And important to mention that the progression is not needed to unlock zone access. People can always gear up in T2 zones and go back to progression later.
In my experience, people who generally have a problem finding a group really are the problem themselves. More often than not, those who claim to look for a group are guilty of cherry picking or are simply looking for free rides through ninja AFKing; henceforth developing a reputation where people won't want to group with you.
Just to give another perspective. I box a mage and cleric. I have TBM grp gear, my mage has EM18 focus. I have 14k AAs. So far in Lceanium i have had no issues doing the quests. I am able to take on 1-2 trash mobs with complete ease. I can handle 4 trash mobs with popping some AAs and healing a lot. I have killed 3 named mobs, and while they were tough and i used burn and defensive AAs, at no point did i think i was going to lose the fight. If i was gonna throw out some random number id say its about 25% harder than TBM stuff. It seems just fine to me.
Was in Lceanium earlier, and a strange thing happened - various people on the "spider repellant" step all started spontaneously helping each other complete the step - at one point there were at least three different groups of people, clicking for the update one at a time, then everybody joined in on crowd control and killing the adds whilst the person triggering got their two frenzied mobs killed. Not sure exactly how many people we got through that step, but it was a real throwback to the EQ that I remember used to exist. If that's a consequence of the relative power of the mobs, then I also agree that the mobs there are tuned perfectly - it has been far too long since I've witnessed that sort of behaviour...
You don't have to, but I've played the game for 15 years and I have a pretty good grasp of things by now and I still follow development regularly. Basic mechanics and ideas such as, I don't know, creating a /friend list and sending a /tell and /invite playername have not changed lately.
It was a long time ago and I wasn't great at it but I used to run what may have been the largest guild in EQ (by active player numbers). Nobody needs to do this, but being social and forming a network of some sort is still the basis of How To Get A Group in any MMO. If someone is having trouble finding up to 5 other people on a server with let's say 1500 players to go experience content with, either: 1. They're a jerk or annoying and everyone has tuned out their requests 2. They're new or returning to the game and have not had time to form any sort of network 3. They're a very casual player that only logs in maybe once a month and are unknown on the server 4. They've always solo'd or boxed or had their character played by a Chinese night crew 5. They're more than averagely terrified of sending a /tell to a stranger 6. Too picky in zone/camp destination, group makeup, or player levels or guild tags My experience lately was mostly boxing and part-time raiding due to an irregular schedule and health issues. I didn't want to commit to anything for an extended period. If someone wanted to join my group to replace a merc or a box, then great, but I was usually content to do content from a couple of expansions back. If populations are lower on normal servers now because of the TLP servers, that's fine too, but if you don't box and can't find at least 2 other people and fill out a group with mercs and set out to do *something* outside of the Guild Lobby, you're probably doing something wrong. Having a passive attitude accounts for 90% of those issues. Relying on the /general channel and simply announcing that you are a 93 rogue LFG is usually not going to get the same response as saying that *you* are forming a group and looking for more. The /who all 101 105 command is not used often enough by people making these complaints. I don't know if it's due to ignorance, laziness or a snobby attitude, but combined with /tell it's one of the most useful commands in all of EQ.
This. EQ of old is popping up again, people interacting, spontaneous helping each other. EQ players are not rarely a select bunch, this expansion reminds us of that.
Unfortunately the other side of old eq pops its head around a new expansion release too. Spending several hours in the new FM I get to here a few "they stole our named" rants going on in ooc. *sighs*
As far as I can tell, this expansion is very UF-esque in how it feels/plays. I have absolutely always been more a solo/box player than anything else, and always preferred a challenge. So having to actually take giants seriously again, that right there is just awesome. If anything, can slide the difficulty slider up a bit without mention in the patch notes . I won't complain.
Not sure what server you were on, but I saw the same thing today on BB. Went there to help one person out, and others were there and all worked together. Was pretty cool (even if my groups dps was low so they all got the loot)
Where do you define the line of high end raid guilds? Less than high end raid guilds and even casual/random teams have had close to a year to gear up. And the new group gear looks pretty impressive. I know it sounds bad, but sorry. We can't help if you play bad.
if thats how you see it, maybe they can tune it to chutes and ladders for all? I see PLENTY of groupers ie non raiders doing just fine, man so over that blanket statement.
The Drachnid Quest (contacting the leadership) is a good example how 2-group-work can be. Had last night a group of 7 people going through and another group with a bunch of fellows attended. One group had raid configuration the other boxer group with mercs. We could have put all together but with mercs and this open zone one group controlled the one doorway while the other controlled the second. And everbody fired step by step their repellant till everybody got 2 upgrades. If one died the next one was present with another repellant or switched to the group / raid-group who got the most dps and the kill. It was a bit chaotic but it worked. If more people were there we could have done it faster but it was quite fun and secure to do it. And everybody was quite happy to come over that difficult entry quest. I know, SKs solo it
