Epic Disappointment

[AdamWest007]

<p>So these are the "epic" quests?   Many classes have already completed their (group) version in a matter of hours.  </p><p>Please tell me this is only step 1 of 10 on a much longer epic quest line.  I was so looking forward to a Claymore-type quest series that would take me months to complete.  </p><p>Lets face facts.  EQ2 is in dire straits.  Epic quests were touted as the savior of EQ2, what we have all been waiting for.  Finally something to do besides the instance grind.  Instead, this time next week we will all be back to running the same four instances day in and day out.  Well, those of us that are still here will be.</p><p>Time to roll an alt I suppose. </p>

[Gladiia]

I thought they were epic weapons. 

[Apocroph]

<cite>AdamWest007 wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>So these are the "epic" quests?   Many classes have already completed their (group) version in a matter of hours.  </p><p>Please tell me this is only step 1 of 10 on a much longer epic quest line.  I was so looking forward to a Claymore-type quest series that would take me months to complete.  </p><p>Lets face facts.  EQ2 is in dire straits.  Epic quests were touted as the savior of EQ2, what we have all been waiting for.  Finally something to do besides the instance grind.  Instead, this time next week we will all be back to running the same four instances day in and day out.  Well, those of us that are still here will be.</p><p>Time to roll an alt I suppose. </p></blockquote>Let's face facts here.  The things that made the original run of epics "epic" are game mechanics that have been deliberately left out of EQ2.Things like camping long timer random spawns for days on end, things like epic subquests that gave rewards along the way (see the old Shaman and Monk epics for examples), things like the quests starting before max level so they were actually useful before you got there.The fast pacing of this game has finally come back to bite us in the [Removed for Content].  Everybody complained about how leveling took too long, camping things took too long, how having to search high and low for quest NPC's wasn't fun, and now those things are gone, leaving us with "epic" quests that get completed in two days, raid zones that are cleared the first week, and best of all...A lot of disappointment.

[Antipalad]

While I don't mind figuring out quests and so on, my biggest dissapointment so far is incredibly vague wording on for instance Troubador and Conjurer questlines.

[Drumstix]

Big disappointment =/And on the comment of them being epic weapons... where do you think the weapons came from? A quest <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Maybe they should not have tied the epics to any quests that already exist... and if they did, there still needs to be way more.I guess it's too late now. I doubt they're gonna change much with so many completions already. /sigh

[Gladiia]

<cite>Drumstix wrote:</cite><blockquote>Big disappointment =/And on the comment of them being epic weapons... where do you think the weapons came from? A quest <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />" width="15" height="15" />Maybe they should not have tied the epics to any quests that already exist... and if they did, there still needs to be way more.I guess it's too late now. I doubt they're gonna change much with so many completions already. /sigh</blockquote>I have never spent this much time on any questline in this game ever to this point.  Still not even at the half way point in my epic line - or rather the group portion of my epic line.  It's a rather nice reward for a harder than average quest line - and it isn't even the full epic.  Speaking of which - has any of the classes found the starter for upgrading there weapon to the full epic version yet?

[Meirril]

<p>I agree that these quests arn't nearly as difficult as the Claymore series or the Soulfire series of quests were. It is rather disappointing that these quests were completed by several classes within 24 hours of being released. It is difficult to explain why it took so long to release this material considering the relative briefness of each quest. </p><p>Also, there is no such thing as a level playing field here. Lets take wardens and furies for an example. A fury can walk up to one object, get their quest starter, and walk over to someone else in the same zone to start their epic. Yay! </p><p>Wardens on the other hand have to get a few people to help them kill an 83^^^ that teleports around a fairly large and dangerous area and has a respawn of at least 1 hour. </p><p>The Fury can more or less solo his entire epic. The hardest part is a requirement to spend time harvesting 4 t8 rares! </p><p>The warden needs a few people to help him later on. Mostly the warden epic seems soloable too.</p><p>It would of been much better if all of the epics went something like this: Mission that someone in your city sends you on (like claymore, but different NPC per class with slightly different goals). Go out and do a series of solo quests that lead you to a dungeon. Join other players lead to same dunegon. Carry out your own task while helping other people accomplish theirs. Go back to soloing following the trail. Get lead by nose to next dungeon. Again, join others to complete your goal while satisfying their desire to progress their agenda. Go back to soloing, only to find yourself at the last dungeon on the continent. One last NPC to talk to, then do one of the harder instances. Maybe even an instance for just your epic. Cheers, you have the group epic.</p><p>Now, quest NPC mentions that there is a hidden power in your epic. Maybe if you can obtain (part of raid boss) he can unlock this power for you. Or maybe if you gather enough essence of raid zone he can help you. Either way, requires you spend some time in a raid zone. Could be nice to casual players and make it a lower-end raid zone. Could satisfy raiders and make it the hardest raid zone. Whatever. Ether way, after putting in significant raidig effort, you have the raid epic. </p><p>Now admittedly this would be a difficult quest line to do. However, as it was demonstrated with the Claymore quest line it could be done. That I can see taking a whole lot of development time. What was done? I'd say a week for each quest of real effort. That's it. Maybe its because I'm not a developer and I don't know how difficult it is to actually script each encounter and the dialogue. The quest ideas though don't seem like a lot of time was put into them. Unless a lot of concern was put onto making sure they wern't long and required about the same amount of time to complete if you knew the quest already. Then I'd say objective completed. They can all be done in less than 8 hours if you have a group ready to help you all the way.</p>

[Cusashorn]

<p>I miss  how in EQlive, it took some classes months to find thier epics.</p><p>The smart thing for them to do was to have not announced that the epics had gone live, and let the players find them on thier own without knowing they were in.</p><p>I'm also very disappointed in the graphics for the weapons themselves. Even without particle effects, the Coercer, Wizard, Assassin, and Bruiser epics are severe disappointments. You can barely see the Coercer or Assassin epics. How is a BONE an epic weapon for a wizard? it's a baby rattle, not a weapon of immense power!</p><p>On the other hand though, I'm very impressed by the Swashbuckler, Brigand, Monk, Warden, and Ranger epics. Very impressive.</p>

[Meirril]

<cite>Cusashorn wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I miss  how in EQlive, it took some classes months to find thier epics.</p><p>The smart thing for them to do was to have not announced that the epics had gone live, and let the players find them on thier own without knowing they were in.</p><p>I'm also very disappointed in the graphics for the weapons themselves. Even without particle effects, the Coercer, Wizard, Assassin, and Bruiser epics are severe disappointments. You can barely see the Coercer or Assassin epics. How is a BONE an epic weapon for a wizard? it's a baby rattle, not a weapon of immense power!</p><p>On the other hand though, I'm very impressed by the Swashbuckler, Brigand, Monk, Warden, and Ranger epics. Very impressive.</p></blockquote>That brings up another issue I was thinking about. A lot of people are not happy with their epic's graphic and would of perfered the graphic available to the other half of their subclass. I really don't see any harm in allowing shamman to pick between a spear and a club. It is a cosmetic change. Not associating a fixed graphic with the item and allowing it to be chosen at the end (even if you had to make 4 items instead of just 2 with a slight color change) would of been very smart.