Gates of Discord AoC Testing Thread

AoS will 100% block the entire server and you. This list happens and 1 guild is clearing Tacvi in era. All these guilds that dont batphone and havent raced in years will get completely trampled. Its just a fact.

That's not what happened on Fippy, despite a TL that was every bit as motivated to make it happen.

It would not happen on Phinny either. OGC, EOE, and a few others will be much more motivated to get 1 Tacvi key than AoS will be to block them from the 10th or 15th or 20th Zun kill.

Ultimately, when only one guild wants to stomp everyone else's progression, and the other 24 want to progress, diplomacy will win the day.

While AoS will certainly go for every open world Zun'Muram I don't think our objective is to block everyone from Tacvi. I mean, we gave away hundreds of Trak teeth in Kunark to basically anyone that asked, Elemental God flags, Emp Rifts etc, and it's not like you can't request a Tacvi instance for another guild (they just have to be able to fully clear it that day). Blocking people from Tacvi doesn't actually gain us anything since there is no open world version of the zone.

That said I fully expect this will be remedied and Progression targets required to gain access to Tacvi will be instanced so all guilds can progress without the need to race open world.

If possible I'd like to not derail this into an anti-AOS thread. I get it if you don't like us but please don't get this thread locked or distract devs from issues that affect every raiding guild.

Here's a head start. I believe this is every event in Gates of Discord that could potentially meet your criteria, the ones I'm not certain meet your requirements I've pointed out why they might not.

Have raid loot, be raid difficulty, and hard to obtain (basically long respawn):

Natimbi: Cragbeast Queen
All three requirements met.

Ferubi: Weapon Master Vtiink Vzaan (Smith Rondo)
Ferubi: Zun'Muram Votal
Ferubi: Packmaster Skoiat Pizak
The Ferubi raids meet the raid difficulty and hard to obtain requirements, the loot is a bit dodgy.

Riwwi: Taskmistress Krisz
I'm not sure if this one is supposed to be available in Gates of Discord or Omens of War. I also don't remember what the respawn timer is on Taskmistress. It meets the loot and raid difficulty requirements.

Yxtta: Pixtt Suir Mindrider
All three requirements met.

Yxtta: Primal Arachnid
Yxtta: Primal Insect
Yxtta: Primal Reptile
The primals meet the raid loot and difficulty to obtain requirements, they require more than 1 group of level 65s, but not a whole lot more (like 2-3, versus 6-7 for most of the mobs that meet the raid difficulty requirement). They're already spawning in the instance, there is no upside in removing them.

Qvic Raid Event: Iqthinxa Karnkvi
Qvic Raid Event: Cynosure Kvanjji
Both of these meet all three requirements.

Txevu Raid Event: Ixt Hsek Syat/Mastruq Champion
Txevu Raid Event: High Priest Nkosi Bakari
Txevu Raid Event: Zun`Muram Tkarish Zyk
Txevu Raid Event: Ukun Bloodfeaster
Txevu Raid Event: Ancient Cragbeast Matriarch
Txevu Raid Event: Ikaav Nysf Lleiv
All 6 of these meet all three requirements.

Txevu Raid Event: Aneuk Nyrt Ymosa
Txevu Raid Event: Aneuk Rilst Uskst
Txevu Raid Event: Ixt Kial Ivesi
Txevu Raid Event: Ixt Quall Nalnn
The Aneuks and Ixts meet the raid difficulty and loot quality requirements, I believe they respawn roughly every 24 hours, which is shorter than most of the bosses that meet this requirement (typically 2.5+ days), they crush the other two categories so firmly (will regularly wipe raid forces, drop top tier raid quality loot) that I'd vote for them to be included in the Txevu DZ but some may opine otherwise. The Aneuks are already spawning in the DZ.

Progression and hard to obtain (basically long respawn):

The only progression targets that aren't already covered by the raid loot, raid difficulty, difficult to obtain list (Ixt Hsek Syat/Mastruq Champion, High Priest Nkosi Bakari, Zun`Murak Tkarish Zyk) are the ones in Kod`Taz.

Kod`Taz Event: Temple of the Damned
Kod`Taz Event: Summoner Ring
Kod`Taz Event: Pit of the Lost
I don't know what the respawn is on these, they meet the progression requirement.

I don't understand why you want to create such hostile environment on this server. Some of the mobs that don't fall into these will be heavily contested and camped if you don't have them instanced. Look at the giants in PoS. No one enjoyed it other than the RMTers. By the way, you didn't do it to some mobs in previous expansions, Tear mobs in Hall of Testing, Phinigel in Classic, even the armor mobs in Fear/Hate. They were all non-raid mobs with short respawn timer. Why now you are adding extra requirements for them to be instanced?

Everything becomes "hard to obtain" on a server with 21+ raid guilds. M'Sha mobs not instanced means 17+ guilds will never see them alive, let alone get a chance at dps / training each other. That sounds pretty hard to obtain to me.

Let's say a miracle happened and we decide to rotate M'Sha mobs between all guilds. Even on a 24 hour respawn that's almost 1 month between kills for each guild. lol?

This isn't RF / LJ with only 2 raiding guilds.

Please Please please reconsider the M'Shas ... Those mobs drop visible armor slots which are not available anywhere else. if 22 guilds have to fight for scrabs that will be a pure nightmare...

Dev's: Some of us DID have a positive experience with GoD back in the day; and would like to have another one. Please reconsider the lists posted (won't rehash that) and add AoC's for all the progression targets.

Gates is a fun, challenging, expansion and I'd rather not have to ignore it and keep farming time/ldon because we can't get enough people flagged in the shortened window GoD will be current. (only 2 months, 1 month short of what it should have been but I digress)

Some of us get upset but try not to take it personally, its a passion for the game and a desire to make it the best experience possible. I know getting the AoC's setup is a lot of work, but its work you won't have to repeat for future TLP servers.

Speaking of Temple of the Damned in KodTaz, it wasn't on my list because it wasn't a raid event, but it is for progression and potentially hard to get due to a long respawn. Do we know what the respawn is on the pile of bones trigger mob?

TBH, I hope it is short enough that we don't have to worry about it.

Its like 45 minutes.

Will the GOD mobs have MOTM or any version of it??? Is it possible to put the Luclin or Velious MOTM on the GOD raid targets???? (Lets make GOD HARD AGAIN LOL )

Will the MA SHAS from QVIC spawn in picks??? The armor from the MA SHAS would be the same as the elemental MINI armor molds ( Muramite Boot Armor Muramite Bracer Armor Muramite Glove Armor
Muramite Helm Armor Muramite Sleeve Armor )!!!


So they kinda fall into that were a mob that drops raid gear but were one groupable.... It was kinda the reward for beating UQUA... The gear is clearly better then the Elemental molds (Heroic Stats + More over all HP / mana)

This leaves us with a very unique and odd citation.... This raid gear drops from a mob that spawns every 6 hours and is one groupable.........

So we can do a few things!

1. The best case scenario (IMO) You set the QVIC AOC like the NTOV (where you can just keep requesting the expo after the expo ends) IE You kill the MA shas wait 6 hours do it again and allow people to farm the mobs on there time..... ****15+ guilds farm POTIME**** 15-23 x 54-60ish ppl in QVIC at all times KSING / Training / Fighting / grieving for this armor and it will happen...... Stopping the Chaos / BLEEP SHOW is by far the best possible citation for EVERYONE!! Also its only 12 weeks long so you also need to keep that into consideration.... LET US HAVE R QVIC ARMOR PLZ?

2. Allow the MA SHAS to spawn in PICS!


Thanks Absor for all the hard work !

I don't understand the hesitation to just instance everything in the zone. That's what this server is about. Being able to get a mob once a week is hardly game breaking - especially on content that is like 15 years old or something.

Doing so has worked great for the Elemental Planes, as people have mentioned. Doubly so with the compressed timeline GoD is getting (only 8 weeks instead of 12). The more casual raid guilds are already going to be challenged enough to finish the expansion and see the end game content a few times, without having to worry about important progression (both quest and gear) mobs being highly contested.

I couldn't agree with this more. It's the inconsistency, it seems to me to be whichever dev gets tasked with doing it and however they feel at the time.

This is an 18 year old game that we're all playing for fun, not to poop sock, again, if we wanted to poop sock we'd be on Ragefire/Lockjaw. I didn't go into PoS for giants for an entire month just because I didn't want to poop sock. I was piggybacked in places until I finally got my BoT key.

I can point to numerous examples of things that have been instanced in the past that don't fit the criteria Absor gave. I got my pair of GEBs in classic from an instance of solb. Everything in PoP was instanced except for the named giants in PoS. I'll admit PoS medallions weren't as bad as everyone thought they would be, but it still wasn't good. It would have been better if those giants were in the instance. It really does go against everything this server stands for and why it's so popular.

As a player, its pretty frustrating seeing the same conversation happen for every new piece of content on Phinny.

15+ years ago, EverQuest was not designed around the thought of having 20+ active raiding guilds on a server. New content was being created with servers that had 1-2 hard core guilds out of a large population. Phinny is both more populated than most of those servers 15 years ago, and a much higher proportion of the population participates in the end-game content.

I love the EverQuest developers, but I straight up don't understand deferring to bad design decisions that were made over 15 years ago and have never been repeated again, even in EverQuest.

Not instancing everything on this list, especially the M'shas makes no sense to me. M'shas were not instanced and on short re-spawn timers to make them MORE accessible, because only a handful of guilds on each server would be competing for the spawns, and that armor was there to help people catch up. On Phinny, un-instanced M'shas makes flies in the face of the design intent of the content when it was made, but the implementation, rather than the intent, is what seems to be the guide post.

A very similar argument was made regarding Undead Bard on Phinny and I personally am very happy that it got changed, but every time a similar situation arises we (the community) seemingly have to point out the same problems every time.

This is the last real bulk of implementation for Agents of Change that will most likely ever have to be done - doesn't it make sense to make the system scale-able for future TLPs regardless of their implementation and aligning with the current content philosophies that drive EverQuest on live servers?

And as many in this thread have said, thank you for all of your hard work and dedication to the game. I have been playing EverQuest for more than half of my life, and anticipate continuing to do so for as long as the servers are still kicking. This game is a cornerstone of my life and the benefit that you as its developers have brought me is immeasurable, but as many others in this thread have mentioned I've grown past the point in my life where bat phoning, poop socking, and exploiting to make sure you win a DPS race are fun - I'd rather just enjoy the game for its content and its community.

Diplomacy didn't win the day on Sleeper, Combine, Fippy, Vulak, Ragefire, or Lockjaw. That's exactly why we have Phinny.

Generally, no, but every now and then it did. It was amazing for instance to see joint TL/Citizen pickup raids when we both were motivated to punish Ascendancy for breaking the rotation in PoP. If AoS locked down every Zun, I could see an alliance forming after a few weeks--especially since you could potentially use a single key to allow any number of guilds to raid Tacvi (assuming they don't change the lockouts at all)--you don't get a lockout for requesting the dz, and the toon with the key could just request one for each guild then drop.

Of course, more likely what would happen would be AoS would start giving keys away to everyone except OGC, to remove any potential allies from teaming up with OGC. But even if that happens, it will take more than a month for everyone who wants a key to have a key. And I imagine Dima would be able to work out a deal with one of those guilds that receive keys to request instances for OGC each week.

This.

Exactly. I don't understand the need to create a PVP environment on a PVE server. I still think Open World raid mobs should be removed from the game. 90% of guilds probably haven't killed an OW spawn in the last month.

Frankly, this is a line of speculation we should not pursue. What could or would happen in under these circumstances should not be relevant to this server. I have zero interest in political or rotation summits or any of the other ridiculous drama non-sense I experience on Fippy and Ragefire. I play on this server 100% to avoid this kind of crap.

Guilds are not businesses competing in a market who need to be negotiating deals and rights and mergers; money and livelihoods aren't on the line here. I already get paid to work 40 hours a week and I don't need a second job, especially one that doesn't come with a paycheck. I want to log in and kill . If we have the numbers/correct strategy, we win and get loot. If we don't, we fail. Other guilds shouldn't have anything to do with our success or failure. Phinny exists because that model was financially unsuccessful (read: drove players away) for SOE/Daybreak on the initial 3 iterations of progression servers.

There's a simple argument in favor of Mshas.

1. They drop GoD's raid armor set pieces. This armor is part of raid progression in GoD.
2. There are a total of 5 armor droppers for each piece of Bracers, Gloves, Arms, Boots, Helm - Two mobs in Inktuta, and three mobs in Qvic. The respawns are 6hrs for M'shas, 3.5 days for Cyno/Zoo, and 6 days for Inktuta's instance.
3. From a sheer spawn perspective, on average, when it comes to mold droppers, each week you will see - 2x Inktuta mob kills, 4x Zoo+Cyno kills, and 84x Mshas. Mshas are 93% of your weekly mold mobs. If you split Inktuta and Qvic, this would add 8x to the above, which means Mshas are still 85% of your potential mold mobs.