Idea for Open world raid event - contructive feedback wanted

[Gomly]

I was talking with a couple guild members today and fantasizing about what we would like to see added to the game in the future and came up with what I feel is a great idea for a booster pack. I will state in advance that some ideas involved here may ring a bell from other games, but now-a-days what game doesn't have mimics from other games? I will give an in depth example of 1 zone here but bear in mind we are looking at this becomming possible for many of the shattered lands zones (since most are dead zones anyways) maybe even being introduced as multiple boosters.

Everquest 2 : The Fight for the Shattered Lands

Who : The Orcs

What : They have finally mounted an assult on Freeport

Where : Commonlands

When : When triggered by a series of quests by any guild

Why : Additional end game contont that is community based

Player X turns in final quest to Lucan D'lere which prompts a server wide message much like someone recieving thier epic. "[guild name] has triggered the world event 'Assult on Freeport' all assistance is needed". This gives a 15 minute countdown until commonlands spawns the "commonlands 2 instance"does a complete flip and becomes a full scale warzone full of level 80 epic x4 orcs mounting a full scale assult on Freeport. Players will recieve a master quest at the gate leading out into commonlands to drive the orcs out of the Commonlands. There will also be sub quests to retake the crossroads, the docks, the graveyard, the spires, the druid ring, etc. Upon completing each sub quest it would trigger an in zone event.

Sub-quest Example: You have successfully retaken the crossroads, you must now defend it and the path freeport for 30 minutes while workers travel from Freeport to crossroads to rebuild it. During the defense waves of mobs would attack including named bosses (Orc Generals). Once rebuilt a mender, relic peddler, several quest givers and a dozen epic x4 guards would spawn. It is possible for the orcs to overwhelm the guards and take crossroads back so it must be watched and defended (seeing the community part here).

Other sub Quest Examples (cause and effect) : Capture the docks, allows for npc reinforcements to be dropped off by boat every 30 miuntes. Capture the Spires/druid ring, allows for npc reinforcements to arive via spire/druid ring every 30 minutes. Capture the graveyard, slows respawn rate of Orc npc's. etc etc

The end goal would be to push across all of commonlands completing each subquest as you go across. Upon reaching the canyons leading to fallen gate if you have contol of all subquest points you will spawn High Chieftain [name] Leader of the orcs. Who would be the equivelant to an avatar on steriods (aka very very hard).

Now make each named in the instance only spawn once each. but make them so that they do give AA experience, status, and loot every time they are killed. So if you participate in 4 world events in a month you would get aa exp each time you killed each named in each triggered world event. (making it worth the $10 bucks to make it a booster rather then a live update)

The entire event could take a few hours to an entire day based on player participation. Players zoning in would be given the option to join as raid group (for raiding guilds) join as groups (for guilds without a full raid group) or join solo. Solo players and groups would be placed into raid groups whenever possible although the goal here is for all guilds to be able to form a full group and come out to play.

Benefits earned from participating would include aa, status, loot, titles, community effort and giving the old unused zones a purpose. This would place all guilds on a fairly equal level as a guild who could only provide 1 group would be just as important as the uber hardcore guilds since you will need people to stay and defend points while others pushed forward etc. Because of the large player base who would hopefully be participating in this loot windows for boss drops would be opened zone wide in a Need before Greed fashion not allowing players to roll on items not usable by thier classes primary function. (such as berserker couldn't roll on a robe while a wizard couldn't roll on a plate chest"). Chests would contain 2 types of loot primary and secondary, Primary loot drops would only be available by the guild who triggered the world event provided that guild has in excess of 20+ players in the zone, while secondary loot would be available to all. This giving the event starts a small bonus for "hosting" the event. Primary event hosters would also recieve a bonus to thier aa and status gains while in the zone.

To help prevent AFK'ers. A couple simple yet stern policies could be made. If you are afk in excess of xx minutes or don't partake in an encounter within xx minutes you are automatically booted from the zone and force fed "The Deserter" as your suffix for the next 24 hours preventing you from being able to re-enter the world event zone.

Now this could be done for any number of old world zones, anything from Orcs of crushbone attacking Kelethin, Nightbloods marking through Enchanted Lands, Minions of Cazith Thule storming Feerott, etc etc. you get the picture.

This is just a rough idea, any constructive critisizm is very welcomed. Thanks.

[hellfire]

I like this idea.

[EverAfterIt]

Do it! Why don't you do it?! It's what you want to do, so just do it! Do it!

[Elepian]

I like this idea but would like to see it not only for raiders but maybe for groups also. heck make it for both playstyles; groups tackle  orc reinforcements and named orcish officers, while raids are taking out the generals.  In war, u could have the group ONLY players focus on lower chains of command. (i.e. orc sergeants, lieutenants, captains.) as well as maybe destructable objects such as resources, (blacksmith, healers, provisioners. ) and buildings (orcish outposts, armed w/ catapults; battering rams, orcish towers etc.) This way, both playstyles can get involved in defending their city.  While not chopping the largest head of the hydra.. we as groups are helping kill off the smaller ones.  Groups could also be instructed once  a territory has been won, to cut off enemy forces moving through the sewers, or the ruins etc.  as with wars.. most of the time the enemy will move through the smaller villages to get to their objective.  Also could implement the use of both sides of the classes field. Don't want to fight? Crafters could do their part by constructing poisons, explosives, Walls with sharpened logs pointing towars the battle to slow down calvarys advance..smiths (weap and armor could construct weapon or armor attachments to proc extra mitigation ONLY in this event. or additional dmg prc (spell/ranged/melee). Again this would implement the help of all playstyles and grant more player help.  this idea is sort of a more elaborate version of my request posted earlier today in another thread : 

Honestly I would say Shapeshifting type of race IF they picked one. Personally theres a ton of things i'd like to see them focusing on instead of a new race if it came down to it. (I.E. making illusions actually useful i.e. faction modifications implemented like in EQLive., Giving the game a little more immersive life to it instead of a bunch of mobs just standing there for no apparent reason.  Hasn't the main objective of the gnolls been to get into qeynos and ransack the city? Sure there mascot (Fippy Darkpaw) was hacked and slashed to bits 500 years ago but in every tribal society theres always going to be the village idiot! Orcs marching in columns of forces to take the fight to Freeport! How about the underfoot races (minotaurs, goblins, kobolds etc. ) Marching to attack the gates of new Tunaria and Kelethin?  We have all these stationary mobs standing out in antonica and commonlands and greater faydark.  The only way to get them to move is to get close to them.  Dragons have grown fat and lazy in the last 500 years? I don't recall seeing anywhere in lore that the dragons were forced to stop breeding younglings.  All races regardless of if their beastial or human/elf, have an age in which their race acts rebellious, couldn't the dragons do things such as this? I mean we march up into KoS and start killing them off. Shouldnt that anger them in the slightest bit? Veeshan's Peak is crawling with dragons; why not give a few nomadic dragons that walk the land?  

Back to Shapeshifters- 

Could possibly start out in a human form during the day and shapeshift at nightfall. Or even allow the shapeshifting to be implemented as a questline and end result is for oh i dunno.. 30 minutes you can take the form of your choice and it gives you combat Modifications and bonuses during that duration but then must wait 1hr before using again or something along those lines.   

I remember Barbarians in EQLive turning berserk at 10% health, do this again? Only give a increased melee/ranged bonus and mitigation if barb gets 10% or below maybe?   Elves in lore have been tied to things of old such as dragon-kind.  Can allow them to shapeshift to either dragon or a wurm.  Look at the lore in DoF where the Dark elf turns to a dragon at daylight and the high elf shifts into a dragon at nightfall? something like this could be implemented but IMO I want to see this game be a little more alive.. not have a new race added to it. We're at what, 19 playable races now? and 26 classes!?(EVEN though their just mirror images of their counterparts)  I think we should add a little more live content to the game.  The World of Norrath seems to certainly have changed from the world it started out to be.  the Races are no longer stranded but oncemore working together and the Gods returned at the wrong time to oversee their own destruction should access to their planes be re-opened.   We have once-again reached the point of success and prosperity we were at in EQLive, everyone save for the negligent are helping one another out and forming friendships and guilds.  Give us mobs that are alive and hungry for war!  If Gnolls didn't want to kill us then they wouldn't attack Qeynosians/Freeportians of level.  If the Slogan of EverQuest II is "Where Adventure Comes Alive." Then show me the living adventure!  I might be the only one that enjoyed ring wars in EQLive and marching with the Pilgrims in FV to face off against the Drolvarg.. or even aiding my home city of Felwithe against the Thexian Hordes from out of Mistmoore castle and the Crushbone Orcs attacking Kelethin.  I felt that game EQLive its "alive feeling."  If we truly are wandering in a world torn by conflict, show us this war-torn world or this conflict we are facing.   

More Live content, with a grind here and there; Less repeatable quest that doesn't change the world at all ::

I'm all for this Idea.  There it is SoE.. please do this as itd be a great addition to an already great game  

[Dirty Jack Rackham]

Sounds like a good idea. Could be fun. 

[Zhern]

I like this idea, but I bet lag would be the worst enemy!