Raids Will Be Limited to 42

[Tordail]

[Maitz]

Goodbye EQ for me if this goes live.

[Yesak]

What's the big deal? Do you guys reach the current cap during your raids now? All the guilds I've ever been in have been pressed to hit the max and are normally somewhere in the 30s. Please explain why this is so bad, because I see nothing wrong.

[Tordail]

You apparently didn't bother reading the linked thread.

People are afraid that the guilds who can still field 54+ people -- and there are quite a few of them -- will lose members left and right. Why? Nobody wants to sit out of a raid and it seems as though a 42-man cap will force more to sit out. Who will likely be sitting out? Some say certain classes, such as so-called "secondary DPS," will have to sit out. People are afraid guilds won't want to recruit the so-called "secondary DPS" classes. With a 42-man cap, it will be exceptionally difficult to take down encounters tuned for 54-people (SoF particularly). A great many people play EverQuest just so they can have large-scale raids, and people are afraid this will cause a mass exodus.

[Yesak]

Correct, I didnt read the link. I apologize

[Vasei]

[Yesak]

I'm siding with Vasei here. I still dont see a huge problem except for those rare top end guilds who get more than 54 players. I'll chat around to some of my friends tonite, but I dont think many guilds get into the 50s these days. Most are in the 30s or 40s so the majority of people wont be affected.

And seriously, if you're guild will actually boot people because of this, you may want to reconsider the guild that you're in. So on some raids the late comers may not get in. Where's the problem? I think you all should just take a deep breath. The major problem is how everything revolves around clerics in EQ. I guess some guilds might scrap a druid or shaman or someone else for another cleric or (here's the shock) they might actually use better tactics or learn to live with less cleric power.

If this change really affects how you play the game and you see this as a doomsday scenario, you may want to take a step back is all.

[Finori]

Please think this through before you come to the conclusion this may be a good thing. Most if not all guilds in TBS+ field 50+ raiders. Those are 70+ guilds. I wager that even most guilds in TSS these days field 50ish. Those are now 100+ guilds. All of these guilds have to bench 10+ people. They will not sit forever on the bench. And they have no-where to go since all the other guilds overflow. The overflow people will also lack key classes to form their own new guild. These 1000 people now will quit for no good reason.

Now on to the guilds that indeed do not field 50 people: Most of them are perpetually stuck below TSS. That means they have either to go thru 3 expansions worth of 54-men raids before they reach the land of 42-men raids or the devs actually make a parallel track of raids. Maybe some candy land a la the current lower guk where it rains SoF raid equipment for just showing up. But if they already go thru this extra effort – why not keep 54-men raids and make these raid candy lands anyways.

I am in a casual guild with no raid attendance working on MMM access. This change will hurt us badly. We rely on class redundancy. This is jeopardized if we have to reduce our roster.

[Yesak]

I'm in a guild that is in TSS. We just cleared all of FC raids and are now working on AG (I think we did it backwards, but whatever). We consistently get between 40 and 50 people (according to DKP logs, thought it was fewer, but i was wrong.....again hehe), depending on the raid and different bots we have. We are not going to be in the new expansion anytime soon, so this change really wont affect us for another year, maybe two. By that time, more people will have stopped playing or moved on to something else or have RL issues come up, whatever. The solution would simply be to cut down on recruitment.

I'm not saying this is the greatest idea known to man, but I think everyone is over reacting. It will not be a doomsday scene with guild leaders booting people left and right if they're not clerics or tanks. Take a deep breath, it might suck and take some getting used to but it's not the end of the world.

[Finori]

How is forcing 1000 active players into early retirment, making raiding harder and having no real benefit - not a really, really bad thing.

[Yesak]

I fail to see the progression of forcing players to retire. I guess that's where my problem with the whole doomsday scenario some of you have. I just dont see how we get from raid limit goes to 42 to the next day thousands of people will be (key word here) forced to retire or be booted from their guilds or what have you. If you explain that better, I might feel more sympathy to you high end raiders this affects. I just fail to see how the community as a whole would resort to what you all are saying rather than adjusting to it in a different manner.

Like I said before, this might not be the brightest move but you are over reacting in my opinion.

[Finori]

[Tanom]

I would have to agree ..... This change will lead the road that Finori has described. People that only get on to raid or enjoy to raid (Hence they join a raiding guild TO RAID) will quit if they continually excluded from their raids if their guild reaches the content of the new expansion and are in the "Secondary" classes. 54 man teams reduced to 42 man teams is not good at all no matter how u try to make the sun shine down on it. You have to remember, raid guilds dont reach this most likely unless they pass MMM and Crystallos.

[Tordail]

I'm opposed to the change to 42-man raids for many reasons that have already been said. I had planned to join a new raid guild after my surgery and now I find myself wondering ... by the time I am recovered enough to play, will they even accept applications or will they be paring down their roster? Joining a new raid guild and beating encounters I'd never seen before was honestly the only thing keeping me paying for this game. Truth be told, if I can't join the raid guild I had intended to join, I very likely will quit EQ. However, understand that it's more a matter of convenience and how not getting into the raid guild of my choice would coincide with my surgery and recovery more than it is a decision "forced" by the change to 42-man raids.

[SBBD]

We are already having to have people sit out at 54 man raids as it is,most of them are boxes or apps but if its changed to 42 man raids that means alot of mains are going to have to sit out and it will probably end up being the same people most of the time.Would you bother to stay in a guild that wont let you raid,I know I would'nt,if anything it needs to be changed back to 72 man raid limit.We would beable to recrute more people and have more apps on raids,more people would play EQ and I believe thats what sony wants.More people playing means more money in sonys pockets.So think real hard about this before you force who knows how many beople to retire and move to other games that don't put money in sonys pockets.

[Bruennor]

I am having fun with this little debate on the eq forums, and my response there is this.

This had to happen sooner rather than later. It will sting high end guilds at first, but this will make the future easier for the entire game. Yes it will suck at first, but I have experienced the painful death of a guild due to the war of attrition, higher end guild poaching, being abused by sorry excuses for people apping, getting geared, and then apping to a higher end guild, and so on. I was stuck on Sendaii during DoD for almost a year over 2 guilds, all due to numbers issues.

This change will sting at first, but in the future, it is far easier to field 42 than it is to field 54. I do agree class balance will be the big thing with this change, but EQ is fairly interesting lately, due to all the changes.

[kroe]

Not only is this change going to hurt many guilds who currently have full 54 man raids + extra's waiting - those secondary classes will be decimated (in my opinion) in the short to medium term.

I am Australian and most other aussies have congregated on 2 servers due to the demise other guilds in our timezone and a lack of recruitment pool in our timezone - serverwide, in the 2 most progressed raiding guilds in our timezone (Wreckers on Bertox and Terror Australis on The Rathe). I can't speak for TA, but in Wreckers, our raids most often have 44-48 mains available at raid start, with 54-60 available shortly after the commencement of our raiding window.

We have SF on farm and have beaten Gakkor/Big Byn a couple of times each and I fully expect us to be progressing well into MMM raiding before the new expansion is released in 4 months. So, what are our options? Take 54 through MMM/Crystallos fully knowing the minute we decide to start any new expansion progression, that at least 6-12+ members who have helped us get to where we are, current friends for extended periods of time going back years are expected to sit by and cheer on those selected 42 who get to blaze a new trail?

Like many have stated in the threads on EQ Live, people won't sit on the bench, raid night after raid night, forever. At first they will log on, hope a spot may open for them, but after a few weeks of that, they just won't log on at all. The problem for us is, these people don't have any other options, most aussies wishing to progress in the raid game are already on these 2 servers, there is nowhere else for them to go if they wish to continue raiding in this timezone and are constantly asked to warm the bench when they do log on.

As Rytan has already admitted, class balance issues will be amplified significantly, as the raid desirability and flexibility of the classes comes into question when guilds try to optimise the '42' who will move forward. For those who believe SOE will be able to successfully balance these issues *now* before this mistake becomes a reality, we need only to look at how well they have done so far. I am certainly not convinced they have done a good job of it so far, and have no illusions that they will be able to turn that around.

A 42 person hard capped raid limit is just a huge mistake waiting to happen and will not bring any positives (at least that I can foresee in my timezone/niche) and can only drive away some of the few dedicated players remaining, especially in my timezone.

[Bruennor]

As I said, the dev's are interesting lately.

Case in point, this little tidbit from rytan



at the start of the new thread on the eq forums
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts ... _id=136236

I think the big knee jerk reaction those folks are having is rather funny. Point is, there are more guilds than just the high end, and their future has to be considered to. If SoE waited a year to put this change into effect, it would have the exact same effect its having now, so there is no win time for them to pop this to the eq populace. Guilds now have 4 months to plan accordingly, and a beta to see the changes in action.

Folks need to learn to chill and see how these changes work in beta, because I don't think the insane amount of whining they are doing on the eq forums will sway the dev's much, especially since 75 percent of the naysayers there say stupid stuff like tune for 42, but leave in the 54 man cap. They think 42 man raids would break the high end eq raid scene faster than beating an expansion in a month, its very funny.

EQ is changing drastically, and fast. Who knows what eq will be like when sod comes out. I think its worth checking out.

[olts]

i do not see how this change will benefit smaller guilds at all. i am raidleader for one of those guilds the change is aimed at. what would help us the most would be a revamp of the healing classes (since ya NEED clerics, but not many ppl play clerics). what certainly will not help us is lowering the raid size. the change will not affect us directly anyways, but i will definitly affect the guilds that can field 54+ ppl - what will affect the whole server - and in the end any guild that is left there. this change is total madness.

c.

[Bruennor]

Yes, that would help, whats your idea on how to balance classes that will be good enough to not make clerics and warriors quit in droves?

Class balance is something that dwarfs 42 man raids, if done wrong. You hurt somebodies class too much, then they are gone, no matter if they are lv 80, 70, or even 50.

SoE is takin baby steps, pretty much. I think 42 man raids are a bandaid for now, and are a good basis on future raids. Why do I think this?....

There needs to be more guilds in eq. There needs to be more competition at the high end. There needs to be more expansion for more players. I bought sof last November or October, don't remember which. I have done 0 raids in it. Me and a bunch of friends were gonna try octa, but after fabled, a lot of the folks we raid with burned out, including me for the most part. I would log on to help if I got an im saying they could use some help, but regardless, a large chunk of our new fable weaponed toons were now gone. We were scraping along doing bazu/last blood mobs, and trying to do vergalid with low numbers, until GM harassment caused some of my friends to quit, and due to the nature of the reason those friends quit, a lot of my other friends quit to, because of the way eq was turning out in SoF, and the blatant misuse of power, and lack of want to even discipline their own people, the gm's were doing.

So now most of my friends I used to raid with don't play anymore. Due to this I have canceled my account, since I only logged on to play with friends who are, for the most part, no longer there. All of this started due to low raid numbers causing depression and lack of progression.

I know for a fact 42 man raids will help far more than hinder guilds. I have spent 3/4 of my eq raiding time, from the time I used to be high end, to the time where I was doing anguish during TSS and TBS, gearing, and regearing apps because most of them are not raiding material, or used us to get gear then jumped ship for higher guilds. The 2 guilds I was in had no choice but to gear apps as we didnt have enough people to beat the fights that were blocking us. We could consistantly field 35, if raids were tuned for 42, we could of probably boxed our way through a lot of the raids and at least got a sense of accomplishment of moving forward. That did not happen however.

[olts]

i am fully aware that you cant just revamp healing, still class balance is the big issue of eq - and not the size of raids. soe ignored class balance issues for a long time - or made it worse because they seem not to understand how classes work - but this horse is beaten to death really and its probably too late already to fix it. as you said, if soe would radically change the classes, this would most likely end up in a mass exodus. soe also never really got rid of the idea of a holy trinity, i.e. you need at warriors, clerics and high dps to win a raid. a trend that leaves second class dps, second class healers and knights out - and a trend that was only getting worse with the newer raid content. if you dont have the required number of clerics, you dont go - simple as that.

it might be, that a handfull of guilds will move from the middle ground into the top ranks with the change of the raidsize - you dont have to be a genius though to predict what the change will do to the current high-end guilds and the not so much needed classes. beside that most mid-tier guilds problem isnt the size, it is bringing enough of the required classes to win a raid. what would help would be tuning raids in a way, that you can win without having the required classes - i.e. make scripts more intelligent and implement different pathes to win an encounter. i doubt though that this will happen, rytan already said that it would require rescources soe simply doesnt have. also, most mid-tier guilds will most likely still have to raid old content to progress to the newest expansion - and if its only for weapons. mid-tier guild xy will still have problems though to beat solteris, may there be a change in raid size for the newest expansion or not.

what makes eq special in comparison to other games is raiding. i fail to see how hurting the guilds that raid high-end stuff will fix any issues mid tier guilds have.

as for the harrasment by gms: this happend to my guild too when we were petitioning about a bug - and it made many of them leave for good. soe really should act, the way some gms treat the playerbase isnt funny anymore. but i guess this will fall to deaf ears too.

c.

[Bruennor]

Its very simple, this game is not overflowing with warriors and clerics, or rogues and zerkers for that matter. I don't foresee too much issues with classes in raids in any place other than the high end.

I think mid tier guild health is better than high end continued dominant, untouchable status. Raids need to become much more accessible to every single raider in eq, because soon enough group gear is gonna dwarf all but the last expansions raid gear, so what would be the incentive to deal with the weapon fiasco that is tss, just to move on to soltiers or low end sof when the gear is a sidegrade at best?

Mid tier guilds deserve some love now, because god knows they haven't gotten any in years. Between soe retuning encounters and making them harder, after the high end guilds are done with them I might add, and nothing being done, till last server merge and now, to combat the issue with player numbers, mid tier guilds have been dying left and right, while only a few established ones have survived with the people who want to progress through all the content, and the other sorry excuse for player raids use those guilds, and less stable ones, to gear up and move on to higher end pastures.

I seriously doubt 42 man raids will break eq, or even cause much more than a ripple when all is said and done. Its potential for the future of raiding is very nice though. It is easy to field 30 to 35 people, and can toss on a few bots if needed. I already was in a guild that tried using 15 to 20 bots, that was not a pretty sight.

Anyway, we both got our opinions, and I think this is a good thing. Class min/max wise, only the high end guilds will truly be cruel enough to bump off people entirely based on class, but we will see how it turns out. Once beta reports come in, depending on how they sound, I may talk some of my friends into making a comeback to eq to test drive it. Will say this though, the devs have to make a lot of changes for that to happen, so this change being announced makes me hopeful for the future.

[Maitz]

OFC it won't destroy neither EQ nor EQ raiding. It will just destroy the only aspect of the game EQ is uniq at ... large scale raiding and force a large number players into early retirement.

This change also won't help mid tier guilds at all, not atm and not untill they reach SoD content. The only guilds imidiatelly affected by the change will be the guilds that *CAN* field 54+ players every night.

You will still have to go trough TBS, SoF to reach 42 man raids and believe me you won't beat SoF without 54 players in raid. So you'll get from raids requiring 54 to beat in SoF to 42 man raids in SoD just like that without any transition. Forcing ANOTHER bunch of players into retirement when they're at that stage.

[Bruennor]

Hmm, lets see, 550 hp group gear in sof....the next expansion has to give a decent upgrade to that, and if it gets upgraded decently, then what exactly is the point of doing old content?

This is an aspect most folks don't seem to consider. Other than mods and ac, SoF crystallos gear ='s solteris for the most part. I think something interesting will happen next expansion regarding raids. The biggest thing of all will be weaponry. If the dev's listen to all the feedback on weaponry, we could very well see TSS level weaponry in group play next expansion, which i think will make solteris a less than 54 man raid. I am expecting raids for mid tier guilds next expansion to. It only makes sense with group gear going to surpass solteris in a lot of ways. The only safe way they can make this change is to offer extensive raids for mid tier guilds in sod to, a way for them to start from a certain progression point that is non SoF, and work their way up the ladder. I am looking forward to seeing the reports on this expansion.

[Kianor]

I'm surprised no-one has mentioned the last time this happened. Raids in PoP were 72 people. In fact, a lot of those were in open zones where you could have more. The guild I was in at the time was a solid high end raiding guild with a family atmosphere, at the time 3rd on the server in progression, so not ultra high end, but in the second wave of progression. We often fielded 80+ people, because we didn't have to turn anyone away. Then, we got to PoTime, which was instanced and limited to 72, so people had to sit out. But the numbers sitting out got fewer as natural attrition took our numbers down.

However, when GoD came out, the raid limit was reduced to 54 people. We had lots sitting out again, 20 or so, and the raids were largely progression raids too. So we had lots of juggling to do. We had a core of raiders familiar with the raids, and quite a lot of people who weren't so hard core, but raided semi-frequently and still needed to be flagged, but you can't just do something with 54 people, then do it again with 20 of those people switched out for others who weren't as well geared or didn't know the raid so well. So we had to do the flagging runs several times each to get all our raid force flagged. It was a pain. The hard core people got frustrated by this, of course - they wanted to progress.

If you combine that with GoD itself, we had a fairly high attrition rate. Towards the end of GoD, after OoW had come out, we were trying to make our way through to Tacvi, and were struggling to have enough people to do it.

Will this happen again with the new limit? I don't know. But, if people are trying to do the new expansion content and the previous expansion's content at the same time, it will be a nuisance to have to field 42 people one day, 54 the next. And with people sitting out of raids, there will be attrition due to frustration.

[Yesak]

The point that has been brought up is that group gear is far outclassing previous expansion's raid gear. I mentioned somewhere that the devs would probably like to do a massive overhaul of the game, and this is part of it. If they get group gear to outclass 54 man raid gear, people can simply use that to move on to 42 man raids. No reason to juggle between 54 and 42 if there's no reason to do 54. I've been saying all along that people are overreacting. Please, before all of you kill yourselves because you see this as the end of the world, take a deep breath and remember that there is at least 4 months before any changes go live. Everyone is so nuerotic that they cant see any possible outcome except for their worst nightmare. Now, I dont have any dillusions that this change will be good by any stretch of the imagination, but with EQ population slowly dwindling, this changed had to happen sooner or later. We may be able to stop it now, but what happens next year when the population has gone down even more and they try again? Do we keep freaking out each time?

As far as it happening before, I barely remember the change between PoP and GoD. That is about when I stopped raiding for a while. Got burnt out on EP Gods to get to PoTime. My guild got stuck and then lost people to the top guilds who were already in Time. I joined up with another guild who was just starting raiding and enjoyed my time as a big fish in little pond before moving on to another guild to start raiding for real again when OoW was released, or there abouts.

These are just my opinions and I'm not a hardcore raider so it wont affect me as much as some of you. However, the class balance tweakage makes me much more afraid than having raids capped. They could totally screw up the classes or they could really help energize some classes. Only time will tell, but any class balance changes should be getting this huge freak out rather than some number cap.

[Vasei]

Really great points, Kianor. I think that gives the discussion a much needed historical perspective, and points it in a much more interesting direction.

First, if they learn from the past and don't make the outrageously painful mistakes that created the GoD flagging/balance exodus, that should avoid a really big problem with the 54 man limit. (must... have ...hope)

I have no idea how many guilds are forced to bring passels of bots to take on content tuned for more raiders than they can field. But this change is going to be huge in that respect. I have serious doubts about how EQ could manage to wean itself from its heroin-like cleric healing dependency, but maybe someone will come up with a creative solution.

What would be truly phenomenal would be if they created events tuned for 54 people, then gave an option for a 72 version instance, that has a number of drops increased proportionately. There. Fixed. It seems like that would be easier than creating different content for the two groups, but what do I know? Maybe there aren't enough guilds of that size to warrant the development time.

[Arslayn]

[Yesak]

Kind of like the DoD expansion (or even LDoNs) where they had the "hard" option? That might be a good option, select which version you want based on the number of people. If you're feeling particularly uberfied, you can try the "hard" version for extra loot even when you have less than top numbers. It's an idea worth exploring, could prove to be VERY interesting alternative.

[Ughbash]

Well from my perspective 42 man raids will stink.
I do open raids on Tunare, we often have a group or two outside the expedition sitting out. So now assuming 66 show up we will have 24 sitting out instead of 12.

Last night when we did LL1, we had about 75 show up, we had 54 in the expedition, the raid was at 72, and another group outside the raid was started. Going down to 42 would have meant that 33 people were outside.

It also makes no sense that if they did the legacy to see what guilds coudl do as a means of tuning content for next expansion to then change the number from 54 (which they now have stats on assuming they bother to look) to 42.

[Hulfdane]

I've run the spectrum here in EQ; from small guild with just friends to an upstart guild, and to what I consider high end raiding guild.

My guild at the time of PoP was constructed smaller, we did fill the 72 raid roster, sometimes with alt and bots but our force was in the 55-65 range and when GoD came out this put us right at that limit or just above it.

What happened in GoD was the attrition of flagging, specifically 1 man group missions to be able to have access to those raid zones, having everyone be flagged through the Tipt Mission before able to access raid zone content. Not to mention raid content like Uqua that was deliberately there to block progression before Tacvi, cause people to fizzle out. We were pretty much an expansion behind if not 2 most of the time and we were comfortable with that. The guild started struggling with the OOW, we spent too much time in CoA in a farm cycle for new members to keep ourselves maxed at 54 per raid. Sure we had some parallel progression with DoD and DoN Expansions. We event beat DoN before reaching Sendii in DP.

But the fact of the matter was in order to progress you needed to do all this older content before moving to the next. Dragons did provide some overlap as an expansion with guild farming Anguish and still trying to get Sendii down for DP access. But that’s were we stalled out with older members getting frustrated seeking progression and newer content, which lead to the guilds merger/disbandment. Enough of my guild history.

SoF I think did a really good job trying to bridge the gap of gear between group and raiding. You could do group gear and upgrade it to the base level raiding gear for that expansion and start your progress on Big Bynn, Steam Factory, etc…allowing you to skip some of the previous content. The problem is it still takes time, and for some casual raiders that just doesn’t happen.

Now if all that is done the 42 cap could help these guilds except for on problem. They still need a force around 46-52 to go through MMM and get the next step in gear progression, and will be faced with the same problem at top tear guilds of scaling down raid force for 42 raids in SoD, it will just take you longer to get to that point.

My other though is the 42 person raids will be scaled in a difficulty inline with the end of current content. Meaning the mid level raids will be on par with difficulty of MMM but scaled to 42 people. 42 people in MMM/Crystalos Gear is going to have more success versus 42 people geared in DP or TSS. It’s just a face that I have seen playing EQ for about 8 years now.

If SOE decides to dumb down the raid content then I feel EQ looses its uniqueness. I’ve seen people leave EQ for EQ2, WoW, CoA, etc. and most have come back because the large raid content is what they enjoyed with the complexity of the events.

I think they should offer a choice similar to EQ2 of a normal event with 42 and a heroic event with 54. And if they were really smart they could gather that data to see which is accessed more and completed. That way the could actually provide stats to the population what is done more.

[olts]

[Finori]

[WaringMcMarrin]

[Bruennor]

GoD had a lot of issues, those of you discussing it barely touched on the plethora of what happened.

I liked GoD personally, after I figured out attack-off tanking. Even so, I was high end raid geared for the time, and I got owned by kod taz named, and I had a ranger tanking for me about half the time I did jhiru, till debuffs were on. It was a very challenging expansion early on. Most players don't want that kind of challenge though, I thrived on it, but I love challenge, most folks don't want to go that extreme.

After LDoN, GoD brought about perfect groups required to do content, not a good idea. GoD brought about very long instances, meaning the sewers mostly, that were death traps at times, they were horribly tuned. GoD brought about all these perfect group scenario's right when a plethora of new games came wanting to compete with eq on it's own turf.

GoD in its entirety was horribly tuned, especially Tacvi. All the events were broken, for the most part. Ikkinz trials, uqua, inktuta. Champ script in txevu was constantly bugging, as was the high priest. I experienced it all first hand from uqua on, had school prior to that, and my classes were during raid times. GoD was nothing but a big brick wall for both groupers and raiders, and thats why the huge loss of players happened, that, and people had new games to test drive when their favorite let them down. My guild wasn't harmed by the change from 72 to 54 man raids, as we were a euro guild on an american server, so were hardly overflowing in members. The change in raid size probably affected some guilds, just like this newest proposed change will affect some guilds, but I doubt most of them felt the change, other than in the fact that their 45 could finally have raids tuned closer to their max numbers.

LDoN was a very popular expansion. You had 4 or 5 different types of missions in 5 different locales. You could pick normal or hard. You were not pigeon holed into one type of group, you could have a druid or shaman healing most of them with only minor difficulty. It promoted mixed class groups. It promoted typing /who lfg 60 65...and grabbing people who were actually lfg, not waiting till the perfect class to log on. LDoN was also very popular due to the fact that the top end group gear was very close to top end raid gear, and you were not required to do the hard missions to get this gear. Hard missions did require a pretty specific group, but it wasn't forced on players to play in it. It offered more points yes, and challenge, but groupers normally just want something to do, and people there to help them do it. Normal's offered them steady progression on both the new charm augment, and points to buy gear.

One funny thing about LDoN though...it sucked for raiders, and yet it was the highest rated expansion of the entire eq series, iirc. LDoN was made for post time guilds, it sucked for raiders, and yet the expansion was the most popular...why is that? Because this game used to be made up of more than just high end raiders, which is something that the more elitist high enders will learn the hard way, I think. LDoN was the groupers expansion, focused almost entirely on the grouper. That is a very telling blow towards raiding expansions and the decline of the player base in eq. Once SoE quit focusing on the grouper, and made content that was anti normal grouper, the groupers left. Once soe made that content, and on top of it made raid content that was almost undoable due to artificial bugs, a lot of raiders left. What made it even easier was the new games coming out.

I look at the change to 42 man as a step back to eq's roots. The dev's are starting to reorient on the little guys again, and the first thing to become public is soe focusing on the non high end raider. Mid tier guilds already get treated like red headed step children, so its about time they got some love. After jokes like Lethar and some SoF raids being made harder than ever after 6 to 12 months, and even longer, this only hurt the mid tier raider. Mid tier guilds were used as foot stools for higher guilds which caused a lot of in guild drama. Mid tier guilds are the ones who actually had to recruit people with 50 aa, while the high end guilds got their pick out of people with 800+. What I am saying is mid tier guilds made most of the high end raiders in today's game. Its about time they are getting some attention in a positive manner, that being the chance to have their forced lower numbers be sufficient for raids. As I said above though, if the dev's don't add a healthy helping of raids to SoD for these guilds, this change is pointless and just cruel. I think SoE knows this, and will have raid content for them in SoD.

Now, people can just cross their fingers and hope the dev's listened regarding group gear. Modern day group gear is a travesty to say the least. Visible slots are nice, save for the craptastic bp effects, but every other slot leaves a lot to be desired. The 42 man raid change is just the start I am hoping.

Anyway, pardon the long winded post. I am tired, and when I am tired I talk alot, be it verbally or on the forums. Have a good night.


Edit

Thats highly disappointing.

[Tordail]

[Brohg]

42 is a big chop from 54, from 9 groups to 7. I hope that the issue is still on the table in the SOE offices, though, and they'll consider the more moderate scaling back to 48 for this Nov. A literal decimation of raid rosters. See how it goes, maybe let it coast for a couple years, and reevaluate later.

[Brohg]

[olts]

[WaringMcMarrin]