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Hateborne needs to make a new post, why players leave and brainstorm that, otherwise we shooting in the wind with the "I wants (including me)"
So that’s me
So why have I stopped playing EZ:
1. Boxing 12+ toons is really tiring. When I first started playing on EZ (some 6 years ago) a single group of 6 toons was adequate to all content (T2 being the highest teir). For me 6 toons was really manageable playing in large amounts of lag. When the content shifted and it became obvious that a second (and then third) group of toons was needed to manage content reasonably – I started getting tired of logging toons in.
2. There are too many long and boring grinds on the server. Everything from RoA to UW to SoT are just massive in themselves. Personally, I hit the “one grind too many” syndrome. The content is just not dynamic enough and the grind ends up being really hard work.
3. Single zone tiers started to really bore me. Spending a couple of months grinding out T6 possibly broke me. The zone is dull, one dimensional and not at all fun once broken. The forced repetition there (with way too many shades of brown) just did my head in. Loping Plains was better but I started to long for more varied content.
Side thought – it would be nice if the entire server wasn’t in the same gear and going for the exact same items.
I’ve started playing on the live servers again – mainly to get ready for EQ Next but also to recapture that sense of solo play again. After playing on EZ I had really forgotten how skilled you need to be to master a class. The toons on EZ are so maxed out that only a few of the AAs are truly meaningful – and nowhere near as meaningful as on live. And really – when you box an army there’s no need to really think about the nuance of a class when you can simply muscle your way through the content.
Today on live you can start with a lvl 85 toon (with all the AAs possible to attain at that level) and you are equipped with Raid ready gear for that toon. The server populations on live are now quite low and to answer this, Sony has provided Mercs and Heroic Adventure zones where two or more people can group together in mini raids. Playing solo and in small groups is now really feasible on live. The hell levels have all disappeared and leveling to 100 could take a focused player no longer than a month to achieve.
It occurs to me that EZ currently has no streamlining to end game content. If anything, it’s been deliberately developed to stop newer players from progressing with any kind of speed: especially in the face of needing to box more than 6 toons. Live now seems to shortcut content for newer players to ensure that endgame content is more than possible faster. For good or evil – it means that returning players like myself aren’t put off by this MASSIVE grind to end game content that could potentially take years. When I think about EZ, I wonder how long it would take a new player to build a box set of 6+ from Field of Bones to T9 with all augs, UWs (on main tank), RoA at 200+ level. My guess is that it’s close to a year (with lots of help). Certainly no casual player is getting there anytime soon. As the server grows and develops more tiers the distance between a new player and end game will be close to insurmountable without some serious consideration to streamlining the earlier content. How does EZ server look at Tier 20 for example with no changes to the lower tiers.
My thoughts anyway – from a distance.
Strix
