The Joy of Kunark

So I'm about to finish my fifth level 60. I may be able to squeeze two more out before Velious, but I'm left with the quandary that I will run out of alts before PoP, and honestly I just don't ever want to play a Ranger, so there's that.

My guild has geared up its mains, it has geared up its alts. We're drawing the line at second alts, too much burn out, too many people not logging in anymore and not interested in alts at all. I think we've lost 20% of our original raid force, then recruited that same # back, and lost them too. Not to other guilds, our retention rate is very high. We're just losing them to other games. Our guild leader has been purging anyone who hasn't logged in for a month... it's getting pretty terrible. Names of people I liked and felt made us a good team are disappearing. I can see some of them on Discord playing WoW, playing silly PCized console crap, playing that pubg thing...whatever. Gone.

So the only explanation of why we're still on Kunark is because farmers like this content, it makes RL bucks. But looking at the prices of things, even the farmers are suffering. They're still locking down high value camps, but the prices of things are dropping off the chart, suggesting to me that they're mostly destroying items to keep others from getting them.

I'm told this isn't new, Phinny went through this...twice. During Classic/Kunark and then again in LoY/LDoN. Remind me again why we haven't learned from the mistakes of several TLPs and shortened the length of lousy content (classic, kunark, LoY, LDoN)? Does DBG hate having subscribers?

Kunark is one of the worst EQ expansions for sure, the only thing nearly as bad is PoP. Everyone knew what they were getting into when they began playing on Agnarr however, and no one is forcing us to continue logging in.

For future TLP's I'd love to see Classic + Kunark launched together or Classic and Kunark both being four or six weeks a piece.

But you in particular are planning to leave when that other Brad game comes out. We all see your posts on the forums. So I guess I know why you are here, and what you want out of this server.

For those that are planning to stick around, or who want a future, that's not a helpful position to take.

So lemmy guess.....your in one of the top 5ish guilds who is racing through content as fast as you can, not only as fast as you can, but also splitting content to acquire twice the loot, possibly even taking out open world mobs along with the instanced versions, making it what 3x the loot......and yet you don't understand why your members are getting bored and not logging in anymore? Huh, weird.......

Lets be honest, part of the issue, is Kunark, but a bigger part is the mentality behind this type of play style. The game was never intended to be played at this high pace and yield this many rewards in such a short period of time. EQ is based on the whole carrot on a stick mentality, keeping you moving forward always reaching out for that bite. Combining instancing and mad dash type raiding, you have effectively removed the stick from the equation.

I'm actually right in the middle of this type of raiding as well, in a guild that is clearing VP, splitting everything under the sun. The difference, which is sounds to be the same as the OP, I continue to log in and help others, basically supporting the team mentality. I think that is another factor in the type of guild members that stop logging in, they are very self centered people that only care about getting their loot, after which they are MIA until the next big thing. Best thing a guild could do is start kicking them, take away DKP or whatever, some type of incentive for helping the guild as a whole.

I recently considered joining the top(not naming names, forum police) raiding guilds, but then had to ask myself, why? Why in the world would I want to race through the content that much faster? It doesn't make sense, in my eyes. I recently asked a couple friends I have in their the guild, what they planning to do in PoP and how quickly they expected to get burned out, seemed none of them had thought about it.

I think Agnarr is an oddity in the MMO world in that I really expect the high end guilds you see now, to all either fall apart in PoP or adopt a revolving door mentality when it comes to players. The guilds that I expect to make it long term are the ones who are going at it a little slower, don't need to be first and don't need to split content to feel like they have achieved anything.

Every day I come to the TLP server forums it warms my heart to see another QQ thread about Agnarr.

The best part is, it's typically people (as the OP even stated) that already did at least one other recent TLP (Rage/LJ/PHini).

I HATE KUNARK GUYS!
Ooohhhh new TLP launching! It's gonna be awesome!


Btw, LoY is bundled with POP on other TLPs, so that's new for you. LDoN has some raid augments that last forever, for the smart raiders. Sadly your server dies at LDoN so I guess you're right though.

I have not played ranger since my return on Phinny (I haven't played since Live GoD)
That being said, they are preeeettty strong in Luclin/PoP. And they seem to have fun doing head shots once PoP hits. I would grind one to 60 just to try it if you are looking for stuff to do. Velious would be a good time to start it up as they really shine in Luclin with Archery AA's

While he may be ranting about that, Agnaar will lock long before that its released.. they are hoping for Early Access in 2019, with no month locked down.
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This is going to sound negative, but try to take it as more of a neutral stance.

What you saw in Classic was inflated numbers that all new TLP see.

• You saw all of the farmers jumping on for the easy krono.
• You saw people from Phinny who dis-liked GoD and wanted to skip it.
• You saw people returning to re-experience EQ (probably not played in many years)
• You saw people who wanted to re-experience EQ, joined got max level, realized it will stop at PoP, and decided to swap to Phinny to experience everything they missed (minus GoD), who are now already level 70 and enjoying new to them content in OOW

There are other 'groups' of people that I am not mentioning or forgetting to mention... Anyway these players all had lower timers than the people who were drooling at that PoP/LDoN lock.

All of the raid content is easier due to melee innate dmg, and spells being ~50% stronger from live, in addition to the gear power increase from instances. These trivial encounters, and speed up the time to farm gear as you are no longer 'progressing through content' and instead just doing content.

You are also seeing the issue with a INCREASED exp server, and this is what it will be like on PoP week 5 if you are a raider. (Week 3? if you are a hardcore raider/high play time)

The 2 or 3 month unlocks are trying to cater to a wider audience, honestly the target of your server, the casuals who are coming back to re-live their nostalgia and dip once they got their fix, knowing they can return later without losing their progress or being left behind. If they were to target the high play time users, it would be like 2 months (maybe 6 weeks) for lvl increase and 1 for non level increase, and lower lock outs on instances.

Gaming styles have also changed a lot over the last 10 years. The newer style in PC gaming is to constantly bounce from a new (to the player at least) game to another new game, with a group of friends. You can see this by looking at peoples steam profile and see 200 hrs across a dozen or more games. I have a bunch of friends that went from time sink games like WoW/LoL to other games they chew through more quickly, such as CS:GO>Payday2>Dayz>DontStarve>Rust>GTA5>Ark>etc etc

Last but not least, all TLP servers see this as they near the end of an expansion... the high play time users have checked their boxes of what they wanted to do, and are just waiting for the new expansion to unlock.

Don't have hope for people returning, as for my experience, I would say if they aren't even logging on for raiding, they wont be back, because something else caught their attention.

Nope. People not logging in any more because they got their loot, yes, not necessarily via the guild. Don't split raid much except Phinny, and that only because the epic items were rare as hell. But even that is done, several times over. Small guild means small loot demands.

Players would rather not play than clear VP. The -blocking was bad, people stopped keying. Then they looked at the loot table and said "why, I will get better than this on day 1 of velious". So no, VP is being skipped. And it's TBD if they come back for velious to prove themselves correct.

Nope. I've never done this content before. But I do have friends who have, and that's why they come to Agnarr to farm krono for their mains on Phinny, but otherwise view us as special snowflakes escaped from an asylum.

I do not think most people who are playing care about the group grind. They seem to actively dislike it. I think the increased XP is responsible for the initial success, w/o which people would not have played. Take a look out there, there's not a lot of /lfg on alts. If people liked the group grind they'd be working one alt after another. I do not think too many people have all 12 classes maxed out yet.

A few people I know are waiting for the next XP weekend and making powerlevelling plans. But that's about it. I have little faith in those plans, XP weekend tends to fill up the picks fast, killing powerlevelling. Frogs do not breed fast enough.

This above all things. I do think a few people will return, but I think most are gone for good.

Of all the expansions eventually on Agnarr... you chose PoP are the 2nd worst? lol wut?

How are LDoN, LoY, Velious and Luclin ahead of PoP? I don't understand.

I am curious how you have done this, In my guild we have done all raid targets from day one (2 open world Gore) and split VS since the first kill and 4/5 of the guild are still in hate or less leg, same for Trak Bps if not a worse ratio.

We have been in Kunark for 8-9 weeks?
That is 8-9 legs and 8-9 BPs...
Your entire guild is geared and so are the alts with 8-9 trak kills and 8-9 VS kills?

The math sure seems off to me...

If you are referring to old world stuff like CoF and RBBs... ya my guild is pretty much stocked on those and they are either going to bards or alts... but other than those items not much drops enough to have a full guild and alts geared?

LoY being lumped in with PoP was good on Phinny, and honestly LDoN should be as well. In a TLP setting I do think Luclin was better than PoP though.

The problem with Kunark is the raid loot isn't that good. Most all the BIS stuff comes from quests or group drops so there's very little incentive to kill raid bosses besides the 1-2 times to say you did it. Remember all that Chardok loot is way out of era too. Come Velious and beyond raid loot is a big deal and you keep killing Vulak for the 100th time until you get XYZ loot for your class. That keeps people playing and raiding.

I applaud your effort, but consider checking in to a clinic. All that stuff is going to be replaced in a few weeks, and all you will be left with is remembering how much of your life you spent killing that one dragon over and over.

Once might be a fluke, twice and you're on the right track. 5 times? That's a bit obsessive. 10 times and honestly you need a pill. Daybreak is not paying me to work on the game, I am paying them to have fun. What you describe is not fun, what you describe is obsession.

Purging from guild roster after being AFK for only one month? Wow, that's harsh. Just make a new guild rank for "inactive" or something.

What are you even talking about?

Lol, so why are you even playing atm if that is your attitude, why not wait until PoP to even log in? Because with this mentality of "All that stuff is going to be replaced in a few weeks....." will not change and a month into Velious and then Luclin you will be whining about the same issue. At this point, based on your comments, its obviously not an issue with the game, its an issue with your expectations of the game.

Classic example of someone seeing one sentence and replying with something that makes zero sense.

Wow, Strudel, great moves, keep it up, proud of you!

K, knock yourselves out. Just remember your safe word, and make sure you let someone at DBG know in case you get hurt. Maybe you can ask them for a server with just Naggy, and you can't unlock Vox until you beat Naggy 1000 times. Or are you too casual for that?

I'm going to continue to appeal to more sensible people, unfortunately they probably gave up on the forums too.

I play on Ragefire. We didn't get handed instancing, we had to self police our server. Had to kick and scrape to form rotations. Our server is great now, no thanks to anyone at Daybreak. Pretty sure if you're looking for a casual, inward is the only direction I can refer you to.

Velious/luclin have meaningful raid content in the openworld, as well as instanced raid content for ppl who just want to do it more casually. It also comes out with a lot of content to do outside of raids, even for raiders. Lot of quests etc to do that you can use on your characters, as well as aa's to get come luclin. Pop literally has 2 quests(binden concerta/aid grimel ear) and 1 raid zone of gear that you actually use(potime). There arent many new aa's in pop for most classes, and its just furthering ranks of other aa's that already exsist. Compile it with the fact that time as an endzone is basically just a forced massive trashclear for 70% of time, then a loot pinata the rest of it, coupled with the fact that basically every event in potime is the same minus the zek brothers( this boss has an ae you resist with bard songs, adds every 10-20%, ramp) and then worlds most boring endboss. Fights in velious/luclin have more indepth event mechanics even if some of them arent the most fun(sitting to avoid being spinstunned on lady nev, cant fd/let pets die on shei, silences gflux's etc).

I've always wondered who these folks are that seem to have millions of hours of time and don't quit once it becomes apparent that they don't enjoy the game / server anymore.

I played on RF, LJ and even phinny once I got tired of them I quit because I did not enjoy the rules. Do yourself a favor and quit for now and just either come back during velious or wait for a server you can enjoy.