Problem with that in WoW once you get a level you can no longer lose it meaning that there is never a need for low level content for a class started at a high level. In EQ you could start them at a high level but players could delevel all the way to level 6 letting them experience the low level content. If they don't have the needed tools to relevel that would cause a problem.
We don't need new classes, it's not too difficult to find current threads here complaining that X or Y class is essentially useless/useful if you have good players/underrated by people who don't know any better. Unfortunately it's usually all 3 Races in EQ are a dogs breakfast. Some are way overrated and others are ignored for being short/ugly/or can't dance....
As a person who has wanted to return to EQ for the past 2 years and used to be a hardcore raider for years and years, it is almost a complete turn off to consider due to how leveling is now. Why the hell do I want to return to a game where I have to wait a month to level up from overseer and HOPE I can find a group who wants to help a person 10 levels below the cap do progression missions to level up in older expansions where theres literally 0 groups or socializing going on. I have zero desire to spend a month grinding when ive done it for years and years, I would be okay grinding the same amount as other players who had to grind the newest 5 levels and playing in the current expansion or 1 behind but yeah, I dont have the kind of time to waste a month playing catchup just to even get to join a guild that MAY let me on raids to start getting dkp but i also probably need to spend 30 hours a week working on gear/augs as well after hitting level cap and collecting AAs to even kill current content.
If you can't find a guild as a Casual Member or like Family Style or something to play with, best thing is probably to join in on a fresh TLP and you should be able to play on it till it catches up to live and ends then be current with whatever is live at that time
why am i going to join a family guild that has maybe 2 people to group with who can actually be in line with helping me get to the point of raiding within 2 months? As a hardcore raider your only desire to come back to EQ is usually to raid again and be in current content. Do you know any hardcore raiders who will enjoy paying money and spending hours of their days for months playing with casuals who probably arent even paying attention half the time or are 14? No, this is a silly suggestion and i get it but we are talking about hardcore raiders who had life stuff they needed to step away from EQ for whatever reasons for and they DO NOT want to spend 2 months of grinding and frustration just to get to the point of enjoyment again. We are adults mostly that is effing stupid. This is a game there needs to be a way for good quality players to level up and it not be a time sink to get to AAs/Gear to raid.
Nah, there’s actually a valid point within that post. Once you fall behind the community, it becomes really difficult and time consuming to catch-up without boxing or Krono. The slog through all that content for extended periods of time, when you just want to raid is off putting for a lot of people. EQ really needs to do better for returning players, which better supports the community.
I returned at level 65 after being a hard core raider. It was so refreshing not to have someone dictating when and where I would be that day for 5 days a week It did not take me month to level up fast. And Overseer was not even around then. Its stupidly simple to level up in the game now, between bonus HA/Hot zones/that AA that gives bonus exp/and tons of other ways. I am not a top player anymore and get distracted easily and run off and do other things and getting to top level was not my main goal but there I am, top level. I think you are putting obstacles in your own way. You sound like an accomplished player who really would have no problem doing this easily. Yet you make it sound like a major undertaking - it would have been if the game were still the same as it was 10 years ago
To an extent. But at some point you just gotta grit your teeth, suck it up, and do what you gotta do if you wanna raid. It's a universal rule that everybody has to deal with. He's being given advice and instead of taking it he just keeps whining because he wants what he wants NOW
Yep, I agree with you. So his best move is to get the level 100 Heroic coming in a few months and level that one up (although he should be able to get past that in the same amount of time)
And that’s going to restrict the flow of people back into the game. Sounds really dumb, when you type it out.
I would not mind them linking a new playable Race to only be created with the new Heroic 100 coming this fall.
yall are missing the point completely..... this isnt about you or how much you value your position in the game do you want quality players to come back or do you want to keep serving your in game ego? because saying "grit your teeth and do what you dont want to and pay for it even if you dont like it" is only appealing to you and other current players, that attitude isnt jiving with anyone else who is trying to come back to the game who may have once been an end game raider for a decade or more. So chill with the holier than though "I just work harder than you" attitude, I am a professional bodybuilder in real life so I dont need to hear about it.I want to play this game in my offtime and not have to grit my life away, and I have the knowledge and skill to contribute to a raiding schedule and the years go gaming in EQ end game to know how to operate mechanics of a full raid with the demands of paying 100% attention and knowing your class/build for hours nightly. Now to address how you are missing the point, no one gives 2 chits about leveling to 110, its 110 to 120 and the AAs that is the real grind so lets not kid ourselves with "just get a 100 character bro" come the ef on
You're asking for too much at this point. COVID. Let's just get raid lag/server entirely fixed, and 64-bit optimized, and forget the expansion.
I was always under the impression the game has been on life support for years and is only kept alive for future use of the IP
New classes lol, welcome to the forums. New player models? Low, but not quite zero chance. Just takes that one right person in EQ management with the vision to see it as an investment in more options for future appearance content that can pay for itself (hero's forge 3.0 hello?!?!) and the players might have to accept our characters reduced to 4 sets of m/f skeletal animations, staggered over a few expansions. Anyway, on to the meat. For levels 1-75 the existing game is mostly fine and defiant armor is awesome. Only real quirk here is how mercs totally outclass players in tanking and dps. Generally, these levels go by fast enough and are entirely trivialized with damage shield powerleveling so we can somewhat hand-wave the issues here. 75-90 is where the game starts to become a grind. With the defiant armor line ending at 70, solo players lose the ability to gear themselves. There is some mitigation here with max level DS buffs and cheap lvl 80 gear but that isn't always available to everyone. Still, there is enough easy content for players to two-box themselves through this range with pure willpower/commitment. 90-100 the joke becomes real. Dailies, overseer and whatever shred of exp you can get to claw your way out of this range. Your only chance of gearing yourself is to sell Krono and buy/beg scraps from people working their Hunter achievements. You see a lot of players in this range with gear spanning 20 levels (or even empty slots/lvl 1 gear) that leaves them completely useless against exp-giving mobs. Yet, chasing BiS gear is a waste of time because alts/boxes just skate through this range with one good PL grind session with almost about any max level character. So much for grouping opportunities. 100+ returning players are pure charity cases unless they 6-box. Reasonable experience from kills has been intentionally replaced with quest-based content that expects a full group of already-geared players in order to achieve. The root cause here is that players who are not already max level and fully geared have not been considered whatsoever by the EQ devs in over a decade. This is squarely on EQ's management, because devs are focused entirely on moving the endgame carrot for max level players, with brief distractions permitted only for TLP stuff (money maker!) or seasonal content (marketing!). The result of this is that guy who sits outside the door to the small bank on EVERY server, spamming general/newplayers about his "extremely fast" services. What's missing in EQ is a 75-120 soloable exp AND gearing path for returning players, and unfortunately the closest thing we have to that is TLP. I've mentioned in other threads that we could use tribute merchant that sells raid gear (Agents of Change perhaps?) but that only addresses the gear side. Occasionally? Folks get lucky. They join a guild and make friends only to get PL'd beyond the abilities of their gear, maybe even to max level in a couple of days. But what use is a character with a handful of drops and a player with no clue how to play it? At that point why are they even playing the game? Finally, we could use class mechanics reviewed at lower levels. Rogues, for example received a massive boon when poisons were revamped. DoT system overhaul created the next wave of winners and losers. And yet classes like Warrior are STILL an absolute chore to play with almost no value prior to lvl 100'ish. It would be huge to see a dev-playerbase conversation started about what quality-of-life stuff from later expansions could be trickled down to lower level characters.
stopped reading right there. https://everquest.allakhazam.com/story.html?story=33987 CoTF is the expansion they added heroic chars with. Well a patch after it launched anyways.
Add "Squiring" that lets players get boosted to higher levels when grouping with high level characters. This will help them avoid the player deserts that exist more than 5 levels under max level Create a hot zone for each expansion that rotates daily. Provide substantial rewards for daily quests that are attractive to most of the playerbase. Ex: for later expansions, group currency for quests like "kill three named". This will consolidate the playerbase into fewer zones to increase grouping opportunities while rotating them through additional zones to help players kill the named they need and finish quests, especially in more difficult zones
