The Spirit Realm

To me, 3 very important things happened to EQ since the last patch that I truly appreciate.

One: Since the last patch, I have had no lag spikes and only 1 crash. This is a HUGE improvement over pre-patch, and it significantly enhances the quality of my EQ experience. Bad news: I may start wanting to play it too much again

Two: The MMs have been made decent and even wonderful to play. The annoying features that various MMs exhibited in the past have have been eliminated (at least in the MMs I have played) - except for the annoyances that are intended as part of the challenge. The exploits seem to have all been fixed, and MMs are a much more enjoyable feature of EQ. MMs now have their rightful place in the EQ gaming system. People who like them will do them and enjoy them, and those that don't will find other things to do.

Three: The number of overall bugs, odd occurances, and just wierd events has dropped considerably since the last patch for me. I was worried that Sony was losing control of the EQ code, but they have definitely shown that they still are mostly in control of the EQ code base.

Thank you Sony

Glad EQ is making you happy. Just in case you'd like my perspective.

1. I've never had a problem with EQ in terms of bugs or crashes. Occasional (once a week) crash perhaps. Nothing much more or less.
2. MM's are the single worst thing EQ ever did for the long term health of the game.. Just my opinion. I know some will disagree.
3. See 1.

I wish they'd slow down the jumps in gear each expansion from its current 50hp to something closer to 20-25hp gains. I wish they'd increase the difficulty of raid content and require longer progressions to the end zones, and in parallel, release slightly fewer expansions, but far bigger in depth.

I also wish they'd stop releasing 'odd' expansions. The alien-like models are kinda starting to detract from the traditional fantasy game that I thought EQ was years ago. Give me another antonica, or another velious.

In all these years, a new dwarf, human, troll, or erudite city has never been found? My next dream expansion is that another antonica is found far across the seas. It split off from the main antonica thousands of years ago in a great cataclysm, that nearly destroyed the sister-antonica, and subjected its dwarf, elf, troll, etc.. as well as the mobs, to horrible periods of unstable weather, forcing them to become tougher than the relatively stable lands of the original antonica (blah blah setup for tougher content, new races, etc..). I think it'd be neat to have a bunch of new races, like what about ice dwarves, sand elves, sea trolls.. basically exactly the same just new models for a change.

Ungkor I liked your post. It made me think

As far as MMs go it would not be have been my choice as new content.
But at least they have stabilized them and there is no fear that one day they'll be dramatically changed. They also have finally fixed a lot of the original bugs that plagued them - imho they released DoD at least a month too soon. The big problem with releasing all this buggy content is it made EQ seem very amateurish, not a game to be taken seriously. Which is exactly the opposite of what EQ is at its core.

I agree with a much stronger statement than what you made. I believe that equipment inflation has gotten entirely of out of hand. I am hoping for a bit of stability in this area, at least for a while. Overall equipment inflation just makes the numbers bigger - but it reduces the joy out of working hard for equipment upgrades knowing that in another month it'll be replaced by something with bigger numbers.

One problem for Sony is that if they want to market an expansion that raises the level limit to 75 anytime soon - well that means people gotta be able to fight in RSS (mobs level 69 and less will be "trivial" content for level 75 ppl much as BOT is reduced xp for level 70s). Over time more and more casuals are making the move to MPG and to RSS. But its still a smallish percentage of the casual population. I guess we'll know soon whether Sony just drops mega-equipment down on Norrath so casuals can handle the level 71+ content, delays level 75 another 6 months (at which time a good number of casuals will be farming RSS regularly anyway), or adds casual content along with the raise to 75 to entice casuals to also get the expansion. What I think you are saying is that you want Sony to get back to basics - use the Feb expansion to fill in some of the gaps that exist in EQ rather than add any eye-candy type of funsy feature. If that is what you are saying I whole heartedly agree.

The core product that EQ sells is STRONG. They are straying from this, and hopefully they will return to it soon.

I've been in casual groups that can do RS, it isnt hard. I've been in a lot of casual groups for MPG. They both are just not hard.

Levels will go up, it's just a matter of "when?"

Yep

My guess is next release, Feb or Mar.
But possibly it might be the release after that.

I would be real surprised if level 70 were the max level next New Years.