Test Update 03/26/14

They removed the ability to g imp pull in one zone, dude calm down.

I personally like it. It brings back the spirit of the old ways, no more "123 I WIN" buttons, some caution/care and planning has to go into how you split/pull. This is a good thing. Always being able to WTFpwn stuff deteriorates your skill level IMO. Some of my own personal bad habits got revealed the first time I zoned in. I adapted and adjusted.

Would be nice if there would be options like:

/camp instant = camp instantly to server.
/camp counter = camp with Count dwon
/camp = camp with counter.
/camp instant desktop = camp instantly to desktop

Dzarn: Why is Arcane Fusion blocked? It doesn't have a fling on it. That is, was it intentionally blocked for a different reason, or did it get caught up accidentally?

I wish you were a developer saying that and your name was in red. heh!
I wonder if there is a 54 man raid at the end of progression?
Now that would be awesome and Hoards of people would flock there. Both groupers and raiders I beleave. If there is, I wonder if it will have loot better or equal to the expected Raid CoTF tier 2 numbers?
Or maybe you can get an upgrade to class epics 2.0's. Now were talking! hehe!

I don't know, there hasn't been to many things for awhile now (As far as loot goes) that made me go "Oooo" "Ahhhh" "I got to get me that no matter what else I do." The Underfoot Shawl was the last thing I can think of until they super nerfed it.
The coolest thing I've seen most recently and unexpectedly was after you finnish Partisan in The first part of Dead Hills is your spirit doing the fly by of the zone with the music playing. But thats not loot and/or "improving" your character.

The loot is already said to be cotf t2 group gear from the named, the rare loot that is worthwhile can drop off any NPC, there are no raids, only the 15th anniversary one as mentioned

Hopefully it's just a bug because it has a fixed hate value. Dzarn sounded like there is some special handling of hate values in PoW.

Gee i don't know....fun?

Hahah wait...no one cares about that anymore. Right.

And for the record, the gear, while below the cotf rare gear stat-wise, is 10959386937856937 times more common, especially after being nuked form HAs, and has things (*cough* click effects *cough* augs) that even the biggest numberphile will want to get their hands on. Yes I have seen them, am in possession of one such item actually. No I won't link them. I want it to be a surprise.

That sounds like fun. I just death touched you 100 times!

I am curious why they would make a zone where you have to have 2+ full groups of real people to take on nameds when this game has long ago lost the ability to get 1 full group unless you already know a bunch of people. I thought they learned their lesson with Underfoot? I lost a lot of friends due to that expansion and I think maybe 2 came back again. So congratulations SOE we get to say good bye to even more of our friends. . I know the raiders complain that group content is to easy but what do they expect? They get gear that is far superior to group and then complain that group content is to easy. They get their challenge in the raids that's the trade off for the uber gear. Now will come the trolls saying I don't have to go to the zone in the first place, it doesn't make sense to build an entire zone around the top 5% of the people in the game.

Because they have been giving content to the other 95% for 2 entire expansions. If they want to release 1 zone for the other 5 percent out of the last 2 expansions worth of content how is that a bad thing.

Not everyone is a raider that is doing this zone. I've been doing the flagging/questing and some general killing with a completely group geared team. I don't see the problem of them requiring 2 groups.

If you can't do the content, its not intended for you go do something else. If you can do it, do it.

The real name is "Shades of Walken"

It is much more...aggressive(?) than i thought in terms of strength for the named. 130k DTs, raid like mechanics ect. Is this tuned for group geared players? The only people who have been able to kill these have been fully raided geared so far, but i reserve judgement untill more group geared people are flagged. This wont deter me from trying to kill them, in fact i am trying to flag more of my guild so we can do them. I do think they understated the difficulty of the named when they said "SoF Squire" like though. I will say however; i do like the challenge, i just hope i can find enough people who do that are willing to come together

There may be a bug preventing people from progressing in getting pass the first gate. I have done the quest on several characters and now cannot get it to work after the last mini patch.
I /bug reported it.

I feel like i am spamming, but i notice that named are popping many times in a hour at the current rate. (perhaps due to the near instant spawn rates?) Is it intentional that they spawn so often when u lock down the PH? ( i know it was said mobs in general will spawn less often when it goes live, i just want to let it be known)

I agree with your assessment of an understatement, but personally i am glad it is the way it is instead of like SOF Squires. I was able to 4 box SOF squires while they were current... These new named not so much.

Also I just finished the quest on an alt. So yes you can still finish it.

RoF T4 nameds have 120k "DTs" and hit for 20k.
Are they killable? Yes, if you nuke like you're playing an old NES game and spam heals with no reserve.

Challenge in EQ used to be

1.) Pulling - without easy-mode pulls
2.) Dispelling - without "show buffs" windows
3.) Debuffing - that actually did something and was required in most cases
4.) Crowd control
5.) Resource managment. Once you got 1 through 4 down, your main enemy was your mana bar and properly managing it.
6.) Corpse retrieval
7.) Gear selection. (Do I need high HP? Do I need High fire and magic resists?, etc)

EQ has turned into diablo, which makes it less fun and far less rewarding. There used to be multiple ways to do an encounter, but now it's mainly tank and spank.

You're pretty much REQUIRED to run a parser and graph your DPS and tanking.
You're pretty much REQUIRED to research mob abilities on the Lucy database.

This split second timing and min/maxing with full reliance on critical EVERYTHING is the route the devs have chosen, and this is where that "EQ magic" has been lost.

So, enjoy the game as it is...
If you ever wondered where all of the players went during GoD, UF, and VoA (ie: mass exodus), remember that some people think a mob 1 rounding you in group gear is a challenge.

I've been parsing lots lately, and I come up with completely ridiculous margins of error for group players. Some of my parses have come down to requiring massive DPS or you fail in 20 seconds and on others, if you don't have XYZ classes - best of luck to you in the lobby

It never used to be this way. The fun used to be hanging out with friends and learning as you go. Learning is hard when your margin for error is tiny and the feedback the EQ client gives you is in no way convenient or useful.

I remember doing Kael armor runs in gear less than Fear / Hate quality.
I remember doing Sebilis and Charasis in less than Darkforge / Lambent etc.

Maybe this is the price we pay for no corpse retrieval, or maybe no corpse retrieval was the price for poor encounter design.

you started the entire quest after the server reset yesterday? The bug is near the start.

Ill check on my ranger tonight.

RoF in teir 4 are very much boxable. (without boxing programs mind you) At least from my experience.
Smart play makes it totally possible with good margins of error.

PoW is a whole different level in group gear and basically breaks down to being mini raids. This makes them excellent targets for mid tier raids and family guild targets for raid night as long as they are properly tuned. I just dont know if they are tuned yet and if EQ has the population to do them as groupers; as Family and mid tier guilds have been gutted regularly over the years.
I would love it if they added zones like this to every expansion and made them tier 5 group zones. giving good targets to non hard core raid guilds and other smaller guilds to band together to raid. Make some decent progression to get in which would encourage team work in guilds. (as long as it doesn't cut out more content then we already are lacking)