How realistic is casual raiding?

[yorumi]

I’m looking at this for green 2.0. As someone who doesn’t have time, nor do I care about the truly hardcore raiding how realistic is it to still have access to raid targets? I know some are more contested than others but I really know very little about the actual raid scene. While I’m not opposed to buying MQs and such I’d prefer to avoid it if I can. Is it realistic to do it on a more casual schedule? Does access to raids for a casual change through the eras the server will progress through? Feel free to add anything else I should know. Note I don’t really want opinions about raiding and whether you personally think it’s fun or not, I can decide for myself when or if I experience it.

[PlsNoBan]

Don't expect to get any highly desired raid targets with any kind of regularity unless you join 1 of (usually 2) of the zerg neckbeard raid guilds that control all the content 99% of the time. Be prepared to answer batphones at all hours of the day/night. Casual raiding is kind of a meme on p99. Unless ur happy with "raiding" consisting of basically HoT and trash tier targets that the top 2 guilds don't care about as much.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Not sure how the guilds work on Green, but casual raiding is very much a thing on Blue. The top guilds no longer require raid attendance minimums, so you can attend whichever raids you want, whenever you want. You probably won't be able to get the highest tier loot due to it taking a long time to acquire that much DKP as a casual, but you could get low to mid tier raid loot just fine.

[loramin]

Don't expect to get any highly desired raid targets with any kind of regularity unless you join 1 of (usually 2) of the zerg neckbeard raid guilds that control all the content 99% of the time. Be prepared to answer batphones at all hours of the day/night. Casual raiding is kind of a meme on p99. Unless ur happy with "raiding" consisting of basically HoT and trash tier targets that the top 2 guilds don't care about as much.

Spoken like someone who isn't in one of those top guilds.

You can absolutely be in a top guild and still be "casual", at least in the "not answering every batphone" sense. Will you make it to every big boss raid? No, probably not.

But you can still make it to whatever raids happen when you are online, and over time you'll accrue DKP. Eventually, someday, you'll get lucky, and the guild will be doing the raid boss that drops the item you want ... while you're online to fight it. Then you'll get to spend those DKP and get the phat lewtz you desire.

The only issue is that some guilds might have a minimum participation requirement, either during the application process or permanently. But unless you are super casual it should still be possible to hit that requirement. I think in Kingdom (we're recruiting! (https://kingdomdkp.com/eqdkp/index.php/Policy/Mission-statement.html?)) it's like 10%, but only if you want to be in the highest "class" of raiding (ie. be able to spend the max DKP for those big items); you can be in the guild without any raid participation, and just only be able to bid on 90% of the (not-biggest-ticket) items.

Oh, also top end raid guilds might want you to have certain raiding gear, so to join them you may need to spend some time in the EC tunnel.

And even if you are super casual and can't make that requirement ... there are still tons of guilds (https://wiki.project1999.com/Green_Guilds) other than the top ones, which raid most of the targets on the server, and don't have any minimum participation or gear requirements. You won't get Vulak, but you can still do a ton of raiding and get lots of great items.

[yorumi]

But you can still make it to whatever raids happen when you are online, and over time you'll accrue DKP. Eventually, someday, you'll get lucky, and the guild will be doing the raid boss that drops the item you want ... while you're online to fight it. Then you'll get to spend those DKP and get the phat lewtz you desire.

The only issue is that some guilds might have a minimum participation requirement, either during the application process or permanently. But unless you are super casual it should still be possible to hit that requirement. I think in Kingdom (we're recruiting! (https://kingdomdkp.com/eqdkp/index.php/Policy/Mission-statement.html?)) it's like 10%, but only if you want to be in the highest "class" of raiding (ie. be able to spend the max DKP for those big items); you can be in the guild without any raid participation, and just only be able to bid on 90% of the (not-biggest-ticket) items.


That actually sounds like exactly what I was hoping it would be like. I know casual has a pretty broad definition but for me it’s mostly that I can’t dedicate my life to raiding but I can certainly do a few hours multiple nights a week. I just want to experience a part of eq I haven’t done before and actually gear a character through it. I know I might not be able to get every last BiS item and I’m fine with that.

[Scalem]

I’m looking at this for green 2.0. As someone who doesn’t have time, nor do I care about the truly hardcore raiding how realistic is it to still have access to raid targets? I know some are more contested than others but I really know very little about the actual raid scene. While I’m not opposed to buying MQs and such I’d prefer to avoid it if I can. Is it realistic to do it on a more casual schedule? Does access to raids for a casual change through the eras the server will progress through? Feel free to add anything else I should know. Note I don’t really want opinions about raiding and whether you personally think it’s fun or not, I can decide for myself when or if I experience it.

When the server is in just "classic" EQ it's probably the easiest time to be a casual and get raid gear as the only real content is Hate/Fear clears. In Kunark there is a bit more mobs to go after but it doesn't change to much. Come Velious it just becomes a numbers game and every raid guild needs "warmbodies" who are casuals that just show up. Will you get Vulak, AoW or Tunare loot as a casual? Probably not unless you are a paladin or SK or your guild has had the content on farm with minimal competition for a year. Every guild needs casual members and you can easily get some gear for what raids you do show up to. It's also incredibly class dependent, playing a rogue/monk/war? You going to be waiting a long time for good gear. Playing ranger/sk/paladin? You won't have to wait that long for half decent raid gear.

[yorumi]

It's also incredibly class dependent, playing a rogue/monk/war? You going to be waiting a long time for good gear. Playing ranger/sk/paladin? You won't have to wait that long for half decent raid gear.

I figure I’m just going to play what I want and not worry about how popular it is. I’m using the last months of green to test out different race/class combos to figure out what I really want to play. It’s mostly that I’m looking to change things up and not play what I normally do and try out new things. The way I see it if I’m enjoying myself in the raid scene it won’t matter how long it takes to get items and if I’m not then playing a class for easier loot won’t matter.

[Ooloo]

Yeah currently on green there's quite a relaxed policy for most raid guilds. However you should be aware that if you join one, it will be very cliquey and you might have a hard time making your way if you can only play on a casual schedule. I'm somewhere between casual and neckbeard depending on work, but its quite fun. It's not just ST dominating everything on green anymore.

[loramin]

That actually sounds like exactly what I was hoping it would be like. I know casual has a pretty broad definition but for me it’s mostly that I can’t dedicate my life to raiding but I can certainly do a few hours multiple nights a week. I just want to experience a part of eq I haven’t done before and actually gear a character through it. I know I might not be able to get every last BiS item and I’m fine with that.

:) You should definitely join a raid guild.

Kingdom is recruiting if you want to be able to kill the biggest baddies on the server, but if you want a guild that tackles smaller foes to "get your feet wet" https://wiki.project1999.com/Green_Guilds has lots of other options.

(NOTE: I say this as a Kingdom member ... but also as someone who got started raiding with a smaller guild, Anonymous. Both have pros/cons.)

[Keebz]

So there's two types of raids:

1) Semi-scheduled content — Some group of guilds have agreed to rotate access to a raid zone on a weekly/semi-weekly basis. So these raids will mostly be scheduled and easy to attend. Think Plane of Sky, Plane of Fear... basically the Planes and less competitive content.

2) 'Batphone' content — These are highly desirable mobs that get killed as soon as possible after they spawn. Someone from your guild sits around 'tracking' for when they spawn then sends out a guild-wide text or discord message alerting everyone to assemble and try to get the kill. This could be at any time—4am, 4pm, Midnight whenever. This mobs tend to drop the best of the best gear.

Type 1) content is much easier for casuals obviously, but type 2) content is actually pretty achievable as well. Just set healthy limits on when you're willing to respond to a batphone.

As for guilds, generally each guild does a different balance of type 1) and type 2) content. So you should pick your guild based off what type of content you want to experience. A common pattern is to start in a more type 1) heavy guild then swap to a type 2) heavy guild as you get bored with the scheduled content.

All that being said, if we're talking about Green 2.0, you should know there's very few batphonable targets for the first 2 years of a sever. So I highly suggest joining the most competitive guild and just being a casual in it. You will get to experience all the content and get a good shot at decent loot. Moreover, the longer you are in a guild, the more clout (social and DKP) you have which means as new content releases you will have quicker access to the new loot.

Hope this is somewhat informative. Cheers.

[Scalem]

I figure I’m just going to play what I want and not worry about how popular it is. I’m using the last months of green to test out different race/class combos to figure out what I really want to play. It’s mostly that I’m looking to change things up and not play what I normally do and try out new things. The way I see it if I’m enjoying myself in the raid scene it won’t matter how long it takes to get items and if I’m not then playing a class for easier loot won’t matter.

Should know that no one knows if green is going to end or when it will. You could be waiting years before a green 2.0 if we even get one.

[loramin]

Should know that no one knows if green is going to end or when it will. You could be waiting years before a green 2.0 if we even get one.

We will get one. Green (and it's subsequent 2.0, 3.0, etc. revisions) are the entire point of this place's existence.

Now there's certainly a question of "how long will they wait after the last patch?" before they take 1.0 down and put up 2.0 ... but while the dates may be uncertain, Green 2.0 isn't, because the whole purpose of this place is to give people the experience of playing classic EQ.

[Scalem]

We will get one. Green (and it's subsequent 2.0, 3.0, etc. revisions) are the entire point of this place's existence.

Now there's certainly a question of "how long will they wait after the last patch?" before they take 1.0 down and put up 2.0 ... but while the dates may be uncertain, Green 2.0 isn't, because the whole purpose of this place is to give people the experience of playing classic EQ.

No one knows for certain if we will get one. I’m sure the original plan was for it but the fact is we don’t know what their actual plans are. All people can do is speculate one way or another. Hell we hadn’t seen R for months until all the drama around Ryan and Sean.

[Blingy]

Also keep in mind some guilds are listed as casual on the previous page but do raid. I'm in Castle which is listed as casual. However we've been bat-phoning fairly often.

Recent targets include: Vindi, Severlous, Trak, WToV, Kelorek Dar, Innoruk (and other mini's), Cazic-Thule (and other mini's), ring 10, Venril Sathir, Halls of Testing.

[yorumi]

:) You should definitely join a raid guild.

Kingdom is recruiting if you want to be able to kill the biggest baddies on the server, but if you want a guild that tackles smaller foes to "get your feet wet" https://wiki.project1999.com/Green_Guilds has lots of other options.

(NOTE: I say this as a Kingdom member ... but also as someone who got started raiding with a smaller guild, Anonymous. Both have pros/cons.)

Yeah I'm planning to pick one out later. Main reason I don't now is because my highest character on green right now is 7 and I'm mostly planning to just try some combos out that I haven't done before to see what I like. I've played a good bit on blue several years ago but I always kind of played the same things and I'm in the mood for something different.

So there's two types of raids:

shortened...

Thanks that did help a lot. Sounds like I'll actually be able to do a good bit of it over a long enough period of time.

Should know that no one knows if green is going to end or when it will. You could be waiting years before a green 2.0 if we even get one.

I have confidence it won't been an extreme period of time. As mentioned I don't have characters ready to go yet. If it ends up going long enough that I get a character at raid levels and there's no end in sight then I'd just join a guild and start going but for not it's not an urgent issue.

[PlsNoBan]

We will get one. Green (and it's subsequent 2.0, 3.0, etc. revisions) are the entire point of this place's existence.

Now there's certainly a question of "how long will they wait after the last patch?" before they take 1.0 down and put up 2.0 ... but while the dates may be uncertain, Green 2.0 isn't, because the whole purpose of this place is to give people the experience of playing classic EQ.


"Server Merge - The staff has had considerable discussion internally regarding the merging of Green into Blue at the end of the timeline. We've heard your concerns. At this time, we haven't made a final decision, but we have also decided that we will leave the door open. A lot can change in 3 years, and we may chose to leave Green running independently as we open additional servers in the future." - Rogean

[tadkins]

From my experience, it's not very realistic. You're either in one of the big time guilds like Seal Team, Kingdom or Force of Will, or you're in one of the smaller guilds getting rolled over by the aforementioned big ones. This server is just oppressive and hyper-competitive, and that's apparently how the folks here want it. Prepare for drama if you aspire to do anything more than a derv camp.

If you really want to see some raiding without being trolled, griefed or trained, the newest TLP servers on Live are going to be opening up in a couple days. It's not perfect, but dealing with a weirder looking Freeport is a fair tradeoff in exchange for being able to count on raiding and earning loot without hassle.

The only issue is that some guilds might have a minimum participation requirement, either during the application process or permanently. But unless you are super casual it should still be possible to hit that requirement. I think in Kingdom (we're recruiting! (https://kingdomdkp.com/eqdkp/index.php/Policy/Mission-statement.html?)) it's like 10%, but only if you want to be in the highest "class" of raiding (ie. be able to spend the max DKP for those big items); you can be in the guild without any raid participation, and just only be able to bid on 90% of the (not-biggest-ticket) items.

Your guild accused me of being a spy for another guild when I tried to join you guys, when all I was looking to do was make some friends and eventually see some raiding.

Seriously, when folks on this server are *that* paranoid where it is a "meta" to try and sneak spies into rival guilds, what chance does the average person really have on this server?

[Scalem]

From my experience, it's not very realistic. You're either in one of the big time guilds like Seal Team, Kingdom or Force of Will, or you're in one of the smaller guilds getting rolled over by the aforementioned big ones. This server is just oppressive and hyper-competitive, and that's apparently how the folks here want it. Prepare for drama if you aspire to do anything more than a derv camp.

If you really want to see some raiding without being trolled, griefed or trained, the newest TLP servers on Live are going to be opening up in a couple days. It's not perfect, but dealing with a weirder looking Freeport is a fair tradeoff in exchange for being able to count on raiding and earning loot without hassle.



Your guild accused me of being a spy for another guild when I tried to join you guys, when all I was looking to do was make some friends and eventually see some raiding.

Seriously, when folks on this server are *that* paranoid where it is a "meta" to try and sneak spies into rival guilds, what chance does the average person really have on this server?


It's hilarious how paranoid Kingdom is about spies when there is literally nothing worth spying on any guild for. Not going to gain any crazy state secrets or undiscovered strategies. Chances are you have friends in any of the competitive guilds who probably share more then any "spy" would ever figure out on their own.

[Bardp1999]

Unless you are unemployed or work from home raiding on P99 is not a feasible thing, anyone who says elsewise is either flat out lying or doesn't know.

You have to be able to log in during work hours and late-night or you will never keep your raid attendance high enough to actually bid on anything. There are not enough prime-time raid kills per week to keep RA and even then you have to be a no lifer (even keeping 10%-20% raid attendance is almost impossible unless you have gone full neckbeard).

[Keebz]

Unless you are unemployed or work from home raiding on P99 is not a feasible thing, anyone who says elsewise is either flat out lying or doesn't know.

You have to be able to log in during work hours and late-night or you will never keep your raid attendance high enough to actually bid on anything. There are not enough prime-time raid kills per week to keep RA and even then you have to be a no lifer (even keeping 10%-20% raid attendance is almost impossible unless you have gone full neckbeard).

Windows are generally on the weekends these days, and we had 2 quakes last weekend. Assuming you work 9-5 M-F, you can make plenty of targets without stressing too much.

Also lots of guilds no longer require RA for much of anything. Just accrue DKP and bid like everyone else.

I get the impression you're not active in the current raid scene and are going off memories of p99 past.

[Fammaden]

Don't listen to these salty dipshits OP, you got the good answers early in the thread. Every single raid guild on both servers have people with jobs (not WFH) and responsibilities who are just fine enjoying raiding on their own schedule.

The raid schedules here are unforgiving in a general sense, but the raid guilds are not exclusionary. There's always more people needed even if your playtimes are just four hours in primetime or whatever, you're still wanted.

As far as RA, in Velious getting something like 10% isn't as bad as it sounds since the sheer number of raids and targets mean you just show up for what you can and over the month you're fine. But generally on P99 its not that big of a factor for membership anyway.

[PlsNoBan]

Lots of copium in this thread. P99 endgame is not casual friendly. It never has been and likely never will be.

[greenspectre]

Spoken like someone who isn't in one of those top guilds.

You can absolutely be in a top guild and still be "casual", at least in the "not answering every batphone" sense. Will you make it to every big boss raid? No, probably not.

But you can still make it to whatever raids happen when you are online, and over time you'll accrue DKP. Eventually, someday, you'll get lucky, and the guild will be doing the raid boss that drops the item you want ... while you're online to fight it. Then you'll get to spend those DKP and get the phat lewtz you desire.

The only issue is that some guilds might have a minimum participation requirement, either during the application process or permanently. But unless you are super casual it should still be possible to hit that requirement. I think in Kingdom (we're recruiting! (https://kingdomdkp.com/eqdkp/index.php/Policy/Mission-statement.html?)) it's like 10%, but only if you want to be in the highest "class" of raiding (ie. be able to spend the max DKP for those big items); you can be in the guild without any raid participation, and just only be able to bid on 90% of the (not-biggest-ticket) items.

Loramin's got it on-point here. This is what I do. I went hard enough to hit the 10% requirement (in one month, by the way, not overall- that's easier to do than you think, especially with scheduled events like Sky). Now I can casually raid whenever it's convenient, which is a huge since I have sole care of my 5-year-old so I can't always go hard like that. Sure, I don't earn 1,000 DKP a week or anything, but that hasn't stopped me from going HoT/Vindi armor to NToV pieces.

I'd recommend Kingdom for sure, super helpful team that will teach you everything you need to know. Side note, I didn't know we were guildies, Loramin! PM me your toon name!

[loramin]

"Server Merge - The staff has had considerable discussion internally regarding the merging of Green into Blue at the end of the timeline. We've heard your concerns. At this time, we haven't made a final decision, but we have also decided that we will leave the door open. A lot can change in 3 years, and we may chose to leave Green running independently as we open additional servers in the future." - Rogean

I am ... skeptical of the idea of Green 1.0 staying up, but that's just me personally. Regardless of whether Green 1.0 stays up or not though, Green 2.0 is coming.

Again, this is a certainty, because the entire point of this project is to let people experience classic EverQuest ... ie. a fresh Green server (not one that's unclassicaly run past it's expiration date, as Blue has).

[Mblake1981]

When the server is in just "classic" EQ it's probably the easiest time to be a casual and get raid gear as the only real content is Hate/Fear clears.

Original EQ is still the best and most cohesive EQ, it was a downhill slide with Kunark and the rest of the expansions.

[greenspectre]

Original EQ is still the best and most cohesive EQ, it was a downhill slide with Kunark and the rest of the expansions.

Also, can we talk about how nuts Hate and Fear were with a level cap of 50? Wiping was not uncommon even with good organization. At 60 you don't wipe nearly as much to ToV trash as you did at 50 to Hate trash. One spite golem gates and its "EVERYONE CAMP!"

[Jibartik]

https://i.imgur.com/JBErPwJ.png

[Delekhan]

Quakes are far more frequent nowadays so socking windows late at night for raid content is now the exception, not the norm. If you play weekends you'll have access to a wide variety of raids as a casual player in any of the guilds. If you only play on weekdays, the raid options will be more limited as quakes generally occur during the weekends.

The changes in quake frequency have changed the overall tone to be more casual overall, I think. Many folks are content to capture Quake targets and are less concerned with natural spawns. That said the traditional have-nots on Green still poopsock with a high degree of urgency.

[tadkins]

Lots of copium in this thread. P99 endgame is not casual friendly. It never has been and likely never will be.

This. Otherwise we wouldn't have guilds employing the shady tactics they do to get bosses, and we wouldn't have guilds be as elitist and exclusionary as they are. When you have a guild like Kingdom rejecting people thinking they're trying to "spy" on them, how can a person say that raiding on P99 is casual friendly?

[Erati]

This. Otherwise we wouldn't have guilds employing the shady tactics they do to get bosses, and we wouldn't have guilds be as elitist and exclusionary as they are. When you have a guild like Kingdom rejecting people thinking they're trying to "spy" on them, how can a person say that raiding on P99 is casual friendly?

Sounds like your encountered a misunderstanding during your application but never seriously followed up to correct anything which likely all that it was.

If your character had access shared w others (I am just speculating I have no knowledge of your application), this might have sparked initial concerns. I dont recall hearing about any application terminated bc of speculation that anyone is a spy, this seems a bit of a broad stroke.

[PlsNoBan]

We just had a massive RNF thread detailing how multiple guilds were/are actively abusing scripts to win FTE races for kael giants on blue. A server that has been doing kael giants every week for like 8 years?

Yeah super casual friendly npnp

[loramin]

We just had a massive RNF thread detailing how multiple guilds were/are actively abusing scripts to win FTE races for kael giants on blue. A server that has been doing kael giants every week for like 8 years?

Yeah super casual friendly npnp

So one guild, on one server, got a slight advantage by cheating, on a couple encounters ... and then got caught.

Because of that, casual players can't enjoy any of the scores of other raid encounters? Or even that particular encounter? Seems like sound logic to me :rolleyes:

[Chortles Snortles]

https://i.imgur.com/U4TFODQ.jpg

[yorumi]

We just had a massive RNF thread detailing how multiple guilds were/are actively abusing scripts to win FTE races for kael giants on blue. A server that has been doing kael giants every week for like 8 years?

Yeah super casual friendly npnp

I kind of feel like you don't have a good understanding of what a lot of people mean by casual raiding. While the definition can be broad it would generally be agreed that it means a person who only has a short amount of time at any moment to dedicate to raiding can still access an acceptable about of raid content. Some things would be unavailable or impractical but not all of it. You won't necessarily have access to BiS gear and what you get will take a longer time to get but it can be done.

Under that definition the fact that some guilds might have done things or some targets are ridiculously impossible isn't a concern. But being able to do a hate raid, or get an epic, or do some mid tier velious raids without dedicating a lifetime to it is perfectly fine.

[tadkins]

Sounds like your encountered a misunderstanding during your application but never seriously followed up to correct anything which likely all that it was.

If your character had access shared w others (I am just speculating I have no knowledge of your application), this might have sparked initial concerns. I dont recall hearing about any application terminated bc of speculation that anyone is a spy, this seems a bit of a broad stroke.

Wasn't really a lot to it. I was a 20 Ranger at the time just looking for a guild. I thought I'd give Kingdom a shot, as I one day hoped to see some raids and earn an epic, so I joined your discord and sent a message to Shimmerdark as that's what the instructions for those sub-46 said. I honestly just wanted to make some friends and have some people to talk to while I leveled, so that I could know you guys a bit before hoping to eventually raid.

I was basically accused of being a spy, told that it was the "meta" to sneak alts into rival guilds, and was denied entry.

Am still a bit salty over that, and it's sort of led me to understand I don't have a future on P99, and ultimately it is why I'm playing on Yelinak TLP now. But it is what it is, and I will eventually see those raids in a far more inclusive environment soon. Knowing that, the question becomes honest and obvious; what chance does the average person have on this server beyond the barest of the bare scraps guilds like yours is willing to leave?

[Danth]

what chance does the average person have on this server beyond the barest of the bare scraps guilds like yours is willing to leave?

It's all a matter of perspective. Recognize this game is loosely-tuned, and there is NO conventional content that actually requires high-end raid loot. My own character (level 60 for going on a decade at this point) wears mostly thurgadin-level equipment, accessible to about anyone, and guess what? Other than a couple of locked zones (Sleeper and Veeshan's Peak) that I don't have keys for, I do the same stuff anyone else does because, again, there's only so much to do in this game and none of it requires "best in slot" equipment. You *definitely* don't need top-end equipment to participate in the giant zerg raids that are the present main way the bigger guilds do stuff. I don't raid much--don't particularly enjoy it or have much interest in it--but still, I've been to the planes, been to all wings of temple veeshan, kael drakkel, whatever. It's there, it's not going anywhere, and you have all the time in the world.

If your idea of fun is being able to set a schedule and log on at 8 PM for pre-planned guild raids to a variety of different places, P99 is not the place for that and never has been. If on the other hand you enjoy the rest of the game you can find plenty to do that isn't heavily contested.

Danth

[Fammaden]

Tadkins has been complaining on this forum for years that he can't enjoy P99 and always its the fault of other players, the server rules, the guilds, the grind and xp curve, his class choices, etc etc etc. Dude is his own worst enemy.

[tadkins]

It's all a matter of perspective. Recognize this game is loosely-tuned, and there is NO conventional content that actually requires high-end raid loot. My own character (level 60 for going on a decade at this point) wears mostly thurgadin-level equipment, accessible to about anyone, and guess what? Other than a couple of locked zones (Sleeper and Veeshan's Peak) that I don't have keys for, I do the same stuff anyone else does because, again, there's only so much to do in this game and none of it requires "best in slot" equipment. You *definitely* don't need top-end equipment to participate in the giant zerg raids that are the present main way the bigger guilds do stuff. I don't raid much--don't particularly enjoy it or have much interest in it--but still, I've been to the planes, been to all wings of temple veeshan, kael drakkel, whatever. It's there, it's not going anywhere, and you have all the time in the world.

If your idea of fun is being able to set a schedule and log on at 8 PM for pre-planned guild raids to a variety of different places, P99 is not the place for that and never has been. If on the other hand you enjoy the rest of the game you can find plenty to do that isn't heavily contested.

Danth
Well no, but it'd still be cool to one day earn some high end loot. Earn something nice that can't just be bought in the EC tunnel, you know? I don't feel like it's ever going to be possible to do that on P99. Assuming I can even get into one of the worthwhile guilds, you've got folks who've been raiding for years and it would probably be a decade before someone like me would even have a chance.

Always been a dream of mine to one day fight Innoruuk, Cazic-Thule and the like. To see the planes, Veeshan's Peak, Sleeper's Tomb and whatnot. It's demoralizing to know that I'm never going to get that chance here.

What else is there to even enjoy? Dungeons that I can never find groups for? Camps that are always taken 24/7? Tradeskills that mean nothing because plenty of others have already cornered those markets? There's no competing against people like Sumetal, and it'd be foolish to try. Working on factions that no one cares about? My human wizard is max ally with the Spurned, because it was all I really had to do. No one really cares.

Seriously, what is there for someone like me in this game?

[Danth]

Seriously, what is there for someone like me in this game?

I've been able to do what you say you can't do--see most the raid zones, get an epic, etc. Even the two zones I haven't done on P99, I could have if I wanted to and I'm simply not interested enough to bother keying. If I can, you can. Doesn't mean it'll be fast. You've been registered on this board for four years. My Shadowknight was ~6 years old before he completed his epic. That kind of timeframe was acceptable to me but I recognize it isn't acceptable for everyone. If it isn't and you're a lower-hours player like I am, you're right to want to investigate other alternatives besides P99. As a rule, here, you can get stuff fairly quick, or you can be casual, but you can't have both. That was why I favored Blue over Green--I can't advance fast enough to keep up with Green's expected server lifespan. Progression servers just aren't meant for low-hours players.

Outside the raids, don't even try to tell me you can't find high-level group content to do because I know better than that. The wife and I have stuff we can do any time we log in. There are areas, camps, and even a few entire zones that go largely un-used because most players don't want to go off the regular XP highway. You'll need a few friends though. This is very much a multi-player game (well, maybe not for Enchanters), not Warcraft where it's a quasi-solo game until raiding and other people might as well be AI bots.

If it turns out you simply don't like classic EQ all that well, that's fine, but your issue is definitely not a want of things to do.

Danth

[Toxigen]

No guild has attendance reqs.

Show up / respond to batphones when it suits you.

[Ooloo]

Yeah I don't understand all the naysayers. Even if you only come to like 5% of raids, you'll still build up dkp over time and will be able to bid competitively on nice loot, it will just come at a slower pace than if you went hardcore neckbeard. It's completely possible, even in the most competitive guilds.

[greenspectre]

Wasn't really a lot to it. I was a 20 Ranger at the time just looking for a guild. I thought I'd give Kingdom a shot, as I one day hoped to see some raids and earn an epic, so I joined your discord and sent a message to Shimmerdark as that's what the instructions for those sub-46 said. I honestly just wanted to make some friends and have some people to talk to while I leveled, so that I could know you guys a bit before hoping to eventually raid.

I was basically accused of being a spy, told that it was the "meta" to sneak alts into rival guilds, and was denied entry.

That's a really unfortunate experience that you had with our guild, and I'm sorry that happened. For context, there IS concern with rival guilds trying to seed alts in rival guilds to get a leg up when it comes to the COMPETETIVE raids. My suggestion would be to re-app at 40+, as I think that's more what the policy of "sub-46" was geared towards.

Kingdom is a raiding guild, so isn't likely to extend a guild tag to anyone under 46 for that reason above. There are several awesome leveling guilds on this server (I always hear Castle as being the best) and it's perfectly acceptable to go from one of those to Kingdom if you're wanting to hit up the higher-end raids (yes, even casually) once you're leveled.

We are a really cool group of people, and you sound very cool and level-headed yourself, so I do hope to see you in Kingdom some day when you're done with your TLP adventures :)

[Tunabros]

Who is loramin in kingdom? i must talk to him

[tadkins]

That's a really unfortunate experience that you had with our guild, and I'm sorry that happened. For context, there IS concern with rival guilds trying to seed alts in rival guilds to get a leg up when it comes to the COMPETETIVE raids. My suggestion would be to re-app at 40+, as I think that's more what the policy of "sub-46" was geared towards.

Kingdom is a raiding guild, so isn't likely to extend a guild tag to anyone under 46 for that reason above. There are several awesome leveling guilds on this server (I always hear Castle as being the best) and it's perfectly acceptable to go from one of those to Kingdom if you're wanting to hit up the higher-end raids (yes, even casually) once you're leveled.

We are a really cool group of people, and you sound very cool and level-headed yourself, so I do hope to see you in Kingdom some day when you're done with your TLP adventures :)

Castle is a terrible guild. I was in there briefly on a lowbie necromancer, they didn't give a damn about helping anyone outside their established cliques, and was even laughed at in guild chat when I admitted that I have never gotten a rez before (never had cleric friends or the cash to pay for them, so I always just sucked up whatever exp losses incurred throughout my adventures).

At this point I've honestly just given up trying to find a place on this server and within the community. The most I've ever amounted to here was being a DaP wizard, and no one cares about those.

[Toxigen]

Your RA is a direct representation of the quality / quantity of loot you will receive.

Show up / participate, more/better loot.

Its pretty simple and is the most fair system possible.

[Ravager]

Even casual raiding on this server isn't casual. Not realistic at all.

[Ravager]

Yeah I don't understand all the naysayers. Even if you only come to like 5% of raids, you'll still build up dkp over time and will be able to bid competitively on nice loot, it will just come at a slower pace than if you went hardcore neckbeard. It's completely possible, even in the most competitive guilds.

Bid for scraps. The 90%+ RA people have so much DKP they take whatever they want. DKP is a system built for neckbeards by neckbeards. Jimmy Warmbody Casual guy saves up his DKP for that one item he absolutely wants, will absolutely get outbid by Johnny Neckbeard and all the while Johnny Neckbeard is scooping up the mid-tier stuff for his alts. 5%ers might get to roll on the rots if they don't spend their DKP on them. GL 5%ers!

[unsunghero]

My guild was raiding Kael and I saw a few pieces of cloth gear rotting in guildchat. Too bad I forgot how to get to Kael…

[Kich867]

Bid for scraps. The 90%+ RA people have so much DKP they take whatever they want. DKP is a system built for neckbeards by neckbeards. Jimmy Warmbody Casual guy saves up his DKP for that one item he absolutely wants, will absolutely get outbid by Johnny Neckbeard and all the while Johnny Neckbeard is scooping up the mid-tier stuff for his alts. 5%ers might get to roll on the rots if they don't spend their DKP on them. GL 5%ers!

It's fairly common that main bids outweigh alt bids, no? I don't think I've ever been in a guild that geared alts over mains in like 17 years.

Getting loot is really fuckin simple though. Both in EQ and in life. You show up, you give a shit, you demonstrate you're a good person to be around, and you contribute.

It's never about who you know, it's about who knows you.

[PlsNoBan]

After skimming through this thread. My initial post still stands:

Don't expect to get any highly desired raid targets with any kind of regularity unless you join 1 of (usually 2) of the zerg neckbeard raid guilds that control all the content 99% of the time. Be prepared to answer batphones at all hours of the day/night. Casual raiding is kind of a meme on p99. Unless ur happy with "raiding" consisting of basically HoT and trash tier targets that the top 2 guilds don't care about as much.

The people claiming you can raid casually are either A: talking about the HoT/trash tier targets I mentioned above or B: have a definition of "casual" that would make normal peoples skin crawl.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

After skimming through this thread. My initial post still stands:



The people claiming you can raid casually are either A: talking about the HoT/trash tier targets I mentioned above or B: have a definition of "casual" that would make normal peoples skin crawl.

You can casually raid in big guilds now that the attendance requirements are gone. A lot of items are fairly cheap DKP wise in a top guild that gets a lot of targets per week. More targets killed also means more chances to catch a raid while you are available.

[tadkins]

You can casually raid in big guilds now that the attendance requirements are gone. A lot of items are fairly cheap DKP wise in a top guild that gets a lot of targets per week. More targets killed also means more chances to catch a raid while you are available.
I honestly doubt this. Assuming one can even get into one of the big guilds, I'd imagine most folks in there have amassed so much "DKP" that newcomers would be lucky to get a piece of garbage after a dedicated year of raiding. And anything cool and worthwhile, like an epic? Forget about it.

On a happier note though I did finally accomplish a long time goal a couple days ago.

https://i.imgur.com/fsqqKP6.jpg

Got to see my first raids, and earned my first epic, even if they were mostly solo. I never knew Plane of Hate could be such a cool zone. Dark, ominous, and a little confusing. I think it's my favorite in the game now next to Neriak.

I know it may not mean much considering this is on Live, but I am proud and happy of that accomplishment. So much so that I've locked my exp there at 60 so I can enjoy my epic pet as long as possible. It's something I would have absolutely loved to do on P99 but years of trying to find a good guild or community to jive with ended in nothing but failure, and the top dogs of the server would never allow me to do anything more ambitious than a derv camp, or have the privileged honor of porting the "real players" to their epic adventures.

[Jimjam]

EPIC GRATS!



RE DSM's post:

Most raid garbage is way better than easily accessible stuff you'd pick up while levelling up or cheap in EC.

The issue I've found is that the amount of time between a raid mob spawning and a guild mobilising to kill it is tiny. This means you need a character parked on site, and you need to be at a powered-up computer and monitoring discord/notifications to have a chance at attending almost any kill, assuming you are even available. That can require quite the perfect storm, but it isn't impossible... I keep a 60 war in toV on Blue but it is very rare that a bat phone goes out which I am available to answer.

Scheduled raiding can fit a bit more easily in to life - you know when and where it will be so you can manage other commitments around that. This is great if you enjoy trash clear type raids like Sky, Growth, Kael Arena/Plate house, etc and there are a few raid tier mobs which spawn frequently enough that it is feasible to schedule raids for them such as Derakor the Vindicator. That won't garner you the tiptop pixels though.

[tadkins]

EPIC GRATS!

I do appreciate that. The mage epic was always my favorite looking one of all of them, even way back decades ago when they were first released. I remember looking at the first pictures of them from a high school library computer, and I dreamed of having it one day. I'm just a big fan of the rainbow color effects there.

I had heard how utterly insane it was to get on P99 though, and knew I wouldn't have a shred of a chance of ever getting one here. It's partly why I started here as a wizard in the first place, because at least that epic *seemed* accessible. Since I'm now playing on FV Live though, with its no no-drop rule thing, the mage one seemed far more obtainable and I rolled one as my main char there.

Mage epic still required a lot of patience though and I had to rely on someone's kindness for the Crown of Elemental Mastery as I couldn't solo PoSky due to DTs, but I finally succeeded. I know it's decades later and epics are beyond the point of anyone really caring, but I seriously am happy to finally have one. Finally getting to see places like PoHate and Kedge Keep were also rewarding in their own rights.

[Toxigen]

Bid for scraps. The 90%+ RA people have so much DKP they take whatever they want. DKP is a system built for neckbeards by neckbeards. Jimmy Warmbody Casual guy saves up his DKP for that one item he absolutely wants, will absolutely get outbid by Johnny Neckbeard and all the while Johnny Neckbeard is scooping up the mid-tier stuff for his alts. 5%ers might get to roll on the rots if they don't spend their DKP on them. GL 5%ers!

lol someones salty they do absolutely nothing for a raid guild and expect loot

[cd288]

I honestly doubt this. Assuming one can even get into one of the big guilds, I'd imagine most folks in there have amassed so much "DKP" that newcomers would be lucky to get a piece of garbage after a dedicated year of raiding. And anything cool and worthwhile, like an epic? Forget about it.

On a happier note though I did finally accomplish a long time goal a couple days ago.

https://i.imgur.com/fsqqKP6.jpg

Got to see my first raids, and earned my first epic, even if they were mostly solo. I never knew Plane of Hate could be such a cool zone. Dark, ominous, and a little confusing. I think it's my favorite in the game now next to Neriak.

I know it may not mean much considering this is on Live, but I am proud and happy of that accomplishment. So much so that I've locked my exp there at 60 so I can enjoy my epic pet as long as possible. It's something I would have absolutely loved to do on P99 but years of trying to find a good guild or community to jive with ended in nothing but failure, and the top dogs of the server would never allow me to do anything more ambitious than a derv camp, or have the privileged honor of porting the "real players" to their epic adventures.

You can just ignore DSM, he generally just disagrees with people just for the sake of doing it.

In the big guilds it will depend on their loot policy, but yes if you want to be getting the better gear that drops you've got a trek to build up DKP which cannot really be done casually (unless you're willing for it to take a really long time). Lower tier items probably easier to get casually.

[cd288]

lol someones salty they do absolutely nothing for a raid guild and expect loot

Also ignore this guy. He was kicked from all the raiding guilds lmao

[DeathsSilkyMist]

You can just ignore DSM, he generally just disagrees with people just for the sake of doing it.


cd288 is just mad because he was proven wrong in another thread. He hasn't recovered yet, so please ignore his silly comments regarding me.

I honestly doubt this. Assuming one can even get into one of the big guilds, I'd imagine most folks in there have amassed so much "DKP" that newcomers would be lucky to get a piece of garbage after a dedicated year of raiding. And anything cool and worthwhile, like an epic? Forget about it.


Gaining DKP can be done casually in big guilds now that the mandatory raid attendance has dropped.

Being in a big guild means you have more opportunities for raid targets because they can kill everything that spawns, and generally take a good portion of the kills. This means you have more chances for a target to be available when you are.

Not only that, but guilds have options to gain DKP outside of raids. You can camp items like Shiny Brass Idol or Scepter of the Forlorn, you can level guild bots, etc.

You can get some great loot for cheap because most of the hardcore raiders are gunning for big ticket items like Vulak loot. They typically think twice about a lot of loot, either because they already have it, or they don't want to shrink their DKP they can dump on something big.

In terms of Epics specifically, it depends on the Epic. Obviously Mage Epic is going to go for a lot, but that is true in all guilds on the server, unless your guild does /random. I have seen Child's Tear go for 10 DKP or less plenty of times, it is practically given away. That is an easy 100k item for real cheap. For reference, you get 1-6 DKP per encounter, depending on what happened. A kill is 3 DKP, so you only need to have attended 4 raid kills and you can already get a great item if it goes for cheap, or you would just need to do some camping/leveling work, or whatever else is posted as a DKP work order.

[cd288]

cd288 is just mad because he was proven wrong in another thread. He hasn't recovered yet, so please ignore his silly comments regarding me.



Gaining DKP can be done casually in big guilds now that the mandatory raid attendance has dropped.

Being in a big guild means you have more opportunities for raid targets because they can kill everything that spawns, and generally take a good portion of the kills. This means you have more chances for a target to be available when you are.

Not only that, but guilds have options to gain DKP outside of raids. You can camp items like Shiny Brass Idol or Scepter of the Forlorn, you can level guild bots, etc.

You can get some great loot for cheap because most of the hardcore raiders are gunning for big ticket items like Vulak loot. They typically think twice about a lot of loot, either because they already have it, or they don't want to shrink their DKP they can dump on something big.

In terms of Epics specifically, it depends on the Epic. Obviously Mage Epic is going to go for a lot, but that is true in all guilds on the server, unless your guild does /random. I have seen Child's Tear go for 10 DKP or less plenty of times, it is practically given away. That is an easy 100k item for real cheap. For reference, you get 1-6 DKP per encounter, depending on what happened. A kill is 3 DKP, so you only need to have attended 4 raid kills and you can already get a great item if it goes for cheap, or you would just need to do some camping/leveling work, or whatever else is posted as a DKP work order.

TLDR:

No raid attendance requirements, but you still have to accumulate a large amount of DKP if you really want to acquire any of the good stuff. And in order to acquire said large amount of DKP you have to spend hours showing up to many raids, leveling guild bots, spend hours tracking spawns, camping super long camps, etc.

If you don't care about getting top end loot then you can raid casually in most of the top raiding guilds (i.e., you can join raids and see content if that's all you care about). If you care about good loot, then no you can't do that "casually"...it will still take a time and effort commitment of many many hours.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

TLDR:

No raid attendance requirements, but you still have to accumulate a large amount of DKP if you really want to acquire any of the good stuff. And in order to acquire said large amount of DKP you have to spend hours showing up to many raids, leveling guild bots, spend hours tracking spawns, camping super long camps, etc.

If you don't care about getting top end loot then you can raid casually in most of the top raiding guilds (i.e., you can join raids and see content if that's all you care about). If you care about good loot, then no you can't do that "casually"...it will still take a time and effort commitment of many many hours.

It depends on what you define as "good stuff". If you want Vulak loot, then yeah you won't be able to get it as a casual player. But this is true of the small guilds too, since they can't kill Vulak. You have no chance at Vulak loot as a casual player either way, unless you get insanely lucky on a server event where they /random all the loot.

Plenty of good gear goes for cheap, and that gear is going to typically be better than what you can get in a casual guild, because they secure less kills on average. This means you have less gear options, and what does drop will be taken by the players with more DKP in those casual guilds anyway. It doesn't take that long to get 100 DKP if you play casually. But it does depend on what you mean by casual. If you are playing 1 hour a week, you aren't really getting much of anything in general, even just doing group content.

[cd288]

As much as I'm not a fan of Toxigen, it looks like you were right with your comment earlier in this thread. It was only a matter of time before DSM got bored in the 4 person caster thread and came in here to try and turn this into a 100 page mess lol

[Kich867]

If you don't care about getting top end loot then you can raid casually in most of the top raiding guilds (i.e., you can join raids and see content if that's all you care about). If you care about good loot, then no you can't do that "casually"...it will still take a time and effort commitment of many many hours.

Anyone who expects to put in significantly less effort and commitment than someone who is a hardcore raider should expect to get less, no? I think it's almost a necessity to assume that a "casual raider" doesn't care about top-end loot. The only game that supports that, sorta, is something like WoW where you can PUG mega easy mode versions of raids with heavily watered down versions of items that those bosses drop, and even then its obviously not top end gear at all.

If you go into it not expecting BIS gear, show up, help where you can, be a useful guildmate, and demonstrate you give a shit...I've never seen a guild not support people like that.

Items rot all the time, or get sent to a guild bank, or get sent to alts, for "casual" players those items are drastically better than anything else they'd be wearing or could farm for.

I guess I just don't envision a "casual raider" being someone who would ever, ever expect or feel entitled to the absolute best gear around, or maybe just me as a person has a more grounded sense of reality. If I were joining a guild and wanted to only occasionally raid, I would never have the expectation of loot. In my times leading raids / raiding guilds in other games, officers knew who were good people who just can't show up as often as everyone else and everyone was supportive of getting them gear when we could.

I don't see that being any less doable in EQ, though honestly I think your biggest hurdle is getting up near 60 as a casual player. Assuming you're already in that level range though, join a small or middle-sized raiding guild and you'll be fine.

[Fammaden]

Everything DSM is saying is true. If you're out there lurking this thread, just give it a try and find out for yourself after you get to 60, or even 55+. Try one of the high end guilds and decide for yourself, worst case scenario you politely back out and go join someone else.

Many of the people who would be asking this question have come to one of the top two raid guilds on either server and suddenly found out that they got a ton of good loot and had a fun time even just playing during primetime weeknights or whenever, contrary to what all the forum posters tried to tell them.

[Keebz]

For a fresh server, the trick to casually raiding is being in most dominant guild. Earn DKP doing scheduled planar clears for 2 years, then dump it while you have uncontested access to VP, ToV and Sleepers for months while the other guilds catch up.

Today on a late stage server, you can still be semi-casual. Just park at ToV and kill whatever during your available time on the weekends. As people drop off, lots of stuff sits up overnight, so Saturday/Sunday mornings are a good time to log on and knock out 4-5 targets, then go about the rest of your day.

In general "casual raiding guilds" are the absolute worst for casual raiding outside the scheduled shit. If you're in one and want to do ToV/VP/etc, get your Epic/HoT/Sky gear then get to a guild with no-lifers who can do the socking for you.

For everyone saying the neck beards will take all your loot for their alts, this is somewhat true. For example, you're gonna have a hard time on a monk bidding against every shaman/druid/necro/etc warm body in your guild. However, you can gear your hybrid to the teeth pretty quickly. On the monk - hybrid spectrum there's a number of other speed options for gearing.

[cd288]

Anyone who expects to put in significantly less effort and commitment than someone who is a hardcore raider should expect to get less, no? I think it's almost a necessity to assume that a "casual raider" doesn't care about top-end loot. The only game that supports that, sorta, is something like WoW where you can PUG mega easy mode versions of raids with heavily watered down versions of items that those bosses drop, and even then its obviously not top end gear at all.

If you go into it not expecting BIS gear, show up, help where you can, be a useful guildmate, and demonstrate you give a shit...I've never seen a guild not support people like that.

Items rot all the time, or get sent to a guild bank, or get sent to alts, for "casual" players those items are drastically better than anything else they'd be wearing or could farm for.

I guess I just don't envision a "casual raider" being someone who would ever, ever expect or feel entitled to the absolute best gear around, or maybe just me as a person has a more grounded sense of reality. If I were joining a guild and wanted to only occasionally raid, I would never have the expectation of loot. In my times leading raids / raiding guilds in other games, officers knew who were good people who just can't show up as often as everyone else and everyone was supportive of getting them gear when we could.

I don't see that being any less doable in EQ, though honestly I think your biggest hurdle is getting up near 60 as a casual player. Assuming you're already in that level range though, join a small or middle-sized raiding guild and you'll be fine.

Oh absolutely. I didn't say people felt entitled to it, just answering the question overall and flagging that it depends on what your goal is. If you just want to raid and see content you can absolutely do that casually. If you want gear on the high end of the spectrum then it's hard to do casually because you're going to have a to spend awhile building up enough DKP to get it...some items do rot but more frequently those are items for lesser used classes (Paladin is a good example) or items restricted to one or two classes and you get lucky and those classes on the raid at the time already have one (but I wouldn't go into raiding expecting that to happen consistently.

Gear that's not as high end is easier to obtain while raiding and you can do that casually (Thurgadin quest armor drops in Kael for example). It all just depends on what your overall goal is.

[cd288]

For a fresh server, the trick to casually raiding is being in most dominant guild. Earn DKP doing scheduled planar clears for 2 years, then dump it while you have uncontested access to VP, ToV and Sleepers for months while the other guilds catch up.

Today on a late stage server, you can still be semi-casual. Just park at ToV and kill whatever during your available time on the weekends. As people drop off, lots of stuff sits up overnight, so Saturday/Sunday mornings are a good time to log on and knock out 4-5 targets, then go about the rest of your day.

In general "casual raiding guilds" are the absolute worst for casual raiding outside the scheduled shit. If you're in one and want to do ToV/VP/etc, get your Epic/HoT/Sky gear then get to a guild with no-lifers who can do the socking for you.

For everyone saying the neck beards will take all your loot for their alts, this is somewhat true. For example, you're gonna have a hard time on a monk bidding against every shaman/druid/necro/etc warm body in your guild. However, you can gear your hybrid to the teeth pretty quickly. On the monk - hybrid spectrum there's a number of other speed options for gearing.

Yup a hybrid (not including Bard here just to be clear) can generally get geared faster for less DKP because there are some good pieces that are limited to their class for instance

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Oh absolutely. I didn't say people felt entitled to it, just answering the question overall and flagging that it depends on what your goal is. If you just want to raid and see content you can absolutely do that casually. If you want gear on the high end of the spectrum then it's hard to do casually because you're going to have a to spend awhile building up enough DKP to get it...some items do rot but more frequently those are items for lesser used classes (Paladin is a good example) or items restricted to one or two classes and you get lucky and those classes on the raid at the time already have one (but I wouldn't go into raiding expecting that to happen consistently.

Gear that's not as high end is easier to obtain while raiding and you can do that casually (Thurgadin quest armor drops in Kael for example). It all just depends on what your overall goal is.

You can get a Child's Tear for like 10 DKP in VQ. That is much better than the No Drop armor pieces, and 10 DKP is really easy to get. You are vastly underestimating what items you can get for cheap.

[cd288]

You can get a Child's Tear for like 10 DKP in VQ. That is much better than the No Drop armor pieces, and 10 DKP is really easy to get. You are vastly underestimating what items you can get for cheap.

Hereeeeeeee we go boys and girls! DSM here to post 1,000 times and turn the thread into a useless discussion about how he's the only person who is right!

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Hereeeeeeee we go boys and girls! DSM here to post 1,000 times and turn the thread into a useless discussion about how he's the only person who is right!

Mega yikes. You should really stop posting stuff like this, it doesn't make you look good, or prove any of your points.

I have been in a big guild for a while. It really isn't as hard as you claim it is, unless your definition of casual is fairly extreme, like playing a few hours a week. Under those circumstances you aren't going to be getting much done in Everquest, whether it be raiding, grouping, or soloing.

[Rick Sanchez]

Problem with reality is it's real OP. In MMO's the more time you spend on the game, the more progress you make. Everquest in general was made with competition in mind with the keyword being "contested". If you genuinely want a EQ raiding experience on here be ready to spend more time than a rational adult with responsibility will allow. I'll admit when this server dropped in 2009 and I heard that midi music again, I was immersed as close as I'll ever be to the first time and I knew I was going to neckbeard hard at that time because before this server nothing even came remotely close. I for sure got my fill here and I am grateful for all the staff(except for amelinda). However, luckily the EQemu community is robust for how old the game is which is nice. So give it a shot and see what happens man /shrug.

[cd288]

Mega yikes. You should really stop posting stuff like this, it doesn't make you look good, or prove any of your points.

I have been in a big guild for a while. It really isn't as hard as you claim it is, unless your definition of casual is fairly extreme, like playing a few hours a week. Under those circumstances you aren't going to be getting much done in Everquest, whether it be raiding, grouping, or soloing.

Oh wow it's almost like the definition of "casual raiding" is a subjective analysis that depends on OP's (or others like OP's) time allotment and overall goals.

So kind of exactly what I've said a couple of times now. Wow imagine that. But since you basically reiterated my earlier point which you're now trying to dispute, I'm sure you will find some way to change your argument as always!

Next on "DSM Ruining Threads"....

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Oh wow it's almost like the definition of "casual raiding" is a subjective analysis that depends on OP's (or others like OP's) time allotment and overall goals.

So kind of exactly what I've said a couple of times now. Wow imagine that. But since you basically reiterated my earlier point which you're now trying to dispute, I'm sure you will find some way to change your argument as always!

Next on "DSM Ruining Threads"....

Mega yikes. Please stop turning threads into an RnF thread because you are angry for no reason. You are the only person ruining threads with this kind of nonsense.

Casual Raiding is generally defined as somebody who attends a few raids when they can. If you are so casual you play 1 hour a week, that doesn't apply to you.

If you can attend 10 raids per year and do a few DKP work orders within that year, you would have enough DKP for a Child's Tear and at least one other item that goes for fairly cheap, like a Vindicator BP. Sounds a lot better than some Thurgadin No Drop Pieces, and sounds like Casual Raiding too.

[cd288]

Lol I cannot believe DSM is now going to argue that someone's definition of casual play in a video game is not their own subjective opinion and that you have to define it his way.

This is amazing

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Lol I cannot believe DSM is now going to argue that someone's definition of casual play in a video game is not their own subjective opinion and that you have to define it his way.

This is amazing

If everything is subjective, how can we have a discussion? There needs to be definitions that people agree upon, or talking is pointless.

If your subjective opinion is that the word "onion" means a tuna sandwich, of course there are going to be communication problems whenever someone says the word "onion".

I am not sure how my definition of casual raiding is wildly off base.

[Kich867]

Problem with reality is it's real OP. In MMO's the more time you spend on the game, the more progress you make. Everquest in general was made with competition in mind with the keyword being "contested".

Just out of curiosity, since I was like, 13 when all this came out...but I look back at EQ and I just think like, was EQ really made with "competition" in mind?

I honestly question if they had anything at all in mind. I always got the impression the devs were just like, "Man idk, sure, here's a fuckin dragon with a bunch of hp and a ton of damage, kill it, don't, we don't care."

Velious feels slightly like an outlier where the content seemed very catered towards the idea of raiding, but classic and kunark seemed sort of like they were just yoloing shit that they thought would be cool.

What I mean by the original question is, did the devs ever actually communicate with the players that this is how they wanted stuff to work or was it more like, "It is what it is because we made it that way and we didn't really have the tools available to do anything more complicated than this"?

[cd288]

Casual P99 Player: "Yeah I plan to raid casually, maybe I'll play an hour or two a week just to see some of the quick FTE kills here and there if I happen to be available at the time."

DSM: "No you can't say that's casual raiding. You can only use the term casual if you attend at least 10 raids per year and also do other DKP work orders within the span of that year. Otherwise don't say your casually raiding. That's the definition I have chosen so please limit your use of the term 'casual raiding' unless you fall within my definition."

Aforementioned Casual P99 Player: "..."

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Casual P99 Player: "Yeah I plan to raid casually, maybe I'll play an hour or two a week just to see some of the quick FTE kills here and there if I happen to be available at the time."

DSM: "No you can't say that's casual raiding. You can only use the term casual if you attend at least 10 raids per year and also do other DKP work orders within the span of that year. Otherwise don't say your casually raiding. That's the definition I have chosen so please limit your use of the term 'casual raiding' unless you fall within my definition."

Aforementioned Casual P99 Player: "..."

I didn't say people must use my definition at all. You have reading comprehension issues, which are also apparent in the other thread. I am not saying this as an insult. I am getting concerned at how you interpret what you are reading.

I explained my definition of casual raiding, and I don't think it is off base. Your definition of somebody hopping on for a few hours a week to catch an FTE could easily get 10 FTE's per year (attending 10 raids). So I am not sure where the disagreement is. Our definitions appear to match just fine. You could also easily do a DKP work order if you had the time on a weekend or something. It isn't like people who play for a few hours a week never get a free weekend to play more.

[Kich867]

Casual P99 Player: "Yeah I plan to raid casually, maybe I'll play an hour or two a week just to see some of the quick FTE kills here and there if I happen to be available at the time."

DSM: "No you can't say that's casual raiding. You can only use the term casual if you attend at least 10 raids per year and also do other DKP work orders within the span of that year. Otherwise don't say your casually raiding. That's the definition I have chosen so please limit your use of the term 'casual raiding' unless you fall within my definition."

Aforementioned Casual P99 Player: "..."

You gotta chill dude, at this point this is entirely on you. He made a super fuckin innocuous statement and you're acting like he shit in your pants or something. He was basically agreeing with you and enhancing your point by elaborating that even some decent items don't cost that much DKP. You desperately need to calm down.

[tadkins]

All of what you guys have said is predicated on the fact that you can even get into a good guild. Something I haven't had a lot of luck with. Been rejected from the "top" guilds and the guilds below them are do-nothings that refuse to play with anyone outside their established inner cliques, and who get stomped when it comes to anything serious by aforementioned top guilds anyway.

Never did end up getting that Concussion spell.

The best guild I've managed to find on this server that actually accepted me was Dial a Port, and well, we all know they're not the type of guild that can muster any kind of epic help.

Just have a hard time seeing this server as being accepting or casual friendly. Years of trying to find a place and a community here have ended in failure. Don't know what else I can do. It took playing on Live, many extra levels, agents of change, mercenaries, and an NPC wizard for me to finally be able to see Plane of Hate. How sad is that?

[Fammaden]

What I mean by the original question is, did the devs ever actually communicate with the players that this is how they wanted stuff to work or was it more like, "It is what it is because we made it that way and we didn't really have the tools available to do anything more complicated than this"?

It was 1000% "it is what it is cause we said so" in the earliest days to the point of being a running joke how out of touch and condescending they were to the players. The playerbase quickly learned things that the devs didn't understand and wouldn't take input on. You can see how it began to shift quickly though, VP was kinda made as the first raiding loot pinata zone and then Velious was just a whole theme park full of them.

(Velious still had the classic feel though IMO since a lot went into lore and zone design that started to be more phoned in as the expansions went on.)

So yeah, they were flying by the seat of their pants. That one streamer dude who was an original dev said they all expected to be out of work in under a year. So half of the weird shit in classic/vanilla/pre-Kunark was just them being like "IDK fuck it put that drop in a level 10 dungeon, whatever".

[cd288]

All of what you guys have said is predicated on the fact that you can even get into a good guild. Something I haven't had a lot of luck with. Been rejected from the "top" guilds and the guilds below them are do-nothings that refuse to play with anyone outside their established inner cliques, and who get stomped when it comes to anything serious by aforementioned top guilds anyway.

Never did end up getting that Concussion spell.

The best guild I've managed to find on this server that actually accepted me was Dial a Port, and well, we all know they're not the type of guild that can muster any kind of epic help.

Just have a hard time seeing this server as being accepting or casual friendly. Years of trying to find a place and a community here have ended in failure. Don't know what else I can do. It took playing on Live, many extra levels, agents of change, mercenaries, and an NPC wizard for me to finally be able to see Plane of Hate. How sad is that?

Not sure if you're on Blue at all but if you are then you could try Kittens. They are pretty welcoming and occasionally compete for top content depending on the day (i.e., how many people they can field on that specific day).

Like any of the other top raiding guilds though, it is going to take awhile to build up DKP to get the good stuff (unless you're a class where drops rot frequently).

[tadkins]

Not sure if you're on Blue at all but if you are then you could try Kittens. They are pretty welcoming and occasionally compete for top content depending on the day (i.e., how many people they can field on that specific day).

Like any of the other top raiding guilds though, it is going to take awhile to build up DKP to get the good stuff (unless you're a class where drops rot frequently).

I thought about trying Blue, but Green is where all of my wealth is, and it's hard to let go of a tink bag, box of abu-kar among many other things.

It doesn't help either that my favorite class (wizard) isn't considered very good and is ostracized to hell and back on this server.

[cd288]

I thought about trying Blue, but Green is where all of my wealth is, and it's hard to let go of a tink bag, box of abu-kar among many other things.

It doesn't help either that my favorite class (wizard) isn't considered very good and is ostracized to hell and back on this server.

I mean for a top raiding guild a Wizard is going to be valuable. The leveling path kind of sucks because you're right it's harder to find groups but you do have value for a top guild (certainly more than some of the other classes).

Wealth is pretty easy to come by in classic EQ with a bit of time. If you're willing to be a little evil in terms of the NPCs you kill you can make good plat just XPing. I mean damn the other day I made a couple thousand platinum in a level just killing some random dwarf guards in BB. Decent gear on Blue is relatively cheap, the guilds are a bit more relaxed in terms of requirements than they are on Green (or than they used to be on Green), and if you're set on playing a caster class you don't really need much gear anyway.

[Kich867]

I thought about trying Blue, but Green is where all of my wealth is, and it's hard to let go of a tink bag, box of abu-kar among many other things.

It doesn't help either that my favorite class (wizard) isn't considered very good and is ostracized to hell and back on this server.

I'm a wizard, I was in DAP, I had a great time with them and I look forward to getting a druid alt in with them some day, and I recently left them to pursue my own raiding goals. I hope I left them on amiable terms, I think I did. Being rejected and ostracized for being a wizard has not been my experience at all.

I've heard some guilds have recently removed their raid attendance requirements, maybe you could look into them? Most of the raiding guilds have recruitment threads on this forum.

[Kich867]

I mean for a top raiding guild a Wizard is going to be valuable. The leveling path kind of sucks because you're right it's harder to find groups but you do have value for a top guild (certainly more than some of the other classes).

It's definitely boring, but wizard quadding is _pretty_ dope. I guess not being in a guild though can make it pretty unfun. At least if you've got g-chat you can talk to people between pulls.

[-TK-]

I thought about trying Blue, but Green is where all of my wealth is, and it's hard to let go of a tink bag, box of abu-kar among many other things.

It doesn't help either that my favorite class (wizard) isn't considered very good and is ostracized to hell and back on this server.

Wizards are in demand for raiding just FYI. Train-outs, TL's, and DPS are all important and welcomed for raiding. I don't think they are really ostracized except by a fraction of people that think all wizards are lazy in groups because they just med, nuke, and afk while refusing to provide any other utility for the group. If you fall into that category of wizard, then I can understand thinking they are ostracized. My friend just got his to 51 in short order through a mix of grouping, duo's, and quading and is having a blast.

I don't know the guild dynamic on Green or how Kingdom does their recruiting, but I'm also not surprised that a level 20 character with no reputation or higher characters wasn't greated very enthusiastically by a top raid guild. The road to 60, especially on a first toon, is usually long and arduous and more people never make it 60 here than do. I'm in the camp that the best thing you can do for any toon to increase your utility and usefulness is to get 60 and then really start worrying about raiding and gear (more hp at 60, mana, more spells, more likely to resist AE's, etc..). A better path to go would be to get into a leveling/social guild and make some friends and memories on the ride to 56+, and then worry about a raid guild. With this path you'll most likely meet some people that will help you choose which raiding guild you want to join. There's groups of people/friends from guilds like TSS and Kittens or Ex Astra that apply 'together' to raid guilds all of the time.

Just my 2 cp.

And as far as casual raiding? I was able to go to my son's baseball game, come home, and hit 4 raid targets in the 2-3 hours before dinner. That's pretty casual to me. Sometimes my monthly raid attendence is 25%, and sometimes it's 1% and no one has ever said a word to me. Life happens and even the top raid guilds now are just happy that you show up when you can and play your classes well.

[tadkins]

It's definitely boring, but wizard quadding is _pretty_ dope. I guess not being in a guild though can make it pretty unfun. At least if you've got g-chat you can talk to people between pulls.

I actually enjoyed quadding, even if I sucked at it. Died more often than I care to admit during the TD portion, those backstabbing birds got me quite a bit. But that was mostly when the place was infested with druids and I had to dig deep high into the tree to grab a pull.

Like I don't mind soloing to level, it just seriously sucks when you need things that require a group like the staff of temp flux, the acumen mask, the concussion spell, etc, and not a single person out there is willing to help or invite you to anything. If I couldn't get help for those, what chance did I ever have of getting an epic? Those were the seriously depressing moments I faced on this server. There were moments where I did struggle to level on my own, after a string of bad kites and deaths, and I'd ask my guild "hey can I join your hole group or something for a bit?" and they'd respond with crickets.

[tadkins]

Wizards are in demand for raiding just FYI. Train-outs, TL's, and DPS are all important and welcomed for raiding. I don't think they are really ostracized except by a fraction of people that think all wizards are lazy in groups because they just med, nuke, and afk while refusing to provide any other utility for the group. If you fall into that category of wizard, then I can understand thinking they are ostracized. My friend just got his to 51 in short order through a mix of grouping, duo's, and quading and is having a blast.

I don't know the guild dynamic on Green or how Kingdom does their recruiting, but I'm also not surprised that a level 20 character with no reputation or higher characters wasn't greated very enthusiastically by a top raid guild. The road to 60, especially on a first toon, is usually long and arduous and more people never make it 60 here than do. I'm in the camp that the best thing you can do for any toon to increase your utility and usefulness is to get 60 and then really start worrying about raiding and gear (more hp at 60, mana, more spells, more likely to resist AE's, etc..). A better path to go would be to get into a leveling/social guild and make some friends and memories on the ride to 56+, and then worry about a raid guild. With this path you'll most likely meet some people that will help you choose which raiding guild you want to join. There's groups of people/friends from guilds like TSS and Kittens or Ex Astra that apply 'together' to raid guilds all of the time.

Just my 2 cp.

What does a wizard do besides nuke, root for CC, have an evac loaded, and occasionally stun cleric mobs? Honest question, because that's what I always thought to do in a group (if I were ever invited to one).

But yeah, I was just trying to make some friends. I never had any luck in the lower end guilds like Castle, FoH and FoW, who basically didn't really care about anyone but their inner cliques. So I thought I'd try Kingdom. Wasn't looking for anything but people to talk to, and possibly make some friends by the time I got up there to raiding. So it did hurt a little when they flat out rejected me. Pretty sure Seal Team also straight up laughed at my attempts to join them too.

So you can understand why I feel a bit jaded when it comes to this community. What is even left after all that?

I could potentially join Blue and try my luck there, but I'm also afraid of the same things happening, just in a newbie robe, no gear and no money on top of that.

[-TK-]

Honest question, but what does a wizard do besides nuke, root for CC, have an evac loaded, and occasionally stun cleric mobs? Honest question, because that's what I always thought to do in a group (if I were ever invited to one).

You're on the right track with that for groups, imo. Help CC, nuke, stun, and evac are all great. Wars in groups love it when you root mobs 99% of the time because they can use the proximity mechanic to keep aggro. If you get in a group just let them know you're available to help CC and will watch for when stuns are needed. You could also find a fun duo or trio to level with. It's great exp and will keep you a little busier than a full group might. I will defer to the wizard pros around here for good solo/duo tips.

When you raid you can learn to do train outs which are critical to raid success nowadays, you can TL monks and debuffers during pulls and engages to help make plays happen, and every non-caster in the raid is looking for a TL after the kill to move on to the next target.

It does take a while to make those friendships on a new server, especially if your playtime is limited, but don't be afraid to use your friend's list and hit up people you might have leveled or grouped with when you can play to see what they are up to. Reputation matters a lot here more than live, and people will always tend to gravitate towards the friendly and helpful players they meet. Sometimes I just log on and check my friends list to see how people are doing or what they are into if I don't have long.

[tadkins]

You're on the right track with that for groups, imo. Help CC, nuke, stun, and evac are all great. Wars in groups love it when you root mobs 99% of the time because they can use the proximity mechanic to keep aggro. If you get in a group just let them know you're available to help CC and will watch for when stuns are needed. You could also find a fun duo or trio to level with. It's great exp and will keep you a little busier than a full group might. I will defer to the wizard pros around here for good solo/duo tips.

When you raid you can learn to do train outs which are critical to raid success nowadays, you can TL monks and debuffers during pulls and engages to help make plays happen, and every non-caster in the raid is looking for a TL after the kill to move on to the next target.

It does take a while to make those friendships on a new server, especially if your playtime is limited, but don't be afraid to use your friend's list and hit up people you might have leveled or grouped with when you can play to see what they are up to. Reputation matters a lot here more than live, and people will always tend to gravitate towards the friendly and helpful players they meet. Sometimes I just log on and check my friends list to see how people are doing or what they are into if I don't have long.
This may incriminate me a bit by saying this, but I honestly hate duoing. It's all of the downsides to grouping with no real noticable upside. Exp feels like it slows to a trickle in a duo. I like soloing because I can alt-tab or AFK when I need to in between med breaks, but I feel like I can't really do that in a duo. I have to sit there and entertain my partner. There doesn't seem to be a lot I can accomplish with a duo that can't be done solo; if duoing meant I could go do a cool quest or an epic or something, that'd be different.

I just prefer to either solo, or be deep in a dungeon somewhere with a full group. Is that wrong?

[-TK-]

This may incriminate me a bit by saying this, but I honestly hate duoing. It's all of the downsides to grouping with no real noticable upside. Exp feels like it slows to a trickle in a duo. I like soloing because I can alt-tab or AFK when I need to in between med breaks, but I feel like I can't really do that in a duo; I have to sit there and entertain my partner.

I just prefer to either solo, or be deep in a dungeon somewhere with a full group. Is that wrong?

I wouldn't say it's wrong, it's just the way you like to play. I will say that P99, Blue at least, does tend to favor duo's and trio's. It has become my favorite way to level alts and it can make for good friendships as it's more personal than a full group. It usually keeps the players a little more engaged and results in faster exp in my experience. I won't speak too much about duo/trio wizzies, because I frankly just don't have the experience as I treat the wiz like a solo class, but maybe others have good recommendations for spicing up wizzy duos/trios.

My biggest recommendation is just not to worry about raiding until you're at least 51. Before that, play how you would like, meet people (even other soloers), say hi and check in on the people you've met, and just enjoy the ride. It's often overlooked here because Live tends to be a lot less social in my experience, but being social here opens the doors to pretty much everything. You're bound to run into some assholes here and there for sure, but in my decade+ of time here my positive experiences far outweigh the negative ones.

[tadkins]

I wouldn't say it's wrong, it's just the way you like to play. I will say that P99, Blue at least, does tend to favor duo's and trio's. It has become my favorite way to level alts and it can make for good friendships as it's more personal than a full group. It usually keeps the players a little more engaged and results in faster exp in my experience. I won't speak too much about duo/trio wizzies, because I frankly just don't have the experience as I treat the wiz like a solo class, but maybe others have good recommendations for spicing up wizzy duos/trios.

My biggest recommendation is just not to worry about raiding until you're at least 51. Before that, play how you would like, meet people (even other soloers), say hi and check in on the people you've met, and just enjoy the ride. It's often overlooked here because Live tends to be a lot less social in my experience, but being social here opens the doors to pretty much everything. You're bound to run into some assholes here and there for sure, but in my decade+ of time here my positive experiences far outweigh the negative ones.

True that. For the most part, while I did like to solo, I'd always speak up in guild chat and respond to port requests within the guild. I always kept my bind spot close to wherever I was hunting for that reason.

Can't recall a time where I was actively unfriendly to anyone, just kind of a quiet and solitary person I suppose.

I was in a raiding guild for a bit while I was low 50s, but they were actively raiding as 55+ and not really taking me. This was around Velious launch and they had declared that they weren't going to do any more of the lower raids, like PoH/PoS, that I could have been a part of. Refused to help with anything, like the aforementioned Concussion spell questline when I admitted I had never been to KC or CoM. They even laughed at me when I asked what the "Plate room" in Kael was (I honestly thought it was the spot behind Tormax's throne where plate wearers got their quest armors). Just felt ostracized and lonely in that guild, and I ultimately gave up and left.

Maybe that guild was just an outlier though, a single bad egg in a pool of good ones?

[Kich867]

I mean that sounds like a pretty unfriendly guild, I've not had that experience at all. I also though tend to stay away from the massive guilds.

For several reasons: it's harder to make an impact and create a reputation for yourself in a large guild, it's less personable since there's just too many people to keep track of, and idk this is just speculation but I get the vibe with those that it can get kinda top-heavy cliquey if only because--for the same reasons its hard for newer people to establish a report, it's hard for the old guard to build new relationships with that many people. I don't think it's necessarily malicious all the time, there's just only so many people you can really keep track of in your social net.

I look for small to medium sized guilds because they're small enough to kinda know everybody and that just makes things easier I think.

You could also maybe look for up and coming guilds, or leveling guilds looking to turn into raiding guilds with their higher level members, stuff like that. Those can be fun. I briefly joined Pals on a character and everyone seemed super nice there and it sounded like they were looking to start getting into raiding.

[tadkins]

I mean that sounds like a pretty unfriendly guild, I've not had that experience at all. I also though tend to stay away from the massive guilds.

You can judge for yourself, it was <Force of Will>.

But yep, I'm tempted to try one more time as a wizard on Blue. Just not sure I can take the disappointment a second time lols.

[Abukii]

<Good Guys> has NO RA requirements and has brand spanking new system you can join so you don't have to bid 3+years of DKP in Kingdom, while it's made up of former ST/FoW we are starting things off better and realizing our mistakes.

[cd288]

It's definitely boring, but wizard quadding is _pretty_ dope. I guess not being in a guild though can make it pretty unfun. At least if you've got g-chat you can talk to people between pulls.

Yeah quadding is fun for a bit killing 4 mobs at a time, but it gets old by like the 50s IMO

[Kich867]

Yeah quadding is fun for a bit killing 4 mobs at a time, but it gets old by like the 50s IMO

The efficiency nerd in me can't really ignore how absurdly dope the xp is doing it sadly. That and I don't have any keys to the major dungeons, but that's probably because I'm too busy quadding all day XD. Knocked out level 54 in a couple days, it would've been faster though, I'm just dumb and thought CS Wyverns ranged from 38-41, not 38-42, so I thought at 54 it'd be like almost fully green...I ended up spending like 60% of the level camping suits and it's just a way, way slower camp compared to CS where I pretty regularly could just port out to get C2/POTG and chain quad wyverns.

[cd288]

The efficiency nerd in me can't really ignore how absurdly dope the xp is doing it sadly. That and I don't have any keys to the major dungeons, but that's probably because I'm too busy quadding all day XD.

I mean it’s really not that efficient compared to other classes though. At least not when you get into the higher levels where you don’t have a multitude of spawns and you become more limited by respawn time than anything else. Killing 4 mobs every like 15 minutes ends up being slower than a lot of other classes can level.

That being said it’s great if you want to kill 4 mobs and then go do something else for like 15 minutes until respawn

[Kich867]

I mean it’s really not that efficient compared to other classes though. At least not when you get into the higher levels where you don’t have a multitude of spawns and you become more limited by respawn time than anything else. Killing 4 mobs every like 15 minutes ends up being slower than a lot of other classes can level.

That being said it’s great if you want to kill 4 mobs and then go do something else for like 15 minutes until respawn

Totally, at 57 given that it's basically just Suits for quadding that's a pretty slow camp I guess...but I mean,

Level 53
Start: [Sat Sep 10 11:19:20 2022]
End: [Sat Sep 10 16:53:40 2022]

Getting through level 53 in 5 1/2 hours isn't bad? Maybe it is idk, seemed fine to me.

[cd288]

Totally, at 57 given that it's basically just Suits for quadding that's a pretty slow camp I guess...but I mean,

Level 53
Start: [Sat Sep 10 11:19:20 2022]
End: [Sat Sep 10 16:53:40 2022]

Getting through level 53 in 5 1/2 hours isn't bad? Maybe it is idk, seemed fine to me.

Well there was a 50% EXP bonus going on I believe, haha. The staff didn't turn it off for a few days after it was supposed to be turned off on Wednesday. I blew through 53 and 54 on an alt last week as well.

[Kich867]

Well there was a 50% EXP bonus going on I believe, haha. The staff didn't turn it off for a few days after it was supposed to be turned off on Wednesday. I blew through 53 and 54 on an alt last week as well.

Nah it was off by then that was saturday, they didn't leave it on for a full week. I did 40-51 though sunday and monday with the XP bonus, that was great. Then I was burnt the fuck out from quadding that long so I took a break until the next weekend.

Quadding at active camps like Wyverns is only limited by your mana, which you can go fetch POTG / C2 regularly since you can just port straight back to CS. I had pretty wide windows during those 5 hours where I was the only person-ish there camping wyverns. That and for some reason no one else was taking the tower 7 wyverns spawn so I pretty frequently had an extra 2 packs that no one else bothered with.

If you can quad at active camps like that, or FV Drolvargs, or LOIO bloodgills (basically "active" camp since you just barely get the mana for your next quad if you have POTG on and you alternate between the two pairs in front / back of the temple thing underwater), its stupid fast. I suppose my results are also leaning towards "ideal conditions", I had virtually no competition for my spots from 40-55 which probably isn't typical.

Suits though, or any camp you have to wait for spawns on, for sure, I bet an enchanter or necro can do way better with charm kiting. If they can kill more than one mob every like 3 1/2 minutes they beat quadding in the high 50's probably.

[cd288]

Nah it was off by then that was saturday, they didn't leave it on for a full week. I did 40-51 though sunday and monday with the XP bonus, that was great. Then I was burnt the fuck out from quadding that long so I took a break until the next weekend.

Quadding at active camps like Wyverns is only limited by your mana, which you can go fetch POTG / C2 regularly since you can just port straight back to CS. I had pretty wide windows during those 5 hours where I was the only person-ish there camping wyverns. That and for some reason no one else was taking the tower 7 wyverns spawn so I pretty frequently had an extra 2 packs that no one else bothered with.

If you can quad at active camps like that, or FV Drolvargs, or LOIO bloodgills (basically "active" camp since you just barely get the mana for your next quad if you have POTG on and you alternate between the two pairs in front / back of the temple thing underwater), its stupid fast. I suppose my results are also leaning towards "ideal conditions", I had virtually no competition for my spots from 40-55 which probably isn't typical.

Suits though, or any camp you have to wait for spawns on, for sure, I bet an enchanter or necro can do way better with charm kiting. If they can kill more than one mob every like 3 1/2 minutes they beat quadding in the high 50's probably.

Nah check Discord. Blistig turned it off on Sunday. So it was on while you were doing level 53 (accidentally it seems because it was originally supposed to be turned off on 9/7 but didn't get turned off until 9/11 based on Blistig's comment).

[Kich867]

Nah check Discord. Blistig turned it off on Sunday. So it was on while you were doing level 53 (accidentally it seems because it was originally supposed to be turned off on 9/7 but didn't get turned off until 9/11 based on Blistig's comment).

Wild, so that'd be.. 8h 15m then to get through 53 without it. I'm still pretty happy with that. I assumed it was off since my XP in 54 was the same from 9/10 to 9/12 but that's probably just the hell level talking, each quad was always between 1-2%.

[cd288]

Yeah it helped with the hell level for me but not immensely.

But yeah 8-9 hours in 53 is not bad in terms of total time solo

[unsunghero]

Quadders always stealing my birds in TD

I give them clarity bc I buff everyone but that makes them able to steal more birds :(

But I still do it

[Fammaden]

Didn't know anyone except quadders even killed them.

[PatChapp]

I recently leveled a toon with a small group of my homies on the spirocs, not a bad spot for a 2-4 man group

[Kich867]

I recently leveled a toon with a small group of my homies on the spirocs, not a bad spot for a 2-4 man group

Spirocs are dope yo.

[unsunghero]

Spirocs are dope yo.

Shhh what spirocs

There’s a weird situation where on the top of the hill there is a “warrior” one, but isn’t a warrior at all but a shaman. Can ToT then charm him, and he’s the meanest out of all them. He hastes himself and slows targets. Fun little pet, not as exp efficient as reverse charming tho

Oh was gonna say I would see sk and mages solo’ing there often

[unsunghero]

Can replace WoW with EQ prior

Toilet chair is important

[Ooloo]

That WoW episode of southpark where cartman's mom comes down to allow him to shit into a bucket while he continues playing is still the funniest thing I've ever seen

My mistake, it was a bedpan.

[Ravager]

lol someones salty they do absolutely nothing for a raid guild and expect loot

I don't expect shit because I'm not wasting my time on that clownshow. Pretend it matters though if it makes you feel better about the sunk costs of obtaining imaginary things.

[Toxigen]

I don't expect shit because I'm not wasting my time on that clownshow. Pretend it matters though if it makes you feel better about the sunk costs of obtaining imaginary things.

Oh don't get me wrong. It certainly is a waste of time. A lot of folks waste away on a couch watching garbage television, too. However, if we're going with that route of logic, logging into p99 at all falls under that same roof.

Just don't be salty. I'm a simple retired elf offering objective forum commentary.

The point is dkp is as fair as it can get. You certainly can get very good gear without sinking much time in, especially how easy it is to get on a raid log without doing much of anything. If the playmakers, trackers, time-sinkers, etc were not rewarded for their efforts the entire raid guild system as it stands on p99 would fall apart.

Are you going to be full BiS with 2% RA? Absolutely not. You can, however, get class-changing (or at least insane upgrade) items without the huge time sink. Alternatively, there is the option of bidding only droppable loot. From a platinum-per-hour standpoint, it can be extremely lucrative if your objective is to fund a mega twink instead of gearing out a 60.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Oh don't get me wrong. It certainly is a waste of time. A lot of folks waste away on a couch watching garbage television, too. However, if we're going with that route of logic, logging into p99 at all falls under that same roof.

Just don't be salty. I'm a simple retired elf offering objective forum commentary.

The point is dkp is as fair as it can get. You certainly can get very good gear without sinking much time in, especially how easy it is to get on a raid log without doing much of anything. If the playmakers, trackers, time-sinkers, etc were not rewarded for their efforts the entire raid guild system as it stands on p99 would fall apart.

Are you going to be full BiS with 2% RA? Absolutely not. You can, however, get class-changing (or at least insane upgrade) items without the huge time sink. Alternatively, there is the option of bidding only droppable loot. From a platinum-per-hour standpoint, it can be extremely lucrative if your objective is to fund a mega twink instead of gearing out a 60.

100% agree. DKP is the fairest method there is. You can still get good loot for cheap. Will it be Vulak loot? No, but it will be better than the droppable stuff you buy in EC.

The reason why /random guilds never get big is because the players who put in the most effort get screwed over by RNG, while casual/new players get lucky with great loot.

There just isn't any incentive for your best players to stick around. They end up joining a DKP guild, and then your guild has no more good players. At that point you become just another very casual guild.

[cd288]

If you really want to be fair then certain people on the raid should get more DKP than others like per hour/kill etc.

Most of classic EQ raiding is everyone standing around while a select few individuals execute pull strategies and things to make sure the raid goes smoothly. If anything those people should get first dibs on drops and if they don't want it then just /random for all the warm bodies.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

If you really want to be fair then certain people on the raid should get more DKP than others like per hour/kill etc.

Most of classic EQ raiding is everyone standing around while a select few individuals execute pull strategies and things to make sure the raid goes smoothly. If anything those people should get first dibs on drops and if they don't want it then just /random for all the warm bodies.

That is an interesting idea. However, with the clickie nerfs, pushing mob nerf, and rooted dragons, you need warm bodies now more than ever. Any guild who doesn't reward the warm bodies is going to end up not having the numbers for kills that need the zerg.

I would predict that if one of the two big guilds did this, that big guild would just bleed players to the other big guild. All big guilds would need to agree to use such a system simultanously. I don't think that will happen.

[Ripqozko]

DSM bout to shit up this thread since he said he won't post in other, Inc 300 pages. Inb4 just trying to prove a point and everyone is a troll.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

DSM bout to shit up this thread since he said he won't post in other, Inc 300 pages. Inb4 just trying to prove a point and everyone is a troll.

Please stop turning threads into RnF threads with your trolling. You have embarassed yourself enough.

I will not be responding to another troll post of yours here.

[Ripqozko]

Please stop turning threads into RnF threads with your trolling. You have embarassed yourself enough.

I will not be responding to another troll post of yours here.

Called it

[Kich867]

I mean that's also not that fair of a system to begin with...I think this should be kind of obvious. Only a select few are selected to perform the duties you're holding to a higher regard. There's no way the rest of the guild could participate in that if they wanted to, due to the restriction of how many people can actually be involved in those jobs.

You could show up every raid, on time, maybe early, bring all your required items, never miss a beat in what you're supposed to do, always be there contributing, and not receive this preferential treatment, not because you aren't a good player, but because you didn't pick a class that does that or someone else is already doing it?

[DeathsSilkyMist]

I mean that's also not that fair of a system to begin with...I think this should be kind of obvious. Only a select few are selected to perform the duties you're holding to a higher regard. There's no way the rest of the guild could participate in that if they wanted to, due to the restriction of how many people can actually be involved in those jobs.

You could show up every raid, on time, maybe early, bring all your required items, never miss a beat in what you're supposed to do, always be there contributing, and not receive this preferential treatment, not because you aren't a good player, but because you didn't pick a class that does that or someone else is already doing it?

Agreed. It's closer to a loot council at that point, which also turns out poorly.

That's why I am confident any guild who tries to implement such a system is just going to lose it's warm bodies, which are still necessary. Now more than ever due to the clickie nerfs, push interrupt nerf, and rooted dragons.

[cyxthryth]

Agreed. It's closer to a loot council at that point, which also turns out poorly.

That's why I am confident any guild who tries to implement such a system is just going to lose it's warm bodies, which are still necessary. Now more than ever due to the clickie nerfs, push interrupt nerf, and rooted dragons.

Agreed.

[PlsNoBan]

Agreed. It's closer to a loot council at that point, which also turns out poorly.

That's why I am confident any guild who tries to implement such a system is just going to lose it's warm bodies, which are still necessary. Now more than ever due to the clickie nerfs, push interrupt nerf, and rooted dragons.

I also agree with DSM!

https://i.imgur.com/yg5xwxF.gif

[Toxigen]

I mean that's also not that fair of a system to begin with...I think this should be kind of obvious. Only a select few are selected to perform the duties you're holding to a higher regard. There's no way the rest of the guild could participate in that if they wanted to, due to the restriction of how many people can actually be involved in those jobs.

You could show up every raid, on time, maybe early, bring all your required items, never miss a beat in what you're supposed to do, always be there contributing, and not receive this preferential treatment, not because you aren't a good player, but because you didn't pick a class that does that or someone else is already doing it?

This is entirely untrue and its very clear you have zero experience in a high end raid guild.

The opportunities to get DKP are aplenty. If you can't figure it out, then you don't deserve BIS loot.

You're taking points from DSM who has never been a raid playmaker, ever.

[PlsNoBan]

This is entirely untrue and its very clear you have zero experience in a high end raid guild.

The opportunities to get DKP are aplenty. If you can't figure it out, then you don't deserve BIS loot.

You're taking points from DSM who has never been a raid playmaker, ever.

In his defense. Raiding on p99 as a shaman is kinda stupid. You can't really do anything but be a buff/malo/slow bot and a mediocre spot healer. What kinda plays are you gonna make? Not like u can root rot adds in raids. "Ooh shamanguy cast slow on that mob so good". I haven't really raided since some of these changes to clickies and other shit but I assume it hasn't changed the fact that basically the only semi skilled position in a raid group is the pullers. Maybe tanks now that they can't just throw infinite mallets at everything? You could train monkeys to run a CH rotation or mash an /assist and cast nuke or backstab button. EQ raid mechanics in classic basically topped out at "run out of the AE sometimes" and audio triggers/GINA trivializes that.

Unless we're talking about tracking/FTE racing and other dumb things exclusive to P99 raiding. I guess that's a different story. I guess I assumed you were talking about raid performance and not all the utter nonsense that comes before you actually kill stuff.

[Gloomlord]

All of my characters are guildless at the moment. And from the looks of it, it seems it's going to stay that way.

All of this can be remedied with instances, though it's not "classic".

[Solist]

Any class can be a playmaker, it's all in the prep.

DA earrings help, so casters have a benefit.

Sneak and FD help, so monks sometimes have a benefit, rarely.

Selo's for some reason we still allow, so obviously it rules out everything else when it matters.

The player make the difference, put Mjrn or Luddo on a naked 60 human warrior with a DA idol and some sow pots and wands, he'll outplay everyone in this thread.

[Connor]

I've had no problems at all on green joining raids as a casual player.

[Keebz]

It should also be noted, you can generally earn DKP on your own schedule through non-raid activities like leveling bots (shared guild chars), farming idols, etc. This way you can have decent buying power for the raids you do attend.

[Bodybagger]

That is an interesting idea. However, with the clickie nerfs, pushing mob nerf, and rooted dragons, you need warm bodies now more than ever. Any guild who doesn't reward the warm bodies is going to end up not having the numbers for kills that need the zerg.

I would predict that if one of the two big guilds did this, that big guild would just bleed players to the other big guild. All big guilds would need to agree to use such a system simultaneously. I don't think that will happen.

He's right you know... just look at what happened to <Safe Space>, bumped down to draco and 2 golems only on a quake :eek: I guess the flip side is people can't DKP dump and run if they got no loot to bid on #bigbrain guess they're lucky kingdom needs warm bodies too :confused:

[DeathsSilkyMist]

This is entirely untrue and its very clear you have zero experience in a high end raid guild.

The opportunities to get DKP are aplenty. If you can't figure it out, then you don't deserve BIS loot.

You're taking points from DSM who has never been a raid playmaker, ever.

What are you talking about? I was agreeing with him about the part where you need to reward people with DKP.

If I understood his top point correctly, he just means not everybody can be consistently able to participlate as a playmaker due to lower playtime. In that case, you couldn't make it into the ranks of the top players who get first dibs in the system cd288 was proposing.

I already agreed with your points about DKP being superior, and that there are plenty of ways to get DKP, even outside of raiding.

I can only assume you missed cd288's post, which is what we were discussing. We weren't discussing a normal DKP guild where everybody gets rewarded with DKP and anybody can step up to be a playmaker.

[Kich867]

This is entirely untrue and its very clear you have zero experience in a high end raid guild.

The opportunities to get DKP are aplenty. If you can't figure it out, then you don't deserve BIS loot.

You're taking points from DSM who has never been a raid playmaker, ever.

...What are you even talking about? I was responding to someone saying that pullers should get more DKP than anyone else in order to be more fair. Those people typically get rewarded in other ways anyways they don't also need more DKP than people because they happened to be in the right place at the right time or picked the right class.

If I understood his top point correctly, he just means not everybody can be consistently able to participlate as a playmaker due to lower playtime.

To be clear, I wanted to specifically not say it in reference to play time. Some people will never get those opportunities because of the class they chose or that the guild already has established pullers or whatever, you could show up to every raid and be a great representative to your class and you'd be objectively in a worse off position for no reason. That's why rewarding a puller with more DKP or something is stupid. That's all.

[PlsNoBan]

Any class can be a playmaker, it's all in the prep.

DA earrings help, so casters have a benefit.

Sneak and FD help, so monks sometimes have a benefit, rarely.

Selo's for some reason we still allow, so obviously it rules out everything else when it matters.

The player make the difference, put Mjrn or Luddo on a naked 60 human warrior with a DA idol and some sow pots and wands, he'll outplay everyone in this thread.

Unless we're talking about tracking/FTE racing and other dumb things exclusive to P99 raiding. I guess that's a different story. I guess I assumed you were talking about raid performance and not all the utter nonsense that comes before you actually kill stuff.

Call me a boomer I guess. I miss the days when a skilled player meant someone that knew their class well and performed the role of its class at a high level. It's such a shame that the endgame has been reduced to who can farm more abusable clickies and practicing optimal race lines to tag mobs first and scripting and screensharing and account sharing trackers.etc.etc.etc

It's a fucking disgrace imo. P99 endgame raiders (and especially the heavy hitters in the FTE/Racing/Tracking game) have some serious stockholm syndrome

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Call me a boomer I guess. I miss the days when a skilled player meant someone that knew their class well and performed the role of its class at a high level. It's such a shame that the endgame has been reduced to who can farm more abusable clickies and practicing optimal race lines to tag mobs first and scripting and screensharing and account sharing trackers.etc.etc.etc

It's a fucking disgrace imo. P99 endgame raiders (and especially the heavy hitters in the FTE/Racing/Tracking game) have some serious stockholm syndrome

I think most people on P99 miss the 1999-2001 live days, where people didn't know much about the game. This allowed raiding to be more interesting, because your guild had to figure out the encounter while competing with other guilds who weren't sharing the information. Plus you needed to prepare for the next expansion. In that situation you don't really need all of the P99 rules/features that try and make raiding harder/fairer.

Unfortunately you cannot put the genie back in the bottle when it comes to game knowledge. I can't see any other way for Everquest raiding to end up in this scenario where you don't have instancing. Everybody knows how to beat the encounter, and at least two guilds always have the numbers available via batphone to kill the encounter. Racing and tracking is how you get the mob first, and FTE lets everybody know who tagged the mob.

Custom content would probably be the only way to change the current raiding system, but it almost certainly would fail. People just don't like custom content that much, which is why all of the EQEMU custom content servers have a fraction of the population of P99.

[PlsNoBan]

I think most people on P99 miss the 1999-2001 live days, where people didn't know much about the game. This allowed raiding to be more interesting, because your guild had to figure out the encounter while competing with other guilds who weren't sharing the information. Plus you needed to prepare for the next expansion. In that situation you don't really need all of the P99 rules/features that try and make raiding harder/fairer.

Unfortunately you cannot put the genie back in the bottle when it comes to game knowledge. I can't see any other way for Everquest raiding to end up in this scenario where you don't have instancing. Everybody knows how to beat the encounter, and at least two guilds always have the numbers available via batphone to kill the encounter. Racing and tracking is how you get the mob first, and FTE lets everybody know who tagged the mob.

Custom content would probably be the only way to change the current raiding system, but it almost certainly would fail. People just don't like custom content that much, which is why all of the EQEMU custom content servers have a fraction of the population of P99.

I think you're right for the most part. There's certainly no putting the genie back in the bottle with regard to game knowledge. I do believe there are a variety of changes that could easily be made to make the endgame less toxic and stupid and not just instances. They might be less classic? But honestly at this point how "classic" does p99 endgame raiding feel? It feels so different than classic that it might as well be a different game.

I've been a big proponent of either completely removing variance or making it significantly shorter windows. What good does having 16h windows do for anyone? It rewards unhealthy extreme neckbeard behavior and abusing account sharing/screen sharing/scripting. None of which is objectively a good thing or classic in any sense. Either 0 variance or windows of 1-2 hours would go a long way to reducing the extreme timesink barriers and reducing the need for scripts/account/screen sharing. I feel like most people that play this game can stomach tracking for an hour or two. People wouldn't be earning extra DKP to waste their lives staring at a screen for 16 hours straight for the 92389238524th spawn of the same dragon/giant/whatever we've all killed on this server time and time again. This only helps lessen the stupidity of the tracking portion of endgame and doesn't address FTE/Racing which I also think is terrible. Figuring out a better system than FTE/Racing is a slightly harder problem though. On paper I think enforced rotations is probably the most fair and least likely to result in toxic behavior but it has it's own share of issues. People would inevitably just splinter into like 30 different 30man guilds instead of having like 4-5 guilds of 100+ players. You could artificially limit how many guilds can be eligible for the rotation and just tell players if they want to be part of the rotation they need to join/merge into one of those guilds. That's not a perfect solution by any means. I do personally think it's better than encouraging guilds to spend HOURS and HOURS practicing race lines through raid zones and scripting to move off the line quicker and endless farming of otherwise unnecessary clickies and all the dumb shit that happens in this current system.

Another possible solution would be just making raid mobs spawn far more frequently. If every raid mob was on a 24h repop timer I suspect that a much larger variety of guilds would get much more valuable targets on a more regular basis than they do now. What's the negative? People get gear faster? Who cares? P99 is a non profit project right? Not like they have paying customers they need to retain to pay for operations right? What's wrong with making some changes to allow people to actually participate in the endgame? This isn't supposed to be such a competitive game. PvP servers are dead for a reason. Not to mention how many more players would they gain if the endgame was a bit more approachable for the masses? I basically entirely gave up on P99 endgame in it's current state. If some big changes were made to make it less toxic I would certainly consider getting back into it myself. I'm sure I'm not the only one. Every one of us as human beings only gets a certain amount of time to live our lives. I'm not one to shame people for choosing to spend their time however they like. I've spent a disgusting amount of my life playing video games of various kinds. Do you really want to spend DAYS of your life staring at a screen to "track" a 1999 pixel dragon and not even actually playing the game the entire time for a little extra DKP? Does anyone actually enjoy this?

[DeathsSilkyMist]

I've been a big proponent of either completely removing variance or making it significantly shorter windows.


I agree with removing variance. It isn't classic. It would make the game more predicable for the smaller guilds. I think this would help smaller guilds compete if done right. For this to work, the devs would need to always quake at peak play times. Otherwise random quakes could put the raid boss respawn time at 2am, which would remove small guilds from the equation again.

I disagree with shorter spawn times though. Scarcity of loot is one of the major factors keeping P99 going for so many years. Just look at how the TLP's bleed players with instancing. When you make loot too easy to get, your player turnover increases. P99 can't really afford that, since there isn't a lot of turnover to begin with. You need to keep the players you have.

Honestly I think P99 would be much better if they just removed a lot of the non-classic changes. No spawn variance, no clickie nerfs, no push interrupt nerf, and no rooted dragons. This would allow small guilds to compete again, and we would have like 5 or 6 guilds going after a target instead of 2.

[PlsNoBan]

player turnover increases. P99 can't really afford that

Why? Again this is non profit. Their stated goal is simply to recreate a "museum" server that as closely resembles classic as possible. This isn't supposed to be a money maker where they need to have as many players as possible or anything. It's not a business. People will still play P99. If the numbers dwindle a little bit it really doesn't make a big difference. A sizeable portion of the playerbase doesn't raid at all. You think they're all going to quit if raid gear gets easier to attain?

I do agree with your other points though

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Why? Again this is non profit. Their stated goal is simply to recreate a "museum" server that as closely resembles classic as possible. This isn't supposed to be a money maker where they need to have as many players as possible or anything. It's not a business. People will still play P99. If the numbers dwindle a little bit it really doesn't make a big difference. A sizeable portion of the playerbase doesn't raid at all. You think they're all going to quit if raid gear gets easier to attain?

I do agree with your other points though

P99 is a very niche server that has quite a few hurdles to jump over before you even get it working.

For players like us who love the game, we are willing to jump over said hurdles. But a lot of people stop at the point of trying to get the game working in the first place if they are not as familiar with the game.

Based on the data from the TLPs, I am farily certain people would leave P99 at a faster rate due to accomplishing their goals faster. As population dwindles, more people leave because the server feels empty.

You have to be extremely careful with multiplayer games. The player base is required to keep the game alive. Clearly the scarcity formula works for P99, or it would have died years ago. Anybody who wants faster loot is already playing TLP probably.

[Kich867]

Another possible solution would be just making raid mobs spawn far more frequently. If every raid mob was on a 24h repop timer I suspect that a much larger variety of guilds would get much more valuable targets on a more regular basis than they do now. What's the negative? People get gear faster? Who cares? P99 is a non profit project right? Not like they have paying customers they need to retain to pay for operations right? What's wrong with making some changes to allow people to actually participate in the endgame? This isn't supposed to be such a competitive game. PvP servers are dead for a reason. Not to mention how many more players would they gain if the endgame was a bit more approachable for the masses? I basically entirely gave up on P99 endgame in it's current state. If some big changes were made to make it less toxic I would certainly consider getting back into it myself. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

This is generally where my head goes for this. Just have them respawn more frequently with smaller windows, or no windows. I've also seen/heard some games go in different directions where the longer a mob is alive the better it loot it has so there's some incentive not to kill it immediately, I don't love that though it seems like it would breed a ton of drama and whatnot.

I think ideally a system would involve some level of mechanics to encourage a guild to not camp one mob forever, but I honestly think that would occur naturally if they spawned more often. If most raid mobs spawned every like, 8 hours, you're still going to regularly be trying to figure out what is up, what isn't up, who is doing what, what can you go grab, and for me at least that's kind of the enjoyable part.

And it would space spawns out to be somewhat reasonable for most timezones at some point.

[cd288]

Honestly I would support raid instancing on P99. Not for regular dungeons so certain things like Kael would still get contested but for things like the planes and ToV whatever just instance it. The whole Zerg and clickie meta nowadays is so unclassic anyway that why not just shove the big groups of man children into their own respective instances and call it a day.

I could imagine one benefit being maybe the staff is more engaged on other things because they’re not spending all their free time dealing with whiney raid petitions.

[PlsNoBan]

Honestly I would support raid instancing on P99. Not for regular dungeons so certain things like Kael would still get contested but for things like the planes and ToV whatever just instance it. The whole Zerg and clickie meta nowadays is so unclassic anyway that why not just shove the big groups of man children into their own respective instances and call it a day.

I could imagine one benefit being maybe the staff is more engaged on other things because they’re not spending all their free time dealing with whiney raid petitions.

That's the thing. I can see the argument against instances. I understand the fear of losing players if gear becomes easier to get. The game CAN become stale if you get full bis gear and "run out of things to do". Stuff like instances or raid rotations or removing variance and reducing spawn times or whatever other changes you can come up with will all have their pros and cons. I'm just personally of the opinion that the current system has far more cons. The p99 endgame raid "meta" is the most absurd bullshit. It's really unbelievable how dumb it has become. Making gear easier to get and having some people burn out or get bored is a small price to pay for making an overall better experience for everyone else.

Like I said before TONS of people play this game and never raid at all. They aren't all going to magically quit if raiding becomes more approachable. They still find enjoyment in the game after years and years without even touching raid targets.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

There is one surefire way to determine the best course of action, but it will probably never happen.

When the next Green Server comes, put faster raid respawns on it. Roll the old Green characters into Blue and keep the normal raid respawn timers on Blue.

Then we have two servers, one with normal raid respawn timers and one with faster raid respawn timers. Then we will see which server ends up with more players at the end of the next Green server, and we don't lose existing players because you can still play Blue.

Based on the current data (TLP vs P99), I think the normal raid respawn timers will win. But you never know.

[PlsNoBan]

There is one surefire way to determine the best course of action, but it will probably never happen.

When the next Green Server comes, put faster raid respawns on it. Roll the old Green characters into Blue and keep the normal raid respawn timers on Blue.

Then we have two servers, one with normal raid respawn timers and one with faster raid respawn timers. Then we will see which server ends up with more players at the end of the next Green server, and we don't lose existing players because you can still play Blue.

Based on the current data (TLP vs P99), I think the normal raid respawn timers will win. But you never know.

The numbers could be lower. In fact I suspect they probably will be by a little bit. I just think lower numbers with a healthy endgame is preferable to more players with extremely toxic nonsense. That's all. Being that P99 isn't a business trying to make money it doesn't harm them to have slightly less players. As long as there's enough players to do stuff it's fine. I've been on other emu servers with ~100 players and it was still fun. I don't think there's any chance P99 dips under like 400-500 per server at peak almost no matter what they do. I do like the idea of trying new things on green 2.0 though! That's a good way to experiment without compromising blue. If it ends up being bad for whatever reason they can always nix it for green 3.0 in 2078

[Troxx]

That's the thing. I can see the argument against instances. I understand the fear of losing players if gear becomes easier to get. The game CAN become stale if you get full bis gear and "run out of things to do". Stuff like instances or raid rotations or removing variance and reducing spawn times or whatever other changes you can come up with will all have their pros and cons. I'm just personally of the opinion that the current system has far more cons. The p99 endgame raid "meta" is the most absurd bullshit. It's really unbelievable how dumb it has become. Making gear easier to get and having some people burn out or get bored is a small price to pay for making an overall better experience for everyone else.

Like I said before TONS of people play this game and never raid at all. They aren't all going to magically quit if raiding becomes more approachable. They still find enjoyment in the game after years and years without even touching raid targets.

I could get behind this specifically for blue. Green and future green 2.0 can always strive for strictly classic but what we have on blue is so far from classic it isn’t even funny. Classic raiding was nothing like p99 raiding where you have hundreds of players with high end gear and umpteen alts … all of whom are willing to park their alts all over Norrath and log in for a 2am batphone.

P99 raiding is about as far from a classic experience as you can get.

[unsunghero]

I think the forums creates a biased impression that the game is mostly high end raiders while the actual majority of players are casual unguilded scrubs that only play a couple hours a week/month, don’t raid, and don’t even realize this forum exists

The appeal of this game to many casuals is that you can stay casual because you aren’t falling behind a never-ending new-expansion-release power curve. The reality is you still probably can’t ever catch up to the current high end but at least you can pretend you can. Whereas with TLP or modern MMO’s you know you’ll never catch up because by the time you do, another expansion has released invalidating all the current gear

[PlsNoBan]

I think the forums creates a biased impression that the game is mostly high end raiders while the actual majority of players are casual unguilded scrubs that only play a couple hours a week/month, don’t raid, and don’t even realize this forum exists

The appeal of this game to many casuals is that you can stay casual because you aren’t falling behind a never-ending new-expansion-release power curve. The reality is you still probably can’t ever catch up to the current high end but at least you can pretend you can. Whereas with TLP or modern MMO’s you know you’ll never catch up because by the time you do, another expansion has released invalidating all the current gear

100% this. This is why I think that no matter what you do to the endgame (even removing raid targets entirely from the game) would not kill the server(s). There's a lot more non raiders than I think some people believe.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

I think the forums creates a biased impression that the game is mostly high end raiders while the actual majority of players are casual unguilded scrubs that only play a couple hours a week/month, don’t raid, and don’t even realize this forum exists

The appeal of this game to many casuals is that you can stay casual because you aren’t falling behind a never-ending new-expansion-release power curve. The reality is you still probably can’t ever catch up to the current high end but at least you can pretend you can. Whereas with TLP or modern MMO’s you know you’ll never catch up because by the time you do, another expansion has released invalidating all the current gear

I understand that most players on P99 are casual players who never/barely raid. However, I did do a lot of raiding in the Aftermath days. I know that you can easily get 300+ players in a raid zone if it is during a popular time. Losing a few hundred players due to changing the raid scene in a negative way wouldn't be healthy for P99.

The biggest problem I see is the potential for a cascading effect. First, the hardcore raiders will leave. This won't decimate the population, but it will reduce it by a good 10-20%. When the casual raiders fill in the gap, they will end up leaving faster due to getting what they wanted. This will cause more players to leave.

Having the population at a healthy level is what is keeping the casual players playing in my opinion. This means you get more opportunities for groups, cheaper items due to them being farmed more, etc.

If the population drops below a certain number, more people leave because the server feels empty. This has happened many times before in MMO's. If a multiplayer game has been running 1000+ players consistently for 5+ years, you don't want to mess with the formula. For some reason it works, even if we don't know why. It isn't worth the risk to change it in my opinion.

P99 is harder to get into than other games due to all of the hurdles you need to jump over to start playing. It does turn off a lot of new players. P99 isn't great at providing access to new players, so player turnaround is lower. This means losing players has a bigger effect.

[PlsNoBan]

I understand that most players on P99 are casual players who never/barely raid. However, I did do a lot of raiding in the Aftermath days. I know that you can easily get 300+ players in a raid zone if it is during a popular time. Losing a few hundred players due to changing the raid scene in a negative way wouldn't be healthy for P99.

The biggest problem I see is the potential for a cascading effect. First, the hardcore raiders will leave. This won't decimate the population, but it will reduce it by a good 10-20%. When the casual raiders fill in the gap, they will end up leaving faster due to getting what they wanted. This will cause more players to leave.

Having the population at a healthy level is what is keeping the casual players playing in my opinion. This means you get more opportunities for groups, cheaper items due to them being farmed more, etc.

If the population drops below a certain number, more people leave because the server feels empty. This has happened many times before in MMO's. If a multiplayer game has been running 1000+ players consistently for 5+ years, you don't want to mess with the formula. For some reason it works, even if we don't know why. It isn't worth the risk to change it in my opinion.

P99 is harder to get into than other games due to all of the hurdles you need to jump over to start playing. It does turn off a lot of new players. P99 isn't great at providing access to new players, so player turnaround is lower. This means losing players has a bigger effect.

I'm going to just respectfully agree to disagree here. Even if you use the 300 number for "hardcore raiders" which I suspect it's probably a bit less than that. Many of those 300 are just warmbodies that are only in those guilds cause its the ONLY WAY to actually participate in high value endgame raiding. But even granting that 300. If you have 1000 players on the server at peak (rough estimate here) and you take 300 hardcore raiders and you make a change to make endgame more approachable to the majority of the server. Out of those 300 I can 100% guarantee that not 100% of those 300 people are going to go "Well this server sucks now I quit". I'd guess probably like 30% of those raiders may quit? That's being kind of generous I think? You're talking about losing less than 100 players at peak. The casuals not participating in endgame at all right now aren't going to start participating cause it becomes more approachable then get a few pieces of gear and go "Well I'm bored of the game I've been playing for 5+ years now cause I got some raid loot". Also on top of that like I mentioned earlier. How many players is P99 going to GAIN by bringing back people that left cause they were jaded by the current endgame system?

Just the way I see it. No way to really prove this one way or another without trying it. The comparison to TLP's doesn't really work I don't think. There's a lot of differences between P99 and TLP that change things. I certainly don't think P99 staff will ever entertain making changes like this though. People have been begging for changes like this for a decade and nothing has substantially changed so this conversation is ultimately pointless.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

I'm going to just respectfully agree to disagree here. Even if you use the 300 number for "hardcore raiders" which I suspect it's probably a bit less than that. Many of those 300 are just warmbodies that are only in those guilds cause its the ONLY WAY to actually participate in high value endgame raiding. But even granting that 300. If you have 1000 players on the server at peak (rough estimate here) and you take 300 hardcore raiders and you make a change to make endgame more approachable to the majority of the server. Out of those 300 I can 100% guarantee that not 100% of those 300 people are going to go "Well this server sucks now I quit". I'd guess probably like 30% of those raiders may quit? That's being kind of generous I think? You're talking about losing less than 100 players at peak. The casuals not participating in endgame at all right now aren't going to start participating cause it becomes more approachable then get a few pieces of gear and go "Well I'm bored of the game I've been playing for 5+ years now cause I got some raid loot".

Just the way I see it. No way to really prove this one way or another without trying it. The comparison to TLP's doesn't really work I don't think. There's a lot of differences between P99 and TLP that change things. I certainly don't think P99 staff will ever entertain making changes like this though. People have been begging for changes like this for a decade and nothing has substantially changed so this conversation is ultimately pointless.

As you say, there is no way to know for sure until you try it. I am simply saying mistakes are harder to fix on P99 due to the barriers of entry and lower amount of new players coming in. I am not trying to claim that all of the raiders will leave, but you have to assume the worst case when you have no data. That is what I do.

That is why I would prefer to try any drastic changes on another P99 server, as I mentioned before. That way we don't lose players, and we get to see what will happen definitively. I agree with you that there are other factors in TLP that affect player turnaround, but it really is the closest analogy we have to P99.

[PlsNoBan]

As you say, there is no way to know for sure until you try it. I am simply saying mistakes are harder to fix on P99 due to the barriers of entry and lower amount of new players coming in. I am not trying to claim that all of the raiders will leave, but you have to assume the worst case when you have no data. That is what I do.

That is why I would prefer to try any drastic changes on another P99 server, as I mentioned before. That way we don't lose players, and we get to see what will happen definitively. I agree with you that there are other factors in TLP that affect player turnaround, but it really is the closest analogy we have to P99.

Yea I don't disagree with you here. I think it'd be cool to try new things either on blue and keep green with the current system or vice versa. I don't really care which server they do it on. I'd end up making a new main either way most likely. It's never going to happen though unfortunately. I'd love to be wrong here but I doubt it hehe

Little backstory on me: I raided pretty heavily back when IB was one of the top guilds. I wasn't with them super long cause the amount of neckbeardery was just too much for my tastes. I ended up taking a break from the game for a bit then coming back and joining BDA for a more casual experience and still getting *some* raiding in. I would've liked to get more raid targets but I wasn't willing to make P99 my second job to do so. I didn't want to park my characters and be unable to play them for extended periods of time. I wasn't a big altoholic I just wanted to play my main. Nothing was worse than having a day off work and not being able to play my fucking main cause it had to be parked for a 16hr window somewhere. I didn't want to feel obligated to track (so fucking stupid) for bonus dkp or whatever. It was just too much. BDA was much better in that regard but obviously didn't get as many targets. The toxicity of the p99 raid scene eventually pushed BDA leadership to entirely abandon p99 and took almost every single member with them to play on TLP's. Some have returned but most have not and I believe BDA was one of the larger guilds on the server in their heyday. I wanna say the BDA guild on TLP's had like over 200 members within the first week? This is why I say I think people may underestimate how many folks would return if endgame was a little more approachable without making it a job/chore. I don't know what the solution is and I don't think we'll get anything much different than status quo anyway. But that's my story.

[Mateo]

Revert almost all non-classic changes. DPS race raid targets.

[tadkins]

Honestly I would support raid instancing on P99. Not for regular dungeons so certain things like Kael would still get contested but for things like the planes and ToV whatever just instance it. The whole Zerg and clickie meta nowadays is so unclassic anyway that why not just shove the big groups of man children into their own respective instances and call it a day.

I could imagine one benefit being maybe the staff is more engaged on other things because they’re not spending all their free time dealing with whiney raid petitions.

Agreed. I feel bad for the staff who has to deal with all of that mess.

I'd also be in support of having a more accessible endgame. Instances would be great. If P99 is supposed to be a museum, then why can't it be a museum we're allowed to actually enter?

I just really hate the cutthroat competitive attitude that seems required if you just want to see some raids and maybe earn a piece of cool loot that can't be simply bought in the EC tunnel.

I know nothing's going to change anytime soon, I just wish there was a chance to succeed at the game without having to kiss up to certain guilds.

[cd288]

Or at the very least give more DKP for showing up to contest and eliminate bonuses for FTEs and kills. Unless you're in the top guild, harder for new raiders to amass lots of DKP to catch up with the people who are at the top because half the DKP in an encounter comes if you actually engage and kill, which is hit or miss given the current meta

[Toxigen]

Or at the very least give more DKP for showing up to contest and eliminate bonuses for FTEs and kills. Unless you're in the top guild, harder for new raiders to amass lots of DKP to catch up with the people who are at the top because half the DKP in an encounter comes if you actually engage and kill, which is hit or miss given the current meta

Yes promote participation trophies and give even less incentive for the playmakers, good idea you fucking cuck.

[cd288]

Yes promote participation trophies and give even less incentive for the playmakers, good idea you fucking cuck.

Why do you care? Not like you're raiding with DKP anymore

[tadkins]

Or at the very least give more DKP for showing up to contest and eliminate bonuses for FTEs and kills. Unless you're in the top guild, harder for new raiders to amass lots of DKP to catch up with the people who are at the top because half the DKP in an encounter comes if you actually engage and kill, which is hit or miss given the current meta

At this point I feel like it would be impossible to get anything now. Everyone in every guild probably has too much "DKP" to compete with as a brand new raider.

In this case, I wish there was some kind of participation trophy.

[Toxigen]

At this point I feel like it would be impossible to get anything now. Everyone in every guild probably has too much "DKP" to compete with as a brand new raider.

In this case, I wish there was some kind of participation trophy.

DKP bloat / inflation is a real thing.

We should be nearing the end of the inevitable guild cycle. People get comfortable at the top, complacency sets in, then comes frustration (you are here)....slap a meta change on top and everything falls apart.

When they reform, get in early, raid as much as you can, and scoop up your most prized items on the cheap.

This is the way.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

DKP bloat / inflation is a real thing.

We should be nearing the end of the inevitable guild cycle. People get comfortable at the top, complacency sets in, then comes frustration (you are here)....slap a meta change on top and everything falls apart.

When they reform, get in early, raid as much as you can, and scoop up your most prized items on the cheap.

This is the way.

Agreed, getting in on a new reformed guild is a great way to get gear if you can raid a decent amount.

DKP bloat often doesn't effect a lot of items that go for cheap. They still go for cheap. Those are the items a casual is looking for. DKP bloat can effect the mid tier items that costs a few hundred DKP, but that is typically out of reach for casuals.

DKP bloat mostly effects the items you couldn't get anyway as a casual, like Vulak loot. The secret about DKP bloat is most people with thousands of DKP are saving the vast majority of it to dump on a super rare item like Tunare/Vulak loot. You will easily see someone dump 3000 DKP on a Vulak Robe, for example.

[cd288]

At this point I feel like it would be impossible to get anything now. Everyone in every guild probably has too much "DKP" to compete with as a brand new raider.

In this case, I wish there was some kind of participation trophy.

Yeah I mean I guess to be fair it depends on the guild's loot policy. I heard Kittens may be implementing some sort of policy requiring full DKP bids on certain tier loot...or something like that, I don't have all the details. That could be a good way to cut down on DKP bloat.

[Toxigen]

At this point I feel like it would be impossible to get anything now. Everyone in every guild probably has too much "DKP" to compete with as a brand new raider.

In this case, I wish there was some kind of participation trophy.

Also, just to play devil's advocate:

So yes, these long term members have lots of dkp. Why should you, as a new raider, be entitled to items over the veterans? They have put in far more time. Be an active raider, let the vets burn some of their points on stuff, and soon you'll be there bidding too.

Keep in mind DKP is a representation of 2 things: how much time/effort one has put in to raiding, and how good they are at getting on DKP event logs. Its the one glaring weakness of modern Discord-Bot-Run DKP systems...extremely easy to cheese / get your participation points for doing nothing but being in the zone when the logs are taken.

[PlsNoBan]

extremely easy to cheese / get your participation points for doing nothing but being in the zone when the logs are taken.

Sounds like every DKP system in every guild in the history of EQ

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Sounds like every DKP system in every guild in the history of EQ

In all fairness the guild officers/leaders are generally completely volunteer. So it isn't like you have a professional level system in place where they are triple checking documentation.

Generally speaking they do a great job all things considered. I personally haven't seen heavy abuse of the system. People are generally honest.

[PlsNoBan]

In all fairness the guild officers/leaders are generally completely volunteer. So it isn't like you have a professional level system in place where they are triple checking documentation.

Generally speaking they do a great job all things considered. I personally haven't seen heavy abuse of the system. People are generally honest.

Yeah I'm not accusing anyone or anything. I was just pointing out I don't think it's a issue specifically related to DKP systems being run via discord bots. DKP systems of all flavors are flawed in this way. Long as you're present for the raid dumps you get credit no matter how you perform or how much you AFK during the raid. Some people will take advantage of that. It's just how it goes. EQ raiding especially on P99 requires a lot of warmbodies so this type of thing is fairly common.

[Ravager]

Yeah I'm not accusing anyone or anything. I was just pointing out I don't think it's a issue specifically related to DKP systems being run via discord bots. DKP systems of all flavors are flawed in this way. Long as you're present for the raid dumps you get credit no matter how you perform or how much you AFK during the raid. Some people will take advantage of that. It's just how it goes. EQ raiding especially on P99 requires a lot of warmbodies so this type of thing is fairly common.

But it's all about the madskillz and work and effort! Get gud grubs!

[Christopher]

Being new on P99 and reading through this thread. It does inspire hope that a new player can level up, join in on raiding and actually be able to obtain equipment.

On live it's such a flood of loot, upgrades don't feel as meaningful. Everything here has felt like an achievement in comparison.

[Ravager]

Being new on P99 and reading through this thread. It does inspire hope that a new player can level up, join in on raiding and actually be able to obtain equipment.

On live it's such a flood of loot, upgrades don't feel as meaningful. Everything here has felt like an achievement in comparison.

That's the drug.

[tadkins]

Being new on P99 and reading through this thread. It does inspire hope that a new player can level up, join in on raiding and actually be able to obtain equipment.

On live it's such a flood of loot, upgrades don't feel as meaningful. Everything here has felt like an achievement in comparison.

I'm honestly not super confident. If I started to level a character now, invest the months it takes to get to 50+ (with all the failure and struggle associated with that journey, and I don't have any cleric friends), and somehow get into a guild (another beast entirely, and not guaranteed based on experience), that it would be months of hard work before maybe possibly having a chance at earning a piece of loot. It just feels too damn late at this point. While I've been over here struggling for the last couple years, there are tons in this game that have been steadily consolidating their DKP in their respective raiding guilds.

It's always been a goal of mine to earn something that you can't just buy in the EC tunnel, but it doesn't seem realistic at this point. Everything I've managed to earn has been bought through porting money...and after this weekend that's all I seem to be destined to be, an uber driver. I'd still love to fight a dragon one day but all I get to do is port the cool kids to the real adventures.

I'm just feeling so depressed, broken and lonely at this point.

[cd288]

I'm honestly not super confident. If I started to level a character now, invest the months it takes to get to 50+ (with all the failure and struggle associated with that journey, and I don't have any cleric friends), and somehow get into a guild (another beast entirely, and not guaranteed based on experience), that it would be months of hard work before maybe possibly having a chance at earning a piece of loot. It just feels too damn late at this point. While I've been over here struggling for the last couple years, there are tons in this game that have been steadily consolidating their DKP in their respective raiding guilds.

It's always been a goal of mine to earn something that you can't just buy in the EC tunnel, but it doesn't seem realistic at this point. Everything I've managed to earn has been bought through porting money...and after this weekend that's all I seem to be destined to be, an uber driver. I'd still love to fight a dragon one day but all I get to do is port the cool kids to the real adventures.

I'm just feeling so depressed, broken and lonely at this point.

I mean this really depends on the guild. First, if you're not trying to join like the top guild on the server you can usually join pre-raiding level.

It's also entirely dependent on the guild's DKP rules and policies. For example, you could have a guild that requires full DKP (or a large portion of DKP) bids for certain tiers of items. That inevitably causes people to burn through large amounts of their DKP and now they're under you. It also depends on when a guild awards DKP and how much they award...each guild will have different policies on what encounters allow you to earn DKP, they will also all have the ability to earn DKP through leveling guild bots, tracking spawns, etc.

It's also going to depend on the rules for spending DKP on alts. I.e., if you're on an encounter with Character A, can you spend your DKP on a drop that your Character B could use? Many guilds will have rules around this rather than letting it be a total free for all where someone with massive amounts of DKP can outbid your main on everything just to gear like their 8th alt. So it reduces competition for certain drops somewhat.

Many encounters end up not being DKP at all for a lot of the drops. For example, at this stage in Velious many planar gear drops will end up being /random (granted, maybe some guilds don't do this but I think a lot do). So you don't even need to worry about DKP there.

A lot of the time guilds will also run things like Halls of Testing and Kael on a /random loot basis (I know Kittens does a /random HoT once a week and sometimes a DKP one that week also). So you can get Skyshrine and Thurg armor on your toons without needing to sink a ton of time into gaining DKP.

Overall point being, don't assume that it's just "I'm behind and will need a million hours to catch up and get enough DKP to get loot". Sure, if you're going for the absolute top tier loot and things like very rare epic quest drops then yeah you'll need a lot of time spent accruing DKP. But you can get some sweet stuff without a ton of DKP (or DKP at all) in many raiding guilds.