After playing for an hour in The Ruins, I must say that the social changes accross the board have made Ruins very hard to play, especially for a newbie zone. Pulling by the group mobs, I was only body pulling. However, 2 orcs a battle would wander over.
I think the revamp killed The Ruins -- it is really very hard now for newbies. It used to be a great zone and now it sucks!!
I agree. the guards are more like menacing lawn gnomes than guards, because before that they would KS. And the social aggro is insane. I needed to call in a level 50-something fury to help because I couldn't solo it, and there were no people to group with on my server when I would play on my necro alt. Message Edited by Lingsch on 07-20-2006 08:15 PM
This is one of the zones that has never reached its potential. When it was revamped with the new FP questlines I thought it was a superb alternative to CL/WC's but with the new social aggro problem it is a very tough zone to play in. The majority of Orcs in there are heroic and it would take a very good newbie group to get the best out that zone. Message Edited by Jabbso on 07-21-2006 08:05 AM
i'd imagine black burrow will be the same. a lot of zones where made and designed before the change, or even revamped before the change. while the social agro change was needed, i think its affect on many zones, especially low level zones has left them often avoided due to the risks involved, with out high enough rewards to balance it. its an unfortunate fact that the risk:reward ratio is out of balance in most zones, with the popular zones being the ones with high rewards and little risk. while SOE are working on a lot of zone revamps, some of the zones that have already had the treatment either haven't had enough effort put into them, or recent changes have altered the balance. as for the ruins... i jsut train everything into the guards
The Ruins is by far my least favorite tier1 zone in the game. It's nearly impossible to finish the newbie armor quests there until you're level 15-17, and that's with a group. The armor received isn't worth the risk, in my opinion. I skip that zone on my Freeport alts and buy crafted armor now. I think it's silly to spend so much time in a newbie zone where the mobs are harder than most of the mobs in Commonlands. :smileyindifferent: And I agree with the OP - social aggro is awful there, especially around the heroics.
Oh Yes. Please Please Please. That used to be a great solo zone (my favorite one before I discovered Qeynos classes). I went in on my lowbie coercer the other day, forgetting it had been revamped. I looked around and thought, okay, this could be fun - dangerous, but fun. Nope. Totally wrong. The guards do NOT help you kill anything if you get jumped and run towards them with an aggro'd mob; However, they are more than happy to kill my petted mob and come attack me because it was attached to me. I'm not entirely sure whether the pet attacked the guard or the guard attacked the pet first (all without any direction from me), but there is definitely something wrong with it. The low- high teens have Wailing Caves and FG. Why is it that the only mob I could solo was a level 18 triple up on a level 25 toon?
This actually isn't anything new, nor does it have anything to do with the social changes. A few months ago, I posted some beefs I have with the ruins here http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=zones&message.id=12183 All the annoying stuff in the Ruins has been going on long before LU#24, so maybe it will get fixed someday, maybe it won't. Actually, only 1 quarter of the ruins has heroic mobs in it. They are only ^^ heriocs even. Most of the mobs there are indeed solo, although you do need a group to handle the zerging orcs adds. My advice (unless you are on a PvP server) is to sneak into the Caves in qeynos and do the AQs there for the Qeynos Guard. The rewards are far better, the loot that drops is far better, you will make more coin from vendor trash and other loots, you have a better chance of finding a small group to kill the 1 heroic mob needed for the AQs, theres a few nameds there appropriate level for the zone, and even some harder nameds (the named rat that slaughters lowbies, and the giant named golem), and even some solo named. The only thing that sucks is dying, because you respawn in Antonica by NQ gates. And don't use the mariners bell to get there, you have to sneak in through the sewers. Theres a high level guard standing by the bells waiting to murder any evils that zone into the Caves via the mariners bell. Message Edited by Cannibas on 07-23-2006 02:09 AM
