You made me think of something. What if there were group/solo zones that did not allow mercs? The mechanic is already in place, as mercs are not allowed in raids. Give these zones an XP boost. Another mechanic that already exists. This would encourage people to use these zones as groups or solo, and those with limited play time. Just brain storming, as I would love to see an acceptable solution to all play styles.
I have been at 100% AA since shortly after launch, and I am 35% into 119 with Overseer (none finished early, and even with it's bugs), one KV mission only, Lesson burn once a day, and no merc/part past VT. I really prefer the old school grinding approach to levelling, but I also recognize the need for both, and for the need for this game to change in whatever way it takes to keep the hamsters running.
In Search of Intelligence just avoid the see invis vampires (should be easy since they are in the like mid-north sections of zone) and as long as no like named are up in the areas it's just update spots, ground spawns and talking to NPC's
That's a solution I don't think the devs would go for, or many players either. It does address the "why can't the zones always be relevant" argument of some players but I think that EverQuest was built on the very simple idea of overpowering content through a combination of items & levels (and later AA too). By the way how the Elder Scrolls actually achieves their system is to make all of the mobs level 255 and then scale players UP to the mob level rather than scaling mobs up/down to the player, this also means no problems finding groups and although newbies will still be less powerful than veterans they can at least survive the zones well enough to catch up. Removing the ability to overpower the content by way of levels means there is no going back to solo old raids for a laugh or for long sought illusion clickies which is a meta game EQ has had for years.
This would fundamentally change the game and is just a terrible idea for EQ. There is no reason to change what the game is at it's core. Add to the fact that I have 0% confidence that a change like this could even be successfully implemented when they can't even address simple things like server lag. Myself personally, I just want to see them return to what everquest always was, killing mobs for exerience. That's how it functioned from 1999-2020, when it was inexplicably changed to force a silly cell phone game on us (overseer). The people that still enjoy doing progression can do that (and get experience while killing mobs working progression), and the people that don't enjoy "achievement hunting" can just go grind some mobs and make reasonable progress as well, even with just another friend or two. Me personally, I would always do progression for each new expansion and by the time I was finished, I would have gotten enough exp from klling mobs during tasks/mission that I didn't have to "grind" much anyways to hit max level. The current system only works for one group of players, while punishing anyone else outside that playstyle.
So many bad actors in this thread, still acting like grinding is impossible. Answer the question you've been asked multiple times. How long do you think it should take you to grind to 120?
In the time y'all have been crying, I've leveled 15 characters through grinding. It's perfectly reasonable XP to grind, you just have to stop trying to grind in Sathir's Tomb or whatever awful zones you're in.
Overseer is entirely optional, in fact unless you type /overseer in game, you will never see or be affected by it. Killing mobs for experience is still one of the ways you can level. So it would appear your post was entirely false.
The fact that you are 'leveling 15' characters says something. Are you perhaps boxing? Maybe automating your game play so you can XP 40-80+ hrs a week?
I think you should be able have a non maxed out group of players and be able to log in, find a group, and make ~ 20% of a level a night. Where "a night" is ~1-2 hrs after coming home from work, logging into EQ, starting out LFG soloing light blue mobs and picking up people to fill out a group. The feedback I hear from people who are not the hard core spending 40-80hr+ week in EQ is ... ToL just doesn't feel like its worth the effort.
So actual xp isnt far off what from you want. I didn't track per hour, but I got around 30-40% of a level in 4 hours.
I don't think you represent the typical player Frank. You are in a top end raiding guild and suspect you are running with a group of optimized players able to put out a lot more DPS than the 'average' pick up group.
My first character (which I didn't include in the 15) was leveled without boxing because I find it fun to do a static group with real players, but even he was mostly leveled through grinding because I was the only person in my static who took off for the launch and I wasn't going to do quests without them. But yes, I box, and as Frank said, I started out boxing 12 on Selos Truebox, and eventually dropped down to 6 primary, and a bunch of tertiary characters that exist for specific reasons (an enchanter to enchant stuff, a cleric I keep leveled up incase my wife comes back, etc). The idea that it takes automation to play 40 hours a week is silly. You can play for 5 hours a night on weekdays and 6-8 hours on the weekend and hit that easily. If you don't want to spend that much time, that's totally fine, but you should expect your progression in EQ to be slower as a result. 20% after an hour of logged in game time that includes LFG and everything seems crazy to me. You're talking something that might take a group < 10 total hours of grind time. At that point they might as well just introduce the beta npc that lets you talk to it and be granted max level. As it stands, you can currently grind out about 20% XP if you do a solid grind for about 2 hours, that doesn't count LFG time or sitting around grinding out light blues. I don't believe you can reasonably count LFG time in that, because that's going to be extremely variable (for instance, we have non boxers in my guild who due to their friend group and consistent play times, can pretty much be assured a group when they log in, we have boxers who take an hour to round up all their boxes, get them buffed, get setup, etc).
Frank's group wasn't really optimized. Like he had players who know how to push their buttons that's for sure, but he also included things like.. a paladin, the worst DPS tank class against anything not undead, and two healers. My own static wan't much slower than that, and it had 3 healers, 2 slowers, and a Crowd Control and was very DPS lite (Warrior/Cleric/Shaman/Enchanter/Druid/Monk).
I also had 5 characters. My 6th was a heroic zerker that was afk at the campfire. The cleric is largest unneed as I can keep myself alive with paladin heals and occasional shaman intervention.
FYI - I get about 5-7% an hour with my group in bloodfalls so you're sustained DPS is considerably higher than mine.
