Why use raid targets to determine Xpac Release?

/tears up - so darn classic!

Trakanon
Respawn - Approx 2.5 Days
VP Keys - Average 3 per kill

Probable Trakanon Kills
Ragefire - 36
Lockjaw - 72

Probable VP Keys
Ragefire - 108
Lockjaw - 216

Rotation Guilds
Ragefire - 12
Lockjaw - 9

VP Key Split
Ragefire - 9 VP keys per guild
Lockjaw - 24 VP keys per guild

For the record I think Phara Dar will be slain by two groups or less.

As for the VP key issue. Yeah... That's a serious issue at the moment. I wrote a letter to some of the developers on this issue and brought in some guild officers/leaders from both servers to show them that this was something that pretty much every could identify as an upcoming point of contention.

On Lockjaw I'm sure we'll have a few more guilds join the rotation before Kunark as well and even during Kunark which will only make this worse.

The fact is that Everquest was designed with one or two top raiding guilds in mind on each server. There was supposed to be a pecking order. The game itself does not support the style of rotations being implemented on these servers. We can all come together and try our best to make things better but without changes on the design side it won't always be enough. This is one of those times.

Also VP respawns once a week, so if there are more than 12 guilds on Ragefires rotation that means some of you will be in line until Velious anyway!

I'm just glad I'm on Lockjaw so we can see how the dust settles after all of the whining that will happen over the next couple of months as Ragefire does Kunark.

Like I said I wont be surprised if most of those targets have their timers halved from the current rate by the time Kunark comes to Lockjaw; 30 hours for Trakanon and 84 hours for Veeshan's Peak would be reasonable. Increasing the drop rate of Trakanon's Tooth might be another solution they could do instead of or in addition to adjusting Trakanon's spawn time.

But yeah Ruins of Kunark had a few fundamental design flaws and this is one of them. In later expansions killing that kind of a gate keeper mob keys or flags up at least 30 people in your raid making progression into the next zone much more manageable.

It was always meant to be a timesink to prevent players from defeating all the raid content too quickly. I don't think the VP system in itself is too bad but when combined with these rotations it is impossible.

I agree that the insanity about to spew forth on Ragefire will see the VP issue resolved before Kunark launches on Lockjaw. Like we said in our letter to the devs, the current situation simply will not work with rotations. It's not even a question of changing it or not. It will happen because it must.

Sleepers Tomb will be similar in Velious. Those 7/7 necklaces for the key quest. Poor Sont/Zland/Kland. I forget, does Aaryonar drop it as well? Do the other dragons in NToV drop it? Dozicar The Cursed? (forget his full name) One in west wing as well? Meh my memory is crap these days.

There are five key mobs in Velious not counting the few that have a low probability of dropping "a shard of Hsagra's Talisman".

Sontalak(WW) Klandicar(WW) Zlandicar(DN) Yelinak(SS) and Lendiniara(WToV) drop the main talisman's.

Ah yes, how could I have forgotten Lord Yelinak. The slippery room!! (lots of lolz in that room).

Thanks.

Actually, the best system the developers could implement for this is a Tacvi system, where Trakenon could drop an item used to spawn a Veeshan's Peak expedition for your guild.

I would say that the same system should be used for Temple of Veeshan, Sleeper's Tomb, and Vex Thal, but of course I would be flamed for such a suggestion.

I don't know any guild leader here who would oppose this. It's an awesome idea that probably unfortunately won't happen.

Detheb will!

Even though #brocrush.

Mixed bag....

VP and VT? Carry on like normal. Everyone should have to do their key, period. This isnt EverRaid, this is EverQuest. VP and VT key quests are an integral part of the raiding game, period.

Instance ToV? Cmon man, how many raid mobs are there between the 3 wings? That has to be a joke.

I wouldn't be fully opposed to instancing Sleeper's Tomb though, but only after the Sleeper has been awakened, meaning one guild would have to fully key before they have that access.

Agreed. I would be fine with them simply increasing the number of teeth to be more in line with the number of possible keys you get from Emp (Emp is like, 40 rifts per kill I think?). The key quests are far more than just the boss kills. Not having to get the VP medallions or the VT shards would certainly save time, but the whole point is putting the time and effort in to complete the quests. Again, I'd be fine with loosening the bottlenecks by increasing Trak teeth or spawn more planar rifts per kill.

ToV has no key, doesn't even seem relevant to this discussion.

Sleeper's - ehh whatever I would be ok with either. Perhaps increase the mobs/probability that can hsgara's shards to get more keys out there.

Yeah Emperor Ssraezsha gives 40 pieces for the Vex Thal key quest making it a far more reasonable quest for guilds to complete; one kill of Emperor Ssraezsha is really all a guild needs to move on to the next zone. The farming for shards isn't really that much of a pain as most of those shards drop in higher level zones that you will probably be hunting in for AA grinding anyway. It's the quests for Veeshan's Peak that will be a big pain in the . Sleeper's Tomb also has a similar problem though there are 5 different mobs with a 100% drop of a key and 4 additional mobs with a chance to drop it which makes keying up for Sleeper's Tomb somewhat easier as even smaller guilds that aren't on rotation for the big key dropping dragons could end up with a couple of keys from something like Derakor the Vindicator.

The rest of the VP key is going to be interesting too. With ~1000 raiders on each server who are all going to want to be farming those pieces on day 1 or shortly thereafter, I expect the Pained Soul, Verix, bloodgill marauder etc camps to be just as brutally contested as Trakanon is sure to be.

We'll see how it goes, i could also see a lot of people not wasting their time on doing it until they're for sure going to be there.

As someone on the lower end of the totem pole in line for trak keys, I will not be wasting time bumping heads with 1000 other people on these camps until they calm down.

I actually really like this

I disagree, I don't think people respect the raw power of AEs in veeshans peak