Feldon 
From Kander on the EQ2 Forums:
To clarify, the Epic 2.0 will not be required for the expansion, expansion access or 99% of the expansion content. It will not be required for any solo or quest content, including the signature line. There will be some specific content, that if you have done the epic, you will be able to participate in. It isn’t required. Alts and new players will have virtually no pre-reqs for expansion 14 content. We’re even going to gear your alts and new players for said content before they begin. The plan is to make the new content easier for alts to go through after the initial pass.
We will be doing things to help alts catch up, like the summer promo quests and tithe baubles, etc, on Ascension and several other aspects of content. More news soon.
Epic 2.0s will not be required for any raid or heroic content. They will remain the best items for those slots throughout the expac content though.
Good to hear, the hearsay was making people nervous.
If you look at Kander’s initial statement it seems that they were planning on the epic 2.0 playing an important part in the next expansion:
We’re knee deep building Expansion content, dungeons, raids and quests! We cannot wait to show you all what we have in store for you, but make sure you get those Epic 2.0 updates, it will be important.Lots more to come!
It makes me wonder if they changed their initial plans after the blow back they received on the forums.
Maybe I’m nuts but the Stormhold merge note seemed dropped rather abruptly — and I’m acknowledging evident population drop-off — and it seemed like a short change of course…Didn’t we just read an update note referring to DoV expac in TLE a few days ago?
Mixed messages goin’ on or crazy meetings in San Diego?
Found it, from last Thursday:
“The Truespirits’ Lament – The shadowy creatures that start this quest have been disciplined. They will no longer attack or be visible until Destiny of Velious is available on TLE.”
Except they’re bagging TLE, so who cares?
My point is that your point, Mizgamer62, about Kander’s phrasing makes me wonder if they’re making some especially awkward decisions lately.
Agreed.
I think they spent too much time banning people and basically ignoring feedback that they didn’t like and now it has finally caught of with them. Unfortunately for the game though, it is a little to late to try and rectify things. We lost a lot of the player base with this expansion and I am not sure at this point that the game can recover.
My Alts and I voted with our feet awhile ago. As I have no trust in anything that is said I will wait for the expansion to have been released before I decide about coming back or not.
Maybe they intend for epics to be required later, in the large mid expansion update.
Maybe they intend to make a decision about when to make new decisions about them when they decide…to…otherwise…something. ;p
Isn’t Fallen Gate a TLE server as well…..thinking people bailed off Stormhold and went to that one instead. They now see no need for two TLE servers and are closing the less populated one. Just a thought.
Ostensibly, Fallen Gate’s shtick was offering gear for doing HQs. A running opinion was that, like with RTT, any Stormhold players in there would go back to playing Stormhold after fooling around in the temporary, maybe special ruleset, server.
Well, as long as dev keeps dangling shinies in different servers, of course the populations aren’t going to be stable.
Again, Stormhold was not billed as a temporary server. What with complaints about how it was run and firing up these other temp servers, it looks like dev facilitated population decrease. It would be interesting to see actual numbers of account holders migrating between Stormhold and “live” servers, as well as net account losses, during these two years but we can’t, nor would it necessarily tell us anything comprehensive. Curious, tho’.
A few weeks ago Stormhold had 10 players logged on at Europe evening hours, and that included 6 from my former Wednesday evening SH group. It’s dead, Jim! FG on the other hand has multiples of low level leveling zones.
I really, really am enjoying Fallen Gate. I should have stayed with RTT but this is a lot of fun. There are people playing and interacting and they group together willingly to do stuff. It’s rather nice.
I agree, I just wish they hadn’t nerfed XP gain so badly. I did all of darklight and New Halas and still didn’t make L20. On Live either of them will do it. Still, I agree that there is a lot of camaraderie and the (100) Dwarven boots are a nice plus on Live.
I think they are finally realizing that people don’t want a game that requires you to login every day and grind for hours on end to be able to do things. This last xpac as a joke when it came to the sheer requirements to do even the basic items. They might be finally realizing that the game is old, and they need to focus on ways to keep people in the game and that does not include making requirements that only people who live in the game can attain. 🙁
Unlikely that they have seen the light, since raid gear now seems to be dropping with grey adornment slots.
Exactly and I think as a result, a lot of players won’t be buying the next expansion.
so the real question is will the new xpac require you to be ascended. I not finished it on any toon. I not played in months until today. I still at ascended level 3 lol. So if the next xpac requires that I don’t care how alt friendly they make it.
Been playing TLE recently, but getting bored already. Been there, done that many times.. I feel my time in EQ2 is coming to an end.