Question for those of you who "want to raid"

I don't understand why you all want instancing. If they were to actually go through with that. They would have to tune the encounters so it cannot be abused.

Right now it doesn't take 72 people to take down a boss. If they instance content, what's to say a guild won't simply split their raiding group into 3 parts and get the loot 3 times more than they do now? Then the complaints will be... "yeah we're getting loot now.. but they get more!"

Instances would require retuning of the bosses. And the items made no trade across the board. For example, this how Lord Nagafen could be retuned:

1. Increase HP to 2,500,000, this is to ensure a healthy long fight with 72 players, even if they stack high DPS pet classes.
2. Damage of attacks remain the same. Has Dragon Fear and his fire aoe like normal. Retains the 40% shielding.
3. Ignores pets like mobs in Plane of War. He's a boss, he's too crafty for that. You need a real tank.
4. Every 2-3 minutes he spawns 8 to 12 adds. These adds have 40,000 hp each. Half of them are immune to mezes, the other half are immune to roots. They can be slowed or stunned. You can tell which is which by the name. These mobs deal normal level 50 mob damage. And they have slight AoE effects.
5. Every 5 minutes or so, when one of the above groups of adds comes out, there is a single add that spawns with them. It has 100,000 hp and must be killed within 75 seconds. Otherwise it does a roomwide AOE that deals 1500-2000 damage. This one doesn't really attack for much. It just needs to be dealt with before exploding. It can be stunned or mezzed, but those effects don't stop it from exploding.
6. Pulling boss from the room results in a DT on everyone on the hate list. Don't run (course if its instanced, it just has to be the room, so nowhere to run to anyway, this mechanic may not be needed in that case).

That's an example of a retuning that would need to be done. In fact I think it should be done even if instancing isn't done. Some numbers may need to be tweaked here or there, and I would different mechanics for each boss.

I don't think this encounter would be that difficult. The dungeon bosses in most modern MMOs have this in their leveling content so this only like a stepping stone. Because lets face it.. most EQ players would struggle with the above.

But the great thing about it is you'll need bards and enchanters as well as rooters (preferably druids and rangers so the casters can concentrate on dps). You'll need to decide which DPS stop on the boss to deal with adds. You need a healer in each group, more than one tank (2-3 more depending on how good your CC is). Off healers (paladins, druids, and shaman) will need to help with healing since we're talking a 15-30min fight, so that the clerics don't go OOM. And chanters and bards will need to keep the mana up. May need to structure the groups so that all the healers get the mana songs.

Mechanics we could see on other bosses:

DS's that need to be dispelled.
Random teleporting of characters (shifts them around the room).
Debuffs that you want to have cleaned off (disease and poison based), don't always have to do damage, could be mana drains, slows, ect.
Area specific AOEs so you're hit or not hit based on where you are standing, these are telegraphed by the boss saying something. Something like the big stone guy says in Anguish. Audio triggers would be your friend.
CC-immune adds that require more tanks in the raid.
Two bosses! Perhaps the boss has a strong lieutenant with them and needs another good tank and a second team of healers to keep them up. Maybe killing one before the other isn't such a hot idea (killing one first means the other is stronger than both together for the rest of the fight) so you want to slowly DPS one down and then have him tanked while focusing the other, or focus both at the same time.
Lower HP boss, but does all AOE attacks, requiring less DPS and more healing to survive the encounter.

The idea is have many different mechanics on each boss to give a variety of classes a chance to shine. I especially like the idea of using more than one tank as well as mechanics that involve classes not focused on pure dps so you don't want to just stack DPS.

Is this true to classic EQ? Probably not. But the bosses we remember 16 years ago were epic encounters. Maybe it was because it was a different game and the bosses were difficult. Maybe we're just smarter and know how to deal with them. Regardless of the fact... Will we remember a handful of tank and spanks as being epic 16 years from Now?

Lets make them epic. Instancing alone wouldn't do that. Making the bosses an actual challenge would.

Well damn just be rude about it. My brain is wired just fine, thanks for being concerned. The general populace of the server says:
"We want to raid"
They are told:
"You need to be in a guild or have friends where you can mobilize and communicate effectively."
They say:
"But it's not fair because people are socking the targets and by the time we get there dragons are dead!"
They are told:
"That's kind of the way open content works, not everyone wins all the time unless they have a very large number of people who can be on at all hours of the day and night ready to go at a moments notice."
They say:
"We pay our 15 bucks a month just like everyone else, we should be able to experience the content too!"
They are told:
"No one is stopping you from experiencing said content, there are guilds to join who try to kill things and if you don't like those guilds then make your own."
They say:
"That's not it! That's not what we're complaining about! No one listens, raiders are stupid!"
They are told:
"If competition, mobilization, communication and the ability to find enough players with the same mind set as you is not your problem, then why do you want instances?"
They say:
"We pay our 15 bucks a month just like everyone else, we should be able to experience the content too!"
And the cycle continues...

In reality you win some and you lose some, it sucks but you move on or do something to increase your chances next time. I'm not against instancing, I'm not chomping at the bit for it, but I agree with Gregolo - If raids in classic are moving more toward the need to achieve well-oiled machine status then maybe instances wouldn't be a bad idea, simply for the fact that when raids get difficult there needs to be practice given to beat them and if mobs start getting scripts this early etc etc then they need to be instanced so more people can practice and win and have awesome loots rain from the sky.

Someone's inability to raid is not the rest of the servers problem. I am in an accelerated nursing program and even though it's hard I still try to be online as much as I can. I have found my balance between real life and EverQuest; it's something that I had to learn how to do a very long time ago. If time constraints are the problem then that's personal and not my problem. If you aren't in a guild that can kill raid targets, that is also not my problem. If you feel entitled because you pay the same amount of money every month as I do, that is again - not my problem. If you can't find enough players to make your own guild and go kill stuff - that's definitely not my problem because this forum is littered with people who want to raid evidently, go find them.

Your aptitude to throw insults and then follow it up with "nothing personal" doesn't help your cause either. I'm all for everyone getting to experience content, but you're definitely no better than I am. If I can make sacrifices for my hobby then you sure as hell can do the same, and if you're not willing to, then that again, is not my problem.

Maybe if we change the label "raid" to "large scale grouping" it will be more in line with what people are actually asking for. Some people want to log on from 8-11 Mon/Wed/Fri and go take down content with dedicated friends. Some people would like to schedule pick-ups on a normal schedule, or take part in them. The don't want to have a batphone on their nightstand. They don't want to sit on a spawn point for the only 3 hours of free time they have that day. They don't want the exercise in frustration of taking 15-30 minutes to mobilize to a target that just happened to pop while they were on, only to have it ripped away by a couple box groups right before they engage. They don't want that waste of time.

Contested content can be great, but it shouldn't be the driving force of end-game content in what many wish was a predominately PvE enviroment.

Thank you for that. Concise to the point and without the fluff. I like it. That being said, what did people think they were going to get when Ragefire launched? I'm not saying that it shouldn't change or that it won't ever, I'm asking this - If people knew that classic content was not instanced when Ragefire was going to be launched and multiple discussion topics were made about stuff like this and nothing was changed, then why come to this server where you're going to be ultimately unhappy with the way content used to be and expect things to change? Why not wait until an expansion where there's instanced content to enjoy if that's your thing? Genuinely curious. If the answer is "Because I like classic and that's what I looked forward to coming back and playing" then I again ask the question "But if you knew it was going to be this way why do you act so disappointed and think things should be changed?"

Anyway, those are just my queries. I have said multiple times that I don't care either way, for or against instanced content, but I just don't understand why people keep trying to jam a square peg in a circular hole when they knew it was a circle before they picked up the piece.

the only reason people even started bringing 72 people raids to encounters was to win the dps race against other people, not because the encounters required it. 72 man raids were solely a PoP thing. in fact they quickly reduced the limit to expedition size to 54 in GoD and beyond.

completely ignoring what we have been saying all along yet again... seriously... try re-reading why myself and others don't want anything do do with your "raid style". it's not the set up, it's not getting a guild together, it's not showing up ontime(though that is an issue for some).

let's see if you can finally stop skipping over the rest.

We came to Ragefire because we still had a great time before we got to the endgame. The leveling experience is still tons of fun. Now that we've gotten to the part we don't like, we're asking for a change. If it does not come, that is fine. We'll just leave when the fun is gone. Not a threat, it's just how games work. People only play games when they are having fun.

RE: instancing abuse

Put a minimum number of players required to spawn an instance.

Must have 36 unlocked-out chars to spawn an instance. Done.

These aren't hard problems. They only take a moment of thinking to get around.

What I want because it would bee suit my life would be instancing, and the WoW meta type of MMO gaming, just with Everquest. However, I came back to EQ because of the game itself, and my personal feeling would be that I didn't earn this "Item X" if I could just waltz in and kill said mob at any given time. I fully advocate against instancing, people who beg for it, and the people who knock guilds like the ones Jain listed because they do go the extra mile. I miss so many in raids with my guild, TL, but I know for now this is part of the game and I didn't expect it to be different.

We have one set of loot drop per spawn cycle.

What you suggest means there will be far more. Say TL has 144 people ready to go, and the other guilds have 72 people each. That means 12 times more loot will be dropping per 'cycle' than there is currently.

Which means the content needs to be retuned again so that the risk/challenge matches the reward. You are taking much of the challenge of the encounters away when you instance them. The challenge being able to get your guild in before another does.

That challenge has to be replaced with something. Can you handle that challenge?

Do you have some reason to believe that the server will not be healthier with instancing than in its current state? Or is it just your preference that encounters not be instanced.

If it's your preference not to have instanced encounters then you are free to just not raid instanced content. "I don't want that feature because I don't intent to use it" is not a very useful argument.

I think your math is off.


Currently there are 7 spawns per week per dragon. We are asking for week long lockouts. So there would need to be 84 guilds spawning 1 raid each to get to 12 times more loot.

I did more math for you. 84 guilds of 36 people means 3024 unique characters need to all targets every week in order to get to 12 times more loot under instancing.

I can't quote too many other people - although I'd imagine many are in the same boat - I'm personally all for toughing it out and biding my time - but I've done these servers not once, not twice, but three times now and I keep seeing one constant result:

People that run out of content to do quit - and reasonably often those that quit because of a lack of content do not return.

If I listed the numbers of good friends I've lost to such attrition over the years (just good friends) we'd be into the two dozen range, just guildees - close to 200, people I enjoyed interacting with include those outside of my guild (or even server sometimes as I tend to talk with the community as a whole) - probably around 500.

And mind you these servers are much slower this time which exacerbates the "I have nothing to do, quitting for good" issue - last time people were dealing with nothing to do for a month, or two months - now they've got THREE TO SIX.

Additionally the entire nature of no CS changes a ton too.

Well that's not what I said at all, but whatever floats your boat sport. I personally don't think the long term population will be affected by the expansions that were never instanced remaining the same. People will leave at GoD anyways because they won't be able to tolerate getting 1 rounded, and at that point the game it will have become too hard for people to just have fun in. This is also the point of the game where I believe it becomes a challenge and is at its peak.

you dont really get one rounded in GoD anymore. if people give it a chance, they will find its a well balanced, fun expansion now

Trash no, raids yes.

From what I have seen of raids atm, I don't even want to raid if the way it's being done is how you have to do it.

GoD isn't really hard anymore. Not only was it tuned down after the initial release but the game's mechanics are way different. It feels just like anything else.

You're dodging the issue.

Instancing is free loot. The bosses are tank and spank. The hardest part about them is getting the people together. The harder part now is getting them in before another guild does. You want to take the hardest part out.

You effectively want everyone to show up, and then divvy out loot with no challenge, once a week. The Devs and Producer know this and THAT is why they don't want to instance the content. They don't want to turn the TLP servers into a loot fest, where the live servers had to contend for years over the same content to stay at the positions they want.

Now, lets take this back to where it needs to be. The challenge of the encounter vs the reward. You want to take the challenge of competitive guild logistics out of the equation. What do you intend to replace it with? Feel free to save yourself the work and look at my example suggestion above about Nagafen and agree with that. Or post your own suggestion on how to make him a real challenge. Or feel free to make your own on another boss. Up to you.

But don't dodge the real issue over semantics of mathematics.

I know that's not what you said. I was asking you a question to try and figure out why it is you feel that way. Why can't EQ have instancing pre-GoD. I know it hasn't ever had it, but it also never had a log in queue. I know we weren't told to expect it but we were also told not to expect two servers.

I'm trying to figure out why people believe instancing will be fatal to this game, or will lead to a server that is less healthy than the one the exists now.

So far I have not seen one post from.anyone anywhere saying "I was about to kill phinny, but no one else showed up so I couldn't DPS race. I'm quitting". Nearly all of the complaints about this server can be solved with instancing to various degrees.

Everquest is, in my opinion, PERFECT contentwise. But the ability of other players to grief is a fatal flaw.

Instancing mitigates this fatal flaw. But some people still seem to not want instancing. Most of these people are RMTs or griefers themselves. They play because everquest is currently perfect for that style of play. Then there are the purists who simply believe that EQ shouldn't be touched just because. These are the people who thought in game maps were the biggest abomination in the history of MMOs.

I'm asking you, which one are you?