by Bruennor » Fri Jul 25, 2008 1:38 am
GoD had a lot of issues, those of you discussing it barely touched on the plethora of what happened.
I liked GoD personally, after I figured out attack-off tanking. Even so, I was high end raid geared for the time, and I got owned by kod taz named, and I had a ranger tanking for me about half the time I did jhiru, till debuffs were on. It was a very challenging expansion early on. Most players don't want that kind of challenge though, I thrived on it, but I love challenge, most folks don't want to go that extreme.
After LDoN, GoD brought about perfect groups required to do content, not a good idea. GoD brought about very long instances, meaning the sewers mostly, that were death traps at times, they were horribly tuned. GoD brought about all these perfect group scenario's right when a plethora of new games came wanting to compete with eq on it's own turf.
GoD in its entirety was horribly tuned, especially Tacvi. All the events were broken, for the most part. Ikkinz trials, uqua, inktuta. Champ script in txevu was constantly bugging, as was the high priest. I experienced it all first hand from uqua on, had school prior to that, and my classes were during raid times. GoD was nothing but a big brick wall for both groupers and raiders, and thats why the huge loss of players happened, that, and people had new games to test drive when their favorite let them down. My guild wasn't harmed by the change from 72 to 54 man raids, as we were a euro guild on an american server, so were hardly overflowing in members. The change in raid size probably affected some guilds, just like this newest proposed change will affect some guilds, but I doubt most of them felt the change, other than in the fact that their 45 could finally have raids tuned closer to their max numbers.
LDoN was a very popular expansion. You had 4 or 5 different types of missions in 5 different locales. You could pick normal or hard. You were not pigeon holed into one type of group, you could have a druid or shaman healing most of them with only minor difficulty. It promoted mixed class groups. It promoted typing /who lfg 60 65...and grabbing people who were actually lfg, not waiting till the perfect class to log on. LDoN was also very popular due to the fact that the top end group gear was very close to top end raid gear, and you were not required to do the hard missions to get this gear. Hard missions did require a pretty specific group, but it wasn't forced on players to play in it. It offered more points yes, and challenge, but groupers normally just want something to do, and people there to help them do it. Normal's offered them steady progression on both the new charm augment, and points to buy gear.
One funny thing about LDoN though...it sucked for raiders, and yet it was the highest rated expansion of the entire eq series, iirc. LDoN was made for post time guilds, it sucked for raiders, and yet the expansion was the most popular...why is that? Because this game used to be made up of more than just high end raiders, which is something that the more elitist high enders will learn the hard way, I think. LDoN was the groupers expansion, focused almost entirely on the grouper. That is a very telling blow towards raiding expansions and the decline of the player base in eq. Once SoE quit focusing on the grouper, and made content that was anti normal grouper, the groupers left. Once soe made that content, and on top of it made raid content that was almost undoable due to artificial bugs, a lot of raiders left. What made it even easier was the new games coming out.
I look at the change to 42 man as a step back to eq's roots. The dev's are starting to reorient on the little guys again, and the first thing to become public is soe focusing on the non high end raider. Mid tier guilds already get treated like red headed step children, so its about time they got some love. After jokes like Lethar and some SoF raids being made harder than ever after 6 to 12 months, and even longer, this only hurt the mid tier raider. Mid tier guilds were used as foot stools for higher guilds which caused a lot of in guild drama. Mid tier guilds are the ones who actually had to recruit people with 50 aa, while the high end guilds got their pick out of people with 800+. What I am saying is mid tier guilds made most of the high end raiders in today's game. Its about time they are getting some attention in a positive manner, that being the chance to have their forced lower numbers be sufficient for raids. As I said above though, if the dev's don't add a healthy helping of raids to SoD for these guilds, this change is pointless and just cruel. I think SoE knows this, and will have raid content for them in SoD.
Now, people can just cross their fingers and hope the dev's listened regarding group gear. Modern day group gear is a travesty to say the least. Visible slots are nice, save for the craptastic bp effects, but every other slot leaves a lot to be desired. The 42 man raid change is just the start I am hoping.
Anyway, pardon the long winded post. I am tired, and when I am tired I talk alot, be it verbally or on the forums. Have a good night.
Edit
Thats highly disappointing.