So I have gone back and forth a lot between EQ and WoW over the years. I noticed one thing that has kept WoW really going and one thing EQ hasn't quite fully tapped into yet is making Open raiding bigger than guild raiding. On WoW you have tons of open raids all times of the day, but on EQ its a big rarity except on progression servers its become more popular to do GDKP As many people who box and play alts now I am just surprised more people arent running GDKP open pug raids or that EQ Devs have not wanted to shift raiding in this direction so that its fun for guilds but allows for more access to all players. This seems like it would not only stimulate the krono market but would offer good players a way to play for free for a very long time on multiple accounts. This also allows those who like to raid multiple times a week and have 2 or more characters on different lockout rotations to get to raid multiple times with different goals. Just something I have observed that really draws in and holds returning players to WoW vs EQ
I think there are some design issues. Many EQ raids can be failed by a single clueless or inattentive raider. It can be difficult even getting the raiders to correctly install the crutch programs like GINA and Teamspeak or Discord. My hat is off to any EQ pickup raiding force doing anything even close to current content. It probably would be a good thing if some easy tank & spank raids were included in more expansions that facilitated open force raiding. It would be even better if failing some mechanic penalized only the offender and caused them to be permanently punted from the current raid instance and DT'd.
I know Xegony, Cazic, and Luclin all do Open/alliance raids, I think Bristlebane does as well. this isn't something EQ has control over, it's up to players on each server to coordinate these things.
Open raiding was pretty big in PoP in T1 raids but flagging prevented a lot of progression. Now the raids are not locked but as Metanis said, the raids are often too complicated or too difficult for a pickup raid force to just zerg. It might be worth the Devs exploring an option to add an extra raid or 2 that unlocks at the end of the expansion cycle that is simple in complexity and doesn't hit / AE as hard as the other events. It could be balanced by only dropping 1 ore with any 3 random items from the expansion raid vendor and 3 random raid spells. This would really help the idea of open raids and smaller guilds. The counter argument of Dev time doesn't need to be legitimate because it could be as easy as making a named wyvren in western wastes as a raid instance. I'm also a big believer in making an easy mode for raids. My suggestion for that was an aura in the song window that reduces incoming damage by 25% and outgoing damage and healing by 25%. Tune the aura to tune the event and put a big penalty on the chest. Or just design events with 2 chests, 1 for easy mode and a bonus chest on hard mode. In any case the OP does have some points and I do there there are some very easy solutions that are worth the compromise, especially if unavailable until the last 3 months of the expansion cycle, but really theres no reason not to have an easy mode the entire cycle with very little loot that people can use to practice event mechanics on or for doing as an open raid.
Why make bother to make fake raids? I think most would rather have more real raids to challenge themselves with. I personally would rather see more raid content of the current type as well as more group content before they worry about open raiding.
It's not a fake raid. It's an easier raid to expand access to a larger amount of the player base. Open raiding is a narrow focus that you aren't looking past. Many smaller guilds make collaborative efforts to raid together. They have the same difficulties as open raids. Lower playtime players can't get enough armor and collaboration to be in larger guilds to beat that current events. They simply can't beat current content. Making a single raid per expansion that has no script and is simply a high hitpoint mob with a AE in an existing zone that uses current loot tables would probably not take very much developer time. Also if expansions started using a easy/hard mode, which is identical in every way except an aura and 1vs2 chests would likely not take very much developer time after it's initial design. The easy/hard format would just be copy/paste from the previous expansion format. The real question is, If you can take a large amount of content and a small amount of developer time to expand that existing content to a larger amount of people, why object? If you use a small amount of dev time to add a single simple event what adds a small amount of content accessible to everyone, why not? I'm not talking about months of work. I'm suggesting a very minimalistic approach to increase access to existing content. I understand dev time is valuable but I think that expanding access is worth the effort. EverQuest has lost a lot of players, subs and expansion sales of players who get less content per dollar spent. Simpler is not fake. Simpler is balanced. Less difficult, less reward, possibly longer lockout. More access, more players.
We had a guild alliance on Terris-Thule way back. The Guild Coalition Project we called it. Lots of small guilds, casual and family guilds, and a couple small guilds that were good at raiding. We had a message board, and we would coordinate raids. Made a lot of friends across many guilds, and had a lot of fun.
AB used to have a very active Pick-up raiding scene circa 2002-2006, the notorious "Nightcrawlers", and a few others, several Raid Leaders of existing and collapsed guilds ran Velious & Luclin Raids fairly often too. Back in the days of OoW 2005 ish Eaidaen (sp) and a few others ran a ton of PoP progression and Plane of Time raids, I even lead a bunch of those myself, those were really popular, usually could fill them twice over even after kicking extra boxes out (alts being played were fine) and thanks to the size of the raid being 72 players it was usually the case that I could find a couple of people each week to help on things like organising the other 2 trials at the start and a healer and tank to cover healing and tank rotations and a few Master Looters to sort that while I mostly just sorted groups & called for buffs, event starts, gave basic strats etc. On AB a few experienced raidleaders have for the past few weeks been running some organised pick up / open raids combining members of the main raiding guilds &/or their alts plus interested folks in general chat tackling content ranging from RoF to ToV. The earlier raids are much more conducive to pick up raiding, the tank & spank nature of them makes them easy to not have 1 person screw things up. But I'm not a fan of cross server raiding. I am a fan of cross server grouping & (scenario) PvP matches though. I think servers "should" try to organise some open raids as this is simply a route to keeping the raid guilds populated with players and also provides a much better cooperative community spirit on the server but the logistics of running those as cross server "pick up raids" is either the domain of some very elite super calm raid leader or an absolute masochist. I would be very interested if some system could allow players to play cross server on raids that were pre-arranged etc. For example a pre-determined "DZ booking" system that could be given a time slot and date slot ID number and then you can have people you know join in across servers to do that raid no matter their current server. Cross-server alliances could then be organized between small guilds on multiple servers rather than being restricted to just the actual server they are on where maybe alliances &/or open raiding isn't available to them.
Mythic+ is what EQ is missing. Open raids is a community thing (though an LFR feature would be nice if there was a playerbase for that). What do you do when you're full BIS in WoW? Mythic+ & PVP or alt raids. Many people already do alt raids in EQ, but at this point in the expansion, it's hard to find a group to run missions with. Mythic+ would keep competition fierce throughout the whole expansion, rather than the first 30 minutes of a raid tier release. M+ leaderboards would be necessary though.
A few guilds do not allow raiders to raid current content in open raids and with T3 group gear being very close to current raid gear there isn't a lot of interest to run last years raids. Not to mention every raider and their alts ended last years raids fully raid geared. Raiding older expansions for clickies gets a lot more interest.
Mythic+ is such boring content though. None of the affixes are interesting and it homogenizes all the dungeons around the same mechanics. The random key system is terrible too.
Freelance on Cazic-Thule server has beaten all raids at least once, including Aary & Vulak in Claws of Veeshan. That also includes Mearatas. Cazic Joint raids beat all TOV raids, and all COV except for Vulak.
The problem with a lot of the "Open raids" of the past were just guilds without guild tags and raids still were organized on a weekly basis. One of the advantages to having a system where people can run a PUG/Open raid is doing it just a day or hours in advance and putting together a force and taking it out. The way they do it is have a core of solid raiders, usually alts/boxes, they then have say 20 open spots for GDKP. You can also advertise for qualified people who are geared/skilled enough to join and get paid a split of the GDKP if you need numbers/better players. A lot of GDKP raids im sure could easily yield a krono or two to everyone in the split. It would take the desire and effort on the players part as well as the Devs to scale raiding in a way to make it more possible for a mostly decently geared raid force with good strategies take on raid targets with a full raid as long as everyone is max level, max useful AAs and close to current group/previous raid gear. It just seems like an overall win, win, win to me for the general players, raiders, and EQ team. The only complaint I really see is hardcore raiders being upset casuals could get raid gear, but I mean come on EQ is 22 years old, is it really necessary to have that much of an elitist attitude anymore? You can still benefit from this by getting easy krono/alt raid gear/enjoy raiding on another toon.
It’s a system of creating of infinite scaling dungeons for example Mythic 0 is used as the base. Mythic 10 has mobs with more health and damage. Additionally, there are difficulty modifiers applied such as Tyrannical adds more health to boss mobs, teeming adds more trash mobs, etc. The goal is to complete the dungeon within in the set timer. You have to clear a set % of trash and all the boss mobs. It creates a hostile environment with excessive burden on the healers and tanks. Failure to complete the dungeon in time downgrades the key being used, which essentially wastes someone’s progression. All of this creates a massively unfriendly environment and promotes excessive gate keeping. Your progress is tracked via a score and let’s people judge your ability. While, not entirely accurate because people spend $$$ to buy carries to raise their score. It’s not a very good or fun system and gets very boring.
