So far i love Rise of Kunark, its a lot of fun, but i do not see it lastly for long. The main reason for this is people are burning though the contact faster than ever. I currently have guild mates who allready have 1/2 of the level 80 legendary armor sets, by the end of the week at there current rate they will have their full set of Legendary armor. The expansion isn’t even 20 days old, there max level, and have half of there armor sets done, other than raiding, what exactly is going to keep these people playing the other 345 days of the year?
On top of that raids have don’t appear to be to hard either. The top guild on my server has defeated every single RoK raid except Veeshan’s Peak… That 6 differnet raid zone that they have completed and finished. The expansion came out 13 days ago, it hasn’t even been 2 full weeks, and people are already finished the majorty of the raid zones!!! How many raid guild did you know were starting to raid Deathtoll 2 week in to KoS? Again the top guild on my server took about 45 days to get deathtoll access.
Where is the challenge? There doesn’t appear to be a challenge. The only thing slowing people down, right now is lock out timers. Right now the average player who was 70 before rok came out are in there mid 70’s now. Before the year is done they will be 80. And before january is over they will most likely have a full set of legendary gear. By the end of January the top raid guild will be fully fabled out, non top end raid guild will most likely have completed tier 1, and 2 of RoK and would be working on tier 3 or 4.
So i must ask everyone, including the devs. What going to keep the average person playing, 3 months down the line? Currently dose not look like much. And what happens when people do start to leave the game because there nothing to do? Server populations will fall, and the people who do stay will find it harder to find groups, and might make them want to leave as well.
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Well one thing I know someone would point out are Epics. They will probably be released in, I think Scott said something like a month or two? So in a way I fear what could be a rehash of EQ1 epics, if that is what they feel will keep players busy for awhile. I am just speculating, but that is all I can think of right now. Of course I don’t expect the epic quests will take anyone longer than a few weeks at most, that is all I can think of.
Well ya epics… but if all the encounters in the game now have been beaten, then it pretty much become another quest, that will be done pretty quickly. Now if there some difficult puzzles it might take some time..
I think I’ll blog about my thoughts on this. My point of view is from a returning player to the game. I actually think it’s a good thing.
There’s plenty of content it’s just all of the hardcore people are burning through it because they are too obsessed. There’s no way to stop this from happening. You need to remember that the people you mentioned only make up about 1% of the game base so it’s not hurting anyone.
Well there is the tower yet to be realeased. Maybe the feedback will make them beef it up a bit.
As thing’s stand, there’s no doubt that the hardcore are burning through the content in the usual, predictable way. But if the hardcore disappear, they won’t be missed on a lot of servers.
Predicting that more casual raid guilds will be finishing off the raid content by January may be overstating it a little, but it probably isn’t far out. As well as the concern over content, there’s also the problem that there is a mature (i.e. high level) playerbase. When DoF and KoS came out, a lot of players hadn’t got to 50 or 60 so there was still plenty of content to go at. Now the level cap has been 70 for 2 years, most players are launching into EoF as wealthy and well-geared 70’s.
On the other hand, I think we need to remember the gradual content releases during EoF’s lifespan – unrest, claymore, SoF. I’m pretty sure that SOE will stick to this kind of program, trailing some new content around Xmas and releasing it at the end of Jan. Maybe epics, maybe a new dungeon, but it will be enough to keep the playerbase going for a few more months.
Looking at a map of the whole expansion, there appears to be a large empty space in the North of Kunark. They’re going to fill that with something, surely?
The bigger problem is the solo focus of the expansion. Unless you’re a guardian, troubadour or defiler, there’s next to no point in grouping on your grind to 80. That will damage guilds who don’t take action to combat the solo-isation of the game – and is the first WoW-ward step in EQ2 that’s really concerned me.
I would just like to point out that I thinkn you are forgetting that the top guilds ALWAYS burn through content like this! That is just what those crazy guilds do. Even regular raiding guilds I think are different from the top raiding guilds. Comparing the casual player to these raiding guilds and judging how long content will take to finish really is not fair.
I Do know top guild burn threw content fast… but not this fast… KOS it took raid guild 40-50 days to compplete all the lower end encounters to get to deathtoll RoK it took them 13 to complete all 6 raid zone leading up to VP. I have seen a similar effect with casual players there leveling faster, and gearing up sooner, than previous expansions.
What worries me while there is a lot of content i see both casual and hardcore players getting threw most of it in 2/3 months. What do people do the other 8 or 9 months. I know SoE will add more content as we go, but that only good for so long.
[...] 27, 2007 ogrebears and keenandgraev have both blogged on Rise of Kunark and the future of EQ2, Keen opining that its [...]
I’m a casual player and don’t raid at all and already hit 80 a few days ago. EOF kept me entertained for quite a long time, but this expansion was just a bit too speedy. I still have the dungeons to explore when I can find the large chunks of time to do that. But for now it’s back to my alt.
I feel very much the same – and even the lockouts won’t be keeping us back as much now with the Chelsith and Maidens autoupdate changes. Even crafting has become even more trivial and isn’t much of a timesink/challenge. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we see an adventure pack. And, we’ll have epic quests to work on – after the first of the year. And, there’s Kurns…