Quote:
Originally Posted by DMN
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All it took was for shamans to start hitting 9 and druids 14 for druid's stock to start massively rising. Few people wanted to play blind ass scrubby looking tattooed clown-shoed barbarians, who started in what was believed the in the worst starting zone in the game
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That isn't true at all, LOL? First of all, plenty of people found Barbarians to have an appealing look (and as for Ogre/Troll, people had plenty of reason to play those races too, aka their stats, if not the fantasy roleplaying enjoyment of playing an Ogre or Troll caster). Second of all, Everfrost was an amazing starting zone. There was more to hunt there, and across a wider level range, than any other starting zone in the game, and the ambiance of the twisty icy mountains and danger of nighttime was quite enthralling (even if it was more difficult).
Finally, and most importantly, Barbarian Shaman was my first fucking character early in 1999. I was in Blackburrow, and Qeynos Hills, and the Karanas, where ALL of the Human Druids were also starting out. There were more Shaman there than Druids (and more Rangers than Druids as well). Obviously there were a ton of Druids starting over in the Gfay area, but Shaman was not such a scarce class as you say (I saw a decent amount of Ogre/Troll Shaman when I found my way over to that part of the world), and Druids were not found in large quantities everywhere. Warrior was the class that was everywhere, and Ranger was next in line in terms of how many I saw being played during those months (they were basically "Warriors who can also cast snare and use tracking and forage food!" to most people who had progressed a bit, plus the RPG attraction...extremely popular).
I'd really like to know what servers you claim had 2x as many Druids as any other class, because that was not my experience, in any game era. Sure, they were a relatively popular class from the start and got even more popular as they became the class that casual players latched onto (ironically the one class who survived being called bad in Kunark, because despite their weaker power level at the higher levels, people still really liked their travel ability and self-dependability). It's even possible they were the most played class at a certain point, but it wasn't like that during early EQ, and that number you quote sounds overboard to me for later eras, because Druids did still have a stigma attached to them; there was a ton of talk as the Kunark era progressed, about how much worse they were than Cleric or Shaman as the defensive support for a team.