Does Hybrid Penalty (still) apply to group?

[Sethius]

Originally Posted by Tol [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Nothing wrong with min-maxing. If I want to play a game based on creativity and story I'll look into D&D, whitewolf, or other tabletop games.

I play EQ to be the most efficient genocidal killer I can be, watch stat numbers go up, and get better gear. I just don't really consider EQ to give the ability to do anything but kill mindlessly for hours on end, the only real challenges being presented by the ineptitude of fellow players. I mean really, how many freaking days can you roleplay, "We're in Ass/sup yet again, smiting the evil frog ghouls". Especially if you did it on live 10 years ago. I group with like-minded players, and we have fun doing crazy stuff that most groups our level are not able to. I'm the person who likes to solo the crazy mobs that take most people a group to kill, or group up with another player and do challenging things that we probably weren't intended to do. That attracts me to game-breaking classes like bard and doing things like swarm kiting 50 mobs in the planes. I play with my own goals in mind, and those usually dont involve grouping with 4 lobotomized hybrids who all somehow fail to grasp eq's challenging mechanics of, "press autoattack" and watching my exp dwindle to nothing.

Nothing wrong with playing how you want, but I have a hard time understanding why you are not playing WoW instead of EQ with that mindset... you certainly exhibit the characteristics of almost everyone in my old WoW guild.

No offense, just an observation and opinion. WoW is a good game too, for people that like that sort of thing.

As for you liking the challenge of doing the hard stuff, I can respect that.

[Tol]

Originally Posted by Sethius [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Nothing wrong with playing how you want, but I have a hard time understanding why you are not playing WoW instead of EQ with that mindset... you certainly exhibit the characteristics of almost everyone in my old WoW guild.

No offense, just an observation and opinion. WoW is a good game too, for people that like that sort of thing.

As for you liking the challenge of doing the hard stuff, I can respect that.

Honestly not much of a reason other than EQ is less time consuming during the grind. The two games are not really different at all. They're timesinks where you watch numbers slowly go up. I actually think EQ is ALOT easier once you know the game mechanics. cheal chains and watch aggro and you can spank-n-tank any old world mob pretty easy. yawn. EQ was challenging when no one knew the game mechanics, before all the quests were posted online, before every classes ideal cookie-cutter gear became widely known, and because of bugs and other players. With all that stripped away, EQ is a really simple game honestly.

I like EQ more because the leveling processes is: "kill 2 mobs, afk 10 minutes to do laundry and study". I am more productive around the house and get more done when playing solo classes in EQ than virtually any other time. Yay downtime [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

wow is "click click click click CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK" for 8 hours straight. I like a game I can play while I can watch TV or read a book unless I'm grouped with guildmates or friends. wow does not facilitate that.

[Mcbard]

Originally Posted by Tol [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I like EQ more because the leveling processes is: "kill 2 mobs, afk 10 minutes to do laundry and study". I am more productive around the house and get more done when playing solo classes in EQ than virtually any other time. Yay downtime [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I've never really had any downtime soloing as a bard here, or as a necromancer on live. Maybe you're doing it wrong (right?). :P

[Kich]

Originally Posted by Sethius [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Nothing wrong with playing how you want, but I have a hard time understanding why you are not playing WoW instead of EQ with that mindset... you certainly exhibit the characteristics of almost everyone in my old WoW guild.

No offense, just an observation and opinion. WoW is a good game too, for people that like that sort of thing.

As for you liking the challenge of doing the hard stuff, I can respect that.

Typecasting the WoW playerbase as loot hungry min-maxers is a bit naive. Of the ~13 million users, 10 (or more) million of those players have little to no interest in raiding and the like. A good portion of that group is deeply in love with the story of the game, and a smaller portion of THAT portion intimately play on RP servers (I may be wrong about that demographic, I've never been on one, but I do know there are at least a few incredibly large and popular RP servers).

It sounds like you were probably in a hardcore raiding guild, or one that wanted to be, of which there are only about a dozen per server of the hundreds (perhaps thousandish) guilds per server.

(In other words, the hardcore min-maxing scene (which I'm absolutely a part of in that game) is actually very small.)

In regards to EQ, I can understand why he plays it over WoW. Especially in regards to the challenge and power an individual can attain in this game depending on the class. In WoW, there is no real challenge in the outside world, nor in dungeons. It only really hits in raids and even then a lot of it is actually pretty easy conceptually. EQ has a steep difficulty curve, not only that the mobs in the game drop interesting loot (something a game like WoW seriously lacks, their items are bound to stat budgets and level requirements and they're all basically the same thing with "change x to y" certain stat).

Understandably, at some point in the EQ timeline, gear starts becoming ridiculous and every piece of high end gear was just a massive increase to all stats and had no real flavor to it, but I don't think this server reaches that point.

However, Tol, you may have inspired me to make a Bard =P

[Sethius]

Originally Posted by Kich [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Typecasting the WoW playerbase as loot hungry min-maxers is a bit naive. Of the ~13 million users, 10 (or more) million of those players have little to no interest in raiding and the like. A good portion of that group is deeply in love with the story of the game, and a smaller portion of THAT portion intimately play on RP servers (I may be wrong about that demographic, I've never been on one, but I do know there are at least a few incredibly large and popular RP servers).

It sounds like you were probably in a hardcore raiding guild, or one that wanted to be, of which there are only about a dozen per server of the hundreds (perhaps thousandish) guilds per server.

(In other words, the hardcore min-maxing scene (which I'm absolutely a part of in that game) is actually very small.)

In regards to EQ, I can understand why he plays it over WoW. Especially in regards to the challenge and power an individual can attain in this game depending on the class. In WoW, there is no real challenge in the outside world, nor in dungeons. It only really hits in raids and even then a lot of it is actually pretty easy conceptually. EQ has a steep difficulty curve, not only that the mobs in the game drop interesting loot (something a game like WoW seriously lacks, their items are bound to stat budgets and level requirements and they're all basically the same thing with "change x to y" certain stat).

Understandably, at some point in the EQ timeline, gear starts becoming ridiculous and every piece of high end gear was just a massive increase to all stats and had no real flavor to it, but I don't think this server reaches that point.

However, Tol, you may have inspired me to make a Bard =P

I was the guild leader of a guild that raided 5 nights a week, doing all the top end raids. I stopped playing maybe a few weeks before we did lich king, and handed leadership off to one of my officers. We were not competing for the top spots on the server, but we did well, and had a lot of respect.

I'm not trying to typecast WoW players, but the game is built to cater to min-maxers. EQ is also built to cater to min-maxers, but the game is 11 years old now, and anyone who is coming back here is probably coming back for nostalgia when min-max gameplay was not even heard of and not due to a min-max idea. Playing an 11 year old game is the opposite of the min-maxer mentality, especially given the culture that once surrounded EQ so many years ago.

[Tol]

Originally Posted by Sethius [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

and anyone who is coming back here is probably coming back for nostalgia when min-max gameplay was not even heard of and not due to a min-max idea. Playing an 11 year old game is the opposite of the min-maxer mentality, especially given the culture that once surrounded EQ so many years ago.

Pretty much everything in this paragraph is wrong

Min-maxers existed on EQ from as far back as anyone can remember. Seriously dude, people parsing text logs and calculating exactly which stats stop being useful after which soft/hard cap is as min-maxy as it gets, and they were doing it in UO/muds/etc before EQ even hit the scene. I think you have rose-colored glasses on if you don't think most everquest players were as bad as their wow counterparts. As soon as kunark opened, the LOIO highway became the norm and was populted 24/7, not the exception. Getting anyone outside of guild/friends to go do something fun/challenging like dalnir, nurga, and other dungeons was an exercise in frustration. "LEAVE MY DREADLANDS? I DONT THINK SO BUDDY"

Also we have a shaman thread basically every week thats like, "hey how do I exactly allocate my statistics perfectly so I will be the best at everything I ever do". Nostalgia's there for sure, but people play for a lot of other reasons.

Originally Posted by Mcbard [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I've never really had any downtime soloing as a bard here, or as a necromancer on live. Maybe you're doing it wrong (right?). :P

I played a bard/necro on live, not here. I specifically avoided bard because after twisting for 5 years I really don't want to do so any more [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]. I'll be making an iksar necro at kunark because all of the current races are STATISTICALLY INFERIOR and I couldn't have that!

[Sethius]

Originally Posted by Tol [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Pretty much everything in this paragraph is wrong

Min-maxers existed on EQ from as far back as anyone can remember. Seriously dude, people parsing text logs and calculating exactly which stats stop being useful after which soft/hard cap is as min-maxy as it gets, and they were doing it in UO/muds/etc before EQ even hit the scene. I think you have rose-colored glasses on if you don't think most everquest players were as bad as their wow counterparts. As soon as kunark opened, the LOIO highway became the norm and was populted 24/7, not the exception. Getting anyone outside of guild/friends to go do something fun/challenging like dalnir, nurga, and other dungeons was an exercise in frustration. "LEAVE MY DREADLANDS? I DONT THINK SO BUDDY"

Most people back then barely knew what stats were, and everyone was lost 90% of the time, in my experience anyway.

I don't know who you hung out with on Live in the old days, but it sounds like you got screwed in the nostalgia department. I, on the other hand, had fun.