Aw man, so mean.
They lost me at The RoK expansion. The solo quest, half ass mimic wow killed the game they had until that point. Poor raid loot optimization, hotbar ability bloat paired with the "we know more than you peasants" attitude most of the devs had was the nail in the coffin. Tons of people left and never returned.
Agreed and my feelings exactly. There's more than you think that gave the game a chance that feel the same way. WoW wasn't for everyone, it really wasn't for me though I played it to run with old EQ friends during BC. I also understand why it was appealing and why many had to break up with SoE/EQ. Not only did many of us invest countless hours into a game and needed a change of scenery but SoE really dropped the ball time after time again (Not to mention the direction and face of the game was changing for the worst).
The Venril Sathir fight at RoK launch made a FUCK TON of my server's raiding guilds quit the game. My guild could do Trak with no wipes but would always have pre-fight jitters just thinking about having to go to Venril's Lair and then spend 30+ minutes afterwards fighting amongst each other after 2-3 wipes. I really don't think the dev team at that time understood the serious damage to the EQ2 community that fight had caused with how it was designed pre-nerf. I understand the fight was to get the absolute "best in slot" weapon for certain classes at that time but it was one of the worst experiences I've had in gaming ever next to having to camp Ragefire in EQ1.
Well, you have to remember that most stats are based on flat percentages rather than WoW-style ratings. There are some stats with curves like what you're talking about (like multi-attack), but it still has the net effect of impacting buff desirability and in general making those stats less interesting to chase.
Matron was on Mara, a different expansion. And it was still the case years later, and it was a unique encounter. Adds would spawn (on death?) and the fucking encounter turned into a slideshow. To be fair a lot of other encounters weren't like that and ran pretty smoothly. The raiding in EoF was some of the best in all the MMO's I ever played.
Whoops I was thinking EQ2 used ratings. Make lower level gear nerf itself? Heh that'd go over about as well as a Rick Grimes speech I'm sure.
As an enchanter, that fight fucking sucked. People could just not manage their mana well enough to not get one shot and we didnt have the tools to help keep them in the range they needed to be. Pure frustration. But Sebilis was a pretty awesome dungeon though.
They were actually going to do that at some point (I think during the Sentinel's Fate beta, so way before my time as a dev), it was not received well, but from what I heard the execution was lacking.
EoF was great, RoK lost me as well. I didn't even finish to level my char, my friends vanished halfway through the trip to whatever was the new level cap (80 maybe) and I said "fuck it" and moved on to play other stuff.