I wanted to make a thread in which some intelligent and like-minded people could post ideas on how to close the power gap between the top end clans and more casual players and make arctic fun again. I am a RISE player, and in my clan we play this game for the pk wars. Unfortunately this game at the moment seems so top heavy that after day 2 of the wipe, the game lost all its competitive edge. There was absolutely no way that any clan could contend with RISE or make it interesting in any way. It is spammed on these boards that people "quit because of pk", but really most people quit because they CAN'T pk. Hear me out here: If Rise pks Neutralclan, Neutralclan doesn't quit because we pked them, they quit because there is no way they could possibly retaliate against such a superiorly equiped\spelled\legended clan. And on the other end, people in my clan usually quit because of LACK of Pk. We started out with about 35 real players, were down to about 20 after week 3, and 12 after week 6. All quit because of boredom. No clans to fight in pk. If we attack anybody we get guilt tripped because they are so easily blown out of the water. People may think this is the way we want the game but it is not. We want enemies worth killing who make us nervous and get excited about fighting. We want 3-4 other big clans to give us a fight until the very last day of the wipe.
Now, what i noticed from this wipe: the first two days of this wipe were very close and contested between the two most powerful clans, CORE and RISE, however Rise ended up winning the last in a series of battles on day 2 of the wipe which basically won us the wipe. Why? because we were able to legend first and then pop all the gear in the game. Our enemies were easily able to get to lvl 30 without a problem, but it was basically impossible for them to legend with us on the mud in force. This brings me to idea #1:
Remove legend. Yes i know everybody loves legend characters so hear me out: Remove legend, allow all skills, abilities, bonuses that legend offers to everybody who reaches level 30. Ranks would only be for stuff you want to buy, ie +dam, spell saves, iceshield, whatever. This would HUGELY close the player gap. Most casuals dont want to grind shit out, they just want to log, play and have fun, however everything worth doing in this game now basically requires being legend. So lets remove the legend! Also think of all the classes that are absolutely worthless pre-legend: shamans, druids, thieves, black robes, red robes, scouts. To be elite with these classes you basically have to grind for a month then spend countless hours at training bullshit skills to superb that you will never use again. Why not remove all that grinding and make them fun to play from the jump?
Idea #2: Change load rate for eq to 100% and increase spell loads significantly. Why? hear me out:
Example: EvilTim decayed his night-blue dragonscale armor from verminaard this wipe. Rise spammed the mob 15 times or so to get the item to load. What clan could have spammed verminaard 15 times in a row to pop the armor? Nobody but Rise. So what is some casual clan supposed to do when they lose their best shiny item and now they have to spam a super hard zone 15 times in order to repop it? Quit. Thats what they are going to do. This low load% of eq thing was designed to make it so zones are always loading equipment but in reality it just prevents people from having good eq who cant afford the time to spam the zone 10-15 times a day. And spells? the chaos books were a good idea for sure. But i have over 15 days of playtime this wipe and I have never seen one load yet. The super hardcore crazy players in my clan have popped them and i think out of all of Rise in 300 days of combined playtime the best spell we saw load was fireshield\vit shield\lightning shield. So maybe those load rates should be upped a bit? Same thing with the World Boss mobs IMO, i have only killed 2 myself in that many days playtime. Don't get me wrong, world bosses are awesome but most people quit or will never be powerful or lucky enough to be able to kill one.
Idea #3: New content!!!!
How many people in this game spent months or years exploring the new dargo and bloodshoal? Many of us! But there is barely ever any new content in this game even though there seems to be 10-20 people always willing to get on creation. Look at all the zones that are terribly outdated or useless that are currently in this game. My go-to is thordbardin. That zone, if you read the books should be absolutely amazing! 7-8 dwarven clans all vying for the crown to rule a vast city over an intricate mountain of tunnels, mines, and mazes. Imo zones like thordbardin would be perfect for large re-vamp projects. There are many volunteers to help create, lets get some new content in shall we???