Ragefire releases May 20th! - Primer VideoFollow

I do not understand why it takes a special server (s)s for people to play EQ together. We can do.the same thing on the.live servers but people would rather buy heroic toon, power level or box. I am in no rush enjoy the content, quests, adventure and experiences of the game.

What you don't understand is other people enjoy things different than you.

The attraction of a progression server is that everyone is starting out at level 1 so noobie zones and low level dungeons have that "packed" condition that evokes the original game. Or even some of the xpacs which introduced new race and new noobie zones. Anyone remember how packed the Vah Shir and Froglok noobie zones were when those went live? I never saw so many frogs all in one place outside of my nightmares!

What bothers me about "legit" progression servers:

1. They're not classic in any real sense. The real magic of re-experiencing the low level game is to re-experience the original classic EQ, at least for ME.

2. They don't stay "real" very long. I'm already hearing about people planning TO TAKE OFF SEVERAL DAYS FROM WORK once the server goes live so they can level up round the clock as fast as possible. The fun of original EQ was in enjoying the race, NOT HYPERTHRUSTING THRU THE WHOLE RACE!

3. Inevitably comes the dawning realization that "you can never go home", "the past is past" and "we aren't kids anymore."

You can sorta get close. That's one reason I LOVE the original music and play it from time to time in my car or elsewhere. Pure nostalgia, a reminder of happier times, i.e. when I was younger.

ddoouubbllee

Edited, May 20th 2015 4:25am by Bijou

Somewhat of a derail comment here, (so be it) but one thing Daybreak COULD do to stimulate grouping is allow cross-server groups, maybe in instanced versions of zones. Something like WoW does altho I think with WoW it's always for a PVP raid-type encounter (not sure, haven't played WoW in a long time.) Pumping up the available potential "groupies" from one server's worth to the entire game's worth would increase the chance that players could find or make real groups. With instanced content people could even arrange "group play dates" at fixed times with players from other servers.

In terms of grouping at lower levels, I resort to my favorite proposal, made many times to some of the powers-that-be that they should allow high-level players to play low-level alts on the same account and have the ability to acquire/earn gear which can ONLY be used by the high-level main. That is, not tradeable---to eliminate pharming.) I'd be a lot more inclined to invest some of my scarce gaming leisure time playing a level 30 alt and grouping with other level 30s if I knew I had a shot at a piece of gear that would improve my 105 main. They could also modify the code "somehow" to ensure the rare drop can only happen if the mob is fought by a "real" group of players, as opposed to one guy and his 5 boxes (like me!)

Alas, I can dream...

Or play a cleric.

"Want to join our group?"
"Are you LFG?"
"Want to go to Unrest in mansion?"
"Are you LFG?"
"Hey, leave your group and join ours it's awesome xp but we need a cleric"
"Can you rez yet? Need rez at windmill"
"Are you LFG?"
"Come on please, we need a cleric"
"Got a great group going in SolA want in?"
"Are you LFG?"
"Why won't you join our group?"

Or druid:

"Hey bro can I get a port to Commons?"
"Sorry, in a group."
"Cmon, it be quick. You're a druid you can just bind and port back."
"Fightin...."
"I can tip ya if ya need it"*
"Sorry can't"
"You jerk!"
/ignore



*Yeah, I'm going to abandon my group in mid-fight deep inside a dungeon to go port a stranger for free

I remember in the old days playing a druid and people were downright buttholes to you as a druid. Alot of people acted like it was your job to port them for free because your class had the spell.

OMFG this was so freaking true! I remember painfully soloing while waiting for a group to materialize. As a paladin (all hybrids had this problem), the way the exp was calculated, not only did we get screwed, but we cost the group more exp over time as well. The geniuses designing the game decided that hybrids, having the abilities of two classes, should get less powerful abilities in each class, half mana for the same int/wis, have spells that were 70% as effective as the parent class versions, and require 140% exp to level. But the exp deal was "hidden" in that they basically divided the exp you got by that factor. But to balance out exp in a group, they multiplied the exp weight of the character to account for that. So a hybrid took up 1.4x as much group exp as an identically leveled non-hybrid, but didn't go up any faster than anyone else in the group.

So when soloing, we got dorked (really dorked cause our abilities really never were sufficient to allow us to kill stuff faster), and it was hard to get a group because the group would take a penalty taking us. I think they *finally* fixed this somewhere around Luclin. SKs and pallys were most dorked IMO because rangers could actually solo a lot better than we could back then. And while this may totally be my own perception, paladins really got dorked the most of the three because we basically brought *nothing* to a group that couldn't be done much better by someone else. SKs and rangers could at least snare and had some damage spells. In a time when every group had to have a cleric (and paladin heals really really really sucked), paladin healing was meaningless. Stuns didn't start to be useful until quite late in the leveling stream (again, I think around Luclin with the introduction of the Akera line, they were actually overpowered since you could perma lock down a mob). Other than guild groups, I pretty much only got a group if they literally could not find anyone else to tank, or were not too savvy players and didn't realize all the negatives involved (which usually meant crappy players and risk of death).

To be fair though, while I bang on PoP as the guild killer expansion, it was a ridiculously awesome time to be a paladin. Could paci pull, and the sudden jump in mob damage meant that stuns on pull until slows dropped made paladins the preferred group tank. That was the first time when I actually had people actively looking for a paladin to tank for them.


Oh. Little bit of trivia for you all, having to do with hybrids. Casting a spell used to reset your melee timers. So if you had a delay 4.5 weapon (yes folks, that was not uncommon back then), casting a spell started that count from the beginning. So timing spells was really important. Of course, delays were so large, and haste so rare, that you really could time this manually. It also meant that early stuns were completely useless except as a spell interruption. The delay casting the spell was about the same as the duration of the stun. Meaning you effectively slowed your own attacks down by the same amount you slowed your opponents (assuming you actually timed it perfectly, otherwise it slowed you down *more*). Oh. And mob attack timers are not reset by stuns. So if you dropped a 1.5 second stun .5 seconds into a 3 second delay on the mobs attack, it didn't actually do anything. And even if it did delay it, the instant the stun wore off all of the mobs attacks that were waiting to go would hit at once. This is actually why you always want to stack stuns when you can, since the longer you can keep the mob stunned in a continuous way, the more you slow it's total damage. Two 4 second stuns with a 1 second gap between them does not reduce the mobs dps nearly as much as casting the second with a .5 second overlap (so 7.5 seconds of total stun time say).

Oh. And stuns with knockback effects knock the mob back in the direction you're facing when the spell hits. So you can start casting, and then rotate to face the direction you want to move the mob. I used to use this trick all the time during guild raids to help reposition the mob we were fighting. Very useful to get mobs out of walls, for example. You know, while I'm on the subject of stuns.


Oh, and Joph, the one thing I actually was good for in Commonlands back then was that paladins got a summoned hammer, which did magic damage. Meaning I could actually do damage to ghouls at a level when pretty much no other melee class could. So that was something.

Edited, May 20th 2015 2:28pm by gbaji

I remember human's couldn't see in the dark in the early days, and there were players selling GL's to them for outrageous prices (5 plat? who has 5 plat??)

Being a shammy old days meant being very busy while grouping - buffs, SOW, slow, DOT, root, cure, heal (cause there was no cleric in group), canni-canni-canni (cause there was no chanter in group). Repeat
If there was a cleric AND a chanter, it felt like holyday.

Good old days...
Lots of fun...

I am not sure if I am going to do Ragefire, but yeah - all the peeps who missed this experience, should do it



Edited, May 22nd 2015 2:40am by Surimuri