Guide events...we miss these.

Well, I miss these.
Any news on why the long lack of events??

Its your server - we have them weekly on Tunare, in fact the last few weeks has been a couple 2 times a week.

So no lack here.

Vox has had one every Wednesday at 4 Central. It is a member of the SWAT team.

If you are watching General, someone is doing an event, at least was, before the server went down (player ran event) that rewards 1 Krono. Pretty awesome stuff. Good timing for me, just coming back to the game

Grats to those fortunate enough to play on Tunare and Vox I guess. Mangler misses them to.

I've even seen them on Phiny recently a server with a average population under 50 now

The Guide program and the events they administer are great, when players actually participate.

Sadly most players show up, demand loot, then complain about the loot and complain about the time they wasted for such crappy loot, crappy roleplay, crappy quests, and how the guides are just crap people. Do better, Norrath.

Makes me sad because the Guides and the Guide Program are amazing.

To bad they don't offer the Stormhammer server anymore eh? Used to get guaranteed 3 events a day. It was a ton of fun, the most fun I ever had on this game to be honest. I miss it. It was the reason I became a guide later on (haven't been for years mind you, such a thankless job sadly).

Pretty regular on Povar.

All the events I've heard about recently sound pretty lame. They should rehaul the guide program to enable guides to give events and rewards that players want.

Guide's are players who take part in the program, with much fewer players than we had in EQ's heyday there are far fewer people interested in taking part.

The link to the guide forums is right on the front page of this forum by the way

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?link-forums/guide-events.240/

Often players say they get no events then check there only to find there were dozens that they missed.

Won't happen.

They'd need the huge GM program they had circa Kunark-Velious era for that. and that is not going to happen unless EQ starts pulling in players left & right and hitting concurrencies over 250k, and maybe not even then.

Which is why a lot of people don't attend them. I make an effort to attend the ones on Vox, though, even if I am the only one there. Guides put in their free time to do these events, so the least I can do is show up and show my support for them doing so.

Why? If players don't want to participate, the guides aren't providing a useful service and are just perpetuating a broken system. Just because a guide wants to have an event to make players race like rats in some serpents of ro zone for some biscuits doesn't make their time spent noble or worth lauding.

I don't see the need for a huge GM program in order to update the guide program with useful events.

Define "useful events." If you are expecting free handouts of loot, that won't happen. Perhaps they could come up with new, unique ornaments per event, but that in itself would take a lot of time with graphic designs.

The service isn't meant to be useful, it is meant to be fun. Sure, guides are restricted to scripts that have to be preapproved, and have to be strictly followed. Perhaps they could allow players to write scripts and submit them. But as far as useful, you have the rest of the game to get what you need.

I miss murdering players as a NPC in this game. Sure you felt bad, for a few seconds....

The sad truth is, when Daybreak took over the rewards for being a Guide were gutted. You don't get paid for being a guide at all, but you used to at least get a few exp potions, a subscription and a base expansion, when they came out. I have no idea why they removed the expansion perk. Not sure if they still even get subs. As a Guide you can put in 40 hours of in game services a week (some Guides only do minimum requirements mind you (if I recall it is 1 NPC event a week OR 3 sessions on your Guide character), some of us went all out). With little to nothing in return when it comes to player interaction. I was fortunate enough to work on a server that had amazing role-players back in the day.

As far as the events go, they need a lot of re work. Some how they have just gotten stale over the years. When was the last time you heard of someone being kidnapped by an lizardman and held for a sacrifice to Cazic (the hopes of players banding together to save the player being held, having to kill the very buff lizardman in the process)??? I know it does take a lot of work on someone's part making sure the Guide has the NPCs added to their Guide account and all. I have little experience in Guide events after I quit playing EQ as well. I do know on EQ2 they were giving out amazing quest chains that rewarded things like giant bags (that also had a unique backpack appearance), mercs, pets, mounts, unique house and armor appearances. Even if those events were only given out once or twice a month.

Also, https://forums.daybreakgames.com/guide/index.php?forums/everquest-guide-events.321/
You can see just how active some servers are compared to others with the posts there.

Events that have a lot of participation.

Part of the problem with our events is that they are held relatively early, meaning before people get home and get online. It is mainly East-coasters that will be home at the time of the events, while Central, Mountain, and West-coasters are still at work or stuck in traffic home. I have talked to the guide that does these, and, unfortunately, they live in Europe, so time difference doesn't work well in favor of having the events later in the evening.

It is a thankless volunteer job, though. Most people that show up think they can demand what ornaments they want to have (Holy Sword ornament is a popular one), and get all uppity when they don't get it. I have even seen people threaten guides, which is sad, really.

You aren't wrong. And, as a former guide, I believe most Guides would agree with you.

I think the rewards need to be better, yes. Unfortunately, rewards that people want would compete with recent expansions. The minimal amount of oversight the Guide program currently has would open the reward distribution to abuse (it's happened before, hence the lackluster rewards we currently have).

The Guide program works, but I feel like it could leverage automation to make the rewards more robust. Like a Guide-Only /claim system so every piece of loot and reward can be easily tracked. I also feel this should include experience rewards.

There are many, many ways to increase participation in Guide events and make them more fun. But that requires buy-in from Darkpaw.