Server merger, population ?Follow

The server populations are very healthy. There are plenty of people in zones for all level ranges. You won't want for huntin' buddies.

I'm probably the one who said that, so I should probably let you know what I think. Whether or not crafting has gotten worse depends on what you want from it. If you want to focus on tradeskills and play a primarily crafting game things have gotten worse. The term 'dumbing down' is overused so I hesitate to use it myself, but you can definitly make the claim. The social, depth and economic aspect of interdependency was dropped early on. Without interdependency there was really no need for subcombines, so they were dropped later on, removing some depth. Experience was increased so as to make levelling much faster than it used to be. However, the worst thing that's happened is the gear crafters make was nerfed across the board and dropped gear was improved. At high levels the best things a crafter can make are little more than filler gear to be used only until you get your legendary drop, which is pretty easy to come by.

The clincher for me was the new tradeskills. They were advertised and tested all through beta and being for people who had leveled a tradeskill. I thought they were finally going to add something for tradeskills only that would make a pure crafting character more valued and important in game. Shortly after EoF launch they were opened up to anyone using the higher of adventure or tradeskill level, and I was very disappointed. Tinkered items became no trade and tinker only only after beta, which served to justify opening it up to anyone, albeit after the fact.

More personally, Transmuters all get to make weapon adornments that are arguably better than the ones weaponsmiths make. They have to make them to level so the market is flooded with them at far less than cost to make them. and no other tradeskill was saddled with this extra competition.

Tradeskills have become a sideline timesink for adventurers to keep them interested longer. If you're looking to be a crafter first and foremost then tradeskills have gotten worse. Still playable if you're not looking for a lot of depth, but definitely worse. If you want to mainly adventure and craft in your spare time to make yourself some very good low level gear, some decent filler gear later on and maybe make a little money then you'll love it.

I see, i got to say i liked the interdependency that was there before, you could actuall make money just by making subcombines. At the very worst case, i could have different characters providing myself with all i needed.

So the way i understand it now, theres alot less steps to make anything.

i remember back then there was like 4 step to make quills, 3 to make paper and 4 or 5 to make ink, then with all that i could make a spell.

Is it still like that or just, 1 step to make each of those component then another to make paper.


Tradeskill was somewhat important to me, cause when i have only little time to play, i can just log in, chat with friends and go around harvesting. And if i am lucky getting some rare components. I was thinking about making a carpenter this time since i have so fewer time to play with the 2 demons, not mainly to make money only to have fun with my appartment, how did that tradeskill evolved ?

Oh man 1 step period, now i see what you mean. Well i guess the general player base asked for it, i remember back then everyone were like level 50/3 or 50/10 :)

well ill see how fun it can be ( seemed pretty much toned down to wow simplicity), one last question, ive read that there are different newbie islands now, did they kept the original one or is it 2 new ones ? Ill try to go on a different island this time, i always found the starting island very well done, and those are probably nice too since they try to bait people with it.

Edited, Dec 29th 2006 11:29am by PrometeusVaer

Personally, I hated how crafting was before even though I never crafted back then. Everything costed way too much and the idea of going through all that subcombine trouble to make one single item?

For the people who actually want to do that kinda stuff, I think they could maybe make a different line of recipes that give REALLY good items but require subcombines, lots of time, and produce masters scrolls and armor with treasured/legendary type stat buffs. But for casual people who just want to make alittle cash and don't want to pay 5g for a single piece of armor at lvl 10, I like the simplified recipes.