Swashbucklers and Brigands = Neutral?

As far as that goes, it seems they are pretty much tying your characterization to what you choose to do, so I'd imagine if you help enough orcs raid villages they'll give you a hug

I think Rainmere did a bang up job describing how good bruisers/assassin, evil rangers/monks reasoning makes sense.

Forcing a strict GOOD/EVIL classes really did nothing good for Norrath in EQ2 imo though. Really only mystic/defiler, paladin/sk make complete sense with the current state of the game's lore.

To be 100 % honest, I've hated the "Good/Evil" divide in EQ2 from day one. I spent a great deal of time early in the game lamenting how the factions worked in EQ2 and talking about how I could take my ranger(Tunare worshiper even) into old EQ Ogguk and even buy from merchants as long as I stayed away from the SKs. And my dark elf rogue was welcome in Rivervale as long as she avoided the priests. One could be a paladin in Freeport and one could start a necromancer in Qeynos (albeit you started in the Catacombs). Mages (EQ conjurers) were completely neutral.

I know all that time had past and things happened etc etc but it all felt very forced to me. I know a the team has invested a lot into the good/evil storyline as much as I don't like it and I don't foresee it quickly changing. I'd hoped it would with the New Combine storyline but alas, it wasn't to be. Then again, I'm also one of those people who greatly miss the 'grittier, not so sunny in Qeynos" newbie quests that were completely removed some years ago. Where you had to go 'deal' with people from Freeport sneaking into the city and where this guy was smuggling gnoll beer into town and stuff like that.


Maybe they need to just introduce a 100% neutral city to be aligned with, that might be easier than reworking everything else and would likely make fewer people angry.

Maj'Dul?

They'd have to rework how that city functions to use it as a neutral city like Qeynos & Freeport are cities. I think it would be easier for them to start from scratch or convert Gorowyn (the most likely since they are already very welcoming to everyone).

I think with tweaking Maj'dul as a neutral city would be a great idea. however i would be concerned how they would tweak it. (i.e the freeport/qeynos removal of zones). the best idea me thinks would be to copy maj'dul, have a pre-of fate and destiny and post of fate and destiny.

provide the enhanced city zone and housing as a reward for completing the "of fates and destiny" line (only need to run on one toon to unlock account wide).

change enhanced city courts of coin, blade, truth to open buildings to serve as mender/broker/banker buildings (place housing access on existing nearby residence buildings)

combine the enhanced city coin/truth/blade guards into one faction.

add housing merchants and new house items into the market areas of enhanced maj'dul.

@ Finora:

Probably better to have one each from the current alignments - so Gorowyn and New Halas (this would give each faction two cities). They would also probably need to make it where the Neutrals aren't KOS in the other two factions cities. I'm not suggesting that Neutrals should be ally (at least not without significant faction work) with Qeynos / Freeport, just that they not be kill-on-sight.

@ Rainmare:
I had noticed this previously, but it appears to be a lot more blatant now.

You appear to have a significant anti-Freeport bias. You seem to assume, because some thieves in Freeport prefer murder to thievery, that it necessarily follows that all thieves in Freeport do so. That assumption is, of course, faulty - since assuming that something that may be true for a subset of a given population is definitely true of the larger homogenous population is called stereotyping, and stereotyping is not the result of sound reasoning.

In other words:

Likewise, many of your other arguments against non-neutrality of certain classes seem to come from the same anti-Freeport bias (or pro-Qeynos bias). I'm not saying that you don't have reasons for your arguments, just that those reasons aren't the result of an objective viewpoint. You appear to be operating under the assumption that one city is morally superior to the other. Many of us that argue for neutrality of the remaining classes do so because we don't believe that either Qeynos or Freeport is morally superior to its opposite - they just have different ways of functioning and different methods of rulership.

Don't get me wrong, Qeynos talks a good game, and Freeport blusters a lot, but when you get down to brass tacks, they really aren't that dissimilar.

I was onboard with the Qeynos good vs. Freeport evil idea at launch on PvE, but it seemed odd and put a dent in the "conflict" because a guild could be made up of good and evil and goods and evils could group/raid together. I also liked that you could make an ogre wizard or a gnome guardian. It kind of boggled my mind that you could take a good paladin and betray to Freeport and have a traditional "good" race become "evil" in the opposite city.

When they opened up 8 other classes to be neutral, I was ticked that they did this, and that's when I started to rant on the forums about making it all fair and balanced. If I had rolled an assassin at launch, then I would have been free to leave Freeport, move to Qeynos and still remain an assassin to do "good" city quests. Since I rolled a swashbuckler, I was stuck in Qeynos and was unable to remain a swashbuckler to do "evil" city quests. Another issue was being able to follow a god that was best for being a melee scout that raided.

Another thing that proved to me that they didn't care much about class/race/good vs. evil and lore was when they came up with potions to change your name, sex, and race. They opened up 8 classes to be neutral, and then added 2 new classes to also be neutral. They allowed ratongas to be a neutral race. All of these changes were done because of money.

The whole good vs. evil now is pretty much moot now. It's been "us" (both good and evil working together) vs. the game and the NPCs in the current storylines....and this has been going on for a few expansions now. I've never felt any sense of conflict with evil cities. IMO, if they were going to make 2 scout classes neutral, it should have been the rogues and not the predators. To me, rogues seem to be more neutral than an "assassin" (even the words "assassin" and "predator" sound more evil compared to "rogue" and "swashbuckler/brigand" AKA "pirate"). "Ranger" just sounds too "good" to me and being a champion of nature.

I'd still not be able to do "evil" city quests with this concept. I'd still have to turn into a brigand on a PvE server to be able to do these quests. I'd end up losing all my masters and GMs as being a swashbuckler to turn into a brigand, and I'm not a fan of the brigand playstyle....even though swashbucklers are still viewed as "meh" for raiding compared to brigands.