Race and Class Combo Clash: Round Three

The first two rounds are complete, and the battle over which race and class combination we should add to EverQuest continues to heat up this week! This round will be a bit longer, and it will determine which race and class combinations will face off in the finals!

Which will you vote for this week?

Round One Winner Showdown: Dark Elf Ranger vs Dark Elf Bard

It’s the battle of the Teir’Dal! Two Dark Elves enter this round, but only one can leave. Which of these classes is a better candidate to represent their race in the finals?
Round Two’s Results!

Wood Elf Beastlord vs. Gnome Beastlord: Wood Elf Beastlord advances to the semi-finals!
Iksar Berserker verses Dwarf Shadowknight: Iksar Berserker advances to the semi-finals!

Round Two Winner Showdown: Wood Elf Beastlord versus Iksar Berserker

A single Beastlord emerged from the qualifying round to do combat with a Berserker, and your votes are these combatants’ greatest asset in this battle! Which of these candidates will the community decide should advance into the finals?


Let your voice be heard! Head on over to the combo clash page to learn even more about this event and to vote on what race and class combination you want to see added to the game on EverQuest’s 15th Anniversary on March 16, 2014!

Is it just me, or are Silver accounts not allowed to vote?

Anyone's allowed to vote, even those that have never played the game.

While I'm here, can I get a unique animation for two hand blunt? It used to be the same as two hand pierce, which at least gave the impression that the character was skillful and using precise strikes. Now, its the two hand slash animation, which gives the impression of less skill, from a role playing perspective.

Dark Elf bard vs. Dark Elf ranger? I'm not sure I even care.

The poke looks really stupid with hammers.

There's no connection between accounts and voting at all. It's open to anyone, anywhere, and they're using a browser cookie on your computer to keep you from voting more than once per day. Of course, since anyone can delete their cookies from everquest.com and vote more than once, they also have to be running some scripts something behind the scenes to remove duplicate votes from the same internet address on the same day (after the experiences of the first week of voiting, anyway).

Not that the ballot can't still be stuffed; it just requires being more knowledge to do so now. I'm pretty sure it's still happening, based on the way the wood-elf/iksar results have benn moving around this round so far (there seem to be a couple warring factions competing).

Paid-account based voting probably would have been a smarter plan (not free accounts, since that's just another version of stuffing).

You can simply disable cookies from the site. This whole voting process is very flawed technically, but the biggest flaw, as you pointed out, is that everybody is allowed to vote. Even those who don't play EQ or any SOE games at all.

Why doesn't this vote require logging into a SOE account? Who are they polling? The whole internet? Letting completely random people decide it instead of actual EQ players is an incredibly bad idea.

I recall we have an in-game polling system; I also recall seeing it used once. Guess someone decided that using a polling system outside the game would be more reliable. In hindsight, seems it was not.

If iksar zerker is not the final winner I may just race change my iksar sk to a gnome and delete him

Drizzt will be the final winner of course. People who don't ever intend to play but are allowed to vote will make sure of that.

Swing it like a baseball bat!

I'd be curious what the true numbers are.

If it's cookie-based voting then remove votes from identical IPs if they're bypassing that by deleting cookies or using Private Browsing.
If it's cookie and IP-based then remove multiple votes if they're bypassing that based on known proxies and Tor exit nodes.

I agree, this definitely should have been 1 vote per account per bracket. While not perfect it's better than what's going on now.

Don't even bother voting. SOE going to make it so DE Ranger wins regardless. They probably calculated that Ranger is the most played class, so they will make the most money when people race change to dark elf. I mean really, why even hold a vote if you are just going to change the results. Glad I'm not on one of those TLP servers, I'm sure they do the same kind of thing all the time there. Very frustrating

What's a drzzt, and why do people keep talking about it?

Yep that's pretty much what I said as soon a they announced that they had to recalculate the round 1 results. I didn't realize that the stupidity of the system included allowing everyone to vote. I see no point or wisdom in this stupid vote every day BS; one vote per person period is all it should be.

I think the correct quote is "what is a drizzit?"

This multi-day voting doesn't even make any sense at all.

If I vote once for Option A and someone else votes once for Option B then they are 50/50.
If I vote once per day for seven days for Option A and someone else votes once per day for seven days for Option B then they are still 50/50.
Change the above scenario to a million times a day for a million years and it's still 50/50.

Include all the voters and their choices and it's still the same principle.

Heh...I looked around a bit and found one blog that was essentially raffling off some prizes, payable only if the results of this vote came out the way he wanted. Most of his readers probably don't even play EQ. That's a legal form of ballot-stuffing in this case...if your social circle is big enough, you can have an impact.

...this is a case of exactly why this should've been an in-game only vote with 1 vote per account...and limit to at least silver members (so people can't just create new accounts and fill the box that way)...maybe even gold. This is also a case of why they should absolutely scrap the entire vote and start over with the in-game voting instead.

Sure, there'd still be some who did it...but unless you put a level requirement on voting and have it be a NPC that tallies the votes in PoK or something...then I don't see any other way around most of it than doing that.

-_-

Rather sad that the three races that got so far all have a fairly easily obtainable clicky illusion option.
Also, everyone's complaining about the lack of tanks and healers and the druid and SK lost on the first round.
I'd rather see a Veteran Reward that gives you a one time chance to make any class/race combo you want.