[Culdahl]

I bet you know what I'm going to say?

Anywho, yeah, I'm playing WoW right now and having a blast. I'm not sure I'll be back in EQ anytime soon, but you never know how things will play out in WoW at level 70 /shrug.

As for my reasons on leaving: EQ, to me, is simply not for someone who can only devote a couple of hours a night. I have gear just good enough to make the group game obsolete and not good enough to progress in raid content. What I saw, as an officer and raidleader, was an uphill battle on the raid front due to game mechanics that are increasingly designed for more clerics, more warriors, more DPS and a min. of 50+ players (even with mudflation).

I've certainly never been in it for the loot, so to speak, but, like everyone else, I like to catch that carrot on the end of the stick every once in awhile (or at least have a glimmer of hope of doing so), yet I found myself not getting a single piece of loot for nearly 6 months and I was actually going backwards, XP wise, in group content due to how piss-poor the RvR is in SoF (which is group content designed for TSS+ level RAID gear /sigh).

On top of that, there hasn't been a single lower-level raid encounter designed since OoW (I guess you could argue Shyra was, but that was just piss-poor development by the devs and not by design imho).

Conversely, I get nice rewards almost daily in WoW and they actually have this thing called quests in which you get a reward for doing a short set of tasks.......I wonder why everQUEST never thought of such a crazy idea? I think in my 8 years in EQ I might have done 7-8 quests and about 4 of those netted me absolute garbage and took FOREVER.

My last point would be that, despite the recent flag changes which were a good idea, SOE is not going to attract new blood to the game. The UI is outdated, the graphics are outdated and there are more bugs than in auldaen's bed (I should know). On top of that, it takes MORE resources to run than newer games! They're also stuck with ever decreasing revenue, which shrinks the dev team (about 1/100th the dev team of modern MMOs), which causes more bugs and worse content. Holy cyclical batman!

In essence, for the game to be viable they need to address high end raiders, high end groupers and mid to low-end raiders/groupers ALL in the same expansion and they simply do not have the resources. So, we will keep ending up with extremes like SoF that are almost exclusively raid expansions or LDoN which will destroy upper-end guilds....I just don't see them addressing both with the revenue they have. If it wasn't for boxed toons (IE - multiple accounts) the game would be shut down by now.

Anyway, that's my bitchfest and I'm glad to get it off my chest...I made every attempt to get sony to make more casual friendly content and I made every attempt to recruit new people into AH (asked about every GL, on our level, to merge in some way to help us progress before I left with no success). So I'm done beating my head against the wall and hearing the ubers claim how lazy we all are and how we should all just quit and go to WoW....I guess, in the end, I finally took their advice and they were right: If you play less than 5-8 hrs per session, EQ just isn't for you anymore (at least, it isn't for me...screw 2 weeks in cryst while having to run 100% reg XP to not unding 80 while not seeing a SINGLE drop that ANYONE in the group could use.....screw that right to hell!).

Anyway, I will miss you people despite SOE's madness and I'm glad I got to know you all. I think AH extended my EQ life by at least a couple of years and it would have been great to see it continue on, but taking 100x as long to complete content that is 4 years old just isn't my idea of fun, especially with the mudflation in HPs in group gear.

P.S. - I reserve the right to recant on this rant at any time should I decide to return to the game....if this is the case, you must rid yourself of this bitchfest and pretend it did not occur.

Love (and other indoor sports),

- Culdahl (AKA > you)