Hello All, I am currently running 3 silver accounts with 3 Mercs, while i cannot go All Access with all 3 i could do one at a time and then pick one to stay that way. I've read here before that some folks go all access for a month to max out AA's, if i do that and go back to F2P do I keep all the AA's? also, as they are mages, at what point can I ditch the Merc tank for something else? I am well below 65. Should I then get a J1 or whatever cleric Merc? could I get a J5 tank and keep her till 80? thanks all.
You will keep all AA you earn while gold even if you return to silver/free. You cannot earn more once you return to silver/free. You cannot get a J5 merc till 75 (doing it the long way) or 85 (doing it the short way). J5 are only available on paying accounts and you will loose it if you go back to free. Auto grant is great if you know what each AA given in huge chunks at one time does. In other words if you have to earn them then you know what they do as you picked them and made hot keys as your earned them. If you auto grant you will get hundreds at one time and there are going to be AA that you got that you overlooked until one day you realize what your character can really do with that AA enabled. From what I know mage pets are tanks. You might be able to run the 3 of them with one gold account with one J5 healer merc once you get higher level. Unless you want to spend the money - 100 plat every 15 min at levels 90 and up to run each merc for the whole group.
Going gold for a month, on a level 100 character (95 even?) will give you 13k AA. You should do this. Do not develop AA until after you have gone gold (which is also impossible I just realized as I wrote it :-D ). You should have 1-2 cleric (only) mercs if you play the group game with 3 mages, no merc tank, and no dps merc. Mercs take xp; mage pets tank group content fine. I would suggest you consider 3 air pets, for the stuns, or mix of air and earth. Water will give you a tad more dps, but I would not choose it over increased ability to tank. However, you need to device strategies for pulls where you get more than 1 mob, since pets have only single target aggro. I am assuming that you have taunt turned off for your pets, remember to turn it on again. Also, when they become available, use summoned aggro swords. Make sure you study how to have the best level appropriate Enhanced Minion you can get, I think you can even buy EM V or so in Plane of Knowledge. When you get to level 105, EM 18 is pretty doable. I am not sure at which level you can realistically do the J5 quest, I would think it would be around lvl 85. I would suggest you find a large family style guild on your server, and try to group if something becomes available. Being a nice dude in /GU , might get you invited in to high XP groups when you are in grouping range; if so you will start levelling real fast (using my box team of 105+, I leveled a new toon, during 50% anniversary XP bonus, from 85 - Heroic - to 105 in a matter of few weeks, with 85-90 being a single session w. Lesson etc.) But just playing your tri-mage box, it should go pretty fast at your level. Consider using IS Boxer. It will increase your dps significantly if you are able to use your toons effectively, which will then convert into more XP pr hour
On your Silver accounts you can get A5 merc without any quests or anything. J1 requires Gold, no quests. J5 quest in Feerrot dream is quite easy at 85 dark blue mobs (use map find for the npcs you have to speak with). 'The long way' to J5 mentioned above is possible but not easy. If you opt for the 'long way', just do the J5, you don't have to do 1-5.
The mobs that you will have to fight to finish the Feerrott quest are all doable at 85. Just make sure you pull the "invaders" to the wall instead of fighting them out in the open like someone I know (cough) did. However, there are a few wandering mobs in the area and they are much tougher. And if you accidentally run into a camp full of lizardmen... well, consider yourself warned
Keep in mind that any AA rewards from completing quests or achievements will be wasted if you are not subscribed. You may want to avoid finishing quests/achievements until you are subscribed so that you don't miss out. Personally, I really don't think this game is viable after about level 60 if you are free to play, but everybody has their own definition of fun
If you want to be completely honest the game is no longer worth $14.99 a month. Even that Station Pass isn't really worth that price anymore. The only thing that drives subs at the moment are TLP servers. The fact that they are starting to come out faster and cookie cutter seems to suggest that even those subscriptions are falling off and they need to keep adding new ones to get players to re-sub. Daybreak needs to just go back to the $9.99/Mo and $99.99/yr models. I would suspect eh bean counters would see how selling a few widgets for way to much money will never be as lucrative as selling thousands of widgets at less money but greater volume. If Daybreak sold the subscriptions at $9.99/$99.99 they would likely see a substantial and sustained jump in reoccurring subscriptions for 2-3 years. Far more then cookie cutter TLP's can sustain for the next 2-3 years.
They do sell subscriptions for $9.99/month - its the yearly plan. Yeah its not $99.99 a year, its $119.99 but many of us got the $79/yr special last year or the year before to make up for it. So I am sure they saw a substantial jump then. I can drop $10 or $20 easy on pizza. One dinner out of the month but I can play EQ many times during that month for the same money. I only went to the TLP servers one time and they were not for me. TLP's bring a fast immediate influx of receivables into the DBG books which looks good for the annual reports. But there are many of us who do not play TLP. But like life, you get out of something what you put into it.
I honestly cant think of anything else that provides me with this much entertainment for the price. I mean what else can you even buy for 10-15 dollars these days? Go to the movies and maybe get 2 hours of entertainment or maybe 2 hours of boredom. Ten minutes at the casino if your lucky. A couple containers of night crawlers and a day of fishing assuming you even have your license and gear. A couple games of bowling. A cheap dinner for one or a couple of cheap drinks at your local watering hole. If someone thinks 10-15 bucks a month for basically unlimited entertainment is to much money they either have money issues to begin with or they just don't find this game all that entertaining and in this event these people would probably complain about any cost associated with this game. I would gladly pay more money for this game if it meant hiring more developers and resulting in more content but maybe that's just me.
It really is a good value if you just want to play and don't have too many expectations. OR you know your path already, i.e. you're going to raid, and you have the money for that. We've seen EQ change a bit over the years. While it is a great value and almost sinful for nearly 24/7 fun at < $20 a month. Free To Play changed things (not complaining, just saying). Now with boxing being more of a thing too, it's likely at some point you think to yourself, "How much can I do with a free account?" If there weren't free accounts, this thought wouldn't occur to you, and the 'value' of an account would be clear (what it costs a month). Also with the AA changes, you can reach a wall where if you are Silver or FTP and don't have all the current expansions, even when you are under the cap and can earn more AA you can't spend them because they are expansion locked. So you have to factor in expansions now too, if you want to level a character or a shiny heroic above 90. It has started to create a big gap, where 1-60 is easily done FTP, and you can go old world, TSS or later, or both. There is actually a lot to do FTP 1-60. Had one of the most fun times in my EQ career leveling a 4 box FTP crew on a new (to me) dead server, no help, fast up to 52 with anni bonus XP. And boxed up a Naggy kill. Way back in the day I tagged along on a couple of Naggy raids (mana battery years ugg), fun in it's own way, but I always wanted to be part of the kill. To actually kill a dragon solo (4 box) was great fun, and FTP (one account was Silver). I have plenty more to do with my FTPs before the next expansion comes out. And thus the point I'm getting at... They've created a situation now where there isn't much incentive for someone like me to buy the expansion or even sub until there's another expansion to buy that comes with claims.
I think it's worth a few of us old timers creating F2P accounts and leveling non-twinked, non-boxed, unassisted fresh characters to 60+ (no big bags, no plat, no obscure quests) and sharing some info here on viable molo locations for the higher level ranges.
Any entertainment you can get for an entire month for under $20 is worth it. My point was there has been a lot of attrition of late and it just might be time to drop the monthly price point to maybe WinBack some of those subs. or maybe win some new players to come to the game since its slightly cheaper then the industry standard for a nearly 2 decade old game. There is a lot of "NEW" that Everquest offers that is similar to modern MMO's but honestly no one will ever know, since most read "Release Date" March16th.1999" and assume its not a current game. Maybe I am wrong, maybe they wont get as many subs at 9.99 as they get at 14.99, I can only go by what I would do. And I would have no problems paying $9.99 a month even if I only logged in once a week for an hour. But when it costs more to play EQ then to watch Netflixs or Amazon Prime, I look at that payment on my card and question is it worth it at $14.99? It like buying a item for $100 or $99.99 ... we all know its the same price but your mind says "WOW, $99.99 !!" Going the other way my mind might see "$9.99 a month now? Humm ... a second account is only like $5 more then the old $14.99, l can just sub a two box now for $20" now they have gained an extra sub at a bonus $5 a month I probably would never have run.
For me personally I get bored with TV or other things that I cant actually interact with. I have Netflix streaming when I play but I am usually just half listening and occasionally watching while I play EQ. I could just as easily turn on the radio or play some music. I agree that for people that like to just sit and watch TV there is great value in streaming services but I could do without them and my QOL would not change. Its for this reason why I got rid of my cable and installed an outdoor antenna so I could get my local channels to watch football.
I go through phases. Some months I feel like playing an MMO, in which case $15/mo for EQ is an excellent deal. Other months I feel like watching movies, in which case <$15/mo for a streaming service is an even better deal. Win-win!
EQchanter , what server are you playing? btw as free to play , mages box are probably the strongest , it just need a decent EM earring .( non prestige ). you can google * everquest em earring * you can have a EM 5 to drop in ferrott ........em 12 to drop from shard landing .......em 15 in neriak. there is an item at the market place you can buy if you want to * tag * your FTP toon to always being able to memorise rank 2 spells..
You can literally pay for a month of EQ by flipping burgers at McDonald's (or folding tacos at Taco Bell, if you prefer) for only three bours, after taxes! If you can't afford $15 per month, you have serious life issues and should not be playing video games. Even the spangers (people that hang out by the beach asking for spare change) can afford Everquest, and most of them are hopelessly addicted to meth.
The issue with arguing cheap entertainment, with respect to this game, is that it's not always entertainment. At times, it can feel more like work; and you're paying to do that work. This is particularly the case when you don't box, because you then often have completely useless nights when you can't get anything done due to not being able to find an effective group. Too many times I've seen people log off in disgust after not being able to put together a group. So yeah, the game is not expensive. But depending on your experiences as a player, even $15 a month might be too much to pay for what passes as entertainment from day to day. Look at the size of expansions these days and the amount of intentional time sinks to make them last long. It's not so much that people find $15 a ridiculous amount of money to pay; but that they can no longer justify spending any money on a game they might play once or twice a week, and not even have fun half the time they log on. Had the game been consistently entertaining, nobody would have a problem with spending $15 a month for it.
Yeah, i see those people too. Asking for a group in general and then, when you try to send them a tell a mere 15mins later, you go through your log and find out they've logged 10mins go. Some people have the attention-span of a gold fish and the patience of a gerbil. Spoiled brats, one and all
To each their own I guess. I agree this game can feel more like work than entertainment at times and that is not a boxer vs solo player thing. Boxing requires a lot of time and work gearing, leveling and evolving toons. Even if you have a ready made group and can hit the ground running you still end up doing things that are less enjoyable for the greater good of your group makeup a lot of times. Is it fun to camp the same caster weapon for all of your box casters for example? Even when I played just one toon I always found something to do. If there were no groups to be had I would work on trade skills or go farm stuff or work on old quests or just do the solo grind. If someone can only find enjoyment in this game while being in a group and they are against boxing to make it happen that's on the individual imo. Even if they boxed only when their were no groups to be had they could always be doing something instead of sitting around in frustration and if a group of real players comes available they could drop their box toons and do group play. There are options to help curb this boredom some players might have in this game but they make the personal choice to not utilize those options. I do think there should be better grouping tools in game but until that happens us as players need to make the best with what we have or find something more enjoyable to do with out free time.
