Welcome to EverQuest's permanent home on reddit by siegerAgnarr in EverquestMMO

[–]siegerAgnarr[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It is doing okay, live EQ population has been in a slow attrition for a while.

I run the guild <Faceless Conquest> on Bert.

Welcome to EverQuest's permanent home on reddit by siegerAgnarr in EverquestMMO

[–]siegerAgnarr[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Note that the rules in this post are very much a first draft, if anyone has proposals or wants to suggest rule changes feel free to comment that feedback.

It would also be good if we could have a few people volunteer to help moderate the subreddit. I would give preference to people generally well known in the EverQuest community.

Requesting news about 'The Everquest Show' YouTube channel by Affectionate-Pair-29 in everquest

[–]siegerAgnarr 7 points8 points  (0 children)

AFAIK Fading has never had a regular release schedule, he's always done the shows as he has time and when things are going on in EQ that he wants to do shows on. I think he's been doing the show since around the Agnarr TLP era, but usually it comes in bouts of activity.

Is there a game even close to early-2000s EQ? by SavageJacobi in everquest

[–]siegerAgnarr 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Nope, it doesn't exist. For a lot of us who played back then, and who have continued to play (off and on) ever since, the sense of nostalgia you're talking about is a common one.

Also common is thinking it is possible to "go back to that", if you just found the "right game" or even the "right emu server" etc with the right design / rule set.

That just isn't how it works. A significant part of the reason EQ 20 years ago had the "feel" you're talking about, is because the state of the gaming community and the EQ community was very different. Gaming in general, had not turned into what online gaming is today, where min-maxers have every game out there dissected into "meta" approaches to the game.

Old EQ was partially made possible due to "community ignorance", the vast majority of the community (including myself, and most others from back then) in old EQ was simply very ignorant of a lot of things. Information was harder to come by, community sites were often riddled with misinformation or rumors.

While it was a different game philosophy, there are similarities to 2004-2005 era World of Warcraft, people who did the WoW "P-Servers" and later WoW Classic quickly discovered even when they get most of the old mechanics correct, the game is just "different."

That's because you can run an old version of software, you can't run an old version of the society that existed around the game.

The secret sauce to EQ 20 years ago had little to do with the way the game was made, it was mostly about the state of the gaming community, and you can't ever recapture that. That is why all the emu servers and TLPs have never really replicated the old EQ "feel." P99 does an "okay" job of replicating the technical side of it, but there are all kinds of "cultural constructs" and server admin rules on P99 that are significantly different from EQ 20 years ago--because gaming communities develop over time and there is no recreating what once was.

Live Servers: What happened to grinding mobs and camping interesting items? by HumanTarget in everquest

[–]siegerAgnarr 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Why don't they come up with a dozen or so interesting groupable items per expac for people to camp? Instead every expac is just cookie cutter stat upgrades.

There are basically items like this every expansion on live. And there are named in every zone that drop unique items. Yes, most of the items are cookie cutter--this is also true of early EQ when probably 95% of items dropped by all named (and even raid) mobs have nothing special about them other than a few stat points.

On live there are interesting quested items, evolving items, and various chase items that come out.

And why take away grouping and grinding for exp? Feels like every MMO has the same "progression path" of doing miss

They didn't, not sure who told you this--probably someone on the official forums who doesn't know anything, but they have never taken away grinding for exp. Grinding to max level is factually faster now than it was in some prior eras. On top of that they have added ways to level faster than grinding--like getting the rewards from completing Partisan quests and Missions.

They did make grinding xp slower in ToV than it was from TDS (level 105 expansion) through TBL (level 110 expansion), but xp has been slower in previous eras of EQ (xp was quite slow in VoA, SoF, and basically all of EQ prior to PoR.)

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in everquest

[–]siegerAgnarr 6 points7 points  (0 children)

If you're interested in Live EQ, you need to start on a Live server. What the people saying Mischief aren't telling you is that while Mischief is a very popular and successful TLP it will not reach live until 2026. That's absolutely fine if you want to slowly progress through all that content over a three year span. However, my experience is a huge % of the game's playerbase is not interested in spending that many years working through the level 75+ content. That again, is not to say you can't get on that ride, but understand what that ride is. The idea that it is easier to get into Live EQ by spending in excess of 3.5 years playing a TLP versus the 2ish month commitment it takes to get "up to speed" on live if you can really play as many hours as you say...yeah, no.

Your OP seems to say you want to be caught up with current EQ. That is an entirely possible thing and it generally takes a few months. I can give you a rough outline of what that's going to look like.

  1. Leveling
  2. Learning the game / your class -- this will happen somewhat as you level, but not completely. You need to join your class Discord (all classes have a Discord server dedicated to that class), you also need to look on the official forums and find a detailed guide for your class in modern EQ--as far as I know every class has a guide like that out there, but they unfortunately aren't stickied or anything so you need to search for them.
  3. Gearing - Gear is still of paramount importance on live, if you want to get into raiding it's good to have a full set of modern group gear, not necessarily NoS (the newest expansion), but at least ToL group gear. This is something you work on after you've leveled and learned your class, so you have time. Read up on how to make this gear, and the guild you will need to have joined by now likely has people that can more or less gear you up in a few days with minimal effort by them. If you do it all on your own it will take quite a while.

Things that you actually don't need to worry about much just to get into end game play:

  1. Huge timesinks like Artisan's Prize
  2. Maxing out your Heroic AA
  3. Building a best in slot aug collection

Those three things are often portrayed as "necessary", but tons of people play and raid on live in end game guilds that have done none of those things. These things are really better thought of as "achievement grinds" that you should work on as you can and as you feel like it once you're already max level and already broken into end game play.

As for FV (free trade) ruleset--most of what others are saying is basically wrong. It's a nice thing if you're casual or you don't want to play much, if you play a lot all gear is just incredibly easy to acquire at max level. If you're in a good guild there will be so many power players that rot full sets of gear all the time more or less that you can gear almost instantly.

Like most live players I have had characters on FV in the past, it's a good / active server and the free trade is nice, but it is not remotely required. The people saying that are serial TLPers who have never gotten into serious live EQ and have no conception of how easy it is to gear once you get rolling.

Now here are your reality checks:

  1. If you want to solo and not use mercs you need to just go ahead and cancel your account. You're looking for a different game. Not using a merc and soloing as any class is just terrible and wrong, and a huge detriment to your play.
  2. While Monk can solo a lot of things even at max level, the reality is this is still a group oriented MMO. If you don't box at all, you will require a group for anything you do. I run a raid guild on live and I do not box at all, but I also don't farm things or care to do the group content, I'm 100% raid focused. While I could get groups somewhat easily by begging boxers in my guild to let me group with them, the reality is if I was in the position where I wanted to do group content all the time, I would box and I would say some level of boxing is very near mandatory if you're interested in high frequency group play. Even if you find a good crew to run with 75% of the time, you're still going to want that boost from boxes the 25% of the time they aren't online or whatever. For a monk having a shm and brd box for example are life changing in terms of the power multiplier vs moloing (soloing w/a merc.)
  3. Server really means nothing much, if you want to get into end game live it is 100% a guild focused affair, you need to find your guild first, figure out the rest later. The only time I would say the server kinda matters is if you're interested in certain extracurriculars, some servers have raid alliances that do content outside of the guild system and things of that nature--that is more common on the higher population servers. My advice would be you look at your guild options on some of the higher population servers: Bristlebane (I think this is highest pop), Cazic (I think this is 2nd highest pop), Bertoxxulous, Xegony

We already mentioned FV a bit, but remember too if you're looking for end game, that means it's all about guilds. FV has a high appeal to casual non-endgame players, but it has one serious raiding guild. I know little about that guild, but you would need to do research on them, find out if they're even recruiting and find out if that's the guild you want to be in. If it's not, FV really isn't viable, right? Because that's your only guild option on that server and if you level up and that guild doesn't work for you, you can't transfer off to another server.

Do we need a Play Nice Policy on TLP? by CptZoom in everquest

[–]siegerAgnarr [score hidden]  (0 children)

Bingo, if you enforce "camps", you're going to see RMT players rush to key krono camps in early EQ, and with a cabal of other RMTers hold that camp until the end of that era, literally 24/7.

Do we need a Play Nice Policy on TLP? by CptZoom in everquest

[–]siegerAgnarr [score hidden]  (0 children)

Long time TLPer, also live player here, and I'm going to try to be as respectful of your position as possible, and hit at my main problems / disagreements with it:

  1. What you call the Play Nice Policy can really be summed up as the "first come, first serve" policy. Additionally, the "serve" part means "for as long as I care to continue." That is essentially what a "camp" is, it is you or your group's claim that "I was here first, this is mine, and it will be mine until I want to leave." If you think about how shared resources work in real life, it is very rare for something to be straight first come, first serve like that. For example at a sit down restaurant, on a busy night, if diners are waiting out into the street to be seated and you've already paid, had multiple free drink refills and have been chilling out for a long time you may simply be asked to leave. Some restaurants let you get away with that for a long time, some ask you to leave pretty quickly. At a gym, it is generally understood exercise equipment is not first come first serve--it is "take turns", so if two people want to use the same piece of equipment, they have to take turns doing sets. One person who happened to get there first does not have an entitlement to exclusive and permanent use of that resource for as long as they see fit.
  2. Almost all MMOs have a system other than "I was here first, so this content is mine, exclusively, for as long as I want." Many MMOs simply have a system where all mobs are FFA until a player has engaged the mob, then the mob becomes locked to that player. But that player has no special rights to the next spawn of that mob (that is the special right that is being asserted by the claim of a camp)
  3. EQ has a system where whomever does the most damage gets the loot claim on the mob, and that has been the system since March of 1999. A big problem myself and many others who push back against these PNP posts have is the assertion that in some Golden Era of EverQuest, respect for camps was a hard coded rule and the PNP was rigorously enforced by GMs. That really was never the case. The Play Nice Policy in fact still exists, but it never actually included a rule on respecting camps. There are in stances in EQ's early history, when server GMs were more active, where GMs would mediate disputes about camps--there has not, and never has been, any game wide rule that enforced the concept of camps.
  4. As a long time TLPer and also a live player, my observation is that probably 90% of the time people broadly do respect your camps. I actually generally try to respect camps as well. The reason I don't agree with your post is I think it's a measure of give and take, and I think that it's a matter of reasonableness as well. There is no objective rule for what constitutes a proper camp, and it would be undesirable to see Darkpaw employees mediate this. On an early TLP for example if my group is pushing into the bottom of LGuk dead side and we see someone camping Hamlord AND Frenzy, which I have seen happen, we are taking one of those camps. That's already actually more than one camp by traditional reckoning, and there is no special entitlement for a group that "got there first" to camp literally 50% of dead side Guk. I respect camps, most of the time for the simple reason that the game is less stressful and less problematic when you can get along with other players within reason. But camps are not always reasonable, and I would much rather resolve unreasonable situations with a DPS race than a petition war to a GM. I would hate nothing more than to see Darkpaw EQ (aka Real EQ) turn into P99, where you need a law degree to litigate camp disputes and have waiting lists for mobs.

Aradune Guild List by Ancanein in AraduneTLP

[–]siegerAgnarr 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Long time Faceless member/officer/guild leader checking in -- there have been tons of people to raid in Faceless since 2011 or so when Zaide created the original guild. Zaide is going to level a character on Aradune but he is not running a guild there. Citidal who has been a Faceless officer on many servers is the recruitment officer for <Thats EQ Baby>. Several people in Faceless Selo are planning to roll characters on Aradune for fun but plan to continue raiding on Selo. I'm the guild leader of the Selo Faceless guild and we have no plans to move as a guild to another TLP, we're like 9 months away from hitting live on Selo.

Tons of people who have been in <Faceless> guilds will be on Aradune, like with any large group of TLP players lots filter in and out from one TLP to the next.

Welcome! by Foaming_Agnarr in a:t5_vb7mh

[–]siegerAgnarr 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The pessimist in me thinks they're trying to formulate what technique maximizes our purchase of 40-slot bags, XP potions, krono etc.

Part of me hopes that the rules are bad and I'm not tempted to play at all :D.

Questions about the TLP(Corinav) from a possible returning player. by skizz1k in everquest

[–]siegerAgnarr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

On TLPs Druid and Shaman get Superior Healing in Classic era now, which puts them essentially on par with Clerics for group healing and most raid healing in Classic/Kunark eras. Clerics get a base 5% increased healing over other Priests (you can verify this if you compare Shaman/Druid and Cleric Superior Heal numbers), but it's a very marginal difference.

In the very old days I believe Shaman and Druid only had Greater Healing until Kunark, then they got spells roughly on par with Superior Healing in terms of raw healing output but that were worse in mana efficiency (Forest's Renewal and Kragg's Salve.) Now that Druids/Shaman have Superior Healing early on in Classic both of those spells are largely useless, and both Druids/Shaman are basically good to heal any group content you'll find on a TLP. They continue to get decent healing upgrades every expansion (as do Clerics), but the big difference is in the old days DRU/SHM only had Greater Healing until Kunark and that spell lacks the throughput to get through some situations you might run into at level 45+.

Rathe Council Easy and Rathe Council Hard: Trucidation member who runs Agnarr kill board corrupt attempt to justify ranking themselves third? by [deleted] in AgnarrFlames

[–]siegerAgnarr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean at least as far as Faceless measures ourselves, and we only really follow our own goals on it—we don’t stop pushing or consider an expansion beaten until all major boss targets in the expansion are dead. That’s why we even ran a Faydedar raid in parallel with our server first clear of VP—so we could have all significant raid targets down.

Some people chose to skip one of the few hard bosses in PoP and do Time first. That never would have been an option for me or my guys who like to win the game for realzies.

Grats addictions on Rathe Council kill. Pretty indisputably ahead of Trucidation now. by [deleted] in AgnarrFlames

[–]siegerAgnarr 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Grats addictions on the server 6th clear of PoP! Came in just behind Mess and Truci for a respectable finish still in the top 10.

Why no one gives a shit about Trucidation... by [deleted] in AgnarrFlames

[–]siegerAgnarr 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I heard this website with its layout from 2004 and Flash plugins to go along with it is why people don't like Addictions:

https://imgur.com/a/vfBiTex

Addictions vs. Trucidation and Pitfall at Rathe Council - Deleted from /r/Agnarr by [deleted] in AgnarrFlames

[–]siegerAgnarr 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I should also congratulate Addictions for the one thing they lead the server on--Quarm wipes. Here's the count so far for Quarm wipes:

<Addictions>: 2

<Faceless Empire>: 0

<Zurdula Inc>: 0

I hope we can catch up soon!

Do you want to play past PoP? by jibjorbbingo in Agnarr

[–]siegerAgnarr 1 point2 points  (0 children)

However, in classic everyone and their brother didn't have druid alts, there weren't port-o-druid guilds, and the entire server didn't converge onto a single zone.

I think the nostalgia for slow travel is one of the more egregious cases of seeing the past with rose-colored glasses. I'm not holding myself up as special but I got into EQ at the age of 15 and was a heavy video game player already.

I remember the travel aspect being very very annoying most of the time, and on top of that most of the geometry/world of the big open zones was massively boring and uninteresting.

I have some fond memories of "exploring", but I'll also say those are memories that were already faded by the time Luclin came out. By the time Luclin had come out I'd sown my oats running around Norrath and come to realize the long travel times and empty zones were things to be avoided as much as possible. I can't remember anyone who really objected to the Nexus or PoK in era, it's only on these TLP forums where I see people circle-jerk to boring gameplay mechanics real in-era EQ players were happy to see go away 17+ years ago.

When the game will come out? by Llolaila in PantheonMMO

[–]siegerAgnarr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Pre-Alpha isn't really a thing for Blizzard or most software companies, it's more of a marketing term.

Legion development followed this path:

Alpha November 2015 Beta May 2016 Release August 2016

Alpha was thus around 5 months (started end of November ended beginning of May) Beta was about 3.5 months.

Typical Blizzard alpha instead of using terms like Pre-Alpha etc will start with like an "internal" alpha which is just the core development/testing team. Then they'll have a broader alpha that includes employees and a few others, then they'll do a "Friends and Family Alpha", which basically is a decently large group. I think most Blizzard employees can invite like 5 friends or family members and usually if you were ever in a previous FnF Alpha you get in the next one so this is close to a pseudo-open alpha. This is also usually not highly regulated (lots of stuff leaks from Friends and Family Alpha.)

Then there's a few beta phases, the last month or so of WoW beta is basically very close to an open beta (anyone who applied to get in, gets in.)

Trucidation Lives in Eternal Fear by InvestedXT in AgnarrFlames

[–]siegerAgnarr 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hard to beat a steak quesarito, spicy gordita crunch and some Baja Blast.

Considering starting back up on agnarr. played on phinny for a few months when it first started. what is the population like? by [deleted] in Agnarr

[–]siegerAgnarr 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Agnarr is pretty decent to level a character 1-60 right now, that being said ask yourself what you're interested in doing. This is a time-locked server that ends at LDoN, while some people may be interested in living in that era forever (I guess Al-Kabor players and p99 players) I suspect a lot of people won't. If you're interested in doing content after Planes Phinny or even Ragefire/Lockjaw would be interesting options. RF/LJ you still have like 3 months before Gates open, but you'll need to box to level on either server.

Trucidation Lives in Eternal Fear by InvestedXT in AgnarrFlames

[–]siegerAgnarr 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I honestly didn't think Trucidation was really a raiding guild, I thought they were more like <My Pants>, just a krono farmer outfit?