Why are people coming to play on TLP servers and demanding changes be made?

So adding obvious class balance changes would ruin EQ just so you can't feel like an overpowered snowflake? No, I don't think so.

There's a giant laundry list of reasons why EQ feel into obscurity and got embarrassed by WoW. People asking for honest game balance changes is not one of them.

The so called "overpowered" charm mechanic function exactly the same in p99, though. Before velious on p99, I literally grinded through all of the 50s in one night in seb, with a charm pet and a cleric following me through as I smashed from disco to chef repeatedly. It was the fastest way to level because A) reverted a.c. code on tanks is on p99 and they're a mana sponge to healers on top of being dps, and B) charm is just as reliable there as it is here.

Individuals with limited play time would rather be playing during that time than waste it on pointless time sinks just so you can wear your nostalgia snuggy.

Should we give those people free level 50 toons and free planar armor too? Maybe do their epic quests for them?

I have a family, and a full-time job, so let's stop with the pointless basement dweller stereotype.

Just because people are better than you doesn't mean they have no life. Grow up.

Only those? Those are practically nothing. I'm sure JChan can whip them up before morning.

So, keep in mind that the EQ devs have a variety of servers to care for. Currently, if you completely ignore live (a huge portion of their responsibility, likely still more than half their total dev time--they still need to come out with a new expansion every year or the game dies...) You have progression servers in (or about to be in) TDS, SoD, GoD, LDON, PoP, and Classic/Kunark.

Even if you ask the devs to just focus on class balance on three or four of the most populated of those, you are still asking them to accomplish something that a much larger dev team wasn't able to get right most of the time in era, when they had only 1 expansion to focus on. The "obvious" changes to you aren't obvious to them, because you spend about 40-60 more hours per week interacting with the expansion in question than the devs do. Plus, they need to accomplish this balance without any global changes that would impact live (that's a bug loser for them from the $$ side of things.) And, anything they do in your current expansion will be irrelevant in 60-90 days when the next one rolls around and all the class balance issues change. So it's hard to justify devoting a lot of time or resources to this particular balance issue right now, I imagine.

I have a fulltime job and kids. My play time is limited and when I do get time to play, I don't want to spend it doing a corpse run or stumbling around with no maps. I just want to find a group and have fun hunting. Perhaps some people with fulltime jobs and families can make hardcore game play work. Not every family can.

I've also had bad experience with dying in game in the past, so that also makes me speak out against corpse runs. I've gotten guilt tripped for telling people I have to leave and don't have time to do a recovery. Someone even tried to guilt me for saying I needed to log to take care of a sick family member, which I did not appreciate. With how easily offended certain people in the community get (i.e. the guy who took offense because I wouldn't add him on Skype and personal Facebook account), I'm not keen to see game mechanics come back that would further fuel the guilt trippers.

I like challenges. I don't want my epic handed to me or to log in and have a toon at max level. But I feel the game needs to be as accessible as possible to people and corpse runs/no maps discourage many players.

There's a reason why EQ became so much less populated as soon as there were other major options. Most people play games to relax and have fun and therefore enjoy convenience features like not having to grind for hours to get your exp back if you're unlucky enough to not have the one class in the game with a decent rez around, particularly if you're on a server where it will be a long time or never before cleric mercs unlock.

EQ is a fun game with tons of content and a mostly awesome community, but man it has so many insanely stupid balance decisions, particularly in the early game, and I for one definitely support the convenience feature change requests like letting rez be more common, though I do agree that nerfing charm at this point is a stupid idea.

Exactly this. The elitist jackholes are the most toxic members of the community that want to hold back progression and innovation whilst wearing rose colored nostalgic glasses. This high horse attitude is what drives people away in droves and effectively kills the game.

Nice hyperbolic examples. Having more time to do boring, long grinds doesn't make you better than anyone. It only means you have more free time and a masochistic desire to prove you can stomach grinds for those virtual rewards. Hooray for you.

Not sure if you misconstrued my statement or were adding to it. I'm in favor off making things more streamlined and allowing the time in game being worth playing rather than spent trying to play. Dulu mentioned he wanted stuff implemented which would serve no real purpose or add any enjoyment to the average player. His direct reasoning is to be "MORE like classic" which reinforces the idea it's for nostalgic reasons rather than progressive ones.

As somebody already mentioned, you went from 0 to 100. I defended the reasoning why many people with a family would rather not have some of the pointless things you've requested (i.e corpse runs, no maps, no soulbinders/translocators) and the only thing you can come up with is "then give them everything!". If you can't comprehend that there is a huge difference between spending time working on an epic or raiding and going AFK with autorun just to get to the zones to do said things, then I don't know what else can be said.

I was adding to your statement, Max =)

But your line of thinking is what has ruined the MMORPG genre. Games like World of Warcraft etc have dumbed themselves down so much, in order to allow 'everyone to do everything'.

Maybe I overreacted, and I'm sorry for that - but I don't want this game to be so easy.

I think a good compromise would be to release a "Hardcore" TLP server. Give us a TLP with corpse runs, racial XP penalties, no soulbinders/translocators, coin weight, no maps, nerfed store potions.. and let those of us who want to play the original style game migrate there.

They have that server, it is called P99. If you choose to play here instead of there, thats on you.

Wait, you went 50-59 in one night in Seb?

Yes. Charm is actually better on p99 because it doesn't have any damage reduction or hp reduction at all. On agnarr, classic era charms reduce mob dmg and hp by 20%. That % penalty then increases as you go up in charm spell upgrades. We had a 9 page thread a couple days ago about how OP charm is on tlp, but it's even more OP on p99. Fact is, they just have alot more on p99 that don't use charm to the fullest.

IIRC, the grind on P99 went something like this:

Day 1 - Lvl 1 - 20 with animation pet in Felwithe, meleeing mobs 1 time, running to next white/blue con mob, and letting sword pet kill them as they chased me till level 5. Then i moved to EC orcs till level 10, then I moved to Uguk till 20.

Day 2 - Lvl 20-32. Uguk, SolA, and Mistmoore, in succession to 32.

Day 3 - Lvl 32 to lvl 48 Overnight grind in City of Mist with 2 tanks 2 healers, and 1 DPS, charmpet carried. I chose two tanks and 2 healers because I didnt want to get screwwed by a healer or tank leaving in the middle of the night and killing the group.

Day 4 - Seb grind to lvl 60. I did this in about 22 hours plowing all the non-krup frogs with 1 cleric following me and keeping me healed as we marched down to disco, then up to the Krup area just before Chef. It was faster to exp on non-krups because Krups have nearly twice the HP of lesser frogs, but not twice the exp. Dars were fairly tame pets throughout the grind but I did switch over to krups as the charmpet of choice at one point.

Was level 60 in less than a week, used charm extensively throughout the grind without much issue. Just about the time that I got to City of Mist, i was able to buy cha JC wrists, and Tecmos tossed me a few other CHA items to push me over 200cha for charm stability.

All I want is my Northman Ring armor in the game that was supposedly Classic...

As an aside, I apped and was invited to TMO after I was done in COM, they were rather surprised to see that I was 60 24 hours later.

The biggest differences I noticed on P99 from BOTH classic EQ and TLP is that sirken likes to artificially increase the base resists of mobs at marquise camps to make them harder than they ever were on classic EQ. Namely, camps like Fungi King, Juggs etc had resist rates tuned ridiculously higher than they were back in the 99-2001 era of the game; where Ilis frogs, shrooms, and juggs can be Tashed, and Maloed, yet still resist slows etc at a rate of close to 75% of the time.

They intentionally tune the higher end loot camps to be more "epic" than they were back in the day, in order to promote the perception that EQ used to be "super hard" or something. It's an artificial means to stifle the volume of higher end loot entering their economy.