** Best news ever **

[Lindbeck]

in many ways i like this, the fact that the entire population now is warped into Penumbra and can work together as a community... people who cancelled their accounts because of Adonis-camping might come back ... people who aint got much online time can now join others in Penumbra (the only interesting playfield for TL6 chars) etc etc. so all in all, a positive move by FC...

BUT...

[19:31] [<Patk9> "Hi, sorry for wasting DAYS of your lives, we're gonna let everyone else right on through"

so all the days and weeks of camping in Adonis was all for nothing

and ... i wonder what the developers feel like today. all the months spent implementing the quests into the game.. and now *poof*

they realize now (months after release) what we have been saying all along .... mandatory quests kill accounts! WHY WON'T FC LISTEN?? well, now they have listened .... a few months too late im afraid.

but don't let FC break you Lind.... hang in there

[Monrakashi]

Oh wowzers! That's some major news indeed...

Nice to be handed the keys like that, but it takes some of the accomplishment out of it. And like Healerkat said, the lower zones have been fun exploring.

Maybe they ought to hand out some Pioneer Backpacks (or Pioneer Sunglasses, or Fluffy Pioneer Sugar Pie) to those already in Penumbra, hehe.

I think I'm going to go ahead and finish the Elysium quests for posterity's sake.

-Mon

[rahmorak]

Trust me Kat, if you had to endure the camping in Adonis to get to Penumbra you would not see it is fun/exploring.

Nasc/Ely and even Scheol weren't too bad/were even fun as they were soloable and drop-rates weren't too bad.

However... I do agree with Cogs that the level reqs are too low.

Raise the level reqs to a point where the Zone becomes almost grey before you get a free pass and then those that want to push on get access that bit sooner as an achievement. (so long as they fix the drop-rates)

[Sidarion]

Well...

I am happy where I am now. It would have been absolutely impossible for me to even think about completing the Adonis Ergo quest. I have seen the problem with Scheol to a certain degree already.
With the insane amount of camping (for everything, you need a team) you spent even longer looking for good teams than doing the actual quest.

In the end, this would have led me to resign the project Shadowlands in Scheol, the last zone I can walk around without everything trying to eat me (and succeeding at it when I am alone) and leaving my beloved org, for my friends were only reachable through a chatbot.

The move by FC to lift these requirements was a good one. I must admit that I experienced a pang of regret when I told Ergo that I wanted to steam ahead, skipping the quest. Normally I am not that kind of player.

But:
A quest must be manageable in a reasonable amount of time. I don't want to spend a month of casual gaming trying to find teams to run after some unconfirmed drops with a broken loot table in a bugged quest. That seriously takes the fun out of it. Period.

And second but:
SL turned out to be poisonous to a facet of the game-product AO that made people actually stick to the game. Its superb team-oriented game play with an emphasis on guilds and organisations. I was ready to give up if I had entered Adonis after finishing the Scheol Ergo quest. I would have most likely quit the guild for lack of opportunity of seeing some of my online friends. That done, I would have never set a foot into a Jobe portal again.

Alas, FC DID change it... for the better. So: Now I still get eaten by every mob in SL, giving me 60 K XP but still hitting me like a QL 250 Dynaboss, so levelling will be extremely slow going. But I had the chance to see the faces of all the people I had so much fun with during the months prior to SL launch again, and... teaming with them once more for some fun and an atmosphere only an "org only" team can offer you.

So... I am in Penumbra now, too...
but guess what... I will still go down to Rubi Ka... I have the ring now... nothing can happen to me...

Been there, done that...

Sid