EZ Server

I think a lot of the focus of changes are on T10, while the vast majority of players are not in T10 and won't be for quite a while.  I think it's important to look at changes that can retain new players in lower content. 

Having gone through the lower tier content early last year and then again recently when I level'd up a 3rd group, here are some comments and thoughts on how I feel the content looks to a new player, starting from level 1:

Field of Bone:  It's a pretty crappy starting area as a new player, IMO.  I think starting in a bit of a more epic area would be nice.  There's another custom server that used Vex Thal and the did a great job with it.  With that said, a new starting area would require too many resources that Akka can better spend elsewhere so I don't think this is important at all.

The rest of the zones to 70:  Good stuff.

Plane of Fire:  Great for new 70s and great for PL'ing your new group levels/AAs.  Feels relatively useless as a way to grind out levels on your Ring of Ages.  Now that the Ring has required levels, I would love to see Plane of Fire have some use as a grinding zone.  Any player who can mass pull Qvic+ would rather do that for AAs if they were AA farming, as they would have the chance for GSoAs/essences/rainbows.

Time/LDON:  Great zones, no complaints.  I would like to see LDON instance cost be free, in order to allow players a bit more leeway in wiping on their way up the levels.  It would make King's Chests for the FG/CG too easy to farm by doing that, which leads to my next point:

FG/CG: I think the quests are great but I dislike that you have to get the King's Chests because it makes you go through Time/LDON with toons without skills maxxed out.  Another time-consuming equivalent would be great, in order to make people work at the quest and gain the benefit of the offense/defense skill gains when they really need it.  I've always hated having to AFK toons for hours or overnight in order to work melee skills and/or defense up.  It just serves 0 purpose.

Qvic:  I loved the zone as a new player.  It was a lot of fun breaking into it.  I wish more zones felt this way.

CT/T1/T2:  This is where my suggestions get a bit more challenging.  I think the order of these zones are all wrong, including the order of the essences and how they affect UWs.  I think T1/T2 should be before CT.  Increase the drop rate of crystals for T1 and give all of the minis a very small chance to drop dragon minors. 

Beef up CT slightly and make the bosses there meaningful.  Turn it into a good dungeon crawl the way Qvic feels for a fresh group of 70s.   After the playstyle of T1/T2, this would be a drastic change back to the LDON/Qvic playstyle and I feel like it would make the first few tiers more enjoyable.  T1/T2 is just so incredibly boring.  I don't think there's anyone out there that enjoys T1/T2 at all.

As a result of pushing CT after Qvic/T1/T2, I think you re-work the UWs and make UW4 the big jump in power rather than UW3.  This way a player has to go through 4 tiers of content to get that big power jump.   

T3/T4:  I'm ok with both of these.   People complain about gmajors, which is a fair complaint, but I don't think there's a reason to make them easier.  Bottlenecks are ok.

T5:  I think it's a great zone.  I think a coral bane quest would be great, something with about +60,000 coral damage would be optimal.  Killing corals with a group of 6/12 without at least a UW6 is a nightmare when you're in the last few stages of clearing this place.  It's made even worse when you have to gear up duplicate classes.  I had 4 zerkers last year when I went through this place.  I had nightmares about yellow corals for months. 

T6:  Great zone, no complaints.

I haven't had enough experience in T7+ to comment on changes to those zones.

GSOAs:  I think they should only drop in T3 and up.  I think the drop rate should be increased in T7 and up.  I also think you could level limit the earrings.  Level 10 earring requires level 72.  Level 20 earring requires level 74.  Level 30 earring and up requires level 76.   The problem with GSOAs is that they're killing the economy.  Nobody farms SLS as new players anymore.  You get one GSOA as a lucky drop in Qvic, sell it for 15m+ and you can outfit your crew to the gills with strike augs and you can get your tank their SotA.  I don't know that farming SLS as a new player is necessarily a good option either, as it's a zero-skill, mundane task, but as it stands there are no SLS out there for higher tier players to buy.  MPG doesn't bring enough in.  It helps, sure, but it's just a supplement to your farming. 

I don't like the idea of changing anything that Hunter established....I think it discredits the work he did. If he were still with us and agreed to changes that would be another matter all together.

So a zone currently in a poor state (T1/T2) should be left unchanged?  I can't imagine Hunter wouldn't have wanted his work to be improved on.  Nobody's asking to throw it away. 

Leaving 90% of it intact isn't discrediting his legacy, it's evolution.  Things can get better and still reflect the hard work a person put into it before their unfortunate passing.  Should the iPhone remain unchanged because Steve Jobs was one of the top innovators in American history and it would discredit his incredible vision and hard work?  Of course not. 

I enjoyed my struggles through T1/T2...perhaps it wasnt boring to me because half the bosses would wipe my raid if i wasnt johnny on the spot with heals.....uber buffs turn fun challenging content into boring grinds.

The heroic resist augs also took away much of the challenge from these tiers.   The AOE poison from the dragons used to be very challenging.    Now, as you said with everyone buffing, everyone getting leet XP from the XP mask MGB, and the ability to get elite resists there is no challenge here any longer.

I guess the grind is still a challenge, hmmm may be a pattern there.

I agree - this change isnt worth anyone's time. You dont spend much time in this zone and there is never a need to come back.


Skills being maxed out in the guilds seems to me to be more of a convenience for players who are bringing up boxes and already well past that content. Otherwise, you should be maxing your skills as you progress through the content. To me, this sounds like an issue of advancing to fast through the earliest content. I dont feel like i ever had to stop to get my toons skills up because by the time i farmed all my epics from PoTime everybody got high enough to hang.


I dont feel like the zone order needs to be messed with. I do agree with increased crystal drop rates and dragon minor drop chance on minis. Farming UW - T1 & T2 blows. If it blows for someone who can pull the entire zone, its worse for players who are actually grinding through the zone. Rot Bot & Dragon Class are great to alleviate the lower level pains, but neither are very helpful when RNG hits and the 20 crystals you spent forever farming turn up the same damn bosses over and over and none are the ones you need.


I enjoyed T1/T2  8) I would like to know more about what bores you with T1/T2...its the first zone where you arent just doing a dungeon crawl (which i think is great) and it should be challenging (absent uber buffs). I dont like messing with lower ranks of UW. To me UW shouldnt be something you farm until you are well past these tiers.


To piggy back off my earlier question - What makes T3/T4 better than T1/T2. To me they are very similar zones with T3/T4 having a little more complexity to it.


Corals suck, but not absurdly so. I like the idea of coral bane quest but its honestly unnecessary. I like zones that punish class stacking. Don't get me wrong, i class stack just like everyone else, but i think its a fair price when you have to spend some extra time in each tier because you stacked up on what you believe to be the best class available for the task.


I can help you here - The zone is freaking huge and you spend more time running around clearing bosses than clearing the trash! But it is what it is and its not worth spending a ton of time to fix it. I think this zone is well balanced for having large pay offs for spending a large amount of time clearing the zone.

Fair Point - perhaps we should change T1/T2.......i suggest making spells in T1/T2 unresistable!

I say make it so you can't use heroic resists until t7 and level limit buffs for lower classes (as this seems a constant complaint) so that content remains challenging.

Skills don't max as you go through, the leveling process is too fast as it is on live and other servers.  You can find new players AFK in Surefall on a pretty consistent basis hitting training dummies.  There's enough on this serve to keep us busy without encouraging people to AFK to train skills.  It just doesn't serve a purpose.


When did you enjoy them?  Right now they're awful as a player going through them the first time through.  They never posed any challenge whatsoever.  Just a boring, slow, spread-out crystal farm-fest.  There's no epic feel, there's no risk of death.  I don't think making the AEs meaningful is going to help much.  I also did T1/T2 without buffs and it was never a risk of death.  In LDON as a fresh 70 without buffs, there was a definite risk of death.  In QVIC, without buffs, there was a risk of death for the first 2-3 clears.  In T3, you could only pull 1-2 sections, if that, and there was a risk of death climbing stairs with mobs on you.  In T5, I started by only being able to pull 10-12 mobs when riposte was up, and only pulled in packs of 6-7 when riposte was down.  There was a risk of death.  In T6, I started the same way as T5.  I'm still unable to pull more than about 1/6 of the zone at a time, currently. 

T1/T2, even without buffs, never felt that way.  It was always a boring walkover.  I think it would be difficult to re-work T1/T2, which is why I think it's easier to put CT behind T1/T2, beef it up slightly, make the named always up like Qvic and make them required, and make this another dungeon crawl.  I think UW4 should be the big jump at that point because it would require a bit of a more difficult grind going through 4 UWs as well as a slightly more difficult CT.  As a new player progresses, the first time they can realistically consider pulling the entirety of Qvic to begin farming UW is after they have their 3.5 from HOH and even then it's a challenge.   It doesn't get trivial to pull the whole zone at once until you hit level 73, have your maxxed SotA, and 4.0.  On the flipside, T1/T2 farming was NEVER difficult even remotely.  Just terribly time-consuming and utterly boring.  Farming T1 crystals is worse than farming HOH tokens x100.  Pulling the entirety of HOH in one pull never comes within 10% of the ease of pulling T1/T2 in one pull.  It's not in the same zip code.

That's why I'd make T1 farming a bit easier, and make CT farming a bit harder and make it the bottleneck for the big UW jump.  As it currently stands, a UW1 is a minor upgrade, a UW2 is a minor upgrade, and then BOOM, UW3 instant-legendary.  UW4/UW5 are like no upgrades at all, and then UW6 and UW7 are moderate increases.  I think gating UW4 behind a tougher CT would make the jump to legendary-UW feel a lot more rewarding.  When I finished farming dminors, my elation was extremely tempered because I felt like I'd been run over by a truck a few times.

Part of what I just said answers your question about what makes T3/T4 ok and T1/T2 not.  I never felt any challenge whatsoever in T1/T2 and the setup of the zone itself generates no excitement.  It's not just the difficulty of the dragons, it's that the zone has no feeling of epic to it at all.  T3 has some challenge for a long time as far as pulling it is concerned.  T3 can get very burdensome as well when you're farming for gminors/gmajors, or even T4 gear.  I understand that.  But when I got there, at least I enjoyed clearing it out the first 10 or 20 times.  T1/T2 I didn't even enjoy the first time and I can't be the only one.  It's a lifeless zone that's too early in the progression and I think people who enjoyed Time/LDON/Qvic get smashed in the face with disappointment.  Then, right after you finish it, you go back-to-back with another large zone token-farm (equivalent to the crystal farm).  I think it would smooth out progression to not have them back-to-back and to make CT feel more meaningful rather than a quick bump in the road.

Keep in mind, by the way, that CT as a dungeon crawl for a player moving up the lower tiers is a lot different than farming CT for essences as a higher tier player.  I know most of the higher tier players don't like farming CT essences for UWs and whatnot because it's too cramped in.  That's the thing, though:  when you're going up through progression, I think dungeon crawls are a lot more fun than open spaces.  I think when you're farming essences, that dynamic flips, and you'd rather have the open spaces.  I'm writing this post, however, from the perspective of a player moving up through the tiers, not a player who is in T8/T9/T10 and doing backfarming.   The health of this server will always depend on retaining the new players.  It benefits everyone in the end to keep them here.  If only new content and T10 content is being addressed, then that content does nothing for the new players here.

I agree with the problem with buffs, by the way.  When I was new here at the beginning of last year, I cleared LDON and Qvic without buffs.  When I got buffed for my 2nd or 3rd Qvic run, I couldn't believe how boring and trivial it became.  It was like playing a really hard console game, and feeling immense gratification when you beat it, and then finding out there's a cheat code.  You plug in the cheat code, and play it again, and the game is never the same for you.  You just never enjoy it again and you can't stop yourself from taking the easy way out and using that code.  I think you need to take away god mode from the players for their own good, and in the end it will be for their betterment.  I'm ok with EXP buffs to a certain extent, but new players getting buffs that increase their 20k health to 200k is just way too much. 

In some of the lower, more boring zones maybe take a page from the Plane of Growth playbook....every X amount of mobs killed, spawn mobs like the Protectors of Growth, who are RIDICULOUSLY hard to kill for the tier.....completely resistant to procs, perhaps, with very beefy mitigation....maybe tie their level to the highest level character in the instance...dont know. Just an idea.

And big yes to making resist stones level limited. Maybe make it progressive....rank 1's only til you hit T3....or make them recommended level as they progress, so that the benefits are incredibly limited til you level. Also, hell yes on buff limits. Start to 70 has pretty much always been trivial here, but now later tiers are trivial as well as long as you hang out in Nexus for a while. And before you all start arguing about making it harder for new players now that we all have ours, keep in mind that many of us "got ours" before most of these buffs even existed.

And sorry, been working myself up to playing again.

I like that idea, Chunka.  I think to reward the lower tier players, maybe put charm prisms and weapon drops as rewards on those bosses to benefit the newer players for beating a difficult mob.  That way they're rewarded but you aren't rewarding the back-farmers who would find those things trivial anyway.  I think you could apply something similar to T3 as well.  As it stands, it's basically just a pull-as-much-as-you-can zone without any mid-point rewards for the new player.  It feels rewarding to have something in the middle of all the trash packs to keep it fresh.  I think Shadow's warping mechanic should also be removed and he should be made way harder.  The warping mechanic is just extremely irritating, particularly when he flies to the opposite end of the zone in an area you already cleared.  Make him really difficult, instead.  The 3.5 reward is massive as it is, for a warrior.

I do agree though that CT sucks....a change that would be very cool....and still keep with Hunter's original concept.....move that tier back to oh crap the name of the zone from Qvic.....I am forgetting...the way it was originally....wow I am brain dead this morning.

Tacvi

Maybe instead of changing the original zones we can take a page out of SOE's playbook.

We could take each zone, copy it and beef it up to a higher tier rating and let it serve as a "Legendary" tier.

example: take T5, copy the zone and scale the mobs to tier 9 with greater rewards, more drops, etc.

it's no secret that there is a large population of the server that hates, and has always hated CT as a tier, however going back to Tacvi is just not a good idea imo. A new zone could be selected to replace CT would be the best option.

These ideas take time and careful consideration to implement though

Love the legendary tier idea.

Legendary tier is nice but it doesn't address some of the negatives of progression for players on the way up, as I was trying to give the perspective of.

I would definitely prefer legendary tier over backfarming lower essences via MPG or through the original lower tiers, though.  That sounds like a lot of fun!

Gonna be the first time I have ever said this.

Thanks, Maslow. :o

That's just silly man.   

I know, but it wouldn't be me if I didn't continue the feud....you know Hatfield and McCoy kinda thing. ;D

Orthanos is the worst.

Pot meet kettle..... ;D

There may be other lower tier options that come into play this year.

These ideas have not been ironed out. It is my intention to bring new and exciting content to the lower tiers to break up the "grind" aspect and give players a way to play with gains.

Side "raids" and side "expeditions" to give players a way to get gains while seeing new content on the way up.

These ideas are evolving, changing and only in the idea phase.

I feel that needed changes to existing zones won't be ruled out, but at the same time keeping with Hunter's zones and concepts is the core of the server.

I'd love to see reworking of UC and UW.  Make prism charms (v1) drop in all custom zones and at much higher rate. That way you can raise them up naturally as you progress and not spend so much time farming Ldon/Hoh/etc. Then for v2 & v3 have a trade-in system for prism charms where 100-200 prisms = uc2 upgrade and 400-500 = uc3 upgrade (tweak the numbers, whatever works). Right now doing UC is far too painful unless it's double loot.. And yes I'm aware it was much harder in the past, I did 2 UC's under the old system (2010 or so) but back then UC (v1) was actually the "ultimate" and it was end-game, and it wasn't exactly required, not for every single dingle toon, buffer etc..

Same for UW, way way too much grind, especially lower tiers. T1-2 and T3-4 make essences drop off all mobs not just bosses. T5 and up are generally ok, just increase the drop rate a little. Same for the Tofs essences, either increase drop rate dramatically, or eliminate them as a requirement for UW (best idea IMO).

Either that or tone down T10 a lot (mob HP and rampage - especially f'n rampage), and I don't think you want to do that. But if you're really going to require 18+ toons all with max UC & UW (or nearly all) just to progress at a decent rate in T10, then you need to make those items more realistic.  If this makes current UW-enabled players butthurt then enable them to turn in current UW's for a MegaUW or some crap that helps with their feelings... idk.

Right now I have 8 toons, all have UC1, two have UC2 and one has UC3, and 0 UW's, and T10 is just too slow. I can barely kill 1 mob per minute, and when the starting quest is 750 kills before you even get a single upgrade.. that just bites. And the only way to increase DPS would be to add more toons (and grind their UC's) or get UWs for a few toons, which is even worse. I don't even want to login any more. Some day when I'm super bored I'll probably give in and create 3-4 more toons and start grinding Qvic.. but not today :/

The reality is you can't do T10 without at least one strong UW and a group of UC2/UC3 toons. To be honest, in order to do it at a reasonable pace you need at least two UWs. Personally, I like this as it acts as a major gut check, but it does make the UWs essential for progression.

Gell, I hate to say this but the reason you are going slowly is because you havent taken the time to gear your toons before moving into T10. I don't have UW on two of my 3 groups.....and I dont have SoA on every toon either.  I have UC3 on healers/tanks primarily (pally,clr,druid,shm,war,war and maybe 3 dps toons monk/zerker/zerker maybe a rogue)....when you are running T10 with toons that only have a UC1 when a UC2 is sooooo easy to get then you kinda lost the argument on nefing T10.....T10 has been nerfed....nothing else needs to be nerfed there.


I like your idea of taking ToFS esse's out of the UW recipe though.  They weren't there to start with.

As for too much grind to get the 100 esse's, no....can't agree with that....is it a pita...boring....YES! I don't want it to be an item that you don't have to grind for.

Now I did propose an idea to Akka about making T10 epics have UW aug slots....no clue if that is going to stick or not. I would like to be able to spend berries on toons that dont have an UW for augs that aren't game breaking (because if they were they wouldnt be in-game) and the epic 10 is a grind all too itself. As I have said I am on last faction and have several sun shards (just waiting on faction at this point) and I will have UA and everything for UW BEFORE I get the t10 epic! With that kind of grind I would expect a better than normal epic weapon for each toon......all this is of course my opinion...so you can take it or leave it.  8)

ahem well, all my toons are pretty maxed out, except for UC/UW. mana necks, check. ornate fire swords check. shield of ages check. fire/ninjastrikes check. resist augs check. hp augs on tanks check. the main reason it's so slow is I'm not running 20+ toons and the fact that you need 750 kills just to START getting gear. most other tiers you kill the first boss, bam you got an upgrade for one of your toons...

look I get it, it's a MMO, it's all about the grind. mmo players are like rats in a cage, pushing a button to get a food pellet.  that's fine, I'll push that button, but I gotta get a pellet before too long. if I push the button over 100 times and still no pellet, I'm gonna starve.

If you think you are maxed out and you still have UC1s, you are wrong.    If you do not understand that then I'd recommend Skylanders or Pokemon for a game your speed.

You are not ready for T10, period.     You are in the same spot many have been when they went from T3/T4 to Illaslin, realizing quickly you are not prepared and heading back to retool and or gear up.  

UC2's give a HUGE boost to spell/proc damage and healing...UC3 even more. Also with mana necks I take it you are heavy caster classes.  That's a plus! Hate designed T10 for casters since they were classes rarely used and he looked to build content to make them more useful. You do need to finish UC2's at bare minimum.....I would work on doing anything and everything I could to boost dps.  The faster you can kill something the less it will beat on your tank and kill them....kinda like the best defense is a good offense theory.

Suggestion from the peanut gallery.  Provide options for every tier that you consider need changed.  If you think FoB needs a change, give an alternative zone that you can do the same thing in.  Although from someone that is just a month or so into the game, FOB wasn't all that awful, it didn't take forever and once it was finished, it was finished.

Dulak is quite boring, but I think there should be more mobs available to kill for the quest.  Maybe some of the ship mobs?

POTIMEa was a blast.  That also I got help with, but once I got the hang of what's what there, I found I could solo and then group pretty easily.  The armor upgrades are very much appreciated.

BOT wasn't to awful, but it was boring... for me.  I was glad to get it over with.
 
LDON's were a struggle, but I managed to get some help.  If a group had zero assistance, and didn't have any Nexus buffs, it is a serious crawl.  Most folks who join that are true Newbies don't have two groups and probably think they will be soloing content.  LDON is the first obstacle and eye-opener.   If the intent is to make it more 'newbie friendly' LDoN should be looked at.  If the intent is to make it difficult and require some time, then leave it alone.

FG/CG was really enjoyable.  Getting to revisit all of those classic zones was awesome!  I wish there were more of this type of quests.  The nice thing is that each step wasn't THAT difficult, and by this time you have got a handle on instances and they help a ton!  It sorta felt like a mini-epic quest, but didn't require a lot of effort, just a bit of time and some ingenuity to traverse these old zones and get thru locked doors.   Loved it!

Hohonora is very boring.  I honestly think this is the first part I have hit that I feel  A SMALL PART of the pain that I read in OOC every day about the time sink with very limited drops.  Hours spent there, crawling along with a few if any drops towards advancement.  Granted, I can't mass pull the zone, but true newbies can't do that type of thing at this point.  Maybe handling 3 or 4 adds at a time can be done (with nexus buffs) but that's it.  No true newbie has the abilities YET for much more.

CT isn't awful, but the drops can be a problem.  Just that LAST piece, at least we can ask for rotts in OOC right?  How about the ability to hand in multi's for the one piece you need, sorta like POD?

POD, not so bad, there are many opportunities for assistance there from phatties mass pulling that zone that don't need the armor pcs that drop.

I know this isn't in order, it's just as it came to me.

How about a way to obtain higher level buffs from a BUFF BOT type NPC, maybe buffs that cost some gold?  100k per buff or something I dunno.

The thing is, who actually can make these changes on the server?  Is Akk the only 'developer' that we have?  I really just don't know who the movers and shakers are but the only one I see in OOC chat is AKK, and I think he has a lot on his plate as it is.

Things actually seem a lot better now, than they used to. Instances. Resists. People MGB'in all over the place, the EZ-Wiki (I had to bother Chunka every other minute back in the day), extensive guides etc. for the most part, people even seem friendly in OOC.

Lots of the crap that has been listed in this thread are 1st world problems. And I honestly don't think, that this server caters to absolute EverQuest virgins, unless they have some sort of masochistic need for timesinks and RNG frustration.

But hey I could be wrong, haven't played T1-4 in 5+ years - but back then, it really sucked too. Thankfully, there were a lot of peers in the same pool of piss as you, that you could team up with and uberleets, who'd show up to give a small leg up here and there. That may not be the case anymore.

But I kinda thought that was the point of it all. If it's not, then I have a ton of recommendations for T9 changes =D

LOL!

Right now T10 is easy compared to before. Everyone that got their T10 armor before the Akka fix grinded by killing 1-3 mobs at a time until they got their armor. We all had to deal with the crazy rampages, high hp's, and single juggers that can easily wipe out 18 people without a problem. Many including myself had to back track and get at least 2 max'd UW's, all UC2 on all toons, mana necks, strike augs, plus add on a couple more toons.

Can we please attempt to try to keep this on track and not have it take a sharp turn towards a T10 debate?  It goes completely against what I was originally stating here.

For the record:  I do not want the lower tiers to be easier.  If anything, I very much support them being harder.  I want newer players limited on 100-200k hp buffs (meaning they have no reason for them.  An improved buff bot as someone mentioned above would be great:  Maybe you hand the buff bot 50k plat and she gives you buffs equivalent to 20-30k HP?  That would be great help for LDON/QVIC but not game breaking. 

I want T1/T2 to be harder.  I want CT to feel meaningful.  I want CT to be placed behind T1/T2 and make the UW4 reward from CT be the meaningful jump in power.  As it stands, the only meaningful jump in UW power right now is UW3.  It's monumental.  Make CT meaningful, and gate UW4 behind it to make it feel rewarding. 

You know what else I hate?  That UW5/UW6, which are pretty huge grinds as well, don't feel rewarding.  Their jump in power is so miniscule that your only excitement for finishing each grind is that you just don't have to do it anymore.  The reward itself is very disappointing.  The UW7 and UW8 jumps are solid and very good, respectively, and those are some of the easiest essences to attain.  I think the stats need to be re-worked a bit here.   Why give a good DPS jump for abyss essences and a 50% increase for anguish essences but like <5% gain on gminors and a 20% gain for gmajors?  That was so disappointing.  I think UW5 damage should be where UW6 is, and UW6 damage should be around 100k.  UW7 110k, UW8 125k and the rest as they are.  It would feel a lot more rewarding for the efforts involved.

The changes I'm asking for have nothing to do with backfarming, have nothing to do with T10.  The only change to backfarming I'd request is somehow re-working dminors.  It's just such an awful farm.  Awful awful awful. 

Spot on. This has been the story for every single zone that has come out! Previous group was lacking in new content because of x.....so make new toons roll them through old content so that you can handle the new content.  Heck I remember when T6 came out and I had Orthanos as my main. I learned quickly that a paladin could NOT tank t6...he did T5 just fine...so I made Raygan. When T9 first came out, and mobs hit like crazy, I made Wilddruidness.  At that time ,before T9 got nerfed, you HAD to have a druid for Skin of the Drake.....All my toons were made out of the need to optimize my group(s) to handle content. So making toons and learning the spells they can use (and some spells that are VERY beneficial in T10 are not EZ custom spells) and gearing toons up to the content they are in.

The lower end content goes by quickly, unless you are farming for essences for UW as you go. You may find that going some tiers further in and then going back to the zone and "backfarm" is a better way to spend your time. (Assuming that's what is happening)

there are other means to acquire dminors, in the forms of expeditions, that take some of the pain away from farming the zones you love to hate.

Maybe Akka plans to fix the nerf bat that was swung at the dailies and make Dranik expedition and Abyss expedition (if this one will ever come back to the game) actually start dropping essences again....that would make a HUGE dent in the complaint factory that is the UW quest line.

I have been thinking about this comment today. It maybe a valid argument.  So to keep content from getting boring from grinding so may essences and to keep the complaining to a minimum....why not make the UW quest not accessible until the toon hits Loping Plains? Allows people to continue through content and then once they hit LP (the tier UW was introduced to game) it becomes an optional quest that they can then do and use saved/banked essences and/or back farming to get.

I agree with this thought process. At the moment, I feel like that kind of already exists. Half of the problem to hating these zones seems like it stems from staying too long in a tier to get the UW essences, when its just not worth doing. I didnt start working on my UW until LP and was eager to get out of each tier to move onto the next. Perhaps this is why i look back fondly at a lot of the lower tiers. I dont know that we need to create a mechanic to force people along this line of play, but perhaps those people should identify they are causing their own pain.

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I agree with this thought process. At the moment, I feel like that kind of already exists. Half of the problem to hating these zones seems like it stems from staying too long in a tier to get the UW essences, when its just not worth doing. I didnt start working on my UW until LP and was eager to get out of each tier to move onto the next. Perhaps this is why i look back fondly at a lot of the lower tiers. I dont know that we need to create a mechanic to force people along this line of play, but perhaps those people should identify they are causing their own pain.
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That shouldnt be too hard.  Just increase the required level on all the lower versions.

Agreed. I just dont think its necessary. Why force people to play on a linear path. If they want to torture themselves and level UW along with their progression, thats how they choose to play. They just need help realizing it isn't necessary to do in progressing. If they want to play that way, let them.

Off-topic :

I've no insight on the effort required to adapt a un-used zone, so please forgive my ignorance, but what are the chances, or what is required for us to get more zones to play and progress in?

Looking over the zone-list I found so many interesting zones which was launched long after I quit live-eq back in the day (around Dragons of Norrath) and I thought to myself that it would be a lovely thing to get to play in some of these zones, get the experience, if nothing else then just for something else to do and as an alternative to the current standard road of progression.

//Ekiir

Because then you get QQ posts like this.

On this note I wish all the unused old zones had T7-10 level difficulty, solid experience and dropped standard loot (crystals / plat bags / gsoa etc. / maybe random essences). Seems like a waste of zones to not do this. I know I would spend a good deal of my time in old zones that happen to be fun and difficult - keeps it interesting. Eg. innothule swamp mobs could be lvl 78 and hit like t10 :) Would be fun to explore the old world again and add excitement entering old zones not knowing how tough the mobs will be. I bet this is a lot of work though even if the zones are not adjusted apart from loot tables and mob difficulty.

I wish that I could chill all day in your raid while you farmed PBs for me.   That would be cool.   I could go to work, chill with friends and still progress.

Since we are wishing.

You can't just chill for kill count credits anymore can you?  You actually have to hit the mob to get credit now, don't you?

I bet you can't. Sure Maslow if you don't mind 5-10 PBs / hr.