Greetings. I've been playing EQ off and on for a little over a year, having returned from a 7-year hiatus. I still enjoy live, but lately I've had the itch to roll a new character on Phinny. It's entering the era of EQ I enjoyed the most, the level 80-90 expansions. I'm wondering if Phinny is viable for an almost exclusively group-oriented player. Are family guilds a thing there? Do raid guilds offer casual membership for those who can't or don't want to raid very much or even at all? If so, I'd be interested in either option. I'll happily grind the levels on my own, solo if necessary, and if I have to drop a krono or two for starter gear so be it. I'm just hoping to find a core of players interested in group content once I'm of level for it. Regardless, I look forward to starting on Phinny sometime this weekend. I haven't decided on a class yet, but I do know I'll be playing a single character. I'm kinda burned out on boxing. Happy hunting. (Title clarification: Starting on Phinny,)
Pretty well all the main raid guilds on phinny have a sort of "friends and family" membership level for non raiding members or people leveling up characters who want to raid eventually. Just find one that fits your time zone and inquire. I'm sure there are lots of non raiding guilds or guilds that raid older content that would suit you too.
Check out https://phinnyprogress.com/raid_times.php See what guilds fit your raiding schedule for the future, check out their websites and see what kind of guild they are and then talk about the friends and family like Numiko said =) If you need any help feel free to hit me up in game! You will find the server very welcoming and people are generally very nice and will answer any of your questions. -Vandil
For the last year, up until SoF launched, the answer would have been a resounding no, unless you have a static group to play with there were very little grouping opportunities. Now we are getting into expansions where there is a lot to do and everyone won't be finished in the first two weeks, so that is starting to change. I imagine there will still be dead periods toward the last month or so of each expansion where not much grouping happens though. If you don't want to box, you may want to have a plan of some sort for getting to max level, as there are few grouping options below ~75. IE don't play a solo war or rog and expect to have an easy time of it.
Doesn't Phinny get mercs next expansion? Low level grouping kind of becomes a non-issue then, since everyone's Tank Merc will just PL them.
Vandil's on point. Your best bet for finding a good regular group is finding a guild that has a bunch folks active during your regular play times (may not necessarily be their raid times).
Dunno, when the guy says he doesn't want to raid at all, pointing him to guild raid times seems somewhat counterproductive.
i.e., join a guild that's active during your play times, and these may not necessarily be that guild's raid times.
Thank you all for the helpful and candid feedback. And for the, uh, frog too... I'm underway on Phinny. I'll do my research on the guild scene as I continue to level up. So far the people I've encountered, while not many, have been super nice. I don't have anything to do on live until TBL comes out - one Artisan's Prize was all I could endure - so this is a nice respite. Let's see where this goes.
Give Kazzuk a shout in game if you need a hand with anything, be happy to help and if you just want to skip the low levels and get to 53 we can do that in a few hours too.