A brief message to Severlin. So long and thanks for all the fish. I'll be back.

[Brendael]

Yes, I understand these messages about people taking a sabbatical from the game are tiresome and unnecessary but here goes.

My laptop died and I'm just not going to bother installing DDO on the new one. So here is pretty much why :

1. Getting rid of Mabar and replacing it with a hunt the Mimic Festival. This shows a distinct lack of understanding on what makes an MMO work. Festivals like Mabar and Crystal Cove (Which everyone is sick of already) are social events. They allow people to mingle and just generally be social and meet new people. Festivault, The Risia Ice games are essentially single player events. They are lousy substitutions. Social festivals are really important to break the monotony of regular questing.

2. Epic content is adding to player fatigue in the long run. I have a character at cap and I have a character TR'ing past lives. I'm playing epic quests and I'm playing heroic quests. So I end up playing the same content twice as often and once again it just leads to player burn out.

3. Lag. I think we have seen a lot on this topic.

4. Server populations are dropping. I pug because I have irregular hours. Ghallanda's LFM panel is starting to look like Oriens when I left for Ghallanda to get a higher population just that there is nowhere else to go.

5. Drop rates are just ridiculous. 60+ runs of a dragon raid to upgrade your weapons to tier 3. (90 runs of the Shadow Dragon raid because 50% of those raids are garanteed to end in a lag wipe.). Is it any wonder that everyone started duping? That is just not a realistic target for most players even with duped raid timers. You need 20 odd runs of CiTW to get your weapons (I'm at 9 without getting my Pinion which I have seen drop once in that time.). The balance of the game is completely broken. I'm currently on 11 runs of MoD without a single named item dropping. (Requiring 20 runs of a raid before getting a single item is just not fun.) People need to be able to run raids for fun as well as grind. I'm beyond finding the grind fun.

So yeah, you can't have my stuff because I may be back some time but for now I'm done.

Cheers and so long for the fish. I hope someone who matters out there sees this and realizes that grind is a poor substitute for fun.

[janave]

quoted/snip for readabiltiy

2. They updated the progress into higher levels without providing enough content to play around in and earn exp without repeating content that players already run dry, since then we slowly got more stuff to get epic exp from, altho (in my opinion) it is nowhere near enough to support a system like the epic TRing.

We would need many more quests with total exp over 100k, in order to make the progress more fun, currently only a few quests provide this, and so we instead farm these to the point of burnt out nihilum.

Developers just need to look at the LFMs for a week and see what is posted mostly, especially what people run as the "daily grind".

4. It is not just the server population, it is the player base rather choosing to play in static groups, for n reasons. One big reason is different pace of the game, the gap between veteran and new has never been so stupidly wide. Thanks to stacking past lifes and completely off the chart item creep.

5. Yes, but on the upside you dont need top gear to complete a dungeon, in fact in 6 man groups 3-4 people could very easily just pike naked. Raids are mostly run easy, except the seasonal LFM for an EE/favor farming group.

Tome drop rates on the other hand are so bad, that you can probably farm TP for 4-5 tomes to buy in the store before you see 1 in a chest. Never seen a tome of fate drop, been in tons of epic raids, ee chain completions etcetc... the only consistent store loot is hairdyes, with an occasional renown or xp potion of the lower tiers.

Some people will chase down every +1 the Devs push into the game, but i guess most people will get tired much sooner.

We keep hearing how its their personal mission to make the game more fun, but i guess the definition of fun is not the same for everyone. :D

[Saekee]

Brendael, have you tried a stealth run? It's like a game within the game.

[Livmo]

snipe

I know you said nobody could have your stuffs, but I would appreciate any Greater Arcane Essences on G-Land sent to Livmo if you felt like donating. Please and thanks. Also, I'm sorry to hear about your exp. and hope you come back someday.

[Qhualor]

1. I understand the social part of it, but I found Mabar to be completely boring. standing around killing mobs in one area that you have to be constantly moving to get ingredients over and over is quite tedious. doing that the whole time im playing every day for days sucks.

2. it seems the devs are partially addressing that. new content was mentioned end of the year and they have mixed things up with E3BC. ENecro is the same quests but with easy flagging and different mobs. that just tells me how big their budget and time to create is, which seems to not be very big or long. theres speculation from the money isn't there to pressure from up top to do enough to keep the interest to play to small staff and a big game that continues to grow unable to dedicate the necessary time.

3. a never ending issue that was addressed in the Producers Letter. some of it is the fault of Turbine and some of it is the fault of your computer.

4. if its hard to get a group together during non peak times than that says to me there isn't a lot of European/Asian/Australian players during those times. maybe marketing needs a boost because I know when I still am logged in past 11PM EST there can be a drop in lfms and panel seems to be cut in half. it doesn't seem to pick back up again until the AM. theres also a lot of other reasons like the game has gotten to the point of soloing is normal.

5. I remember when it took 60-80 completions with 3 day raid timers to get my TOD ring on each character. 20 completions to get a +2 or +3 tome that wasn't found in the store yet and not guaranteed. I think 60 runs to get tier 3 TF upgrade is fine. there needs to be a reason to keep content alive and with raid timer bypass available it can certainly cut down the days to get what you want. people will dupe regardless of the grind if its possible. the grind can sometimes persuade people to break the rules because time is more important to them.

[Lonnbeimnech]

Drop rates are fine, maybe even too generous.

Lag is annoying, but asking for more events like mabar isn't going to help.

Running the same quests on heroic as on epic... There are almost 400 quests in the game, maybe run something other than von3, wizking, and spies in the house.

[Lonnbeimnech]

5. I remember when it took 60-80 completions with 3 day raid timers to get my TOD ring on each character. 20 completions to get a +2 or +3 tome that wasn't found in the store yet and not guaranteed. I think 60 runs to get tier 3 TF upgrade is fine. there needs to be a reason to keep content alive and with raid timer bypass available it can certainly cut down the days to get what you want. people will dupe regardless of the grind if its possible. the grind can sometimes persuade people to break the rules because time is more important to them.

60 runs is nonsense. You get 10 phlogs on your 20th. It's more like 25 runs to make a t3 item.

Unless you use 20 timers in one day and end up getting nothing on most of those runs because the chest is ransacked, and then don't pick phlogs on the 20th, then yeah it might take a while...

[Qhualor]

60 runs is nonsense. You get 10 phlogs on your 20th. It's more like 25 runs to make a t3 item.

Unless you use 20 timers in one day and end up getting nothing on most of those runs because the chest is ransacked, and then don't pick phlogs on the 20th, then yeah it might take a while...

I was just going by the OP. I actually have never run the raid. 25 completions, or a month and a half if you ran it every day with a 3 day timer, sounds quite reasonable.