Players new to Everquest or RPG are generally completely lost. They often don't even understand the basic gameplay loop. Kill/Quest → Reward → Progress There's usually a lot of standing around wondering what they're supposed to do, because they don't get the gameplay loop. A lot of games nowadays are also cozy games, where the populace within the environment is your friend, not your enemy. The idea of killing everything on sight, does not come naturally to players used to cozy games. Some RPG (including Everquest) try to solve this by frontloading the players with lots of text-based tutorials. But this is a terrible idea. Phil Fish his objections to Japanese games are rooted in his argument that many games, especially Japanese and RPG, are unable to properly explain the gameplay loop with gameplay, and instead resort to frontloading the players with info that just puts them off from playing altogether.
The basics of EQ are self teaching. I just think that many people are more dumb than the generations before them, because of electromagnetic rays that do get emitted from wireless routers, TVs, monitors, and especially from s.m.a.r.t.-phones. Microwaves (4G/5G) are heating up the brain and other parts of the body, and do also cause bad eyes just by the waves and not only by staring onto screens. School and many other factors are also dumbing down the kids.
Hope someone saves that post and quotes it every time this guy says one of his dumb opinions said in that narcissistic overconfident manner so they all remember why no one listens to him.
I totally get that the point of playing MMO is to group, guild, and raid. The reason I am focusing on solo/molo play is because in a game as old as EverQuest, it is to be expected that they will spend a great deal of their time at first playing alone simply because there are so few people leveling up new characters in a greatly top-end heavy game. While it is not uncommon for a new player to get help leveling, I wanted to explore the other half of the spectrum where a new player picks up the game for the first time, and just doesn't end up finding much help from exiting players on the server (not that they are actively avoiding help, but it just isn't there for them for what ever reason).
I agree with what you are saying, and that could be a good idea for my next EverQuest series after I get this one done.
Just to be absolutely clear and blatantly honest, I chose the Mischief server because of the fact that gear drops like candy from a pinata and you can eventually get raid gear with out actually needing to raid. Now before people roast me alive, keep in mind that I am interested in being able to get raid gear with out raiding BECAUSE I want to see how a new player who doesn't have the time in their life to devote to a raid schedule is able to effectively play the game at this point. It has nothing to do with not liking raiding. It's just an experiment to see what if you couldn't raid and still wanted to get the most out of your time in EQ. That all being said, in my opinion, a new player coming to the game for the first time or an old player coming back to start over from scratch after many, many years away, would maybe get the most for their time and effort out of playing on the Mischief server specifically because of it's very unique rule set. I know that won't be a popular opinion, but that's my opinion and why I chose Mischief.
*Update* I took some time off for the holidays. Spent most of it up on my farm learning how to use a tractor for the first time lol. I only almost killed myself and a friend a half dozen times, so it was an overall success and an amazingly fun vacation First off, you can catch the playlist on YouTube here. For my first attempt, I went with the following personas: Shadow Knight Paladin Warrior Beastlord Buying the expansion gives you 3 alternate personas for every character you make on every server. Your character you first create (and already existing characters) are actually an alternate persona as well. There is no such thing as a non-alternate persona character in EverQuest at this point. Therefore, every character you have ever made or ever will make is actually an Alternate Persona of that character slot. The 3 extra alternate persona slots you get for every character therefore gives you a starting max of 4 alternate personas on every character. That's why I went with 3 plate classes and 1 leather wearer. I could have done a cleric or bard for my 4th plate class AP, but I really wanted to play a beastlord, so I went with BL for the 4th AP. I took the SK all the way through the tutorial, and got the initial set of glooming deep gear on him. As noted elsewhere in this thread already, any other AP you take through the tutorial will not be able to get the quests in the tutorial zone. In fact, if you want to even go to the tutorial area after creating your first extra AP (aka your first time hitting the create AP button), you will have to camp out after creating the AP, and then click the go to Tutorial button from the character select screen. You are not able to choose to go to the Tutorial from the create AP screen. You can only choose to go to your starting city when creating an AP. Seeing as you can't get the quests in the tutorial on your APs after doing the tutorial once on your first character made going to the tutorial fairly useless, so I instead leveled up in Crescent Reach. Now, here's the cool part about leveling up in CR. Since it is a starting zone, you can swap between APs anytime you are out of combat. The CR zone goes from level 1 to 15-20 (not sure the top end), so it's pretty fun leveling multiple APs at the same time while in CR. Just get a level or two, and then swap AP to another, and rinse/repeat. It really shows how awesome the Alternate Persona system could be if they end up allowing you to switch APs anywhere later on. Let's hope they do because THAT is fun. The SK/Pal/War APs were able to share all their gear among each other which made swapping between them a breeze. When swapping between any of them and the beast lord, it was a little more annoying only because all the plate gear got thrown all over my bags when I switched to the beast lord and then vice versa when going from the beast lord to any of the plate wearers. Now that being said, the interesting thing to keep in mind is that the first time you create your AP, it will start out with everything equipped that the last AP had on when you create the new AP. Therefore, going from being logged in on my SK AP and creating my beast lord AP meant that I showed up in Crescent Reach with all my plate gear and weapon/shield equipped on my beast lord. That didn't mean I could use it. It just meant that it was all equipped and all the icons were yellow in my inventory window. After I moved all that gear to my bags, the next time I switched to the beast lord, he had on what I had equipped on the beast lord when I logged out or switched personas last. Another interesting thing I found was that every AP you make gets a set of the "new character" items that every new character gets by default. This includes the bag, lantern, etc. But, there's a catch. You don't see it when you create the AP if your inventory slots are full. They are there, but you don't have access to them. The next time you log out of that alternate persona and back in to it, you will get a message telling you that you have items in your overflow. All the items will be there in your /overflow area. After making my 4 APs, I realized this when I happened to notice the overflow message. I did the /overflow command to access it, and there were all my start bags, lanterns, etc. Basically, this means that on a brand new TLP server day one, the first character you make and then create the 3 additional Alternate Personas, you will have 4 free bags waiting for you in overflow. Not a big deal, but just another min/max thing to know about for those who like to race on new TLP servers. The first big change I made to my personal ruleset for the experiment was the no big bag claims rule. Bag space is a major issue with a game like EverQuest, and swapping APs adds to that. To be honest, I just got to the point where I was like nope... not going to deal with this space issue lol. So, I claimed what bags I could as well as grab my big bags that were on an old character on that server. I know this makes the experiment not like a brand new player to the game, but... I'm just going to assume that the new player *ahem* got sick of bag space as well, and bought big bags lol. At some point, I decided that I wanted to add a 5th AP to the group mainly because I just wanted to see how that process works of buying an additional slot. So, I added an enchanter to the mix. Why? I just wanted to be able to play an Enchanter as well. It's a personal preference. So, at this point, I am juggling a set of plate, leather, and silk gear between 5 alternate personas, and my APs range between level 1 and 15ish (I think.. haven't loaded up EQ since vacation, and I have slept a lot since then). I am enjoying the experience so far, but I am clearly way, way, way, wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy far away from the end game at this point.
but YOU will be actively avoiding help, then claiming this is how EQ is. YOU said "judge" and this is false because players DO help new players. I play on all servers and start new characters often and people offer help, offer up free twink gear, plat, power levels, guild tags and groups. This is how MMO works. My goal with the series is to see how successful a brand new player in the world of EverQuest can be if starting out in 2024 "My goal with the series is to see how successful a brand new player in the world of EverQuest can be if starting out in 2024" "How successful" is bullpucks if it's like Netflix producer driven BS. This is more a test to see how hobbled a stubborn newb can make themselves. For views. Faked drama really.
I get your point, but one note about the "For views. Faked drama really" thing you said. My EverQuest content gets a very minimal amount of views. I do the EverQuest content because I enjoy the game. If I did content just for "getting views", I wouldn't be playing EQ. My Lord of The Rings Online content gets the vast majority of my views on both Twitch and YouTube. We're not even talking in the same ballpark when it comes to views for EQ and views for LoTRO on my channels. My EQ content gets hundreds of views and my LoTRO content gets thousands of views. It's not even close. I do EQ content because of my love for the game. Accusing me of trying to create "fake drama" to drum up views for my EQ content is laughable.
I usually do CR undead to 26 so I can grab Ornate fill-in pieces. Regarding bag space, deluxe toolboxes are all of 1pp in PoK so I wouldn't worry about spoiling yourself there. I'll be very interested to check in on how you're doing in the 80s/90s.
Yeah I've been stupid busy with the holidays and now catching up on work after getting back from the holidays, but I am hoping to get some streams in for this series this week.
I'm looking forward to the next TLP to do this kind of stuff. Somewhere I cannot twink! Races/Classes I'm looking at doing will be, Gnome Chanter, Barb Shaman, DE Rogue and a WE Ranger. That should make me TS sufficient. I'm also considering an SK Iksar when we get to Kunark, don't want to make one in classic as not sure how a race change would work.
