Announcing the Rum Cellar Campaign DLC for $15 [NOT A JOKE]
If you told me last November that nearly one third of Altar of Malice expansion purchasers would opt for the never discounted $89.99 Collector’s Edition, I’d have suggested therapy or possibly drug treatment. If you read the comments here on EQ2Wire and on the official EQ2 forums when the pricing was announced, the universal response was howls of protest. Yet to this day, the expansion not only continues to show good sales numbers, but fully one third spring for the Collector’s Edition. Perhaps we ARE the vocal minority.
So with that background comes today’s Marketing-driven blitz (yes on April Fool’s Day for some reason) of how EverQuest II’s content will be released going forward. First up, here are the Press sites that participated in Round Tables with the EQ2 team this week:
- EQ2 ZAM: Campaigns, Pirates & the Rumpocolyse
- MMORPG: The Rum Cellar Campaign
- MassivelyOP: EVERQUEST II CUTS EXPANSIONS, DEBUTS DLCS WITH RUM CELLAR
TL;DR Summary
- Coming on April 28th, we will see a purchasable “Campaign” or what most people would call DLC/Adventure Pack for $15 ($13.50 for All Access)
- The new DLC introduces a new instance called the “Far Seas Distillery“, with 1 Solo, 1 Event Advanced Solo, 1 Heroic, 2 Event Heroics, and large Raid versions. The new zones have rare loot, collections, achievements, a new drunken monk mercenary, and a dropped Zeppelin flying mount.
- We’ll see another large Campaign this fall around the usual expansion release time. The content released throughout the year in these Campaigns will add up to what we might have traditionally seen in a yearly expansion.
- Cross-Server Dungeon Finder is coming “later this summer”.
- New Deity Revamp this fall with purchasable AA abilities.
- Level cap will remain 100 for the time being.
From Holly “Windstalker” Longdale on the EQ2 Forums and on EverQuest2.com:
Greetings Norrath!
We’ve been toiling away hatching our plans and are ready to talk about our bigger targets for the year ahead.
I’ll start by saying we’re preparing for a new release at the end of April that we are calling “The Rum Cellar Campaign.” This is the first step on a new path for us and one we are jazzed about. Let me explain for a sec…
As you know, we are players as well as devs and we want our characters to be growing and changing and having lots of fun with our friends. So, what does this mean? As a team, we decided we want to release content to you more often than one big release a year. So, we’re introducing what we’re calling “campaigns” – because it seems apropos for what we do as an RPG! You can think of campaigns like DLC packs you see in other games.
Why the change? We want to keep the world turning with intrigue and fun and be able to react more quickly to you, the community, and do what’s right for the game at the moment. The Rum Cellar Campaign is the first stab at what we see as a DLC-type of release philosophy. We have a much larger one planned for late fall too.
For the sake of clarity, we will release a similar amount of content as an expansion over a year, but in packages that make sense to us and the ever-changing community.
With that in mind, our goal with future releases is to also offer variety for all the ways you play – like creative bundling of content options for families or players with multiple accounts, decorators, adventurers, crafters, and collectors, for example.
In case there is any doubt, character advancement remains a focus in our future, but we’re staying at Level 100 for a while. We want to spread our wings on character progression later this year and work on some cool new stuff with existing systems, like renewing the Deity System that brings more meaning to experience you earn in the world.
So, what’s in The Rum Cellar Campaign? It includes a new distillery-themed environment tied to Altar of Malice (the 2014 expansion and Level 100 are required to play it given it is integrated with the mechanics and storyline). In this campaign we have an event solo zone, heroic and event heroic, and raid. There is new loot in the zones as well as on a merchant tied to this campaign who accepts Ferrins. There are new collections and achievements and a cool zeppelin mount that drops in the content as well as one that can be purchased on the Rum Cellar merchant, and a pretty noteworthy drop will be a drunken monk elite merc…hiccup.
![[IMG]](https://assets-cdn.soe.com/uploads/dcsclient/000/000/085/442.jpg)
The Rum Cellar Campaign will be available for $15 and we’ll be offering some bundles with a discount on the Altar of Malice expansion. We’ll get those details to you very soon. The new campaign content will be going to Beta in the second week of April and we’d love feedback from players who want to help us test it.
In other news, you may have noticed weekly updates on each server as we lay the groundwork for Cross-Server Dungeons which are planned for late summer. We appreciate your patience as we take on this substantial amount of work. These are some pretty meaty changes that will give us some great new options in the game and development.
As I said in my last letter, we are continuing to look at ways to improve performance. And, in case there is any doubt, we will continue to bring you infamous holiday fun throughout the year and regular attention to bug fixes. Please continue to use /bug and /feedback if you are experiencing issues.
We’ve got exciting times ahead and a lot of plans up our sleeves that we’ll share as we race along. Your passion and love of our game is shared here and I can’t say enough how much we appreciate your support and feedback.
Stay tuned, my fair friends! Fun ahead…
Holly “Windstalker” Longdale
Executive Producer, EQ & EQ2
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Comments (84)
kono
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It was obvious to anyone who was paying attention that the existing expansion model was going to have to be revisited in this post-Sony reality.
This is probably a good plan overall, but we’ll see how it’s executed. With a tighter focus, maybe we can hope for a little more polish and fewer headaches.
kono
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Zhaan
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This to me looks like something in previous years we would have gotten for free if we bought the expansion. Now they are charging for it? I see this costing a lot more than $90 if you buy everything over the course of a year. I already had one foot out the door with EQ2 this may just push me right on out. I really need a new MMORPG (not an old new one but a new new one).
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eric
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I guess that is a way to break up paying 90 bucks for an xpac. Now they are just going to do it every few months. Good thing, that remains to be seen. I am not sure if this is good or bad, or just a way to nickel and dime us to death.
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Anaogi
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I…like this idea. Breaking the late-xpac doldrums by something new being available regularly.
Also, I want my dirigible mount!
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Archangel
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Referring to your math comment Feldon ……
33% chose to purchase the CE, while a majority, 67% chose to reject the CE.
That makes you and the vocal members of this site, the vocal Majority.
Takes a special kind of company, to deliberately tick off 67% of it’s customers. Or maybe this company only wants to keep happy 33% of the customer base?
/*
http://consumerist.com/2014/04/08/congratulations-to-comcast-your-2014-worst-company-in-america/
Congratulations To Comcast, Your 2014 Worst Company In America!
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eric
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I played swg before the nge, they pissed off 90% of the player base at one time and did not even flinch. Only 6 years later was there a half rear ended apology from smed. They sure don’t learn from their mistakes. Customers hate big changes to the billing system, and to the mechanics.
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Gaealiege
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The NGE shows exactly how these people think. They’re so arrogant that they just shrug at any actual failures.
Smedley has been a slimey piece of s*** for years though. He’s nothing more than a corporate crony.
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eq2nethunter
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Well looks like three or more raiding guilds will be leaving eq2 .daybreakgames there goes alot of subs and hopefully more.guildwars 2 it is and final fantasy should be around the corner.laterz
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Terrius
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I’m still holding out hope that this is an elaborate Aprils fools day joke. I mean no company would make an official announcement on april 1st, that is very bad form.
Also this means we pay more for less content, as 1 heroic 1 solo and 1 raid is certainly overvalued at $15 even with the gimmicky event heroics and event solo.
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GriffonLady
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Better than a $60 or $90 kick in the gut all at once.
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Kruzzen
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I disagree. You are making the assumption that people would pay for the CE version for 90. I did not pay for the CE as I thought it was a horrible waste of money. I bought the discounted standard edition and if they are raising the price I have to seriously consider if it is worth it anymore.
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Noctew
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I….like this idea. It was obvious they could not go on doing large expansions and mid-expansion content drops with the reduced team size. If they do, say, 3 DLC packs per year, the price is not even that much higher than just paying for one expansion.
Only issue I have with this it them starting doing this mid-expansion. The DLC content was announced along with AoM and people expected it to be free.
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mithreal
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ever-changing has a nice ring to it but I guess I would have aimed for continuity of the community.
I guess if it doesn’t make sense to me, I must not be part of their ever-changing community. My annual sub ends in a few days, was really hoping to see the content that was supposed to be free when I purchased the last CE expansion come out this summer but yikes, ok, reality dictates the change.
Interesting to watch broker prices for Krono following this announcement.
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Feldon
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You have to read through the marketing speak. We’re still getting a “cohesive expansion” this fall. Luclin?
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Tarb
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You really think Luclin? thatd be awesome imo
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Kinya
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So we just bought an expansion and were promised content delivery for a whole year – yet, 6 month later instead of delivering promised content they are releasing paid DLC…
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Oxymorphone
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That’s indeed true. I’m used to these tactics though from corporations by now. Take it or leave it, vote with your wallet.
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Gaealiege
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I’m voting no…and for Kodos.
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Desius
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How I read the announcement: “We no longer have the staff necessary to design and release large-scale themed expansions, so we’re going to spit out little chunks of that content and charge you more per-zone than you would have paid for a full expansion.”
The thought of being asked to pay for piecemeal content trickling in with no cohesive theme adds up to me cancelling both of my subs. They’ll be relying more on the extra goodies, such as mounts and mercs, in each DLC to carry the sales. This is even more gimmicky than CE expansion content.
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Tarb
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Cant say i like the idea of paying $15 for 1 zone because that’s exactly what it sounds like to me.
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GriffonLady
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A flying mount by itself costs that much. I’m surprised it wasn’t over $30.
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Tarb
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Good point haha
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Beyoncia
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Who cares about that mount? I ride on my 5 years old pegasus and have no desire to change it.
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Leahyla
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I think $15 is a bit much, but this isn’t the first time EQ2 did something like this.
Remember the Adventure Packs? Splitpaw, Vampires and Mara? These are twice as expensive though.
If the content is well balanced and fun, and there is other stuff linked to it (for example, a new signature questline, tradeskilling recipes, etc) I think it could be good for the game, in the sense it might allow them to rebuild a team.
However, they need to do free updates as well. I don’t mind these as extras, but they better not charge for the fabled EoF zones.
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Foodcity
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Blergh….. Just as I was about to go for getting AoM for my alt account.
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Feldon
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There will be an AoM/Rum Cellar bundle.
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Poppintabs
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I think this will ruin just about everything. It is coming out waaaayyyyy to early. I think the idea is a good one but there needs to be a correction to the way they release content. You need to stop allowing “top guilds” to test your content. They end up clearing just about everything in the first month. And now who is going to pay for you hand selecting players for that model. The rest of us have to keep up with the top 1% of the population. Secondly, STOP NERFING STUFF omg! where is the challenge to this game anymore. You want to know why people are quitting? If you wait to get the expacs 1-2 months after release it will be 10x’s easier. Also the majority of the input you get from the players is about appearance items/mounts. That should be your focus while keeping the content extremely difficult for the top end. More content this early will be killed in 2-3 weeks and then what? They will add another quick $15 on. This will burn it to the ground.
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Feldon
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With all the gloom and doom, I needed to read some comedy this morning. Thank you.
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Poppintabs
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Negative reactions to comments like this tells me that people know this is accurate. If I am way off then please enlighten me on how this DLC will help the game other than fund another DLC in the very very near future?
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Mermut
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I think the amusement is the contradictory nature of your post. On one hand you complain about the content being tested by ‘the 1%’ who ‘clear the content too fast” and that ‘normal people’ can’t keep up with them., then you claim the only feedback they give is appearance/mount stuff.. and that those same people want to make the content easier.
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Poppintabs
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Evidently you have never gone to watch a Q & A. Because if you have you would have noticed that all of the topics that were addressed had to do with mounts/conjie pets/appearance slots/ personal and guild banks. Rather than talking about issues like how can we make the content last longer so DLC like this doesn’t have to happen. Following my first post about the 2-3 week timeline, which I firmly believe is close to accurate given the nerfs in the past. This content will disappear and be such a blur that the only way to extend on this would be more DLC that we will have to pay for. Normally in the past all DLC was included with the expansion. So basically what I am getting at is why should we have to pay for all of these tiny chucks of content at the rate they are released when the majority of the players won’t ever get to see it due to the “1%” blowing it out the water being that they already gear to walk into it and laugh at it?
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Feldon
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Yeah the circular logic makes my brain hurt. She wants ridiculously hard content that is launched broken and left broken for months, but then she wants the other 99% of players to be able to keep up with the hardcore raiders. Does not compute! When you put content in that is not broken, then players will defeat it. Period.
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Kittaene
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I am still trying to pull my guildies back into the game…those that bought AOM, started the content and just gave up. I was able to snag back a couple, when they intro’d the writs and fixed a few things.
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Feldon
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There are two DLCs this year. April and November. The Far Seas Distillery zones have been in development for over 4 months, way before this buyout or layoffs were announced.
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Poppintabs
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Tier 1 – Brokenskull Bay: Bilgewater Falls
Tier 1 – Brokenskull Bay: Hoist the Yellow Jack
Tier 1 – Zavith’loa: The Lost Caverns
Tier 1 – Zavith’loa: The Hidden Caldera
Tier 1 – Zavith’loa: The Hunt
Tier 2 – Brokenskull Bay: Bosun’s Private Stock
Tier 2 – Ossuary: Resonance of Malice
Tier 2 – Castle Highhold
Tier 2 – Castle Highhold: Thresinet’s Den
Tier 2 – Castle Highhold: Insider Treachery
Tier 2 – Ssraeshza Temple
Tier 2 – Ssraeshza Temple: Taskmaster’s Echo
Tier 3 – Ossuary: Sanguine Fountains
Tier 3 – Ossuary: Choir of T’Vyl
Tier 3 – Ssraeshza Temple: Inner Sanctum
Ok so all of this was cleared by the first week of March by the “1%”. Nov 11, 2014 was the release of AoM to gold members. That means all of that content was cleared in just over 3.5 months. So you mean to tell me that 1 ADV solo, 1 Heroic, and 1 Raid zone will last us 7 months? Do you see yet where I am going with this?
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Poppintabs
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I am not responding to this post for any other reason than to put some light on something that will either have to change or it will end up hurting the game that we are all hoping that can make the turn around it deserves.
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Feldon
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Dave Georgeson and John Smedley do. They’ve commented extensively about how MMO content doesn’t last, even when you have large development teams of 50-80 (EQ2 currently has 11 plus 5 shared with the EQ team). Their solution? Player-made content.
Daybreak is pretty much phasing out individual designer-made content in EQN/L. Instead they have design leads and an army of programmers that release tools for players to make quests, NPCs, houses, castles, etc. To build Qeynos, they put out a design document and a few sketches to players and said “go build it” and the players did! They get to charge us twice AND not have to pay a bunch of designers to hand-build anything. Instead of months of work building an overland zone, a designer twiddles some knobs and clicks a few buttons and bam a continent is terraformed and ready for players to place houses, cities, quests, npcs, etc.
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Poppintabs
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Ok this is what I get from your post.
1.They know now and have known about the ‘fast cleared content’ issue for a while and have chose to address it in a new game rather than correcting it here. Including the fact that handing players strats on test server and allowing dev’s to play in guilds on their designated servers is totally not the cause of this issue.
2. They really don’t care that the timelines are exaggerated to the point where more than likely the top players will get bored and quit, destroying unlockable content.
3. EQ2 is officially being put on the back burner, because the model has been switched so many times that now they understand what they really want which is that much like ‘LittleBigPlanet, which is a puzzle platform video game series created by Media Molecule and published by Sony Computer Entertainment on multiple PlayStation platforms’ on steroids because it would end up costing too much money for them to implement the player-made aspect into the current game.
4. They still don’t understand that visually we love how AoM looks but visuals don’t win over the customers when the other stuff isn’t being addressed.
So now it would be safe to assume that they know the majority of their player base is the people who play to enjoy quests, lore, dungeons (solo/heroic) and building/decorating/appearance stuff, you know ‘normal people’, due to the EQN model. “Mermut.”
The current model has been abandoned not because it doesn’t function properly, not because the design team isn’t doing their jobs correctly, and not because there is no clear way to fix it. This is happening because the people who made the decisions about implementing everything from marketing the whole way down to planning timelines won’t take accountability that they were wrong about their direction of the game and avoid attempting to correct it. They would rather side step to a whole another game/platform in hopes that they get that one right and leech with the previous ones.
Im sure this makes sense when you read about your $60 million public post you made about smed.
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Feldon
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They have tried everything possible within the EverQuest franchise for the last 16 years to stretch the life span of content. They tried gating content behind:
I could go on. The point is, any non-broken content you release will be killed by the top 5 guilds. There is nothing you can do to stop this without adding horrible brokenness or painful grinding that players in 2015 will no longer tolerate.
Do you have any suggestions on actual solutions, or just bitching?
So you don’t think devs should raid (don’t worry, with their new workflow they probably won’t be able to and now will get screamed at by players saying they are out-of-touch and “don’t even play this game”) and you don’t think raid content should be tested.
Do I really need to respond to the rest? I am just seeing self-contradictory comments and circular logic that is impossible to follow. You want content incredibly hard but you don’t want the other 99% of the players to be left behind. All I will say to that is, the Rum Cellar content is mid-level difficulty and casuals will find a lot to enjoy in it. It’s not “omg painful” content like you are clamoring for.
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Poppintabs
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I fully agree that the dev’s shouldn’t raid. Not sure about your logic behind allowing people to created the content to raid and tell people how to beat an encounter on day one. Call it bitching all you want but that is about the most retarded thing you could possibly allow to happen. I have to follow an EULA that states I am not allowed to use 3rd party programs but this other guy in the “1%” should have full ability to run a dev in their raid force? Have you lost your F’n mind? You guys clearly don’t know where the line is to enforce people in this game. Pick one or the other. If you enforced the EULA guess what would happen??! The content would become so much harder by default. All of the “ways they tried to make it harder” was the grind to boost 1 stat to a specific percentage/limit to survive/win. That was a really good try. I have subbed for 10 years so believe me this isn’t my first time around the block. But incase you have failed to realize the single stat thing has failed through crit mit/crit chance/resist’s. Why do you keep trying when it doesn’t work? I am giving you the solutions but all you are only reading is the part that I think is wrong or broken.
You clearly skimmed my post. What I am asking for is simple. Make the end game harder and more content for the players that want to play the easier content. How is the so remotely difficult to understand?
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Feldon
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The new raids are entry level to medium and not part of harder progression.
We haven’t had developers leaking strats to their guilds since Aeralik who quit how many years ago? I trust the current devs not to give strats away. Sorry you don’t.
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UnknownPerson1
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Didn’t they do this with the Island of Mara adventure pack??
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Daros
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Daybreak Game Company – ‘Giving you less for more’
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Breanna
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I like the idea of new content more often. But for $15 that’s a bit much for only 1 zone. As for the mount, well I think we have way to many of them lol so I don’t care unless the stats are out of this world which I seriously doubt.
The thing I do Not like is they promised us, or OWE us content that we already purchased with AOM. Example, didn’t we already pay for deity updates? I seem to remember the xpac stating we would be allowed to have 2 gods? And we were to get updates thru the year with aom. Yet now it seems they are going to charge us again for something that was already paid for. I don’t mind if they do the adventure packs as our updates but not when I have already paid for said content. Bring this feature in NEXT year and don’t double charge for content they already said we would receive from last xpac . Anyways that’s my thoughts on all this 🙂
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Feldon
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You got everything you were promised as part of the Altar of Malice expansion in November.
Deity Revamp is still on track for later this year. I don’t believe it will be a paid thing, but it has never been started when we’d get it, whether it’d be part of an expansion, or a free update. It was simply announced at a Q&A panel near the end of SOE Live.
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Kittaene
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Heh, server’s down so guess I will come over here and torment Feldon 😉
My translation of said announcement was pretty short:
“Dear Players, we love the game and want to keep the doors open… Breaking out the Yearly expac into bundles will keep players in-game and feed the hamsters. Thank you. ”
It appears to me, once again, to be focused fairly heavily on group/ raid content. I have to say that I run into many in-game that still love and support the game, but do not raid and only group in limited scenarios with the guildies. It seems that there is an ever-growing chasm between the solo-would-really-love-to-group-again crowd and those that run Heroics. Am I being harsh? Perhaps.
*insert Kitty Rant warning*
I was running a guild group through Lads on my baby SK. Nice lady joined us….we kept running, as she’d wanted to do more. She’d mentioned how her guild did not have enough people to run some of the content in AOM. I told her to give me a shout if she needed anything and I’d try on my Zerker. Her response: Oh, no…you cannot, you’ve not done….yadda, yadda, yadda. Heh, guess what lady, that guildie that “showed” online which we replaced you with…was a merc! Get your own guild that IS good enough to level your alts. Sorry, had to share. I’ll help anyone, but her attitude appears endemic of the issue we face with folks saying there are no groups./ PuGs.
*end Kitty rant*
On a more positive note, I did like the zeppelin mount and I think that breaking out the expacs into more manageable expenditures would work for a lot of the player-base, as long as they don’t try to pick and choose based on content therein.
Kitty
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Pipsissiwa
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This decision makes sense, but if they’re going to do things piecemeal I’d rather be able to buy each ‘difficulty’ separately. Then I could just buy solo and adv solo as they are the only ones I am likely to use, and I’ll never use the raid version.
This never bothered me in full expansions because there was more than enough content useable by my play style to be valuable to me, but just 4 versions of one zone, one of which I def wont ever use and one I’m highly unlikely to use doesn’t feel worth $15, even with the mount (which I won’t ever see drop – it’ll be raid/heroic only – I’ll have to buy it), and collections.
Not sure at all…
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Malade
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CE of AoM had a STAT mount PER character, that sold most people.
All the ‘best’ gear will drop in the distilled zones, meaning you pay $15 or get left behind. Ya’ll have fun.
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Dethdlr
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Yep. That STAT mount that was worse than the one you got from doing the solo questline. I’d forgotten about that.
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Malade
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I don’t know what you are smoking, but it was far better than the solo questline mount, solo questline mount had 8crit bonus, CE mount has 20crit bonus for instance. The CE mount was per character (new mounts are $20/char if bought each), without the entire boring solo questline etc.
It may have been the same as the one that cost 6000 etyma or whatever but I never got that one. I get so tired of Elitist bullcrap getting spewed from the 1%.
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Malade
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The AoM solo quest line has a slightly better one, but you have to get to 100 for it to be useful, etc.
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Feldon
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He meant the AoM Sig quest mount. Watch your language.
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Malade
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Sorry, if I could delete them I would have.
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Dethdlr
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As Feldon mentioned below, I was referring to the solo Sig quest mount. My memory isn’t what it used to be, I’ll admit. I didn’t even remember there being another mount from a solo questline. Maybe the one I got for beta testing was better than it so I just glanced at it and forgot it.
Not sure if I’ve ever been accused of being in that Elite 1% before. Not sure if I should feel complemented or insulted. lol
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Poppintabs
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Left behind will happen faster than I believe people think it will. With minimal marketing you would think that the first thing they would do is at least check with the player base to see what the consensus was. I dont see those polls going around anymore with legit questions for us.
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Kittaene
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The poll I’d received, after AOM launch, seemed fairly raid-centric. Several pages of questions specific to Raids, very limited questions on Heroic/ solo content. I think ALL have a place in EQ2. In addition to Raiders, there are Decorators, Solo/molo & an assortment of small and/ or guild group crowds. Will this Campaign open the wallets of that market segment?
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Feldon
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The poll after AOM launch was written by someone in Marketing who read the AOM Press Release and made up the questions based on that. They didn’t talk to ANYONE on the EQ2 team:
https://eq2wire.com/2014/12/16/have-you-taken-the-altar-of-malice-expansion-survey/
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Kittaene
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Ahh, umm…I’d missed your article on that one. 😀
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UliTheGrey
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I´m all for adventure packs, but this feels like “less for more” compared with the traditional packs, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EverQuest_II_expansions. As of now I did no AoM Raids nor heroics and might not see most of the pack. If you go the DLC way, why raising the bar and price it at $15/$13.50 ? With four difficulties (Solo, AdvSolo, Heroic, Raid) why not price it $0.99 $2.99, $3.99, $5.99 respectively with the bundle priced at max $9.99 ?
Seems they are in dire need of cash.
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Noctew
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Obvious statement is obvious. From all we heard, I’d say they didn’t gut the team because they like firing people but because their costs were so high they would not have been able to keep the company afloat until the completion of EQN. Sony (the former mother company) is also in deep trouble, they are selling of (or preparing to sell off) their Audio and TV departments. They used to be market leaders in this areas for decades, you don’t sell those divisions off unless you have no other choice. They would not have wanted to keep pumping money into SOE.
And let’s face it: if EQN fails, that’s it for DBG. They have invested too much in this.
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Feldon
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SOE milked EQ, EQ2, SWG, PS2, and DCUO to get EQNext off the ground. Each of those games on their own were highly profitable and if they didn’t have to support a massive parasite they’d be doing fine. If EQN fails, that’s it.
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Noctew
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Well, companies do have to reinvest enough of their profits into new products – or create those products with loaned money and hope to make at least enough money to pay their loans back. They cannot bet the company on being profitable with their current products forever, even if they support them by reinvesting all of their profits into the current games.
It is, however, unfortunate that their latest and future offerings may not be what the current players like – DCUO and H1Z1 certainly aren’t, don’t know about EQN yet.
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Kittaene
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Sadly, in milking their games, they moved a portion of the player-base to EQNL, which then found they had to have a pretty hefty PC to run it well. Hopefully, EQN will be a bit more optimized.
I love Landmark…while I was playing around over there, some of my friends which could not run that monster wandered off.
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Stumble
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I like the idea of periodic content updates (DLC) however charging $15 seems overpriced. AoM (non-CE) was around $40 to purchase and it included 5/6 raid, 15 heroic, 6 advanced solos, and 5 solo zones not to mention all of the over land content. Comparably speaking that is a total of 31/32 instance zones… which equals out to roughly $1.30 per zone. A more suitable price for this 6 instance DLC would be $8 – $9, which is more in line with what the previous DLC’s cost.
With Daybreaks pricing scheme non-CE AoM would have cost $78.
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Nauralea
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Not sure I want to give them more money right now, already the sting of losing most customer support/consolidated forums is weighing heavily on my mind.
One zone repurposed multiple times doesn’t appeal to me nor the -chance- of a drop mount that looks like it will annoy everyone I park near. My main concern is that in order to get this content tantalizing that the gear out of it will prolly supersede what’s currently out there, so if your raiding/doing heroics if your not doing the shiniest newest thing your wasting your time (I’ll be honest I’d expec it even if it wasn’t paid to go that route)
I would likely have a better view of this if it was being released for fall just because it doesn’t feel like it’s overshadowing the expansion as much…. I will say tho with things going this way I’m seeing less reason to keep my Gold Membership the only thing I can use the accumulated SC on is basically house items/mounts oh and harvestable stuff don’t forget those 🙂 just not sure double tokens is worth the $$ if i’m gonna be plunking down 15$ for DLC content.
Not saying this is the end of the world just saying I’m personally disappointed. Which is surprising I had any expectations left at all 🙂 Hoping I’m wrong and this will be good for the game but concerned it will cause inter-guild rifts of who can buy these updates regularly and who can’t or won’t due to how they feel about it.
Also I think it was poor taste they released an actual announcement on April Fools 🙂 jokes on me for thinking it was fake? 🙂
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SeanB
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The only thing that worries me and hasn’t been mentioned by any other comments yet: (more info here: http://massivelyop.net/2015/04/01/everquesting-holly-longdale-unviels-everquest-iis-change-to-dlcs-with-rum-cellar/ “One casualty to this new release system is the free content updates of the previous year.Longdale said that the game upgrades, such as the class changes that are currently in beta and the cross-server dungeon finder that is slated to come out in August), as well as all holiday events will continue to be free to all players. Content, however, will be a packaged into the campaigns.”
Don’t get me wrong I’m /NOT/ a scrub! I’m All Access and bought the CE of AoM, tons of SC stuff including 5 or so Heroic toons and tons of mounts, ETC… In just 6 short months I’ve already spent well over $300 I’m pretty sure. But this news of no more free content being released into campaigns is the last straw for me I’m afraid.
IMO if you’re patient enough, you should be able to get at the very least some content from previous expansions/Campaigns for free. But it sounds like only bug fixes will be free…not cool. After the rest of my 6 months is up, I’m probably going to unsub and no longer buy anything from SC.
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Oxymorphone
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At this point of time for EQ2, I’m just glad to see new content 🙂
If content will be somewhat streamlined//bugfree I’ll be impressed !
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Eschia
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I’m not sure but by the looks of it I’m reminded of how game updates are done in DDO (dungeons and dragons online). Pay a fee for a quick adventure. I hope it wont get as bad because the last time I played DDO it felt like just about every door in the main city had some sort of “you need this campaign to enter this instance” pay wall.
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Sub
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I got half way through this thread and my brain hurts so I stopped reading it.
All I can see is a malformed announcement, made on April Fool’s day, and a load of conjecture and counter argument.
I don’t see any facts either here or in the official fora. The announcement itself makes the content look like a reject from the Brewday brainstorming meeting so I still believe it’s a Fool’s Joke.
Whatever good or bad DBG does for EQ2, they clearly have less idea of marketing than SOE. That’s a bad state of affairs.
DBG really does need to publish a roadmap and state its’ intentions.
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Gaealiege
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Banned for liking negative comments in the Rum Cellar thread. Keep up the good work, mods! You scumbags.
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Desius
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A lot of people seem to be OK with the new costs. I’m not sure they see the financial change here.
This was my entire point:
Old content product: Single expansion for $40
Roughly 12 zones, many of which with 2-5 tiered difficulty versions for US$40.00. $3.33/zone
New content product, DLCs at $15
One zone with several tiered difficulty versions, plus fluff you can’t exclude for $15
Tranquil Sea $15
Phantom Sea $15
Zavith’loa: The Lost Caverns (Heroic) $15
Zavith’loa: The Hidden Caldera (Heroic) $15
Brokenskull Bay: Bilgewater Falls (Heroic) $15
Brokenskull Bay: Hoist the Yellow Jack (Heroic)$15
Castle Highhold (Heroic) $15
Ssraeshza Temple (Heroic) $15
Castle Highhold: Thresinet’s Den (Heroic) $15
Ossuary: Resonance of Malice (Heroic) $15
Ssraeshza Temple: Inner Sanctum (Heroic) $15
Ossuary: Sanguine Fountains (Heroic) $15
Counting only the base heroic zones, if AOM was based on that pricing scheme it would have cost US$180 for the base version and $230 ($50 upcharge) for the CE.
Compared to $40.00 for the entire expansion (no, not factoring in CE “fluff” like mounts) this is a massive change in the cost of content. A single adventure zone/instance with several difficulty levels will cost us 450% of the previous cost.
The only way I would consider piecemeal zone purchases like this is if they offered a version for half price ( $5-7 ) that did not force the mounts and other fluff on us. I don’t consider yet another mount as added value I should have to pay for.
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Feldon
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The ignorance. It burns. They’re not breaking out 1 dungeon per DLC.
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Desius
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Define a zone for me Feldon.
“In this campaign we have an event solo zone, heroic and event heroic, and raid. ”
To me this sounds like what we know of now as one zone, with several variations for solo, heroic, raid, etc.. If my understanding is incorrect then it because of insufficient details given in the announcement. Perhaps an insider like yourself knows more?
Please tell me where I am misunderstanding the details of the announcement instead of simply calling me ignorant without correcting my misunderstanding.
I’m actually a little surprised at the tone of your reply, considering the reminder visible near the post or reply submission. “Please post your comments without flaming or insulting other players:”
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Nauralea
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I understand what your saying on the ‘one’ zone front because that’s how it strikes me too but if your going on that measure of a zone let’s be clear on the pricing then tho? Cause we have to really list what would be for each marked piece if we’re counting it as a single zone then we need to count others likewise.
Tranquil Sea $15
Phantom Sea $15
1 event heroic, 1 raid Zavith’loa: The Lost Caverns (Heroic) & Zavith’loa: The Hidden Caldera (Heroic) $15
1 event heroic, 1 raid Brokenskull Bay: Bilgewater Falls (Heroic) & Brokenskull Bay: Hoist the Yellow Jack (Heroic)$15
1 event heroic, 1 raid Castle Highhold (Heroic) & Castle Highhold: Thresinet’s Den (Heroic) $15
1 event heroic, 1 raid Ssraeshza Temple: Inner Sanctum (Heroic) & Ssraeshza Temple (Heroic) $15
Ossuary: Sanguine Fountains (Heroic) & Ossuary: Resonance of Malice (Heroic) $15
Also including the event heroics that share the same map of each…I realize it’s recycling but we can be honest about the recycling used 🙂 in the case of the new one I believe it’s going to be a single Heroic/raid and 2 event heroics? as well as the solo stuff…
Even by breaking it down tho via that it’s obvious with that reasoning that the expansions are cheaper to the consumer for zones. Unfortunately this isn’t about what is best for us, it’s what they’ve decided the new vision is, which I feel continues to steer away from listening to the community.
It’s going to cause a lot of rifts amongst people who want to do this new raid zone and those that won’t and I fear it will fracture some already limping guilds further. Heck this household is already divided cause the husband really wants the duck mount and I loathe the thought to have that thing near me because of what it stands for, which is basically “hey kids look at the birdie ignore the house burning down cause we got you a biiiiirdie, lookit the biiiiirdiiiiiie” Sad thing is if it had come up over ANY other circumstances than to just distract the community while the building is falling down rather than give them real answers or GASP talk to them, I would jump at buying every single one, cause TTobey is pretty amazing.
As a raid leader I’m dreading the first person messaging me about this DLC and asking why aren’t we doing this content, because if we want to do it as a guild I have to nudge people to spend more of their money to keep raiding. And my guild is full of great and wonderful people who help each other, give kronos to help someone get by for a month, or out right by them expansions so they won’t be left out of the fun and adventure during hard times.
As a raid leader I’m going to have to face the challenge of what do you tell people when they buy this DLC and the rest of the raid can’t or wont? And what of the next DLC? What if it’s marketed to high end raiders instead of low/middle of the pack, if I buy that wouldn’t I just be wasting my money, since whenever they gear stuff for the higher end raiders I know my casual guild won’t be able to touch that content. If I buy the next DLC will it include this one? At what point would that happen?
But I’m having to hope that this easy/middle ground raid zone is actually going to be that, not something with an incredible dps check or requirement of classes I can’t field. Again this is a casual guild and I realize serious progression guilds don’t have these problems. But as a Raid leader I will face them, and more. Like what if the gear in this zone is better/worse than current gear? Better procs? Don’t get me wrong I love the idea of MORE actual content at my level of play but I do disagree with the pricing scheme as currently presented.
Anyway just realized I ranted all over your comment sorry!
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Desius
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No worries Nauralea, the comments are welcome.
The primary reason I split out zones with the same name is that, while they can share a location name, they can be completely different maps and asset sets. I guess internally I am splitting them out as these distinct maps.
e.g. Caldera and Caverns are two different maps and two very distinct zones sharing the “Zavith’loa” name. They both have three distinct Solo, Advanced Solo, and Group versions, which is why I included them separately.
Granted some of the ‘zones’ are one-shot things or extra zones on the theme like the “Hunt” and “Inner Sanctum” and I agree those should not stand on their own for the purposes of how I totalled it up.
If what Daybreak releases is close to the content level of packs such as Splitpaw or Bloodlines, they could arguably be worth $15 or so. I guess we will have to wait and see.
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Nauralea
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Agreed I just know for the pirate zones technically they’re all one as a result of how they flow together for contested, and Zavithloa I almost hold to the same because of how they seem to overlap into each other for raid merely because the Extra boss spawn in what would be the caverns part of the zone… but I agree they do play up as separate zones for heroic giving them a very distinctive play through while others are merely redressing of the same area 🙂 but yes I TOTALLY get what you are saying 🙂
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Feldon
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The fact that Far Seas Distillery is one “zone theme” with 6 variations does not mean that this fall’s expansion will be broken out into lots of $15 zone themes for a total cost of $40, 60, or more just to get the basic content. We can speculate and dream up the worst case scenario, but it’s just not going to happen. Now, there might be options from $25 up to $90 for prestige houses, flying mounts, and lots of fluff extras, but the actual zones won’t cost $15 a piece.
I apologize for my tone and should have explained further.
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Nauralea
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Ahh see I was understanding her verbage to mean we would get a larger DLC package in the fall not an expansion? Might just be how it’s worded but I’m not betting on an expansion and your right we shouldn’t judge what hasn’t happened but fears to arise when they do.
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thait
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I suppose it depends on how it works out. I still remember Mara and Splitpaw and those were really neat, would actually love another Mara type thing done. $15 dollars isn’t that big a deal to me, if i decide to buy it that is, considering that with my gaming habit I dish out $60 for a game that holds my attention for a measly 8 hours at most.
Whether they continue this type of thing will probably depend on how many people buy it. If it’s really good and lots of people want it due to that they will probably keep doing things like it. If it’s bad most won’t touch it and that will be that.
I just wish they would get that stupid EQN off the ground so it would stop sucking money away from the other games.
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Pipsissiwa
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People keep mentioning Mara and Splitpaw, but I don’t think they are comparable to what is being described here.
Mara was two small but perfectly formed overland zones with bosses, strings of quests & crafting stuff, and the Forsaken City dungeon with mountains of quests/trials etc in there too. Kept me busy for quite a while.
Splitpaw was an underground zone with loads of repeatable quests in a number of different dungeons with interesting and original challenges in them (like Harclave’s), not to mention the starting dungeon area and the being kidnapped stuff.
And Mara (cant remember for Splitpaw) was free to All-Access and a small cost to normal subscribers.
This pack just sounds like a hub area (& merchant) with a dungeon off it that comes in 4 difficulties, presumably with the now normal daily/weekly etc quests for each version. To me, this is simply adding to the more recent miserable game style approach of rinse and repeat grind, presumably still without mobs/bosses dropping stuff inside the dungeon until the end (unlike Mara, Splitpaw and other older expacs where all bosses dropped loot to use, sell or more recently ‘mute). Now, unless you complete a zone you get precious little to show for your efforts if you don’t need XP/AA.
All quite different from previous ‘Adventure Packs’ IMO, and considerably less value, but others may and will disagree I am sure.
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unclex
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Lets not forget the first real adventure pack (DLC) was bloodline cronicals it was vampire based out of Nek forest and it was only one zone 2 versions heroic and raid for 9.99 iirc
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Feldon
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$4.99
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unclex
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was it that inexpensive I really though it was more
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bluggly
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Its clear the game now is on its last legs this is yet anotherr ploy to try and keep it chugging along,sorry an di do hate to say this but i wont be buying such a sad way for my time to end with this once great game
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