Feldon 
What started as an odd Twitter exchange which felt like a pre-planned stunt turns into a three page backhanded compliment for EverQuest II. From Polygon.com:
Touring the living remains of an 11-year-old MMO
EverQuest 2 has been around over a decade, but there’s still some incredible sights to see in this odd gameMy name is Phil Kollar, and I had a weird weekend.
Let’s start our story just over 11 years ago, on Nov. 9, 2004. That was the date that Sony Online Entertainment released EverQuest 2. I had spent a couple years in high school noodling around in the original EverQuest, a period that, despite my inability to make much progress in the game, helped me fall in love with the genre of massively multiplayer online role-playing games.
So I must have been excited for EverQuest 2, right?
…
EverQuest 2 is not a bad game, and I’m happy that it’s still up and running.
This is a game with history. Real, human history. Over the course of 11 years, people have become friends, adventured together, even fallen in love. I might have made the choice to go with World of Warcraft 11 years ago, but plenty of people went in the other direction and chose to spend days, weeks, months and years of their lives in this virtual world.
…
I don’t regret spending my weekend with this weird game. It’s wonderful that we live in a time where there are hundreds of virtual worlds in which people spend their time and find meaning.
EverQuest 2 may not be my cup of tea, but I’m glad I got to take a sip.
Some of his observations are spot on. All the systems added over time have made it a glut of systems that no new player is going to understand. It’s quite ridiculous. I am playing again on the TLE server and loving it but on “live” the deity system, on top of the adornment system, on top of reforging, on top of 10 blue stats on items, so many AA abilities everyone has to have 10 hotbars, the list goes on and on is nuts.
Of course people who have played it all along take the additions in stride, But try leaving and coming back, or being a new player. I am on TLE and I have a ton of lvl 95 characters on live that could login. But I don’t.
I guess in an MMO that lasts this long people demand new things to hold their interest.
Maybe they don’t revamp stuff also, because of how much time was spent in redoing Qeynos and Freeport zones. No one complains about it much except the few people who miss starter zones but it was something that really didn’t need to be done and must have taken valuable time away from the devs.
All I have to say is thank goodness for TLE
This is my favorite line:
“So what gets lost in the rush? The time needed to polish content along with the ability to go back and remove content that doesn’t really matter anymore.”
Imagine if they had the resources to progress smartly, vs. today where as the writer states, it’s just adding on and adding on.
As much as I love EQ2, I have always felt there has been a constant rush to innovate the next big thing. Nothing old ever gets polished.
The arena came out in DoF and was a nice idea. You could of done a fair bit with it. Quests, gear earned through faction and wins, challanges etc. Instead it just got left, with the only update that followed being a new champion come KoS.
Or Dungeon Maker! It had gear and utility items. Gear quickly gets outleveled but giving more utility items would of been fine and adjusting XP to make it still an OK run even if it wasn’t a good leveling system, instead they nerfed it. They could of added more, made it like AE from City of Heroes, showcased the best zones and given out prizes.
Personally i hate it when content is removed from games, old and new, but he does have a point. Outside of the TLE servers, hard core questers, and achievement hounds, who actually bothers with old content other than to mix up the grind a bit? ESPECIALLY Raid content.
This goes double for the recent AA change where you gain X AAs per level until you close in on the level cap.
Of course, I also personally detest grind, whether it’s a quest grind or XP grind or what have you, so…
I spend my time adventuring in old content. I use the new content for leveling crafters but not so much adventures.
you said it Katz!
Any RPG I’ve played has some component of grinding…MMO or not. It’s a cornerstone of the genre…and I hate to admit I like it in a sadistic sort of way. It’s what makes you feel that bit of pain before you earn something that makes you happy before enduring more pain. That said, EQ2 has very little REAL grind left in it…except perhaps grinding keys for plat and rare items. It really only has the amount of grind you wish to endure….which is a pretty amazing achievement. I also tend to take WoW veteran comments with a grain of salt. They tend to follow a very narrow…and trivialized path of what an MMO should be.
The biggest problem with the expansions of EQ2 is that there is not aconsistency of gameplay features that they stick with. If you’re a newplayer and you’re going through the tiers of levels, you’ll find that out very quickly. The worst part of it is that all of them without guidance have no idea where to go to progress. It’s just all over the place especially in zones that are ranged from 80-100.