Rant: How Everquest is killing itself for me

[Ukerric]

Originally posted by Iannis
REAL noobs? Not just people pretending in hopes of getting free shit(I saw more than enough of those. People who act TOO n00bish, and for some reason hang out around bank areas waiting to beg money or "spare vault items plz?")

There are still these. EQ isn't growing much, but there's always attrition, so there are always new accounts being opened. And not just mules.

Noway in hell they could catch up content-wise with a 4 year old game...the servers will all have become dilapidated by the name true noobs made it to the endgame FoH rants about at the end of every expansion when they notice they got jacked..hehe.

Do they want to? A lot of the newbies I see aren't in the "end-game" thingy at all. They're here without preconception, and just like 3/4 of the EQ population isn't in the high-end guilds, most of them aren't interested in that.

And even if they are, they can be boostrapped. If you have time, and someone to show you the ropes (and most of these came because some friend invited them), you can get to 65+ relatively fast. And when you're 65, even without much AA, you can participate. Maybe not (yet) in guild #1, but lower ones.

(CoH, that one Furor gave a news update to)....

City of Heroes... muhahaha.

I still have difficulties imagining any gameplay that doesn't become ridiculous in a superhero MMOG.

Better watch A Tale in the Desert (featured on your favorite uberguild frontpage). Now that's a special brand of game. With resets (when the endgame is achieved, the world is reset, and everyone starts from scratch. Except for laws that have been passed, I think).

[arbosch]

I think most problems the blue server guilds have will vanish when they will play on a PvP Server.

If two guilds go for the same mob you will have a mayor problem on blue server.

If other guilds try to catch up to you or you try to catch up to them you can do nothing.

On a PvP Server you not only have to win the PvE fight you need to fight for the right to kill this mob. PvP Server guilds are usually behind other guilds. Most will say because we suck and are unskilled guys and keep griefing each other to destroy the others fun.

For some part it is true, but most highlevel guilds know that it is more fun to play fair and they keep the griefing at a low level and we 'waste' 30 to 60% of our time with PvP.

Lets take yesterday. One of our next target is plane of tactcis for our guild. SWe know that there are two other guilds which are allready there. So we moved to PoI. When we was there we was 68 members. You will call this Zergforce and that is true. But it is needed on a PvP Server. 20 Minutes after we entered the zone 50 from our enemys show up to fight us for this mob. Such fights usually take a long time because it is not a fight where both groups run at each other and fight untill one groupe is death.

It is a game where you start attacks with the heavy tanks and dmg dealers and try to make as much dmg to the other groupe as possible and retreat when they get organised and try to flee to the healing station and split up the other groupe so when you reach the healing station. Then you turn arround and finish of the one which followed you and start a counter attack again. You loosing people in this attacks no question. But usually it need a lot of attacks that a groupe break up really and give up (this has nothing to do with bindrushing. Loot and scout is very activ and when you get killed you leave the zone and most highlevel guild do this because on the other way it is no fun). So you dont have fights where you as guild fight a mob where everyone hit one mob and try to keep the one which get hit from mob alive untill the mob has 0 hps.

PvP fights are adrenalinerushes where you have up to 100 people running arround and you try to keep your groupe together and not get catched from your enemys with your pants down. This is a lot of fun.

On the other side you get other problems. Total broken 1vs1 PvP (manaburn/Lifeburn, class advantage etc.) but when you have large fights this things are a minor pain and it is a lot of fun. You will slow down a lot because this 'wasted' time and you need a lot of nerfs because if you plan to make this mob today you have to give up your plans when you get kicked out of the zone and that is most of the time not fun and more stress. But the time when you kick a enemy force out and you see there corpse turning up arround you and you won this fight. You see you had 2 hours non stop fight and you think it was only 5 minutes. Highlevel PvP where guilds fight against guilds and both guilds act respectable is the salt in this game.

Arbosch Bloodforge
Ancient Dawn
Vallon Zek

[Rulan]

Personally I started a melee because I found casters boring. Chasing a mob around just to get in hits is more enjoyable then "Stand, Nuke, Sit, Stand, Nuke, Sit" all the time.

But seriously I see your point. With more than 60 people on a raid things just have a way of screwing up, generally any raids we do are much smoother when the numbers are reasonable. (However I play on a PvP server so we generally have higher numbers than blue guilds. 50-60 on a raid is acceptable, 70+ is considered overkill.)

[AxissGlox]

The big problem I have with PoP all comes down to the flagging system coupled with horrendous loot tables on some lower key mobs.

Consider Aerin`Dar. Loot is pure ass, but it gives people a flag to HoH. So, everyone wants to be at the kill because they wanna get their HoH flag. The guild doesn't wanna farm AD, because his loot sucks and it's a lamo fight anyway. End result, massive forces descend upon the mob to minimize the number of kills needed to flag everyone.

In essence, EQ now encourages zerg forcing of mobs. It's rarely even needed, but it's so much more efficient to drop some crap mob 1 time and flag 70+ than to kill it 4 times with 36. Sure you can do it 4 times, but you'll end up watching loot rot, waiting to do the next step because half your guild isn't flagged and flat out bored.

Bottom line, flags encourage zerging, which in turn diminishes the quality of the experience. Retunning drops off these mobs to make them worth killing multiple times would help, but it still leaves the we won't be able to take the next step as a guild unless we mazimize access to the next tier. I like the linear progression of PoP, but I don't know how to maintain that while eliminating the impulse to zerg for flags. That's the real key though, the damn flags.

[titan_atlas]

Good time to bump this topic. Kreugen playing EQ again and the raid size argument in WOW. Read please 3 years ago this was all the same argument.

[WarderX]

It's never a good time for thread necromancy

[Szlia]

There is a good time to link to it, a good time to quote the post, but I am pretty sure there never is a good time to bump a topic from page 82173487236.

[LikeWow!]

Old threads die on this board. Maybe they're floating around for the admins somewhere, but they're pruned from existence to someone looking for nostalgia.

[Himeo]

Haters gotta hate. Lovers gotta love. Titan doesn't want none of the above he wants to be pissed on.

Please!
Please!
Please, look at me! Gotta soak it in. Gotta be pissed on.

[DJk_zero]

Don't worry guys, it's only beta!

Whops, 2 years late.

[Old Man Potter]

Here's a guy in one of the most prolific uber guilds in existance bellyaching about how other guilds "zerg" boss mob encounters. It's like Bill Gates complaining that the minimum wage in the USA is too high. Furor and FoH have always hated the fact that guilds could zerg places like Fear and Hate -- because it's just not fair! However, this is nothing new. Not only did they complain about about testing broken content they felt that had the right to dictate how other players should play as well. Priceless.

Well he got his wish with Blizzard's brand of social engineering in MMO's as 25 players is the new raid size for the new expansion and by the time the next expansion comes out WoW: The Frozen Outhouse I'm sure Blizzard in all their wisdom will have artificially capped raids down to 5 players. The way things are going guilds will soon be obsolete as in order for *content* to be truly "balanced", "non-trivial" and "working as intended" we'll have guilds of one person. Keep it up Blizzard and you'll be have destroyed one of the few things that kept the MMORPG genre alive: large guilds. You gotta love Blizzard, slowly killing the original WoW design document one patch at a time.

Here lies the large guild
Rest in Peace
1999-2006

[gnomeish]

The irony is, as soon as content became instanced and limited to maximum 54 people(GoD), they all quit??

And yes, I am kidding

[Duppin]

Necroposting should be an instant ban, imo.