Mischief - State of Epic 1.5/2.0 Camps (Bard Epic Dire Animals, Warrior EW 2.0 Step & Others)

That doesn't even make sense. I don't even play on Mischief and you're accusing me of being a warper on...Mischief? Lulz

I would tell you what you sound like, but it would get me a 7 day suspension from the forums.

All contested content is toxic cancer. It's why picks exist, and even they are insufficient to stop it.

It's still absurd how difficult some 1.0s are to complete in-era, let alone 1.5s and 2.0s. EQ would be a better game if epics had more parity across the board in terms of difficulty, and didn't rely on the community screwing eachother over to progress.

Pretty much the same for us. Get 20-30 people together spur of the moment, ask who is ready for what, port and run around and knock out 10-15 epic fights in a few hours with almost no one's event not up.

If something isn't up, check it later and half the time its up later in the run.

I'm waiting to see what the attrition is after X months of level 70 as time goes on, but quite enjoying the state of Thornblade, particularly when I read threads like this about how Mischief is like.

Bro don't say that. You're giving them incentive to not change it.

Should they all be Zerker easy? Who would constantly readjust past, current and future changes when a part of the player base thinks it's too hard?

Epics are desired by many and even some are not equal in terms of longevity or power boost to a character.

So many considerations may prove this difficult. DB policies arguably create a culture that results in some of your listed frustrations. Also the player base has changed since original EQ.

IIRC the SK epic was changed when it showed only a handful of SKs could even feasibly get it completed prior to the next expansion release.

Let's fix larger gameplay issue like monk track or convincing the player base to not buy epic drops and farm them all for themselves or even to be more concerned about the social aspect of the game verse loot. However, your player base has many types including some box crews that can count on themselves to show up for an epic kill rather than relying on the social aspect of getting people to help.

Other epics have arduous taks to complete solo that have extremely rare drop rates or even buggy events that fail often.

Some people/guilds intentionally deceive others asking assistance to spawn picks to get another epic mob; having 5 of 6 group members (or CoH mage) camped out at location while waiting on 1 online group member to pick over to the new instance upon spawn, thus beating any raid running there.

Others show up at time of respawn and the larger dps force wins, no matter how much you wanted it or long someone waited.

Twenty four hour timer for a mob seems long but that still better than a 1% drop rate on epic components ... to some.

I'm sure this conversation happens with the development team and we are part of it now ...

Good luck getting your epic but know it seems the toxicity people complain about is not going to be solved by small adjustments to quests, people seem resourceful to overcome some of these roadblocks.

The "toxicity people complain about" is very much a product of the out dated quest mechanics and steps described in the original post. Unlike other epic steps that can be completed with reasonably sized pick forcing attempts (20-40), the steps above require full-scale raid forces (60) to even attempt a pick spawn (guilds are often stumbling over each others toes in EW), no picks are available whatsoever, or are not positioned for DPS racing due to the loss of turn-in items. None of the mobs mentioned in the OP require anything close to a full-scale raid force to kill and are trivial encounters that could be completed with only 4-6 raid geared level 70 characters.

As someone who has completed one of the 2.0s and helped numerous friends complete them via pick forcing and sweaty DPS racing, I still believe the antiquated mechanics and quest steps above should be examined, refined, and would /dramatically/ improve the quality of Omens and help the overwhelming majority of players enjoy the game (and eliminate a great deal of the toxicity and time-wasting steps of the epics).

We've seen DBG make similar changes to Epic 1.0 quests that the community has embraced and greatly enjoyed. Hopefully, the Dev Team will take a look at these steps and implement improvements.

If people don't want to wait for the devs to fix this the obvious solution is go to Thornblade. I'm biased here but after reading all the opinions and stuff I can tell you it's a great environment and welcome you all . Our guild has no problem accomplishing what we want in-era for epics and it would only benefit everyone to see a bit more liveliness on Thornblade(economy, lfg, etc.) and you wouldn't get the toxicity.

As of now, there's literally no krono farmers, (anecdotally) very little toxicity, and if you have a guild you won't have a problem finding people to play with.

Decisive Glyphers is lookin for some priests and caster damage if you decide to transfer over

For the love of all that is holy fix Bleak Fungus drops

We have plenty of Karens here already, thanks.

Great post, would like to see these changes considered for TLP!

One issue that I KNOW a lot of monks have run into is Wygrish in Siren's Grotto for the 1.5. I personally had 4 times in as many days where he was about to spawn, I was at the camp alone, and minutes before or literally seconds before he spawned, a fully automated 6 box crew rolled up and took him out. One of the box crews didn't even have a monk, and he just straight up said, "I'm here to KS you so you don't get your epic". Similar stories from many monks I've heard from.

Just came here to throw my support in for easing Epic encounters that cause huge bottlenecks and toxicity.

I'm new to this part of Everquest so I don't know all the big culprits yet, but wanted to let people know that you need to tell DBG the exact encounter that needs adjustments like in the OP, as they are not going to simply look through every Epic quest and determine on their own what needs adjustments. If your encounter hasn't been brought up here, you need to say something. Complaints and documentation are the way to go - if you've had a bad experience with an Epic encounter, be sure to post about it here.

This game is ancient and is in need of a lot of adjustments to older content, so thanks to anyone that helps make that happen, both players and devs.

Also coming to show my support for changing these encounters. There is zero reason to have bottlenecks that completely block an entire class from even attempting to finish their epic.
These 3 in particular need to be addressed more so than any other encounter, with Warrior being at the top. It's ridiculous to have a mob on a 24hr respawn timer that requires 50+ people to spawn multiple picks, just to lose the encounter to folks that use enhanced abilities to get to the location.

Let's face it, we aren't teenagers playing this game anymore. We are all adults with adult-things to do. We can not spend 24hours straight at an attempt. Please with all do respect, consider changing these events to be more in-line with other epic encounters. Waiting 23 hours of your day for the chance of a spawn is not an awesome epic win feeling, it's an awful epic fail feeling.

These open world bottlenecks are out of control. Why not just give the ability to create a DZ to alleviate these issues.

Outside of the OP's proposal I think everything for epics needs to be no drop. I decided to go to FG to do my box shaman's epic, outside of there being a couple shaman waiting to farm a drop (x2) off an uncommon mob there is always a box army murdering the whole area. They wont respond to any tells or hails from anyone and they stay there for hours and hours. I did a quick check on the baz and its the same couple of traders trying to are sell it for 250-400k each. One of our shaman that has finished his epic pre farmed it in GoD, and another one ended up buying it because they sat their waiting for hours every day and couldn't get in

you people on MIscheif have been spoiled with nerfs from the first minute the server was opened. Im not surprised to see this post. God forbid you have to actually work for something, and not have it handed to you.

Difference between working for something and in some cases, having box armies perma camping the non no drop stuff so people can't progress without paying some God awful amount, or needing a raid Force to spawn a pick to kill a mob that can be soloed.

Please Fix Devs!

Great write up. Devs?