Truth in advertising and Epic 2.0

[TerjynPovar]

Well, the main reason it really annoyed me is that it's not like it was other people who still needed the quest who was doing this, it was people who were just screwing with you.  People way higher in level, or people who you could 100% guarantee had already done the quest in the past (they already had the reward for instance).

This is why I thought of the battle.net mentality, because a whole lot of the battle.netters playing Diablo 2 will screw with you just because they can, not even because it helps them in any way.

[Shieara]

This is still a derail but...

Kind of related to that, one thing that bothered me on the stress tests were the names.  Now I am not one of those people who feels every name must be a fantasy name and everyone else should be banned, but names like xxxISLAYUxxx or names with profanity turn we way off.  I hear they implemented a naming filter after the stress test  :wink:

[Skanda]

Yes, the names were one of the things I didn't like and you're right. They reworked their naming policy after the stress test. Along with all the normal stuff you'd expect now you can't use names that contain Partial or Complete Sentences, Pure Gibberish, Real World References, "Leet" or "Dudespeak", or Titles now.

If there's one good thing that came of the stress test it was that.

[feralize]

Sometimes I think it would be a good idea for developers to have the balls to create a game where you had to go with a computer-generated character name. Problem solved, but at the expense of not being called exactly what you wanted. Kinda like in rl really  :P

[Lorathir]

Sometimes I think it would be a good idea for developers to have the balls to create a game where you had to go with a computer-generated character name.

I agree entirely.

[Eatbugs]

Sometimes I think it would be a good idea for developers to have the balls to create a game where you had to go with a computer-generated character name.

I agree entirely.

Used to play Dragonrealms, and they had a problem with the character setup server being spammed with people trying to get one particular facial feature that could only pop up at random on one race. I can't imagine how bad the spam would be with every subscriber spamming the character creation process trying to get a cool name.  :?

[feralize]

Have the character name creation client side. When a player decides on a name only then do you need to access the server-side part. You could even have it so that every time you logged in a list of already-taken names would be transferred to the client so no duplicates would be created client-side.

[Eatbugs]

Have the character name creation client side.

I think UO, EQ, AC and AO have all demonstrated what a bad idea it is to have anything happen client side except communication with the server.  I estimate the time elapsed between putting name creation on the client side in an MMORPG and the first character named '3133TG0D' appearing at about a week.

[negrismorte]

Personally, I don't consider it to be a big deal.  If you can't afford 50 bucks for all the expansion then I don't see why you'd put all the time into the epic 1.0/1.5/2.0.  

Anybody who is this far advanced in the game has spend thosands of hours wasting time in the game that could have be easily been spent working.  If you don't have the time or cash to get the expansions needed then you really dont have much use playing the game at the endgame.

No kidding.  The "original" everquest isn't even available in stores here.  All you can get is Platinum edition for $29.99 (all 7 expansions pre-OOW).

[danaconda]

At first I was thinking, "how stupid can people be? did they really think the epic wouldn't include all other expansions?" Well, now I have changed my mind. Epic 1.0 wasn't advertized to sell an expansion. Beastlord epic 1.0 spanned accross original EQ, Luclin (duh, you needed luclin to be beastlord), and Kunark. No surprises there. They PURPOSEFULLY left out Velious so you weren't required any other expansions but the basic ones (Kunark was basic for an epic). That is a fact. Epics were considered Kunark weapons. It was common sense to expect Kunark would be involved. All other classes need Kunark so why shouldn't we? No biggie there.

I don't know a thing about Berserkers' epic. So I won't include that one here.

There has not been a single expansion where one of the selling points was unattainable unless you had any previous expansion. That was the deal with expansions. None of them required another. An expansion on an existing game is just that. An expansion of an existing game. GoD is not an existing game. It is an expansion to original EQ. You don't need Kunark to access it do you? You may need other expansions for some quests, but those quests weren't advertized. Quests are meant to be discovered and they have always spanned many expansions. But no quest has EVER been advertized. That's the problem.

Oh, and to whomever said "it's just 50 bucks" I respond with this. Ok, then you buy me the expansion and nobody will complain. Many people were upset with GoD and won't buy it. So now they can't be uber in OoW? What about up and coming guilds that are just starting to beat PoTime? Maybe they skipped GoD flagging because of how time-consuming it was/is. No reason to lock them out of Epics because of it.

PoP advertized "battle the gods of norrath". They delivered that. They didn't specify being in an uber guild, but again, that was always the case with previous gods. And nobody says you are REQUIRED to join an uber guild. Maybe your server has pick-up raids, maybe it doesn't. But either way, anyone playing EverQuest already knows that you need an uber guild to see uber content.

[Bengali]

You don't need Kunark to access it do you? You may need other expansions for some quests, but those quests weren't advertized. Quests are meant to be discovered and they have always spanned many expansions. But no quest has EVER been advertized. That's the problem.

That's not entirely correct.  Every expansion has advertised "all new quests" and some of those have components from earlier expansions.  If we follow this reasoning, then it's reasonable for people to expect that every one of those advertised "all new quests" would only involve the expansion and original EQ.  And those are just normal quests.  An epic quest by its definition implies an even larger scope.

Or, to put it another way, if the "epic" quest only involved the expansion and original EQ, then you'd have consumers who said that they bought the expansion expecting a quest of grand world-spanning scale and scope, and all they got was something involving the new expansion and some old world zones.  They'd say, "how is this *epic*?  It's just a regular old quest."

Oh, and to whomever said "it's just 50 bucks" I respond with this. Ok, then you buy me the expansion and nobody will complain. Many people were upset with GoD and won't buy it. So now they can't be uber in OoW? What about up and coming guilds that are just starting to beat PoTime? Maybe they skipped GoD flagging because of how time-consuming it was/is. No reason to lock them out of Epics because of it.

No one is locked out of epics because they didn't do backflagging, since none of the "non-uber" epic parts so far have been in any locked zones.  Everyone can get to Riwwi or Vxed or Natimbi or Ferubi.   Also, no one is locked out of "being uber" since you don't need an epic 1.5 to be uber.  Although one counterpoint is that the Epic 1.5 is one of the best items that a player can get without having access to Qvic+.

A lot of people may be boycotting GoD, and that's all well and good, but SOE isn't under any obligation to keep from adding things to it just so those people can continue their crusade.  You've essentially got people complaining that they didn't buy GoD because there was nothing in it that interested them or that the content was unbalanced (much of that has changed, btw), and now they are upset because now there is something in it that interests them and they still don't want to get it because they are holding a grudge.

[Musogi]

You guys aren't getting it at all are you?

Hi epic 1.0 was a part of kunark, you couldn't get it without kunark.  Obviously no conflicts with needing the original game too since kunark was just an expansion.

Then, when luclin came around there was an exception, the Beastlord.  Obviously still no conflicts with needing past expansions to get your epic, since the beastlord quest did not involve Velious, and you needed Luclin just to be able to play the class anyway.

Next comes the Berserker epic, which you need GoD to be able to get since you can only play the class if you have it.  This quest also required no other expansions other than Kunark and its own to be able to complete.

Now we've got epic 1.5/2.0's for all classes.  Given the way epic quests have worked in the past, it would be safe to assume that any expansion that involved a new class would more than likely be required to venture to.  You'd think that this would exclude LoY, and Velious, but unfortunately it doesn't.  The new epics are required level 65 which was implemented in PoP so obviously you need that one (not sure if the requirement was advertised or not).  The only expansion you don't need is LDoN...

So no, its not common sense to assume you would need all expansions.  Just that you would need most of them.

[Katonis]

Actually a rogue friend had me join her for the three minimum person requirements to make an LDoN mission.

She had to go in and keep trying different chests for parts of her epic.

Kat

[Musogi]

Oh yeah, you're right.  I completely forgot about that part of the rogue epic lol.

[Oneiromancer]

And one of the paladin epic 2.0 (not 1.5) parts is in a LDoN raid:

http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/board/message?board.id=Paladin&message.id=3237

Game on,