Kunark Ascending- Blunt First Impression (UPDATED)

Sorry, wrong Kunark, it will be a bit before you get to see the outdoors!

Kunark Ascending launched today. It has been quite sometime since I was ready and playing at cap when an expansion launched. Sometimes it is nice to wait until the crowd thins out and all the kinks have been ironed out. Want to know what I thought so far? Read on. (Update at bottom with some notes on a few things)



Update 11/16 BROKEN Values on mob resolve- BUG-
According to a post on the forums the  following  was said in Discord chat. Not all of us actually use that, you know, some of us still check official websites and forums for things like this. But anyhow:

From Discord Chat 11/15 

Tsurpettan- Yesterday at 5:25 PM:
Do the outdoor critters have a resolve Value in Obulus Frontier?

Kander- Yesterday at 5:25 PM:
Yes, they are broken until Thursday. Was a strange feature issue.

With that said I am just completely boggled at why DBG would not announce a fix is on the way and why in the world they would let this bug ride for several days and not get it hotfixed ASAP. Meanwhile the forums are full of people telling other people to get better gear (for solo content), even one dev in the thread telling players to go buy KA crafted gear off the broker. Adding more fuel to that L2P fire. 

This is one of the most outrageous, lazy and unprofessional launches I have ever taken part of in my fourteen years of playing MMO games and launches. Leaving a massive bug in for days?!! You do not leave out or leave hanging- ANY -customer at a launch. This is a paid expansion, not some freebie, not some subscription perk. To make ANY player feel left out or wondering is a massive failure at giving your aging game any longevity and keeping it alive, as well as keeping those paying customers. This is a total embarrassment. No, announcement, no apology, no free day or two added to accounts in trying to reach out and smooth things over. NOTHING. What alternate reality are those devs in at DBG, where they think this is acceptable? Can you imagine if Legion launched and all those fresh 100 characters couldn't kill anything. I guess they hold themselves to a lower standard, guess who suffers? Get it together DBG, your customers are sick of being the brunt of the joke, this one is at least. I say this as a longtime fan of the EQ games, as a gamer, not just as a customer. Which makes me wonder if I am of the very few left who even care enough to even write about this... 

Color me unimpressed. I really hate saying this. The expansion has been out for mere hours and I already feel fatigued. Yesterday I raced around making sure I had the Greenmist (old content heritage quest needed to start the quest line) chain done. No issues other than being cursed out while I was afk for my pet attacking someone's mob that had hit it, heh. The chain was unnecessary and rather boring at level 100 and it has a lot of issues with people unintentionally messing you up at one point where you wait on a slow npc to walk down a long, long dock. But it was easy. No new pre-quest, don't make me do old stuff I didn't want to do in the first place. I had my languages done, good thing I did the dragon language awhile back, or it would have taken several hours.

To start off, on the first character you have to do a pre-quest through Thalumbra. It wasn't hard, quite easy but really felt weird not heading to the new lands right away. I want to see Kunark! I want to explore and see these new places! Hook me! Reel me in! Charm me with something new and exciting!  Or don't... Once you get there you're on a beach and then before you can move, you're thrown into a cave full of lava. Then it just goes down hill.

Charm me with your new zones...?

First off, there are not enough mobs. Down a winding cave, through a winding lava filled cove in these blackened mountains. Waiting on re-spawns that have a gazillion hitpoints. Why not an open area filled with mobs?! This was terrible and smothering and aimed not at a heroic 100 toon either (which were included just to start this xpac with). I just was so let down at the execution. I suppose things will get better as we move on through the new areas. It is just taking so darn long... I got to the point where I pulled mobs went afk and let my merc kill them, it was so boring. And the whole tab out to look at the wiki- because there are no quest markers- because everything is so retro now!!! That just really takes the immersion out of actually playing the flipping game. The old Kunark zones, which this is a throwback to, start you off in the vast open world, full of scenery and TONS of mobs, I missed that.

If only I could get out of this cave maybe I could go there...

So, I am quite unimpressed and will wait to do more once the crowd has thinned out because the mobs are taking a while to spawn or one of the masses grabs them before I can. Sure makes me miss mechanics from Rift and even WoW, which let multiple people tag mobs, and it really helps with bottlenecks like this.

So what else are some of the things we got with this xpac? Wardrobe! Buying the basic expansion nets you six slots per character. Six slots per item type (head, chest, legs). Which does very  little for my huge collection of appearance gear on each character. They do not carry over to other characters. No shared gear looks like WoW or Rift do. If you get the more expensive editions you can get 12 or 18. I suppose it is better than nothing. I also suppose you can spend money to unlock more.

Quest chain leading to expansion. 

Mercenary gear. I only could put two items in so far, seems alright. With access to the best gear you could have a real beast... Which I won't have, lol. I can't say much about it except it takes days to rank up so far to unlock more slots, or pay some money. But it is a welcomed edition as some of the mercs really need some help.

Maybe it is me? This just feels so unexciting, which causes me to feel deflated as a huge EverQuest fan. Players want to go to new lands and see the  new world! Players want to feel good about playing not like something is wrong. What's wrong, is it because I am not a raider? The wrong class? That is called being out of touch with your player base, when you cause any players to wonder WTF is wrong when things should be exciting. If you have friends, take them with you. Not one other member from my guild logged on today though. For a very casual player or even returning players this is going to be painful to get through, I've already seen my thoughts echoed on the forums.

Comparing it to the Legion expansion... I just can't at this point, there is no comparison. And I left after the first month there, as fantastic as things were in many ways. I honestly hope Rift has something better in tomorrow's expansion, because I'd be pretty forgiving if it was better than this. I wish I could tell a lie and say it was a great expansion... Tell me it gets better!

Edit: A few things you might have trouble finding around the net still.

How to get back to the questing area in the Obulus Frontier? EQ2 maps doesn't seem to be updated as of now. If you do not have CE which offers a housing portal then you can get there by:

• In Kylong Plains is a cave on the right before you get to Jarsath Wastes at ( 2325, 161, -2927 ) 
• In Jarsath Wastes is a cave on the left before you get to Kylong Plains at ( -1259, -12, -708 ) 

Why is it taking so long to kill things? Resolve, you need more resolve unfortunately. Check out this post to see you are not alone. People with not too much better gear than my own ,stat wise, but a much higher resolve amount on it, they were killing mobs with ease. Fresh 100 heroic characters will not have enough to start out without a struggle, nor will simply quested geared characters. Hopefully the developers take notice to the forums and feedback and fix this because as of now it is simply not enjoyable and I would highly advise waiting, if you are in that boat, before purchasing this expansion.

Tips for Kunark Ascending, a handy post on the official forums.

What you need to do BEFORE you head to the expansion: EQ2 Wire has a great write-up. You will need to complete several things before you can head there, so check out the list.