Is there some justification for apprentice mercs being almost completely useless after about lvl 70

Or is it that silver players aren't really allowed to play the game without being carried?

It's basically impossible to keep a tank merc up against 2 mobs, even if they're light blue and the merc is getting (literally) heal spammed, with both halcyon breeze and langour up and mobs debuffed. It's equally hard to keep him up against a single dark blue mob. And tank merc + shaman is supposed to be a "very strong" combination (lol!).

Heal merc runs out of mana easily in one fight against one mob. Useful for buffs between pulls but not as an actual healer.

I love soloing in MMOs. It's nice to have other players around for interaction when I feel like it, for a living economy and just generally making the gameplay experience more interesting but I do NOT want to be forced to group all of the time. So now I'm weighing farming for a Krono in one hand and uninstalling in the other, because I also don't want to go gold just because I don't have any other choice and it seems like there's no middleground for players who don't want to commit to a subscription.

So what now?

I think the game is kinda geared around you eventually going gold. I could not imagine what playing would be like with the ftp limitations. I myself have always been either a gold sub or not playing. I will say that I think this game is tuned around j5 mercs in two or three box groups. There has been very little content tuned to six individual players apart from perhaps powar in recent years. My advice would be to go gold or else if you can pay to unlock a better merc to do so. If this game were tuned around ftp mercs being enough to do most content you would see a lot of bored folk quit as the already easy version of eq we have today would be even easier.

Get rid of the merc and box a second or third toon. Real solo players don't need PC toons to do their dirty work

Think of silver as an extended trial; it's not really feasible to reach endgame for free unless you're being carried. The higher you get, the more you're going to be crippled by being ftp. SOE is a business and they want money.

That being said, when I was your age, shammies soloed without mercs (uphill both ways) by root-rotting. Find a mob that doesn't summon, keep it rooted, and kill it with dots.

Two dogs,

I agree with you that apprentice mercenaries are pretty much worthless in the 70s. I think as others have stated this is intentional to lead you to a subscription.

As a player also in the silver status, I would create a box class. I would say a class that can tank whether a true tank class or a Mage. By your comments, I am assuming that you play a shaman. With this in mind, the combination works well at least into the mid 80s. In addition, the apprentice dps mercs can be added if wanted for more damage. I am playing a pal/shaman combo at the moment and, it has worked well for trash and named mobs up to level 76

Rykard

SOE is a business. They deserve your money if you like EQ, it's that simple. However, it's not really *that* simple , as you can see from looking at the price for big bags!

There are a few options:

• Play at high level in recent expansions. You NEED to subscribe and buy the latest expansion every year; J5 mercs shouldn't be a problem in this case.
• Box 2-3 accounts (or more); they could all be F2P, or just one All Access. You don't have to have any mercs if you chose the right combos (hint: tank characters should really be on a paid account).
• Restrict yourself to the 1-70 game. No need for higher mercs, lots of good content to play and replay. And, you can do it all F2P.

You can solo a shaman all the way, and only rarely need a merc (some of the daily quests are a lot easier with a higher tier merc for summoning mobs, but they are still possible). It will be much tougher without prestige gear (notably augments), and you would be strongly advised to buy AA unlockers or a Krono every few months. I would always advise leaving the current expansion content until it becomes F2P if you are strictly solo, or just stick to groups when you get to that level.

You're right. It's not that simple. They offer tons and tons of premium perks outside of their monthly sub. If the game is good, players will indulge in said perks. That's a proper F2P model. players that don't pay monthly fees as well as huge expansion costs is not. Some of the most popular and profitable games in the world use an ethical F2P model with zero buy-ins (I'm looking at you, LoL). Don't you think it's a little bit ridiculous to have monthly subs, expansion fees and a marketplace? But I digress.

The issue with sticking to "low-end" content is that the game is devoid of life outside of the 80+ zones (or that's been my experience over the last month or so). I mean, there is really no point to playing an MMO if you rarely if ever see another player at all...

Root rotting is cool, but I'd like to use the toolkit of my class instead of just a couple of spells. In earlier levels, shamans can just tank themselves. Back around when level 75 was the cap (when I quit) it was starting to get harder to do that, but at least there were plenty of groups to be had. Now there's no groups, the content is too difficult to solo (at an acceptable rate, anyway) and I feel like a good tank merc is the best option.

Anyway, thanks for the responses. I'll consider boxing a mage or something.

At 70-75, a shammy can tank-solo a load of content. Super fast DD/DoT's, HoT's and Heals.

Apprentice mercs are just.. bad. Horrifically bad. J1 should at least be available to all and apprentice should simply be removed. Otherwise, apprentice needs some serious overhaul. There shouldn't be such a major gap between A5 and J1, but it is night and day at any level.

Two dogs,

Shaman are pretty good class. Most classes get huge upgrades post 80 if you can make it that far. I think root/rotting can work too. Either way get the dps upgrades and spirit call to help your merc out. If you play on Emarr, look me up. I play PST time usually after 10-11 pm.

Rykard

Is "ethical" giving you the impression something is free, but requiring you buy $30 dollars worth of stuff at $1-2 each from a market? Or is "ethical" giving you an upfront, fixed subscription fee with an optional market that you do not have to use at all to succeed? I much prefer knowing up front how much something costs than being nickle and dimmed for everything. Seriously, $12-15/month is cheap entertainment considering how many hours most people spend in the game. And there are people that are able to stretch out free subscriptions (with an occasional paid month to grind AA).

Back to the merc topic. Even the J1 mercs start to fizzle out just beyond 70. They're a huge upgrade over the A5s, but still not sufficient. If you're going to rely on mercs beyond 75, you really need to subscribe and do the upgrade quests. Otherwise box or play a character that can solo well.

There is no requirement to buy anything to play. You pick and choose what is important and whether it is worth paying for. Ethics are irrelevant since what you get is clearly defined ahead of time, you are NOT required to put a single cent down in order to be able to play. If you want to play with all perks, then you pay but it is optional.

Now, if you want to discuss whether it ethical to portray something that is clearly optional as a required purchase, that would be relevant.

Mercs are crazy-over-powered before 60-70ish. What you're experiencing is them coming down to Norrath.

Even the fully-clothed, fully AAed J5 mercs peter out eventually to the point that they're almost more trouble than they're worth in PoWar.

The idea is that they're there to get you by, minimally, when you can't get a group, not carry a soloer everywhere he or she might want to go.

As far as the money, I don't understand why people think a game they love and play for hours every week isn't worth the $10/mo, but whatever.

As far as mercs carrying players through the game, the original purpose of mercs and what they do today are different. Your initial view that they are just to carry players over till they get groups was the old/initial view. The current use is to carry players through group play as far as they can manage. Without that, there would be a lot of lost money due to losing players whose times fall outside EST or the players who have limited playtimes.

As far as PoWar, this was a hard zone specifically designed for the hardcore players. With this in mind, mercs probably won't cut it there for many years like the epics which were originally only for the raiders.

Money is a different story. If I could not even advance with mercs, I could not finish expansions so, the entertainment value there would not be much. To put it more simply, I can not experience the content so, why would I pay even the lowest subscription price of $10/month. Mercs make it feasible to get the casuals into the paying and purchasing expansion category which is good.

Rykard
Paladin of the 77th season
Emarr

So, when you pay for an all-you-can-eat buffet, are you bothered that you cannot consume the entire buffet yourself? No, you judge the experience by what you actually consume. If you enjoy playing as little as 5 hours per month, All-Access is just $2/hr.

If you're even contemplating doing something as extreme as attempting to finish an expansion, purchasing a year of All-Access and every expansion should be a no-brainer, unless you're in serious financial dire straits.

The analogy is off a bit. A better comparison would be that a company offers an all you can eat buffet but will only allow you to select at the salad counter. You are paying the full buffet price but are only allowed a salad. You are not really getting a buffet for your money.

In the game, there just are not enough people playing to have full groups for a variety of reasons. Mercenaries bridge those gaps allowing alot of players to progress and experience the largest amount of content possible or the majority of the buffet.

If the person is satisfied with 5 hours a month for his subscription, it is money he has spent to his satisfaction. By posts made on the forums including this post, it does not seem to hold true for the majority.

Note: In ordered to get ~$10/month, you would need to have the reoccuring 12 month subscription. the other options are ~ $13 and up.

Rykard

If you want to look at it that way, at your level, it's more like they give you the main buffet for free, and if you want salad and desert, that's $10/mo and if you want sprinkles or gummy bears on your ice cream, they're available in the SC store.

Me, I play 60 hours the first month, so that's $2/hr the first month, and then the next 11 months are free with my annual subscription. I consider it a great value for my entertainment $.

Not seeing it. At low levels the heal mercs have enough to cast one buff then they need to med. They cast 2 (very small) heals then need to med. Do they soak exp? I figured they did so I just dismiss them unless I need a buff because they're hardly any help at all.

The tanks are excellent at grabbing agro I will give you that. I took my tank merc into the planes to farm tradeskill crap and could pull rooms full of light blues and not worry about taking damage. But it was light blues... not sure how much that merc was really needed. It was a nice convenience though. Now if only they could actually tank anything meaningful...

If you already pay then you've already justified in your mind. But some people have a different idea of what is worth their money because they don't have a lot of it to throw around. You'd probably think I was a scumbag for getting a refund on D3 after putting 300 hours into it, but from my perspective I never got to "the good part" and that's all that kind of game is worth playing for. Bliz admitted all their screwups and horrible design decisions with that game so guess I shouldn't feel bad about that.

I love to support devs that love their players. Most of my very limited cash goes to indie devs these days and I decided a long time ago that no game on this earth is worth a monthly fee, because I have not felt the love from any developer that hosts a game with a monthly sub requirement... except maybe CCP (too bad EVE Online literally puts me to sleep, as it seems to be an "all eye-candy, no gameplay" experience these days).

Long story short, I expect my money to go toward making a better game, not making more ways to get me to spend money. It's why I quit WoW, which was a great game until they stopped making things for the "players" and shifted all of their focus onto the "payers" by releasing more and more "pay-extra for it" content and less and less stuff for us regular guys that only pay a monthly sub.

And that isn't to say I'm not willing to pay for extras if I find the game enjoyable... but uh, I need to actually find the game enjoyable first. And I need to find value in what I'm paying for when I do. Hopefully, I can find that here.

And thanks for listening to my ramblings

Not a scumbag necessarily, you didn't exactly knock down an old lady to take her purse. It does baffle me a bit how people can ask for a refund in those scenarios, though. Sorry for the slight derail.

Bronze is intended to let folk try the game out, and see if they are interested in going all access, Silver was good so that folk didn't have to give up the game entirely when they were short of $, but like every other company, it is paying customers that keep the doors open. So while there is stuff for the casual player, the good stuff goes to the steady customer.
It is easy to say you want stuff, but, check your viewpoint and see what you would be thinking if you own a company and want paying customers, how much come along are you prepared to give away in hopes of gaining steady income.

This thread is baffling. I wish I had some advice that would make more sense to those not getting it, than what is already been mentioned. I'm on a fixed income. I currently don't subscribe, but when I play more than 1hr / month, or a spurt of 4hrs once or twice a year, I do subscribe. EQ was basically my only entertainment expenditure before. Now it's netflix. I don't see how you can logically believe that it's not a great value if you spend any time playing.

Even if you don't play, you get stuff, just for logging in and claiming each month, like LoN packs, and station cash.

Oh wait! I'm reminded of the MetLife commercial with the Peanuts gang: It should be five cents. Response: Everything can't be five cents.

Yther Ore.