Quote:
Originally Posted by Rooj
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Detrimental to the community. Part of the reason that this server thrives is because of Everquest's near requirement to group with other players and the incredibly slow leveling speed. It shouldn't have been allowed in classic either [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
In an AOE group, 99% of the time you're AFK. You're not even playing the game. If you don't want to play the game, why are you playing it? |
I think this is pretty silly. You're definitely not AFK anywhere close to 99% of the time, for one thing. The repops take about 20 minutes; shortly before the repop happens you have to kill a roamer, then you have to make sure you're buffed up and ready as the pull comes, then the monsters come and you kill them - them arriving and you killing them takes several minutes - then you spend a while looting and rolling on loot. You end up actually being able to AFK about 4/5 of the time, maybe a little more, certainly not 99%. The situation is different if you bought a proxy spot, obviously; if you're being PLed you don't necessarily need to do anything, period, but we're talking about being a normal participant here.
What else involves a lot of AFK time? Many classes' soloing ability. Look at a quadding druid or wizard: you gather up a bunch of mobs, kill them, then sit for a long time medding up. I guess you don't want to play the game then!
Also, I don't know why you would even mention the requirement to group with other players, because that is exactly what you are doing in an AE group. In fact, I would say that an AE group is in some ways the ultimate form of grouping with other players because you have to be so well-coordinated and on the ball. If you screw up in a regular EXP group, maybe your group has to have a longer rest break after a pull. If you screw up in an AE group, everybody dies in a fraction of a second (obviously this depends on the class; an AE nuker has somewhat more leeway). And what you're accomplishing is pretty amazing - you're killing an entire zone all at once.
I think AE groups are one of the coolest parts of EQ, to be honest. You are working together with other people in a very specific and thought-out way to accomplish something great. Now, I wouldn't say that it should be your entire leveling experience, but levels 50+ with their crazy hell levels and double hell levels and not an enormous amount of places to EXP can get very slow and very dull, and AE groups are a great way to do something different and something faster.
Also, to the poster asking why I didn't think 5k/hr was reasonable - for me it's just a matter of how much someone's time is worth. My impression was that normal PLing goes for about 2k/hr, which for me is already kind of steep because most of my methods of income are less than that. So if I paid someone 2k/hr for a PL when I can really only make about 1-1.5k/hr in income through various methods, I'm saying their time is worth more than mine. 5k/hr is just huge, and in my opinion unreasonable. But it is very good EXP (depending on the group having good pulling and going smoothly), so if you wanna shell out that kind of money, go for it.