Well a lot of people avoided VoA because it was pretty hard, especially after the relative easiness of HoT. Same goes for TDS. I chop them up in COTH but TDS is just plain tough. I can only speak for myself regarding my box crew. Boxing lets me play at my pace. When you have a group of 6 you play at the pace of six people and the slow players suffer. I've slowed a lot in recent years. Can't deathmatch on CoD at all and I get owned on StarCraft 2. Researchers have used SC2 players for all kinds of studies on cognition and found something interesting. They said cognitive reflexes and reactions start to decline after age 24. That's why SC2 professional players are so young and there is now a doping scandal with SC2 players taking Adderall to compete. I'm way past 24 and can only react so fast. I've been having a nightmare time trying out as an enchanter in a raiding guild. Boxing lets me play at my pace and my speed. I can only play for so long before I start to get headaches and dizziness. If I group with younger players who play real fast it becomes a nightmare. So I box to play at my own speed. If there was an offline game like this, I'd never log on. I had hoped Might and Magic X would be it but man did they do a crap job on it. The fact is soon I won't be able to keep up with the game. Guess I'll have to take up Candy Crush Saga or something.
There are plenty of older people in high end raiding guilds. I don't know if you've ever been to SoE live/fanfaire, but the couple times I've been there there was more grey hair than not.
Depends. By providing us with the mapping tools they've provided us the ability to make our own maps possibly better and more useful with labels that matter to us players.
If you insist, you can come with my while I slowly kill animals in Shard's Landing for their pelt. I'll drop a merc for you anytime. You're a raider. You prob. log off 10 mins after raid. Get outta' here complaining about boxes.
I'm past 54 and my reaction time was always bad, bad, bad. Groups with males make me feel rushed. I've raided as an enchanter, among other classes. With a 'cycle through nearest NPCs' hotkey, you'll be fine.
Incorrect. Everlore, The Casters Realm, EQ Traders and many others have been around since the very early life of the game.
ha, having tried adderall (when I definitely didn't need to be on it), I can see why it would be considered a performance enhancing drug. Used to take it before mid-terms and finals for cramming, hah. I wonder, though, what they would say if you have a prescription; I know a few co-workers who take it for adult ADD
Pretty hostile response. And how would you know my play time/style? Do all raiders just play during raids nights and cannot be found the rest of the week? You're generalizing quite a bit and attacking me like a viper for no good reason. I spend lots of time in the game outside of raiding. I only raid 3 nights a week at most so there are 4 other days where I don't raid. But you're right, I do tend to log right after raids because raids end at 11pm EST (I live on the East Coast) and I have work the next morning. However, I do log in before raids to try and group and do other things and on off nights I'm always on...not raiding.I guess all these group achievements I have were just acquired by me sitting afk staring at a wall. Or better yet, maybe the guides just auto granted me them since they know I'm a raider and I do nothing else but raid I have every right to voice my opinion. Don't go around telling me what I can say or can't say. You're not a member of the EQ police, whether or not you want to self anoint yourself to the position. And this is probably the major problem in the game now. Everyone is in such a rush they they forget what made this game great. It was a chance to be social, relax and enjoy yourself around others. I admit, I've fallen victim of the "must get everything done before anyone else!" mentality but lately I've eased back to try and go back to the ways I used to be. It's more fun going in slow mode.You pick up things that normally you wouldn't, you catch little details, read the lore more, etc. It's like watching a movie for the 2nd time. You always spot stuff new that you wouldn't the first time or if you were going a million miles per hour. Mercs do have their perks. People now have more flexibility and the freedom to do what they want on their own time at their own pace. Freedom of choice is a good thing. However, it was also lots of fun /ooc'ing LFG and seeing dozens of groups in a zone each taking their own little section/camp meeting new people. I do miss that about EQ and unfortunately that ship has sailed. We've all adapted to the new play style - for better of for worse - and life in Norrath goes on. I'm not complaining there aren't groups anymore, it's just that it would be a nice change of atmosphere. A walk down memory lane for lack of better words.
The biggest obstacle to this game become a social game again is how fast pace that game has become. In the old days you had a lot of down time, even in a group setting plus you did not have a ton of hot keys and mobs that would kill you in a few seconds. A clerics best heal was complete heal which took 10 seconds to cast and even then they were not chain casting it to often in a group setting. In todays game the only time you are not pressing a button, is when you are waiting for a spell gem to refresh, if they really want to make this game a social again, then they need to reduce the amount of button smashing to a small handful a minute.
Don't be calling boxers 'pathetic.' It's a coping mechanism in response to too much content for too few players.
Back in the day, we always referred to third party web sites, or, failing that we roamed around, hailing every PC in sight, to locate whatever it was we were looking for. Before in-game maps happened, I used to have a ring binder full of maps that I'd either printed out from EverLore, or hand-drew myself, back when EQ was about exploration and finding things out for yourself. I had a box of index cards, for keeping track of all the items as I discovered them, so I knew where to go to buy Opals or whatever (making the rain stop in a zone was quite impressive, back in the day). I'm not saying that it was necessarily "better" back in the day, but the world certainly had a lot more wonder about it, precisely because we didn't have all the information handed to us.
Yeah, box crews, bleh. But in Champions of Norrath when we are not raiding we officers promote grouping. And we just have 1 more raid to finish TDS, so you can do both! The ValBjork
Really in game maps take away from the exploration, discovery and they remove the social element of "where is this" "let me show you". To me this is such a problem where some quests / raid strats you go mod your map file to add some locations in then during that quest/raid you open your map and go to the X. I think the maps should not of had the X where you are. Maps are super convenient, I use them lots but they do take away a gameplay element. Before maps many of us had printed out maps and would navigate through the zone with reference points it just added more depth to the game.
EQ has always had a raid component, but it's not a raiding game. There is plenty for casuals to do to see all the content and enjoy it beyond raiding.
