When does EQ become harder?

Im basically just standing around doing nothing on fights. The fights in this game seem made for old people? I dont mean that in a negative way, it seriously seems like the fights were made for old people, who cant do much more or they will fail the fight .Give me something to do, I dont even care necessarily if the fights are hard, just give me something to do other then standing still hitting 2 buttons. Currently on Coirnav which is during Luclin. Are there more mechanics or diffictuly coming in further expansions, or at least something more then standing still, and the occasional spell joust?

OoW is the first expansion I remember adding raid mechanics that people freaked out about and thought were impossible. Ironically lots of those mechanics are pretty standard now. For many expansions if you can build the corrrct group, CC or single pulling was a big deal. Actual game mechanics were pretty slow. Lots of tank and spark with a lot of free time to chat.

Just the way it was at the time.

Maybe Kerafym in SoF? I can't recall anything before that guilds had any real issue with on TLP this go around.

Yeah Kerafyrm and Vyskudra in Crystallos.

Although Demi-Plane also adds some spice earlier on... Problem with those events though, is that it caters to very few doing a lot of work while rest of the raid is still just tank spanking. SoF is probably where there's multiple challenges/mechanics for every archetype in a very nicely balanced manner.

Only 10 expansions to go for Coirnav then!

Any encounter where 1 person watching Netflix can wipe a raid is "hard" EQ.

If you don't have your heart set on playing a TLP server you should play live. The game gets way better with AAs post 70. If you're just standing around on live pushing 2 buttons you've failed at EQ

In general, you need to find the meta games in raiding to really enjoy it. If you want to be carried, you can and just about nobody will care.

However, if you want to push it, there is always something for some classes to do. Bard, as I play, is a popular one where people can easily set it and forget it, but if you want to make something of it, you can be doing something different just about every fight to min/max. There is a huge mini game within EQ that is getting the last 10% out of your class. That's the only challenge I've found that involves the individual.

Luclin measured by almost all standards is easy. Not knowing Emp could be considered hard given the need to CC, establish and hold Ramp and Emp’s ability to one-shot in-era tanks without Spellshield. A few people not executing could turn into a wipe; but it really isn’t a raid wide fail condition or one you couldn’t overcome with gear or numbers.

But as far as a raid with actual fail conditions? DoDH sort of has one with the Performer that requires like 18 hot buttons to “sing along” or he loses HP. Perhaps an encounter in Tacvi in GoD where you blow up the raid by killing low HP mobs with DS/riposte/AE/uncontrolled pets. Or in OoW where you fail to click your mask and turn the boss into a super boss that one-shots tanks most of the time. Even these can be overcome with excessively BIS gear.

As far as legitimate fail conditions, there really aren’t many yet - at least not like the “better” scripted successor MMO’s and their expansions. You won’t see complexity like that until SoF and later which is a long time away from the classic EQ expansion you’re in; the only way to make those “hard” is to do everything in-era with low numbers where mistakes get magnified drastically. IE doing Emp with 18 is much harder than doing him with 60 people.

Problem is that, for the most part, a few skilled players can carry a whole raid force. In that sense, EQ isn't hard. Most of the skill involved revolves around know when to do things. For example, being in a CH chain isn't 'hard' since you're just pressing a button every few seconds... but the complexity comes from different scenarios that occur during a fight that may interrupt you. Tank may need DI, someone may need a spot, you may get stunned/feared/tank may go OOR and require you to be paying attention and adjusting on the fly. If all ur doing is mindlessly pressing your CH chain macro, you may miss something important and the raid can wipe; especially if you're not just zerging content down with 70 people.

I cant speak for EQ post-LDON, but I'd say the challenge in the game can be found boxing; try boxing multiple clerics in different groups, being 2 spots in a ch chain while also tanking or dpsing on another char. Otherwise, the hardness in the game comes from knowing what to do & when (which not everyone knows) and being attentive enough on raids to adjust quickly if you need to.

It's hard if you do it in era. Load a classic interface. Turn off coms and coordinate with typing only in a single chat window. Only get gear from open world mobs. a No instances and no picks. Remember it's 20 years old. Of course it's not hard now, we know everything and we have all the best strategy and stuff.

Never, despite the elitist attitude of many EQ players, the game's encounters never even approach the difficullty of later MMOs hardest encounters.

There is no encounter in EQ as hard as the last 4 bosses of HC ICC. Or a modern mythic final boss.

It's not even remotely close.

EQ becomes much harder when real-life limits your play time and you fall behind the leveling curve which snowballs into gear & AAs and soon you are in a no man's land of minimal population above the alts in Unrest/Paludal but not high enough to group with the mostly-capped population, a population ever getting farther away from you (except on Agnarr of course).

Some of us find this fun though.

Definitely the hardest part of end game EQ is balancing a real life.

The hardest part about eq is trying to play live at the high end, were you have over 30000 aa's and 6 hotbar configurations just to play optimally.

Tell you what, if you’ve already defeated Emp Ssra, go into PoP without anyone who has played all the content 100 times telling you exactly what to do for every encounter. Let me know how long it takes you to get into PoTime without your hand being held.

i mean it's an old game so yeah most of the people who play it nowadays are old, although we were young once.. a lot of the difficulty is the planning that happens before the fight, which i think differentiates it from other games that might have more of what your looking for

It's true. Everyone on the forums likes to pretend that they were all in Afterlife or w/e high end guilds were there back in the day, and yet on Agnarr there are still active raiding guilds that havent killed Quarm. There's a reason it takes guilds months to kill Rathe council, etc. Cuz a lot of people playing TLPs were insanely casual players and never raided end game content, like me. I got very lucky to be in a guild on Agnarr with very experienced raiders so I learned a lot, but otherwise you can only read about the encounters so much online and hope everyone can execute the strats... if you don't have skilled folks difficult.

Demi in DoDH is probably the start of mechanics getting more interesting. SoF is where they start to pick up even more, imo.

LOL Heroic ICC was a breeze outside of the Lich King encounter... and the only hard part with that was finding enough children on WoW that weren't dropped on their heads as a child to fill a raid.

I'm sorry but generally speaking solo'ing on early era Bard, or juggling multiple yellow/red con mobs with CC and kite in EQ is harder than anything WoW has ever offered.. and I raided up until WoD.

Most DPS rotations are just timer dump into 1-6 button spam on CD. You can literally make it all into a one button macro and deal 98% of your max dps. Also if you seriously think "walk out of the green stuff...walk out of the purple stuff....walk away from the valks/ghosts/whatever...don't stand on the edge of ... is "mechanically" hard... then I suggest trying a Moba or hell any shooter. Honestly the only hard role in WoW "expanantion dependent mind you" is raid heals.

RNG is what makes stuff hard.... WoW doesn't have RNG to speak of. If you do the exact same , in the exact same way every time... you win... every time. EQ brings random CC/charm breaks, resists, fizzles, and generally random stupid bugs to the table. EQ is as hard as you want it to be. If you aren't doing anything but solo griding light blue mobs.. then yeh.. it's going to be easy. Go kill harder stuff.. or bring less people.

If you want hard go play a non TLP server... buy TBL and hit up the very first zone. Most of the raids in WoW are easier than trying to kill with a group in the damn starter zone there.