What a change

[Thame]

Logging onto Sarlona tonight there was prob 25% less people then last night. Sarlona I think is the largest server right now so thats alot of people. alot harder to find a group. Usually same amount each night. So apparently you really ****ed off alot of people with this last 'update'.
IMO ( and I havent even done the abbot raid) the Touch Of Dolurrh thing was a bit much.

Also some advice to the devs. People typically get bored with the content rather quickly and all we have to look foward to are loot runs. So far each mod has had some quest that is labeled a loot run. Last mod it was pop now it was TOV. You guys made changes to pop before mod 5 which was fine because people could make easier adjustments. Then with mod 5 you lowered the loot tables and now all I hear on pop runs is how the loot absolutely sux, pulling lvl 6-9 garbage out of a lvl 15 quest., But this may have been done to push people to play the new MOD 5 content which prob 50% of people hate the LOTD series anyway. So for those that hated it we still had loot runs.
With the change to shadows youve eliminated the TOV loot run which now the people who needed the loot runs to stay interested now have nothing to really do or look foward to when they log on, so hence a HUGE drop in server POP I see tonight. Maybe they are just ****ed and will come back but I doubt it, what do they have to do.
But youve made the shadows immune to the most usefull spell against them becaus ethe phasing they do is horrible.
I cant agree with the way the loot run was before it was actually easier then POP runs, but this was not the answer.
Few suggestions.
1- Make the shadows partially immune to FW heck even 50% immune is a huge difference compared to total immunity.
2- If you dont wanna do the partial immunity then make them either stop phasing as much or eliminate their phasing entirely. Ok so in PNP they 'do this' so to speak but then again in PNP they are not immune to fire. This is the reason LOTD is so disliked anyway because people have finger cramps halfway through the first quest thrying to kill these things. Firewall is the only solid weapon against them.

This last update you may have thought it was necessary, prob was for the most part but you guys took a MAJOR hit on customers.

[slothman911]

I agree with you completely Thame logged on Sarlona last night and no higher level groups going on so I logged on and played my lowbie.

One intresting thing I did notice is some of the lowbie groups I have ran there are people with multiple higher level characters in them.

I just fear most of them will get tired of constantly re rolling characters up to 14 only to see there is nothing that intrests them at that level.

My real concern has been my friends list. Very, very few people on that list are ever on and I fear the majority of them will not be coming back to this game.

Our guild recently merged with another and I see fewer and fewer people on. And when we do run groups I don't see people having the fun they used to have.

Not sure how to solve these problems.

[arminius]

Last night on Ghal, I saw pretty much exclusively:

Lowbie groups
Highbies running lowbie favor
Desert wandering
VoN
PoP/Trial by Fire loop

Definitely something missing there.

Of course, you could speculate that people were still running the Orchard but just avoiding LFMs and sticking with only trusted guildies to test out the changes. That wasn't the case with my guild though.

_

[Cedrica-the-Bard]

...but the Shadow thingies only show up in ToV when you smash the breakables, don't they? Or am I wrong? I know when my guild runs it, we never see shadows because we know never to break anything...

[moorewr]

...but the Shadow thingies only show up in ToV when you smash the breakables, don't they? Or am I wrong? I know when my guild runs it, we never see shadows because we know never to break anything...

I haven't been back in since the update (my sorc is sooo ransacked in there) but I understand that Desecrated Temple of Vol now has continuous shadow spawns too discourage our habit of hanging out by the campfire at the lever.

[Cedrica-the-Bard]

I haven't been back in since the update (my sorc is sooo ransacked in there) but I understand that Desecrated Temple of Vol now has continuous shadow spawns too discourage our habit of hanging out by the campfire at the lever.

Ahhhh OK. I haven't been on since the change, didn't know that.

[akla_thornfist]

loot runs are a necessity we need them to finance the raids, take away the loot runs and no more raids

[slothman911]

loot runs are a necessity we need them to finance the raids, take away the loot runs and no more raids

Agreed 2 lvl 14 clerics don't pay for themselves

[Perceval418]

Same thing on Thelanis. There was two LFM up at 2am Central Time, by the time i logged about 30 mins later there was one. One was a lowbie run, the other was a favor run.

Where we usually have 7-10 people on at that time in the guild, there was two.

Turbine did forget to add one thing to the release notes:

-Due to recent changes to the new content, you will now experience virtually no lag and no load time when exploring the lands of stormreach!

Edit: Whats most funny is nobody would go from here to LOTR. LOTR looks like a cookie-cut MMORPG with your typical stats, skills, crafting, etc... Id rather go back to EQ II or look into newer MMO's or even, gasp, WoW!

[ArkoHighStar]

I haven't been back in since the update (my sorc is sooo ransacked in there) but I understand that Desecrated Temple of Vol now has continuous shadow spawns too discourage our habit of hanging out by the campfire at the lever.

I did it on elite last night, only caster, was not that bad, the big change is the first part getting the keys, now you haveto od both sides ,and the fire immune shadows spawn in the hallway to the keys, so having a rogue or someone who can disable traps is more advantageous now, have them run in pull the shadows back, melee kills them, disable traps, get key. The spawn time at the center is not that bad and actually gives the other melee characters something to do while 1 or 2 pull the vamps etc. so instead of taking 8 minutes it took 20 firsttime through, now that we now what to do maybe 12 minutes, it burns a bit more mana at the beginning but its not like the number of shrines was too low to begin with.

[Isssssa]

I did a TOV yesterday and we had no trouble pulling everything to the switch. I was on my cleric and had set up several max extended BB's. They seemed to take care of everything in there. This quest is still easily runable as a loot run.

[Luthen]

Once again the player base shows itself to be smarter then whoever developed a particular quest and found an easy and safe way to accomplish a task that didn't include cheating. Turbine response? Change it so they don't seem to be smarter then you anymore.

Except you're gonna keep "adjusting" things like this until one day you've adjusted yourself out of a player base. Not yet and maby not tomorrow but you guys are spending to much time looking at the short term and not enough time looking at the long term.

[ErgonomicCat]

DOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

I was playing at 3 am CST last night on Ghallandra, because the baby was awake. I had a full PUG within 5 minutes, and cycled 5 people through it over the course of 4 quests.

LFM isn't a particularly good indicator of what's going on - it's anecdotal. People may well be in groups, in guild groups, in static groups, soloing, or just full....

[linaewen]

I used to play 10 hours a day when I was a student/working partial time, now that I work full time, the ONLY thing I am looking forward to is loot runs.

And now, when I log on, all I want is to log off cause there is no loot run in mod 5.

sad for a day -5 (headstart) customer