Unfortunately I have nothing to speak of that does not involve real life, so I’m going to bore you with a recap of Araxes’ adventuring progress.
Kunark apparated out of the ether on November 13th and Anotnia Bayle was in a mad rush to get to it. In such a rush, in fact, that horrendous lag existed for the first week or so. Then it went away, and in its stead came server crash after server crash, updates, updates, updates — more updates — lots of whining, more whining … and now things have reached some kind of stable point, it seems.
Somehow, during all of that craziness, I have managed to put in some pretty solid game time, and Ara is now halfway through level 75. Most of this was achieved strictly through questing, a point which, I admit, causes me some amount of annoyance. This post isn’t meant to be my official review of Kunark, since I haven’t finished exploring the expansion, and probably won’t for a good two more months at the least — however I feel compelled to make some kind of statement. In regards to dungeons, I think that something was lost. I’m not sure what, exactly. Maybe I am used to the insane difficulty that was present in past expansions and seems to be missing from this one. Particularly I recall ^^^ Heroic mobs being far, far more difficult to hit. I went into the Vault of Eternal Sleep when I was only level 72. The mobs there are all heroic and range from level 76-82 ish. Yet, aside from the trap doors, we went through it with almost no problems. Figuring out the strategy of the named was what stopped us — but it wasn’t the challenge of battles. I know that there are two sides to this: those who will say challenge should be strategic in nature, and those (like me) who enjoy long, hard battles where players routinely go into the yellow and orange. The kind of battles that when you finish them you all type “Jesus!” or “Good lord” or “Holy fuck!” Or whatever. (I picked a religious theme, can you tell?) But in Kunark, I just don’t get that feeling at all.
Couple that lack of excitement and challenge with a general feeling that the loot is terribly, terribly unbalanced … I can get +4 spell crit, tons of bonus to my resists, a boatload of Int … all from a quested piece of gear. Now — do I like that? HELLS YES! I am glad that questers and soloers can finally get some meaningful rewards without spending hours grinding. BUT … that doesn’t change the fact that the dungeon loot needs to be comparable in its scale. If I AM going to spend hours in a dungeon, with a group, waiting on AFK’s, waiting on replacements, putting up with the stress of bad players, and so forth … I sure as HELL better be rewarded for it in a way that is suitable. In the past this has been a combination of higher XP gain and excellent loot rewards. I have never had a problem with the loot rewards in past expansions. I STILL don’t have a problem with the XP gain. It’s my opinion that the XP gain in Kunark dungeons is (after the recent adjustments) far, FAR above what it was in Kingdom of Sky, and literally skyrocketed above what it was in Desert of Flames. I think what has happened in regards to XP is that people, after almost 2 years of being stagnant at level 70, have forgotten what the XP grind was actually like. They have become accustomed to leveling alts at accelerated rates, they want a level a day, maybe 2 or 3 even. That’s just absurd, when you consider that we have a good YEAR before the next expansion is released, and in all likelihood it is NOT going to raise the level cap, if SOE follows suit with their past patterns.
Anyway, to get back to the point — while I DON’T have any issues with the XP gain, I do take issue with the lack of challenge and lack of relevant loot. I say relevant, because it isn’t that the loot is BAD — it’s just not appropriate in light of the fact that you can get class-specific gear through questing, which takes less time, less hassle, and is far easier to coordinate. And it has better stats. So, yes, the loot tables really, REALLY need to be looked at, I think.
Now. On the plus side, the dungeons in Kunark are beautiful. Some of the best and most well designed, and unique, in the game. Prior to this the only dungeons that inspired me were Permarost and Solusek’s Eye. Everything else felt kind of contrived, bland, cliche, and plain. I mean, yeah, Poet’s Palace, Nektropos Castle, Unrest — those were very unique and well done dungeons. However, Kunark has introduced a slew of great looking dungeon “sets” if you will. I’m going to skip Karnor’s becuase that’s the one [glaring] exception to my statement. But on the whole, Chardok, Vault of Eternal Sleep, Chelsith, Sebilis … great places, very unique looking and fun to simply EXPLORE and go “ooooh” at stuff.
Okay. I think I had a point when I started this post but now I’ve rambled on so long I forgot what it was. And I’m tired. And I have to pee.
More to come!
Oh, I’ve also updated some of the other sections.
Recent Comments