow level range. Even though they're gigantic zones which cause people problems with their PCs and requires a lot of pointless running around to get to places, it's still like being in a long, narrow corridor to complete all the same quests in the exact same order. Imagine if EQ2 came with 1 character class. One-size-fits-all.

Unless you are lucky enough to find a duo or trio to do all those quests in the prescribed order all at the same time, it's going to be a long crawl. Only raid guilds seem to have the resources to get people up there fast.

And just to reinforce this "Kunark is a solo game" game design, combat XP for killing heroic yellow con mobs seems to be nonexistent. I remember getting 1% XP for tearing down yellow and orange con ^^^ Heroic mobs in dungeons in the 40's, 50's, and even low 60's. You don't get a fraction of that in Kunark. Also a lot of the nameds are for quests. You don't get any AA XP for killing them.

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Merlonus

sony ruined eq and its sequels when it bought it, bring verant back.

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FUCK THIS GAME AND FUCK YOU TOO.

PUSSY OVER AVATARS.

feldon30

I actually liked Faydwer, although I still think Kaladim and some of the other high level dungeons were made more difficult with cheap tactics like 4 minute respawns rather than creative level design.

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gungo

lol eq1 was hardly balanced and bug free when verant was in charge.
On the other hand didn't a large portion of what was verant switch over to vanguard's development staff? And how did that turn out again?
while not perfect eq2 is still one of the better mmo's.

Cuz

Brad's an idiot.

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Most of us promote responsible testosterone dick waggling. - Evangel