Before reading Loral's uber-vs-casual rants, I used to be a lovely maiden. Now look at what he has done!

A Preview of the Serpent's Spine

by Loral on August 07, 2006

On Friday, 4 August 2006, Travis McGeathy, lead designer for Everquest, took me on a tour of the Serpent's Spine, the twelfth Everquest expansion. We traveled across the new lands stretching from the back doors of High Keep to the dark reaches of Ashengate. Today I discuss what I saw and heard during these travels.

The Serpent's Spine takes a large departure from the expansions we've seen recently. While Dragons of Norrath, Depths of Darkhollow, and Prophecy of Ro all focused on or included a great amount of instanced content for both single-groups and raiders, Serpent's Spine returns to the older days of Everquest with a large expansion focused on static zones.

And large it is. This expansion includes thirteen huge zones; six outdoor zones, six dungeon zones, and a new city zone. The zone levels range from level 1 all the way to very-high-end level 75 zones. Each level range has two possible hunting zones with a few more at level 65 and above.

The biggest feature of this new expansion is the new race, the Drakkin. These dragon-blooded humanoids have more depth and possibility than the normal races. When one picks a Drakkin character, they don't just pick sex and class but also which type of dragon they are descended from. Redblooded Drakkin have resistances to fire, black have resistances to poison, and so on.

The Drakkin models, being mainly humanoid, are a possible leap forward for new player models, a feature requested for a long while. Adding a new player model to a new expansion gave the SOE developers some of the resources required to build a base model for many of the older races. While this new model won't directly lead to new models for older PCs anytime soon, it is a good step forward. At the time of this writing, the Drakkin models were not yet released in the Beta of Serpent's Spine.

The Drakkin and the starting city of Crescent Reach gives players an opportunity to start Everquest from a new beginning. Rather than hunt and level through content designed years ago, lower-level players can see the sorts of things that higher-level players have experienced with recent expansions. For example, quests at low levels include a lot of scripting and features only found on high-end events.

The zones in Serpent's Spine are vast. They include a wide range of environments from deserts to glaciers to scorched volcanic rock. Large Sebilis-style dungeons are included at every level range. Many mini-dungeons, not instanced and not separated from the main zones exist as well.

I spent a few minutes with Rashere in the Stone Hive, a beautiful outdoor dungeon zone (sort of an oxymoron) that offers hunting for level 30 to 50. He and I discussed how players currently leveling up gravitate towards the content that offers the highest reward for the least effort. Such zones, I argued, might continue to be the popular choice even when alternatives exist. The Stone Hive, and the other zones in Serpent's Spine, will have higher experience rewards and better equipment drops than other zones of an equal level. This, mixed with the more interesting content and the beautiful artwork, should help to drive new players to these new zones. The intent of this mainly static content expansion is to get people together in common hunting areas instead of splitting them up into smaller six-person mini-zones.

Along with a focus on static hunting zones, the design team of the Serpent's Spine also focused on quests. There are hundreds of quests for all level ranges included in the Serpent's Spine, almost all of which use the quest window introduced with Omens of War and refined in Dragons of Norrath. These quests help to focus adventurers as they hunt across the vast landscapes included in the Serpent's Spine.

I will let the screenshots speak to the graphic quality of the expansion. While some lands appear at first to be simple rolling hills and grasslands, one quickly discovers pockets of beauty and terror mixed within. In particular, the framerate of the Serpent's Spine is better than Prophecy of ro. Only one area had any significant video lag, the inner city of Crescent Reach itself, but without the new models in it's hard to say how this will respond in the final game.

The story of the Serpent's Spine follows the Rallosian war, the invasion of the Plane of Earth by the giants and ogres of Rallos Zek. This eventually led to the curse of the Rathe. Throughout the expansion, one sees the results of this war.

The Serpent's Spine includes over a dozen new high-end raids and many multi-group events. Instanced versions of Frostcrypt and Ashengate house many of these raids on top of the static raids found throughout the expansion.

The Serpent's Spine also adds a few two-group events. These mini-raids may be a good vehicle for larger pickup events than those found with simple pickup groups. It is a good attempt to find ways for pickup raiding to be a viable option instead of focusing exclusively on high-end guild raids.

In another nice addition, low-level players will have exposure to some of the more powerful beasts of Norrath earlier on. Six dragons, not yet introduced into beta, will reside in Cresent Reach, letting new players see the power and might mostly holed off for only the highest end raiders. This is a good departure from previous expansions that hid the best models designed for Everquest behind raids that less than one percent of the player population could see.

The Serpent's Spine is a Y shaped expansion with a single geographical path up to the level 40ish zones and then a split. One side of the split leads through the new giant city and eventually to the ultra-high-end dungeon of Frostcrypt. The other split leads into the volcanic wastelands and eventually to the new Sebilis style ultra-high-end dungeon of Ashengate.

Like it or not, and Tunare knows it drives the development team crazy, loot is the primary driving force behind new content. At level 75 the Serpent's Spine will include new armor sets available both to single-group non-raiders and to high-end hunters and raiders who can brave the two ultra-high-end dungeons. With no loot yet populated in the beta, it is unknown if the development team found that difficult balance of risk versus reward.

Ashengate and Frostcrypt are worthy of their own discussion. These two static dungeons will pose a threat to even the mightest of adventurers. Huge and powerful beasts will cut, slash, and blast through those armored in the mightest equipment found in Norrath.

This is where we face one of my large concerns with Serpent's Spine. As it stands now, these two zones will offer single-group hunting for high-end raiders only. While anyone can enter these zones if they are able to reach them, the door guards hit hard enough to send anyone equipped in anything lower than Anguish scurrying back to Crescent Reach.

I love the idea of single-group ultra-high-end challenge zones. I love the idea of zones that will crush all but the mightiest. What bothers me is that the only path to these zones leads non-raiders into raiding. If you don't belong to the right guild, you can't hunt in a single group in these zones. An equipment progression path should exist that allows a level 75 single group player with enough AAs to hunt in Ashengate and Frostcyrpt.

High-level, high-AA, high-end single-group equipped players will hit a gap that forces them to either join a raiding guild or accept the fact that only those within raiding guilds will see the depths of Ashengate or Frostcrypt. The counter argument is that some day even single-group equipped players will be able to hunt here. History hasn't shown this to be true.

By the time a single-group equipped player can hunt in a raid-level zone, that zone and everything in it is obsolete.

SOE should rebuild one of these two zones into a high-end single-group-level zone that offers enough rewards to gear non-raiders up for the other ultra-high-end zone. A level 75 player with 300 or more AAs equipped in armor with around 200 hitpoints and mana should be able to hunt and hold their own in one of these two zones. As it stands now, both are designed to be equally inaccessible for most high-level players regardless of the time or effort they put in.

All of that said, there are four to six good level 70 to level 75 hunting zones that are accessible to non-raiders, so this power gap isn't likely to lead to a lack of huntable and profitable content.

The Serpent's Spine goes back to the days of vast expansions filled with wide-open spaces and hoards of beasts roaming the surface of Norrath. With a focus on static content, a large array of quests, and an entirely re-mapped out level 1 to level 75 progression path, this expansion should work well as a complement to recent expansions that included mostly instanced content. I can see how new Everquest players can hunt within the vast landscapes of the Serpent's Spine and then dive into the Depths of Darkhollow for single-group instances. Again, as it has many times in the past, the world of Norrath moves on.

Loral Ciriclight
7 August 2006
loral@loralciriclight.com

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Comment Posted by: concerned1 on August 7, 2006 03:04 PM

Loral: so basically you are saying that this travis mcgeathy "dev" told you there is content that is supposed to be groupable...if you have anguish gear or better? and then at the end you throw a little saying on there that if you still want some groupable instanced zones you can always do dodh missions(i guess you meant this for the lazy ,whiney, gimp casual players).yeah the expansion will be a winner. millions of new players will flock to eq now. in your dreams devs. once the uh la la factor is gone from the drakkin race the zones will become ghost towns like much of eq is already.

Comment Posted by: Juror on August 7, 2006 03:50 PM

Word "player" was left out of that last paragraph.

What Loral was trying to say was that a new player should be able to start in TSS and get high enough to do things in other expansions like DoDH instanced missions if they want.

There will be at least four zones that groups level 70-75 will be able to hunt without being raiders. However two zones will be reserved for ubers (and Loral would like to see one if not both changed or have gear added for "casuals" so that they will eventually be able to go there.)

Two does seem a little bit much, especially if you have to be post-Anquish+ to even enter. Not sure why Sony thinks that they need more than one uber zone. Most folks are still working their way through content from past expansions. Maybe if it's interesting and rewarding enough, people will drop old zones for new zones.

Comment Posted by: Armarant on August 7, 2006 03:57 PM

Juror wrote: Two does seem a little bit much, especially if you have to be post-Anquish+ to even enter. Not sure why Sony thinks that they need more than one uber zone.
----

it makes some sense if those two end game dungeons are not instanced. I am guessing the instances that do occur in this expansion will be used thoroughly I personally have not seen any instanced content yet but I heard it does exist just in lesser quantitys.

Comment Posted by: Loral on August 7, 2006 05:41 PM

"it makes some sense if those two end game dungeons are not instanced."

They are not instanced but there are raid instances based on these two zones.

My main concern, something I don't think really came across in the article, is that the level jump to 75 is a perfect opportunity to rebaseline the power of gear and close the gap between raiders and non-raiders. With these two zones, it is clear SOE has little intention of doing so. The design of these zones and the philosophy behind them shows that the only way to get to the high-end content of the game is to raid.

Comment Posted by: Wolfkinder on August 7, 2006 05:50 PM

I believe the two end-game zones are both static and instanced. They are instanced for the uber-raiding and then static for lesser raiding and grouping, although Loral indicates even the static portion will only be for the best equipped players. This is my understanding from other things I've read, although I may be wrong.

--Wolfkinder

Comment Posted by: Armarant on August 7, 2006 05:54 PM

Loral wrote: They are not instanced but there are raid instances based on these two zones.
--
ok I see your point there, if they are going to create instanced zones for the end game itself these non instanced zones should be tuned to single groups in at least Time gear maybe Theater of Blood gear since that is where people should be before they hit these dungeons anyway since its not as difficult to get into time equivilant gear now as people think.

Comment Posted by: Sunshadow on August 7, 2006 06:53 PM

Personally I don't mind that the non-instanced end zone a tuned to a highlevel group. As long as when my guild raid of 36 toons comes in we got a chance at decent gear and the mobs have reasonable spawn times so ubers can't block us from doing that. Also I don't want some stupid quest that requires the death of 20 uber raid mobs or uber group missions to get the key.

If the trash drops upgrades then we want to be able to go there and check it out.

Following this line of thought through it would be nice SOE moved from the 2 teir to a 3 teir system. Today you have casual and Raider. It would nice have the 3rd option in the middle which is Casual raid/Uber group. Today because of all the flagging requirements in the game this 3rd option is missing and as such a lot of guilds are really stuck doing a linear type of progression POP then GOD then OoW then.....
There are weeks when we field a really stong raid (for us) and it would be nice on those weeks to be able to jump ahead and hit something a bit tougher but we are held back by lack of flags.

Comment Posted by: Loral on August 7, 2006 06:56 PM

As it is now, they are developing raid instances for high-end raiders based off of Ashengate and Frost Crypt. They are also designing the static versions of Ashengate and Frost Crypt around the power of high-end raiders. There is no single-group path that will give non-raiders the power to hunt in these zones. Thats the problem.

Comment Posted by: SAbrex on August 7, 2006 07:21 PM

Im sad reading these comments as it means I have little incentive to return to EQ much as I would like. Instead I play EQ2, which is also probably a broken game being too simple and one dimensional but sufficient to spend time playing in the absence of anything better. Im not sure what SOE strategy is but it must be seeing Vanguard as the saviour...if it doesnt pull that off there is no where to go except being a tiny niche in the market.

Comment Posted by: concerned1 on August 7, 2006 08:05 PM

since the level being raised to 75 it makes me wonder what the uber raid gear will be for those raids? if the level is going up 5 times the gear must be crazy. like will there be gear with like 600 hps with no aug? 700 hps? how about 850 hps? will the ubers get weapons with ratios of like 30/120? 30/200? more? how many people that have never played eq and have no friends on there to help them do you think will see stuff like that ; find out how to get it and then think to themselves " you know im gonna just quit life and devote my time to everquest so i can get that".?

Comment Posted by: Utziel on August 7, 2006 08:21 PM

Im very worried about these bits of information. It seem we will fall further behind. Looks like more zones that 75% of the population wont see. No alternate path. Sad really. The end is comming for me I think.

Comment Posted by: Armarant on August 7, 2006 08:22 PM

concerned1 wrote:since the level being raised to 75 it makes me wonder what the uber raid gear will be for those raids? if the level is going up 5 times the gear must be crazy.
---
there will always be people with better gear then you in any MMO you play the only way that could ruin your fun is if you let it. when I did a 10 day trial of wow I saw all types of crazy gear being linked when I ran into Ogrimmar to get quests but I knew that none of that mattered since gear eventually comes around in that game and you upgrade as you go along without having to hunt down specific mobs.

Comment Posted by: sunshadow on August 7, 2006 11:09 PM

If I get what you are saying right. Non-ubers will be unable to raid those mobs the ubers can group?

If this sorry state is true the a serious redress is in order. For this is the very progression the game needs. The static end zones appear to be the ideal setting for this sort of setup but is it going to be an opportunity wasted.

Comment Posted by: Viluin on August 8, 2006 02:57 AM

Ugh...

During SoV, nearly all of the people playing EverQuest never saw NToV and no one bitched.

When was it that people started feeling like they should have a right to everything no matter what? It really bothers me.

If you didn't need to raid to see the the highest level content and get the best gear, NO ONE WOULD RAID.

The way that it is now is the way that it needs to be. The carrot needs to be dangled just out of reach of most people in order for people to continue to want to play the game.

Comment Posted by: belgrath on August 8, 2006 05:27 AM

5 levels can be a HUGE difference, the jump from a maxed out 65 in GOD vs a maxxed out 70 now is pretty big. Mobs the big boys face now at 70 are tremendously more tough, hard hitting and deadly then before when 65 was the limit.

Monster power will zoom up trememdously as usual. Figure yard trash in 75 raid zones would probably 1 round any present 70 tank, thus a under 20k hp tank would prob be considered hopelessly gimp by lvl 75 raiders after a few months.

Comment Posted by: Wiggles on August 8, 2006 07:36 AM

I think it's safe to say that TSS isn't going to usher in a new era of EQ. SOE's actions have done little to make this expansion a new opportunity to rebuild its playerbase. Instead, it will be existing players that will be using this expansion. They'll be plenty of twinked out Drakkin powerleveling and few new players. I expect a lot of low level farming of new items for the bazaar as well.

To counter this, will most item be nodrop, required/recommended levels? Will they be more enticing than spending pp in the bazaar to gear up through the levels? Will there be enough of them obtained fast enough to be of use? Leveling will be plenty fast in these zones by the sounds of it. How will players be able to obtain their 60-75 spells? Will they drop in the zones or will people need to go elsewhere to hunt them? When creating a new 1-75 game, you shouldn't have to resort to buying them in the bazaar.

There are 75 levels to progress which is a huge gap in ability especially at 50,60,65,70, 75. What use is spending time trying to multi-group a level 50 mob when in a week you'll be level 60 and items are more powerful. And so on.

About the final zones in the expansion. It sounds a lot of Kael/SkyShrine & ToV to me. During Kunark, the more organzied (aka ubers) ended up in north ToV and the less organizard (aka casuals) ended up in Kael and east ToV. Perhaps we'll see a situation where the casual types can easily band together and take on loot dropping mobs.

Comment Posted by: Glormane on August 8, 2006 08:22 AM

One of my concerns in the new expansions is itemisation. In POR, itemisation was a bit hit and miss. Some of the missions were quite easy and netted pretty good items (cloak, Borso's ring, shopkeepers charm). Yet some of the group tasks in Relic and the Elddar Forest were harder and netted a reward which overall was worse than that obtained in an MPG group trial. As the mission often required MPG trail equipment to beat this seems a bit of a waste. Also as the loot was no drop and no one can use it, it means alot of missions will not get done. Why would you fight harder content to get worse gear than 2 or 3 expansions ago? Answer many wont.

Also Dreadspire in DoD. The Penultimate zone of the expansion, with mobs hitting and casting as hard as the trash to come in DSK (nearly) and the drops are worse that that of instanced missions needed to get there! If Dreadspire had 230hp/mana gear in it, the place would have been heaving.

Comment Posted by: Keisa on August 8, 2006 10:21 AM

Concerned1: 'since the level being raised to 75 it makes me wonder what the uber raid gear will be for those raids? if the level is going up 5 times the gear must be crazy. like will there be gear with like 600 hps with no aug? 700 hps? how about 850 hps? will the ubers get weapons with ratios of like 30/120? 30/200? more? how many people that have never played eq and have no friends on there to help them do you think will see stuff like that ; find out how to get it and then think to themselves " you know im gonna just quit life and devote my time to everquest so i can get that".?'

---------------------------------------------

What does it matter what the stats are on weapons and gear if it is unobtainable? What is the difference between 200 hp and 800 hp to a guy who has 10 hp?

I think the real question is, how many new people will join the game and enjoy playing it at the level they are with the equipment they can obtain, while not worrying about what ubers have?

---------------------------------------------

I've come to realize that there are two types of people that play MMOs. One group will most likely be happy playing at most levels. The other group is doomed to be unhappy always.

Group 1 plays the game with what they have. When they see an uber item, they think to themselves, "Some day, I may get one of those." After that, they continue playing and enjoy the game before them.

For group 2, the game is all about what other people have. When they see an uber item, they think to themselves, "Damn, I've gotta have that. What I have is junk and worthless. How can I beat the game if I don't have the best stuff?" Since their focus is on what they can't have, then they are left feeling second best and unfulfilled.

Keisa

Comment Posted by: Tuppet on August 8, 2006 10:55 AM

I do not see the point of adding more zones so that people can grind (again) 1-70, and now 75. My toon is level 70 and I'm not about to start grinding another toon due to 1. time it takes to level, 2. typically empty low-level zones. I want content for my level and my gear. There are big disparities between level 70's, between gear and AA's, that there needs to be more 'tiers' of zones that accomodate them.

It really scares me when i hear "the door guards hit hard enough to send anyone equipped in anything lower than Anguish scurrying back to Crescent Reach". Clearly the people who have conquered these zones deserve interesting/challenging content but is there enough to keep those pre-anguish/qvic busy? or will it become another 'useless expansion' similar to GoD before OoW was released.

Can we as players get a NEW UPGRADE PATH other than time/qvic/anguish/etc? I think EQ has good options to gear up but eventually it all trickles into the same zones. Why are people NOT going into DoDH and PoR to gear up but instead still farming GoD/Omens?? (rhetorical question)

Comment Posted by: Tuppet on August 8, 2006 12:41 PM

Comment Posted by: concerned1 on August 8, 2006 01:00 PM

keisa: In your personal opion; will Everquest pull in a new subsciber base to rival wow and post numbers in the millions? After you answer i would like you to explain your answer.

Comment Posted by: Loral on August 8, 2006 01:20 PM

Concerned1, how about if we focus on what we want in the game - what is fun and what is not and not worry about numbers.

Comment Posted by: Ogulbuk on August 8, 2006 01:23 PM

Concerned1, will you get a discount if this game gets the same ammount of players as WoW? Else why care as long as the game still lives?

Comment Posted by: Ogulbuk on August 8, 2006 01:33 PM

You know what id love to see? Id love for all "ambient" and "trash" mobs in outdoor zones to be made weak solo content. Make them soloable by a melee bard, lower their HP and DPS enough for this to be viable, and off course, also lower the rewards. In other words: create a ranking system similar to the one in WoW and EQ2. Make all nameds the equivalent of "Elite" enemies in wow, with the occasional "Epic" ones, make all enemies in dungeons Elites (basically just label them, no change needed there other than that), and off course, apply this philosophy to all zones in new expancions.

Make kill count quests that can be completed anywhere or send me randomly to different old world zones, things that will reward me a bonus to xp, to encourage and reward exploration. Add to every single city zone certain NPCs that may not be lore heavy but will give these quests, for instance, going into the Ranger guild of any town will yield animal hunting quests while going to the Warrior guild I will get humanoid hunting quests.

Make these award points I can use to buy moderately useful equipment, better than naked but worse than any true equipment, yet enough to handle these �soloable� mobs with a bit of challenge.

No matter what they do, the old world will no longer be group content, they should at lest make this content soloable for those that want to enjoy it, even if its slower xp. And yes, this should include even the nameless dragons and giants you see in abundance in some zones (the ones that are rare in the zones should be Elites)

Comment Posted by: Keisa on August 8, 2006 04:00 PM

Suddenly, 2.6 million people have a thought, "Wow! I should be playing EQ." They all jump in their cars, ride their bikes, whatever, to the nearest store to snap up the games. Suddenly, there are riots for the remaining copies of the seven year old game. SOE developers are stunned as server lag goes through the roof.

It could happen. Really, it could... Riiiiiight.

Short answer is, "No!"

So, was there a reason for this excersize?

Keisa

Comment Posted by: Shillingworth on August 8, 2006 08:08 PM

Why is 2 ultra-high-end zones a problem? There are plenty of zones for everyone, and the sheer size of zones make them close to 2 or 3 normal zone sizes. I don't know if most of you realise it, but raids are far from easy, especially high end raids, sometimes they are so difficult it takes months of wiping out to beat them, some are so difficult they cause guilds to disband. Not giving high-end raiders something of thier own for all the work raids take and how little you actually get from them is almost is slap in the face. Sure the raid gear is nice, but what good is it if you have to be on a raid for it to be used to it's full extent.

Those extra 5 levels will open up to your groups not only content in this expansion but content in other expansions that were previously too difficult. So while the high-end raiders get 2 zones appropriate for thier equipment, you get 10 to 20 that were to difficult before plus the few in this expansion that are still worth it at high end.

Comment Posted by: sunshadow on August 8, 2006 09:28 PM

Please define the 10-20 zones I will be able to access. There only zones I can't access today are locked behind raid flags or uber group missions. How will this change??? Upping to 75 is not suddenly going to make Anguish accessable to me, it won't open most of GoD, it won't open the PoT or even the elemental planes. So I am wondering where all this current content I as a casual am missing that a level rise will magically open up for me???

Comment Posted by: Nobo on August 8, 2006 09:59 PM

Maybe we need to focus on how can let new comer join to EQ,also how can let old ppl come back.
This is main problem.

Comment Posted by: Skuz Bukit on August 9, 2006 04:54 AM

I'm really looking forward to the new expansion.

I think there should always remain a difference between raid geared and group geared in terms of numbers & power, to reflect the difficulty of raid encounters, but that group aquirable gear scaling/progression should be a focus of the devs, hand in hand with difficulty & complexity of the content required to obtain it.

Ok so people are complaining that high end raiders are given 2 endzones to do their high end grouping in, whether SoE plan to do access to these zones that also requires raid level geared players is unknown at the moment, & there are arguments both for and against making access to such high end zones feasible to non raiders.

More importantly I would think that if TSS provides zones that offer a solid challenge to non high end raiders & great upgrades that this "should" be enough,by this i mean zones/mobs that will challenge hardcore casuals.

The power of players is spread quite widely among non high end raiders, & personally I think the best way to adress that is by way of the zones & mobs themselves.

Taking the high end out of the picture by giving them their own place to mess around in, i think actually opens up the game to the rest better, having high end zones just prior to the two "uber" zones with very hard mobs/complex mini events would give the non uber plenty to get their teeth into & thats the cruz of my argument, should it matter what the hell the ubers are doing & where there doing it, & what they are wearing, as long as the rest of the community are getting quality entertainment, gear upgrades & exciting encounters?

Comment Posted by: Loral on August 9, 2006 07:16 AM

"Ok so people are complaining that high end raiders are given 2 endzones to do their high end grouping in, whether SoE plan to do access to these zones that also requires raid level geared players is unknown at the moment, & there are arguments both for and against making access to such high end zones feasible to non raiders."

These two zones are unlocked and unkeyed. There are no flags one must acquire. Instead, the power of the creatures within determines who can and cannot hunt there. The people it will hurt the most are high-end tanks and damage classes with lower damage output. Healers like myself will probably not have too much trouble there if we can find high-end raider tanks to follow.

The problem is a philosophical loop. I understand that high-end raiders want a place they can go to use all that power they have, however, instances could have been created off of these zones that offer very-high-end challenges and rewards without limiting entire zones to just raiders.

Single-group content should not be blocked behind high-end raid requirements. There should always be a path one can follow in a single-group context that leads to the highest end single-group content in the game. Raiders raid - that should be their content path.

It does sound like there will be quite a bit of level 70+ non-raider content in the expansion. I don't forsee a lack of content any time soon. However, not having an equipment path to the final two zones is a mistake.

Nobo makes a good point and I haven't yet tested the newbie game in this expansion to determine how it compares to the newbie zones in World of Warcraft - my new benchmark for a new player experience. The lack of a boxed version will limit new players, however.

Comment Posted by: Banerm on August 9, 2006 11:32 AM

God forbid the "ubers...raiders...hardcore" get a place to go group outside of raids. Why on earth would we want a place to go get some XP or maybe a few groupable drops or even some nice twink gear. You do realize giving us a place to XP/Farm means less farming of easier content therefore more drops for the non-raiders right?

It simply amazes me how many people hold this e-peen grudge for people who enjoy raiding. Play the game to enjoy it.. doesn't matter what level you are or how many hp you gear has. It's entertainment...If you dislike the way the game is going so bad then go play WoW since you think it's so balanced. Oh wait its just like every MMO there is seperation of the hardcore and casual there. Lets take for instance the "solo/single" group uber gear. PvP - how long does it take to achieve raid level PvP gear? Longer than it would take to level + gear through instances + find a raiding guild and get gear from end game content.

Simply put the game is always what you make of it. This keeping up with the Jones's mentality will make you not enjoy any game much less life. Sit back take a deep breath and have some fun.

Now for my rant concerning nice group gear. in all honesty the group gear availability has been obvious since LDoN. Nice gear + augmentations were available since then.Granted GoD did not provide the best gear options... but then again people didn't take the time to explore the non-keyed zones of GoD much. If you go and look at the gear that drops from Barindu, Qinimi, Ferubi, Riwwi, Sewers and Vxed they are direct upgrades from that of LDoN. KT also was the next step in groupable content with nice rewards. Beyond that in GoD there was nothing. OoW was fantastic regaurding group rewards, each zone had excellent gear. DoN there is no doubt that worked great for the Casual gamer... in fact it was packed full of group content and provided very little for raiders. The gear was more than satisfactory for the risk. DoDH gave groupers the highest reward gear in game yet. In DoD alone you can get 190/200 hp/mana gear for almost every slot as a non raider.(+ augs) PoRo added more of the same in line with DoD. TSS I expect will give even more yet again leveling the playing field for the casual gamer. It amazes me that you hear of all these casual gamers complaining constantly for better gear and more stuff to do yet the raiders remain mostly silent awaiting a new challenge that will no doubt provide sub-par gear for the risk envolved, yet we keep playing and looking for the next kill.

Comment Posted by: Wolfkinder on August 9, 2006 01:10 PM

I think what the 75 level cap will address is more in line with casual raiders. While high-end raiding is a very small percentage of the population admittedly, I think casual raiding is a much larger percentage. No one ever addresses this. There are several guilds on my server alone that are still doing PoP, GoD, DoN progression, not to mention pickup raids. I agree that if you hate raiding, if the idea of working in more than a group of 6 people is poison to you, you will be limited in this game.

But there are levels to this game. Loral tends to speak, as do others here, from the hardcore casual level, the people who burn through all the group content quickly. There are many, MANY people who don't have their DoDH spells, who are still trying to get their Omens runes, who are trying to dig up equipment in the different zones but can't get a large enough group together. With the level cap raise, much of that content for the TRUE casual player will become easier. You may be able to hunt your Omens runes with less than 6, or solo some beast you couldn't get near before. You can garner pickup raids for zones easier because you will now need less people, possibly less of the "Holy Trinity."

For the person who scoffed at the 10 to 20 zones available with the level increase, it's prolly true for you that it won't make that much of a difference. But for the majority of the player base, I think it will. Unless they're changing the power level of mobs in all expansions, PoP, Gates, DoN casual raiding is gonna get a big jump, which means a lot more Casuals will be able to gear up higher.

Not to mention all the new stuff solo'ers will get to play with.

--Wolfkinder

Comment Posted by: concerned1 on August 9, 2006 01:20 PM

this post before me is what i hate to see .it is misleading and dangerous. that guy knows damn well that eq caters to ubers. what he is afraid of is that the casual players that are still on eq will "wake up" and see the truth and that new potential casual consumers will see the truth and not buy/subscribe to eq to keep the game going so he can feed his lust to be uber or elite. in wow yeah there are differences in gear but what is important is you can get the best any kind of gear even playing casually in a reasonable amount of time. in eq the only people that get "phat lewt"in a decent amount of time are the ones that did like lorals wife and got gimped in zones and got what was rotting, basically by passing game progression. again all one has to do is look at the number of people not choosing to play eq. i cant comment on that though as it seems loral will get angry at me.

Comment Posted by: concerned1 on August 9, 2006 01:21 PM

my post was directed at banerm fyi.

Comment Posted by: Juror on August 9, 2006 04:20 PM

I think it's important to have an end zone in each expansion. There should be a place on the map that reads "Danger! Here be monsters! Enter at your own risk." Only the mightiest dare go there at first (and they usually get their butts kicked until they figure things out.)

Do we need two uber elite end zones in TSS? I am not quite convinced. I would prefer that one be a little easier than the other but that's just my two cp worth (which won't even buy you a Halas 10lb. meat pie in the Bazaar.) Hardcore casuals and mid-level raiders will be able to venture into Ashengate and Frostcrypt in time (as long as they have a path that they can follow to do so.)

Level 75 should open up a lot of content for all kinds of players. Rather than worry too much about where folks won't be able to go, let's see where folks can go before we start building siege towers and heading toward San Diego. There will be plenty of opportunities to load and fire the gnome-a-pults during the patch of the patch of the patch.

If it makes you feel any better, concerned1, I didn't skip any steps (pizza+sigs) to get into Anquish. Also I am going back to Gates now with organization of pickup raiders that I co-founded to flag everyone (including many "casuals") the old-fashioned way.

Comment Posted by: Armarant on August 9, 2006 04:53 PM

Concerned1 wrote: in wow yeah there are differences in gear but what is important is you can get the best any kind of gear even playing casually in a reasonable amount of time. in eq the only people that get "phat lewt"in a decent amount of time are the ones that did like lorals wife and got gimped in zones and got what was rotting, basically by passing game progression.
---
now that I can agree with. everyone in WoW can get the best gear for them eventually. they dont need to be part of a raiding organization. in EQ you either have to shell out hundreds of thousands of plat/goto firiona vie server/join a raiding organization that sucks the life out of you.

Comment Posted by: Skuz on August 9, 2006 06:03 PM

"Comment Posted by: Armarant on August 9, 2006 04:53 PM

If you truly want to be playing a game that gives the very highest end level of gear to groupers, & you feel that WoW does this, then go play it!

Everquest does not, nor should it, why should other games systems of loot distrubtion be exactly mirrored in Everquest just because you "feel" it should?, or just because they do, I for one hope to hell EQ NEVER becomes a carbon copy of WoW.

Even Loral, who works tirelessly to improve the group & casual game does not advocate that, he simply wants a reasonable progression of gear path that has a reasonable level of parity to raiders.

I do not agree with Loral that all groupable zones should be groupable by casuals however, but unlocked zones that destroy all but the currently very high end, may in future offer part of what he wants from group progression when future aa & level "power" increases take place, at level 80 these zones may well become a groupers haven.

I don't feel raiders that group should have to be crowbarred into instances, I think its a perfectly viable to have such high powered endzones that will "eventually" become hunting grounds for the high end casual.

Comment Posted by: Riesan on August 9, 2006 06:44 PM

I have to agree with you here, and my guild is nearly at anguish-stage already. Before I joined my guild a good two years or so ago, I was on the bottom of the equipment scale all together. I was close to retiring from the game entierly and knew there was a -ton- of stuff I would never see.

Turns out I have seen it, thanks to my guild. But not everyone enjoys raiding or wants to join a raiding guild. I just hope they take the advice given here in this article.

Also, I'm excited about the screen shots thus far. What I've seen of PoR has been dissapointing; Sure there are various shinies in the zones, but it looks like someone took clumpfulls of mobs and stuck them together like a patchwork quilt. It feels overcrowded and forced.

Comment Posted by: Armarant on August 9, 2006 08:45 PM

[[ Personal attack removed - Loral. ]]

Comment Posted by: Armarant on August 9, 2006 08:47 PM

[[ Personal attack removed - Loral ]]

Comment Posted by: Armarant on August 9, 2006 09:10 PM

skuzbucket wrote: everquest does not, nor should it, why should other games systems of loot distrubtion be exactly mirrored in Everquest just because you "feel" it should?, or just because they do, I for one hope to hell EQ NEVER becomes a carbon copy of WoW.
---
please point out where me saying what wow does is saying that Everquest should use their loot system?. you cant point that out. [[ Personal attack removed - Loral ]]

Comment Posted by: Skuz on August 9, 2006 09:58 PM

"please point out where me saying what wow does is saying that Everquest should use their loot system?."

How about:
"everyone in WoW can get the best gear for them eventually. they dont need to be part of a raiding organization. in EQ you either have to shell out hundreds of thousands of plat/goto firiona vie server/join a raiding organization that sucks the life out of you."

Am I mistaken in reading that you are not happy about the best gear being raid only?

Am I mistaken that you compared this dislike to a system used by WoW that you do like?

You didn't say "Everquest should have the same loot system as WoW" but you made a comparison to that effect.

Or to put it another way, if you don't want the best gear in an expansion to be groupable within the lifetime of that expansion, what exactly do you want?

Comment Posted by: sunshadow on August 9, 2006 10:38 PM

Skuz mate, you missed a lot of what the whole thread has been about.

It's about groups not having a way to be able to progress into the best group content in the game, outsides of joining a raiding guild and gearing up that way.

So with TSS casuals are not only blocked from Raid content they are also being blocked from group content. This is why we are irrate.

Another point is Raiders have always said Raid gear is only need cause raid mobs are so hard. Casuals don't need that gear as the group content doesn't require it. Well we can see now that argument doesn't hold up any more as raid gear is now a required element for high end group content.

I am really suprised Raiders fight this so hard, it would remove the need for a lot of back flagging and gearing up replacements if the applicants were already close to par.

Comment Posted by: Armarant on August 9, 2006 11:33 PM

skuz wrote: Or to put it another way, if you don't want the best gear in an expansion to be groupable within the lifetime of that expansion, what exactly do you want?
--
for there to be faster upgrade paths between level 1 and 65.. while they shouldnt need to provide a upgrade path that can satisfy all expansions.. they should provide a upgrade path that can be more easily obtained thru hunting and less thru the bazaar. while it is true that people can get from 65~70 gear wise alot easier now. everything below 65 is tougher without useing the bazaar as a crutch.

Comment Posted by: Skuz on August 10, 2006 02:27 AM

"It's about groups not having a way to be able to progress into the best group content in the game, outsides of joining a raiding guild and gearing up that way.

So with TSS casuals are not only blocked from Raid content they are also being blocked from group content. This is why we are irrate."

Perhaps the solution to this is a form of compromise, from a zone design point of view it should be reasonable to tune these two endzones to provide to both high end casual/part time raiders, & high end raiders by way of having both levels of mobs in the same zone in differing areas, with gear off one tier of mobs making the higher tier of mobs possible perhaps.

As far as gear goes I agree groupers in gear that is progressable via group content to be able to survive & gear up in such end zones is a good idea.

Comment Posted by: Banerm on August 10, 2006 02:44 AM

If you honestly think you can get the best gear in WoW by being casual then you are sadly mistaken. The best a casual player will see will be stuff from the 20 man pickup runs. Just like every MMO out there the high end is geared to be hardcore. Be it PvP grind/Faction Farming/Raiding. To see the big numbers it takes the time investment be it EQ/WoW/EQ2 or any other MMO.

Yes WoW offers raid level gear to solo non guilded non raiders... does it require a huge time sink? Absolutely... Epic quality gear/weapons require depending on server damn near 24/7 PvP to reach say "Grand Marshal" which has the epic weapon selection. At "Field Marshall" you can get the upper level PvP epic gear but it also takes a ton of time to reach that rank. This is also dependant on the server and the race for rank.

"this post before me is what i hate to see .it is misleading and dangerous. that guy knows damn well that eq caters to ubers. what he is afraid of is that the casual players that are still on eq will "wake up" and see the truth and that new potential casual consumers will see the truth and not buy/subscribe to eq to keep the game going so he can feed his lust to be uber or elite."

That made me giggle. Yeah they really specifically cater to "ubers" cause we all know the raiders need a new starting city and new content from 1 to 75 plus all the armor drops and quests envolved in the new zones. We also know that OoW/DoN/DoD/PoRo was directly geared to raiders....Like that awesome raid zone Demi-Plane of blood... they loved the raiders so much they gave them the exact same zone as Dreadspire and just made it instanced! Whoa I feel the creative juices flowing from that one. Wait no the creativity was used creating the vast ammount of "group" missions with awesome gear for the casual non-hardcore gamers.(Something that was overdue to help close the gap)

Comment Posted by: Armarant on August 10, 2006 03:57 AM

Banerm wrote: Yes WoW offers raid level gear to solo non guilded non raiders... does it require a huge time sink? Absolutely...
---
But it offers it.. even if its a huge time sink.

Comment Posted by: Nolrog on August 10, 2006 08:48 AM

>> Upping to 75 is not suddenly going to make Anguish accessable to me, it won't open most of GoD, it won't open the PoT or even the elemental planes. So I am wondering where all this current content I as a casual am missing that a level rise will magically open up for me???

Upping to 75 won't open those zones, however upping to 75 will allow you to defeate the encounters so you can open them yourself.

Comment Posted by: Ogulbuk on August 10, 2006 02:13 PM

____________________________________________________
Juror: Do we need two uber elite end zones in TSS? I am not quite convinced.
____________________________________________________

There is one reason why I actually agree with 2 uber elite end zones in the next expansion:

They are not instanced.

This expansion seems to want avoiding instances as much as they can, think raids are instanced only due to the fear of all the mayhem that comes from two uber guilds planning for a week a raid only to stumble into another guild doing it the same date.

However open-ended single group zones that won�t be instanced may themselves not be enough to hold the entire uber player base without stepping on each other's toes once in a while. Remember this is single group content, so its not just one group per uber guild, its the entire membership of each uber guilds divided by 6 being accommodated on these two zones.

Additionally think of this possibility:
Uber players and casual players playing together, the uber player gets a challenge and some single group fun, plus grind a few AAs and other stuff, while the casual non raider may actually see drops that may be slightly inferior to raid drops, but huge upgrades for them. Requiring uber players to help may actually be the key to them being able to add a middle tier of equipment, on top of it you don�t need an entire raid to hold your hand trough itemization, a small group of 5 or 4 ubers may be enough to get you trough.

IF they go this way, it may be an amazing thing.

Comment Posted by: banana_boat on August 10, 2006 02:32 PM

You can't get into every zone in WoW by yourself. You can't get the best gear in WoW by yourself. That is such BS. It requires playing with lots of people (whether you are guilded or not), and playing a lot. This is no different than EQ except people here seem to feel entitled to everything.

You are not entitled to have access to every zone and every item in the game simply by paying for the expansion. If you can't or don't want to spend your gaming time working on ways to do this you can't except people to simply give them too you. SOE help those who help themsevles.

If you're not in a guild (or one with a avg level of 48), and your sever doesn't have open raids, you're going to miss out on some things. Is it enough to say an expansion isn't worth it? No, I don't think so. I'm beginning to think the only so called "casuals" who complain about these things are just self-center people who refuse to have anyone tell them what to do. They'd scoff at the chance of PoTime loot and compare it against Ayonae Ro. Why bother when it's inferior right? Why do I have play a 3 year old expansion when the shiny new one has better things. Gimmie gimmie gimmie!

EQ has plenty to offer people to keep them busy. However, if all you're concerned about is how big your e-peen is compared to someone else you really need to evaluate why you play this game. I have a small e-peen and I'm happy because I know how to use it well.

Comment Posted by: Ogulbuk on August 10, 2006 04:18 PM

---------------------------------------------------
You can't get into every zone in WoW by yourself. You can't get the best gear in WoW by yourself. That is such BS. It requires playing with lots of people (whether you are guilded or not), and playing a lot. This is no different than EQ except people here seem to feel entitled to everything.
---------------------------------------------------

Few want to get great equipment on their own; they simply want it on full size groups, not raids.

That being told WoW has been already confirmed to force their players to do raids that will be side-grades (different but just as good) for the most hardcore equipment players by level 65ish (expansion will add 10 new levels, starting at 61)

Guess how big these raids must be? Ten members. That�s it, just ten members needed, and 1 to 2 hour long mini raids at that. Off course, they will require to run loads of these to get fully geared up so they can actually attempt the true big raid IF they want. I bet the big final raid guy will have some special reward but the overall equipment will come from 10 (or less) men "wings", witch are on themselves very tough to beat pre-requisite content for the big long raids.

So, WoW is actually heading towards "casual raiding" while leaving the B4(*) Raiding there for those that want to do the old style stuff for a B4 exclusive reward.

This also means that people that are riding are ACTUALLY riding instead of doing half the raid until they gear up and can finish it. They will now run the gear-up content on its full and then jump into the raid content, with the real hope of beating it the first time there as they already have the gear they need to do so, this is, guessing they will have the brains to guess how it will all work the first time they go in.

*B4 = BBBB, My own acronym for "Big 'n Bad Basement Boys"

Comment Posted by: Ogulbuk on August 10, 2006 04:23 PM

Clarification I think I didn�t phrase this properly:

Tier 3 raids yield the most powerful gear in WoW. It is expected these players wont be seeing actual upgrades until level 65ish where they will start seeing dungeons that yield different options that are still not actual upgrades. It is guessed normal players will be seeing an equipment upgrade path that will allow them to face this content at lvl 65, so by lvl 65 they are expected to have gear + level power equivalent of a Tier 2 raider.

This is far more casual than a world where 3 expansions later you still had no way to gear up for that 3 expansion old raid content regardless of gained levels and gear.

Comment Posted by: Armarant on August 10, 2006 06:45 PM

Banana_boat wrote: You can't get into every zone in WoW by yourself. You can't get the best gear in WoW by yourself. That is such BS. It requires playing with lots of people (whether you are guilded or not), and playing a lot. This is no different than EQ except people here seem to feel entitled to everything.
---
Unless you have been living in a cave the last year and avoiding reading wow patches which you probably have. you would have noticed they have put in alternative ways to get raiding gear. its got huge time sinks, but its there.

Comment Posted by: Utziel on August 10, 2006 07:36 PM

Nolrog Wrote -

"Upping to 75 won't open those zones, however upping to 75 will allow you to defeate the encounters so you can open them yourself."

So a group of 75s will be able to take down the Bosses in PoP? LOLOLOL I would like to watch that. And not a group of raider 75s a group of casual 75s

BTW how old is PoP and how many havent even seen most of it ?

Comment Posted by: concerned1 on August 11, 2006 01:20 AM

the new race/starting city, play as a monster in a shroud, monster missions, free roboboar,free war horse....etc....are all marketing attempts to lure in casual/new players. a bunch of horsecrap. its smoke and mirrors hiding the true purpose of the expansion: high end raid encounters and "phat lewt" for ubers. the devs themselves are uber raiders and they know they have to put something on the expansions to attract people other then ubers becuase ubers alone cant keep eq afloat. eq needs the money from casuals to keep the uber candyland going. it dosent really matter. its failing. the expansions since OOW have been commercial flops and soe knows it.

Comment Posted by: Skuz Bukit on August 11, 2006 02:38 AM

!Comment Posted by: concerned1 on August 11, 2006 01:20 AM

Such hate.........

You know your contemptious envy is futile, high end raid encounters, the loot, & the uberguilds that get it, are such a small part of the game.

Why do you ignore the fact that TSS is offeing a huge wealth of content for every level of player, why do you ignore the hard work they are putting in the make the expansion fun viable & exciting for everyone?

I think for narrow minded uber-game haters like yourself you should try & see the big picture widen your perspective & see the game as it truly is, focusing on the content that is there for YOU & working to make that better is a far more productive exercise than spewing hate & frothing at the mouth about the top end of the game which you seemingly know so little about.

I think for such people as you, you won't be happy until the game fits YOUR personal ideas, until there is no high end game or people in better gear than you.

If you can do better go make your own MMoRPG.

Comment Posted by: Ogulbuk on August 11, 2006 06:46 AM

Concerned1, you simply being obtuse now.

Comment Posted by: concerned1 on August 11, 2006 07:21 AM

so the truth hurts and theres no where else to go so you attack me personally? how typical is that? i'm on the outside.....i'm looking in.....i see your true colors....

Comment Posted by: Ogulbuk on August 11, 2006 08:51 AM

*sigh*

Know what? I never ever got to max level on any MMO. Ever, and I been playing MMOs since one week before Kunark came out. From MY perspective, you are no casual gamer at all, so stop trying to cry a river of blood here just because the big guys got some content they can actually take part off in the new expansion.

There are some TRUE casuals that wont ever get to max level, yet do you see me whining about how little kids like you can get there but I cant? No you don�t and won�t ever see me do it because I know that time, effort, and friends are the ways to get the farthest possible in these games. If you refuse to afford friends to raid with to get your uber equipment (since that�s what YOU seem to want, not what most casuals want) then I�m [not] sorry for you. I know I can�t afford time, and without time no matter how many friends and effort I place in I can�t get too far.

This expansion is loaded with content for everyone, from level 1, and you come here to complain on how its just a ploy to squeeze money out of the casual player so that the devs can play their raiding game...

Loral has some good points on the two uber zones, but I also can see how the devs want to really on as little instanced content as possible on this expansion too and that�s why I personally think they deserve those 2 grouping zones, you however have decided to take Loral's small point there to feed a conspiracy theory that would make the writers of the X-Files last season laugh due to absurdity.

So yea, that�s why you get attacked, but you wanted some actual arguments shoot back at you? Well here, happy, Mr. Notactuallycassual?

In short: You are plainly being obtuse.

Comment Posted by: Keisa on August 11, 2006 09:54 AM

When I started playing the game, there were those people that prophisied the end of EQ. They complained about the uber players that rushed onward to the top end of the game and the fact that only raiding guilds could get the best stuff.

I joined a good guild and enjoyed playing the content, and worked my way through the levels. I was not willing to give up the many zones of enjoyment SOE provided for me in order to speed past and get to the two zones many claimed were the only thing worth doing in the game. Yes, I looked forward to the loot that came from those zones and knew that one day, when I was 50, I too could go to Hate and Fear.

Isn't it ironic how little things change. We still have people who speed past all the good content to get the top end loot. We still have those people who will never be happy, and continue to worry more about what others have than enjoying the game. We still have people crying, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling! EQ is dieing!" We still have people claiming, "Brad is ruining the game! The Vision is flawed!" Well, the names have changed, but the message is the same.

Keisa

Comment Posted by: Loral on August 11, 2006 01:08 PM

Sorry for my lack of communication, I've been busy. The good news is that my WOW hunter is nearly level 60. The bad news is that I completely missed a dev chat yesterday.

Skuz said:

"I do not agree with Loral that all groupable zones should be groupable by casuals however, but unlocked zones that destroy all but the currently very high end, may in future offer part of what he wants from group progression when future aa & level "power" increases take place, at level 80 these zones may well become a groupers haven."

I do not like paying for zones today that I can't use until I get new levels in another expansion I buy two years from now. That's like some sort of evil reverse lay-away program.

Comment Posted by sunshadow:

"So with TSS casuals are not only blocked from Raid content they are also being blocked from group content. This is why we are irrate."

Exactly.

"But it offers it.. even if its a huge time sink."

Offering something and offering something reasonably are two separate things. There's a lot of good gear in EQ but the amount of time or effort required for non-raiders to acquire it is unreasonable. It is not enough to say "its there", it has to be reasonably acquireable as well.

"However open-ended single group zones that won�t be instanced may themselves not be enough to hold the entire uber player base without stepping on each other's toes once in a while."

Most raiders want to raid. I'll bet a dollar that one of these two zones sees very little use at all. There is a lot of high-end raid-level missions in DODH and no one uses them for the same reason we are having this discussion - SOE won't put raid gear on single-group content. The gear, by definition, won't be as good as raid gear on these new zones and no one else but raiders can hunt there. I'd be perfectly happy with an instanced raider version of these zones with a normal non-raider non-instanced version. This would be like the Normal and Hard DODH missions.

"Uber players and casual players playing together, the uber player gets a challenge and some single group fun, plus grind a few AAs and other stuff, while the casual non raider may actually see drops that may be slightly inferior to raid drops, but huge upgrades for them."

This is another problem - so now I should be allowed to see these huge upgrades only if a high-end raider is so kind as to allow me the benefit of his company? Why can't I get five friends of my own power and go do it?

concerned1 on August 11, 2006 01:20 AM

"the new race/starting city, play as a monster in a shroud, monster missions, free roboboar,free war horse....etc....are all marketing attempts to lure in casual/new players. a bunch of horsecrap. its smoke and mirrors hiding the true purpose of the expansion: high end raid encounters and "phat lewt" for ubers. the devs themselves are uber raiders and they know they have to put something on the expansions to attract people other then ubers becuase ubers alone cant keep eq afloat. eq needs the money from casuals to keep the uber candyland going."

Concerned takes a lot of heat for his delivery but he isn't wrong. It's not all true, but there are some important points to consider in the paragraph above.

There should be a smooth single-group equipment progression path throughout Serpent's Spine that leads into and through Frost Crypt and Ashengate.

Comment Posted by: Greif on August 12, 2006 12:34 AM

Am I the only one (former raider / semi-casual these days) that appreciates the latest instanced content? People who miss the non-instanced stuff don't seem to remember the underside of it all. The blown spawns (Coirnav & PoE ring, thats "fun" for you), the rival trains to each other's raids, the contested kills, the huge lagfests when two 100 person zerg raids collide, flamewars, petitions and counter petitions to GMs.

I think people who claim to enjoy non-instanced content either enjoy the inter-player conflict (nothing wrong with that - but I think a good number of people if not the majority want to avoid all that for a good gaming evening) OR conveniently forget the massive player heartaches that come with it (listed above). On top of that, I have always held the opinion that SOE is thoroughly incapable of creating enough non-instanced content (exp areas, zones, mobs etc) to satisfy the demand of the players.

Oh BTW, if TSS fully go the way of non-instanced content. Good luck fending off all the Chinese IGE / RMT (real money transactions) farmers from all the good exp/loot spots.

Comment Posted by: Skuz Bukit on August 12, 2006 02:56 AM

Loral "I do not like paying for zones today that I can't use until I get new levels in another expansion I buy two years from now. That's like some sort of evil reverse lay-away program."

You don't? Then every single expansion with top end raid-content in it must have burned you up.

If an expansion has 20 uninstanced zones and as a level 75 you have access to 18 of them, ok so probably 10 are aimed at a playerbase so far lower than that to make it unproductive to hunt there, that leaves you 80% of level relevant group content, if that has enough missions/quests/named camps etc to keep the majority of the casual playerbase busy until the next expansion SoE have succeeded, look at past expansions and ask what % of the content you had access to as a casual.

There is an in place scheme in Everquest, it isn't perfect but it's there, whereby those not at the bleeding edge of raiding can power up in group gear to the point they can reasonably tackle raid content from a year or so ago....that system does need a looking into as it has its flaws however.

As far as people who do not raid whatsoever, the bulk of those I know are not the people who bitch & moan, rather they have a circle of likeminded friends they spend their game-time with & most seem to be happy to progress at their own pace with what is already in this game.

The most vocal are the casual raiders that enjoy raiding but who aren't in a high powered guild or don't raid as much as they'd like to due to real life. For these people know the rewards from raiding but want group gaming to offer comparative rewards, which it does but not in sufficient amount/quality to satisfy them.

And do you care to point out where Concerned1 was not true, and where he was spot on, or leave your comment on his post open to interpretation?

Comment Posted by: Ogulbuk on August 12, 2006 06:17 AM

The only valid point on all that garbage post of his is:

"ubers alone cant keep eq afloat."

As the other points covered by Loral on his last post were not noted on Concerned1's last post.

I agree there has to be equipment progression for everyone. I agree the two non instanced zones will be underused, but I bet the intent of the devs is for raiders to single group, and if they somehow managed to encourage this, then the two zones alone wont be enough. By making that content only doable by raiders, then you can add meaningful rewards for them too.

Anyways, is there no dungeon zones for lvl 75 players in the new expansion other than these two "uber 75" zones?

I also think the unintended raid content would be bad idea, but they keeping that instanced. I personally also like instanced dungeon crawls, since they feel more like real... dungeon crawling :P

Comment Posted by: Loral on August 12, 2006 08:08 AM

"Comment Posted by: Skuz Bukit on August 12, 2006 02:56 AM

Loral "I do not like paying for zones today that I can't use until I get new levels in another expansion I buy two years from now. That's like some sort of evil reverse lay-away program."

You don't? Then every single expansion with top end raid-content in it must have burned you up."

Every expansion that has focused on a lot of raid content has burned me up. I'm not against dedicated raid content for raiders, though - I'm against single group content that single-groupers have no chance of getting to until four more expansions come out.

Concerned1 hit on the point that there is a lot of raid content being built for a small sliver of the population. After talking with the design team, however, it is their belief that the numbers are a lot higher than I think. There is no internal SOE evil plan to make casuals pay for the development of their own raid content - SOE spends a fair bit of time deciding how to tune content.

There will be quite a few places a level 70 to 75 non-raider can hunt in TSS, but all of the experience and equipment found there will not be enough for them to reach Ashengate and Frost Crypt and thats what burns me.

I learned this morning that WOW's Burning Crusade expansion will only have a maximum of 25 people in the high-end instances. I think thats a very smart move.

Comment Posted by: Teremar on August 12, 2006 06:58 PM

I think I'm going to have to disagree on this one. This isn't like PoP, where the only thing that kept non-raiders from getting all the benefits of grouping in the elemental planes was not being flagged. Here the prerequisite is gear.

I think it's safe to assume that many (most?) raiders don't want to spend all their time raiding. Some may even want to spend time playing in a single group. And when they do, they want the same things non-raiders want in single group content: challenges and rewards.

But they're wearing raid gear. Thus both the challenges and the rewards have to be scaled for that gear. In short they need zones like Ashengate and Frostcrypt.

So you say "I'm against single group content that single-groupers have no chance of getting to until four more expansions come out." Fair enough. But the only thing keeping keeping single-groupers out is their gear. So to make that happen I can see just two choices:

1) There can be no single group content tuned to challenge people in raid gear.

2) There can be no gap between raid gear and single-group gear.

I suspect what you have in mind is a bit of both: a smaller gear gap and single-group zones which are somewhat on the easy side for raiders so single-groupers can handle them. Or maybe we disagree enough about what raiders want ("Most raiders want to raid.") that you think #1 is the way to go.

I'd like to suggest that there's been too much zero-sum thinking on this issue, e.g. "Every zone for raiders is one less zone for single-groupers" or vice versa. I'd like to see less focus on "Raiders get TWO zones!" and more focus on the content single-groupers can do. Is there enough? Is it interesting and fun? Is it challenging? Is it rewarding? If the answers to all of the above questions are "Yes" then who cares how many zones the raiders are getting?

Comment Posted by: Sabrex on August 12, 2006 08:19 PM

I remember posting a suggestion years ago when the raider/non-raider gear gap first raised its head. Essentially you cant design content for both so stop trying. ie release 2 expansions one for raiders and one for groupers and them in the end segregate the servers to raid only content and non raid content perhaps delivered by 2 different teams. It will save SOE money not having to run so much underused content on hardware and allow itemisation/abilities to be better balanced. Many of the class deficiencies have at the core the problem of trying to balance an ability for people with such a gear range. It also should align the revenue with the development agenda. ie raiders will pay for new raid development and non-raiders for non raid dungeons. People wouldnt have to buy content they can never use.

Comment Posted by: Skuz on August 12, 2006 09:01 PM

@ Sabrex

Thats not a good model, like has been pointed out the game needs players at all levels, not just in gear terms but also at a social level, to ignore the social side of eq is a mistake.

But the way you put it made me think of a new way to look at this " i pay $xx.xx for xx% of content i don't get to use"

Well I think thats true both ends of the scale, a large portion of the group content is either pointless, or too easy for raiders, pointless as its rewards are meaningless to them, too easy as their gear trivialises the challenge.

So you have casuals paying for expansion content of which a large portion they use regularly, (and part time raiders see that after 6 to 18 months later) & Raiders paying for content which is in truth much lower in volume, though more heavily designed out of a necessity to challenge raiders used to complex raid events.

By going down the "raiders only want to raid" path you are being blinded by some form of gaming predjudice, sure there are some that soley raid, but theres a good bunch wanting challenging group stuff too.

I am a raider that absolutely loves the grouping side of the game, would be a nice change of pace to not have to play an alt to enjoy it & instead have group fun on my main. (playing a raid geared main with max aa in group content that has no reward & low challenge consequently isn't much fun, so when i get time I play an alt.

Comment Posted by: Sabrex on August 13, 2006 12:48 AM

From my perspective I havent grouped with a raider since mid Ldon other than begging a friendly tank to solo a named in GoD for us. The reality is I cant group anywhere they find worth doing and I wasnt flagged for their traditional xp zones. My argument is not I dont get my moneys worth, but rather its an economic rationalist view point. If we have to persist with two distinct populations incapable of grouping together for mutual benefit why continue the charade we are playing the same game. Two games would allow the needs of both groups to be better met by SOE and their developers. Im quite happy for people to freely move between raid and non raid servers and quite happy for the raiders to bring their equipment as well. I cant think why they would want to when grouping will effectively have no reqard for them other than xp.
Do you know any raiders bothering grouping outside their guild anyway in content that would always be considered sub-optimal xp and having no worthwhile equipment?

On a more positive note, if I ruled SOE I would fix this mess by 1) Keeping the quality advantage of raid drops at a more sensible level ie 20%. 2) Make raid dropped gear essential for raiding ie with special resists/banes so grouping could not be a way to bypass raiding ie give raiders a reason to run round the wheel 3) Make key equipment items only drop from group content (ie the spells or half the augs) so socially people raider or not had a common goal and raiding on its own wasnt sufficient to reach 100%. 4) Provide a smooth progression path of group content from 0 to 80% of the elite in which non raiders could espire to "finish" the group content of an expansion. Lets stop this view of grouping as only a training/recruitment activity for the real endgame and instead give both streams an end point in each expansion.

Comment Posted by: Skuz Bukit on August 13, 2006 03:55 AM

You raise some good points and Ideas in your final Paragraph Sabrex.

What I would agree with is the 80% of raider power, for one thing I think it would benefit the raid guilds as new applicants are not going to be vastly underpowered & can perform their role on a raid without dying in a heartbeat, a 20% lower geared player is a gap that is viable for a raid to cover imho.

As far as how groupers can reach that 80%, I think repetition shouldn't be the way to attain max group geared, by that I mean not via a points system, a points system should be a lower potential, perhaps 60%.

To attain the best group geared & reach that 80% I would like to see a well thought out storyline that can act as a part of the lore to the game, perhaps tell a story that leads up to the events the raiders are dealing with...the background history etc, where they get to witness a few of the protagonists, along with group obtainable progression, have a flagging system on the top tier of missions so that the final mission arc where the really good loot is has a prerequisite of say 4 earlier missions, the reason I say that is I think such loot should feel like a real achievement, real achievements have to be worked for, have a mission per armour slot at the top tier unlocked by doing a mission set with lesser rewards, doing 5 missions in total to unlock your top group leg slot for example (class specific of course) (something similar Loral has suggested in the past).

Comment Posted by: Sabrex on August 13, 2006 04:55 AM

Im assuming getting to 80% for a non raider will be hard and involve the completion of many quests and in general there will be an overlap of raider and non-raiding powers. ie high end raiders will depending on their effort be 60-100% while non raiders 40-80%. What I want to see is for the commited players of either stream a good overlap 55-75% during the prime time of an expansion in which either can group together for mutual benefit.

Comment Posted by: concerned1 on August 13, 2006 07:47 AM

there is never gonna be a "balance" between uber raiders and casuals like some of you seem to be suggesting. if you look around on eq you will find uber "alts" in anguish gear and have 2.0. not even a "bot" but just a alt. now why do i point things like this out? well lets think about that. ok so the uber dosent need anything for his main. they got it all. so they decide to play a alt and group. so they have a choice to group with: uber mains,bots,other twinked uber alt toons,and casual type player with bazaar,dodh spell mission gear,por group gear,or don crystal bought gear.who they gonna group with? two main problems with this is: for one there are alts with better gear then some peoples mains. two would be people being passed over becuase they basically arent uber.and this is just a sample of what is going on. a couple of people are saying make some stuff where the ubers will have a reward they can use for doing group stuff. yeah that will work for like maybe 2 weeks. when the uber has the new shiney from that they will move on to something else. face it: some people seemingly have endless hours to play some of these games,like eq.....and as a result they tear through the content fast.you cant go back on what has happened in eq. there a is a wide rift between uber raider and the casual player. some of you say it should be there. why? why did it have to be that way? it hasnt brought more people to eq. it hasnt stopped people from leaving. the strangest thing about this whole situation is that it caters to the smallest representation of the people that pay to play. many of you are brash and basically say " if you dont like it quit.fight back with your wallet". well,it looks like that has happened as many people have quit and continue to quit. it's no secret more people are quiting eq then picking it up for the first time.whats the answer? hell,whats the question anymore? eq cant go back......

Comment Posted by: sabrex on August 13, 2006 09:43 AM

Eq doesnt have to go back it just needs to go forward. Each time they bring out a new expansion it can set a new standard. The beauty of mudflation is that it can erase the sins of the past if we break the rule that single group rewards cant come close to raid reward not just for this expansion but the last 5 expansions. Net result an increasing gap as raid gear progresses and non raid gear moves at a snail pace. Draw a line in the sand and say lets progress both types of play style. Link it to level increases and old content need not become irrelevant for those coming up. I say lets all go back to the future.

Comment Posted by: Wolfkinder on August 13, 2006 01:05 PM

Sabrex, disagree with the two server idea. However, everything else you've stated in your last three statements is brilliant. I think if EQ implemented a more structured system that balanced the raiders and casuals (i.e., the figures you gave above) so that there was a decent middleground and only a small gap, it would go a long way to solve many perceived and real issues.

--Wolfkinder

Comment Posted by: Loral on August 13, 2006 09:14 PM

"So you say "I'm against single group content that single-groupers have no chance of getting to until four more expansions come out." Fair enough. But the only thing keeping keeping single-groupers out is their gear. So to make that happen I can see just two choices:

1) There can be no single group content tuned to challenge people in raid gear.

2) There can be no gap between raid gear and single-group gear."

You're right and thats the weird circle I go through in my head. I know raiders should have challenging and rewarding content but it torques me off when they get two hole zones.

I think #2 is the better answer. Honestly, there are so many easy and exploitative ways for people to gear up that there should be similar opportunities for those who simply aren't inside the clicks that allow it. Why should my gear strictly depend on who I know?

Consider this. Right now, as a level 70 cleric, I have a whole bunch of options to upgrade my gear. I can bum off of high-end raiders to get flagged for Theater of Blood and then bottomfeed off of gear they don't want from trash mobs while they go after the big guys. I can join a raiding guild, get geared up on rot gear, and then quit. I can pay someone to 5-box M'Sha gear on off hours. I can mooch with other raid friends to bottomfeed in other zones. None of this seems legitimate to me. None involve any real challenge. Why shouldn't I be able to work hard in single-group progressive content and get that sort of gear?

It shows a clear gap in the progression of a game when the gear that rots for high-end raiders is far better than the best gear I can get as a single-group hunter.

I think the answer is to do a few things. First, make some instanced group content for high-end raiders. Tune the non-instanced versions of the zones to high-end non raiders. Second, close the gap - not completely, but at least to the point where raid gear is 10 to 20% better than single-group gear, not 50% to 100%. Rotting raid gear shouldn't be 50% better than the best non-raider gear.

The issue is never so simple as to either "close the gap" or "don't give raiders challenging group content". The only solutions are fuzzy and detailed and complicated. We'll see what happens, but I think I'll still be torqued about two zones for single-group raiders when the expansion goes live.

Comment Posted by: Wolfkinder on August 14, 2006 12:15 AM

Hey, just wondering out loud, why doesn't Sony go the opposite way with instances. Instead of instancing zones to be harder, they should consider making easier instances of ALL raid zones for high end groups (non ubers). At least we could see them. Could even be a way to redo the gear gap issues, create instances of all the expansions top zones that are built for HARD groups (not uber, but players who are pretty decently geared up through regular groups) and create a path of higher level gear based on that. The 10 to 20 percent below raid gear type of gear. Extremely difficult missions through all the zones we can't see. Wouldn't even have to build new art, just create a decent story and appropriate mobs (think DoDH mission creativity).

--Wolfkinder

Comment Posted by: Richard Hinson on August 14, 2006 05:24 AM

I think the key here is what Loral is talking about.

It's not the question of, "if I become a raider and work HARD, I'll eventually gear up.

It's the fact that if you can just hang out with some raiders you can bottom feed of junk, pure worthless junk in thier eyes, and it just so happens that that JUNK, is 100% better than a single group of non-raiders will ever see.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for raiders being able to get the "best". I'm all for raiders being able to down the hardest encounters in the game.

What I am not for is the idea that the most slack ass poser with no skill, who happens to be friends with a raider in a raiding guild can tag along and with no effort, mp risk, no skill, no time put in, end up with better gear/spells that would have otherwise ROTTED!, than I'll ever see in the game, period, end of story, as a non-raider.

Now is every "raider" HAD to, bar none, no excuses, no short cuts, HAD TO, first "raid" Vox, then Naggy, then Phin, and every other "raid" target through all 12 content sets, with no exceptions, and had to have performed some mechanic so as to have been flagged as "complete" for each and every raid encounter, and each one, HAD to be done within a set level range where each raid was still intense and challenging with no help from heigher leveled toon (aka the Vox bit where higher levels are kicked outta the area), then sure, I'd be fine with raiders being the only ones with access to the top stuff.

But that's not the way it is. Right now, any twit who happens to already have a friend who raids, or can con their way into a raid guild can bottom feed for stuff that the rest of the game players can only wish for.

Sad part of it, is I find the most vocal people against non-raiders being able to close the gap are the very same nimrods that are bottom feeding in the raid guilds.

Personally I'd like a way to be able to earn my gear without having to either blow some raider, or con them.

Comment Posted by: Keisa on August 14, 2006 12:00 PM

Loral:

I suggest that instead of complaining that there are two top end open zones, that we should focus on seeing that everyone has an opportunity to get there. If these zones are truly open to all, and the only constraint to being there is if you are geared for it, then that is the best setup that has been available to the non-raider since POP. Rather than complaining about the fact that it will require a certain level of AAs, Levels, and gear, why not focus on what is required to meet those constraints.

What is needed is a path to be readily available in the game that allows non-raiders to gear up to be capable of hunting in those zones. If that could be done, then most of the game's imbalance issues would be solved.

It seems to me that with somewhere around 15 new mostly open zones and the increase in levels that there will be ample opportunity for SOE to provide such a path. New itemization for people up to 75 will allow (nay require) SOE to rebaseline the balance between gear from the new expansion and older expansions. Indeed new gear dropping in the 70-75 zones should rival trash raid drops from earlier expansions, allowing non-raiders to gear up more easily. It seems to me that this is the perfect time for SOE to review the balance between raider and non-raider gear and provide a reasonable path for non-raiders to advance in the game. If you truly feel there is a plight for the casual players, then this is an opportunity to pursue change.

Change your focus from worrying about the top in zones. Focus instead on the opportunity to making it so that everyone can enjoy those zones. Advocate a path that facilitates growth of all players from the base levels in the game all the way to the top end zones. In this way, everyone will have the ability to grow.

Keisa

Comment Posted by: Ogulbuk on August 14, 2006 01:37 PM

----------------------
Why should my gear strictly depend on who I know?
----------------------

I�m sorry but there is just no way around this. The person that has contacts will always have an easy way to go around gear, at least the way EQ works, but this does not means that you should make it easier for everyone else to get it.

There is only one way around eliminating this and it�s by forcing people to do it challenging and period. This would mean that you force players to not be able to get help from extremely powerful friends. FFXI and City of Heroes both have a way around this: temporary level caps.

It would be a nerf, plain and simple, would not help you get stuff any faster, but would actually remove the "I get it if I have pals" aspect that I admit does cheapens the rewards.

Going back on the level cap thing, the way it works in these games is that once you enter content the devs don�t want trivialized you automatically are leveled down to the max level. Lets say you enter a BCNM fight in FFXI, and this fight is caped at lvl 30, you simply are lowered to this max level. In FFXI, you will automatically unequip all equipment that is higher level than that. In CoH the equipment (enhancement) may be lowered in effectiveness. In both you don�t get access to spells/powers that are higher than that level.

Similar capability is built into EQ2, although I don�t know if they force a level cap on certain content, they simply have the capability to lower you in level.

I don�t see this changing in EQ though, there is too much complexity between AAs and equipment, although technically you can restrict all based on expansion it came with, lowering effectiveness to what was available at that time.

Anyways, it is all just envy of something that should not exist in the first place, but that wont be removed.

That apart, for what I seen here and there, the gap between casual and uber equipment is indeed too big, enough so that 3 year old uber equipment is still better than brand new casual equipment. That is definitively wrong.

Comment Posted by: Horzek on August 14, 2006 04:30 PM

It seems a bit funny to me as I now post here regarding uber raiding gear versus casual gear. Just over a year ago I was a casual player in a family style guild. I took Loral's advice and did what it took to get into a raiding guild. As things worked out I was with the guild as we worked our way through Qvic, Txevu, Tacvi, the MPG trials, and into Anguish. Along the way we stopped in DoN and took down a series of dragons and picked up all the tier flags there. We have made some good progress and we are not done yet.

There are two things I would like to point out about higher end raiding guilds. My first point is that we can not maintain our raid levels unless we can recruit new people. Just where do these new people come from? One of our basic requirements is that to recruit you must have the anguish signets completed. This is not something a casual player is going to find himself getting easily. Honestly we are pretty much tired of the mpg trials although some we have farmed repeatedly. Some of the MPG trials are not something you might want to do over and over.

I saw quite a few posts here about how people can get uber gear by talking their way into a uber guild and bottom feeding off the rotting items. Just how someone is going to get into Anguish to do this is beyond me. Perhaps we could drag someone along in Tacvi some night but to the best of my knowledge we never have done so.

One important thing about our guild is that we are forced to keep our raiding force lean and trim. People who want to raid are not much interested in sitting in a wait room somewhere in the hopes they might be called in for a bit somewhere. We have stringent requirements on our raiders and in order to join us one must be able to prove their track record and their abily to play their class extremely well. We are not about to invest time in someone who simply wants to come along with us to bottom feed.

Back to my other point now, where are we going to get our recruits from? This is why I dont mind seeing some casual group gear getting better and better. We cant take someone with us who is likely to cause the raid to wipe. A great example of this is the Vishimtar fights in DoN. If you die you are replaced by a very nasty mob that has the potential of causing a raid wipe. I have seen this battle fail simply because someone lost their internet connection for a minute. We are only interested in skilled players who know exactly how to do their jobs and do them well.

I suppose we can tolerate a certain amount of deficit in player gear as we get to know them but you can be assured they are going to die a lot. What good is a dead cleric in a tight ch loop for example.

It is for these reasons I would like to see casual players have a means of obtaining sufficient gear to allow them to be able to apply to some of the higher end raiding guilds. There are high end guilds and there are the top end guilds which tend to get their players from the cream of the high end guilds. Since we lose folks to the few guilds who are at a higher level than us, I believe we need progression paths that will allow us all to move up if we so desire.

When we do not have good progression paths for all players, all players suffer and so does the game. This is where I would like to see major efforts placed.

Comment Posted by: Juror on August 14, 2006 04:54 PM

Hate to tell you this but there aren't piles of "junk" just waiting for you to get if you "blow" or "con" a raider. Stuff on raids doesn't rot as much as you think. Sometimes a certain class or lore item does but that's not common. Usually when things start to rot, raid leaders know it's time to move on. Believe it or not, raiders don't like bottom feeding, gimping, or backflagging either.

Raiding guilds can't afford to allow any idiot with friend in guild to join. Do a few get in? Of course... no system (not even one in a fantasy world) is perfect.

Most raiding guilds have recruitment periods in which you don't receive any loot. You sit on the sidelines, work on what you have been told to work on, watch and listen, and wait for chance to get into raid. Once in raid, you have to prove to the GL, all the officers, and the majority of the other members that you can assist, control your pet, manage your aggro, cast the correct spells, follow directions, learn the strats, etc. Make too many mistakes and you usually won't get accepted. Even after you have been on several raids, passed vote, and gotten tagged, there is a probationary period in which you can be removed if you aren't there enough or screw up too much. Sure, friends help you out by teaching you things and taking you places that you might not have been before but mainly it's by grouping with other raiders (who btw have a vested interest in seeing you improve gear so that you can survive boss encounters) that you get so many upgrades.

Should the gear gap be closed or alternative paths for progression opened up? Certainly. It's only fair. There should be challenging content for all levels even if you don't have a lot of time to play.

Seems like there is a gap in more than gear though.

Comment Posted by: Utziel on August 14, 2006 06:25 PM

"Most raiding guilds have recruitment periods in which you don't receive any loot. You sit on the sidelines, work on what you have been told to work on, watch and listen, and wait for chance to get into raid. Once in raid, you have to prove to the GL, all the officers, and the majority of the other members that you can assist, control your pet, manage your aggro, cast the correct spells, follow directions, learn the strats, etc. Make too many mistakes and you usually won't get accepted. Even after you have been on several raids, passed vote, and gotten tagged, there is a probationary period in which you can be removed if you aren't there enough or screw up too much. "

Boy that sounds like so much fun. Im going to join a raiding guild now. God I hope there is a Hazing period too!!!!!

Comment Posted by: Juror on August 15, 2006 07:41 AM

Sorry, no hazing. We don't even have a secret handshake. QQ

Comment Posted by: Glormane on August 15, 2006 11:08 AM

It would be a stern (and some may say wasteful) raiding guild that would let there raid loot actually rot. So even your Probies will pick up some 'uber gear' shortly before they get booted out.

Comment Posted by: Teremar on August 17, 2006 03:42 PM

Letting the loot rot (and making it well known that you will) is a great way to keep the riff-raff from joining in the first place.

I must say I'm surprised and pleased by how much support there is for shrinking the gap between raid and non-raid gear so non-raiders can play in the high-end zones. What a refreshing change from the olden days--remember the arguments that GoD had all sorts of great gear for non-raiders and if they didn't get it it could only be due to laziness?

Maybe my sarcastic post a while back about EQ's shrinking population bringing EQ players together for the good of the game shouldn't have been sarcastic after all.

Comment Posted by: Greif on August 18, 2006 02:35 AM

"Letting the loot rot (and making it well known that you will) is a great way to keep the riff-raff from joining in the first place."

Letting items rot while newcomers are on a recruitment period is actually good policy for a raiding guild. Callous as it may sound to a non-raider, it don't hurt the recruit. Items rot because for several reasons, one of them being that its extremely common. Rikkukin BPs for instance. If they don't get rot items now, they can get it again soon enough or something even better (and not "rot" status) when their recruitment period is over. In the meantime, we can test the quality of the recruit and their interest / dedication to the raid game playstyle.

So why even let items rot?
Good question. My raiding guild used to have a laissez-faire policy to rot items. We would allow completely raw recruits and new people to loot the best stuff. This stopped when we realized people just recruited for a few days(!) to just get one or two rot items out of us! We even had an PA/Ebay farmer recruit under bought accounts, apply to us, loot a few high end rot items (get a few flags) and then turn around and quit - selling the toon on PA later for much higher prices than before. In this case, this scammer got several Tacvi rot items (really good stuff from that era).

"Recruits don't loot", is a good policy for raiding guilds. It weeds out the scammers and leeches before they get too far (or make them work harder at the very least).

Comment Posted by: Ogulbuk on August 18, 2006 08:38 AM

At the cost of being huge elitists @$$hats

Comment Posted by: hohum on August 18, 2006 09:12 AM

The real @$$hats are the people who think they deserve to loot any item by riding on the coattails of people who have put effort gaining access. If you can't even put forth a fraction of that effort to participate in events for a couple weeks, don't expect 50+ people to suddenly make you "uber".

Comment Posted by: Ogulbuk on August 18, 2006 03:03 PM

First, such equipment dropping that way is really a silly design issue more than anything. If SoE really wanted you to "earn" the right to use the equipment it all would be tied to quests and/or tasks.

Second, both are @$$hats, the leaches that just want to piggy ride to gear themselves, and the elitists that step over everyone just because there are a few leaches around.

But since the elitist is the one in power, they are entirely free to step over everyone all the time, treating them as if they were eBayers and leaches.

Comment Posted by: Teremar on August 18, 2006 03:18 PM

I don't see it as elitism, I see it as self defense.

I was never in a raider guild, but I was in a family guild that raided enough to get epics (1.0, when they were still a fairly big deal). We had several people join us for a couple months, constantly bug us to schedule raids for their epic pieces, and then move on to serious raiding guilds when they were done. Needless to say it was not appreciated and we felt very much taken advantage of. I'm don't blame any guild for enacting policies to try to prevent that sort of thing from happening.

Comment Posted by: Aarkan on August 18, 2006 04:47 PM

In that vein I've been in Loral's guild for years, which is a family guild that is devoted to randomly buffing people and helping people out. I'm remembering back to this one cleric who was in the guild for a long time and then the day after we got him his epic he left the guild and tried to join some other guild that was some sort of up and coming raiding guild type thing... This was like PoP era so i guess it was velious? I don't know. ANYWAY! As assholish as it might be letting loot rot in front of recruits is probably the best in the long run.

Comment Posted by: Armarant on August 18, 2006 06:27 PM

Aarkan wrote:ANYWAY! As assholish as it might be letting loot rot in front of recruits is probably the best in the long run.
--
I personally find it sometimes to be a case of the officers/leadership of the guild imposeing their will upon the rest of the guild.

the easiest way to kill a guild or ensure your constantly recruiting new players is to not respect those who are in your guild and playing. telling all new recruits that you dont trust them is just like the music industry treating all their customers like music pirates.

Comment Posted by: Teremar on August 19, 2006 01:02 AM

The sad reality is that there are people out there that you don't want in your guild. A guild that isn't careful about its potential members is 1) naive, 2) desperate, or 3) run by those people you don't want in your guild. Sometimes all three. The first thing I look for in a guild is that they have a process for vetting new members--including me.

Remember the Grouch Marx quote: "I would not join any club that would have someone like me for a member."

Comment Posted by: Greif on August 19, 2006 04:57 AM

People who are frothing in the mouth over rotting gear just don't realize how common they are. A hardcore full-time guild in "farming" mode (completed all flags, reaping the benefits) can have a turnover of 100+ raid gear dropping per week (and thats a conservative estimate). Rot item is rot item is rot item. There are rots even the alts and twinks don't want. Loot items drop like rain once the guild has gotten all the flags and other inconveniences out of the way.

Items rot because:
1) Its too common and it drops 100% of a time from a farm mob.
2) Bad itemization (its just plain lousy like all the 2H zerker only items)
3) Its obsolete
4) Theres a better item in the slot from a diff mob.

Its rot for a reason and in some cases its not doing the recruit any favors to have them looting rot item. If they happen to want it, its almost a certainty that they will get one (or something far better) the next time the mob is farmed.

The opposite viewpoint has it that recruits are FORCED to take the rot loot and is charged DKP for it. Depending on the DKP system the raid guild uses, guilds forcing people to loot "rot" items may even harm the potential recruit as the recruits are charged DKP for items that do not fit into their upgrade plans.

Probationary restrictions is something that all hardcore guilds build into their recruitment process. In an ideal world, we would not have to do it BUT in this world we have to deal with eBayers, scammers and a$$h4ts that "loot and scoot" on their first loot/flag drop. And its not something that guildleaders dreamt up to oppress and exploit the hardworking raiders in the guild. In our guild, these probationary restrictions were demanded by the ordinary "rank and file" of the guild.

PS:
BTW, "Rot" loots are the least of the raiding recruits worries. Its actually, "I hope I don't screw up and wipe the whole raid on my first day".

Comment Posted by: Skuz on August 19, 2006 06:42 AM

Well, speaking as a high-raider, I don't see this huge volume of rot loot that people are talking about, mostly as before a zone starts getting to the stage where almost all of the loot is unwanted the guild has already moved on to higher level farming grounds.

Zones which offer next to nothing for Raiders may get visited to twink alts or to gear up an App in a useful item, (usually out of scheduled raid days) for example a BBoB for a warrior from Tacvi if you haven't reached Hatchet yet (or he is being stingy on swiftcleave).

Comment Posted by: Armarant on August 22, 2006 06:05 AM

Skuz wrote:Well, speaking as a high-raider, I don't see this huge volume of rot loot that people are talking about, mostly as before a zone starts getting to the stage where almost all of the loot is unwanted the guild has already moved on to higher level farming grounds.
---
so the majority of high end guilds just imagined all the rotting bard only items from Demiplane huh? ;)

I beleive demiplane is a good example of a zone where items can rott easy. sure not all the items will rott, but the zone certainly has potential for a couple items on a run to rott.

Comment Posted by: Skuz on August 24, 2006 05:25 PM

I expect Loral is busy beavering away on another topical subject but I read the recent HoC chat & one item in particular sprang out & i though "hmm Loral will like that" (along with the rest of us I'm sure), seeing as it's a topic close to his group-friendly heart.

*Ferlin* What will the focus be of group content in TSS? Similar to recent expansions, or something that is comparatively in a "league" of its own?

In a way, TSS is an old school expansion. It is very much focused around quests and static zones. We don't have much in the way of instanced zones this time around, but rather we focused on massive zones, interesting stories and NPCs, and enough quests to keep even the most rabid quester busy for quite a while.

Also, expect a lot more single group bosses that fight with the complexity, tricks and tactics of a raid mob!

Sounds good.

Comment Posted by: sunshadow on August 24, 2006 07:05 PM

Yeah, it does sound good, as long as the itemisation is half decent, these are the type of mobs the game needs more of. And of course as long as they don't only spawn once every 3 days or when they do pop they don't stop an weaker group from get XP. I kinda always liked Shadowhunter in WOS, he is a tough group mob but if you can't take him alone, you can adhoc raid him or just avoid him. He also adds that element of danger to the easy side of the zone.

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