No way to catch up to live. Autogrant and heroci chars don't cut it.

Let me also correct you..

or no friends of any kind, not socially inclined in any way, and hates to actually grp with other people for any reason what so ever.

There I fixed it for you.

Giving a brand new player a way to quickly get as strong as someone who has played for 20 years... is a pretty ridiculous idea. I agree it sucks for new players though but you need a better solution. The problem is that new players can't play with old players and new players have no other new players to play with. There are good solutions to this and DBG probably know how to do it as well, but they never bothered because clearly they think it isn't worth the development time.

I'm one of those players who has left and come back a couple of times. I'm still "working my way back up" right now, but I will say that it is possible to get to max level and decently geared for a casual. For me, several things were key:

1. This time around, I moved over to FV. This enables a far easier time obtaining filler gear and EM items I would never get otherwise. It also gives you 50% extra exp on kills, so you will level and grind AA faster.

2. Boxing helps significantly. I won't lie; sometimes boxing feels like a "chore," but I've been able to hit 110 and really hammer out AAs and start working on gear (mostly GMM so far). Two boxing opens up your world so much, and 3 boxing means you can have a full group if you're using mercs. I always prefer real players, but filling in those gaps is great.

3. As others have said, join a large, family based group. I have no intention of raiding, but having a friendly guild that gives you: porting tools to different zones, crafters to make items you normally can't, players to give advice on class mechanics, and teammates to help you exp and grow.

4. I know others mentioned back-tracking for progression, but personally, you can probably skip most of that and work on current expansion progression once you're max level.

5. Remember that EQ is a marathon, not a sprint. Give yourself a 6-10 month catch-up period instead of 2 months. Sure, some people can knock it out in 2 months or grind 3,000+ AAs in a day, but not me! Set your expectations accordingly.

Heroics are outdated for sure and need a bump.

How rude, in so many ways.

Considering the large ammount of people who actually succeed in returning to the high level game, without neglecting their jobs or family, I think it would be a better fit for you to play EQ2.

Change the parameters to "Working full time, with a family AND only having a single account." and see if that survives the test. Deleted the rest of your quote since I can't support the brand of stupid from which it originated.

"Success" is that you can achieve top raid admission in one expansion cycle. "Returning player" is also kind of vague. If a player has been gone for just a couple years, its one challenge. If they quit during Underfoot or whatever prior, than that is another. At that point, you might want to consider that your life of being a responsible adult might not have room for a game that requires constant attention. Its why most wives hate this game and kitchen passes are required. It represents competition.

Plus, it is telling with this player community that someone would be called rude for suggesting placing emphasis on family when prioritizing their day's pursuits.

EQ is not, never has been, and never will be the type of game you can jump in at top level and start killing then when you get bored with this toy you can run off and play the next game that just came out.

It takes time, effort and some skill. The amount of each is dependent on the individual player. If you are not skilled in time management or you snowflake when effort is involved or you have no skill other than to shoot something over and over then you probably will not make it in EQ.

EQ is hard. Pull your pants up and play or go away.

OK

https://aoc.fandom.com/wiki/Apprentice

EQ is too uhh, brittle, to do this though.

Funny, I had the exact opposite experience than the OP. I went from brand new heroic characters, a paladin and a necro, to completely done with TBL (djinn mask, carpet) and both my guys fully geared in TBL TS gear in about 4 months. I am actually not playing live anymore at the moment because I ran out of things I wanted to do and I do not want to raid and have since moved on to TLP servers for the time being. This was done with an average of 3-4 hours of play 5 or so days a week with my Paladin being the tank in the group 95%+ of the time.

EQ isn't hard. It's an old game that caters to old people (like myself) and you only need to play half- in order to do almost all the content in the game.

However, EQ has an extremely high entry cost for new players because if you're looking to get into the game and don't have anyone to carry you and aren't willing to box, you've got to get through hundreds of hours of the most boring gameplay in the MMO-space before you can play with more than the very small percent of the population is low enough and willing to group with you.

I recently leveled a new group of chars from 1 to 35 on Sunday and watched a poor lonely level 19 mage try to put together a group. He was soloing mobs and watching all the box-teams and people getting power-leveled zoom passed him in levels as they silently rejected his attempts to group. That's not a problem that's conducive to bringing new players in.

The problem with that sentiment is that people have gone away and now we are a shadow of what we once were.

The problem is that's the nature of all video games regardless of how good the creators of the video games bend over for any and all audiences they are targetting..

To try to imply.. it's only in everquest due to eq devs.. shows stupidity.. on anyone's part who is trying to make that connection and implication..

I came back to EQ in late November at level 100 with something like 7000 AAs. I hadn't played since RoF and had not raided since TSS. Raiding was not even on my radar when I came back, yet within about 3.5 months, I was raiding end-game content again.

Now I would never claim I got here on my own - I had a lot of help. But I transferred servers when I came back and knew absolutely nobody, so the help I've gotten has all been from people I've made friends with along the way. And that's key.

Join the right guild. Offer help more than you ask for it. Be friendly and low maintenance. Be upfront that you're recently back, rusty, and want to learn but need guidance. Every time I've come back to EQ that's been my approach and it has always worked.

If your goal is to raid yet you have limited time, you need to make sure you spend that time as productively as possible. Have specific goals and make sure you are always working towards them. The casual approach of "seeing what's going on" isn't viable on limited time. Log on, find something worthwhile to do, or if you can't, log off and take care of RL responsibilities.

For progression, always know exactly what you need so that when an opportunity to join a task or get a TA comes up, you can grab it without hesitation. But realize this will be the exception, especially once an expansion is no longer new. Be prepared to put your own groups together. I'm amazed at how often I'll see 3-4 people in general, all looking for the same basic content, and nobody makes the effort to build a group. This gets easier over time once you have made some friends and can reach out to them to fill empty spots.

Nobody is saying catching up is easy. I am still not where I want to be with my knowledge of certain game systems, other classes' skills/spells, etc. And I've resigned myself to the reality that I am unlikely to ever completely catch up to players who never took a break the length of my own. But you CAN catch-up, and you can be raid-ready in a matter of months.

I don't know what class the OP is trying to play catch up with, but there is a staggeringly enormous disparity between trying to level up a class that raiding guilds need(Priests, Chanters, Bards, Rogues, Zerkers, and Wizards and the flavour of the millennium classes(Knights, Pet-classes, Rangers, Monks.) The latter can 90pct molo everything in the game. The former can maybe molo 5pct of the game.

So if for example you are a returning or new Shadowknight, it's not a case of if you can do max level/AA and all of progression, its how fast you can do it. Compared to, lets say a cleric, who even if they were auto-granted max level and AA would still be incapable of moloing 99.9pct of the game.

The question most clerics face when they log in is whether or not they will fall asleep at the computer before they get a group, much less actually accomplish any of their needed progression. The SK on the other hand, was able to zip through the game at light speed, only to hit the "class-ceiling" where even mid-tier guilds have twice as many SKs as they need. They would then have to hope that a raiding guild would have enough SKs retire so they could enter the raiding game.

This isn't just bad class balance, it's exacerbated, exponentially; by bad merc balance. But this writing has been written on the walls for a long time in bold underlined glowing hypertext for a decade now, and nothing has ever been attempted to rectify it.

Exactly. There are better solutions than just giving people high level characters. Vanguard had a great mentor system where you lower your level to be the same as others in your group. Now you can get exp in lower level content by playing with low level people and your character is scaled downwards to not be over powered.

Pantheon is going to have people that reach the end game, able to reset their character back to level 1 and start again, but with permanent advantages. EQ could have done things like this years ago and kept the population healthy and spread out throughout the levels instead of 99.9% of people at top level.

But like I said earlier, they don't do these things because mass producing expansions was how they made their money. If the expansion factory is shut down now then maybe they should consider things like this, but I don't know if the game has enough players to justify development like that.

I worked on the oil rigs, put 86 and a half hrs a week on work thats Literally .. TWO full time jobs per week..

I came back .. because I asked people for help I struggled . It sucked as being a warrior is in my personal opinion thee HARDEST class in the game to come back with.. Key reason's I was able to come back WHILE .. pushing two full time jobs worth of work per week (2 weeks on 1 week off)

1. Made friends who were willing to help me out.
2. joined a guild with a GREAT grouping situation.
3. ASKED .. for help ..

You miss any of those 3 .. and you only make the game / coming back 1000x harder .. which makes me laugh at anyone who would do that to themselves..

No.. Success is coming back from any length of time away .. to be able to raid period. Yes some will do it faster because they use all tools available to them Potions via Station cash store .. Friends willing to help (this can not ever be over stated) and actually putting the time in to play (This as well can not be over stated enough)

What is telling .. is some one who trys to imply its hard to find any play time with ONE full time job.. an kids ..

I have literally had both all the time I've played .. My kids are raised now an have kids of their own.. doing great.

So to try to bring them into a poor me poor me .. thread EQ is to hard .. is laughable ..

As if .. your the ONLY one in all of the entire server's in EQ that has jobs an kids .. pathetic ..

I might have some respect for you Whulfgar, if you toned down the arrogance a bit. Otherwise good the F for you. Bravo!

And this game is really best suited for retirees. Or people independently wealthy. Or carefree students. Or those on the dole. Take your pick. People with demanding careers and young families? Not so much.

You can have a rewarding career, great health, great home life, lots of friends or rewarding hobbies. Pick any 3! Something has to give.

There is no universal formula for life. Just because something worked for you doesn't mean it's one size fits all. Plus, I am NOT an advocate of changing the game. More of an advocate of discouraging people from setting them selves up to fail and disappointment by setting unreasonable expectations forselves in a game not designed for them.

Enjoy your retirement. Don't spend it all watching Fox News.

Look, there is not excuse for EoK not being a level expansion. The amount required AAs combined with loot almost as good as TBM raid, make coming back for most impossible. The repeated complaints about it during beta fell on deaf ears.

Fast forward to present we have a problem. One way to deal with it would to be able to purchase HC at 105 with the majority of AAs through EoK.

then select a class that needs less AA count to play if you think this is an issue I am sure their are some classes that dont have that high of AA count vs some that do. you don't need to play a max AA level toon.

I am also some one who does not think its too hard to come back.

How many thousand's came back to the game an left again prior to the hero'ed up tooner's ?

How many thousands have done so since ? And now 1 individual claims its too hard and they try to use career an family .. as an excuse ..

Everquest is not Wow, or any other weak game that the best of the best this or that or aa can be achiv'ed by the weak hearted .. or those not willing to put in the time / effort to achiv those ..

Even more so for some (like the OP) who clearly does not want to get help.. make friends or join guilds to better be able to achiv their desired goal..

As far as coming back from extended AFK's ? There is 100% absolutely a one size fits all formula that is 100% guarantee to work ..

1. Make friends ..
2. Join a guild..
3. ASK FOR HELP..
4. Make the effort..

Expecting to be able to do it all on your own .. and be caught up lickity split .. is not reasonable.. in any game let alone just in EQ..