Zek Rising!!!

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Sokon, Feb 22, 2021.

  1. Sokon Augur

    "Off in the distance a red wave approaches... Will it wash upon these shores high enough to reach and on it's reproach and final retreat bring with it back to the sea the scattered corpses of enemies once lost awaiting the day they'd no longer suffer spread across these red sands of time, ever awaiting to finally lay at rest in the deep... or lay down in it's wake yet another reaping of souls awaiting it's take." ~ The Barren Coast of Zek

    The Zek server has had a reasonable increase in it's population as of late. For quite a few years there when I was either on Zek or on blue, or not playing at all but logging in once in awhile to claim station cash or what not and checking zek.general, the population in that channel was in the 20's or 30's. For a long time, the server was and certainly appeared to be absolutely dead.

    Recently however, at peak times, there have been more than 80 in zek.general. While I realize many of these were alts, there would have been alts when it was 20-30 over all those years. Population, interest or just people logging in again during the times we find ourselves in while having so much time on our hands or spending much more time online has played a part.

    The most recent expansions have had a considerable amount of content, if you were to compare them to EoK and players who might have quit around that time, as was the case for me, returning recently may have been impressed to see all the additions to the game. Or, if they had been gone for a long period of time, have many functions now available to them that really make the game stand out, and for me atleast, gives me confidence that this newer company in charge, really cares about this game and it's playerbase. Some examples of those could be the find item window, zone guide, faction window or perhaps even the advanced looting system and key rings, nevermind dragons hoard. All of these things together is a massive amount of functionality and quality of life changes, all together it's impressive.

    Whether it's the time's we are in that's bringing people back to the game, or functions within it impressing people that came back and leading to higher population in all of Everquest, who knows the exact stats but the Zek server population has significantly increased in the recent months.

    Now, on Zek, one of our guild's sees this as an opportunity and perhaps just a mere window of time we will have. My guild is being strongly advised by myself on things we could do to pump some life back into the Zek server at this time. And we have had many discussions amongst ourselves concerning this.

    I've extensively worked on, edited, gotten feedback of and chatted with the other guild on Zek(Ascending Dawn) about, over the last week or so these ideas. Now is time for a post to the Veteran's Lounge to garner more awareness and hopefully, some interest in what we(Chaotic Entry) see as ways we can bring more people back to Zek and the simple things that need to exist in order for the server of Zek to be healthy, or necessary to exist for anyone to ever consider coming back to it, or trying it in the first place. Or even sending one of their alts here to play outside of raid hours. Our server offers something no others do but due to it's toxic behavior/history(which is brutally explained in our letter to Zek) over the years is not attracting enough people to stay alive and well.

    First, we have a strong belief it is necessary for Zek to have atleast 2 strong, able, Guilds. Mainstays. Options. People like having options, and with only one guild on Zek, anyone coming here simply doesn't have options. Our two guilds are vastly different in personality, leadership and focus. Yet between the two of us, Zek now offers something(a Guild) for anyone who might be interested regardless of their playstyle or goals other than the ability to beat(as is also explained in the letter to Zek) a sufficient amount of raid content to keep the average Everquest raid enthusiest happy.

    Players that like PvPing? Both guilds have a core that can offer you allies for that. Players who only want to, or are only movelogging a character here to PvP because it's an alt of theirs or they are done with everything else or they only want to log in for a little friendly competition from time to time and not necessarily be relied to log in while we are still building up to get raids squared away, well our guild Chaotic Entry welcomes you and might be the right place. Ascending Dawn's focus is a bit more on raiding and their culture focuses more on PVE, and a more traditional family oriented/friendly atmosphere. AsD also has a bit larger class makeup of class mains that don't have such a great chance to fair well in PvP, generally attracting more of the server's non-PvP players.

    However, we both have PvPers, and we both have players, some with full box crews, who hardly ever participate or have any interest in PvP. They enjoy our server for other reasons.
    For the married couple out there, or the close friends, whom, one of you has a high interest or misses play on Zek, but the other hated it or just never had much fun doing it or participating in and "wasting time" doing it, both of our guilds have something for either of you. You could each get your fix with either of our teams as each in their entirety is rather diverse.

    Extensive recruitment post's concerning Chaotic Entry(New) and Ascending Dawn are written up and can be found in the Guild Recruitment section. If you have any interest you will want to take a gander at those and by the time you get done reading them both you will have a much better idea which one would better suit you. And if your initial choice doesn't work out or wasn't what you were expecting, the server has another choice.

    Also, inside Chaotic Entry's thread, the first two replies contain 2 items you may find interesting for entirely different reasons trying to interest you in considering movelogging to Zek or ever joining a guild there, but perhaps may enjoy nonetheless.

    Those two items(letters) include:

    A Healthy Zek(a letter to the Zek community, past/present)
    Red Vs. Blue(a proposal to all Everquest(2) raiding guilds)

    Inside these two items all the goals that I and my guild have come together to think up and try to properly and entirely convey within, in the way we envision them are both short term and very long term goals we may, with a little effort be able to achieve, possibly resulting in a very active, thriving Zek server and Everquest Red experience once again.

    The unharnessed/unbridled potential of Everquest PvP is shocking.

    When you get around 20 minutes(CE's recruitment post, and the 2 letters combined is a lengthy read) to sit down and look at something, grab a beer, relax, and enjoy the read!

    One of the biggest problems currently with PvP is player damage versus player character health pools. A damage reduction on all damage types is necessary, see the Everquest Development(Bug Reports) section for a thread regarding this.
    Stymie, Riotgears and Broaken like this.
  2. Niskin Clockwork Arguer

    I actually read those posts from your guildmate a week ago, and I have to say that's an impressive take for a PvP player to have. In previous years I would be in a thread like this saying that PvP in this game was too toxic to ever draw more players than it pushes away, because it was. But simply acknowledging that a PvP server needs players and a healthy community more than it needs the opportunity to gank anybody you see into oblivion, that's progress.

    So instead of my usual rant, I will wish you good luck with this. I'm not personally somebody with the time or patience to play on Zek, but if I did have the time I would at least consider it with the efforts that are taking place now. Obviously the massive damage issues will still be a challenge, but even that has some potential to be addressed in the future if the server comes back to life with an increase in active players.
    Stymie and Sokon like this.
  3. Astral64 Augur

  4. The real Sandaormo Augur

    PVP server would be interesting in a game with a balanced PVP system. EQ is not that. If I have this all wrong, please enlighten me.
  5. Sokon Augur

    I completely agree. But you do have it all wrong as well.

    The problem is the difference between the damage we do to NPCs, the NPC life pools, and the widening gap between that and our Health Pool. Many abilities, particularly basic melee hits, 2 hand hits, pierces, arrow hits etc etc etc do very close the amount of damage to PCs as they do NPCs, but NPCs have WAY more life.

    A flat damage reduction across the board would fix it. In years past people have asked for them to "fix pvp". Fix this, fix that. This spell here, this disc there, one by one by one. That takes a lot of work, and they haven't put in any work in those regards for a long time and perhaps where we are at now, that would be an unmanageable thing to even ask for or attempt.

    A flat damage reduction, of all damage types however, now, that is most certainly what we need.

    Kills have just never so easy as they are now. Warriors can kill an entire group instaneously. I as a monk can in about 3-4 seconds. Rogues can do it in about 2 seconds. Zerkers around 1-2 seconds since they also have a ramp.

    Damage needs to go WAY down, it needs to Go SO FAR DOWN, that, once again, the only abilities in PvP that do 40% of someones life are Harmtouch, Manaburn, Lifeburn etc.

    Right now, there's dots that do 500 k dmg in one tick, single melee hits of about 5 different classes that can do 200-400 k damage in a single hit. It just doesn't make any sense for me to try to write up a thread of about 20-30 different abilities that all need to be nerfed, cause they don't need to be nerfed.

    All damage needs to be nerfed across the board. NOT every ability tweaked individually.

    Just think about how much damage we do now, and how much health mobs have compared to player life pools. It's really not a hard concept to grasp, nor would an appropriate % dmg reduction of all types be to determine or maintain/change slightly each expansion.

    Monks, our damage is till , but no, we don't have any one ability that does over 40%. Depending on someones life pool and lucky crit from a zan fi's whistle proc can do around 150 k damage. Our heron stance only hits for like 20-30 k crit in PvP. But still, the amount of DPS we can do and number of hits in a very short amount of time, it wouldn't be fair to me to ask for nerfs to a bunch of different class OP abilities, because my overall damage in PvP needs to be nerfed as well.

    Very simple solution to a complicated problem ~ a mentor of mine once told me this

    I suggested a damage reduction by a doubling of the spell shield, dot shield, and melee shielding mod 2's in PvP. The only problem I could see with doing somehting like that is with warriors, since they have so much straight minus number damage, they could become virtually unkillable with a doubling of their melee shielding in pvp, but either way, all damage needs to halved, period. Doing that would fix about 90% of the problems on Zek.

    Other than obscene damage, classes in EQ are actually quite balanced for PvP. it's just that damage is so fast no healing of any sorts matters. So, everything looks completely messed up, and that's not the case at all.
    Broaken likes this.
  6. Kravin Journeyman

    Biggest issue with lower damage is, heals. You lower the dmg you would have to lower the heal amount as well. So I suggest that if they were going to fix pvp have a 2nd combat mod. Once in gaged in pvp all heals and dmg automatically get cut which also brings a problem when you are pve and pvp zones in
  7. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    Sokon what you're asking for is, for all intents and purposes, a new game dedicated to PVP.

    It won't happen. It would take ENORMOUS amounts of time to unravel 21 years of PVE tuning. It's simply not worth it.

    I get that you're passionate about EverQuest PVP. The truth of the matter is it has no place in EverQuest. None.
  8. Sokon Augur

    Steer clear of the many Arena's my friend. Thankfully many do provide seats for spectators, at a safe range from harm.
  9. Imvi New Member

  10. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    Not difficult. They are always empty. Always. No danger there, Sokon.
  11. FawnTemplar Augur

    Can we just allow these threads to die from now on? Sokon clearly doesn't care what other people think and is unwilling to listen to reason.
  12. Sokon Augur

    "Can we just allow these threads to die from now on? Sokon clearly doesn't care what other people think and is unwilling to listen to reason." ~ Fawn's now deleted reply.

    Right, cause there is no place for PvP in EQ when there is a PvP server and arenas all over the place on every other server, including an Arena zone.

    And I'm the unreasonable one?

    You don't have any interest in EQ PvP, seeing the thread makes you curious and you want to post something negative, again. But I'm the unreasonable one...

    Bumping a thread while asking to let all Zek threads DIE... But I'm the unreasonable one.

    Try sticking to threads here that match your interests. There's plenty of them.

    You just don't care about anything regarding Zek or PvP in Everquest. And the best word to describe you would be unreasonable.
  13. Warpeace Augur

    Its that time of year again isn't it?

    Once DP announces and releases the new non PvP TLP it will die off and give a few months of quiet. They already stated they have no plans for PvP at this time.

    IF PvP was not horribly broken more people might care. As it is its been broken for years and zero fun in its current form.

    Spamming both the Forums and Discord is not going to win people over. The only thing that can do that would be DP fixing PvP and we have their answer.

    Maybe your being unreasonable you did received a response regarding EQ PvP from a Dev?
    Corwyhn Lionheart and Moege like this.
  14. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    "There came to Egypt a man who did not know."
  15. Cailen Augur

    If there is a place for PvP why is Zek dead? Nobody cares but the 12 people left on Zek and no I didn't even take the time to read your post.
  16. FawnTemplar Augur

    Strange, my reply doesn't look deleted to me. Also, replying 15 mins after the last reply is hardly "bumping."

    PVP is dead, Zek is dead. I'm sorry but that's the reality and it has been the reality for a decade or so. I get that you love PVP but this game is not good for it and it is not going to be good for it. I can imagine how much that sucks. If raiding suddenly died off I would be really sad about it. However, to use my favorite tautology, it is what it is. You're never going get anywhere until you can see reality for what it is. I suggest you continue to enjoy the other things about EQ that keep you around and maybe find your pvp fix somewhere else.
  17. Broaken New Member

    Been back playing for a few months now, quit during VoA time.

    Zek's pretty good at the moment, I'd checked in off and on over the years and it was pretty deaded, much better right now.

    Nice thread!
    Sokon likes this.
  18. Boogey New Member

    I never get why people that are clearly intimidated by the prospect of pvp bother to come on here and attempt to detract from large group of people who enjoy it, yet want to see if finally somewhat balanced. We have been apart of this game as long as you bluebies have.
    Sokon likes this.
  19. Niskin Clockwork Arguer

    Seriously, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for a flat reduction in PvP damage, either as a rule, or as a permanent buff on that server. It's literally the least amount of work, in theory, that the PvP community has ever asked for. If people haven't noticed, the trick around here is to give the devs ideas that are easy to implement. If they can make things better with a minimal amount of work they are more likely to consider it.

    I get it, EQ PvP has been bad for a long time, and the toxicity of the people attracted to PvP is community destroying. For once they get it, more than just a few people, and they are trying to do something about it. Love it or hate it, anything that brings in more players and more subs has the chance to help make things better for all of us.
    Sokon likes this.
  20. FranktheBank Augur


    This is the debate point. It's not a large group.
    Gherig likes this.