Spoiler, If you dont want to read about the downfall (in my eyes as a EQ player from Ruins of Kunark *EQ1*) of EQ2, go ahead and skip this over. *rather hoping this will catch the devs and GMs eyes* As stated, I have played EQ for the better part of going on 12-13 years. I remember the first time i watched it played at my friends house thinking to myself "Wow, how could you sit there all day and play that silly looking game" Untill the day came he grew tired of hearing me make fun of him dieing and shoved the keyboard at me and made me play his Iksar Monk. The next day i was begging him to let me play, it was in my veins. The grouping of people, making new friends, team work and adventure was a rush I would never let go of. I bought EQ the next week, and made an Iksar Monk, Named Monk Iksar on the Rathe server. I loved going out to the planes and splitting groups of 4-6 mobs for my group to chew up and spit out like the vile creatures they were. Months later i would be grinding in PoI, hours of play tugging heavily at my eyelids, i would zone out of PoP and passed out at the keyboard (as i KNOW many of you have) only to wake up at the login screen. Hmmmm maybe a GM saw me just standing there and kicked me...ah well hit enter and start going at it again. Immagine my anger and disbelife when i saw my name had been changed too! I was looking at this Konem Iksar name fumeing.....after /petition a GM contacted me and said they had changed it for me after seeing me at the zone in to PoP due to the name 'not having anything to do with the game".....after a heated discussion i won Munk Iksar. I was back...kinda LOL. I was playing 3 accounts across 3 computers...."Boxing" for us vets, Almost all of my free time was devoted to Everquest and SOE. Then GLORY BE THE DAY they announced EQ2 and i caught a glimps of it. My heart about jumped through my throat. Its all i could talk about, think about and hope for. It got even better the day SOE emailed me my Beta Key.....i had to go clean myself up >.< Not knowing if i would get that privlage, i also signed up for the WoW beta, low and behold....i got both! So, here i sit swapping back and forth knowing full well EQ was going to be it, only playing wow during patches for EQ. Then the week ramping up to Live launch. WoW and SOE were in a deadheaded race to see who would release first. If memory serves, it was EQ...and taking a hit to server stability for it. But it was fine, the mechanics, game play, grafix, all well out weighed the child like toons and simplified toon builds of wow. But alas, it came a time for me to put away my love of the game as a family had come into my life, though the nagging to play was allways there...adulthood and real life had to take presidence. Oh joy to the day of EQX FTP. I could play without having to worry about hurting my self with a reuccuring charge, sure i had to change servers...but the groups were there as well, the comrodery, making a what seemd to be a failed group pull together and finish the instance and all saying Wow, we did pull it off... So sporatic game play came into effect, but heart always true to my first love of MMO's. Expansions were comming, anticipation is growing...oh jow higher levels, better gear, more fun with friends! DoV came, rocked my world...getting close to Planes maybe? Not yet, AoD is to come with help! Mercenaries! Man that would be nice to have to help with quests when dungeon grinding gets to be just that. Wait, what just happened? No more groups in dungeons? No more groups at all? What is this place? This is not the EQ i grew to love. Im a healer, a pretty good one at that and there is no ques up? I have waited for better than 5 minutes now....wt* is going on? Oh, wait theres one....must just be a slow day. Whos this dude in group with a blue name? Its an SK tank, ok we are 3 of 6...in no time we will be rolling. Whats that, we are moving through with just the 3 of us? ok, clear trash no problem. The deathbox and xp debt was just around the corner....time and time again. WT* is going on here...wait for group to fill. Minutes pass, nothing. The teamate grows tired of waiting and leaves the healer to sit there alone. Have you began to see a picture come to life with this little tale? Call me a noob, a wuss or what ever you like; but I know im not the only one here hurt from the collapse of grouping with outher people...hell thats what the game was built on...not going and buying a merc to solo everthing you do. SOE, Devs, GM's, hear my plea.....nerf the mercs in dungeons. make them non useable unless your in an outside zone questing or solo grinding. These mercs have taken my love for the game away....and may others i am sure. If this is to continue on, I will have to bid a fond farewell to this game with a very heavy heart. I have recently converted my fiancee from wow to EQ, only to bring her into a world with no groups.....the one thing i promised her would be the best part and my fondest memories of EQ. Have i made her leave a game where she was in the top 50 healers of her server on a lie? Please tell me this is not so.
Nerfing mercs will not encourage grouping, all it will do is hurt those who solo with mercs. My story is very similar to yours, but the reason I no longer group is because all my friends have left the game. I have next to no interest in PUGs, although I occasionally do join one. I have next to no time to play anymore (due to family) and when I do play I want to do "what I want to do" and not waste the few hours (if that) a week I have. PUGs and groups in general are very wasteful on time. Half the time is spend waiting for people to arrive or catch them up to where you are in a questline. Then they go LD and you have to wait again to see if they are coming back. Better just to box or use a merc (which I do and keep up 99% of the time).
retro_guy wrote: Nerfing the mercs in Dungeons will force grouping again if you want to do them. Keep your merc, solo with it if you want; take it into a DM, but not in a dungeon. They were ment to be played with a group. Lol, PuGs are what made the game interesting. Yep, you have your lamers, but in this game and others like it....there all over. But to get that group to work, helping someone else understand how to play...that is the true game. "Nerfing mercs will not encourage grouping, all it will do is hurt those who solo with mercs." Again, untill these mercs other than chrono/mentor to help lower levels....dungeons were designed for groups...not a solo artist going in grabbing all the loot they can and exploding their wallets, and broker with over priced crap that would be atainable to others if the DF were not now dead. If you ask me, this is an exploit. It spoils the game. How is it an MMO now when you can solo the whole game INCLUDING raid content. It makes me sick to see people in my guild just waltzing through a 2-4 epic raid dungeon alone with a merc. "I have next to no time to play anymore (due to family) and when I do play I want to do "what I want to do" and not waste the few hours (if that) a week I have. PUGs and groups in general are very wasteful on time." If you have so little time to play, why do you play a MMO? go play a FPS or a console game that you can "do what you want to do". If your story is simmilar to mine, than you know that this game is not suppose to be revolved around taking yourself and one other in a ^^^ heroic dungeon, and feed the exploitation that is ruining this game. So to that i say, i dont think your story is simmilar to mine at all.
While I'm not a fan of mercs and think they make people lazy, I don't think that's why you're not getting groups. There's just really a lack of content and appropriate reward for the content that is there. People just don't have enough reason to run skyshrine heroics and zero reason to run drunder/kael/rime heroics. When the content with appropriate reward/challenge is there people will run the zones over and over. The 90 min timer is a blessing/curse. There's not enough to do other than run the stuff over and over, but with a 90 min timer you run it so many times quickly there's nothing left for useful reward. I think Plane of War gear is a little too low in power and it's causing an itemization issue in power trickling down to the rest of the gear. There's not a lot of room to make challenge mode heroic better than easy mode, but not quite as good as easy mode skyshrine raid gear. And from there you can't boost ss raid cause it'll bump up against the new hm drunder gear. If the PoW gear were brought up you'd have more room to stretch out all these tiers and make them valuable. btw, small red text sucks to read.
Potionman01 wrote: Your story is actually dead on to mine. I started playing EQ1 at Luclin however. I quit EQ1/2 shortly after EQ2 released due to family and started playing WoW because I could get away with being casual in that, only to dip back into EQ2 when I found more time available. The aspect of grouping is one thing i refer to in many of my posts. Lack of travel, corpse runs, and the existence of questing all relate to a "solo" enviroment in some way. The copy/pasting MMOs have done from WoW and what they did to try to copy their success has left us with an empty shell of what MMOs used to be. That's not to say WoW doesn't have a market (obviously) but at the same time you shouldn't attempt to share the market by every game copying the same style (aka you don't see Mcdonald's hamburgers in every restaurant). As you stated why I played EQ ultimately was the comradery. Camping areas for hours/days at a time. Leveling in zones with certain camp spots with groups for hours just chatting away. Getting people to help killed named mobs or to do an epic quest. Games these days because of massive quests (literally no grinding) and solo instances, etc you can literally level solo the entire way in almost any popular MMO. Now just take in that sentence a moment. You can solo...to max level...in a MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER ONLINE RPG. I have no issue with some soloing, but what happened to the days of NEEDING a group to get past a certain point? Why is that such a bad thing? Aren't we here to play with others NOT just at endgame? I mean if were here to solo why aren't we just playing Dragon Age or Skyrim or such? But in the above paragraph is a lot of the issue as well. Why are MMOs about endgame now? Most of EQ1 was the adventure to cap. The grouping, etc I explained. Not bursting to top level and just spam raiding on a schedule. It was massive/challenging content that to get to the end you had to devote your life to it. That's what a MMO should be. The point of an MMO and what keeps us paying is that there is no end. That there is always something different to do with lots of people to do it with. Nowadays they just push you to max level SOLO and then say you're raiding Mon/Tue/Wed and then do the same thing over and over and over for months at a time. That isn't my MMO.
Twyxx wrote: Sorry my friend, lol Changed it just for you As for "While I'm not a fan of mercs and think they make people lazy, I don't think that's why you're not getting groups. There's just really a lack of content and appropriate reward for the content that is there. People just don't have enough reason to run skyshrine heroics and zero reason to run drunder/kael/rime heroics. " I may only partly agree with you on this. Yes reward vs time spent needs work, the point is they are still doing it....but alone. As Salty stated above, if you wana solo "endgame" content....go play skyrim or EQ champions on console or something. That is not what this game is suppose to be about.
Where have you been, the last few years, OP? You returned and want to relive long lost glory days? They are long gone. This game is aging and finding groups/other people has been a problem, especially while leveling, for quite some time- hence the addition of mercs. IMO a smart move. Instead of blaming it on mercs look at the big picture- look for an active guild to group with, possibly even a more populated server if you're that concerned, maybe consider what roles you're trying to fill. Groups are not going to fall into your lap. Mercs make people lazy? Lazy is blaming a mechanic that was implemented to help, then asking the devs to 'make' people group with you isntead, heh. I've played both games over the last 12 years and I absolutely love the addition of mercs in both games. Your opinion isn't the only one out there. I know I don't have the amount time to spend, that I-or- you, had back in those early days, to sit and play for extended periods and wait for groups as we once did. Mercs help a lot with that angle.
Sable77 wrote: Yet again, the point is missed. "Instead of blaming it on mercs look at the big picture- look for an active guild to group with, possibly even a more populated server if you're that concerned, maybe consider what roles you're trying to fill. Groups are not going to fall into your lap. " I am on one of the heaviest servers and part of a lvl 90 guild that is quite large....it seems you only read what you chose to read. Yet i still see them not group to go solo it them selvs so they dont have to worry about splitting what drops. And oh im sure people see this being put out there like it is and see a threat. Im sure those who are feeding this exploit are hateing me....but thats all good. I do blame the mercs, "Mercs make people lazy? Lazy is blaming a mechanic that was implemented to help" I never said they make people lazy, though i did say they are being used to exploit the game. Again, ^^^ Heroic dungeons were not made to solo with a pet....if that was the case every pet class would be able to do that. And im sure they were, like the rez pots and everything else they have put out there for solo artists. Quests, name hunting outside zones, solo grinding in an aera 3-5 levels over you is what i am sure it was intended for....again not killing the DF, groups in dungeons. "Where have you been, the last few years, OP? You returned and want to relive long lost glory days? They are long gone." I am an older gamer, so i knew reliving something is an impossiability......but what the game was built on has changed. Its not about glory days, i played 6-8 months ago before AoD and the mercs were available and even then i could not use the DF and expect to get a smoke in before qued....now i have time to do my laundry, make supper and even a small nap after eating before getting a que where i either zone in alone or to a death where someone is trying to use a merc and has no concept of how to work one.
1) Most people do not seem to use the dungeon finder to get groups (at least that is my experience on the servers I play on). People still seem to use chat most often to set up groups that are guild groups. 2) Competant players have been soloing & duoing herioc content for years. Since before the first expansion. People were duoing/trioing heroic content in Sentinals's Fate while that content was current. People were duoing/trioing old raid zones long before mercs. 3) Group bonuses would help grouping a lot more than the current situation we have with group xp penalties. Add incentive for real characters in your group over having a merc. 4) Mercenaries do exactly what Devs intended them to do. Allow someone to do content they would otherwise not be able to do and by that opening up more content to more people & hopefully keeping more people playing (and paying) for longer periods of time. The people who tend to solo with a merc are generally people who wouldn't have been looking for a group anyway. 5) If you aren't getting groups because your guild mates don't want to share loot, your problems are bigger than mercs. Bigger guild isn't always better. When I have time to group, my guildmates are more than happy to have me along (and not just because I'm guildleader).
Potionman01 wrote: I play this MMO because I have been playing it since launch and still enjoy it. While I may not group very much I do socialise, and that is an aspect of the game you cannot get from stand along titles. I don't even own a modern console and FPS shooters are a world away from a MMO, which is what I enjoy playing. Don't get me wrong, I would like to group, but I really how long would I wait to get a group together to run through an old Heritage Quest e.g A Thorn of Old. That involves going down to the forge in SS several times after collecting items from heroic dungeons and then killing 4 raid bosses. I doubt I could ever get a group together for something like that. The same goes for the 100's of other dungeons, very few people are interested in anything but endgame. That's where we probably differ. I don't think I have ever, or will ever see an endgame raid zone, unless it's greyed out and then I can solo the names for quest updates. To sum up. groups were dead before mercs. Mercs are the best thing to happen to the game in years.
Its ok guys, i do understand you wanting to defend your exploitation. So, here is what i am going to do. I am going to make a vid with this awesome new youtube tool they have on the UI for all to see how they are being used. Just a bit of a spoiler, i chronod to 75 lastnight and went into seb after i bought a merc to prove this point. I could send that SK into a full room of orange/yellow mobs and she took them all with little heals needed. There is no possiable way even the most geared 75 toon could do the same without a full group. Vid soon to come. Enjoy the exploit while you can, they are ruining the game. Oh, and on the note of, 2) Competant players have been soloing & duoing herioc content for years. Since before the first expansion. People were duoing/trioing heroic content in Sentinals's Fate while that content was current. People were duoing/trioing old raid zones long before mercs. Are you calling me incompetant? You dont think i know this? and yea when they are max lvl, sure why not...if your geard for it and can spen the dull hours beating down all that HP with 2 people....more power to ya. But for those that still chose to group and are not part of your "clicks" we would much rather go in as a whole.
Potionman01 wrote: It's not he mercs that are the problem in your example, it's the chrono scaling. When mentored down, I can solo names that would have taken 24 people in the old days, even without a merc. I don't think it is right either. It's not all that much fun to try to kill a name you've dodged for years only to cut it down like butter. If you're geared up with L90 gear, even if it's not raid gear, once chronoed down you are always far more powerful than you would have been at the natural level. BTW why do you care what people do in old zones/dungeons which for the most part are empty? I'd understand if people could go and molo raid content at L90+ but I don't see that happening. The gear in older dungeons is worthless, masters sell for next to nothing. I do understand you've been out of the game for some time and don't like the changes, but the Mercs allow a lot more people to explore parts of the game they would never otherwise get to see. I certainly would never get to do any of the instances that scale with level, there are simply no people around to group with, or rather, 99% of people do not want to waste their time on older dungeons. PS You talk about exploitation, what do you call boxing?
What you seek is Vanguard, which has also gone free to play. Eq2 is still a great game but what you are saying is true. There really isn't that much grouping anymore. The reasons listed above are all viable, lack of content, mercs etc. The game isn't going th change as they continue to add more items on the marketplace to make it even easier to solo: ress items, power items, health items and so on. Try Vanguard. The game is recently free to play. The starting areas are full. The content is large. The only thing I would say is the game is not as forgiving as WOW and EQ2. . Nidy
VG has little to if any of a playerbase. Also anyone who whines about mercs making grouping useless is NOT looking at the bigger picture. Most people who use mercs are usually new comers who find it almost impossible to find groups. Most people who have alts usually ask a guilding to mentor them to grind through dungeons. I just grinded an alt of a guildy a day ago from level 20 to 40 in little to no time, and by double xp it will just be a lot quicker.
Halo of G4 wrote: It's not just new players that use Mercs, people who have been here since day 1 use Mercs as do many other people, PUGS suck in general. Why would I want to deal with people I don't know when I can pull out a Merc and just do it myself or with a friend + their Merc? Grouping will never be as popular nor as fun as it was, those days are over.
