Feldon 
note that the Skyshrine item is on the LEFT side in the above image (sorry!)
Conclusions
If you’re looking at some of these items and thinking to yourself “well, what’s the big deal here? They’re just similar in stats.”, realize that Drunder HM is still current raid content that only seven (7) guilds in the world have cleared. And as for Plane of War items, after these screenshots were taken, it seems that most of the Plane of War items have been re-run through the famous GU61 Reitemization Script. Many unique effects and stats on Plane of War items have been removed in favor of generic stats which render the items in some cases worse than Skyshrine raid gear (which has ALREADY been mostly cleared by at least one HM raid guild), despite assurances that Plane of War would remain relevant for the foreseeable future.
As for me, I see no reason to raid Drunder x2 or any Drunder content anymore, except for Primal Velium Shards, Pure Primal Velium Shards, and maybe to unlock War Runes (special red adornments which, once unlocked, can be purchased for yourself and alts ad nauseum).
EQ2Wire Asks You! Will Skyshrine on its own be enough content to keep players interested and running the loot chase through until November or December?
Very nice article, thank you for posting it. I am looking forward to playing the game into the future. I may add, your right, Flourchild is a very good raid leader and she has been so helpfull to complete strangers. Thank you Flourchild for your generocity. Thank you Feldon for your un-ending articles that give players a lot of information just clicks away.
Spot on Feldon! In my opinion there will not be enough content to get us to the next content update. Also, for only a 2 level upgrade the level of the gear upgrades is just insane. They made almost all DoV part 1 gear obsolete.
One suggestion though… Find out where some of the gear in your pictures comes from and fix the captions. “I’m guess it’s a heroic drop” doesn’t reflect well on your journalistic article.
It seems to me that farming this new content and powerful gear will give the average raid guild their only chance to progress in HM Drunder, Tormax, Statue. Maybe this was the goal.
What is the point of progressing HM drunder if rewards from skyshrine heroic and group contested out class it?
War Runes. 😉
@ATAN, achievement point ?
Nope, I left the day 63 went live. Too bad too, I really liked this game, but the past year has killed it for me.
Saw this coming. I can’t call what SOE has a ‘learning curve’, on account if it remaining roughly horizontal…
From what I’ve seen of the new gear, you’ll still want old gear for war rune slots and the war runes for certain utility uses. Most of the new procs I’ve seen are generic and replace some existing runes, but the utility ones are not going to be easily replaced — if they even have items with replacements of those effects on them at all.
I think the trash truck has skipped your block for the last week or 10 😉
Yay, for still killing tormax just for Split Second Redemption? =/
We’ve not seen all the gear/procs in 2.0, but I wont be surprised if even less is desired from 1.0 than what little we currently speculate is now.
The Sullon bow is actually a lot better than the Xanadu pic you have.
I have ended my subscription with the release of Skyshrine.
Maybe I have just lost that drive to play anymore, I mean if you think about wait for a new GU to come out, and they will hand you the stuff from the previous one. So why waste so many nights raiding and progressing, when you will just be given the stuff later?
Just my opinion…
Feldon,
I haven’t searched extensively on this subject yet but is the inability to cross over from Skyshrine 1 to lets say Skyshrine 3 going to be added?
This has caused many players much grief making us zone out to Wakening Lands and then zone back into Skyshrine hoping you meet the rest of your group.
As of now there is no way to transfer between them (that I know of).
@shadowed: /zone_to_group_member_zone Name
Yeah, when dov came out the reason to do sentinal’s fate stuff was easier yellow adorns until you got enough white shards to adorn your gear with the new yellow stuff but was a tiny bit overlap.
Seems like the only reason to do raids now are to get blue shards for red slots. and white shards for yellow slots the multiple slots you get now. 🙂
If anything woulda been nice if instead of just complete exploding the gear curve to have recipes to add yellow red or an additional white slot to existing gear instead of TOTALLY making it obsolete.
I do have to agree with Feldon’s article. This “expansion” has had some FANTASTIC art assets and animation effects.
The way I look at it, Quality over Quantity. EQ2 and EQ1 are both heavily inflated with expansion content, while other MMOs that have had either no expansions at all, or probably at most 2-3 seem to still have a large player base supporting them. If you build a good enough MMO, people will keep playing it, but there will always be the type who jump ship to look for greener pastures. The way SOE is trying to prevent it has yet to work, and I doubt it ever will. They may come back for a little while, but once they did everything or give up trying, they leave again. Trying to fight that, is a losing battle. Instead SOE just needs to focus on making quality content rather then rushing it. I for one tend to juggle multiple games, and sometimes go back to old games for nostalgic reasons. I went back to Anarchy Online, DaoC, WoW, CoH/CO STO, and a few others many times to relive the experience. There are times in a game where I come across a difficult puzzle/mob/quest that once I beat, I vow never to attempt again.
They made the gear too good. Realistically the gear from the EM Skyshrine raids should have been between HM DoV and HM Drunder in quality, allowing people to still gain from Drunder raids that most people haven’t done anyways.
However that isn’t the case at all. I don’t think it would be a stretch at all to say I have the best geared guild in the game, and almost every single piece of gear that dropped from EM content that we could probably 2 group was an upgrade for someone.
Not only that, they doubled down on the heroic instance 90 minute timer. So people are going to burn the heroic content in no time.
It’s pretty obvious IMO of what needs to be done. This not being a true expantion, SOE needs to massively upgrade the raid gear from Drunder and HM drunder, along with the other zones to come into line with the new gear that is out. Seeing the stuff coming out of just heroic zones is a slap in the face of us HM raiders.
So correct me if I’m wrong, but there are only 5 new zones(art – wise) in the game update. Withered lands, skyshine, Covenant District ,Lyceum of the Recondite, and Dracur Prime. Every zone is the art of one of those 5 zones? I’m not trying to rush through the content, so I havn’t touched any of the heroic or raid zones. Can anyone confirm this? (Side note: the new mob art is very nice, at least.)
I’m betting they’ll toss in a few more zones when the Qeynos revamp happens. Possibly something the size of drunder.
Either way there’s enough content in both DOV 1 and 2 to keep my group busy until december easily. We’re pretty much pushing into kael zones and won’t likely run any of the new heroics until we’ve cleared through drunder and eow. So we’re good for awhile.
I do hope they toss out some new zones during the revamp time simply to give the more hardcore something to do. Those people blow through content way faster than most so they’ll need an update. There’s probably enough content to keep nearly everyone busy till the revamp but if nothing more is added at that time we’ll be running short.
@Rocky -2 two zones(artwise).. I think.
Skyshrine is made up of three areas, Covenant District, Lyceum of the Recondite, dracur prime. then there is the withered lands.
In various times, skyshrine areas existed in various “instances”.
Otherwise, I just want to know where if my Siren’s Grotto!!! Ya know if Cobalt scar is like the cliff area off of Eastern Wastes.
..Still think they shoulda allow upgrade paths through additional adornment slots or adornment merging…. 🙂 5% crit bonus + 5% critbonus = 10% crit bonus.. they didn’t HAVE to reset gear.. grumble.
So does anyone know what we’re getting for Christmas this year? What’s the expansion that’s going to ‘redefine expansions’?
The totally unsubstantiated story I’ve gotten is that it will be a content expansion again.
Sorry, but that’s a cop out.
@Noctew Does that definitely work in Skyshrine?
The usual right click and zone to group member didn’t work.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Make the gear too good, it screws earlier content. Don’t make it good enough, no-one will do it. Make it “just” good enough, everyone will complain they *have* to do it but it’s hardly worth the bother.
Make gear easy to get, the game’s been dumbed down. Make it hard to get, it’s elitist. Add lots of content for all levels, it’s a kick-in-the-teeth for veterans. Add lots of high level content it’s a kick-in-the-teeth for casuals.
Release big expansions often, they’re buggy, untested and a rip-off. Take a long time getting content bug-free and it’s too little, too late. Etc etc etc.
In seven years EQ2 has lurched around in all kinds of directions and I’ve played it throughout. There have been lengthy periods (TSO/SF/DoV) when development was largely focused on things in which I had no interest and which I never used. Post-DoV, development has gone in another direction that suits me much better, but no doubt really bugs the hell out of people who broadly enjoyed where the game was going before.
In the end they have to make choices and whatever choices they make will irritate some and enthuse others. I’m just going to enjoy it while it’s working in my favor. I’m sure the pendulum will swing the other way soon enough.
“Just” good enough in my book and in what, I think, this article is trying to say is “just good enough” is relative to difficulty or accessibility of content to the reward. Unless you only for the experience it about reward. Gear, consumables, story bits, achievements or otherwise.
You’re comment *have* to do it was why I was excited about a mix of solo/duo, heroic, heroic challenge, x2 raid, and x4 raid content.
Then they went make made the solo/duo, heroic stuff better then x4 raid content.
so… its a gap instead of a overlap in content was my beef. luckily adornments might or shards might leave at least some (gear/reward) reason to do dov part1 content.
my other beef this content missed the boat on x2 raid *zones* versus x2 raid mobs to compliment the x4 raid *zone* content.
By the way–where’s the storyline? What happened to wrapping up Age’s End? Or were Smed and SJ just talking out their butts again?
Final Showdown With Kerafyrm on Luclin’s Remnants in 2012!!!
(OK, that’s a personal wish from my lore blatherings, but it would be cool!)
@Bhagpuss
I reject your premise about gear. In your example gear is the reward, I don’t believe that’s true. Fact of the matter is that mmos are terrible rpgs. Gear should only be a means to bring people together to do zones. While it’s true that alot of people just want the shiny gear, the strongest element of a mmo is the social aspect. Meeting people, and grouping should be what the gameplay elements push people towards.
As Feldon said “Thou shalt make content that lasts!” — The First Commandment of MMO Design
Having people form guilds, and push each other to complete hard instances is what keeps people around.(From the adventure side of things anyway) It becomes a goal that can only be achieved when everyone works together. The dungeon finder was a good idea to bring in people who don’t normally group into grouping, but we all know how hard that failed.(Why they don’t have a dungeon finder for dungeon maker is beyond me.)
Anyway as far as easy/hard it should just be a simple curve. That said it’s alot harder in pratice, but soe has only been doing it for many many years. :p
I really think that there isn’t that much developer power behind eq2 anymore. Which is why the wheels are coming off this ride.
I believe re-itemization of Drunder HM and PoW is a foregone conclusion at this point.
I have a question for “golden age” players, if it was ever truly “golden”:
with each level rise, was prior tier HM raid gear ALWAYS only replacable by current tier HM gear?
If that’s the case, I get why they changed it: to get raiders to play more than just raid zones. The new gear is higher level so I’m not shocked that it looks a tier higher than <= 90 gear. I agree with some of the comments, but I'm not surprise that the gear is bumped like it is.
Ah, good old EQ2. It’s really become that tacky house on the street with too many lawn ornaments, hasn’t it?
It looks to me that someone really didn’t figure out the itemisation of gear there, there was no need to make it all as good as they did, at least for EM mode raiders.
To add to the problem too each new item not only has more crit bonus, prime stat etc as we would expect, but also ever more dps, attack speed, reuse speed etc, stats that cap very easily. I personally see no need to continually increase these stats as too many of them devalues support classes in the game.
E.g. an item with 190 AGI, 5 crit bonus and 2% reuse speed for example.
Now replace it with 230 AGI, 10 crit bonus and 2% reuse speed, that’s a solid and very appealing upgrade.
But not to SOE, in the above example the upgrade would likely have 4% reuse speed, they have to continually increase the hard percentage stats like reuse speed even though they know they have nowhere to go on them …
Eventually this expansion or the next everyone ends up sporting 100% of everything and itemisation breaks like crit chance did for SF 🙁
I thing somebody are missing a BIG point:: Have you still fun, or not, to play this game (and yes, it’s just a game, not life). For what I’ve seen in two intensive game days, the solo content (instances and quests) is pleasant, normal group instances ranged from quite easy (if you’re rightly stuffed, and if you don’t, rewards from quests and/or mastercrafted items will allow you to do the job; Challenging group instances are that, challenging (at least for me and my mix-EM/HM stuffed guildies); I can’t talk about raid, not tried yet.
Elite researcher items are great (too great?) but need quite a lot of compo, so you’ll have to farm instances => Another time sink?
So, I don’t now how long this will last, but for now, I enjoy playing my main character and I no longer split my gaming time only between raiding and leveling alt #xx. So that’s good, for the moment.
Considering we where running on mere fumes of DoV content for over a year now, Skyshrine may actually do a better job. DoV Launched completely broken to begin with, Including a whole itemization revamp that was unnecessary and warned about in BETA .. Only to have on top of that Nothing but extremely difficult content to try to block/rail road the high end from getting there fast. Which did nothing but added to the mass leaving and fueling people to go of to Rift …
The only hope after that was Drunder, which again the screwed up badly by building more content that was even higher then Keal Group zones which where not even done by the lower base of the game at that point. Drunder was an epic waste, and the gear in there could not even be used to farm for itself for you needed Raid gear just to function at a normal rate in there. Drunder has only became operable in the past few months with the massive tone down changes…
Personally if they came out with skyshrine haveing lower tiered gear in any form then drunder you might was well stop playing, because there is no point of new content comeing out that is sporting the need to recycle the mess that DoV was. Majority of the people are tired of it.
DoV and Drunder were too hard, and I think I made that point. 😉
They should have been dialed down dramatically over the months. Crit Mit should have been reduced 25% across the board in October.
As for Skyshrine, ask any kid if they want to go to a restaurant that only serves dessert, and they’ll say “Sure!” Yes, I’ll be running Skyshrine solo/duo/molo instances and group contested and instances and gorging myself on all that amazing gear that requires no effort. And maybe I’ll hop into Skyshrine EM PuGs if they’re as easy as people are saying. But what am I going to do for June-December?
Skyshrine should have been like a Shard of Hate addition. Something for everyone, but doesn’t trash the progression.
As for content lasting…between the many many alt, who are also crafters, Queynos revamp and Diablo 3 releasing I’ll have no trouble wasting time gaming between now and Christmas.
The content isn’t enough.
Its quality, I’ll give it that, doing the first Skyshrine access quest to grab my shiny new shoulders (replacing EM Kael) was some of the most fun playing the game I’ve had in a long time.
But its like a puff pastry or the stereotype of Chinese food… not very filling and in the end will leave one wanting more.
And waiting until the end of the year / beginning of next for something new is going to mean running out of things to do rather quickly.
Oh and while the gear does have crazy stats, I’m sure it will be nerfed in the very near future. That’s something our Devs have down pat.
I look at it this way.
A lvl 92 should have gear with these stats. Getting much of the player base at that level of gear will make things easier on players looking for groups and devs alike. However, all of the heroic content doesn’t have red adornment slots. You’ll have to farm the raids for those, presuming the drops are tuned right.. no sure bet there.
But it does mean much of prior velious is a moot point.
This… for real. Don’t get me wrong I like the content its necessary “width” to the options for grouping at level 90+. And…
92 gear for Plane of war? Only thing at this point makes sense. Unless the new zones are Plane of War x6 or Rallos Zek’s Bedroom[Challenge 100^^^] are the new zones coming out soon.
I am a new player. I started playing when EQ2 went F2P. So I was annoyed when I read about the 280AA limitation on progressing to 92. I only had about 180 AAs. And I think that’s the piece that is lacking in this discussion. Look at the gear that’s on par with the DoV raid gear – it’s for level 92 players. Meaning folks like me can’t use it. Only folks who have put in their time so to speak. I think that makes sense.
What I get out of the expansion is a couple of upgrades (I am already in RyGorr) that will allow me to progress easier through the older content in order to finish the 280AA requirement. So far I’ve upgraded 3 items. But all three were minor upgrades.
This doesn’t break progression. This allows folks who have been treading water at 90 with max AAs but NOT getting raid gear to gear up. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
just my opinion 🙂
I want to add, alot of this itemization is a sheep in wolves clothing. The most important stat is crit chance, and so far I’m seeing new gear with lots of other really nice stats, but not quite as much crit chance of what I am already wearing.
This is sobering with the first raid zone boss mob is looking for 390 CC. I max out at 400 currently, and that means I can’t equip some of the new gear so far and still meet the CC requirements.
Maybe others are seeing different gear that is pushing their CC up (and certainly if you didn’t have drunder gear / EoE / Rares / etc, you may consider the new stuff to be a CC upgrade). Looking at things like charms, belts, weapons, etc. I’m seeing loads of MA and other nice stuff, but 5-10 less CC than my DoV 1.0 gear.
lol wolf in sheep’s clothing… I need more coffee before I post!
I haven’t looked a ton at the CC (not as much as @ATAN) on the latest gear comparatively. But the thing I did notice was that Mitigation was atleast .8% lower per item than “of the Citadel” items.
The blue stats, specifically multiattack are great, but if you play a tank you may want to think twice before using the Skyshrine gear.
Going from HM Drunder and PoW into Skyshrine easy content you’ll find:
– small upgrades on some items, downgrades on other
– a lot of jewelry is already plain better than old stuff (rings for example)
– lots of white slots
– missing red slots on cloaks, belts, weapons, secondary, ranged (this really sucks….) Inability to use the nice war runes we’ve come to unlock
– a lack of raid content now that HM drunder is pretty much worthless
What you’ll enjoy:
– it’s now super easy to upgrade any alt characters you didn’t have much loot on. Grab some quest/new heroic gear, and you’ll be good to go. Most of the new content is very easy, you don’t need much old raid gear to be competent in anything except maybe the new HM fights.
That’s the way it is for me as well. I’m ending up being very picky in armor and such for my tank due to both the lower mit and in some cases stats that simply aren’t impressive enough for me to jump to the new stuff over my old. Granted i’m not terribly far into the new stuff yet, still working our way through quests.
Yeah i’m getting nice upgrades for my characters that arn’t as geared as my tank but i think some of the complaints on the gear are overrated. Not that there arn’t some items that look really powerful compared to dov 1. I think Atan’s right in that they will have to upgrad POW gear. I’ve seen some disco’d on Oasis for the last few weeks and it looks like some really nice gear but if it’s meant to be top dog right now they’ll need to make some adjustments.
As for content, as i said above i don’t think they will leave us till december with nothing new, you’d run out of stuff before then. I still think they’ll toss out some new zones when the qeynos revamp comes in. Which will actually shove my group even farther behind than we already are. So many quests to get done yet in all the DOV 1 zones and now the new stuff as well. Ah well, makes it fun for us.
Please update u.eq2wire.com to allow item searches for items above level 90
@Atan: That boss mob is a HM mob. I don’t know why they did that, but the rest of the zone is EM and only the boss is HM.
The fact that the new gear is better in many ways apart from CC sucks balls. That means people who need the CC to raid get to pass up gear that is better in many ways except for the CC simply for the privilege of raiding. Nothing enjoyable about that.
The game has been incredibly dumbed down. As of 04/18 according to Equilibrium members on flames they’ve cleared the ENTIRE content that this game had to offer raid wise, in what less then two days of the GU being released?
Already on Guk our top 8 to 10 guilds on the server are clearing the first EM zone, with the only reason the second raid zone not being cleared (by some, but not all) is do to the fact that some players are not meeting the level 92 requirement yet. At this rate the world wide top 150 to 200 guilds at least are going to plow through this entire content in less then a month or two or even before the mastercrafted items get finished being researched lol….
This game isn’t going to last past the summer at this rate. I won’t be surprised if allot of guilds just wither up and die before the end of summer.
I apologize if I sound so pessimistic, but the reality of it is, this game just effectively obsoleted all prior content to GU63 and the GU itself lasted barely two days for some players. What’s left to be played? broken and gimp geared POW? Whats even left to say for this game?
Just thinking about it… to add onto my intial post, the reason why I’m so discouraged, is because I do enjoy this game and have had a good couple years playing it. But the downfall of it for me is this…(and please understand I’m not saying this to sound *badass* or be *leet* or *cool* or any other dumb troll remarks people may imply) just to make a simple point representing prolly more of a normal player.
I’m in a guild ranked 112th (to Dov 1 listing), were what you could consider a well organized, but casual raid guild that has completed all EM and had solid HM kills to an extent under our belt.
The point of my discouragement is this;
I play a scout and in one day I went from 217 cb (which took me and my guild all of since realise of Dov 1 for us to accomplish at our pace) One day after the GU63 realese I jumped to 280 crit bonus. (I gained only roughly 20 of from the prestige effects) In one day doing the access quest which took me and my guildmates all of an easy 3 hours (the mobs in the ENTIRE GU63 are so easily weak its sad) to do and to subsequently unlock all heroic content and raid zone for the night.
I got 8 new items in one day (this may sound great, but in the long term its really not especially if your worried about the game being reveleant and lasting) So now I was normally accustomed to doing roughly 250 to 350k on named fights which is on par for most of MY casual guilds top players. Just last night, I din’t hit below 400k with hits being between 400k to an upwards of almost 600k, granted its easymode, but the point I’m trying to make using the above example, is that all those gating tools SOE used to use to make people strive to achieve goals set are now gone. Sure I’ll play this game for about probably the next maybe month it takes my casual guild’s pace to beat this GU at this point…but the problem I’ll soon face like most of you reading this is what are you going to do next? whats left?
I’ve been talking in game and posting all over the official soe forums that this GU was not a good idea, because of the facts mentioned above. ROK, TSO, SF and DOV1 had challenges, goals to strive towards and people coordinating to play. At the end of all those expac begining anew into each other, I felt fine with what I had accomplised. I don’t feel fine that I’m about to accomplish whats now left to play in less then a month.
I apologize for the long-windedness and my intent wasn’t to troll any of you or make myself look good. Its just for me the fear of what this GU represented came true and this game has pretty much died for me. I hope you all enjoy it while it still lasts.
It’s a way for them to get $$ from the silver accounts. Since we have to pay for item and spell unlockers.
All Game Update 63 really was, was a complete slap to the face to anyone who has spent more than 6+ months raiding the DoV and Drunder content. The entire notion of progressing through them – all the hard work every raid guild and/or alliance has put in since DoV came out is completely gone now, because the Skyshrine solo quested gear is just as good as EM DoV gear, and Skyshrine heroic instance gear is just as good as HM Drunder gear. Seriously Feldon…wtf?
It’s really upsetting to me to see so many people who have invested so much time into this game have all their time and effort completely made useless by SOE, because of SOE’s inability to actually design an MMO. Yes, I understand that as time goes on more and more content is released, but the problem is – very few people actually got to experience let alone conquer what was the endline content (HM Drunder, Plane of War), and now those zones have been rendered completely worthless because of Game Update 63.
It’s like I said – Game Update 63 was specifically designed for the casual player in order to completely reset progression and itemization and put everyone back on equal ground. The casual player might praise this move, but for any raider who has invested a lot of their time into progressing through both the DoV and Drunder content…it’s just…beyond upsetting to see all the effort and all that time completely wasted now. I couldn’t wait to get into Plane of War, and my raid guild was so close to getting there – and now we have zero reason to go into Plane of War and are now completely skipping it. We might has well have just stopped all raiding over the past 6 months, and not have bothered with the HM Drunder zones.
i realize, that this GU hurts raiders, and if i were a raider, id be equally upset that my hard work has been trivalized. that said…
for our guild, this has been a awesome boost, we are a small guild that has had it’s share of problems with maintaining a consistant player base, this has greatly increased our options in going to see the zones that require raid gear to even step into. not saying all of you dont have good points, you do, but for us, this has really rocked 🙂 love the update, hopefully they can put in raids that will balance things for the more hardcore guilds, as feldon said alot of the problem is the screwed up way that they set the gear checks
I don’t see how the game lasts after GW2 goes live.
@Tarb
You mean besides the fact that GW2 is a crap game. I know this is shocking to people like you but not everyone wants to play GW2. In fact i’m betting not even a majority of people even care that GW2 is coming out. Or that diablo 3 is coming out, or that plenty of other games are coming out, the majority of people who care about those are already long gone. Not everyone likes what you like, amazing concept i know but it’s true.
Hilarious dude.
I wasnt saying people have to like what I like or that everyone will play it, I was just making the point of with all the big titles coming out this year I don’t see how EQ2 can keep up releasing content that people can complete in short order and then have nothing to do until November.
I think, overall, they have a pretty nice idea here. The thing that makes it work is the crit chance. The hm raid content, whether it’s PoW or Skyshrine HM requires a lot of crit chance. If all you have is Skyshrine heroic or quested you’re not gonna do anything in those zones. You’ll be able to knock thru the easy mode Underdepths and stuff, but the real challenging content is going to remain challenging. Though, if your guild is half-way thru HM drunder you may be able to mixnmatch with Skyshrine enuf to kill the boar and get to the fields of PoW trash.
Equilibrium stomped a few of the new hard modes already, but I think they’re the only ones to do so. We pulled Sevalak and Vyskudra tonight and were’nt able to do much more than tickle either one.
So, they made a lot of content and shiny new gear for the masses without trivializing the toughest mobs. And I’m sure more itemization tweaks will be coming as the balance becomes clearer.
I think the concern of not having many difficult encounters left if new content isn’t coming til winter is a legit one though. Can’t imagine the 8 PoW and 4 Skyshrine mobs we have left taking 8 months to complete…hope not anyway.
After being burnt out trying to chase 280AAs for merely three of my 21 characters my subscription went elsewhere.
Guess Lyndro has driven off the raiders (lack of content with old content erased) and the casuals (putting an AA requirement to advance in overland) this time.
I’m really enjoying my new game a lot.
@Jay What are you playing now ? Always interesting to hear what people who enjoyed EQ2 find afterwards, most times … its worthy trying
21 characters? You don’t think maybe that had something to do with burnout more than “chasing” AA? Burnout had its foot in the door already. If they would have raised levels to 100 and AA stayed the same, then the blame would be towards “chasing” levels.
Its an mmorpg, and despite this ones many many faults, level increases, gear upgrades, alternate leveling methods are all part of the game and should be expected instead of coming as a surprise.
Somehow, I don’t think people with a handful of regularly played characters are blaming burnout whenever increases happen. But I could see where it could get to be an incredibly undertaking with 21 toons.
@Tarb
I’m with you on the need for more content. My group is far from caught up but i know others are right up there already. With only six group zones, three normal and three challenge, in this update i can’t think they will take till november to release more content unless they give compelling proof that the content coming out will be truly massive. That might get people to wait that long but they would need some really impressive proof.
I’m not really looking for different MMO’s right now, still having plenty of fun on EQ2. But who knows, eventually my group might catch up and burn out. It happens to plenty of people, especially on older games as newer games come out.
I hope they don’t continue the trend of one overland zone and one dungeon broken into 3 areas and 3 instances that are the same for raids and solo instances.
I think they’re doing that because it’s a money saver. You can just reload the same textures and use the same zone again and again to handle solo all the way to raids.
I agree that it can get very boring to fight through a zone and then you simply do the exact same zone layout just in an instance instead of a contested. Granted TOFS and the rime zones aren’t like that so it’s not like that’s the main way they make zones. But it still feels like a way to dodge having to come up with more zone layouts. Though i will say the art in GU63 is very well done, some of the best they’ve put out.
I’m not sure what the median should be between overland and instances. In kunark we had four huge overland zones on launch but only a handful of instances and a couple contested. When they switched to the TSO model they had a small overland but lots of instances as well as a contested or two in SF and later. Both styles appeal to lots of people depending on if they want to run overland quests or run instances.
@ THAIT; regarding your first comment: Yes the raw mitigation stat is lower but usually the new pieces have some blue mitigation % stat that makes up for it. And though most of the legendary instance pieces are better than EM Kael gear, I haven’t seen anything I’d switch out any of my HM Kael or EM Drunder items with yet.
@ the slap in the face of the raiding community people: While I understand the frustration if you are raiding ONLY for gear, I would hope more people raid to challenge themselves and have fun, than for just the gear alone.
And now that I’ve gone into all of the heroic instances up there, I see the content losing it’s shiny new smell rather quickly. People are going to be bored of it in a short amount of time. One can hope that alot of people will go back to progress in DOV1 but for the top guilds who are already finished with progression I see dark times ahead.
I don’t know about you guys, but with all the new gear and adornments, I’ve almost run out of Primal Velium Shard’s. I’m going to need to run a few old zones to get them back! I might see if I can do a pickup EM raid also, for the Pure.
I love the article, but the first commandment of mmo design is lasting content?
I played D&D as a kid, and I can tell you a large part of the genre’s fun is amassing power.
If you are standing still, the playerbase wont be happy. Lasting content is how you ruin a game. if you level up to level 2, and you still struggle with level 1 mobs the same way, it will significantly demotivate you to keep leveling up or ever play the game again.
I take gu63 EM content to be a bridge between vanilla HM dov and drunder HM dov or PoW. its offering 55 cc waists, when the first name in HM drunder has 65cc waist.
gu63 is like training wheels for PoW.
Funny I played D&D too, and the biggest fear of any Dungeon Master was the characters getting too powerful too quickly. Each D&D session had to have interesting stuff to do, some kind of cool story, D&D was only built for character level 20, and gaining new equipment was a HUGE deal. Gaining 1 point of a primary stat was a huge deal. It was not even expected that you would gain a level during a 3-4 hour play session.
oh, btw, i love the multidimensional thing for skyshrine.
there isnt a lot of content, and there is a poor implementation of where skyshrine actually exists in relation to other zones, but the concept of dragonsight to see portals, and forbidden city being on top of draccur is great imo.
i just wish you could see the city when you arent there, like background art while in withering lands. when you are in sinking sands you can see majdul, when you are in great divide you can see tserinas tower.
feels like i click on a griffon tamer and someone hits me on the head so i pass out and cant remember how to get there. no idea where it is in relation to anything else. too nebulous transition.
@ Venomizer: Did you look up while in WL? You can see the Skyshrine from below.
As pretty as Skyshrine is, it would seem that’s all that is appealing about the game update the ARTWORK, and more likely what SoE spent many of their working hours doing.
As Arabel and many others said, we (the WE being still only 5 guilds WW btw) spent many hours clearing through Drunder; its HM version of the content with one goal…..to unlock the coveted Plane of War Raid zone.
Something developers were hailing as the be all and end all of content due to its difficulty, and the gear we would obtain. Not to mention mythical weapons from Drunder Challenge mode.
GU63 has bought us better gear in certain areas than “said Plane of War raidzone, from what we have seen so far I will add.
It has given everyone and anyone the ability to acquire a Mythical item with relative ease…..hang on a minute, doesn’t mythical mean almost unheard of?? As in Pigs flying, ehich reminds me I better get back to looking for those.
All of the above being a mahoosive slap in the face to the people that spent massive hours in certain zones. Co-ordinate(d) their efforts toward killing what has yet to be cleared, and replaced it with crap that is for the most part tank n spank if your raid has the DPS.
Another well played out part from SoE, and they expect this to last until November this year. Get a grip Smokejumper
@Feldon
exactly. the DM is worried about you gaining levels too fast. why is he so worried?
if you were ambivalent to leveling, it wouldnt be a problem keeping you down.
your comment reinforces the drive players have to advance. this is a defining element of the genre.
lasting content reminds players they cant beat it. the more conquered content, the more inflated players egos can become.
the sense of satisfaction, as a psych reward, is interwoven to eq2 at its core. stopping progression would drastically change the demographic. likely to ‘hello kitty’ or 2nd Life crowd.
not all ppl play for advancement reasons, but its a base part of the game, upon which all accept as base rules, including hearts, diamonds, clovers, and even spades like leoros.
I hope this is no the end of the Velious Story 🙁 No Western Wastes for example would make it feel incomplete. Especially after Smokejumber has alluded to it in the past. I love the GU so far and hope they at least release 1 more velious zone before they move on.
UPDATE EPICS WEAPONS PLZ – one think Kunark gave the Player base was aunified goal we all worked for and that was awesome – and pls stop slapping al druids in the face with the update. Kkthxbai\
“As for me, I see no reason to raid Drunder x2 or any Drunder content anymore”
Then you’re likely one of the dipshit hypocrites who usually claim they group/raid because it’s so much fun to team up with 23 idiots and don’t mainly raid to get gear, but now where you get better gear elsewhere you wont raid those zones anymore?
You only raid for braggin rights and strolling around in better gear than most other people, in short you’re an ass.
As someone who’s managed raid guilds for over a decade, you will not manage to retain players for very long spending time raiding zones that have no loot that is useable.
Thus Drunder is now mostly pointless.
I will point out that some drops in Drunder HM are still relevant. That is cause of the high crit chance on drunder HM gears as compaired to new release drops.
However, Drunder HM is still scaled WELL beyond most players, even after they level 92 and wear new gear and spend prestige points.
what’s the point in getting better gear in a raid when you dont have a harder raid that you need it for?
I dont raid for gear, I truly raid for fun – probably the only person in the universe (or EQ2).
so I like that there’s now easier to get gear, because I can now join raids with some Alts that would have been rejected before because of their “crap” gear.
“hardcore” raiders make me wanna throw up. Wont take anybody along unless you get super uber gear already, but now when people actually get nice gear to join raids , the hardcore dipshits threaten to not do the raids anymore because the drops got obsolete.
get a life guys! you obviously only do this to compensate your shitty real life where nobody respects u, and u think you get respect in EQ2 when you got better gear than most people. well, now I hear voices in my head. who is that? ah it’s the coolest fag ever, freddy “the legend” mercury.
Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide
No escape from reality
Open your eyes
Look up to the skies and see
I’m just a poor boy, I need no sympathy
Because I’m easy come, easy go
A little high, little low
Anyway the wind blows, doesn’t really matter to me, to me
Mama, just killed a man
Put a gun against his head
Pulled my trigger, now he’s dead
Mama, life had just begun
But now I’ve gone and thrown it all away
Mama, ooo
Didn’t mean to make you cry
If I’m not back again this time tomorrow
Carry on, carry on, as if nothing really matters
Too late, my time has come
Sends shivers down my spine
Body’s aching all the time
Goodbye everybody – I’ve got to go
Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth
Mama, ooo – (anyway the wind blows)
I don’t want to die
I sometimes wish I’d never been born at all
I see a little silhouetto of a man
Scaramouch, scaramouch will you do the fandango
Thunderbolt and lightning – very very frightening me
Gallileo, Gallileo,
Gallileo, Gallileo,
Gallileo Figaro – magnifico
But I’m just a poor boy and nobody loves me
He’s just a poor boy from a poor family
Spare him his life from this monstrosity
Easy come easy go – will you let me go
Bismillah! No – we will not let you go – let him go
Bismillah! We will not let you go – let him go
Bismillah! We will not let you go – let me go
Will not let you go – let me go (never)
Never let you go – let me go
Never let me go – ooo
No, no, no, no, no, no, no –
Oh mama mia, mama mia, mama mia let me go
Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me
for me
for me
So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye
So you think you can love me and leave me to die
Oh baby – can’t do this to me baby
Just gotta get out – just gotta get right outta here
Ooh yeah, ooh yeah
Nothing really matters
Anyone can see
Nothing really matters – nothing really matters to me
Anyway the wind blows…
OK seems most people here are missing the boat so let me play “devil’s advocate”. As has been stated the gear drops in WL are a sight better than most DOV Items.
Now SOE has made EQ2 an F2P and as such F2Pers don’t have access to 100s or 1000s of platz for gear upgrades yet they do spend cash on SC. SOE is making loads of cash from SC.( as shown from the fact that we get weekly SC items but fixes are few and far between)
This gear is to allow F2Pers and Casual players who don’t raid or have access to HM gear to be able to actually see the content from last expac. while still playing WL content.
I believe SOE is trying to make the most content relevant for as many people they can. Yes HC raiders may feel they have been left out but let’s face it DOV was pretty much raiders only content as raid gear was needed for most groups zones for most of the release.
So let’s just “play your way” and enjoy the game.
9/12 underdepths 2.3 svelak or w/e in 1 night lol. we raided the wednesday after the update and got a crap load of discoveries (yes dozakar was still bugged) on mobs that were easier then the second fight in hm EoW. now our raid force is almost blasted their hm drunder gear. Hopefully the raid zones get their script or the survival mechanics harder atm that gear blows everything except PoW outta the water.
I started raiding in SF and I defeated Rhoen Theer (1 Rune) and rescued Lucan D’lere in the process. When Velious came out while reading the dialogue on Solo Quests I saw my impact on the Lore. I knew there were others who had taken down more than me but still I knew I had helped with that. Then suddenly it is announced that Rallos Zek has been defeated… but who defeated him? No one has killed him. Even though I am not anywhere near taking on PoW that was a goal our force had looked into.
Currently we were running HM Vanilla and EM Drunder. The scripts for HM Vanilla are extremely difficult and then we run through a group zone and find gear far superior… we go into a new EM raid zone and find even better gear from a fight which is mostly tank and spank.
All things considered what is the point of going back and finishing HM Vanilla? Of Completing HM Drunder? Of trying PoW?
The story has moved on without any players and the risk versus reward is not worth it.
I was playing throughout DOV – did a few raids toward FEB2012 but had to pay plat for raid gear after playing 7 years but now after gu63 I am well geared and group more often so this expansion is a big help for those looking to get back in the fray…
I’m thinking that Skyshrine as we see it now may not be in it’s “final” form. The city is embattled at the moment, but all of us “New Combine” adventurers are fighting the invaders … Yelinak is no longer in Thurgadin (at least he isn’t if you’ve completed the “Fallen Swords” and the first “War of Skyshrine” signature quests). Yelinak and other of the old Claws of Veeshan are supposed to also be fighting to regain control of the city, but we haven’t seen them yet, unless they are in one of the raid zones fighting??
Maybe after a while Skyshrine will be back under control of the Dragons and we won’t have to be squinting through smoke the whole time we are there. Similar to how Freeport was embattled and then cleared back up, and Qeynos is about to be reborn. Hopefully that doesn’t take all the way to November/December, though, because the content as it is now will not last that long.
As to content lasting and progression – I am disappointed in how fast/easy it is to get to 92 and get all your prestige points – just doing the access quests for the 3 heroic zones easily gets you to 91.5 or so. And there was not even a simple “how do you do” quest before we could fly up to the “forbidden” city??
Gear-wise, the lack of red slots on new raid gear is troubling – the 4 or 5 raid mobs I’ve seen die dropped gear with white slots only…
If there is not some sort of graduated step-up plan for the story line of Skyshrine to progress, then the content will not keep avid players engaged past the end of May, imho.
Maybe this 24 hour maintenance is to update/upgrade gear in the older zones so that the raiding content still stays relevant. Anyone have a clue as to why a 24 hour downtime is needed and was unannounced? It takes less time to merge servers.
My thought process would go along the lines of:
New Skyshrine gear makes raiding old zones obsolete….What if we upgrade the loot to be comparable or better to keep that raiding content relevant? How long to upgrade all old drops? 24 hours sounds about right.
Its interesting that they decided to come full circle with regards to procs on gear again, after all at the end of SF and the release of DoV we were told that they basicly wanted to get away from that hence the war runes were born…but unless you were sleeping through the last half of DoV they started adding procs to gear in droves from the meh faction merchant gear available on Thurg docks to Rygor faction gear to the release of EoW and the drunder rare necks to the explosion it has become in Skyshrine…dont get me wrong I always prefered the procs on gear but I am concerned that they are making intentionally or not war runes obsolete with the lack of slots on raid gear. As for content we’ve done the new small em raid zone up to the last named and are about to try the next one (only waiting for few others to get to 92 which is holding us up)…I do hope they fix the Plane of War zone gear drops to maintain the “will be desired top notch gear for some time” quote the devs have said…and maybe a relook at HM/EM drunder raid gear but I’m not holding my breath.
I haven’t found anything to replace my PoW gear yet from the new zones. Am I missing something?
@ Aggy
Maybe its because you are in a guild that can kill the harder content you haven’t seen the insanely good myth drops that are happening in Heroic Instanced content.
Maybe what SoE want us to do is be scrubby like the other 80% of the game to see the loot they get drop for little effort
Hybriz,
I’ve seen them,and they are nice. But I was mainly wondering why so many people keeping saying that PoW and HM drunder will be worthless. HM Drunder,maybe,but there’s still been a few things that dropped form the new zones that are still making me go “meh…” only because I don’t want to part with my war runes. Don’t get me wrong, I have replaced a couple jewelry pieces.
What a Moment, was there a ” Signature Quest” released as part of GU 63? I know about the “The Fallen Swords” and Prelude quest for GU63 the “The War of Skyshrine: Keeping Enemies Close”. So, as there a new ” Signature Quest” released as part of GU 63 telling the next stage of the story?
@GreenBurrito
I doubt they are touching anything in game, especially itemization.
Silzin,
“The War of Skyshrine: Keeping Enemies Close” was supposed to lead into the rest of the Signature series in GU63, but I’ve not been able to find any info on whether it was indeed there. I’ve not completed all of the Deepwater quests yet, nor do I have much faction with Skyshrine, so I’m hoping that the continuation is there and folks just haven’t reached it yet. If not, I’m rather peeved at having completed the Fallen Swords on three toons in prep for this GU.
The ease of the mobs in these raid zones is really sad. Server firsts in Sevelak both on first pull.
Cleared first 6 mobs in underdepths on first night short 1 bard, a coercer and a swashy empty slots for first 4 mobs in UD 1 pulled first 3, second fight flawless, Tel’koran had only 1 death and it was from a linkdead, Dagarn was a joke it was so easy. Balor (Bridge mob) took 3 pulls. Blazeclaw took 3, and Ikatiar was a 1 pull with 3 deaths.
This content is disappointingly easy and way undertuned, there is no challenge, we went in blind only the knowledge of the Heroic version which sadly was seemingly just copied and pasted so far.
It isn’t enough that they recycle all this, in the name of making the raid mobs available to the casualy player base in a heroic vewrsion, but to make the mobs not much more difficult than a medium tuned x2 is sad. The amount of content that was delivered here is puny, and I’d imagine is going to be cleared in the next few weeks by most guilds.
I hope everyone got what they wanted that was saying everything was too hard, they listened and like they do with everything else they just took a wrecking ball to it, with no regard.
FYI the better and more rare items have high level adornments as a proc on equipment so no need for red slots
@Skyfe
Your statement is assuming that whoever or whatever they have doing the itemization is half competent which for well over a year now there has been no one that is either competent enough or gave enough of a damn to do even a half assed job of it.
They are just taking what the adornments did, calling it something else and putting it on items, it was better with red slots and a choice of what you wanted because you could fine tune it.
You’ll end up with facing the choice of using 2 or 3 of those ‘new and improved’ items with no red slot which all share the same proc or using something slightly worse and keeping war runes.
I miss the game from time to time but I just don’t see myself ever reinstalling it ever again.
I’ve always felt the problem with this series was the fact that you’d work the entire year in a raiding guild or a family guild hitting raid/group dungeons every night in hopes to gear yourself up to be a better player. However with each iteration to the game which has almost been once a year. Most of the gear you had from the previous expansion wouldn’t fair well unless you were fully specked out in the best of the best!
In my final days in EQ2 I found myself working a full days work coming home and just going back to work. My enjoyment of the game became less and less and I found myself getting more frustrated with each new expansion within the last 2 years that is. After delving into Destiny of Velious I found not only myself wanting to leave the game but I saw many other hard core raiders leaving the game! Even players that were just doing group instances.
I of course haven’t played the game in more than a year but I do have friends that still play and they always seem to never want to speak of the game anymore.
It didn’t used to be this way. Faydwer didn’t invalidate Kingdom of Sky content, it complemented it. TSO content built on Kunark content, without totally trashing it.
It was Velious that completely trashed Sentinel’s Fate content by STARTING with raid gear and building up from there. And GU63 trashes Velious content.
It’s very disturbing and extremely unhealthy for the game.
^This. There’s difference between raising the bar from destroying ignoring the bar and running off without guidance.
“No need for red slots” or any slots for that matter takes away from the small level of customization that the community lauded since it was out. Why get rid of or undermine the gear customization system you had in place? Why not build on it? It saves work for the item designer if there is one AND less items for lootScript900(©Atan2012..haha) to have to customize. Provide adornments stats/slots to extend baseline solo, group, raid gear.
The baseline is what the devs were looking for with the whole “we know what we getting with a level 92 player with at least 280 AA and 10 prestige points” statement… but then they seem to not have
1)a baseline for stats for solo, heroic, and raid gear…
2)a baseline for difficulty/reward ratio(gear, mounts, etc etc)
Example, in sent fate and dov pt1 you knew solo gear had roughly a white slot, heroic/pq gear roughly had white, yellow and better stats(maybe a focus), and raid gear had white red slots, a focus and even better stats, dov introduced (i think) hm raid which had white, red, AND yellow with stats+ focus improvement.
Dov Pt2. didn’t fully break that but doesn’t build on the scheme for early examples of solo/heroic gear. (Eow deviated from that too a little).
Double whites for solo, ok. but harder gear with double whites and no yellow? with inflated stats better stats then hm gear. Maybe its a way to make your pick. As Lempo said, take the new proc or keep your adorns/war runes.
Just sayin’
I like skyshrine and the new changes to the game. It opens up this higher level arena to more people. I play to have fun. I don’t know why people can’t do the same. I like to do old content too. I don’t do it for the items, I do it for the lore and to experience it with others and to say “I did that.” I think that too many people treat this game like it’s a job or like real life. That’s a mistake. You need to loosen up and remove the dark cloud from yourself. There’s a world of beauty out there that you’re not seeing. When you see it, your eyes will widen and you’ll understand me.
Before skyshrine came out i was a lv 90 with 167 AA, i like RPG’s of this type and i am a casual player.In order to progress above lv 90 i had to earn 113 AA points. Some say it’s easy and some say it’s not worth the effort.For me it was like 80% work and 20% enjoyable.I will say this now , if SOE pulls something like this in the future i will be gone, not worth the effort.