As of now the server has seen a single Zordak Ragefire and Nagafen has already respawned and been killed. I wanted to go ahead and bring up this issue so other clerics could weigh in on this topic.
Nagafen was killed at approximately 2:00pm est on Monday. Ragefire spawned approximately 2:00pm est on Wednesday (about 48 hours later). (If an IB cleric has more specific information they wish to share, please post below).There was no other Ragefire after Wednesday and Lord Nagafen has respawned and been killed again.
Multiple Ragefires per a Lord Nagafen
The main issue we would address is whether or not Zordak Ragefire is even capable of spawning more than once after Lord Nagafen dies here on P99. The lack of any spawn for over 4.5 days after the first Ragefire on January 4, 2011, indicates that this may indeed be the current implementation on P99 where we get 1 Ragefire per 1 Nagafen. This not classic by any stretch, there are a multitude of examples of Ragefire spawning 2, 3, 4, even 5 times between Nagafens.
There are posts from EqClerics in late 2000/early 2001 (the is era appropriate and contemporaneous as epics were implemented September 2000, First Cleric to complete was on October 6, 2000, by Kerania on Tunare @ http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8407) indicating that Zordak Ragefire can spawn anywhere from 0-72 hours after Lord Nagafen dies and then spawning again after each Zordak Ragefire dies until Lord Nagafen spawns again.
11-01-2000 @ http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8548
He poped at least 3 times this weekend on the rathe with about a 24 hour spawn cycle.
On Terris Thule he has spawned almost like clockwork...22-23 hours roughly. Thurs near midnight, fri at 11, sat around 9, sun around 7:30, Mon around 6:30, Tues pop around 5:30.
That is 6 in a row and most spawns were killed by people that had already cleared FGs knowing roughly when he'd spawn and were sitting in Naggie's lair waiting for him to pop...and he didn't let anyone down.
On Luclin, he has been spawning on a 24 hour timer.
Ragefire spawned 3 days in a row on Quellious, each time he was taken out arond 9pm pst.. i was the third to kill him and it was quite relieving to have won after such a quest.
11-08-2000 @ http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8549
This thread contains multiple examples of multiple spawns between Nagafens across several servers.
3 days (basically, ~65 hours) after Nagafen dies, Zordak will spawn. Once killed, Zordak will respawn slightly less than 24 hours later, pressumably until Nagafen respawns or the server/zone goes down.
On Tribunal we have seen 24 hours from death of Nagafen to spawn of Zordak, with subsequent Zordaks respawning 24 hours after death.
Have yet to pop down the day after a Nagafen kill and Zordak not be there...
Same on Terris Thule.
24-ish hours after Naggy died, Zordak was up. And every 22-23 hours later he was back up. People would clear FGs and wait in lair till he spawned and it was 22-23 hours every time and people were sitting in lair to actually see Zordak spawn.
Zordik spawned 10 hours after Naggy was taken down on Povar, and then a every 23-24 hours after that as long as the FGs are dead.
my point in my other post is that the first spawn is from 0 - 72 hours most likely.
The earliest I can document is 2 hours with the longest being 65.
After his first death he appears to be a 23 hour spawn.
11-27-2000 @ http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8595
Pre-patch zordak worked like this:
Kill nagafen, Zordak pops on a 0-72 hour timer. (I personally confirmed pops of 2 and 67 hours) It has nothing to do with the FG being killed.
After Zordak is killed the first time after a naggy death, it was a 23 hour spawn, apparantly until nagafen pops again.
Some people are saying that on test Zordak was only popping once per nag slaying, and that may have made it to live, but I haven't hunted him since we got 3 of our guild clerics sprinklers.
11-28-2000 @ http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8595
n Bristlebane server... post patch.
Zordak spawned roughly 24h after Nagafen's death. Since then (Friday or Sat was Nag's death) he has spawned approximately 24h upon his own death. He has spawned 3 times since the last death of Nagafen. I just led a group last night against him for my flail.
Nothing seems to have changed in his spawn from my experience the last few days.
This is really good news for clerics, as compared to him spawning only once between Nagafens. It would be horrible to get to the end of this quest and have to race to Zordak because he only spawns roughly once every seven days.
01-31-2001 @ http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8795
When Nagafen died the other day ragefire popped almost immediately. He spawned again, I'm not sure of the exact time, but it was more than 24 hours, and then again about 35 hours after that. The last spawn I am certain of because my guild mate was in the room when he popped and we killed him soon after. (Morell Thule)
I think his spawn window has been increased. When our guilds' first clerics got their sprinklers I'm pretty sure Ragefire was 0-72 hours after nag was dead and 2nd and subsequent Ragefires 0-24 hours after that. That seemed to be supported by what most had experienced on other servers.
Nagafen was killed on the Rathe Saturday night about 1am EST I believe. He might have died a bit later though not by much. Ragefire was killed at 5pm EST Monday. We cleared FG's twice and at 2:30am EST last night still no Ragefire. So it seems now all ragefirespawns are 0-72 hours after nag and at least 0-36 hours, maybe more, after the lastRagefire.
03-06-2001 @ http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8844
Last weekend after the server was taken down on Friday morning, a couple different guilds tried to take out Naggy and failed.
Saturday he was dropped around noon CST. 3 hours later Ragefire popped and was promptly slaughtered.
03-20-2001 @ http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showpost.php?p=85876&postcount=14
Showing multiple Ragefires between Nagafen spawns.
Naggy was killed on thursday at 9:45 pm pst.
ragefire was killed at 4pm pst on friday (spawn probably an hr before this.)
ragefire spawned at 10 am on sunday, killed at 11 am on sunday.
so between the time of death of naggy and the first spawn was 18 hrs. Beteween the first and second ragefire spawn was 42 hrs.
The most i have seen him spawn was 5 times in 7 days.
07-19-2001 @ http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=9079
Last night I was lucky enough to witness Mr. Zordak Ragefire spawn a mere 6 hours after Naggy's death. I've been dreading this camp for months and finally decided to just do it! Yeah Me!
We had the same thing happen with this last patch. Killed Naggy with our twinks. Ragefire spawned 6 hours later.
Nagafen's P99 window and its affect on P99 Zordak
The other issue we seek clarification on is whether or not Nagafen's non-classic 96 hour window affects Zordak Ragefire's spawn timer. There are posts from the appropriate time period indicating that Nagafen being dead is the only thing that affects Ragefires chance to pop, i.e. Ragefire is not depopped by Nagafen spawning both can be alive at the same time.
10-20-2000 @ http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8491
A cleric on the Tribunal was actually fighting Zordak when --- Nagafen spawned --- and told everyone to leave the zone --- ouch, back to square one.
The immediate next post correcting the recollection of the quote above:
Greetings!
Actually Naelana had not yet turned in the item to Zordak, so nothing lost but time waiting for somebody to take out Nagafen again.
The funny thing was Nagafen aggroed Zordak with the AoE...
Zorak Ragefire shouts, 'You shall not evade me Lord_Nagafen00!'
The lead GM had to intervene before Zordak successfully soloed the dragon
It is well established that Nagafen did not have a 96 hour window on live, but for raid/CS purposes a window has been implemented on P99. If Zordak's window is tied in any way to Nagafen's window, then it will severely affect the amount of Zordak's that this server sees.
I would invite other clerics to please include any additional research or era appropriate findings to further this discussion.
Not sure if anyone realizes this or not but Ragefire only worked like this for a certain time period after Epics were released (short respawn time after Nagafen died, 24 hours or so).
It was changed at some point between Epic Release and Velious release. After Nagafen was killed Ragefire's spawn window was huge. He could spawn at any time in between 0 and 7 days. It was a miserable camp hence all the problems with it and why it was so greatly contested.
I do not know exactly when this was changed but Cleric epics were pretty rare from Epic Release until the point where he was moved to Skyfire.
I'm all for adapting this to classic, but the evidence brought forth tends to weigh in favor of leaving it as it stands. If there was a change, based on comments from EQclerics, it does not appear to have occurred until Summer 2001 (Mid-Velious).
Regarding the extremely long waits people experienced, quite a few servers had lines and the cleric would need to be present and waiting for line positions 1 and 2 if not 3 and 4. This results in some clerics spending a week sitting in SolB waiting for their turn. There were also more consistent patches and more inconsistent zone resets resulting in a respawn of Nagafen and a reset of the Ragefire timer. It also appears that some servers would get bugged out causing no Ragefire to respawn. SolB during this time period on some servers would have upwards of 60-80 people exping. The zone, like a lot of others, would either crash or get reset by GMs causing the Nagafen/Ragefire timer to reset.
October 2000:
http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8442&highlight=ragefire+respawn
I noticed that Nagafen has to be dead before Zordak has to spawn, and it takes from 24 to 48 hours for him to pop. Kiling FGs 2nd or 3rd time around does this.
/rude verant to rebooting The Rathe and consequently depop'd Zordak.
November 2000:
http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8548&highlight=ragefire+respawn
On Terris Thule he has spawned almost like clockwork...22-23 hours roughly. Thurs near midnight, fri at 11, sat around 9, sun around 7:30, Mon around 6:30, Tues pop around 5:30.
That is 6 in a row and most spawns were killed by people that had already cleared FGs knowing roughly when he'd spawn and were sitting in Naggie's lair waiting for him to pop...and he didn't let anyone down. It didn't seem to matter at all when the FGs were killed as all but 1 raid the guild was sitting with FGs cleared waiting for spawn...and he spawned almost exactly when each group thought he would based on time alone.
I think it is safe to say that "normally" you kill naggy after server reset (as in not naggy respawn, but naggy spawn on server reset), 22-23 hours later Rage will spawn...and every 22-23 hours after he's killed he'll spawn again...worked for a week now on Terris Thule.
hmm, looking back at older posts it seems after naggy is killed, Zordak spawns anywhere from 0-72 hours later.
However, Zordak seems to repop in 23-24 hours.
Well, here's the current situation on Rathe:
We've had people in his lair almost 24x7 since monday night. We've been clearing all the FG's almost as soon as they pop. We've been getting them about 2 and a half times a RL day since monday night at 7 pm. (nag died at 10pm)
Zordak popped at 6:50 on Monday with all the FG's dead, exactly 23 hours after he was killed sunday. At 6:55, the GM's respawned Sol B as we were preparing to kill him.
So we took our twinks and friends and killed nag. (FG's took under 15mins with a war party of about 30 50-60's)
Its currently at about 60 hours with no Zordak since nag died.
Zordak has yet to make an appearence and the 3 of us waiting on zordak are starting to hallucinate from staring at the wall where he pops.
I am starting to believe when the GM's repopped the zone, they nerfed the Zordak spawn ;(
As a note, the FG's were pretty much cleared the entire time, as far as I know. The times above are accurate to within 1-2 hrs.
If you are waiting on this guy, my suggestion is have someone camp in Naggy's lair, and make sure you have maybe 6-12 people to clear out the FG's when they are due to respawn. I'm guessing in a pinch you could just take down Rokyl and his guards (2-3?) and keep camping the room.
I haven't started on the quest yet, but if anyone has some questions about this part of the quest, reply here. Was helping a good friend do this part of the quest, so I know some of the details regarding this part.
We killed all the FG's then Naggy after a zone reboot. I sat in Naggy's bedroom for a full 8 hours until FG repops made me leave. NO RAGEFIRE AT ALL!
We read that he'd pop at Naggy +20 hours...and Ragefire +20. We killed Naggy, I waited 8 hours until FG's repopped (no Ragefire) then camped and went to bed after setting guild to show up at the 20 hour mark. At the 18 hour mark, I logged in to find that another guild got him around the 10-hour mark. So much for THAT theory.
So we set our sights on the Ragefire+20 hours. We cleared FG's (in different orders); No Ragefire. The Ragefire+10 mark went; No Ragefire. The Ragefire+20 mark went; No Ragefire.
Rechecking the board, I now see a Ragefire+23 hours, so we're settling in for that. Probably still no luck will be had.
He finally popped at the 65 hour mark.
After that, he's been popping at 24 hours.
All the FG talk of being the trigger is false.
He pops with all of them up, all of them down, and while the others are spawning =P
(I have a monk camped in his lair)
So I can confirm that his spawn is 0-65 hours (72 is the max I bet as one of the developers posted they can delay pops for up to 3 days) after nag dies. Then after you kill him it is 23-24 hours.
Ragefire spawned 3 days in a row on Quellious, each time he was taken out arond 9pm pst.. i was the third to kill him and it was quite relieving to have won after such a quest.Well, sure enough, Zordak spawned today. So we gather up, kill the FGs and right as we are at the room before the lair ... Solb Crashes!
Yep, everything respawned, including Nagafen, and Zordak despawned.
So naturally, after an hour a useless "senior guide" comes and says he "can't" do a damn thing to help. Of course, there are no real server GMs online, and I'm currently waiting for one to log on and tell me "tough luck."
And since we're all above 53, we can't even kill Nagafen in the hopes that Zordak will spawn again in 3 days.
Verant in a nutshell, eh?
I have seen or documented zordak spawn in as little as 2 hours...or as long as 65 after nag dies.
the first spawn is random between 0-72 hours.
December 2000:
http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8649&highlight=ragefire+respawn+patch
Camped this badboy for more than a week, so will share my info when I get to work....OK. As far as I know, this guy is totally random. Naggy was killed after a patch, and Ragefire spawned about 27 hours later. The vendor was killed (not from quest progression, don't ask), and he spawned again about 57 hours later. Killed the dragon this time. He spawned again somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 hours after that.
January 2001:
http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8745&highlight=ragefire+respawn
It *was* once rumored to be that 0-72 hours after Naggy dies, and 23-24 hours after the first Ragefire dies. But it seems like it's always 0-72 hours spawn, regardless of after Naggy or after the first Ragefire. Those are in real time hours.
And dragon form spawns right after you kill the human form.
OK. In case you don't want to wade through the endless stuff on EQCleric, I'll tell you what I know.
IMHO, Ragefire is totally random (within a certain time period). The evidence from the past few months....
Naggy dies very early Saturday morning (just after midnight), Ragefire spawns early Sunday morning, (all times CST), rough spawn time about 30 hours.
Ragefire is killed, then spawns Tuesday afternoon, spawn time around 54 hours.
Ragefire is killed again, spawns Thursday morning, about 36 hours.
Fastforward to last week. Naggy dies after last Tuesday's patch, Ragefire spawns sometime on Friday, was killed around midnight Saturday, no estimate here.
Ragefire spawns Sunday afternoon (<--- my epic), spawn time 38 hours.
Ragefire is killed, then spawns Monday afternoon, spawn time in the vicinity of 24 hours.
So, to sum up, I believe that no one knows for certain the spawn time. There has been many guesses, including two formulas applied
on THE Cleric epic walkthrough, but both of these have been proven false. What I would suggest when camping Ragefire would be to
wait 24 hrs after he dies (if you can, assuming it's not already camped), and then clear the FG's and just have someone sit in Naggy's lair til FG respawn. Granted, it sucks, but you will be guaranteed Ragefire when he pops. If anyone has any other methods that are less tedious, by all means...
Well, we killed Naggy on Thusday night, say around 9-10 pm CST.
When I showed up and cleared the FG's at 4am, Zordak was home. Killed him around noon (my epic woo!) Friday and he hasn't respawned since. None on Sat or Sunday, and the lair has been permanently camped by one guild or another since I successfully got mine.
http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8802&highlight=ragefire+respawn
I think you are SOL.
His respawn time is really erratic. I've been camping in Naggy's lair for the last 4 nights and have not seen ragefire up. We've cleared the giants the last 3 nights in hoping that ragefire would spawn shortly thereafter, but no luck.
April 2001:
http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=3083&highlight=ragefire+respawn&page=2
Glad for your luck.
I have camped him 100 hours now, with no luck. Yes server spawning is a pain for everyone, but when you have been camping for 40 hours and the server goes down on Sunday afternoon, it is devastating.
On my server a guild failed to kill the Dragon version of Ragefyre and he despawned. After 55 hours of camping him I petitioned to see if the spawn was broken. A GM replied that "the process to get him to spawn may have to be started over" My question for you is has this happened on any other server and if so did Rage ever pop again before Nagafen was killed again?
...
he still has not spawned been way past 72 hours....
so evidently the spawn can be broken
May 2001:
http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8967&highlight=ragefire+respawn
bunch of 0-72 hour posts
http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=3164&highlight=absor+ragefire+timer
Did you see Absor's Ragefire reply?
The -------- separate Absor's comments from others:
Urky wrote:
The situation with this very rare spawn and last part of the Cleric Epic quest is currently intolerable, and only going to get worse.
Recently other epic quest we're altered to reduce the intesnse competition and ill feeling generated by a final rare spawn, yet the cleric epic remains unaltered. Currently on every server there are multiple people camped out in Solb to pounce on Zordak Ragefire should he ever appear, and the tension generated by having so many guilds/clerics forced to compete for the right to spawn the dragon is intense.. and as more clerics get to this stage the intesity of feeling is only going to increase. Coupled with the fact that with server outages Ragefire becomes an even rarer spawn still .. it can get very unpleasant.
Please review the situation with the spawn.
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Absor:
Well, oddly enough, the Ragefire setup is the one we used as a basis for the changes to other quests.
The only competition over Ragefire is by clerics. The issues that we were addressing were where two, three or more classes wanted to kill an epic NPC. The problem here is completely different.
The 'problem' here is that this particular epic is the most desired epic item in the game. The problem is that everyone is making this their priority; clerics, guilds, groups? everyone. The problem isn't the bottleneck, it's the fact that so many people are trying to get this item.
The Ragefire portion of this quest is not much different than other bottlenecks in other epic quests. Sure, we could move the bottleneck (and, most likely, force you to start over, since the bottleneck is currently at the end of the quest). But it would still have to exist. We need to control how many of these items exist in the game, control their rate of entry into the system.
I have read all of the comments made about this issue. While I can see that this is a concern, the solution is that people need to get along. We can't control the fact that so many people feel that they need to get this item and are willing to screw with other people to get it. The two solutions to that are to just give one to every cleric over 50th level, or to remove (or nerf) the item.
The cleric epic is not going to enter the world any faster than it does. Because of its perceived value, there are no obstacles that we could put in the path of obtaining it that would retain its current drop rate that wouldn't be a 'bottleneck'.
Some folks sent in actual suggestions for change. I'd like to address some of those ideas (sorry, but I'm only posting the parts of the comments with the suggestions, so these are somewhat out of context):
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Please have the team look at these problems, I personally don't think one voice can accomplish much, but this problem is only getting worse.
Some possible sugestions to fix this.
1. please put nagafen on a timer so he kills himself after being up for a few days, or you could have ragefire spawn and kill him for us. (this would fit into the quest)
2. Make ragefire a timed spawn, the problem with this is deciding how long it could take to spawn him, every 24 hours +- 7 hours would be about right.
3. Make RageFire triggered, this is the most unlikly thing to happen but, its only a sugestion.
4. Make RageFire spawn in different places, a lot of the cleric epic centers around the lavastorm area, which goes with the story, but there are other places you could have him spawn.
Thanks for listening to my ideas,
Rebounder Tinyheal
gnome vicar
Fennin Ro
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Absor:
1. No. Nagafen isn't going to just kill himself. He is one of THE epic encounters for those that haven't purchased expansions, and he's not going to just off himself so a cleric can have an epic weapon.
2. It IS a timed spawn? Very similar to what you suggest.
3. He is also triggered, just as you suggest.
4. This might be something that we could do. But you're slightly wrong, he is intimately linked with Nagafen, and moving him and changing this quest would require a rewrite, and might completely invalidate the existing quest.
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-Fujin- wrote:
Bottom line, I would like to make three requests on behalf of the clerics out there.
1. Our weapon is arguably the most useful in the game, and is by all means epic. However, please make the last encounter a bit more difficult than killing a level 54 dragon. Perhaps upping the difficulty to around that of Ixiblat and the Overking, or perhaps a little tougher. Beating up a level 54 dragon is trivial for many guilds, and though the cleric comes away happy, the final "epic battle" is somewhat of a joke.
2. Do something about Nagafen. Many clerics out there are stuck because the guild cannot attack Nagafen because their levels are too high. Something needs to be done to handle the fact that the guild that killed the overking and Ixiblat is too powerful to attack Nagafen. Whether Verant realized this at the time the quest was implemented, they have made Lord Nagafen an integral part of the epic quest.
3. Please allow those of us on our final step a more feasable way to obtain our epic weapon, whether the spawn rate on Zordak is increased, or allow him to be a triggerred spawn like Faydedar is for the druid epic now. It's an incredible letdown to have come this far, only to realize that you have to wait in line for possibly months to get your chance.
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Absor:
1. Well, the fact that it could be considered the best available is, primarily, the cause of all of this conflict. You mentioned earlier (in part of your comment that I cut out), that you thought there might be 20-25 clerics waiting for this part of their epic on your server. There probably aren't that many of any other class working on their epic at all, in any stage, on your server. This indicates to me that the problem lies in the perceived value of the item, not in the quest itself.
But I think I agree that the final battle isn't nearly hard enough. However, increasing the power of this final NPC would not solve the issue at hand.
2. Nagafen doesn't live long on many servers. But I can see the inconsistency in this issue, if nothing else. However, many clerics overcome this problem by offering to aid people to destroy Nagafen, and in a way this promotes the kind of thing we like to see in game.
3. He IS a triggered spawn. The 'triggered' spawn is only an idea to ensure that at least one person in the group has done the previous parts of the quest before they can encounter the next. And I can't imagine that we would increase the rate that these items enter the game. There are already a large number of these supposedly rare artifact-like items in the game.
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So, enough complaints. On to suggestions.
-> Leave Ragefire as he is and add another, triggered mob, that is MUCH tougher to complete the quest. Make said mob level 62 or so and require 4 good groups to kill (or more if you must), as opposed to Ragefire who has been done by 6 level 60s.
-> If possible, change the level necessary to use the epic to 56. While a nice benefit to lower level Clerics to get the 56 res, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that those Clerics should be able to first actually cast the spell before using the effect off a piece of equipment. Very very rarely can someone use an effect of an item that casts a spell higher in level than the player is currently. While many would cry nerf, it seems like a reasonable nerf and would, temporarily at least, reduce the competition for Ragefire.
->Maybe make Ixiblat Fer tougher. Again, very high level players can take him down quite easily and with small numbers. For lower level players (say 55 and under) he is quite the monster, but these days it's trivial to gather the forces necessary to kill him.
->Make the Plasmatic Priest significantly tougher. Can do him with three players easily (probably with 2, Cleric/Monk).
I'm not certain that the suggestions above are worthwhile or even workable within the design vision. However, they are just my attempts at possible solutions that might allow more Epics to enter the game while balancing that somewhat with increased difficulty. Unlike many other epics, the Cleric epic is extremely easy and the only real bottlenecks are the rare spawns. I find it difficult to believe that Verant intentionally designed the Cleric epic quest to be so easy to get to the last step only to have literally dozens (if not hundreds) of Clerics stuck at the final bottleneck. Add that to the item having an effect that is in huge demand by guilds who do raids and it seems like a guaranteed formula for strife.
I thank you for your time and I hope to hear from you soon.
Kenneth Russo
"Rayne" http://eqcleric.gameglow.com[/b]
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Absor:
The bottleneck at Ragefire would not be reduced by your first suggestion, unless you are proposing that we take that step out. As I said, I'm all for making this quest much harder, especially considering that this is by far the most sought after epic in the game.
Putting a level limit on the item is sort of contrary to the way things have been done. But I can see the value in it.
Ixiblat Fer, or the Plasmatic Priest, or any other NPC in this quest getting stronger works fine for me. But it won't reduce the alleged 50 clerics waiting behind the Ragefire spawn?
In any case, I'll bring all of this to the team. We are exceedingly reluctant to mess around with these epic quests. We could spend the rest of our days farting around with them and never make then perfect. So don't expect a change. Only know that I'll make certain the team sees your concerns.
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Absor again:
I wrote all of that last week. Today we had a Tuning meeting that was mostly about this particular issue.
First, we can't be changing epic quests all the time to make them fit the current game. Just like any other content, these quests will get easier as time passes and players get higher level, better items and all that.
The bottleneck here is caused almost exclusively by the massive volume of Clerics and their guilds and friends and friends of friends helping them and urging (or insisting) that the get this item. The only solution to that would be to nerf the item, make it less desirable so that fewer people will be insisting that Clerics have this item. We've decided not to do that.
There are no other changes that we can make to this quest that would not simply be making the quest harder or more tedious. We've learned from past experience that making the quest harder would probably not reduce the bottleneck. Making more bottlenecks earlier in the quest would be considered a nerf, but is the only solution to reducing the bottleneck at Ragefire. While this is a perfectly viable solution, adjusting these quests all the time isn't something we want to do, since the difficulty of these quests will change as players and characters advance (constantly), and we're not planning on playing catchup all the time this way.
So, the answer is, no. We are not going to change the Cleric epic quest. The problem doesn't really lie in the quest (except perhaps that it is too easy), it lies in the desirability of the item and the vast number of people trying to get it (or help others get it).
Alan
Based on the change in comments between May and August this is closest to your estimate of a changed spawn timer.
August 2001:
When I was working on my epic, I studied Ragefire spawn religiously.
I read every post I could get my hands on here and elsewhere. Do some searching using the "search" function, keyword "Ragefire" in the various forums here to get a taste.
The best information I was able to gather, both from researching and from personal experience, follows here. Ragefire will spawn between 4 and 96 hours after Nagafen dies. The average is "weighted" towards the higher end of that scale- about 81 hours on average. I watched this cycle twice. 82 hours after Naggy died, Ragefire spawned and was killed by another guild (I had been camping him but, as it was a weekday, I had to get some sleep- he spawned at about 1 AM).
My Ragefire spawned 75 hours after the first Ragefire dropped...I spent 72 of those 75 hours at my computer. I slept in 30 minute naps, with an alarm waking me up so I could check on his status. I was very, very lucky to have the support of my guild for that whole span: over 20 of them were in SolB that entire week, bashing spiders and Firegiants. I had a list of phone numbers of guildmates (folks scattered all over the world) that I could call at any hour, day or night, for the final 72 hours of my camp. When he spawned, I had 30 people there at my side with 15 minutes. I should mention that, at one point during my 72 hour camp, a GM dropped by to see how things were going. He was a great guy, but he wasn't able to give any great insight into Ragefire. He did confirm that he was on a highly variable timer, and that it could be significantly more than 72 hours.
Nagafen will respawn after almost precisely seven days (little randomness involved, but there *is* some: possibly as much as 12 hours) after he died. If Ragefire is around at the time, Ragefire will immediately despawn. Even if you are in the middle of fighting him. This could be *very* bad, and it has happened to some people- and yes, you do lose your pearl.
So, on average, there will be two Ragefire spawns after each Nagafen slaying (assuming no server restarts).
The guide is just outdated, that's all. Ragefire used to pop 24 hours after his death. Now it's random, up to 96 hours later. For me it was 60 hours after a ragefire death. Also, it does seem like often Ragefire spawns more quickly after a Naggy death, but it's not necessarily 8 hours or 12 hours... it could be a long time, but it seems like frequently it is in the 8-12 hour range after Naggy dies.
Just to throw off several theories about Ragefire spawn time...
For us, just a few weeks ago we took out Naggy right after a patch, so this would be the first time Naggy died.
Ragefire popped instantly after Naggy died.
Seems more like the spawn time is 0 - 100 hours.
October 2001:
Your going to hear theories on this, but the short answer is no one knows.
As the controller for Luclin's Ragefire Rotation list, I have been following this spawn for nearly a year now. Some will say Ragefire's timer starts after naggy dies, but its hard to know for sure, since naggy is never allowed to remain alive longer than a couple days. However, since there ARE rare reports of rage spawning while naggy is up, (Naggy will kill Rage, so hard to notice this), then I now believe that Ragefire's spawn time and Naggy's spawntime are independant and completely unrelated. Naggy is up on server bootup, and then respawns every 7 days, give or take a few hours. Ragefire is not up on bootup, and seems to be wildly random from 1-4 days (reportedly sometimes as long as 4.5, but never longer). Further, in my opinion, its not a simple random number from 1-4 days, it seems to be a bell curve. Though its *possible* to be only 1 day, or all the way out to 4.5, its far more likely to be 2 or 3. I'm not enough of a geek to figure out a median and standard deviation or anything for this though. ; )
Anyway, in your case, I believe the timer started as soon as you killed the last Rage, and the window of possible spawn begins about a day after you killed Rage. If naggy is still up when rage pops, he will quickly die (and you may or probably may not ever notice)
You ever wondered about how when a person starts camping rage after naggy dies, they often get it very fast (like within hours of naggy's death) but the next cleric camping it knows it wont be that easy, more like 2 or 3 days, and so the conventional thinking was, after naggy dies, its 0-3 days, and respawns are 1-4 days. I no longer think is correct.
There's a saying that a simple explanation is a lot more likely than any other. Instead of these complex theories on spawns after naggy and different spawns for respawn, I think they are unrelated, and rage is simply 1-4.5 days. If naggy and ragefire were unrelated on spawns, than that explains this nicely. Rage's timer started on bootup, and when naggy finally died say about 1.5 days after bootup, this is well within rage's possibility of spawning, if the 1-4.5 timer starts at bootup, rather than naggy's death, thus surprising a cleric with a tiny 4-hour camp (when the "camp" really should have started at bootup, but naggy's presence was getting in the way)
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