snailish wrote:
The counter-argument that a fair number on official boards are giving is something like this:
-GoD was retuned after the playerbase perception damage was done. Due to timing a lot of people quit EQ before giving GoD a chance. GoD as it now stands has actually been a lot of fun on past progression servers for the top raiders to do.
-Combining the two expacs in the proposed timeline doesn't leave enough time for even the most hardcore (use all their lockouts) guild to really do all the raid content before the expac(s) [not clear if further bundling occurs] so it is relegating most of GoD content to "skip it" status.
-the expacs beyond OoW are where bundling actually needs to occur as 3-5 expacs are spent at certain level caps and it has traditionally been where progression servers truly lose population
Fair points. But the problem with GoD, even after retuning, is that it's basically only fun *for* the top raiders. It only becomes worth entering as a group/casual player *after* the level max bumps up to 70. I suppose it depends on who you're trying to please most. And, as you mention, if the issue is about maintaining population, which is going to cost you more? Giving the hardcore raiders time to do all the raid content in GoD with a level 65 cap also means giving everyone else no new content for the same period of time.
I'm not sure what the rules on Phinigel are with regard to progression. Do unlocks occur on a timer? When someone defeats certain top content? By vote? If it's a set timer, they can simply increase the time a bit to allow for raiding in both GoD and OoW, with the bonus that the more casual players can now actually enjoy the more group friendly OoW zones at the same time (and can play around in GoD if they want, but other than epic1.5 bits, I don't recall much at all of interest in any of those zones that wasn't raid based.
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My personal take is a little different in that I originally hated GoD, and OoW was the last straw for the first time I quit. I've since gone back and done a fair bit of the OoW non-raid game and it is pretty good aside from the insane mob abilities (GoD has that too) on all sorts of trash mobs.
Yeah. GoD sucked when it came out. Bad. It didn't help that PoP basically put a very hard dividing line on a lot of people's gear. And that dividing line was often purely numbers based. I absolutely hated that they created advancement blocking flagging events that required very very large raids, just to get into content which could be grouped. It was backwards from previous content progression methodologies and basically wiped out a large number of smaller casual raiding guilds since it was often easier faster for their more hardcore members to join some other guild's raids to get flagged and then group with those other folks for gear in the planes that they could access, but not the bulk of their own guild. Ykesha didn't really have anything that boosted gear. LDoN did, but this time went the other direction. The folks who could spend massive amounts of time grinding adventures could buy gear that was maybe an upgrade to what they had (if they weren't able to get elemental or better stuff in PoP). But for those who could only play a few hours at a time a few times a week? Too slow.
Which meant that when GoD came out, there were a number of people (like myself) still sporting basically Velious era gear (with maybe the occasional upgraded weapon or bit here or there) and more or less utterly incapable of handling GoD content. It wasn't until OoW came out that we could actually advance. The factioning was obnoxious, but you could acquire up to tier2 OoW gear without too much difficulty just by joining groups and killing stuff. Which was, at the time, a pretty nice upgrade (hah. But laughable compared to defiant of the same level range now, which I find funny).
So my perception was that OoW was the saving grace during that time period for many players. I also think it did help stop the bleeding that EQ had been experiencing. So yeah, bundling it with GoD is not a terrible idea. The fear is that if the more casual players get bored or frustrated, they're going to just leave (cause in this case, it's just one server, not the whole game as before). And if they do, most of them aren't going to come back once OoW comes out, where as they likely would not leave in the first place if it was out from the get go.
I just saw that entire era as a huge block for the more casually inclined players, so anything that pushes through it might not be a bad idea. Again though, I've never played on a progression server, so take my opinion with the massive block of salt that it requires.
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I'm also leery of the fact that it is heavy-duty raiders who are mostly complaining about this on the official boards. If the average to casual players get Natimbi as the only useful zone for 84 days that won't be good for the server. On the surface the idea of blending expacs that are not the same level cap does seem odd to me.
Yup. Well, to the whole "they just get Natimbi" bit anyway. Again, I suppose you could just have them continue playing around in the "older" content, but to be honest, there just wasn't that much that was good for casual players in the previous set anyway. How many folks are going to spend a significant amount of time doing the same LDoN missions (for example) when they know that once OoW comes out, they can get better gear anyway? So aside from tooling around the lower tier PoP zones (which have more or less zero rewards except exp), I'm not sure what there is to do for them. Luclin?
Then again, didn't GoD also include a big tradeskill revamp? I thought that's when the whole Abysmal Sea thing came out as well. Or am I mixing things up? I suppose that could give some players something to do, maybe. Not sure how the tradeskill stuff advances on these servers though.