Please rethink this new TLP Daybreak Team...

You need to look back further as most of those threads are closer to the launch of a new server and with the most recent server being random loot it has been less of an issue.

It's not easy if you had to be "hard core" to get full BiS in 3 weeks. Going "hard core" isn't easy, it is hard. The clue is in the name.

Additionally, your definition of what is hard core is likely very different than other people's definition of hard core. For some, raiding on a schedule with a guild of more than 60 people is hard core, for others split raiding everything to the nth degree until you burn out half your raid is what makes you hard core.

that they do now? most stuff in classic isn't no-drop. Most stuff in Kunark isn't either, apart from stuff from raids, which would be able to be sold and with AoC's a lot will be floating about, so would probably be cheaper anyways.

Might be a bit more of an issue in Velious I guess, but the best stuff from there would also be from raids and as it would be tradeable, probably going to see more of it for sale more often and cheaper than buying loot rights.

I don't think it's going to be as much of an issue as people think, especially not for the period of time when the server will be most active. After that, if your guild is still active can usually scrape enough people to pop a pick if you really need to camp an item that is being perma-camped, if there isn't already picks available.

There is more to a TLP then what is in classic and you should think of what could issues in the future instead of just at the start.

Not to sound like a skeptic but is it getting ridiculous that every time a new TLP gets around GoD they start the works for a new one and the only reason for doing so is the krono sales in the early market. They also let these RMT 12+ boxers run rampant on every new server ( even the ones like Aradune that was suppose to be limited ) and telling people they're looking into it when clearly they're not because these same players have been on every TLP and some of these same players also start open world guilds to monopolize the loot market early ( the reason I bring up open world is because it spawns way faster then the old days and with the split dz's they can feed a guild of 100+ with full raid gear in no time which leaves them endless gear to sale on the market ) and restricting members from selling in era gear so they can maximize krono profits. If this was all legit and they wanted to put that kind of time in then so be it but its being done by players who are dev's for 3rd party programs *not going to names... you know who you are* and even some corrupt HR employee's that work for the company or friends of these employee's. Then you have people who try to speak up but just get trolled on the forums by the same guys who constantly watch the forums

Money talks I guess...if collectively the community didn't want a new TLP every year when the old one is in GoD then they'd stop rerolling and tossing tons of cash at DBG. On the plus side, if this is a GoD start then next year's TLP wont start when the latest one is in GoD so thats a win for next year right?

I mean honestly, theres lots of ways to farm plat/krono. for instance people would buy VP keys on mischief. after a week or so it was likea kr for a ground spawn when kr was 8k plat. I felt that i could go farm 8k plat way faster than i would be able to sit with my jboots speed necro and be able to grab a ground spawn unless i got extremely lucky and that first 50 minute spawn was right in front of me...

If you can buy an item, sometimes that is the easiest way. Peggy cloak? yes please... and peggy cloak is another example of something where the price went down way faster than the LR sellers would

Your right, there are lots of ways to farm it and making most things tradeable with known spots to camp it is just going to make it worse. It is hard to compare to the random loot servers where it wasn't possible to lock down an item and the number of drops was vastly increased. Those two changes made it much easier for people to get what they wanted.

Because you did miss the point. The point was that the primary domain of mid-level guilds was older expansion raid content, and the only reason older raid content was ever viable in the first place was because it was significantly superior to current group gear. Compare Tacvi level stuff with TSS group gear. Tacvi crushes it. Even P4+ Time is better than a lot of it.

It's not wrong. It was part 1 of a 2-part reason why mid-level raiding died. The second part was SoD being too easy being followed by a moderately difficult UF. That alone wouldn't have killed so many guilds had the gear resets not continued. What would have happened is the pre-existing stratification would have eventually returned. The gear resets every expansion forcing guilds into current content is what stopped that from happening. Thus all raid guilds now (outside of specific exceptions) must be current content guilds.[/quote]

That was most certainly NOT my first claim. I specifically said it wasn't on par:

Nor did I say it was. I said, specifically,

which it absolutely did. Look at the group gear from OoW through TBS if you don't believe me:
OoW: 100-130 HEM
TSS: 170-220 HEM (Yes, some of the AG/FC stuff was in the 275 range, but this was NOT common for players to have since it was pretty much only higher end raiders who could reliably play in those zones and already had better).
TBS: 250-300 HEM (Plus powersources on top of that for visible items)

The increase from OoW->TSS (4 expansions!) is approximately the same as TSS->TBS. That is a significant change in itemization. It was massive for group geared players.

Already explained above. It was a combination of SoD/UF difficulties AND the gear inflation.

Nowhere did I ever say it was. I said "roughly" because compared to the previous game design paradigm, the group gear is insanely close to the previous raid gear.

Compare OoW group gear at 100-130 HEM to Tacvi at 260-290 HEM. It's less than half.
Compare UF Group gear to 980-1080 HEM to SoD raid at 1050-1150 HEM. Its less than 10% difference.


Now, HEM is not the end all be all metric, certain things like AC and melee weapons older raid versions remained MUCH better than group gear for a longer period, but the flip side of that is Mod2 stats like shielding and avoidance the group gear caught up with raid gear to the point even group geared players were maxed on these stats, which was a significant boost to group gear.

While I'm aware that was an exploit that existed, I don't know of any actual raiding guilds that did that. Regardless, Field of Scale raids are Tier 3. Tower of Discord was Tier 4/5 (4+ a group item to make 5) and SoD did not require beating previous content to unlock the next Tier.

You're right, but I was summarizing. My post was already long enough, heh.

It really is apples to hamburger to try and compare Original anything and TLP version.

Original players had:

1) No, or at least less, knowledge of the raid mechanics and strategies to overcome them.

They had to figure them out. Beta raid testing did not used to be as open as it is now. Guilds got to test 1 or 2 raids on Beta at most, and they jealously guarded their secrets. If they found out you told another guild how something worked you risked getting kicked out. (It still happened of course, but it wasn't anything like it is now where strats are posted publicly and everyone is streaming). TLP players come in now knowing every mechanic and how to counter them.

2) Less overall game knowledge.

EQ Players have always been a superstitious bunch. So much early game knowledge was based on "feels" and little actual fact. To be fair, the original game design actively tried to hide its inner workings, but even after it started to become more open the amount of bad data and ideas of how things worked was prevalent. I wouldn't even try to count the number of wrong things I've heard over the years that people swear by because they feel it works that way.

Knowing how to precisely synchronize synergistic buffs for maximum benefit makes a massive difference vs mashing all your buttons at once because the buffs "stack" therefore you think the effects also stack. Knowledge is power.

3) Less player power.

Knowledge is Power, but Power is also Power. The game has massively inflated player power both defensively and offensively.

4) More bugs

Yes, I meant what I said. This is true both in the specific sense of raids themselves being buggy at launch and then fixed but also in the overall sense that despite the never ending complaints, EQ is SO much more stable and less buggy now than it ever was before.

5) Less Gear

Obviously not every TLP guild does this, but the TLP guilds I've seen/played with generally are more efficient with how they distribute loot. I'm sure someone could (and probably has) written a dissertation on loot distribution in MMOs, but the earlier back you go the less optimal it becomes. Especially knowing you are on a condensed timeline pushes guilds to prioritize gear where it is needed most.

6) No TLP changes

The condensed schedule on TLPs is why gear on chests / coin drops have been increased / more flags drop per kill for expansions that have flagging, etc. Other changes like additional nerfes/fixes to events that didn't exist as well.


I could go on, but the overall point is trying to compare the original run through of an old expansion to a TLP version requires so much compensation it starts to bear little resemblance to reality.

Yeah, I remember posting extensively during SoF that the gear reset, while probably needed at that specific point, would be the death of mid-level guilds if they started to do it every expansion, and that SoD was made way too easy would also be a problem. I should dig them up on the archive sometime.

Copy the mischief ruleset. Lower number of people it take's to pop a pick to about 20% of the current number it takes to open. Allow all classes available in classic, use the nexus as a locked zone with beastlord and berserker guildmasters.

I love the idea of GoD start.

It would open a ton of new leveling paths. Lower levels that were added late would get used. Many of the sub-max zones that are ghost towns on most TLP's, would be there at the proper level range. Player wouldn't have to just stick to the standard Crushbone -Unrest - LGuk - Hole grind, which we have done a billion times.

In many cases those zone would be more popular because of high quality loot drops.

There is also a ton of raid content that largely get ignored because the loot is trivial when the encounters become available. It won't be big for the hardcore racers, however it will interesting to how other progress with it.

On live, I remember being in guilds that would do the lower tier PoP, to farm useful. On TLP's the loot from these raids is largely trivial and we blow past them to flag for the higher tier raid.

The revamped Innoruuk encounter in hate would be worth doing.

How many guilds bother with hitting Packmaster Skoiat Pizak and Zun`Muram Votal in Ferubi,

These are example of encounters that are largely waste of time on a standard TLP, since the player base is geared beyond those encounter once the content is available.

Overall that starting point would have a much fresher feel to it.

I'm pretty sure that you will never, ever see a free trade ruleset without the random loot rule.

You'll see it on the next server

I totally agree with you, that it'll be fresher.

However, I'm not so certain that some of the content you mentioned would really see much action.

Certainly the new leveling paths would see some use. I remember launching on Selo's, and after level 30ish my rush group went straight to the moon. We by-passed Unrest, Guk, and Chardok.

However, I don't think people would really be hitting the lower level raid content. Certainly not the 'uber guilds'.

Although, if they do a level cap that lifts progressively during the first weeks, then that content could see action.

However, if they simply launch the server with the max level attainable, a number of people will be racing to max level ASAP.

Gonna have a lot of mouths to feed.
You could basically raid every night and equip every main even if all the gear wasn't 'BiS'. Anything from ToV is better than netted.

Fresher for how long though? Lot of that doesn't actual sound fresh at all underneath the initial surface appeal. It just sounds like expediting up a lot of the same exact repeat grind time people are going to spend on the same exact meta driven progression fuel path routes. While just turning up the repetitive dial to a full 10.

I mean is there a hard limit to how many picks of the Deep can be up simultaneously? On a typical TLP you usually get at least the first 3 expansions worth of a much more socializing spread of varied location leveling groups going on before Luclins helps kill that off with the huge bulk of server leveling then shifting over to there. With people power leveling toons to the point they can sit in group leeching exp a lot more frequently then anybody is going back to make any standard world leveling contributions in lower tier zones. How long before the large majority of the server's leveling population is almost exclusively doing "fresh" Deep AOE funnels and Paw? How much sooner has it been since the a lot of people looking for a fresh re-roll experience have done that in comparison to old world zone grinding?

As far as raiding goes on a standard TLP every raiding guild from the single open world zerg to it's most casual of the in-era content clearing bunch is already basically doing the same exact thing as far progression and prioritizing kills goes. With the only real variance being how hard and for how many consecutive days they initially push to clear content on expansion launches, and how many scheduled raid days a week plus split kills of things come out of it. If nobody there is essentially choosing a non-min/max "stop and smell the roses" progression approach, why would it end up being any different here? All that earlier content below the point that can be easily zerged down with a full raid of level 70s, and with the random use help of a stupid OP tank glyph where needed, is still going to get that universal "waste of time" designation by everybody regardless.

Interesting take. I admit that I don't know much about leveling past the typical TLP path of Classic through Velious.

I know people definitely PL alts and grind AA in AOE groups.

But, doesn't the Deep cap out around lev 60?

I guess there are other AOE zones for things up to 70 and beyond.

I think where things would change a lot, would be with the raid content. People would spend a few months raiding GoD (or what ever expansion is open on launch), then move to the next one.

Part of the issue people have with the traditional TLP is the fact we're spending 3 months in Classic, 3 months in Kunark.

Then people start to get burned out, quit, and they don't see the content beyond Luclin or POP.

Those same people don't have a desire to reroll on a TLP that is further along in progression, or even pick back up their old characters and level them back up.

They want to do the launch experience and all madness that entails, but then go right to the content beyond the first year of TLPs (i.e. go past PoP).

I have to agree that the uber guilds would hit the early bosses. Raids need haste items (dragons, PoS) and armor (Hate, Fear, ToV/Kael). Consider that GoD would remove the MotM buff from classic bosses and you're talking split raiding those even at lower levels.
With a GoD start would the earlier expansions' keyed dungeons be open?