Ragefire Poll Results and Beta Information!

If u look clarity is release on classic era so won't make much of a difference just like some levels to move up for all those enchanters.

Ohhh Yea! Here I come Ragefire!

Q: Can you write a whole lot of words about what the server will be like now?

You bet.
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Having been active in the beginning i wonder about a few things that wern't covered or generally mentioned.

Erudin Necromancers and Shadowknights will not be sharing a hut in toxxula forrest and instead will be starting in the town or Paineel. Nostahla won't be hanging out near the docks as evil classes exit the boat from Erudin and immediately get a one way trip home (loading....please wait).

Early Necro's won't get the brief benefit of sharing Enchatners' Charm and Beguile spell.

There have been so many Necromancer pet nerfs that can the non enhanced minions be at the level as they were in the beginning thus causing constants cries for nerfing.

"You have ruined your lands, you'll not ruin mine" will be spoken once again by Fippy and other gnolls?

Other than Kithicor Forrest, will Splitpaw and Runnyeye also start with the revamp?

Will the Hill Giants of the Karanas once again be rich and plentiful?

World wide spoof duels???

JOURNEYMAN BOOTS drop from Najena?

Box of Abu-kar.....

Boats instead of translocator so we once again can get dumped off in OOT randomly and drown?

Factions are necessry again for some classes or will it not be a factor?

Old character models or new?

Oasis will once again be train central?

Pets in guard mode attack anything nearby including friendly guards. i loved this onc in the beginning every time i went afk.

Will invisible one again kill pets?

Well that enough Nostalgia for me i grow weary....

Edit: what happened to my original forum name and how do I change it?

Ever heard of New Coke?

How about grown people don't take off work for a video game?

I forgot to mention in the previous post.....

Fear wipes and hours of CR!, will it be a part of the fun again or is porting out enabled?

BOOO!!! HISSSS!!! Classic speed for classic server, please.

SUPER BOOO..... SUPER HISSSSSSS! Stand your ground, man.

Monk/mage armies inc....

XP potions... super sadface... sigh...

So basically what you Devs are saying with raised middle fingers is: "Forget that you want instanced raid content, I know we expect to make money off you but we're not going to make the experience equally enjoyable for anyone. No, no, we will just wait until we lose about 40% of players and subs because nobody can see raid content, the pinnacle of nostalgia (the very thing you're going to this server for). We do not care if you don't like it, we're not going to spend money to make money like the rest of the gaming industry. Buy our steamer and like it."

Gotcha.

Seriously. Instance raid content or . I remember raid content in classic and I am most definitely not willing to deal with those same elitist pricks again 16 years later. You know from experience the other way simply DOES NOT WORK. Claiming we worked things out is a flat out lie, I was there. There were DPS races, people would train an entire zone on your raid to get your boss, everything was permacamped by the same people. 16 years later I STILL haven't been able to do a sky or hate raid, you can forget any dragons. Fear, even with it's adjustment still always has the same guy camping the same two spawns every single day.

You are completely ignoring the wishes of the majority as well as the available empirical data pertaining to player interactions and raid content conflicts. Every single week I tried to raid in classic AND Kunark AND Velious we had to petition because someone or a large group of someones were being jerks and ruining the experience for everyone else. What, in your infinite wisdom, makes you think that human nature will suddenly change, just because you said it would in a couple of forum posts?

You say you read our input and act on it, well go the extra mile and actually do what you say.

We can't. DBG won't give out the titanium client.

Aristo, please tell me that you've secretly buffed Naggy and Vox to not go down like a 2 dollar you-know-what against 6 mages - since you guys are unable to nerf the mage/monk damage issues.

Q: Are you really, really not going to instance raids?

Really, really, for real. Uninstanced content on this level was a unique experience for EverQuest, and there are people out there who have never experienced it. We want to believe that you can work it out on your own. We have plans for what to do if you can't work out something equitable, though, and we might have to contract Alan Rickman to read them.

You don't want the plans that Alan Rickman will read, McClane.


PLEASE!!! reduce the spawn times for the Rare/Boss and Epic mobs to under 12 hours.. preferably under 6 hours.. This way the people Boxing Mages want lock down the spawns like they did on the last Progression servers. WE CANT STOP THEM.... its a major issue that keeps small guilds from ever progressing. Dont need to instance it.. just reduce the spawn times. Back in classic there were PUG (pick up group) raids for Dragons all the time. That was before people found out they could farm them. If you do not stop this ahead of time all your going to do is create a road block that will tick off player base and ENSURE that over 60% of players are Mages...

Hope we're able to have race changes when new content comes. I don't mind playing Old World so long as I'm able to get a DE mask and race change to Iksar at kunark launch launch.

You're going to really have to extend the time for nerfed drops given the population. DE mask camp will be constantly tied down and only a few will be able to get it if you only have it drop for a month or two.

Well, to be strict about it (which I think we should), I don't believe autogrant existed for most of the first half of fippy/vulak's lifespan. Autogrant was introduced during their lifespan and allowed to work retroactively. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's how it came about.

I strongly believe you should disable autogrant on the progression servers. Why would I spend time grinding out AAs when the alternative is to do literally nothing but wait for a few expansions to unlock and get them all immediately? Classic mechanic for classic server, please!

At a bare minimum, please exclude "minor" expansions as qualifying as part of the "2 expansions later" mechanic. Ie. You don't get all of Luclin AAs until PoP and GoD have "passed" (because LoY and LDoN are minor expansions). Also I read "until two expansions have passed" as "have been beat". So, you get all of Luclin AAs as soon as OoW goes active and PoP and GoD have "passed". Right?

How about making all dragon / boss loot flagged as no drop until the next expansion is released?; this may lower numbers of farmers.

Skuk

When AA autogrant became a thing, there was a vote for when AA autogrant would affect Fippy/Vulak and all subsequent progression servers. GoD, for some reason, was the one that passed, although there were quite a few pushing for TSS (another of the options in that poll) because at that point new characters have a massive hill to climb.

On Fippy, the autogrants actually weren't given until four AA-granting expansions later.

Which also answers one of your questions: the "minor" or "non-AA-granting" expansions don't count. Or, at least, aren't supposed to.

Your incentive to grind AAs is to be able to use the AAs when they're new. I don't know why a tank wouldn't want CA/CS maxed at any given time. Or a priest wouldn't want Healing Adept maxed at any given time. Or whatever.

So, I guess this is in direct response to the above and also the perceived issue with the mage pet not being changed against blue servers.

I'm probably going to take a great deal of grief for posting this, but . . .

The power of magicians on Fippy was mainly due to mage armies chaining pets on boss raid encounters. Once you get enough pets on the boss and mages re-summoning pets so that the boss total DPS is lower than the HP of the total pets up at any give time, you can slowly dwindle the boss down to zero health with very little risk to the raid.

For those that are unaware, this isn't the same problem as the live servers in previous years, where raids were using Earth pets as the MT (because of the mitigation and avoidance imbalance that was later adjusted) and having all healers heal the pet while the raid range DPS the boss down (which was only used for a few specific encounters). The problem on the TLP was basically having unlimited disposable tanks (pets) to stick on the boss.

There were some down sides though. This tactic can pretty much only be used on low boss health encounters with no significant AOE damage. While pets are being chained on the raid encounter, nobody can really do anything. Melee can't be in melee range, ranged DPS can't do any damage, and healers can't heal. If any individuals on the raid builds up any aggro, once the pets start dieing, anyone with aggro will be summoned and killed. This means the total raid DPS is basically the damage from the pets alone. So, this tactic starts to die out pretty fast once two things happen. Firstly, when boss NPCs have any kind of large AOE damage - all pets on the target start dieing off at the same time and the pet chaining tactic starts to fail. Secondly, once boss NPCs start to get larger HP pools, this tactic starts to fail because of the length of time it takes to pet chain them down. Typically we see boss NPCs get larger HP pools and nasty AOEs at around the same time - Kunark and beyond.

This is the reason magicians get a bad rep.

Secondly, on the TLP, toons are generally under geared. This affects melee much more than casters. Beast Lords are not around in classic and necro pets are slightly weaker than mage pets. This means magicians get to summon a new pet as they level up that is powered to the level they are summoned. A melee has to level up AND gear up! A tank that is the same level AND fully geared to that level is going to be a superior tank to a pet. The problem, especially on the progression server is the gearing up part. On Fippy, with the accelerated release schedule and the SUPER fast leveling, tanks were always under geared - they could get 10 levels in a day and not see a single gear upgrade. This may not be as much of a problem with a slower leveling curve and a longer expansion release schedule.

However, using a mage pet as the group tank has it's disadvantages. When you have a mage pet tanking, nobody else can be in melee range. This means you have to form specialized groups with no classes that are required to be in melee range.

As for DPS, the combined DPS of the mage pet and the mage casting is not better that other DPS classes, once they are geared. A wizard will have better burst DPS and a necro will have better sustained DPS. Again, gear is an issue, and initially all casters have an advantage over melee. In original EQ, spell research and collecting rare components to create desired spells, curbed the disadvantage of melee needing to gear up.

Will paid race changes using Daybreak cash be allowed when Kunark launches?

I was really hoping they were going to have some sort of effort of some kind to help with end game content. At least in the P99 scene, raid content seems to be curated, and very socially driven by the community itself. The rules in place make it as fair as possible, and without admin backup, I fail to see how this server would even come anywhere close to that (which is admittedly, not even that great anyway).

Any effort at all would have been better than nothing in my opinion. For now, I'm not sure I'm going to come play.

I really enjoyed my time back in 2011 on Fippy, but once i got to max i got bored cause their just wasn't enough to do and I was lured away by other things to do with my free time instead. Im having a hard time imagining why would it be any different for me this time? A mix up of some kind at the raid scene, could have been the thing for me.

IMO these were mostly people who voted with their hearts and didn't give that vote a ton of thought. Understandable and if EQ were new to everyone it would rock, but it isn't and it won't.