What a terribly uninspired expansion. 3 zones really, with 4-5 instanced variations of the theme.

Seriously, that's about it. I wouldn't care really, if the new zones provided some semblance of reward.

I look at the lackluster items I can get from COTF, and the gains are so marginal in comparison to the groupable gear I have from ROF (in some cases no improvements at all).

I went from a full suit of ROF tier one to a full suit of COTF tier one and the difference was so slight that I barely noticed any significant change.

Where is the /drool factor we used to get?? Why has the gear become so "ho-hum" and devoid of personality?


Now every weapon and piece of armor is part of some generic "assembly-line" category. The only perceptible variance in these items is the name and some very minor differences in stats. Everything non-raid has become a carbon-copy of other items from that "tier" (perhaps lumping everything into tiers and not letting zones have their own identity is also a bad idea. This is Everquest, not accounting software).


And the content...how bloody predictable can it get?

Cotf is yet another expansion that drops you off into a quest hub where a few dozen quest-givers are standing around eager to plug you into "progression," which is a term that has come to resonate in my mind with the same unpleasantness as "corporate ladder" or "hysterectomy." Much like RoF, where, rather than give it some thought, you're toon is just deposited in a big circular ring with 6 portals leading to the various tiers. In the interest of convenience, of course.

Once you're plugged into the life-sapping-progression-matrix, you basically "work" through these until it has been established, through the magic of "achievements," who in your guild can stomach the most tedium.

And all so you can get some new items with very minor improvements and all have the same 33.33% drop-rate, and all have one of the 5 generic procs on them (sympathetic rune/sap/dmg/heal/yawn XIVXII).

I know the go-hards eat this crap up, and would gladly throw their wallets at Sony for any marginal increase they can get and lord over each other, but not so much for the rest of us...

I think that they should make a zone that, the only way you could get into zone is to have say 4 or maybe even 5 real people in the group to get in. Will bring back full groups again.
Just an idea.

I am willing to buy Call of the Forsaken, if I have to allow mercs to use aa's. I hope they just make it regardless if you buy it or not mercs have aa's. I tend to solo a lot so mercs having aa's sure will help; since I am using Journeyman 1, can't get no help to get 2,3,4, or 5, 1 with aa's will just have to work.

I just wish they would release every race, and class of Mercenaries already.

Edited, Aug 7th 2013 3:54pm by cjguy

Going to skip this expansion for 2 reasons . One is no level cap raise and second is I'm not paying for new weak Mercs I have to waste time AA'ing and equipping to get them to where they were when they were free. How stupid to introduce a weak new Merc just to "create" a new feature to fix them to where they should be Grrsh!! Anyway SKIPPING it. And LDON sucked, I didn't have a group of fanboiz to do 50 a day with LOL.

So do the mercs gain AA, or do we have some new options to improve mercs spending our AA?

Seems this one caters to the everyday player and not the high end raider, which is fine, they need some good new content also. But I don't know why they can't cater to both, with T4 raid gear now to be viable thru next expansion with the raid gear there being little to no upgrade from T4 RoF raid gear, many will get bored and prolly not play nearly as much.

But I do love the merc AA's and 4 gear slots, I 3 box a lot and use 3 mercs. And with the new missions styled to be like Ldon 2.0, that could be interesting as well, will have to see.

I agree with Merf. I would much rather pay up front and slowly get fully-functional content then having to deal with bugs and crashes all at once.

thanks for finally posting this...much appreciated