Turn on the ability to start saving AA

The massive new beastlord population will be at lvl 1 with no AA's banked. Group with them.

The thing I like about Phinny is that the release dates are pretty much set in stone. Velious opened earlier than it was supposed to, and they pushed back some other launches, and combined another. But back to the point, the release dates were supposed to be set in stone so that people could PLAN to play how they WANTED TO PLAY. Me personally, I am over classic and kunark. I really don't care for Velious, so I have been taking my time leveling.

I wouldn't be super upset if AA banking were turned on now, but I would be disappointed for 2 reasons. One, how it directly affects me, and 2 how I think it will effect the server long term. TLPs are a death march to burn out for a large segment of the population. Anyone that has any illusions otherwise is kidding themselves. I believe turning AA on now is only going to increase how quickly some people burn out. Instead of taking a break or going easy in Velious, they will burn to gain all those AAs, spend them once luclin drops, and then promptly quit logging in, maybe never again.

(slightly off topic)

I guess I'm one of them, I quit playing on phinny yesterday (deleted character, otherwise I keep playing while not having fun). Not sure if it is burnout, it is just the massive XP timesink, then the epic timesink, just the fact that walking everywhere takes a long time, you have to get a druid port for everywhere...and then an AA mountain on top of it soon.

Then flagging for VT in Luclin, one of the worst timesinks in EQ, then PoP flagging. I just don't want to dedicate years on EQ again. I wouldn't mind playing EQ again if the timesinks were lowered and the focus was just having fun, not this 3 months release and being hit with XP mountains timesinks, epic timesinks, travel timesinks, flagging timesinks, all at a pace that requires incredible dedication if you want to keep up with others. That's not for me, I don't like that at all, it's a job instead of having fun.

I talked to some people who don't log in anymore, and the consensus among us seems to be that we miss the social aspect, the adventure...but we don't miss the timesinks, how everything is so inconvenient, how everything is so slow. I remember being very interested in EQNext, because it brought back EQ without the .. drag.

It's also about having a family, having other things you want to do, the amount of people who can dedicate hours on raiding and grouping on phinny probably don't have many responsabilities, might not have a job or family, so they can dedicate a lot of time on their character, I don't think that is the case for most EQ players, I think most don't have that kind of time in a day to spend on a game.

The EQ person, Brad McWaid (sp?), is making a game similar to EQ, similarly slow, I just think developers don't understand very very few people are willing to play those games. The amount of people who are initially excited is always substantial, the people that stick around is always incredibly small. I think we see this on phinny too.

It's Brad McQuaid and the game is called Pantheon : Rise of the Fallen iirc.
EQ culture is the opposite of WoW culture. It's long and it's tedious.

Lol of course people find it boring to grind 30 hours for an epic, the game has been out for 17 years. People will gladly do the same 30 hours camp in Pantheon because its new

With instances this should be much much easier/quicker, I would not be surprised if some guilds were not Time flagged in the first week after the launch of pop.

Between this and all the other threads about people crying because Beastlords/Berserkers aren't released early, all that tells me is that the forums are full of people who don't want to be patient and wait, and don't understand the concept of a TLP server.

If playing a Beastlord is that huge to you, then wait until Luclin to start playing. If playing a Zerker is that big, wait until they are released. And if being able to have AA's in order to have fun playing means that much, wait just a few more weeks. But don't try and whine and moan and complain your way into getting what you want, exactly when you want it.

People complaining about the timesinks of EQ is such an interesting thing to me. Its kinda like saying "Man, I'd love to participate in a marathon if it didn't involve running" or "I'd really enjoy water-skiing if I didn't need to use skis and go in the water."

or do like I did and level 2 support characters at 60 (my druid and ench) so they are ready to PL my baby beastlord through the boring levels!

This is what I'm excited about. I'm still holding out hope I can hit 60 before Luclin (I'm 48 now). The main reason I want to get to 60 is so I can start leveling my next toon in a more relaxed state. Right now it's a bit stressful always hoping to get a group while your exp pot is still running and feeling obligated to spend more and more money in the marketplace just to stay relevant. I won't miss that feeling.

EQ has a lot to offer that very few see because these tlp servers continually start in classic and drag out expansions people have played to boredom and remember why they quit in the first place. We see the complaints in Kunark, Velious, and soon Luclin. It takes a hearty soul indeed to slog through that over and over each tlp.

It's a shame it takes years to unlock expansions beyond OoW where raids are quite fun, excluding a few duds here and there. I never raided Underfoot and beyond and on a tlp it will be many years and likely never as they die off. Maybe Phinny will be different but I think they will have to loosen up a bit soon before enough people quit it's starts a spiral down.

Why would u bother investing any time in a game where everything is known then come to the forums wasting your time only to complain.? Eq is not a phone game. There are plenty of other phone games out there for you to play without the timesinks. They can only hold your hand so long until you actually have to put some time investment in a char instead of making 10 alts. Unfortunately this is what we are left with when progression servers actually progress beyond the hand holding content. Starting a server with the planes of power open would be something more interesting for progression then starting from classic. Give the people servers that they actually want instead of trying to combine everyone in the same category. A server that starts in classic and ends in either velious or luclin for the casual alt groupers. A server that starts in pop and actually progresses to some real raid content where you actually have to play one character and not 10.

I enjoy the early content in EQ(Classic through PoP) primarily for nostalgia but also that the raids are not cookie-cutter and specifically designed for X number of people. I like raids that feel like I am actually in a fantasy world killing a monster as opposed to completing a tough level in mario brothers or something. Sure, sometimes they are quite simple - but that doesn't necessarily make it less enjoyable.

I could certainly be wrong, because I never really raided beyond OoW - but from what I have heard, the raids start to become a micro-management of button presses/clickies etc. If I want that sort of thing, I'll migrate back over to WoW where the design and content is superior to EQ in my opinion.

Not really, there is a real difference between actual classic and the EQ of PoP & beyond, which is the majority of EQs content. PoP & beyond actually supports family players, more casual player, players with a job / responsibility.

These two versions of EQ are very distinct. They are not the same at all.

(what about GoD? fair point, but let's leave GoD out of this discussion, it's an anomaly among expansions, everyone knows it was completely mistuned)

The problem with many of the TLP I have seen, is that by the time you actually get to "PoP & Beyond", the server has suffered many "losses", from people who actually don't like the slowness of classic. But this was made so so much worse on Phinni by the slow XP.

I'm sure several people will disagree, but I enjoyed PoP & Beyond far more than classic. OOW imo beats anything classic out of the water. The zones are laid out in such a way that you progress from Dranik's to Riftseeker's Sanctum in a very accessible and fun way. On phinny you have to ask a druid to get anywhere, XP is so unbelievably slow, solo isn't an option, everything is just a pain just to be a pain, it's a pain for the sake of being a pain, it doesn't serve a purpose. If I play a game I want to play a game, not run for miles everywhere or be LFG for half an hour.

I agree with people who said TLP server should progress more quickly through classic or start with Luclin - PoP, the amount of losses on TLP servers happen during classic and its due to its ancient outdated mechanics.


Is there a group of people out there who can handle a very demanding server like Phinni with very slow progression? Yes, there are certainly people who want that.

Is that group of people large enough to support a full server? No, I don't think so, the amount of player attrition on phinni is very high. Out of 20 friends I have on my friends list, 3 still play.

My point is that you know what classic EQ is like, yet you still complain about it and wish it was something that it isn't. The rest of this tangent is irrelevant to my point.

Your implication being that "timesinks" are all or largely what EQ is about. I don't really think this is remotely true, sure time sinks are part of EQ, but they aren't a necessary part or even one of the draws of the game. In this regard it's much more like "the Decathlon is great, but i wish the shot put wasn't part of it"

Perhaps, but that takes this particular discussion out of context. The various timesinks are the specific part they are complaining about as if it were the sole reason they don't enjoy EQ. So In the context of his/her argument, it IS largely what EQ is about.

No, I think the content of classic is fine in 2016, IF it is supported by faster XP, by things like unlocked newbee gear PoP quest, by defiant gear, support for people who only have 30 minutes to play by unlocking some MM etc. That was actually the case on one of the TLP servers a few years ago. And it was a successful server.

Classic classic vanilla....which is basically the way phinni does it....I don't think that's something there's still a large audience for. I don't think there's a large audience for slow travel, slow XP, farming VT keys, keying for PoP, doing epic 1.0, terrible solo XP...I think that audience is much too small to support a server.

I think by the time Phinni arrives at OOW, there will have been a lot of attrition, I just don't think many EQ players want to dedicate that amount of time on a game like EQ once again, you're talking A LOT of dedication. Maybe I'm wrong, that's just my feeling, I don't think the population is there for it. I base this on how few of my friends still play, how few of our guildies still play. I base this on the history of other TLP that had a similar rulest.

they should just give a bunch of AA to start with, its my AA and I want it now! Just call JG Wentworth for it!

Hard to say there isn't a large audience for a server like phinny when it is easily the most successful server the game has ever had.

Attrition can be expected in any game, especially EQ where many people love Classic - PoP and then simply lose interest.