Congratulations... I think? I guess? Maybe?

Five guilds yesterday defeated both SoF new raids. One guild defeated one of the two. Guild I am in, and maybe several others, potentially can have one done tonight.

I am not sure what to think. Is this a good thing? Two more events to farm, around nine times to help guild mains their Shawl 3.0 until new content, some upgrades (albeit small) for mains?

Or is this a bad thing? People already buying all SoF AA via banked tasks, people taking 1-3 hours from start to finish on Shawl 3.0, raids already on farm, boredom soon to follow? With no communication as to when T4 will come out, some who already have their SoF AA bought and shawl completed may lack desire to log in while waiting.

I wonder how long EQ developers were hoping this content would last. Or are they not concerned with the ultra high end raider who banked AA tasks, finished Shawl 3.0 in two hours, and have their titles (if they are given) to the two raids last night? That they feel if you rush through it that fast, so be it?

I am already half way done with Chelsith mercenary and partisan. I could very well be done with Chelsith and Shadows by next Wednesday at the latest. One week for me, one day for quite a few. Is this right?

Congratulations to the five guilds for defeating both raids last night. Hopefully T4 comes sooner than later...

Thanks! On a positive note, we will not have to be disappointed with a "retune" on these events. They are already set to fail level of raids. The events are a cool concept and kinda fun. However the over all difficulty of them is... Yea. 2ndly the raid shawl drop is bugged we think since as of 12 est last night only one guild a actually got them. Maybe one of the devs have more insight on that.

How many loot did those event drop, and how many shawl bits?

Congratulations, to the five guilds that had more people take off work than anyone else. Be proud of your accomplishment!

I think we need to look at what is fun. I'm sure it's different for me than most players, and I'd be surprised if most people felt the same way.

I learned back in PoP leading a raid guild that "I want to see new content." is generally a misperception of one's real motivations when there was a new event that none of us had seen, but dropped sub-par loot, very few actually showed up to explore it.

Some say they want to "Help others." but rarely/never take the opportunity to do so when it arises. Example being those who don't show up to raids that don't drop upgrades for themselves, or ditch a raid (where allowed) to assist a new/returning player.

"I want to do end-game content." rarely includes an understanding, much less a willingness to be defeated ad nauseam learning how to defeat those encounters.

It seems that most players really want to progress their character(s). If that involves a 9-hour static camp, slaughtering a bazillion green cons, or whatever, that's what people actually do when presented with the opportunity. They'll whine about "having to do it," but that won't stop them from skipping "fun stuff."

I imagine all they really need to keep such players subscribed is a salt lick event that didn't provide raid currency, only dropped a single item, and had a vast loot table.

I think it's more important that the events are fun than to be difficult/impossible, though I admit that in a perfect MMO, there is always something yet to be accomplished.

We started at our normal time. Ended about 10 minutes past our normal raiding times.. Think we were right behind #4

The T3 raids being beat is definitely a good thing. If Realm of Insanity in particular and top end guilds in general didn't drop these quickly already having a bunch of T2 raid gear and loaded rosters both in terms of top to bottom quality of play and class distribution there are problems with the event that would need to be fixed.

In terms of when raids are beat there is no right or wrong answer. Last expansion content was staggered out over 6 weeks by the minimum possible flagging time. This expansion the first 12 progression raids and NToV had no flagging/keying mechanism to slow things down but the 13th and 14th progression raids didn't come out for 4.5 months.

Either way top end guilds will spend as much or as little time farming as they want. They will do as many raids as they want based on how much time they choose to spend trying to get more Burden of Truth, alt gear, raid achievements and/or fun that spending more time raiding can provide.

The 3 months D'Pikeys already spent with all raids currently in the game beaten could have been split up differently, with 1 month of all T1 raids beaten but still need to flag/key for T2 raids, 1 month of pre-Xorbb T2 raids beaten but still need to flag/key for Xorbb and 1 month of all raids beaten waiting for T3 to come out.

Or it could have been ~2.5 months since they beat all the T3 raids and are waiting on T4. Or it could have been ~2 months since they beat all the T4 raids and are waiting on next expansion.

It would all end up the same. Most of the 52 weeks high end guilds will have all un-broken raids they can access beaten. You can limit access with flags, keys or staggered releases, you can break content so they can have the "fun" of 54 Commodus attempts but you can't possibly make enough content or make content hard enough to let them work on un-broken raids they haven't beaten for all that many weeks of the year.

Going lower you can create content that is hard enough that guilds will have a raid they haven't beaten most or all of an expansion. Only 22 guilds won all Alaris raids before the new expansion. Only 23 guilds had all T2 raids beat before T3 came out and only 15 of those had them all beat for much more than about a month.

With the Xorbb1 nerf and only 2 more raids it's likely that more than 23 guilds will have beaten all the raids before the next ones come out. It's impossible to answer if that's a good or bad thing. Last year Realm of Insanity beat Alaris 10.5 months before RoF release and only had ToFS as a new raid during that stretch. How many players were on both the first Sep5 and Xorbb3 wins?

Triton 8 months, D'Pikeys 6 months, Silent Resurgence 3 months and Darkwind 1 day. Different guilds and same question. Then you would need to compare it to how many players are on both the Xorbb3 and next expansion initial content release last raid first wins.

Dealing with ~1000 players and the many different reasons someone might choose to stop playing a video game or simply miss a specific raid you wouldn't even be able to draw any clear conclusions even if you had all that data but that's what you're essentially asking. Does a staggered release improve player retention?

We started raids at 8pm est we were done by 9:45...

Farmers plant fields to feeds the masses, not the locusts.

Really it is amazing this thread even exists when it is fairly obvious to most everyone but those at the ultra high end that EQ is being designed to appeal to a broader range of players than just them. If the game were designed just to give an extreme challenge to the high end, than tons of developer effort would have been expended to be enjoyed by a very small number of players. Doubtful that the dev team reports in to work to intentionally create a product that will by design allow very few to enjoy it. Sure, those elite will come back for more next release but the rest who just paid money to bash their head against a wall will take their business elsewhere. The difference between skill sets of those at the ultra high end, "Everquest is my profession" raiders versus those who log in in a more casual manner is way, WAY too vast to avoid having some issues with those on the extreme ends of the player demographic. So sorry, ultra top end raider, you fall outside the target audience this time. You now have 5-6 days in which to do something else with your life since you can kill all the raids down in 1-2 days. Just don't squander that time coming here to complain about how the devs have snubbed you by making raids so darned easy. Especially raids you did not even have to PAY FOR.

If only there were 2 days worth of content to play... :/ I'd might actually play eq more! All I really see on this thread is people who don't like raiders. Hey good for you. Stick to your non raiding like play style an go post on your own threads. You have your content this is ours and its lacking. We do pay for the game and we do pay for the content why shouldn't we be allowed to have a tougher challenge. I'd rather it be harder now and changed 6 months down the road.

militant casuals... ive seen it all.

My 1 beef with RoF that is now fully evident with SoF and will reach ridiculous proportions when the next expansion is released is the XP BANKING. Save 1 clicky from each collection and you can buy an expansion worth of AA instantly. Save 10 Partisan rewards, plus stop a few Mercenary ones 1 hail from completion, and you are full 2 levels up the moment the next level increase happens. This looks like a terrible design decision to me.

Have 6/12/18 people sit in the GGH and zone in for the currency after the win. Considering how many high end raiders complain about boredom it shouldn't be hard to get volunteers who would happily not farm the raid for the nth time.

There is your challenge. There is your more time spent raiding as it can even lead to split raiding with some playing alts and participating in both raids.

Of course you would have to prioritize challenge over getting gear as fast as possible so you'll probably just keep doing it with 54 in zone and complaining it's too easy.

The achievement spam was a little off the wall, almost had to turn it off. Though I am guilty of banking the collect pieces for the past 3 months myself

You keep bringing up gear yet I'm wearing 8 pieces of ntov. Huh... True story I enjoy raiding and/or killing raid content. There was a time a few years back I would raid 5 days a week (you needed to) then after raids go an do fc and ag aug runs. Run some por events and surface mobs for augs as well. When those were down we would clear demi anguish tacvi and pop just for the hell of it with as few people as possible. Raiding is a blast! Since uf the content took a hit. Now even to farm "top gear" we don't have full raids... We have done the split raiding. You still only get 2 days tops with ntov and t1. Since we are just so "op" part and merc tasks only take us a short time complete. I guess it's what I get for being an over achiever. Ill do a lot less then what my skills and character are capable of and see if maybe the game will be less boring.

Think about being able to run 10 miles (this could be hard for many of you) then you start running with some one who can only run 1 mile... Because its to hard for them.

Norm from cheers made a great point
"A pack of buffalo will only run as fast as its slowest member, once the predators pick off the slower buffalo the innate speed of the pack will increase" the rest of the quote doesn't pertain to playing eq more towards drinking.

So in that perspective, bad players are slowing the progress of the game.
My elitist comment of the day. Thank you for your time.

What's really funny about all this, is not so much we all beat the raids last night. It's the fact they were steam rolled. New raids yet fewer deaths then xorbb 1 last week for the whole night. I don't think a single gnome died last night...

This isn't free content.

The gear issue is that I could understand people being upset if doing T3 raids with 42 meant 12 people didn't get 1/6th of a BP from the wins. If the raids are indeed steamrolled easy I don't see how it could be a problem finding 12 people who would just as soon sit in GGH for the duration of the raid so 42 other people can be challenged.

If you only have time to run 1 mile instead of 10 put on some ankle weights.

They don't have to go as fast as the slowest member, to this day 62 guilds have reported clearing T2 Alaris to EGL, 48 cleared T3, 36 cleared all but Sep5 and 25 cleared the expansion. They have the option to make a raid that nearly a third of the guilds who reached it would rather just raid RoF than beat it for the sake of finishing the expansion.

But to make a raid that hard/long/whatever it really shouldn't block access to other raids so that really hard raid would have to be Vulak, Velishan or the final raid in T4. Oh wait, Velishan is really hard, just grow a pair and dispel him. Vulak can challenge you too, kill fewer and fewer of the 12 trash dragons before engaging Vulak. Final raid in T4 might be really hard but won't know that for awhile.

I'm not at all talking about what Devs should do, I'm not at all talking about what high end guilds should do. I'm just pointing out that if you think challenge = fun then there are ways to challenge yourself on RoF raids.

So in that perspective, all players are responsible for their own fun.

Completing the Partisan and the Hero group tasks, then doing the raids all within 1 hour 45 mins is truly a feat and is absolutely amazing.

Finding 3-6 people who can play during the day is not really an amazing achievement. In case you are confused, it takes ONE person completing the progression quests to request the raid for everybody. If nobody in your guild could be bothered with that - it's sad but still not a reason to be bitter and jealous.