New players can't group in this game

You're not missing anything. Game is garbage thanks to DBG. It's a miracle they haven't screwed up EQ1 yet but give them time. EQ2 was one of the greatest on the market. Now it isn't worth your time. Maybe TLE if you're ok with slow xp but at least have a chance at groups, but live servers aren't EQ2. EQ2 died.

You can't have people both wailing that they can't get enough gear to do heroics then gripe when someone gives you detailed instructions on how you can, indeed, get gear for heroics.

Sure you can, happen all the time.

TL;DR 3/4 of it but....

I agree. The game has become so overwhelming that most new players give up within a few days. The old content is worthless due to agnostic dungeons so you have a whole great big world of waste and if you manage to not be told to do Agnostics and go explore, its going to be just you probably. If you don't level up you have the opportunity to start off as a level 95, or use this level 100 token to get to the end almost. Awesome, got my first group....How do I heal? What's a taunt? After that hurdle you now have gear and stats to understand. And once you kind of get that down, then new content is brought in, they change items around. And as you struggle to get gear, you can't buy anything because the value of currency in the game is insane. But, it can happen. I quit at the beginning of Ruins of Kunark and dabbled in PvP off and on but came back during Kunark Ascension and had no clue what Resolve and Potency was and thought i had a lot of plat with 2000p. I rarely group and I am not guilded. I manage decently enough.

**Holds up his drink. Here's to all of the old players, may you stay forever because that's almost the only source of revenue in Everquest 2.

For the record, players do NOT need full MC gear, let alone fully experimented MC gear to start T1 PoP heroics. They don't need a full set IV or V orange adorns. They don't need a full set of white current tier white adorns.

They do need to have AA in useful places,
They should be in at least some solo instance gear.
They may need to choose gear with extra hitpoints and/or mitigation to start.
They should have at least a few current tier adorns.. probably health to start out.

One of the MOST useful things for new players to have is a good guild. They will help with the former and be willing to mentor the player through learning their toon and their first groups.

What folks need to remember is, we all started the expansion with stuff out that box or from solos, or crafted, and we all managed. And let's face it, most gear dropped now is muted, so take along an undergeared player and throw the gear at them.

I see all of the above posts and aside from the couple of posts proclaiming the gloom doom, hate the game stuff... they are all good Sigrdrifa gave great information..

What I'm having trouble with is why some folks need it .. I'm sorry , really i am and not trying to be a snob but this is a computer game almost everything is tool-tipped or cursor-able .
Your stats,wisdom, stamina, intelligence ect. , pass a cursor over them and it will say exactly what that stat does for that character .. empty windows on a gear examine indicates something belongs there.. pass the cursor over it and it says what it is .. take that phrase to the broker or eq2 wiki .. and information is yours .
The abundance of tabs on Everything, open the character window, tabs all over , all showing a section of information pertinent to that character .
the quest journal , and of course the old friend .. Right Click .

read the in-game mail you get from the npc's lots of clues and search words if you cant intuit whats next .

AA points there's a loud chime when you earn one or more and every single option has a tool tip saying what that choice is supposed to do for that character , yes its a lot of reading ..
but that's why and what we all went to school for , to be able to read .. reading puts you ahead of the guy that can't ..

so be ahead ..

and some of the limitations being most complained about, such as the difficulty in finding groups , is not the game .. its the other players .
developers set it up to require X number of hitpoints and X resolve points, but the speed driven (have to make a million plus plat to pay for a krono!!!) play style, requires speed and grinding and to get that speed and ease the Players require that others have X+40% , and anyone not meeting that requirement will not be allowed to slow their play.
since this is based in human nature i doubt there is any real remedy to it , other than running fast enough to keep up . Or making friends with those not so driven so that some time can be taken to play it a little slower and avoid the catch 22 that the speedy players have set up for the rest of us .

Because some people need more help than others? Because it really isn't as straight forward as what you say? Because some people play this as a game, not a second job? Because, remember this whole thread is about new players being able to understand the game that they haven't played for the last 10 years and might be a bit overwhelmed by the crazy wall of text above? All of the above?

If it's 'weeks' for you that logs in 'everyday for hours', then it's months for people who don't. Thanks for admitting it.

I quit about January, I logged in the other day, and realized how far I was behind again and logged off. Because as of now, I don't have the time nor the inclination, to grind to get all the stuff that Sigrdrifa talked about. AND this is from someone who has played for years and could grind with the best of them.

I think all the information in this thread is awesome, It gives information for what to do and how to get there. But it also shows the issue with everything in this game, a brand new player has MONTHS yes MONTHS to get to a place where they can actually be accepted in groups that are doing current content.

People do not want to be forced to log in day after day for hours on end. Don't get me wrong, there are people that like that, and they can play that way. But the vast majority of people do not want to do that. After leveling your character to max level, you should be able to get groups, resolve and ascensions have taken that away from EQ2. But those are the money makers for the company now.

Go read the tool tips, they are very confusing for new people and a lot of them are not even correct. Especially on the gear

Many, not all of the tooltips, may as well read "Increases much of your muchiness".

Examples :

"

Rhythmic Overture is the start of a

Victorious Concert

o

...The reuse of this ability cannot be modified. "

This game needs a manual, badly. /in my best Gauntlet voice.

There is competition for dollars in games. If I come to this game with it's requirements, but can tell that I will have a shorter time to 'playability' in another game, why start this one? I can be in Destiny 2 for instance in FAR FAR less time and commitment. And that is lost dollars for DBG.

Ummmm.....fyi, tooltips are often highly misleading because:

(1) The description is wrong or incomplete
(2) There are often hidden ninja nerfs/mechanics working behind the scenes
(3) Stuff is still being put on gear that obsolete or useless.

I actually prefer to look at stats via Dragon's Armory. Hovering over a stat there will actually give some discussion of the mechanic and provide info on soft and hard caps, and what bonuses (if any) overcaps provide. It also helpfully highlights stats that are overcapped and over hard caps. And if you click a stat, it shows you what equipped items you are wearing have that particular stat, which is a help when reforging.

Dragons Armory only updates your info after you have logged a character, so if you were wearing your crafting gear when you went to bed, then got up the next day, put on your war gear and then look at Dragons Armory, its gonna show the crafting gear still. Just camp to yourself then force a reload on the Dragons Armory page to make it update.

Shouldn't the professionals put out a better product than 'some guy/gal on their free time'?

You're letting the best be the enemy of the good.

My cousin talked about trying Ultima Online LONG ago. He got his weapon and attacked a squirrel... and died. Found out he was supposed to train for an hour or more on a training dummy to get his skill up. He logged off and never went back. His reasoning? "I can log onto Diablo (first one) and be ready to attack the monsters on the first level. I don't have to spend time mindless clicking to get my skill up so I might be able to attack a squirrel (it could be a rabbit, he just knows it was something that should have gotten away from him at worst, not kill him!). So if someone logs onto EQ2 and see all that work ahead of them, even with a rare heroic 100, why bother? Plenty of other games that will start him further up the path to grouping with others, even if they all start at lvl 1. At least they are semi equal, even if some of them have character heirlooms to making twinks out of them.

Luckily I like doing quests, crafting, decorating, holiday events, and so forth. I used to keep up with the other stuff but EQ2 is too convoluted and by the time you figure out what you need to do and get it done, it is changed to some new system that is equally convoluted. I've resorted to avoiding repetitive grind and boring in game things to do. I only do what interests me. Unfortunately, that means that a lot of content is unavailable to me but meh, I have a busy life and don't have the time to devote to become what it takes to do the gear dependent content.

I think of EQ2 like golf. You have to invest some time, research and practice to be good enough to do groups. BUT, you can still jack around on the driving range with no prep if you want to solo.

But if I pay to play a round of golf, I get to. Even if I lose 2 boxes of balls in the trees.