First, good job Sony, you've brought a lot of people in with the heroics. Second, what were you thinking? To be dropped in Feerrott with no idea what to do? Dieing over and over with no clue on how to get a Rez, or the fact you shouldn't be hunting there alone at all? I've lost new guildies because they lost a level over it, and got frustrated, and quit. I can only help so many at once. Go ahead and flame away with "You should have done this", or "They should have done that", sorry, I'm not the new player helping queen of Everquest. Maybe you should have made a new zone for it, or at the very least, separate the difficulty of the mobs according to what side of the river they are on. Yes, maybe they should have went through the tutorial, done the knowledge quests, but sadly, human nature is wanting things "now", leaving the rest of us to pick up up the ball you dropped. For the new people reading this, please, before you get too frustrated and quit, ask for help, do the tutorial with a new toon, do the knowledge quests, research on the Internet. Get out of Feerrott the Dream, practice in an easier zone. Every time one of you quits, I feel like its a waisted opportunity. Just my 2cents. And seriously............The bodies are piling up, there everywhere.
roll in with a cleric and start rezing , if they aint online, oh well, if they are, good chance of a nice surprise
But thats how the game use to be...... It brings back the memories of old... logging in.. having no clue what to do.. and being killed by a rat or snake. Basically they found a way to bring back nostalgia but at higher level
I agree, the bodies are pilling up hahahaha But then again, they also pilled up 15 years ago at "newbie hill" outside Faywder and then outside Crescent Reach city. The Feerrott is just the new "newbie hill" Sostenes
The heroic quest related mobs are markedly easier then the other, "normal", mobs. And as Rox said, no real clear differentiation between the two. You can easily see how people can, intentionally or not, go from one to the other, not expecting a difficulty change that steep and get killed. Granted that is, and should be, part of the game, but not the most welcoming lesson for new players. The larger point here is that getting new players, or returning players, into the game is great. But if the retention of those players isn't strong, it doesn't matter much in the end. That being said, I've come across lots of returning players who are now in the high 80's / low 90's, so retention must be decent, and those players are obviously doing okay for themselves. Yeah, the zone could use more of a revamp to be a sort of tutorial 2.0 for heroic 85's, but that would no doubt be extremely labor intensive. aside: When I am on my cleric, if I see a corpse I try and rez it (or send a tell asking if they want one, etc). My heroic alt sees all this corpses he just can't do anything about it; kinda bothers me. Maybe I should run him through Feerrott / HoT / Grounds and rez everything that (doesn't) move.
I agree that it's like a return to what used to be, especially when they haven't gotten their maps, any many of our new guildies have made it through, but a lot haven't. And it just seems to me that its kind of misleading if you call someone's character "heroic" and they get flattened every few minutes because they didn't know that the Lizard behind that tree is death incarnate compared to the lizard standing a few feet away, it's quite disheartening. And God help them if they delete that character and try a different one without stashing the coin or marks, then can't afford a merc.
Actually, I started my Heroic toon a few days ago, and if you just look around to the right you will see the PoK book, so I just zoned into there and not a problem. But it does suck that Sony puts you in Old Bloodfields and that is a VERY hard zone, the least they could do is put you in PoK right away or you're hometown where you're toon is from.. so that was a bad move there. I wanted to make a Paladin for a long time and I got frustrated with it from level 1 to lvl 40 so I deleted it, so now since Sony started this, I figured "what the heck, I'll make another one" also I find it odd that they just give you a merc. figuring that "oh you'll need this" I'd like to get my own merc, thank you very much.. also some classes are skilled enough to they need them rarely if at all when they group or are raiding. So I found that to be kind of a kick in the nuts.. other than that just turn around if you have a Heroic toon when you first start out, don't walk or run in any direction, just look to the right and boom PoK book.
It was the same outside the city at crescent reach, stay on one side of the river and you were good, cross it and get one hit kills lol I'm uncertain as of what the logic was behind heroic characters, but I've found that many of the seasoned players are avoiding feerrott altogether, just do whatya can Rox, yesterday I walked a guy through on how to send a parcel after he's been gone for ten years, it was satisfying, the patient ones will stick around, the ones that want to treat EQ as a beatem up game will get beat
I recently left a game after about 1.5 years been away and returned to everquest. brough a lovely lady from that game to EQ for the first time and shes loving it. that said, she also skipped the gloomingdeep tut and was badly lost at first. But! i rolled a level 1 and we did the entire gloomingdeep tutorial together, start to finish. now shes hooked and in love with the game =) she got a heroic character and were having a ball going through the heroes journey quest lines. on the darker side, tried bringing three other players with me as well. one two wasnt interested because its not a pvp game, the other just didnt give it a fair shot and i never even got a chance to do the tut with him. imo at this stage of the game- any truely new player needs a chapperone/guide/buddy to help them understand basic stuff to have any hope of sticking around and enjoying themselves. how else should a true-new player know about things like eqmaps? allas? the myriad other intricacies of everquest??
One thing they need to do already is get rid of the separate decay timer. There's no reason for a corpse to stay anymore once the Rez timer is expired.
LOL I see a bunch running to Grounds to do the daily Haven't really played my 'Heroic' character yet but will be interesting to see how the new Feerot has changed.
I went in and tried to do the J-5 merc access, got croaked both times. I'll use my brain next time and learn my spells, etc. first. In the meantime, I'll buff my lower level toons on other accounts. Nope, i didn't leave my toon's body there. I got it back and then rezzed it.
I came back to the game a while ago, after being gone since PoP. I started from ground zero with new characters, and worked my way back into the game from there. Even after doing all that, and 3 boxing for quite a while now, being plopped into a level 85 character with all those AAs and spells/skills was pretty overwhelming. If I would have done that when I first came back to the game, I probably wouldn't have stuck around, I for sure wouldn't have if I was brand new. There is just wayyyyyy too much to take in all at once. Just getting a handle on EQs interface, and the 1 bajillion options takes a good week or so if you are truly new to the game. Looking at pages and pages of AA with no idea how to even put them somewhere...yah..good luck I suppose. They really should have taken the time to make a new tutorial for new/returning players. EQ has always been heavily based on natural selection lol, but it's pretty harsh to just plop someone down with an 85 and say 'good luck'. And that's a shame, because EQ is a fantastic game, that should be played by more people. I'm just not sure Sony have the will at this point to really throw a lot of resources and time at a 15 year old game, or if they even should. From a business standpoint, it's a wonder the game is still going.
I came back after not playing since PoP because of the heroic characters and it has been a terrible experience. Grouping is almost non-existent. And yes I spam General, out of character and send tells to every single person and their dog. 99% of the time it's a boxer who doesn't want anything to do with you. 1% of the time it's a solo guy who wants to just fly solo. Feerrott has been so populated yet seems so vacant.
You are right . and i went around rezing the new players my self with my dark elf cleric . finishing the tutorial is helpful.
If someone is boxing heroic characters, chances are that person isn't really a new player and wouldn't have grouped with you anyway. Before heroic characters, that kind of person was getting their alt powerleveled by their guild to a full set of max level gear. So nothing has really changed there. It is highly unlikely (not impossible, but unlikely) that a TRUE, new "comeback player" with a long time away from EQ can jump on MULTIPLE heroic characters at the same time right off the bat and be doing well, not even if one was a class they had played before. But having to solo to start with (if you can at all, maybe in an easier zone) isn't such a horrible thing. I made heroic characters but haven't jumped on them yet, and when I do, it will be either to 2box or solo (molo) until I can figure out how to play them well. I don't want to tax a group's patience too much, but I'm kind of a people pleaser type. Once I'm comfortable and fluid on the char, then I'll try to group. But I see lots of lev 85's-87's LFG in general chat these days
I walked to school barefoot in the snow and it was uphill both ways. It's a half full vs. half empty issue. If someone wants to get P.O.ed because SOE gave them a level 85 character and through a combination of poor playing and lack of research, they immediately converted it into a level 84 character, big deal. If the whole promotion was based around Heroic characters starting at level 84 it would still be one heck of a treat. Meh, if they loose 10 levels learning how to play the game that would still leave them with a level 75 character. Level 75 isn't exactly chopped liver. If they find out they don't like the game because it is too frustrating or complex, they have a chance to change. You don't have to continue to make bad choices unless you want to. I'm guessing more then a few people were around in the early days. I still remember everyone would go to their guild master and start typing 'Hail'. They would get as far as the 'a which was attack and seconds later they were at their bind point. I doubled down on that strategy, soon as I put a point into 'kick' on my Ranger I hit the key to try it out and still had the GM targeted... Loading. In the long run, a few deaths won't make a difference. We are all still here. Counsel people to not let it get them down.
Problem is, new people are the lifeblood of this game, if the player count falls too low, they will shut it down, and I love this game too much to see that.
We are in 100% agreement on that. Only caveats I have are 1) a death or two isn't that big a deal 2) all we can do is tell people not to let it bug them. Everything else is after the fact now. There will be no more free Heroic characters and the only people creating them will have thrown $35 SOE way. I think Qest, when I joked ~weakest group would be a couple of Clerics with Cleric Mercs, responded something along the lines of ~If a person does that, EQ may not be the right game for them. I would like to invoke his wisdom here to make the same point about people that repeatedly die w/o asking or looking for advice. I've got a hard head myself, but if I got slaughtered five or six times I would start looking for a safe out. Piling up ten bodies is inconceivable except by deliberate action. There are still people in game that do exactly that. I've seen it happen even in the Tutorial with people leaving multiple bodies in the safe area.
