No Grand Finale for Spires Quests

It’s too bad EQ2 developers don’t really talk to the players about Live Events and instead make assumptions.

Over 2 years ago, the first Spires were being rebuilt. Tradeskillers did all the work, and then when the spire reached 100% completion, an Epic x4 dragon appeared, killing them all. Raid guilds swooped in and battled it out for the contested win. Some even swarmed the various zones by logging in dozens of alt characters to intentionally lag out other players to prevent them from successfully taking down the mob. In the end, the raid guilds got Titles and all the credit, and the tradeskillers, the ones who had done the work of building the Spires, got nothing but a bitter taste in their mouths.

This time around, I do believe the event developer wanted to make sure there was not a repeat of these hard feelings. Certainly, there were many precautions taken. First, participation in the Spire Rebuilding came in the form of solo quests, small group quests, harvesting, and tradeskilling. Second, there are a huge variety of awards available on the merchant, more than have ever been offered for a live event. Third, the quests varied depending on whether you were rebuilding a spire or attuning a spire.

With all of these precautions, I thought for certain that we could now safely and fairly have this Grand Finale when each spire neared completion. What with the event now encompassing 9 spires instead of 3, I thought more guilds would have a chance to participate in the event. And every player who had the smallest part to play in the event still got something.

I’ve taken a small part in these events myself. Not only the repeatable quests, but  when the spire in Zek reached 30%, a cry of frustration rang out from other players who gave up and moved on to other spires. Four of us grouped up and defeated the 84^^^, allowing the Zek Spire Rebuild to continue. So I had been looking forward to dealing with the forthcoming x2 mob, and eventually (presumably) a x4 raid mob.

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So I was disappointed to read this account from Hellswrath of the Alliance Guilds of Blackburrow and how their completion of the Everfrost Spire turned out:

First, I would like to say a big congratulations to everyone in the Blackburrow Guild Alliance for their hard work over two days in first building the Everfrost spire to 100%, and then starting all over and aligning it to 100% too!  An awesome job and a lot of hard work for two days straight!  Also, thank you to everyone else who helped on the spire, even for a little while!

Next, I’ll give a quick breakdown of the spire event to all those who are wondering what goodies these spires hold for those willing to put in the effort to complete them!

As most know, the spires in Zek, Everfrost, Lavastorm, and Loping Plains need to be built while the ones in CL, ANT, EL, Feerrott, Nek, and TS are already built and need to be aligned.

While being built, the spire in EF spawned a lvl 84 ^^^ heroic mob at 30%.  The mob killed all npcs and most low level alts doing the spire quests until he was taken down.  The reward for killing the spawned heroic was a small chest that gave 20 spire tokens to each group member.

The spire progressed as normal until it hit 90%, when it spawned a x2 epic.  It was a mob that looked very similar to the heroic, and gave 50 spire tokens to each raid member for killing him.

At 100%…….the spire reset back to 0%.  lol, yes, after all that work we needed to start all over again.  So we picked up again the next day and ground it out again.  While we expected another spawned mob or two, nothing happened by 70%, so we figured the next one would be a logical progression to an epic x4.  By the time we approached 100%, we had a full raid of people who had all been spending time building this spire.  The lowest contributor was a couple hours, the highest was somewhere well over 20 active hours.

It was the way it should be, with most of the people who had spent all their time to build the spire being the ones to get the epic pull and the credit.  Even the people from other guilds who came to look at getting in on the kill were gracious about being politely turned away.

We hit 100%, the spire completed, and . . . . . nothing happened.

Not a thing.  We stood around looking for a mob, checked track, checked the quest npcs and the spire itself to see if we were missing something.

Nope.  There was simply no point to completing this live event.  I must say that a full raid of great people (and many who were cheering on from the sidelines who had helped as well) went away feeling dispirited about the complete lack of reward for all this work.

That being said, thanks again to all those from Alpha Legion that entertained this crazy notion and stayed with us for a ridiculous amount of time to finish this event!  And a huge thanks to everyone who joined us from Casual Alliance, Wayward Waifs, Vainglory, Solace, and everyone else in the Blackburrow Alliance (and outside, too) who took their time to come hang out and grind out this spire to completion!  Awesome job!

I believe if, during Testing, or even the planning of the event, a dialogue had been opened with players asking what they felt was Good or Bad about the past Spires event and how these concerns could have been mitigated, watering this event down would not have been necessary.

It seems there is a dichotomy within the EQ2 team of what is easy, what is just plain tedious, and what is difficult, and decision after decision proves that these definitions are unclear. There is only one reliable way they’re going to find out how players feel about difficulty and fairness– ask the players. Yet this tool is ignored far too often.