to Live FREE! or Shard trying

I've been trying to stay away from subjects that are sore for me. If you haven't noticed well I've taken a little break because for a while now I can say EQ2 was going in the right direction. We're human and we will never like every single aspect of every thing in any game however, in a MMO that can change. If you have read the recent Test patch 17 we are introduced to a shardless death. There are many points I would like to expand on but I dont have all day and I still am unsure how this will all turn out.

First I would like to say the Shard is a joke it has no real effect on my gameplay with or without ONE shard. Granted you start to lose 3 or 4 you might notice a real effect on your solo play which is good. It gives you insentive to go back to get your Shard but the kicker is it's still no reason not to want to die. The debt is not noticable and will only add up if you die about 25 times but after about 50 deaths strait you'll hit around 50% debt which is a cap.. And as it stands you log out of that charcter for a few days Bamb no more debt. Once again making death a joke.

What is it that makes people like SOE want to give easy death penaltys? Why do they want to keep making it less and less obtrusive to play a game that should have RISK vs REWARD? Does no one there think about the aspect of death seriously? If they do they must be the mail room clerks or the new guy that is just trying to fit in.. I know what my gut tells me, SOE is taking out shards even after the Alchemist whom will sell one back to you for a hefty price. They are taking it out to clear up CS ties with the shard. Yeah you heard me right there are fools in EQ2 that petition for their shard even to this day. I mean why should I have to pay an alch. to get my shard back when I got 3 hours CS wait time after I petiton to get my shard back.

I know a person on Faydark that once said they petitioned a shard in the middle of antoinca at level 23. Needless to say he got it back.. My question is why? Is SOE so afraid to say no to stupid requests? I asked this guy why he didn't go get it? He said to me "because I wanted to tradeskill". Now Seriously Stats are overinflated and even if you lose one shard your stat deflation isnt that serious untill keep on dieing and not going back to the shard. So I see no reason for SOE to bow out and help people get their shards back 99.99% of the time. If you ask me this is a big blow for the Betrayel quests. You LOSE your shard for a full 3 days and it will make a newb think twice about betraying. It's a sting you will no longer recive when your betray. It shouldn't be Oh here's 2% debt at lvl 17 go kill 2 orc's or gnolls and your ok again. These are the little things that EQ2 still had some Imersion on, now they will lose that.

Now I hear their might be a bigger debt per death and debt will no longer go away when you log which it should of been even with a shard. I belive if you die you should get about 4% debt each death and death effects for about 15 minutes with debt not leaving while loged then I could live w/o a shard. However, I think their should be an option of which death you want 1. one with shard they way it is now and 1. one without with whatever options SOE will use. Hey we love choices don't we? Why not let us choose how we want to live and die? Sadly though it seems like the future of EQ2 is going to be you die and stand back up and go at it again with no serious reason not to die.

My last point is that this hasn't even touched those that are level 60. Once your level 60 it dont matter how many times you die or what %debt you get. You can't lose your level and at 60 do you really care about 10gp repair costs? I hardly doubt the effects of this new death penalty will effect a level 60 at all. At least when they have to get a shard from the Shimmering citidel would be reson enough for a level 60 not to die.

I'm not one to say OMGTHISSOSUXORIQUIT but if death doesn't have a serious bite or a bee sting then there is no Heart pumping. If my Heart doesnt pump then I feel dead already, why should I keep on playing? Don't get me wrong I'm not droping EQ2 just yet I'm waiting all of this out and if things just keep getting easy again you will see only the door on my way out.

On a good note Runneye is evil even at level 50. I've now raked in about 6 fables and tons of legendary. I do it with respect to lowbies in the zone helping them out and I don't take their camps. So now I usally only go into the two instances that have a good chance of droping mid lvl loot. Both boss mobs are around 43 Heroic and I would suggest bringing a friend becuase they are not easy even when their green.(lock out on instances is 18hrs) If you follow the story line in here the lore is quite intriguing and their seems to be tons to do so I would go check it out