it made me so hopeful to see someone signing up for the 1 of each class idea so shortly after I posted that, that I forgot it's even more conditional than simply, "if it's 1 of each class I call mage".... it's more like, "IF we get the ppl required for this, and IF we can do it between the hours of X and Y or A and B, then...." are there any rules you'd want to add, remove or change? I don't even know what hours Qest will want to do this yet, or if he's even down for this version of it. what class will I probably get stuck with do you think? berserker?
BL and Zerk didn't exist in original EQ so that should be on your rule list. Also, why would you restrict hours? In the original EQ, all the people I knew played MORE hours than the current game (most players came as close to 24/7 as humanly possible). If you wanted Emperor or VT for example, you had most of your guild sitting at the portal for who knows how long or you raided from 7 PM till 3 AM. Two nights in a row. Since most of the player base doesn't actively read the(any) forums, your chances of success are low. However, it's a pretty interesting concept IMO. That said, I already lived the original "progression" so I never would do it.
When are you going to consider each expansion 'complete' before opening up access to the next? Once you defeat the raid content? The problem you are going to face is you are saying no merc's and no defiant gear which means you are going to need full raids of 40-50 people to beat that content before you can move on, just like you needed back in the day. I don't think you even know what you want at this stage - you say you want to experience the old content the way it was supposed to be seen but then turn around and say you want to do it with only 12-16 people. That means you are trivialising it, which is exactly what you said you hated. The defiant gear and over levelling is what actually allows you to do these old raids with fewer people. If you disallow that, then you need a full raid guild - things havent been de-tuned to allow you to finish them, it's gear inflation that enables it. I would be more inclined to go with something like this, which is what I am planning on doing; Rule #1: You are locked to zones of the "current" expansion and all previous expansions, excluding Nexus and PoK. (Travel was ridiculous back in the day, why impose that and annoy people?) Rule #2: You may level to as high as you can get, but are restricted to rule #1. Levelling in PoHate during classic for example should at least get you into the 60's, which will allow you to do the classic raids. Rule #3: No buying gear from the bazaar. You may wear any pieces of defiant that drop for you or for guild mates if you can arrange a swap - but no outside influx of gear. No purchasing of gear from the station store and obviously no heroes journey (not allowed in those zones - see #1) This still creates a sense of needing to farm to gear up - but you can't just farm plat and buy what you need. You also aren't likely to have a full set of current level defiant, but you will have a piece here and there of various different levels which WILL allow you to do the raid content you want to see. Those 3 simple rules should allow you to see all the content, it's going to be more difficult than trolling through it at level 90 and you should still feel a sense of having "earned" it because you still slogged through the levelling work in "current" zones rather than using hot zones etc. Personally, I am a big fan of merc's - I don't have a lot of time to waste looking for groups and sometimes need to leave right then and there. I plan to do this using merc's and boxes but you may be able to adopt some of those rules for your own guild.
Drew, you're really good at over-complicating things! Only one of each class? Seriously??? OK, I call Enchanter. You have 3 tanks, and 3 healers, so that works out nicely for two groups of 5 and a group of 6. Unfortunately, you only have two real crowd controllers, but at least my group will always have one, me! Or are you thinking no BST or zerk, so one group of 4? No ikky leezards, yay! Pencil my wife in for the Human Monk too. /em waits for Drew to put us in separate groups just to cause drama.
I didn't know I'd need 40-50 ppl for a raid, wow.... no wonder no one expects this to happen. I really thought 16 ppl would be more than enough, damn.... well, that sucks. you brought into perspective how unlikely this is and pretty much crushed my hopes. I guess I will have to rethink the rules if I don't get hundreds of ppl (enough to have 50 on at a time???). it now seems impossible to play the way I wanted. I guess the guy who told me that I'd be better off waiting for the next progression server is right, b/c I don't think they'll make a hardcore server. restricting hours would be for the purpose of keeping all involved players together, we'd obviously have to play at the same time.... but, that was then and this is now that I know it can't happen.... UNLESS I could get a guild for the raid content, full of sub "guilds" of 16 players each for the nonraid content, LOL. yeah, no. back to the drawing board. actually back to bed first, I'm too depressed for this right now.
nah, man, I just thought it'd be really cool to have a group of 1 of each class. a fellowship basically that plays a few hours a day together and that's it. it would have been too tough to coordinate anyway I guess, we'd need to find 16 ppl who all want to do it and who can all be on at the same time every day. and a lot of ppl would need days off for personal reasons, so with 16 ppl it probably wouldn't even be easy to get everyone on too often, 1 person would probably always be busy with something else. it seemed like such an epic thing to do though, but going through the game with 16 ppl is probably more unrealistic than I'd hoped.
Another point, as each expansion came out mobs of the same level as those of previous expansions hit harder. This was due to the necessary assumption that characters who've geared up in the last expansion would be expecting just a little more of a challenge. They'll have more HP as well making killing them as well as surviving them more difficult.
Well, maybe this will boost your morale? I experienced a moment of serendipity last night, scouring the web for games to play. Of course MMOs came up, and the state of "MMOs these" days just leaves a bad taste in my mouth because I am in the small percentage of current online gamers who experienced the better days of MMOs like Ultima, Everquest, and Dark Age of Camelot (hell I even beta tested and played through the fall of Anarchy Online and Star Wars Galaxies - and obviously I've played WoW) ... let's just say I miss the good ol' days. Just so, so many good memories of exploring and feeling part of something new, a new world of sorts. Anyway, I stumbled across this thread last night, slept on it, made an account this morning, and here I am posting to tell you that I love this idea and want to give it a try. Now let me just say this ... I have absolutely no clue what the current state of EQ is like and I haven't played in years, only got up to 3 expansions because DAoC took over my life, but I've kept on gaming. I don't think I will have a problem relearning EQ. As far as the rules go, I don't really mind or care too much because I haven't played the game in ages - so I'll just go along. One of every class does sounds awesome! I do have a suggestion: maybe more people would join if it wasn't a daily thing. How about Monday, Wednesday, Friday evenings and then Epic Sundays? Eh, just my two cents. What coast are you on?
well, I got a PM showing interest, onyuyan, Qest, Qest's wife, you, and me.... this makes 6 in the 2 days since the "1 of each class" idea.... maybe 16 isn't enough to raid, as has been pointed out, but with all this support in such little time, we will get 2 groups of 16 in a couple weeks at this rate.... we could simply divide the guild into alpha/beta teams of 16 each if this idea is so popular and bring the teams together some times for the purpose of hitting raid targets. funny no one seemed to be interested b4 the "1 of each class" thing.... I'm on mountain time btw and play poker between 7pm and 1am, but with all the support we should get enough ppl together for any timezone. whoever else is interested, post your time zone and the class you want, it seems like we could get a group's worth of ppl every week. hopefully sign up continues at this rate....
Out of curiosity, what server are you planning to do this on? Progression? Normal? I may have missed it so forgive me if so. It does sound like a fun idea/challenge but Qest already called Enchanter and I don't know how much time there would be outside raids. If playtimes were limited I definitely don't think I could survive. And I also have 4 accounts which I box so I would feel lonely without it! Honestly, in vanilla-original EQ as you are trying to do, I don't know if you could get by with only 1 of each class. With time-period appropriate gear you're going to have a hard time without the "trinity" going through the first few expansions unless things have been retuned so much and I just don't know anymore. You(drew) should make a forum or simple website or something. IMO, I think it would help in your efforts. You could have the rules spelled out (as they've changed some since your OP).
Excellent. I'm a West Coaster. Alpha/Beta teams is a great idea, too! I just DLed, installed and fiddled around on Rathe, might joint Eternal Darkness for some help getting reacquainted with EQ. I'll keep checking this thread and post to keep it going ... feels good to be back in Norrath!!
Trakanon already has a progression guild called Lost In Progression. Not sure where they are currently up to in their progression but you may run into mob contention with them? I guess that is also part of the old experience though
You are overthinking this way too hard. Just do like a raid guild does and schedule yourself a few hours in the evening on two or three nights a week.
And I don't think the one of each class idea is going to work. What are you going to do if your druid, shaman, and cleric can't make it that day? People will be more inclined to play if they can play what they like, not what's left.
