No way to catch up to live. Autogrant and heroci chars don't cut it.

For people looking to come back to live EQ and join a guild raiding current content. It just isn't possible unless you have a guild bending over backwards to help you or are independently wealthy can dedicate two full time jobs worth of manhours, PLUS get a lot of help from other players.

I mean it seem really obvious to me that the company would want players to be able to join their game!

Having to do non-soloable/small-groupable previous expac progression alone makes it a no go for most people. And just trying to catch up on levels and AA's even with autogrant and heroic 85 characters is just onerous.

Maybe heroic chars should start at max level and autogrant should give aa's up to all but the current expac? I dunno, but something needs done.

Having been a returning player my self I can say that this is not true.
Yes it does take effort and time but I was able to catch up and join a top raiding guild with in 4 month of my return so I know it possible.

To start if you new / returning what you want to do is fine a LARGE active guild. Not a raiding guild but a family style guild. these people are very helpful and enjoy grouping and will be key to getting stuff done. EQ is not a solo game. yes it can be done but it was meant to be played as a group.

What you need to working on it doing the progression for the zones you missed. these offer good XP / aa and gear to get you back into the swing of the game.

Next you move on to Raiding. You can do this with a lot of middle level raiding guild as many of them will take active players. if you show up to raid your in. you can also go on open raids as most server hold them. this will get you a few slot of raid gear. and also help you get AA. in these guilds your also able to find groups that will help you to go back and do /ach to get you heroic done and farm augs.

When you hit about 20-25k aa depending on class then you can look at the top raiding guilds and see what ones match your play time and style. 20+ aa may sound like a lot but keep in mind 12-18k are auto granted based on class. so your only looking at needed about 10k over the auto grant. many people grinding can get 100-400 a day. even at 100 per day you only looking at 3 month give or take.

So I would say anyone even a new player if they focus could be in a raiding guild in 6 month starting from nothing. Now if you skill level not able to get you there then your going to have a hard time making it in a top raiding guild. Skill takes time to improve and there many guild out there willing to help if some one wants to learn. If you just want to start a game be raiding in a week and have loot given to you for showing up I would tell you to go play WOW.

Things that will help immensely:

1. Join a large guild.
2. Play a mage/bst to cover tanking and dps. Keep Enhanced Minion earring upgraded.
3. Add a box.
4. Discover and get good at Gribble missions in Dead Hills.
5. Utilize buff pile in PoK/lobby when afk.

Do not sit LFG. Be proactive. Use /who, lfg tool, msg guild, msg general. If you box something like mage + dps, you might not need to group to be efficient.

Do not work on progression. The worthwhile progression is in recent expansions and is much more efficiently tackled once u are 110. Learning progression for the first time is an immense time sink.

I run a large casual guild and I agree completely with the other posts. We are more then happy to take in players who will later move on to raid guilds. While I consider our primary purpose is to provide a home to those who don't want the raiding life I also have no problems helping those who want to raid get to that point.

I can't speak for every guild but I run my guild to help people have fun in EQ. For some that fun means staying in my guild and for others they may stay a short time or a long time then move on to a raiding guild. It's all good.

I don't really see the need for changes to heroic toons and definitely not having them start at max level. I don't think the player community nor DBG are going to encourage changes that let people just start the game and be instant end game raiders. Part of raiding is doing the homework to get to that point.

I get to see a lot of returning players because I actively try to recruit returning people. And I see those who have the will to do it catch up and get into end game content at least on the group side. It's not easy and you are right they probably can't do it on their own but that is where casual/family guilds come in.

The only real roadblock I can think of to the issue you are raising involves progression. What exactly that means in the case of each guild depends on that guild. I guess if they are selective this is where they make their cut knowing that they wont provide much help on catching people up and then knowing that as an individual task it is one that is just too much for the "out of the box heroic" that is recent to 110.

The AA deal is easier because all classes have top end AA counts and then another count of "useful AAs" which is in most cases ALOT less than the maxx AA count.

"a lot"

"alot" is not a word.

You mean I can't say "ALOT of internetz spell police are people with insecurities that flow from lack of appendage size." ??? Something like that?

You can certainly say that.

And then we're allowed to say that some people are ignorant, and perfectly happy to stay that way

And also wrong... /flex

What i don't get is that in eq2 they make it VERY obvious they want a heroic character to be able to jump right in and consume content near the max level right away with decent gear etc and they have been increasing the level of that heroic as expansions come out to help people.

Why are you not doing this for EQ ?

Because EQ2 needs players much more than EQ?

Just a guess.

EQ has always been a grind game. It has gotten better over the years but for the most part the people that play EQ 1 are those that don't want it easy.

There is a problem. EoK should have been a level change expansion, but it was not. Instead we got tons of AAs.

EoK's AA requirements lead to a giant clock block to whoever did not earn the AAs during the expansion.

Racing to 110 is probably a mistake, since AAs are easier to earn at 105.

DB needs to address this issue since it was they made the call to not raise level during EoK.

HC is an option that should be considered.

Several months ago, it was noted that this is an issue of resources... that in order to boost heroic characters, a whole new zone's worth of design time would have to be sacrificed.

Leveling up is not a serious problem, there is plenty of easy content to do it in. Especially with HAs, now that we have some that go all the way to max level.

Raiding guild requirements that you have necessary progression done, well, a raiding guild expects that you will have enough initiative to take care of that yourself. In a top tier guild that means that if you don't, you are not good enough of a player for them to even look at you. Mid tier guilds are more forgiving since they need warm bodies, and they will help to some extent, but again you need to show initiative. They are not going to organize it all for you just because you show up and say "I need flags". Remember, everyone in those guilds HAS done it themselves, so they expect you do largely do that as well. That is not unreasonable.

Why would you think EOK should have had a level change?
AA are not hard to get and getting to 110 makes them even faster.
A hard grind on a Saturday you can get 3000+, if your not a hard grind you can still get 100 aa a night playing a few hours.
Most class have 30k aa of that 8k of them are trade skill and other non REQ aa. like fireworks.
That takes you down to about 22k aa of that 12-15k of them are auto granted.
So that takes you down to 10,000 aa that you have to earn. So for a hard grind you could be down in 3-4 days if you want to take that slow way you can get 10k in 100 days so just over 3 months. That doing about 100 per day. I don't see where grinding for 3 months is a big deal.

I completely disagree with the OP.

I would argue today it takes less effort today (less hours) in EverQuest to Max level and Max aa while getting decent gear (out of GMM) than at any point in the first couple of years of Everquest. I've watched people join my server from level 1 and be max level, have a decent amount of AAs and start raiding in about 2 months worth of just playing at night. For an MMORPG that is not a lot of time investment and for EverQuest I won't want it any faster.

Basically spot on with FV in particular. Now progression is a whole different ballgame.

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...ce-for-an-update-to-heroic-characters.255382/

The post I made in that thread detailing the pretty simple steps DBG could do to upgrade heroic characters was deleted, so I'll just repost from memory here:

1. Increase heroic level to 105.
2. Give them all AAs up to EoK.
3. Give them EotD, by completing EoK progression if necessary, otherwise just hand it out.
4. Give them progression in TBM up to Into the Temple B and whatever they need to do in Plane of Fear/Hate to buy all the TBM gear, give them like, 50k Remnants of Tranquility or whatever and spawn in Plane of Health near the RoT vendor or Quellious near the other RoT vendor.
5. Give them spells up to and including EoK.
6. Don't bother with an introduction set of hotbars/UIs/Socials. Instead send them to an unlocked forum post that starts with this:

"Welcome to the fun show"


and ends in this guide:
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...o-i-help-my-raid-friends.251148/#post-3695501

That + GMM would make it very easy for a totally new player to join the game.

This is 100% completely untrue..

But keep going with your #fakenews..

Let me correct myself:

It's not possible for people with full-time jobs and families who chose not to neglect their jobs or families.