This is a post that should really belong over at mob hunter with Lorial at the helm, but as he’s shown the world as of late he’s more in tune with Wow, the Eq these days. Hence I’ve taken it upon myself to try and step into his big shoes.

Eq2 is an easier, more update version of Everquest, Currently in it’s 3rd year (4th anniversary in November) It’s unfortunately not showing the subscription power of its predecessor – though few games these days can compete on a subscription basis with world of warcraft.

With out any doubt there can always be improvements. He who fails to improve fails, simple as that (Even in the business world).

So here are my 5 ways to improve Eq2.

1. Creation of Hot zones

Eq 1, Had hotspots and zone revamps to draw players to the various unused zones. Players in these zones saw increased experience gains and often new equipment. While Eq2 doesn’t necessarily need entire zone’s revamped to give yet more stuff to the game, A subtle experience increase (even the designation perhaps) of making some of the older unused zones “hot” spots would help draw players to the zones and make grouping much more viable.

I don’t know if anyone has looked lately, but a lot of the zones (Ie. Any other zone besides Kunark) sit empty. Zones made for about a hundred players have seven or eight players in them, and of those, most are harvesting in relative safety.

By bringing bonuses to any on of these zones and promoting grouping and fun play to players who started with Kunark and had no where else to go after the timorous deep. I’ve seen countless unsatisfied players from level 20 to 50 on just my sever, so I don’t think that this can be any other then a right move.

Follow up:

2. Introduction of Generic AA’s

I’m not going to get started on the mistake that was character racial abilities. Sure, some races are far, far better then other races, Lets leave it at that.
It is my belief that there should be a generic section of AA’s (alternate abilities) added to EverQuest 2. Something that doesn’t define any one class or race, rather gives all classes and races the ability to add their class a little bit more, and will hopefully give us bored level 80’s something else to work towards.

I’m probably not the first one to admit (at least in eq2, apparently in eq1 it causes some issues) that the AA system in eq1 was a beautiful way of keeping players, playing. No character was ever quite done and there was always one more AA they could get. While this lead to some player requirement of AA’s before they would be considered viable; from a business point of view it was pure genius.

Leading into Eq2. Where each subclass has its own “tree” and each class has its own “tree”. At the end of the road, once again every class has the same optimal build. There’s a few other players like myself that step away from the optimal build and play freaky characters (Example, My Templar often has more intelligence then wisdom) but for the most part, we’re far from the norm.
With Eq2 AA tree’s designed for 100 AA’s, the additional 40 introduced with Kunark just make the characters that little bit more powerful and do not add much originality to the game.

Instead of having racial traits, of which I expect is far, far to late at this point, a looser alternate achievement model could have been used (And still can be used). Taking a page from eq1, and having a generic set of AA’s that all characters can have access to, however with set level limits – starting at level 50 instead of 10, and building from there. Such AA’s like increasing un-mounted run speed, the increased time of food and drink, the ability to hold one’s breath underwater for longer periods of time, Etc, these could all be viable ways to have generic AA’s brought into eq2.

3. Revamp Mentoring. Make the rewards worth the pain.
Mentoring was a wonderful ideal when it was introduced. However its rarely used these days. Why give a lower level player a starting 5% experience boost while taking a 90% experience hit. It just doesn’t make sense, easier to start a new character and deal with their limitations then force an older character to husband a new player through the zones. Those of us who mentor do it for very, very few reasons – to scoop up any AA for named kills we’ve missed, or to farm the zone.

In the Era of purchasable experience potions (Via Legends of Norrath), it’s time to revamp that paltry 5, 9, 11% increase of additional characters mentoring. Instead why not give a flat 10% increase for each character mentoring, and instead of hitting the mentoring players with a big fat penalty book, (of 75 to 90% less experience gained per mentoring experience) just make it an even 50%. I’d hesitantly even suggest give mentoring players a bonus to experience, except many of us are already at 80, and going nowhere fast.

4. Instead of letting us see what shiny’s are harvested, Give us a quest to exchange them for something else.

Shiny’s. A unique Eq2 experience that has often lead to more group wipes then any other mistake. If you see a sparkling ? In the distance, many players will stop what their doing (especially in groups) to run off to harvest said item. Some of these suckers are worth quite a bit of platinum. Others, well meh. Some of us, have stacks of the same shiny that just end up being sold to merchants at a paltry sum, or destroyed as a space waster.

The introduction of the Burynai in Kunark, sent most of us who were fortunate enough to get one in to rapture, as now we didn’t always have to harvest for the items, we could feed plant food to our little pet who would dig up shiny’s for us.
For those fortunate enough to think ahead and stock up on the required items, fortune’s were made in loss in the first 24 hours of Kunark.

But once again, what do we do with the 20th clam shell we’ve just received, You can’t even give them away, and selling them nets you a whole silver piece to the stack. I’ve mailed so many duplicates to alts, that my alts and my guild mates all have full sets of common shiny’s .

We need an exchange plan. It doesn’t have to be easy, somewhere us consummate shiny farmers can take the thousands of extra’s we have and exchange them for something else. It doesn’t even have to be an even exchange. 4 or more for 1 different shiny will give those of us who collect with a passion another reason to collect a bit more.

5. A revamp of the Kunark Equipment tables.

Most of us, familiar with eq2 have known about this issue for a while. For those who are not familiar, basically when the planning of armor came around, a developer figured that since some classes could use all armor types, why bother creating more then a token type of various armors and let everyone just wear leather.

Not to mention, the wildly inappropriate quest rewards for various classes. Priest classes having to make do with fighter rewards and scout classes having to deal with mage rewards. Let’s face it, Common equipment in eq2 is one big mess.

I understand that there were some issues during the creation of Kunak. We’ve all had them. However simply assuming that all classes will be happy with any given armor type when it’s not specifically their own was a mistake in my opinion. Heavy plate wearing classes should have had a choice of a couple different armor types instead of a single type aimed at fighters, chain armor wearers need a choice, Leather armor wearers need far, far less of a choice and finger wigglers need a bit of a choice as well. Not everyone has the same play style and forcing a templar or inquisitor to wear leather armor like a druid just won’t work.

I don’t think a big change is needed. Change two of the sets from leather to chain and plate and adjust them where necessary and you’ll have a far wider selection. Other then that, I’m impressed by the Diablo esc loot tables that are put into place, however I often wonder what happens to the various tables between levels 20 and 70, where there are no newer zones to have this stuff drop. Will there be mass discovery’s for us in the future as zones are introduced, (in addition to regular zone drops).

And b) Quest rewards – I am no expert to understanding, or explaining why this happened. Some classes would see some rewards while others could see other rewards. I think it might have had to do something with how the game saw the class. (Clerics as fighters and druids as mages) However, not everyone was able to get the same reward as the same class.

In the future, I think it would be beneficial to the game if every person who would try to undertake a quest made for everyone (Not class based quests like epics) could see and choose every reward type, it would remove some of the envy issues that some classes saw. In retrospect, could you also please have at least one quest reward for each type of class (fighter, priest, scout and mage) as opposed to one for each subclass.

Those are my 5. While it doesn’t even begin to list some of the issues that occur with the game, and even bluntly ignores others, those are my current 5 that will improve the game.

If you’d like to discuss my choices you can add a comment to this, or discuss it in our forums

http://www.gamersinfo.net/forum/showthread.php?p=4052#post4052

-B-