Where they should have stopped.

[Kittik]

I think after the Rise of Kunark is where they should have stopped with the major changes to the game. After this expansion pack is when EQ2 started it's decline.

1. Desert of Flames was ehh. For me and most people I knew it was just largely avoided, venturing to DoF for exploration exp.

2. Kingdom of Sky was a great addition. Good content, nice raids and some of the zones where honestly a very nice challenge.

3. Echoes of Faydwer was also a great addition. Lots of content, good zones and the lore was consistent here.

4. Rise of Kunark a thrid great expansion pack. The game was going great during this time. Epic's!
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5. The Shadow Odyssey is when they started introducing the change to how gear was earned and I think the tipping point in what fundamentally changed EQ2.

6. Sentinel's Fate I thought was a nice addition of content but the content further pushed the decline of EQ2 as I saw it. The focus on AoE damage the the "Hole" used to power-level every toon ever from there on out.

7. Destiny of Velious continued the downward spiral of constant changes to earning gear. More changes new players that had just learned the rules of Sentinel's Fate the rules were changed again. Introduction of Public quests were also not greatly implemented.

8. Age of Discovery with the introduction of Merc's was a sign things were ending for the game. Times were sad because I could feel the end in a real sense when this happened. It was around this point when I stopped playing that thinks like Crit Mit were supposed to be in the hundreds if not thousands. Same with Potency.

9. Chains of Eternity. I had stopped playing at this point and don't think I experienced must from CoE.

10. Tears of Veeshan

11. Alter of Malice

12. Terrors of Thalumbra. I came back around this time.

13. Kunark Ascending. Or this time...not sure, but the game had changed a lot. Dungeons have difficulty levels, and I could only group with idiots like myself that weren't good enough to group with good players because of gear or ability or some other silly requirement that punished me for not playing straight for years on end. Was really disappointing in EQ2 at this point. It was once a game I loved and now it wasn't even fun to play because I'd have to spend hours upon hours to be good enough to just play with other people my own level...just bad design.

14. Planes of Prophecy

15. Chaos Descending. I remember trying to pick it up again during one of these last expansion packs and feeling so completely overwhelmed with the requirements to just be "good" that I couldn't' force myself to play anymore.

[Rylec]

The beauty of an emulator is that you can create the game the way you want it to be (within reason).

Right now the team is trying to work on Shattered Lands zones (the initial release), and it will take a long time to get even to the first expansions. If you wish to get involved in working on content to help speed up the process, you are more than welcome to send a pm to [mention]neatz09[/mention] or [mention]Cynnar[/mention] to let them know.

On topic:

I also prefer the old EQ2 (by a land slide), and I think your views on the expansions fit my own pretty well

Not to defend the decisions made by SoE (or DBG) but I think some of the decisions made (especially for the last few expansions) were made because they were trying to create something large and something that would entertain people for an entire year with basically a skeleton crew. To my knowledge the number of employees they currently have assigned to the EQ franchise is a fraction of what they had when they created huge expansions like Rise of Kunark.

[John Adams]

I kinda agree with both of you on this. 100% of why I stopped playing EQ2 was because of Vanguard, so I cannot blame the game or content for that. But when I started emulating EQ2, I spent a ton of time just "in the world", either collecting or learning how the world worked... and I was not thrilled with what I saw.

RoK was definitely a good line-in-the-sand on fun, reasonable, expected content expansion. Everything after that kinda felt like a cash grab, and rightfully so for the publishers, because something's got to pay to keep the lights on.

Being in software development myself (IRL) I totally get seeing how "the competition" does a thing successfully, and ganking it and implementing your own, hopefully better version. The failure comes when there are 20 MMOs people can play and all of them have the exact same feature: a Marketplace to buy anything you need, so you don't even have to play the game.

I was fine with Veteran's Rewards, or earning game-cash by doing something epic... but, to just swipe your CC and you get the same bonuses I get for paying these fuckers $20/mo for 10 years? Yes, that pissed me off.

That's when MMOs died for me.

Butt... all that said, I do understand the need to keep building, keep tweaking, keep making the game(s) bigger and more fun and, sadly, easier, because if a competitor puts out a game that's easier to be uber than you, then you lose customers. So it's basically been a slow-boil dumbing down of our games since 2004 (ahem, WoW).

Anyway, good topic. Good thoughts. Thank the gods for Emulators

[Cynnar]

Butt... all that said, I do understand the need to keep building, keep tweaking, keep making the game(s) bigger and more fun and, sadly, easier, because if a competitor puts out a game that's easier to be uber than you, then you lose customers. So it's basically been a slow-boil dumbing down of our games since 2004 (ahem, WoW).

This is my thoughts exactly. It is sad you have to dumb it down just to keep up with players and competition. Turns good games into crap for sure.

Btw, I never jumped on the WoW train at all.