Please stop. You've been corrected over and over. Regardless of whether or not you think warlocks *should* have been evil, they were *always* defined by the game mechanics as Neutral for the live game, beta, alpha, and pre-alpha in-house testing. They could start in either city, they can worship anyone they choose, etc. If you must know, early early design docs that Raph Koster had his hands on had them as evil, but the Wizard class was neutral. That never made any sense to anyone else and never saw the light of code.
Then the RPers must keep to themselves on the servers that I've been on after all of the mergers that my original server (Unrest) has gone through over the past decade+. If they are keeping to themselves, then why should it matter that my swashbuckler has betrayed to Freeport and is now tagged as "evil'? THAT'S MY WHOLE POINT IN ALL OF THIS. I'm obviously NOT interacting with RPers, and they're not interacting with me. We both go about our business, and everyone is just fine and dandy in their own little corners of Norrath on our server. I'd be that evil swashbuckler who just runs through the evil cities to do the evil aligned quests. Once I bang those out and bump up my quest count, I'm going to be hanging out in my guild hall, my tradeskill crafting house, or doing solo/heroic/raid stuff with my friends and guildies. I promise not to pester anyone who is RPing. If I know they don't want to interact with an evil swashbuckler, I'll do my best to avoid their fun...just like I normally do when I'm in game! I only interact with my friends and guildies, and I say like 1-2 things in chat channel a night...if that. So with that said, why would it hurt anyone that my toon is an evil swashbuckler? Would it ruin the RPer's game THAT MUCH? OH wait...there ARE evil swashbucklers on non-PVP servers now. There ARE good shadowknights in Qeynos. There ARE evil mystics in Freeport. These characters DO exist, and they are here to stay....nothing anyone can do about it. So, now what? Nobody is quitting the game because these abominations to lore are around. Why would it matter if they did let the last 8 classes go neutral? Only a few people like me (who want to do opposite city quests) will make the transition. Thing is, I've been interacting with evil aligned classes on a PvE server since launch. Guilded with them. Grouped with them. Raided with them. EVERYONE HAS...and how did that ruin RPing on a non-RP server? It didn't! If all original classes remained neutral, I'd have no squabble about this. Instead, they shifted 8 classes, and left 8 of us behind.
Role Playing has nothing to do with lore. And IMHO the devs made a mistake letting the PVP people not follow the rest of the PVE rules when they merged them. If I was in charge, all the "good" SKs would have logged in to find their stuff in a moving box and a free express ticket to Freeport in the mailbox.
Bah, Paladins. They have the persistence of zombies, but lack their charisma and personality *grins hatefully*
When the Defenders of Lore show up in these threads, many cite RP as a reason to keep 8 classes good or evil. Then there are the few diehards that defend lore for for lore reasons and general EQ nostalgia. These types of people can come in here and argue why a ranger can be evil, but not a swashbuckler. They'll have a bunch of reasons why an assassin can be good, but not a brigand. (blah blah for the other 6 non-neutral classes). Other than lore being the only reason, this hurts nothing in regard to game mechanics, because it was proven on the PvP servers.
Imo most of classes have to be either good or evil with very few neutrals in between... races is different beast all together - should be all 3 neutral/good/evil but should be a way for opposite factions to gain entrance to the city w/o ruining faction with home cities .. like it was in EQ1 .. I do remember my dark elf necro has to slaughter gazzilion orcs in common lands to get access to most parts of Freeport (paladins still hated me but meh .. )
Why not betray to good? Granted you have to be 20 I think but my main was a defiler and is now a Mystic in Freeport. Just like my SK is aligned with New Halas. Just a suggestion here.
You realize that this boils down to "I cant have what I want, so those other people shouldn't have what they got", or "half a loaf is worse than none"?
The lore reason never makes sense though. IT DOES in a game story perspective. But NOT the mechanics, unless they are playing PvP server and only one exists and that is on TLE not live. The same people will be (for example) "good" (or evil) aligned, and group with the other side, if going by lore, that does NOT make sense. That is the part where it makes far more sense for all classes to be neutral, since every class groups with everyone anyway. Which kinda defeats the purpose of good/bad alignment in a lot of ways, though I think removing good/bad (even if people still group with each other) would lose a lot of flavor of the races of EQ2.
If you don't know the lore of the game you're playing, how can you accurately portray a character living in the setting? That statement doesn't make any sense at all. If your character walks up to one of mine and starts saying something about them being a 6 million year old dragon or what have you, my character's going to think yours is insane. There's a definite timeline--Norrath is only about 5,000-some years old. Honestly, no one on the RP side of things understands why Brigands and Swashbucklers remain Evil and Good only, either. As an RPer, I've never seen a coherent, logical, lore-based arguement for what differentiates a pirate from a bandit in terms of moral quality. :| No one is going to s**t on your RP if you play a Freeport or Neriak-aligned Swashbuckler on AB. At least with Defilers/SKs/Necromancers, the reason why they're evil-only can be discerned by the name alone. For the most part, though, this thread is pointless. Shadowknights/Paladins, Necromancers, and Defilers should never be neutral classes. Just because they've worked together to prevent mutually assured destruction doesn't mean that the Good vs. Evil bit was thrown out the window. Freeport and Neriak are despotic states built on slave labor, ffs. There's a friggin' execution pit with three big spinning sets of blades in the middle of Freeport. ONE OF THE FACTION QUESTS FOR BETRAYING TO NERIAK HAS YOU KIDNAP A KID AND SELL HIM TO AN ANONYMOUS CLIENT. :|
Only if you started your warlock on one of the evil cities if you started your warlock on kelethin or halas you are stuck with Sol Sek Ro. I should know when i had my fae warlock I could not worship Bertox i had to go with sol sek ro. No not all warlocks worshiped bertoxx as I stated above my fae warlock worshiped Sol sek Ro. Please stop showing how little you know about EQ2 and it's beginnings.
Good Grief are you purposely missing my Point here DoomDrake warlocks were always considered neutral meaning you could start one in any of the starter cities no matter what faction that city was if you made it in Qeynos or later kelethin, your warlock was considered good., if you created your warlock in Freeport or later gorowyn or Neriak, he or she was considered evil. that has always been how it was in EQ2. you must be thinking of a different game where warlocks could only be evil that is not so here in EQ2.
No it does not. If they didn't want to hear this argument then they never should have changed alignment on any of the other classes. They should have kept alignments where they were when the game first started. But alas, they had to make some but not all neutral. Which, for lack of a better term, is stupid.
