116410-quarterly-drops

== Content ==
			
First of all I would like to say that I think the delay of drop 3 was an excellent choice and needed to be done. I posted months ago that they needed to stop everything and rework itemization and it appears they listened and are doing so. However I believe that their decision to make drops a quarterly thing in the future is a bad plan.
 
So about this new quarterly drops thing... I am really concerned by this move. Personally monthly content updates were one of the big selling points for this game and so I worry that this change to quarterly drops will mean a net loss of value overall. The endgame in this game is very linear and because of this you end up blowing through it pretty fast (albeit raids but that's another matter). For the last month and a half I have found myself done with ALL the content outside of raids with little reward for replaying it. There's simply nothing for me to work towards anymore regarding meaningful character progression. I am worried that this will be a continuing pattern with all future drops and that the amount of content will simply not sustain the time period over which they extend. If my $45 only buys me a month of content and a lot of boredom as I wait for the next drop, the game might start to really drag.
 
Regarding bugs. Yes drop 1 was buggy. I couldn't really farm the tree event for weeks until they "sorta" fixed it and the scientist crystals in northern wastes bugged out about 50% of the time. But those issues aside I was really pleased with drop 1. I got a new zone to explore, a new quest line, new items to work towards and just a nice amount of content in general. And I could ignore some of the minor bugs because I was expecting them and felt confident that they would get fixed. Mostly the same goes for drop 2. That one wasn't really as great but I enjoyed it even though the SS aoe thing was pretty ridiculous. And constantly in the back of my mind when these drops happened was the happy knowledge that more content was coming only 30 days away and that there would always be new stuff to do. None of the bugs got to me that much.
 
I was willing to deal with bugs in exchange for getting fast content deliveries because at least the new content was something to do and enjoy. Yeah the bugs take away some of the enjoyment but most of it still remains. With no content you get zero enjoyment and honestly I don't think that I will enjoy the content in drop 3 any more than I enjoyed drop 1 simply because its "supposed" to be bug free. I'd rather face the possibility bugs than the known fact of boredom when you are lacking content over an extended period of time with no hard date on the next drop.
 
Now that's my opinion on why I think the quarterly thing is a bad thing. But as I really love this game I feel I should offer some suggestions going into the quarterly drop schedule u have planned. If you are going to release quarterly content here's what I would like to see in it:
 
1.) New, puggable, 20 man raid. No, no, no I don't mean a LFR (there should NEVER be a group finder for raids imo). I'm talking about a 20 man like ZG or AQ20 that you can run twice a week with pugs. I want to see players shouting "LFM (Insert Raid Name Here), poke at Hologram for inspect, must bring boosts and food" in Thayd. This raid would be about the difficulty of the vet dungeons and would allow for a few people to die during the fight. The loot would be about on par with dungeon and world drop epics. This would be an amazing content addition and players would eat this up like fancy chocolate. Players could run this hamster wheel of loot for a very long time while meeting new people, making friends, and feeling epic in a 20 man raid environment. I personally would farm this religiously on multiple characters and would probably run it just for fun.
 
2.) Large, detailed endgame zones. Currently your endgame zones are terrible compared with the awesome lvling zones. They are shallow and streamlined. Make BIG endgame zones with all sorts of quest lines, random stuff to find, pvp events...just make them actually have stuff. Hide content, layer content. Make a zone that is unfamiliar and hard to fully explore. Give us reasons to PLAY in that zone and don't make it just a place we go for an hour every day for rep. Randomly spawning events, hidden achievements with awesome rewards. Give us a lvl 50 zone as big as wilderun with more content and people will be amazed and satisfied.
 
3.) World events. Make something like the litch king's invasion in wow with its influence apparent in the zones of the game. Have an Icthian army invading nexus or a crazy strain outbreak or something that shakes things up and makes the world seem like its alive and evolving. Currently none of the drops really affected anything outside of the drops themselves. Give us weird events that pop up in the zones, destruction to landmarks...make us feel involved even if we aren't actively pursing that current drop's content.
 
Those are just 3 ideas. If you continue your pattern of a relatively shallow lvl 50 zone and a very small daily zone covering 3 months of content you are going to seriously have some pissed players. We were fine with that when that content was monthly but now that its a quarterly schedule we expect content that truly impresses and that will hold our interest over that time period. If drop 4 doesn't really, really impress me with a high amount of content I will be very disappointed and feel rather robbed. Do what you need to do for drop 3 to fix the gear issues; but kick some ass with drop 4 please.
 	
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			The Defile is absolutely awesome; with some serious open world events (5 man mini raid boss & 20 man massive event); add in the solo-raid parallel coming up (Omnicore-1), plus the next rehased starter zone / daily zone (star comm station) coming with faction control dynamics and dynamic events; things are looking good for some cool content.	
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