Two Mercs At Once

Instead of getting rid of the three member quest requirements, how about allowing gold members to deploy two mercs at once?

I would honestly pay more for this capability.

1. Allow a daybreak cash unlock to deploy two mercs or some alternative means.
a. X Daybreak cash that unlocks this capability account wide and/or (I would personally choose this).
b. A quest line available at X level that only unlocks this for that character.
2. Restrict this to a certain level.
3. Merc upkeep costs are of course doubled.

I'm sure there would be a demand, I'm positive in fact.

Peter Gibbons: Lawrence, what would you do if you had a million dollars?
Lawrence: I'll tell you what I'd do, man: two mercs at the same time, man.
Peter Gibbons: That's it? If you had a million dollars, you'd do two mercs at the same time?
Lawrence: Damn straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I were a millionaire I could hook that up, too; 'cause mercs dig dudes with money.
Peter Gibbons: Well, not all mercs.
Lawrence: Well, the type of mercs that'd double up on a dude like me do.
Peter Gibbons: Good point.

No.

Offering this would just be an alternative means to multi-boxing (MB).

I'm thinking about MB, but I really don't want to play in windowed mode or tax my PC anymore than it already is. Granted the power capability is a lot less, but it serves the same purpose, in a more sanctioned manner.

I'd be more on board with removing mercs completely.

Well, lots of problems with this thread.

1. MB = Mana Burn (Wizard AA)
2. You absolutely can play fullscreen with multiple clients
3. Headcount check for group tasks exists for an obvious reason you seem to want to ignore
4. If you can't handle two EQ instances, your PC is too dated for your feedback to be relevant

The post reeks horribly of "cater to me" and I feel dirty for replying to it.

As a non boxer still on an old pc myself i support this. It is virtually impossible to find groups unless a new expansion just came out. Everyone is either on tlp, or hates people and boxes content, it also seems people use the weak excuse they wont group outside of their own guilds. Mercs are still way below a real players skill level therefore its no issue imo, its not like people can do eos mission etc with 4 mercs lets be real....there is no actual advantage other than someone xping a little more efficiently.

If it weren't for mercs (singular), I wouldn't even be playing.

No idea why people are against this. How would this effect you if someone else was running around with two mercs up? What's so different with someone running around with one or two boxes and multiple mercs.

To get two mercs requires multi-boxing. These people exist all over the place, why would it matter if I ran around with two mercs sans one full-fledged character?

People run around with multiple mercs NOW. This just removes the requirement of having two or more clients of EQ running. So tell me, why is one ok and the other isn't purely from a game-mechanics perspective?

Until somebody in this thread comes up with a reason against it, I think your idea is fine - even great! In fact, I don't see any reason to limit the number of mercs you could hire. Why not let people hire 5 mercs and fill out a whole group, or even a full raid of mercs, if they want to spend the money to do so? And I see no reason to impose a level restriction (there is no level restriction on boxing).

As has been pointed out, mercs are considerably less capable than real players (if you aren't better than a merc at your level, you know you still have a bit to learn). Multi-boxing is way more powerful than having more mercs. So this wouldn't imbalance anything or even change anything that was already in the game.

I think the issue would be cost: DB would want to price mercs so that any revenue lost (from losing the multiple paid accounts that boxers currently support) would be made up from selling more mercs. I'm guessing the upkeep of any mercs after the first would need to be very high.

Honestly, I think you will have more fun and be more powerful if you try to box (get a second monitor and it will help you considerably. Alt-tabbing is...well, I wouldn't do it). But I do not see any problems with your idea at this time.

Mercs saved this game people don't want to believe it but they did. The ability to go out and get stuff done when you only have 30m to play or cant find a group. All of these people would of just quit without mercs.

I'm in favor of it. They can always not allow multiple mercs in group tasks that require a full group they could even make content designed 1 person and 2 mercs.

all healers can heal all content .. all tanks can tank the content .. dps and adps alike can do enough damage to kill mobs .. mercs suck..

One merc per person is more than enough and encourages that you actually make an attempt to go out and find other people to play with to do things more complex. A single merc allows most people to be able to do basic stuff, two mercs would make it so that you can pretty much do anything depending on your class.

There are three groups of people against adding the ability to have a second merc out: those of us who feel that it is overkill and actually would discourage grouping, those who feel that mercs in general are a blight on the game and should be removed completely, and the Devs.

What is this obvious reason? This issue keeps coming up, and I've yet to see a good reason for it.

EQ is a multiplayer game.

Group content is designed for groups.

Too many people are special snowflakes that want to be able to do everything by themselves. That's just not what this game is about. Boxers and raiders put in extra effort beyond the group game and are rewarded appropriately, as are antisocial single account players appropriately rewarded in the opposite direction (in most cases)

Problem is, people don't run around with 2 mercs. They sit in one camp 24 hours a day for months on end.

No. Just no.

Without knowing what would be involved in even making it possible there is no way to say it would be a good thing.
Frankly the less touched, apart from debugging, the better at this point.

Instead of more mercs, how about more merc classes --- bard and shaman mercs?

Here I thought this was going to be a two mercs one cup thread.

I would put more type of mercs first. Chanter and shaman would be good.

proof?