I <strong><em>KNOW</em></strong> they were promised at some point. I know the guy that was supposed to do them left SOE.

This is a big historical point of contention between me and the game though.

Why wasn't it done? Cuz the wars are buggy, unstable, hard to create? Implement it in a different way! Not everything uber has to be a bloody full scale war on the entire zone!

That shawl, with the time put into it, should NOT be surpassed by any item in the game you can pick up off a raid, or anything else for that matter.

It took hundreds upon hundreds of hours to skillup the tradeskill areas needed for it, plus more hunting down rare materials.

SOE copping out on it is the major sux!

SOE: "A god came down, what more do you expect?"
Me: Well, friggin makin good on your promise for one!!

that is all.

Why should an item from a past expantion be the best?

The game is about progression. If items were never upgraded, the game would have died off years ago. Its the same arguement as the "Epics should be the best weapon." Its just plain stupid. Its a very nice item, and if you dont think its worth it than you shouldnt have gone to the trouble.

On the other hand, if you did it before they made the new items better than it, you got to use the item when it was at its peak. You got your use out of it (and still can make use of it) when it was the best, thus it was still balaced with the effort required to get it. It may seem like wasted effort now, but you payed the price to get it while it was still worth it. So really I dont see the problem.

Items get outdated and quests items are rarely worth the trouble. Basic rules for items from what ive seen. But yeah, I dont see the point in bitching that the game has progressed. It would be far worse if it never did.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>So really I dont see the problem.
[/quote]
Breaking a promise, that's the problem.

Here's the scenario (roughly):
- SOE announces Velious expansion
- new zones, new quests, blah blah, usual hype
- Ring and Shawl quests found
- Tons of people start the quests
- Ring quest completed to 9th, then 10th
- Shawl quest promised to 10th, when they have time
- Wow, the ring is an uber item, shawl must be the same at 10th
- More people put in the time for the shawl
- People sit at 7th shawl waiting
- SOE says they won't do more shawls at some Q&A at a fanfair
- Uprising of sorts
- They implement the 8th shawl within a short timeframe appeasing the masses for a short time
- They announce that no, they are not going to do the 9th and 10th shawls.


If that's okay with you, fine. To me, it was a blatant breaking of a promise. That's what you're missing with your "It was useful to you at the time" point.

I would probably agree with you if the scenario would have been different.

Edit: Out of curiosity, have *you* done the shawl quest up to the 8th one?

I don't think people realize what 8th shawl'ers have gone through. That's just my opinion though.

I actually didnt touch the 9th and 10th shawl bit for a reason. I see both sides of the debate really, and I would like them to put it in, but at the same time it doesnt seem critical.

And no, I havent done the shawl quest. After watching one of my friends do up to 5 I realized it wasnt worth it. When the 8th shawl was released I was somewhat tempted to try, but that much tradeskilling just isnt fun, for me at least.

Its the same reason I dont raise them for that new uber tradeskill earring. Just isnt worth the aggravation for me. Though, on the bright side, you should have a jump start on it already.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr> KNOW they were promised at some point.[/quote]

Actually my memory says that they never intended to go past 8. As they put it how can you best a God handing you the item Himself?

After Velious came out there was a ring for melee and a shawl for casters introduced. After several months the ring went to number 8 and stopped. The shawl went to 4 and stopped there. The ring stopped at 8 becuase I believe they had a hard time implementting the last 2 steps, but eventually it made it live. Meanwhile the 4th shawl was still the furtherest you could get with a clue that the quest wasn't ended. After much yelling and screaming from casters and the ring out of the way the shawl was continued on and finished quite shortly. Although Sony said that the shawl quest DOES go past 4th they never mentioned that both the ring and shawl were of equal length of steps.

the other problem is the 8th shawl is not comparable to the 10th ring.

The 10th ring, is a very hard to replace commodity. You can be in the elemental planes and find it difficult to replace. Especially since you need 2 rings, and its at the 100 level.
With the effect an added bonus.

the 8th shawl for all the niceness of the effects, is very substandard at the 50 level.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>is very substandard at the 50 level.[/quote] I wouldn't quite take it that far. I have yet to find anything worth replacing mine with, but then again I think it is good enough not to look for something to replace it.

If the 8th shawl is augmentable, I will be a very happy halfling.

I must admit, I don't have proof of who said the 9th and 10th were coming, and when it was said. All I have to go on is memory. Maybe I can find it over at the DenMother's home.

Edit: Yes the 10th ring is hard to replace, but the same would be true for the 10th shawl if they had incorporated it.

i would love to see a 9th even 10th shawl. if the only thing added to it was more mana, ad more ac. that is all that i see missing from it. 8ac seems such a low ac for such a nice item.

that is my only complaint about the shawl as it is now.

maybe add another focus to it as well.... extended range IV or something, as i hate having to lose my nice ranged slot to put in ceramic sword of war for the extended range.

but as it is now, i don't see myself replacing it any time soon.

I think SOE thinks themselves that they have created the 9th and 10th shawl...it's called the Aid Grimel quest.

The shawl quests required you to get good in all tradeskills - Aid Grimel requires you to get even better.

This is not to say that I wish there were a 9th and 10th shawl - I've done the 8th shawl twice. I think the drive to do the shawls in people was pretty special. Back then, there were not lots of high level, extremely wealthly people (who can now skill up for Aid Grimel much easier then without lots of money), so those who did scraped by, fighting for every crystalline silk and brick of velium, begging for help to raid those giant brothers in Kael for blood and dying numerous times to get that silly tooth in SG. It was a brotherhood.

Now, the attitude seems "what, you're not in the 1750 club yet? what's wrong with you?"

Just evolution of the games and quest design.

i remember reading a post from that dude who designed the shawl quests saying that there would, under no uncertian circumstances be a 9th or 10th shawl.

it's here somewhere, or a link to it at least.

alyn

The post you @#%$ to is after the fact, after SOE decided not to have the 9th and 10th shawl.

10th ring isnt nearly as useful as it used to be, you can buy tradable 90HP rings, (12 ac compared to 10) better resists, ranger have a castable DS on same line so its DS is not nearly as unique as it used to be (also the ranger buff has AC, and most warriors prefer the extra AC, compared to the atk...

The regen is inferior to castable regen, and regen doesnt mean too much in PoP.

Which leaves the atk, which is decent, but also is subject to the atk buff (even tho it takes a buff slot, as opposed to being innate, it counts towards cap as it is from an item, like primal weapons)

Also, the skills used in the shawl, helps aid grimmel quest, which absolutly owns other earings,

scirocco, don't they have to decide to not do it before they can announce it regardless of situation?

i mean, they'd have to decide that they're not going to ever have the sleeper invade felwithe before they'd make such an announcement.... so of course they decided there wouldn't be a shawl 9 or 10 before they could make said announcement...

or am i just confused by your statement? /cackle

whichever, it's all good.

alyn

Just an FYI Sony never intended to put the 9th or 10th shawls into the game. I remember very clearly an SoE employee saying that after you have a god bless your shawl what else is really left to do? It is possible that someone in Verant (before Sony bought them) wanted to 10 shawl quests, but that my friend won't happen.

So as Chenier said, hop on the elemental wagon and start working on that earring. It is really nice for tradeskillers, just is a beotch to get the stuff to make it.

My opinion (lemme restate that....<strong>MY OPINION</strong>) is that at one time, they did have a plan to go all the way to 10. As the details were "yeah, we'll have a caster shawl and melee ring, up to 10...yeah, that'll be sooo cool".

Then it got hard because software release dates slip and pressure got put on by corporate and sales to release, so you have to cut something and quests got hit. So they put it off and off.

From the other end, players love the quests and work on them hard. Verant/SOE (and I mean from one and then from the next) community relations folks kept hemming and hawing about the future of these quests - contrary reports, little to say (hi, that means that it wasn't concrete). Tradeskillers and 7th shawl holders get up in arms and make a huge ruckus...so, SOE finally implemented the 8th in which a god blessed the shawl: they needed the storyline in which the shawl quest saga could end because development is focused on future expansions.

I know programmers - they *hate* going back. They only like to development new stuff. And adding additional steps to a quest doesn't sell new product, so from SOE's perspective, the 8th shawl was purely a customer satisfaction gimme. But now go buy PoP and do Aid Grimel please, says SOE.

***
It's not mean and heartless - it's just business. And the Aid Grimel quest is very cool, the lore interesting and the degree of difficulty back up to what the shawls and rings used to be.

Oh, the gear doesn't suck either - yes, there are a few pieces out of time better, but not much. =)

<em>*edit*</em>
don't write posts when your brain is fried...you'll type "purchase" instead of "pressure"....

Here are a couple links on caster's realm regarding the shawls.

In this first link, his response leads one to believe there was more then just the 8th shawl.

<a href="http://eq.crgaming.com/viewarticle.asp?Article=3776" target="_new">Regarding the 8th shawl</a>

This next link is Absor confirming the end of the shawl quests.

<a href="http://eq.crgaming.com/archives.asp?Day=8&Month=8&Year=2002&ID=4454&Action=View" target="_new">Absor confirming no more shawls</a>

The reason why they arent completing these quests are simple.

The materials needed are currently behind broken doors in Ak'anon, Rivervale, Freeport, and Qeynos.

Since they have been given so much flak about fixing broken doors they have decided not to fix anymore. Thus the 9th and 10th shawls will never be completed.

See what happens when you complain about them fixing something. Look what happened to the monks a year or so ago when they asked for class balance.

When I said Shawl8 was very substandard at the 50 level.

I wasn't talking 50th level chars. I was talking gear with 50 hps/mana.

Even if the 10th ring isnt as "much" better as other rings as it used to be. It's still better than 95% of rings outside Time.
And even in Elemental Guilds, I don't know of anyone who has "banked" a 10th ring.

Shawl8 gets banked a lot sooner. In fact, you can start banking it at around the Ssra/VT level. As at that level, you can start maxing FT (6 Shields, 4 Cloaks, 4 Belts, etc) without the FT as motivation, you end up looking at stats. Also you start seeing vastly superior stat wise shoulders (Emp, Twilight from VT). By elemental level there are plenty of shoulders that surpass the Shawl8 (Sol Ro minis, Birds in Fire, Ring in Earth) statwise. Heck there are even 1 groupable shoulders for some. ((Mini Minis in Fire/Water))

Shawl8 if its the final product, really could use a tweak upping the HPs/Mana to the 80/80 to 100/100 range. Or Shawl 9 and 10 to do just that.

One important sidenote is that Shawl8 takes less resources to complete than Ring10. to the people in guilds who can't even complete a ring10 war, the shawl is tremendous. For those
of us, Ssra/VT level through Time, the shawl is substandard gear.

As an elemental level druid, Ive replaced my Shawl. but if I hadn't. It would be the single lowest piece of gear I have in terms of Mana/Hps.

As an alternative, if the focus was slightly "better" I might consider it. If it worked on spells with a duration of 24 or less.
Then it would be a keeper worth the weaker stats.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>As an elemental level druid, Ive replaced my Shawl. but if I hadn't. It would be the single lowest piece of gear I have in terms of Mana/Hps.[/quote]

As an elemental level druid, I haven't replace my shawl yet, but it is the single lowest piece of gear I have in terms of Mana/Hps. I have long since maxxed FT (sitting at 24FT, damned cap) so the only advantage I get from the shawl is the Buff extender and of course the pride knowing that I completed the quest. That pride is the only reason I haven't replaced it yet, but that is wearing very thin, sadly.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Just an FYI Sony never intended to put the 9th or 10th shawls into the game. I remember very clearly an SoE employee saying that after you have a god bless your shawl what else is really left to do?[/quote]
That's a pretty weak argument on SOE's part. By the same token they should not have made any expansions past PoP, where all the gods reside, because.... "what else is really left to do?" I don't buy it.

And thanks for finding that info Celyka!

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>It has been a long time now since the 7th shawl was added. Could you please confirm that the 8th shawl is still slated for development? Hoping so, could you estimate when it might be live? Pre or post Luclin?

<strong>Firstly, I assure you the rumors of my termination have been greatly exaggerated. I'm still here and staying very busy helping to make Luclin the best expansion it can be.

I regret that I was unable to complete the implementation of the final quests for the Coldain Shawl before Luclin production began. It's still my intention to implement the remaining segments, but my current workload has forced me to postpone its completion. I hope you'll feel the remaining portion was worth the wait.

Steve Burke</strong>[/quote]

Note the plural "implementation of the final quest<strong>s</strong>". Since 7 was in production, "final <em>quests</em>", not "final <em>quest</em>", would infer that there would be multiple (ie: at least 2) followups. Therefore there should be at least 9, but we can pretty much see that there were originally 10 intended parts, IMO. There were other references to it, but those are lost I suspect.

Some remember it, some simply don't know that those promises even existed.

Wyte

Easy.

Make the 8th shawl the most augmentable item on god pixelated earth.

Not as good as a continued quest, but. . .

I like that idea. Does anyone have info on the Aug slots for the 8th Shawl? (Don't wanna renew my subscription just to check this)

or.... we could all just stop telling them how to make their game....

/cackle!

alyn

It has 1 type 1 slot, like pretty much every piece of non-LDoN gear out there. I think they should have put more slots in the long-quest items, like the shawl, the ring, the epics. The stuff people put a lot of work into getting.

yeah, i was bummed, one type 1 aug only :-(

oh well, i love the aumentations, is free stats. +13 wisdom now, +19 dex, +7 str, +6 sta, +6 poison, all stats that i wouldn't have.

SOE never promised to make a 9th and 10th Shawl. Verant did. Verant owned the game from the Original to Velious. SOE bought the game for the Luclin release. Therefore they really never broke any promises because THEY didn't make them...The previous owners did.

That's pretty lame cop out. And really not a legal one.

When one business buys another, they get all the old liabilities such as promises as well.

Take the dreaded absetos liability. Many a company has gone bankrupt in last 2 years because they bought companies that has absetos liability.

Anyway, make Zephyrs work on 24 Seconds and up spells and the shawl would always maintain at least a measure of usefulness.

Amen Corla.. reduce required buff time for Zephyr to work! And more shawls would be great :)

The real reason its an invalid arguement is that the teams changed absolutly none when SOE took over. The same developers and more or less same bosses, just more of them. The VI isnt SOE arguements are really kinda lame and stupid. Now sure there is a difference in the teams, but that was a gradual process, and it certaintly didnt happen the minute SOE took over.

I agree, only reason I still have my 8th shawl is the accomplishment that I got in finishing the quest, but that is growing thin as I see better shoulder pieces starting to go to applicants to my guild, one of these days will just give in, ask for it, and bank my shawl.

Really the question still is why upgrade the 8th shawl?

There is no valid reason that old loot should always be better than new loot. Is the reward off compared to the effort nowadays? Yeah probably. The real question is was it off when the quest was first implemented? No it probably wasnt.

Adding on more shawls is a good idea, but just upgrading the current one I wil lalways say is a bad idea. If your going to upgrade old loot to stay the best, then why not upgrade the CoF off of nagafen? Same challenge really as you cant level up past that much to gimp him. So why not upgrade it? Simply put because its an old encounter. New expantions mean new and better loot. If they dont offer new stuff then whats the point really?

The problem isn't that the shawl should be Plane of Time level loot. Or even elemental level loot.

The problem is the Final product shawl should be equivlent to its counterpart the Coldain Ring. With 100/100 the ring will last into the planes, many I know won't replace it to POT.

The shawl is replacable in Ssra Level. thats much sooner than you will see replacement for Ring.

Again with this topic? Ya'll should drop this notion about doing a supposed 9th or 10th Shawl and go do the Oracle Quest. :p

1750 quest, imo!

10th ring has no MP its flat 100 HP

Give your head a shake folks.

A former employee used the plural shawls instead of the singular shawl and some folks complain broken promise, broken promise!!

Some folks remember that somewhere, sometime a Verant employee (or Sony employee, or the milkman) mentioned that there would be a 9th and 10th shawl. (I have seen no evidence of this).

Even if someone did talk about plans for higher level shawls, plans are subject to change. What would you prefer? Sony to tell us about their plans, realizing that they could change? ... or ... keep silent about their plans. Many would complain about lack of customer focus if Sony kept silent.

Some folks might wish, hope or expect a 9th and 10th shawl, but any talk of broken promises is horse manure IMO.

Thicket

This has come to a stage where it doesn't matter if its been promised or if the reward is uber enough. Many people including me want a 9th and 10th shawl, not because we desire an item upgrade, but simply because we enjoy doing the first 8 shawls and still do look forward to further tradeskills related quests.

It is just an oppertunity to upgrade an item many people are emotionally attached to.

I know of many many people for whom the shawl was long slow quests they started at quite low levels.

By providing an upgrade path, SOE can increase the emotional attachement a player has to their character, and thus increase customer loyalty.

And, on the shawl addict side, you get to wear an item you have fond memories of working for, over a long period of time.

Change the shawl slottage to a type 7, a type 2 and a type 3, and it becomes an item that one can invest even more work into.

Originally posted by Nimphe Wildwood
Again with this topic? Ya'll should drop this notion about doing a supposed 9th or 10th Shawl and go do the Oracle Quest. :p
Yeah, what Nimphe said...do something else, bank it if you get better, move on.