What's live like?

[sox7d]

@people who have played in the last 6 months.

[Ravager]

Last summer I tried it out just to see how much it's changed. Rolled a monk and played for about 5 hours. Got to level 15 and had a set of Defiant armor with stats that would make it Best in Slot here. Tried to explore all the old and familiar zones I knew and didn't recognize anything at all. All of the merchants have titles above their heads that explain exactly what they are. Every zone I was in, except the noobie zone, PoK and the starting city was devoid of players.

[Othniel626]

A lot has changed, but once you are made aware of all the differences, it actually turns out to be pretty fun once you get into the 70+ range (which doesn't take too long). Lot's of content, endless quests/augs/stuff to do that let's you fully experience each expansion. For example, starting around Depths of Darkhollow, they put in extensive aug quests that require the use of most of those zones in order to obtain them. So you end up looking around a bunch of zones that you probably wouldn't have touched otherwise.

Of course, the reason I'm here now rather than there is they gave paid players the ability to simply press a button and auto-grant every AA up to the past 4 expansions that is available at the char's current level, basically making all the AA grinding I did for 2+ years absolutely useless.

[Beebo11]

Of course, the reason I'm here now rather than there is they gave paid players the ability to simply press a button and auto-grant every AA up to the past 4 expansions that is available at the char's current level, basically making all the AA grinding I did for 2+ years absolutely useless.

Brutal....is that the last 2+ years or back-in-the-day 2+ years?

[Daldaen]

@people who have played in the last 6 months.

Still randomly play. Don't have latest expansion.

Auto-granting was necessary to smooth the progression to the current game. Grinding those first 6,000 AAs was just a hugely tedious aspect of getting to experience the "end-game", and probably 50-75% of those AA lines are necessary to function for your classes purpose. Especially considering there are another 8,000 AAs you need to grind out.

Yea, it was rough for the people who had come back recently and were regrinding AAs but... it was the best decision they could do to encourage new players to actually join the game and create a character to reasonably get to the current content in non-neckbeard amounts of time.

[Giustin]

Played live from 2000 until March 2014. In a raiding guild doing current content for most of the time. Retired for the final time and didn't play any EQ for a few months .. rolled a toon here for shits n giggles one Sunday in June and never left. My initial reaction to P99 was "OMG .. this is what I have been missing for the last 6 years"

Live is "click here .. follow the golden path .. say this .. click here .. insert credit card = phat lewts"

There is little if any player interaction outside of raids. Lots of rewards for no risk.

Live is a totally different game and shouldn't be allowed to be called Everquest.

Just my 2pp

[Faiding]

It was fun when you could supertwink an alt with raid gear that you solo'd/boxed yourself. But defiant gear took that fun away.

I suppose it's ok now if you just want something very laid back to do. Mercs and guild lobby give you instant access to 96% rezzes and cheap corpse summons, so there's nowhere near the risk of P99.

[sox7d]

Played live from 2000 until March 2014. In a raiding guild doing current content for most of the time. Retired for the final time and didn't play any EQ for a few months .. rolled a toon here for shits n giggles one Sunday in June and never left. My initial reaction to P99 was "OMG .. this is what I have been missing for the last 6 years"

Live is "click here .. follow the golden path .. say this .. click here .. insert credit card = phat lewts"

There is little if any player interaction outside of raids. Lots of rewards for no risk.

Live is a totally different game and shouldn't be allowed to be called Everquest.

Just my 2pp

All I needed to hear. Thanks.

[MilanderTruewield]

Played from October 2000 until April 2014. It's shit. There is no real grouping, most people box their own characters with mercenaries in an instances zone so no one else is there. It's grind, grind, grind. Whether it's grinding augments, grinding quests, or grinding exp, makes no difference. Its still lonely. Raids are good though! The only interaction you really have with other people other than asking for buffs in the guild lobby.

[maskedmelon]

What exactly is the guild lobby?

[Daldaen]

Raids on live were pretty fantastic. After I saw Rain of Fear though, I just said F it. They were trivializing the raids wayy too much. Aiming at the lowest common denominator for every encounter not Just the entry few.

The "race to finish" became a test of what guilds could get online at 1PM on a Tuesday when the server came back up from a patch. Not a test of what guilds were able to break down encounters, emotes, AEs, special abilities and create a strategy quickly to beat the encounter. <-- is what I liked in EQ. Sadly a decent amount of that solving happened during beta, not when the expansion went live but I suppose that was a necessary evil to get content tuned.

Guild lobby you summon your corpse to get a rez. Your gear stays on your person when you die. Only point of GLobby is to summon the corpse for exp from rez. Costs like 900 plat at max level, serves to handle inflation a bit.

Also buff timers do not tick down in GLobby so people AFK and wait for people to Mass-Group-Buff high level/rank buffs on them so that they can exp easier. I really hate these people cause they just lag the shit out of the zone that you are trying to travel through quickly.

[Sajuuk]

Guild lobby is a zone adjacent to PoK, your buffs dont expire if you sit there so lots of people hang around there to AFK. There are npc summoners that can summon your corpse if you die so lots of people just bind there. Its also where a door leads to your guilds own lobby which is a whole other story. Lets just say you are allowed to customize a room (or a huge building) and your guild can hang out there. Teleporters npc are there that can send you to old and new zones. Basically the guild lobby is the new PoK because 90% of people on live are sitting afk there.

[Itap]

I hate what everyone has posted in this thread

[maskedmelon]

Guild lobby is a zone adjacent to PoK, your buffs dont expire if you sit there so lots of people hang around there to AFK. There are npc summoners that can summon your corpse if you die so lots of people just bind there. Its also where a door leads to your guilds own lobby which is a whole other story. Lets just say you are allowed to customize a room (or a huge building) and your guild can hang out there. Teleporters npc are there that can send you to old and new zones. Basically the guild lobby is the new PoK because 90% of people on live are sitting afk there.

Wow, now that is a departure from the game I. Played ^^

[planeofdreams]

There are so many menus and options in Live it gives me a headache. Starting a new character feels like more trouble than its worth. Also its pretty pushy about asking you to upgrade your membership every chance it gets. I keep it installed as a diversion because under all that its still Everquest.

[Krycek]

One of the last raids I did on live was the revamped ToV, that was pretty fun. But what ppl say about grouping etc is true. ya just box just about everything except some of the progression missions you could get others to run with ya. Haven't played the last 2 expansions so not sure what its like now, think lvl cap is 105 or something.

[MilanderTruewield]

Yeah, level cap is 105 now. I have 6 level 100s, my subscription is now cancelled and is silver status. Not getting the latest expansion unless p99 hits the shitter, and I hope that never happens!

[Ravager]

The "race to finish" became a test of what guilds could get online at 1PM on a Tuesday when the server came back up from a patch.

Sounds strangely familiar.

[Lubian]

So last 6 months...

Test no longer gets any more free expansions.

New auto grant AA system (aka free AAs for subscribers up to a certain expansion). There's very little reason to not speed level to 85-90. For those people who enjoyed working on AAs at certain intervals to revisit some old zones, there's really no point now.

The heroic adventure system (aka LDoN 2.0) was interesting, but boiled down to people farming the easiest and most boring missions over and over (with the recent expansion they added a lockout).

I don't know what the current expansion is like, but in the previous they were providing significantly less and less content. Instead of a tier every X months, we were getting HALF a tier (including visible slots). Almost felt like entire zones would drop 5 versions of a specific slot item, and it was extremely disheartening.

They made buffs not tick down in a few other zones now (PoK, PoTranq, etc).

Swarming was significantly nerfed for all classes. Many abilities gained the max hits property, along with other changes.

Pet and pet foci was adjusted to overall nerf pet tanking for the stronger pet classes (some weaker pets got buffs). Some pets were changed to provide more of their specific role (mage pets, the different types, the nec tank pet was made more of a tank, etc, etc).

Some class specific stuns were adjusted to finally go over the max level. Certain tank abilities gained more hate.

I'm probably forgetting a lot of things.

[Swish]

Was it House of Thule? Or another expansion that actually put out some challenging content?

Give SOE/EQ that, they didn't do a Blizzard and fully cater for people who couldn't tie their shoelaces.

Sad to hear some of this stuff though, and a shame you can't hide the Station Cash icon properly.

[Tyym]

Remember you well Camien. Shoot me a tell here on Morphius, Tempyst or Liquidreach.

Tyym, Liquidreach, Zool, Tempyst etc

[ko37qtl]

I hate what everyone has posted in this thread

Same here. I left in 2005 because of this trend and it seems to have sadly continued apace.

[Speedi]

Raiding on live is fun, (alot more challenging than tank & spank classic EQ raids). As for the group game, it sucks sometimes cause of the mercs/boxing. What makes MMO's fun (to me) is people. And mercs/boxing killed alot of the social part of the game. I stopped playing live on a regular basis and started here on p99 at the end of august 2014. The group scene on p99 is more fun for sure. As for raiding on p99, with the drama you have somtimes etc. Thats when I prefer raiding on live.

[stormlord]

@people who have played in the last 6 months.
I played it about 6 months ago maybe. I exploited the free heroic level 85 for two characters. If it's any indication how successful that was, I enjoyed hte game leveling them from 1 to 70, but quit fairly quickly after 85. Of course, I had been playing a while, so was probably burnt out. However, I did have a faint sinking feeling skipping past the 15 levels. Tragically, I had a lot of nostalgia for 70-85. Still, there're 15 more and much more content I haven't seen, so I think the reason I left was burnout. Keep in mind I've played this game off/on since 1999, so I'm very familiar with "burnout". Burnout happens to me usually after about 2 months.

What's the game like? Umm, different than p1999! One of the things which I think should be brought up is that live is just as grindy as it has ever been, despite it having in-game maps, dozens of other addon windows, no coin weight, items not stored on corpse, summoning corpse to GL, auto-mercenary to play with you, instances, spreadsheet items/classes and so on. I mean, many will tell you live is superior to classic for these reasons and others, but let me tell you, it's still grindy, especially at hte upper levels where you start really feeling it.

And another thing unstated, I hate the new item window! The older one, up through SOD or so, was better. And all of the windows and hotkeys very much started to feel bloated to me.

I want to say EQ lacks a lot of polish compared to other games. The feeling I get is they grabbed all of hte talent and moved htem to other departments - EQ Next, Landmark, PS2, H1Z1, EQ2, etc... Expansions seem shallow from my vantage point.

It all reads bad, but to put it straight, you should try Live if you haven't. Instead of getting opinions from people like myself which may not apply to you, go try it and see for yourself. And to get the full flavor of hte game you should subscribe, although it's more important 80+ than pre-80 because I think you only really notice when special augs and higher tier items aren't wearable. And another thing is you can't have the tier 5 mercenary. Probably other things too.

Don't be afraid to Box. Nowadays, for a midlevel player, boxing opens up more of the game. And even though there're still some levelling players, it won't always be easy to find groups.

[MilanderTruewield]

Yeah, but you can't really keep a max level/aa character on live unless you level it up, which is outside of raiding. When I explored P99, it had everything I absolutely loved about classic EQ. Now, the raiding scene is completely toxic, and I don't think I could be a hardcore raider here if you gave me 1mill pp. I was a hardcore raider on live, but this poopsocking, jav spamming, CoTH ducking, etc was NOT what we did on live.

Whatever happened to your guild raiding at certain times, say, 8pm est on mondays, wednesdays and saturdays or something, and you send out trackers to find what was up, identify a target, and mobilize on it? Simple. Fuck batphones. Fuck socking. If you're on and it's raid time, then you mobilized. If it's not your guilds raid night and it was someone else's, and they see a target, oh well, they got it.

Hell, on live the only things EMarr had a rotation for were Trakanon and VS. That's it. The rest was like I outlined above. And the raid scene there was good. I remember racing to ToV to see who would be the first to down Aaryonar for that week (on Emarr, whoever got Aary got NToV for the week). #ClassicEQ

[stormlord]

Still randomly play. Don't have latest expansion.

Auto-granting was necessary to smooth the progression to the current game. Grinding those first 6,000 AAs was just a hugely tedious aspect of getting to experience the "end-game", and probably 50-75% of those AA lines are necessary to function for your classes purpose. Especially considering there are another 8,000 AAs you need to grind out.

Yea, it was rough for the people who had come back recently and were regrinding AAs but... it was the best decision they could do to encourage new players to actually join the game and create a character to reasonably get to the current content in non-neckbeard amounts of time.
Autogranting only goes up to 85. And it only applies whne you're subbed. Now, I was playing when it went live. I understand exactly WHY they did it, as you state above, but I don't necessarily agree it's the ONLY way to do it. The point where I think I disagree is AUTO-granting. The problem with autogranting is the player might not be as familiar with the AA's, since they're auto-granted. This is a problem because some of the AA's are castable abilities or effects or special innates. If a player researches the AA's then this isn't a problem, but if they don't then it's. I imagine it's not a problme at first, but if a player levels up really fast, they're going to have a mountain of AA's they're not using effectively. The problem is there're so many AA's. In hte past, AA's were introduced much more slowly because leveling up was a slow process capped by expansion releases. This allowed players to really dig deep into them. My concern is those AA's won't get used by new players at times when they absolutely need to know how to use them.

Another thing is, if this hasn't already been done, why's there no way to list AA's according to whether they have a hotkey? I remember asking this question back when I was playing. I never checked for any replies. I'm unsure if there's any ability to do that now.

[stormlord]

It was fun when you could supertwink an alt with raid gear that you solo'd/boxed yourself. But defiant gear took that fun away.

I suppose it's ok now if you just want something very laid back to do. Mercs and guild lobby give you instant access to 96% rezzes and cheap corpse summons, so there's nowhere near the risk of P99.
Want to add 70+ magic items are MUCH better than the defiant counterparts. The defiant are dirt cheap in bazaar and relatively plentiful, but inferior by comparison, especially ~90.

So just want to say the game can have that "twink" flavor IF you have a very high level main like 85+ with all the aa's. Then you can get the 70+ items and twink your alt. The higher your alt is, the higher (or richer) your main will need to be to twink them.

OF COURSE, since boxing is so "easy", it's probably faster to powerlevel alts than to twink them. This is unfortunate in some ways, since I actually agree with you: twinking is fun! BUT one caveat: It requires more exertion to box or powerlevel. Soloing, by comparison, is more natural and fun. SO it's not a done deal that powerleveling your alt is what you'll ALWAYS do.

I did box on live last time I played. It's not necessarily an evil thing./

[Clark]

@people who have played in the last 6 months.

Has to be terrible.

[coki]

If you don't sub to live and have the good BOTS, you're gonna have a bad time

[MilanderTruewield]

Boxing is a bad thing if that's all anyone does and you actually expect a social game to be... well, social.

[webrunner5]

I still play live a lot and I don't have the latest expansion. But I have 3 100 level toons and a lot more lower than that. I used to 6 Box a lot, but that really adds up money wise to have 6 to 8 paid accounts going each month. And my son was 4 boxing also on Live, so I was paying for like 12 accounts a month for 3 or 4 years. Crazy stuff. And they have a thing called the Money Market that will drain your Visa card dry if you get hooked on it.

I like to solo a lot there here, Sleeper also. Live is just about impossible to solo anymore. Mobs hit so hard it is scary. Mage is about the only class that can. And it has for awhile taken a shitpot full of Quests to be able to even get into the higher level zones. None of them can really be done solo.

And you NEED like at least 10,000 AA's on any toon to be worth a crap solo wise, or to even Tank in a group, even if your group is all of you 6 boxing. I think you can have up to over 14,000 on some classes now lol.

It has become grind hell to play anymore and the cost wise to get to some zones, and the cost to buy the gizmos to self rez, and keep the Merc going is really costly as hell anymore. Let alone if you are 6 boxing.:eek::eek:

I play on Live yet because there are hell , I no clue, well over 500 zones I bet. So it does not get as stale as it does on here or the Sleeper server. I have been playing EQ straight since 2000 pretty much 7 days a week. I mean you can only go to the same damn 25 zones so many times before you want to kill yourself like it is on here. And if you are level 60 on here there is only about 7 or 8 zones that are any challenge to them other than Raid zones, which take 30 seconds to kill the Mob. Takes longer to answer the Batphone than to kill the damn thing.

And even if and when Velious ever comes out on here, no big deal to me, I have been playing that zone on Live and the Sleeper, and EQMac when it was going, which I liked a lot, for years and years also. So it won't be some "OH BOY", this new stuff is great for me thingy. :( Unless you have a high end Bard that can run fast as hell you are going to hate running through the long zones in Velious just to get to the next zone. And God help you if you are a class that can't bind and have to run through 4 zones to get your corpse when you die, which you will a LOT in Velious. Enchanters are going to be a pissed off class for as many times they are going to die in that expansion also. Better hope you have a good friend that is a Mage in the group or a Cleric. Hell there will even be a use for a Pally in Velious for a 90% rez lol. But they can pull pretty well in it also, so that will help them too.

[MilanderTruewield]

1 account: 100 cleric, 100 paladin, 100 necro. Cleric is raid geared with tier 2 RoF raid armor, paladin has raid weapons and some corrupted ToV armor. 2nd account: 100 druid, 100 rogue, 96 monk. Rogue is likewise raid geared, t2 RoF. 3rd account: 100 warrior, 97 berserker, 89 bard. Both war and zerker have RoF and CoTF raid weapons.

I still won't choose live over P99.

[Bristlebard]

Every time someone boxes, an angel dies :(

[Swish]

Sounds horrible, but an unappealing report on a game is subjective - you can say the same for P99 if you were talking to a new player.

Epic MQs, camp lawyering, and all around nastiness is part of server life... its just how you choose to paint it. (not to mention the raid scene ofc).

Sounds like bad management on live though in terms of having to box and/or have 10000 AAs :/

[MilanderTruewield]

Well, honestly, Sony began a system to continue progressing at max level, and it grew...and grew...and now you have so many aa's it's ridiculous. I enjoyed the game, maintained myself as a hardcore raider but when I found p99, it replaced live immediately. Granted, the raid scene here is toxic as hell, But the entirety of the game is so much better. You actually interact with other people, which was the best thing about live from the get-go.

Personally, I believe mercs destroyed EverQuest.

[Laugher]

tl;dr live is not too bad, mercanaries now taper the amount of boxing you have to do (only need to 3 box for a full group~!) like players they now also get AAs and gear

webrunner described what I saw happening pretty well; could get up to 10k+ aas and will need them for your char to be more useful than your merc in group roles like tanking, but there is also hundreds of zones and content along with items like mounts to collect. Probably a good amount of fun to be had, but be prepared to pay for a sub on at least 2 accounts in order to just be able to get around and kill :p

[Swish]

Yeah I'd go with mercs being the downfall, or devs programming content on the basis that everyone uses them and having to "aim off" and make things more difficult.

[MilanderTruewield]

tl;dr live is not too bad, mercanaries now taper the amount of boxing you have to do (only need to 3 box for a full group~!) like players they now also get AAs and gear

This is exactly why mercs killed the social aspect of a group. "100 Cleric LFG" "Meh, I have my cleric merc out and I don't feel like talking to anyone, so... " 10 minutes later, Cleric still looking for group. And yes, a real cleric with AA's will out-heal a merc any day of the week, but that little bit of convenience for some reason outshines the actual player.