Guys I tried, I really tried

Logged on EQ Live (Bristlebane) first time in many years, gave it a go. Went straight back to Oakwynd. What did they do! Hobbits running around with big gingerbread men lol. At level 10 with a merc, I was pulling the whole zone at once lol. I thought Oakwynd was easy now, but man Live feels like its on rails?

You prefer regurgitating the same content over and over. No shame in it.

Level 10 with a merc is not representative of the next 110 levels, dozens of expansions, and hundreds of zones.

You tried...technically and briefly.

2023. Where trying your hardest constitutes less than six man hours. I weep for the future.

This is good. So many others are weeping for the past. Apparently.

If they made early levels too hard you would complain that it takes 20 years to catch up to your friends.

If you're using a Merc you're missing the point of EQ.

While your at it take off that armor !

You obviously didn't hit the 70's, when mercs start not being good anymore and you become more group dependent, unless you are a necro.

LOL, was just going to post "Conq, is that you?", and before I can even hit reply, I see "Conq likes this"

Mercs are angels. <- There, my new tagline

.. I do not believe I used a merc at that level before. Wouldn't they take up too much exp at that level and also could prolly solo more at that stage.

If you say that you are trying. Then it means you are giving up before you start.

Don't try, just do it!

Because it is, that was the point of the "Progression System", but you didn't get that far since it starts after L75.

Live is pretty much a solo game until 110 or so. Getting to 60-70 is pretty doable with just a single character. After that, you'll probably need some help from a guild or by boxing additional characters. There's pretty much no group game on the way up, so don't count on any kind of pickup groups to help you along. But on the plus side, exp comes pretty quickly and there's lots of uber gear in the /bazaar

The game gets a lot faster paced later on. I mean at one point some people thought it was a lot for a bard to twist, twisting itself was only 2 button presses every 3 seconds. Characters used to be much more simple in everquest but at level 100+ you have a lot more going on. You start to see a bunch of growth in characters around level 75. The game should be easy with very low risk at low levels so you can focus on getting around and learning how to play the game.

It's not just player power that makes Oakwynd easier though its player knowledge. Not just knowledge about Everquest but about how MMOs are supposed to work in general or general video game knowledge. When Everquest was new, people didn't know what to do, this made the game harder. Some of the stuff that people think made Everquest hard didn't make it hard it just made it tedious. For example having to go recover the gear off your body ... tedious. It's just an unfun system that overly penalizes people with low playtime.

Take a person with very little gaming experience, throw them in your "easy" server of oakwynd and don't hold their hand don't tell them how to play the game. It's probably going to be hard for them. It's not going to be hard the way that darksouls is hard where you need to learn some mechanical skill, Everquest has never been a game that requires a lot of mechanical skill.

Sounds like you put in minimal effort and got minimal results because of it. This may comes as a surprise but the Live servers concentrate the difficulty at the higher levels. The low level game is intentionally easy to let folks solo or molo those levels as the player base is concentrated in the over level 100 ish game (perrhaps even the 110+ game).

Live servers the primary challenge is the higher level game where most of the players and grouping opportunities are. The lower level game has been made easier to facilitate folks getting to the higher levels where grouping happens. So the downside is not much grouping at lower levels and easier leveling at lower levels because folks have to do it without groups.

TLPs have higher challenges at lower levels but that is also where the grouping happens. And the downside is you have to start over and over on new TLPs so that you have grouping at the very low levels which lets them keep the difficulty higher.

Neither way is the Right Way to play just different ways. Going to Live or TLP and expecting it to be the same is silly. I think folks can have fun in both but you should really know what to expect. And in either case the difficulty is going to be concentrated where the grouping is at.

I play on Live (FV) and Oakwynd is my first TLP. I originally played from SoL to just before GoD then took a long break with short occasional returns until mid-2020 when I returned for good and started playing heavily again (maybe not quite as heavily as back in the day, but.. older, ya know).

I absolutely agree that Oakwynd is a lot easier than when I started way back when. But, as noted by Laronk, I personally have decades of gaming experience now and about a decade of split experience in EQ. I also have online sites with scads of information even if some of it is a bit harder to sift for just the "original" content. All TLPs, even starting with Classic, have a tonne of stuff that wasn't in the original game. Before the server launched, my curiosity lead me to making a blog post about the differences and what we get from the modern EQ even in Classic TLP (I still need to update a few things so my own post doesn't require as much 'sifting'): https://rijacki-game.blogspot.com/2023/04/eq-tlp-diary-oakwynd-pre-launch-so-when.html. Many of the things change are QoL vs the original release of the game. Some are design choices development can't back out due to shared code on the servers (such as the "revamp" of Freeport that is much reviled and the revamp of a few other zones that actually improves at least how they look). Some are elements of later expansions that 'bleed' in (because of the shared code between servers) like recipes in the tradeskill UIs that are uncraftable because the items don't drop in zones that are available with Classic. Many of the changes absolutely do affect the pace of the game and the speed of leveling. This is also why a TLP starting in Classic doesn't have the 1st expansion 1 year later, as it was originally, but only after 8 weeks after server launch (and yes, I know there are those who wish it was 12 weeks or more). Oakwynd's progression release schedule isn't 20+ years, as it was on Live from original to now, but does span a few years to get to today's current expansion, NoS, and a couple more months after to get to the current expansion of the future. The pace of leveling has to be faster than original to match the pace of the expansions unlocking.

I also absolutely agree that Live in the the 1-50 levels (as are available in TLP Classic) is insanely easy. Leveling to 20 on Live, even if you hamstring your character, is a "blink and you miss it" experience with levels after not much harder (only counting up to 50). BUT, that is in large part because the current level cap is 120 (115 if you're FtP and haven't bought the last or previous expansion). There absolutely has been changes in the leveling speed to make it easier to get into a higher range, so you can level to cap at a much faster pace than if you were playing a character who started in original in 1999. There is absolutely no intent for a new player to take 20+ years to get to their character to current level cap, nor should there be.

But... the TLP pace vs Live pace, it is absolutely a choice a player can make. A player could also choose to go to an that is set in amber with the max of a particular expansion and play with their QoL additions which may or may not affect the pacing or the 'ease' of play. I've never played on one of the emus, but I have heard about some of the changes from original and some of the sites associated with them (like 'Zam is for EQ) have elements not available in Live or TLP (some of that sifting I noted above).

And as noted by Corwyhn above, neither TLP not Live (or even nor ) is the only way or the right way or the wrong way to play.

I'm actually having fun playing for TLP and Live (on the same class even) for entirely different reasons though I can absolutely accept how different they are, almost to the point they are 2 different games in the same world, but that's also one of the appeals to me. It's interesting to me that EQ of current max level now is almost like a sequel to original with TLP Classic as a spin off from original.

I played EQ2 for several years which is also now a completely different game from its original and, in either form, is nothing like EQ original, TLP Classic, or current EQ Live. I now prefer the variations of TLP Classic and EQ Live but absolutely don't think EQ2 is wrong or not really playing in the franchise (some elements I prefer from EQ2 but I don't want them in EQ - except maybe to add to player housing).

So you spent 30 minutes getting to level 10 and you think that you know the game.

Recycler syndrome, but hey if people like it that's valid. Just don't come to the forum acting line you know anything different

OP is silly but there is a huge issue where a returning live player has a tremendous hill to climb before they get to a point where the game is social and fun.

A squire system would go a long way to improving that.

Gingerbread men are the devil.