The Spirit Realm

Considering I cancelled my two accounts just yesterday this is a relatively appropriate thread for me to answer.

If SOE wants to bring old players back to the game they need to institute an exit interview and find out why people are leaving. Have an opinion poll pop up whenever anyone cancels an account.

The Dev team should get more opinions from the current players than they do as well. Foruns are a poor substitute for actual polling and generally only give you the extremes of opinions rather than the general consensus. If you don't know what your customers believe how can you meet their needs and satisfy their wants before someone else does?

I'm sure many players leave for financial, technical or personal reasons not related to the game at all and those accounts can't be recovered by anything SOE can do, but there are many other people leaving due to things that can be fixed and SOE needs to clearly identify those factors or they will continue to lose customers they shouldn't.

As far as bringing new players in SOE needs to spruce up the game's image some. EQ is like dating the plain Jane that has lived across the street for the last ten years. You know her, you like her, she's a great girl, but there's just no mystery left any more. She definately needs a major make-over.

Advertising and promotion wouldn't hurt either.

I can't give any single reason for my current dissatisfaction with EQ though, other than to say that it feels more like a job and less like an adventure than ever. Too many "I gotta go do that"s and not enough "Woo Hoo"s if that makes any sense.

The Dev team has become far too focused on 'risk vs reward' and grinding progression than I am comfortable with. That focus seems to please some players and I don't intend to say anyone is right or wrong in their opinions. I'm just expressing my feelings about what went wrong for me. It's become too much a numbers game and not enough wide-eyed wonder and fun.

As far as specific suggestions for fixing EQ, I don't have any because my reason for leaving is a personal feeling and not a response to any single thing I can point to.

I doubt EQ will ever return to what it once was. Too many players think of it as a competition and less and less as a world and fixing the game the way I want would likely upset more players than it brings back.

I'd like to find the fun I used to have in EQ but I doubt I'll come back this time. There's no bitterness, just a sense that something is lost, never to be found again.

I think the issue of faction needs to be raised: its very clear that their idea for making the current expansion last a full year is to force massively long faction progressions on every player, just so you can get your best spells and get into zones and etc.

Remember when what faction you were on really mattered? Kunark, where you'd die if you went to the wrong place? Where actually being able to walk down the street in Freeport or in Cabilis was a matter of who and what you were? Not just how long you had sat killing the same damned mobs over and over?

Remember when the faction you chose to follow in Velious made a huge difference in how you could progress, hell, even which guild you could belong to?

Faction MATTERED.

Now, faction has just become a different spelling for "grind". Its a roadblock for every characters, and at the end of the expansion, basically every character has exactly the same factions--you have to if you want to get anywhere.

Bad game design imo.

New chars - I would love to see some work on info for new chars (new players)
1. under 20 citys- npcs with tasks for that char would send a tell message.
2. under 20 would have info in game to go to WEB site for SONY -newbe area to post questions or look for info and WEB site for CLASS.

Fix the quest task list to not be limited to 19 tasks. Or fix the tasks so they can be stoped and restarted at where you left off at.

P.S. I like the new AA change they might due.